It is arguable that each of these gates of entry into the topic of intentionality (directedness, condition of satisfaction, and mental content) opens onto a unitary phenomenon. But evidently there is also considerable fragmentation in the conceptions of both consciousness and intentionality that are in the field. To get a better grasp of some of the ways the relationship between consciousness and intentionality can be viewed, without begging questions or trying to present a positive theory on the topic, it is useful to take a look at the recent history of thinking about intentionality, in a way that will bring several issues about its relationship with consciousness to the fore. Together with the preceding discussion, this should provide the background necessary for examining some of the differences that divide those who theorize about consciousness that is very intimately involved with views of the consciousness-intentionality relation.
If we are to acknowledge the extent to which the notion of intentionality is the creature of philosophical history, we have to come to terms with the divide in twentieth century western philosophy between so-called ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophical traditions. Both have been significantly concerned with intentionality. But differences in approach, vocabulary, and background assumptions have made dialogue between them difficult. It is almost inevitable, in a brief exposition, to give largely independent summaries of the two. We will start with the ‘continental’ side of the story - more, specifically, with the Phenomenological movement in continental philosophy. However, while these traditions have developed without a great deal of intercommunication, they do have common sources, and have come to focus on issues concerning the relationship of consciousness and intentionality that are recognizably similar.
A thorough look at the historical roots of controversies over consciousness and intentionality would take us farther into the past than it is feasible to go in this article. A relatively recent, convenient starting point would be in the philosophy of Franz Brentano. He more than any other single thinker is responsible for keeping the term ‘intentional’ alive in philosophical discussions of the last century or so, with something like its current use, and was much concerned to understand its relationship with consciousness. However, it is worth noting that Brentano himself was very aware of the deep historical background to his notion of intentionality: He looked back through scholastic discussions (crucial to the development of Descartes' immensely influential theory of ideas), and ultimately to Aristotle for his theme of intentionality. One may go further back, to Plato's discussion (in the Sophist, and the Theaetetus) of difficulties in making sense of false belief, and yet further still, to the dawn of Western Philosophy, and Parmenides' attempt to draw momentous consequences from his alleged finding that it is not possible to think or speak of what is not.
In Brentano's treatment what seems crucial to intentionality is the mind's capacity to ‘refer’ or be ‘directed’ to objects existing solely in the mind - what he called ‘mental or intentional inexistence.’ It is subject to interpretation just what Brentano meant by speaking of an object existing only in the mind and not outside of it, and what he meant by saying that such ‘immanent’ objects of thought are not ‘real.’ He complained that critics had misunderstood him here, and appears to have revised his position significantly as his thought developed. But it is clear at least that his conception of intentionality is dominated by the first strand in thought about intentionality mentioned above - intentionality as ‘directedness toward an object’ - and whatever difficulty that brings in the point.
Brentano's conception of the relation between consciousness and intentionality can be brought out partly by noting he held that every conscious mental phenomenon is both directed toward an object, and always (if only ‘secondarily’) directed toward itself. (That is, it includes a ‘presentation’ - and ‘inner perception’ - of itself). Since Brentano also denied the existence of unconscious mental phenomena, this amounts to the view that all mental phenomena are, in a sense ‘self-presentational.’
His lectures in the late nineteenth century attracted a diverse group of central European intellectuals (including that great promoter of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud) and the problems raised by Brentano's views were taken up by a number of prominent philosophers of the era, including Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, and Kasimir Twardowski. Of these, it was Husserl's treatment of the Brentanian theme of intentionality that was to have the widest philosophical influence on the European Continent in the twentieth century - both by means of its transformation in the hands of other prominent thinkers who worked under the aegis of ‘phenomenology’ - such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty - and through its rejection by those embracing the ‘deconstructionism’ of Jacques Derrida.
In responding to Brentano, Husserl also adopted his concern with properly understanding the way in which thought and experience are “directed toward objects.” Husserl criticized Brentano's doctrine of ‘inner perception,’ and did not deny (even if he did not affirm) the reality of unconscious mentation. But Husserl retained Brentano's primary focus on describing conscious ‘mental acts.’ Also he believed that knowledge of one's own mental acts rests on an ‘intuitive’ apprehension of their instances, and held that one is, in some sense, conscious of each of one's conscious experiences (though he denied this meant that every conscious experience is an object of an intentional act). Evidently Husserl wished to deny that all conscious acts are objects of inner perception, while also affirming that some kind of reflexivity - one that is, however, neither judgment-like nor sense-like - is essentially built into every conscious act. But the details of the view are not easy to make out. (A similar (and similarly elusive) view was expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre in the doctrine that “All consciousness is a non-positional consciousness of itself.”
One of Husserl's principal points of departure in his early treatment of intentionality (in the Logical Investigations) was his criticism of (what he took to be) Brentano's notion of the ‘mental inexistence’ of the objects of thought and perception. Husserl thought it a fundamental error to suppose that the object (the ‘intentional object’) of a thought, judgment, desire, etc. is always an object ‘in’ (or ‘immanent to’) the mind of the thinker, judger, or desirer. The objects of one's ‘mental acts’ of thinking, judging, etc. are often objects that ‘transcend,’ and exist independently of these acts (states of mind) that are directed toward them (that ‘intend’ them, in Husserl's terms). This is particularly striking, Husserl thought, if we focus on the intentionality of sense perception. The object of my visual experience is not something ‘in my mind,’ whose existence depends on the experience - but something that goes beyond or ‘transcends’ any (necessarily perspectival) experience I may have of it. This view is phenomenologically based, for (Husserl says), the object is experienced as perspectivally given, hence as ‘transcendent’ in this sense.
In cases of hallucination, we should say, on Husserl's view, not that there is an object existing ‘in one's mind,’ but that the object intended does not exist at all. This does not do away with the ‘directedness’ of the experience, for that is properly understood (according to the Logical Investigations) as it is having a certain ‘matter’- where the matter of a mental act is what may be common to different acts, when, for example, one believes that it will not rain tomorrow, and hopes that it will not rain tomorrow. The difference between the mental acts illustrated (between hoping and believing) Husserl would term a difference in their ‘quality.’ Husserl was to re-interpret his notions of act-matter and quality as components of what he called (in Ideas, 1983) the ‘noema’ or ‘noematic structure’ that can be common to distinct particular acts. So intentional directedness is understood not as a relation to special (mental) objects toward which one is directed, but rather: as the possession by mental acts of matter/quality (or later, ‘noematic’) structure.
This unites Husserl's discussion with the ‘content’ conception of intentionality described above: he himself would accept that the matter of an act (later, its ‘noematic sense’) is the same as the content of judgment, belief, desire, etc., in one sense of the term (or rather, in one sense he found in the ambiguous German ‘Gestalt’). However, it is not fully clear how Husserl would view the relationship between either act-matter and noematic sense quite generally and such semantic correlates of ordinary language sentences that some would identify as the contents of states of mind reported in them. Nonetheless, this is a difficulty partly because of his later emphasis (e.g., in Experience and Judgment) on the importance of what he called ‘pre-predicative’ experience. He believed that the sort of judgments we express in ordinary and scientific languages are ‘founded on’ the intentionality of pre-predicative experience, and that it is a central task of philosophy to clarify the way in which such experience of our surroundings and our own bodies underlies judgment, and the capacity it affords us to construct an ‘objective’ conception of the world. Prepredicative experience’s are, paradigmatically, sense experience as it is given to us, independently of any active judging or predication. But did Husserl hold that what makes such experience pre-predicative is that it altogether lacks the content that is expressed linguistically in predicative judgment, or did he think that such judgment merely renders explicitly a predicative content that even ‘pre-predicative’ experience already (implicitly) has? Just what does the ‘pre-’ in ‘pre-predicative’ entail?
Perhaps this is not clear. In any case, the theme of a type of intentionality more fundamental than that involved in predicative judgments that ‘posit’ objects, and to be found in everyday experience of our surroundings, was taken up, in different ways, by later phenomenologists, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The former describes a type of ‘directed’ ‘comportment’ toward beings in which they ‘show themselves’ as ‘ready-to-hand. Heidegger thinks this characterizes our ordinary practical involvement with our surroundings, and regards it as distinct from, and somehow providing a basis for, entities showing themselves to us as ‘present-at-hand’ (or ‘occurrent’) - as they do when we take of less context-bound, and more in a theoretical stance toward the world. Later, Merleau-Ponty (1949-1962), influenced by his study of Gestalt psychology and neurological case studies describing pathologies of perception and action, held that normal perception involves a consciousness of place tied essentially to one's capacities for exploratory and goal-directed movement, which is indeterminate relative to attempts to express or characterize it in terms of ‘objective’ representations - though it makes such an objective conception of the world possible.
Whether Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty's moves in these directions actually contradict Husserl, they clearly go beyond what he says. Another basic, exegetically complex, apparent difference between Husserl and the two later philosophers, pertinent to the relationship of consciousness and intentionality, there lies the disputation over Husserl's proposed ‘Phenomenological reduction.’ Husserl claimed it is possible (and, indeed, essential to the practice of phenomenology) that one conduct and investigation into the structure of consciousness that carefully abstains from affirming the existence of anything in spatial-temporal reality. By this ‘bracketing’ of the natural world, by reducing the scope of one's assertions first to the subjective sphere of consciousness, then to its abstract (or ‘ideal’) atemporal structure, one is able to apprehend what consciousness. Its various forms essentially are, in a way that supplies a foundation to the philosophical study of knowledge, meaning and value. Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (along with a number of Husserl's other students) appear to have questioned whether it is possible to reduce one's commitments as thoroughly as Husserl appears to have prescribed through a ‘mass abstention’ from judgment about the world, and thus whether it is correct to regard one's intentional experience as a whole as essentially detachable from the world at which it is directed. Seemingly crucial to their doubts about Husserl's reduction is their belief that an essential part of intentionality consists in a distinctively practical involvement with the world that cannot be broken by any mere abstention from judgment.
The Phenomenological themes just hinted at (the notion of a ‘pre-predicative’ type of intentionality; the (un)detachability of intentionality from the world) link with issues regarding consciousness and intentionality as these are understood outside the Phenomenological tradition - in particular, the notion of non-conceptual content, and the internalism/externalism debate, to be considered in Section (4). But it is by no means a straightforward matter to describe these links in detail. Part of the reason lies in the general difficulty in being clear about whether what one philosopher means by ‘consciousness’ (or its standard translations) is close enough to what another means for it to be correct to see them as speaking to the same issues. And while some of the Phenomenological philosophers (Brentano, Husserl, Sartre) make thematically central use of terms cognate with ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality,’ and consider questions about intentionality first and foremost as questions about the intentionality of consciousness, they do not explicitly address much that (in the latter half of the twentieth century) came to seem problematic about consciousness and intentionality. Is their ‘consciousness’ the phenomenal kind? Would they reject theories of consciousness that reduce it to a species of access to content? If so, on what grounds? (Given their interest in the relation of consciousness, inner perception, and reflection, it may be easier to discern what their stances on reductive ‘higher order representation’ theories of consciousness would be.)
In some ways the situation is more difficult still in the cases of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. For the former, though he willingly enough uses’ words standardly translated as ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality,’ says little to explain how he understands such terms generally. And the latter deliberately avoid these terms in his central work, Being and Time, in order to forge a philosophical vocabulary free of errors in which they had, he thought, become enmeshed. However, it is not obvious how to articulate the precise difference between what Heidegger rejects, in rejecting the alleged error-laden understanding of ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality’, or their German translations, by what he accepts when he speaks of being to his ‘showing’ or ‘disclosing’ them to us, and of our ‘comportment’ directed toward them.
Nevertheless, one can plausibly read Brentano's notion of ‘presentation’ as equivalent to the notion of phenomenally conscious experience, as this is understood in other writers. For Brentano says, ‘We speak of presentation whenever something appears to us.’ And one may take ways of appearing as equivalent to ways of seeming, in the sense proper to phenomenal consciousness. Further, Brentano's attempt to state that through his analysis as described through that of ‘descriptive or Phenomenological psychology,’ became atypically based on how intentional manifestations are to present of themselves, the fundamental kinds to which they belong and their necessary interrelationships, may plausibly be interpreted as an effort to articulate the philosophical salient, highly general phenomenal character of intentional states (or acts) of mind. And Husserl's attempts to delineate the structure of intentionality as it is ‘given’ in consciousness, as well as the Phenomenological productions of Sartre, can arguably be seen as devoted to laying bare to thought the deepest and most general characteristics of phenomenal consciousness, as they are found in ‘directed’ perception, judgment, imagination, emotion and action. Also, one might reasonably regard Heideggerean disclosure of the ready-to-hand and Merleau-Ponty's ‘motor-intentional’ consciousness of place as forms of phenomenally conscious experience - as long as one's conception of phenomenal consciousness is not tied to the notion that the subjective ‘sphere’ of consciousness is, in essence, independent of the world revealed through it.
In any event, to connect classic Phenomenological writings with current discussions of consciousness and its relation to intentionality, more background is needed on aspects of the other main current of Western philosophy in the past century particularly relevant to the topic of intentionality - broadly labelled ‘analytic’.
It seems fair to say that recent work in philosophy of mind in the analytic tradition that has focussed on questions about the nature of intentionality (or ‘mental content’) has been most formed not by the writings of Brentano, Husserl and their direct intellectual descendants, but by the seminal discussions of logico-linguistic concerns found in Gottlob Frége's (1892) “On Sense and Reference,” and Bertrand Russell's “On Denoting” (1905).
But Frége and Russell's work comes from much the same era, and from much the same intellectual environment as Brentano and the early Husserl. And fairly clear points of contact have long been recognized, such as: Russell's criticism of Meinong's ‘theory of objects’, derived from the problem of intentionality, which led him to countenance objects, such as the golden mountain, that are capable of being the object of thought, although they do not exist. This doctrine was one of the principal theories of Russell’s theory of definite descriptions. However, it came as part of a complex and interesting package of concepts in the theory of meaning and scholars are not united in supposing that Russell was fair to it.
The similarities between Husserl's meaning/object distinction (in Logical Investigation I) and Frége's (prior) sense/reference distinction. Indeed the case has been influentially made (by Follesdal 1969, 1990) that Husserl's ‘meaning/object’ distinction is borrowed from Frége (though with a change in terminology) and that Husserl's ‘noema’ is properly interpreted as having the characteristics of Frégean ‘sense.’
Nonetheless, a number of factors make comparison and integration of debates within the two traditions complicated and strenuous. Husserl's notion of noema (hence his notion of intentionality) is most fundamentally rooted, not in reflections on the logical features of language, but in a contrast between the object of an intentional act, and the object ‘as intended’ (the way in which it is intended), and in the idea that a structure would remain to perceptual experience, even if it were radically non-veridical. And what Husserl seeks is a ‘direct’ characterization of this (and other) kinds of experience from the point of view of the experiencer. On the other hand, Frége and Russell's writings bearing on the topic of intentionality concentrate mainly and most explicitly on issues that grow from their own pioneering achievements in logic, and have given rise to ways of understanding mental states primarily through questions about the logic and semantics of the language used to speak of them.
Broadly speaking, logico-linguistic concerns have been methodologically and thematically dominant in the analytic Frége-Russell tradition, while the Phenomenological Brentano-Husserl lineage is rooted in attempts to characterize experience as it is evident from the subject's point of view. For this reason perhaps, discussions of consciousness and intentionality are more obviously intertwined from the start in the Phenomenological tradition than in the analytic one. The following sketch of relevant background in the latter case will, accordingly, most directly concern the treatment of intentionality. But by the end, the bearing of this on the treatment of consciousness in analytic philosophy of mind will have become more evident, and it will be clearer how similar issues concerning the consciousness-intentionality relationship arise in each tradition.
Central to Frége's legacy for discussions of mental or intentional content has been his distinction between ‘sense’ (Sinn) and ‘reference’ (Bedeutung), and his application in his distinction is to cope with an apparent failure of substitutivity to something of an ordinary co-referential expression. In that contexts created by psychological verbs, the sort mentioned in exposition of the notion of mental content - a task important to his development of logic. The need for a distinction between the sense and reference of an expression became evident to Frége, when he considered that, even if ‘a’ is identical to ‘b’, and you understand both ‘a’ and ‘b,’ still, it can be for you a discovery, an addition to your knowledge, that a = b. This is intelligible, Frége thought, only if you have different ways of understanding the expressions ‘a’ and ‘b’ - only if they involve for your distinct ‘modes of presentation’ of the self-same object to which they refer. In Frége's celebrated example: you may understand the expressions ‘The Morning Star’ and ‘The Evening Star’ and use them to refer to what is one and the same object - the planet Venus. But this is not sufficient for you to know that the Morning Star is identical with the Evening Star. For the ways in which an object (‘the reference’) is ‘given’ to your mind when you employ these expressions (the senses or Sinne you ‘grasp’ when you use them) may differ in such a manner that ignorance of astronomy would prevent your realizing that they are but two ways in which the same object can be given.
The relevance of all this to intentionality becomes clearer, once we see how Frége applied the sense/reference distinction to whole sentences. The sentence, ‘The Evening Star = The Morning Star’ has a different sense than the sentence ‘The Evening Star = The Evening Star’, even if their reference (according to Frége, their truth value) is the same. The failure of substitutivity of co-referential expressions in ‘that p’ contexts created by psychological verbs can consequently be understood (Frége proposed) in this way: The reference of the terms shifts in these contexts, so that, for example, ‘the Evening Star’ no longer refers to its customary reference (the planet Venus), but to a sense that functions, for the subject of the verb (the person who thinks, judges, desires) as his or her mode of presentation of this object. The sentence occurring in this context no longer refers to its truth value, but to the sense in which the mode of presentation is embedded - which might otherwise be called the ‘thought’ - or, by other philosophers, the ‘content’ of the subject's state of mind. This thought or content representation is to be understood not as a mental image, or literally as anything essentially private is the assemblage of its thinking mind - but as one and the same abstract entity that can be ‘grasped’ by two minds, and that must be so grasped if communication is to occur.
While on the surface this story may appear to be only about logic and semantics, and though Frége did not himself elaborate a general account of intentionality, what he says readily suggests the following picture. Intentional states of mind - thinking about Venus, wishing to visit it - involve some special relation (such as ‘mental grasping’)- not ‘in one's mind,’ nor to any imagery, but to an abstractive entity, a thought, which also constitutes the sense of a linguistic expression that can be used to report one's state of mind, a sense that is grasped or understood by speakers who use it.
This style of account, together with the Frégean thesis that ‘sense determines reference,’ and the history of criticisms both have elicited, form much of the background of contemporary discussions of mental content. It is often assumed, with Frége, that we must recognize (as some thinkers in the empiricist tradition allegedly did not) that thoughts or contents cannot consist in images or essentially private ‘ideas.’ But philosophers have frequently criticized Frége's view of thought as some abstract entity ‘grasped’ or ‘present to’ the mind, and have wanted to replace Frége's unanalyzed ‘grasping’ with something more ‘naturalistic.’
Relatedly, it may be granted that the content of the thought reported is to be identified with the sense of the expression with which we report it. But then, it is argued, the identity of this content will not be determined individualistically, and may, in some respect’s lay beyond the grasp (or not be fully ‘present to’ the mind of) the psychological subject. For what determines the reference of an expression may be a natural causal relation to the world - as influentially argued is true for proper names, like ‘Nixon’ and ‘Cicero,’ and ‘natural kind’ terms like ‘gold’ and ‘water.’ Or (as Tyler Burge (1979) has influentially argued) two speakers who, considered as individuals, are qualitatively the same, may nevertheless each assert something different simply because of differing relations they bear to their respective linguistic communities. (For example, what one speaker's utterance of ‘arthritis’ means is determined not by what is ‘in the head’ of that speaker, but by the medical experts in his or her community.) And, if referentially truth conditions of expressions by which one's thought is reported or expressed are not determined by what is in one's head, and the content of one's thought determines their reference and truth conditions, then the content of one's thought is also not determined individualistically. Rather, it is necessarily bound up with one's causal relations to certain natural substances, and one's membership in a certain linguistic community. Both linguistic meaning and mental contents are ‘externally’ determined.
The development of such ‘externalist’ conceptions of intentionality informs the reception of Russell's legacy in contemporary philosophy of mind as well. Russell also helped to put in play a conception of the intentionality of mental states, according to which each such state is seen as involving the individual's ‘acquaintance with a proposition’ (counterpart to Frégean ‘grasping’) - which proposition is at once both what is understood in understanding expressions by which the state of mind is reported, and the content of the individual's state of mind. Thus, intentional states are ‘propositional attitudes.’ Also importantly, Russell's famous analysis of definite descriptions into phrases employing existential quantifiers and general predicates underlay many subsequent philosophers' rejection of any conception of intentionality (like Meinong's) that sees in it a relation to non-existent objects. And, Russell's treatment drew attention to cases of what he called ‘logically proper names’ that apparently defies such analysis in descriptive terms (paradigmatically, the terms ‘this’ and ‘that’), and which (he thought) thus must refer ‘directly’ to objects. Reflection on such ‘demonstratives’ and ‘indexical’ (e.g., ‘I,’ ‘here,’ ‘now’) reference has led some to maintain that the content of our states of mind cannot always be constituted by Frégean senses but must be seen as consisting partly of the very objects in the world outside our heads to which we refer, demonstratively, indexically - another source of support for an ‘externalist’ view of mental content, hence, of intentionality.
Yet another important source of externalist proclivities in twentieth century philosophy lies in the thought that the meaningfulness of a speaker's utterances depends on its potential intelligibility to hearers: language must be public - an idea that has found varying and influential expression in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V.O. Quine, and Donald Davidson. This, coupled with the assumption that intentionality (or ‘thought’ in the broad (Cartesian) sense) must be expressible in language, has led some to conclude that what determines the content of one's mind must lie in the external conditions that enable others to attribute content.
However, the movement from Frége and Russell toward externalist views of intentionality should not simply be accepted as yielding a fund of established results: it has been subject to powerful and detailed challenges, but without plunging into the details of the internalism/externalism debate about mental content, we can recognize, in the issues just raised, certain themes bearing particularly on the connection between consciousness and intentionality.
For example: it is sometimes assumed that, whatever may be true of content or intentionality, the phenomenal character of one's experience, at least, is ‘fixed internally’ -, i.e., it involves no necessary relations to the nature of particular substances in one's external environment or to one's linguistic community. But then the purported externalist finding that meaning nor contents are ‘in the head’ and, of course, be read as showing the insufficiency of phenomenal consciousness to determine any intentionality or content. Something like this consequence is drawn by Putnam (1981), who takes the stream of consciousness to comprise nothing more than sensations and images, which (as Frége saw) should be sharply distinguished from thought and meaning. This interpretation of the import of externalist arguments may be reinforced by a tendency to tie (phenomenal) consciousness to non-intentional sensations, sensory qualities, or ‘raw feels,’ and hence to dissociate consciousness from intentionality (and allied notions of meaning and reference), a tendency that has been prominent in the analytic tradition.
But it is not at all evident that externalist theories of content require us to estrange consciousness from intentionality. One might argue (as do Martin Davies (1997) and Fred Dretske (1997)) that in certain relevant respects the phenomenal character of experience is also essentially determined by causal environmental connections. By contrast, one may argue (as do Ludwig (1996b) and Horgan and Tienson (2002)) that since it is conceivable that a subject has experience is much like our own in phenomenal character, but radically different in external causes from what we take our own to be (in the extreme case, a mind bewitched by a Cartesian demon into massive hallucination), there must indeed be a realm of mental content that is not externally determined.
One other aspect of the Frége-Russell tradition of theorizing about content that impinges on the consciousness/intentionality connection is this. If ‘content’ is identified with the sense or the truth-condition determiners of the expressions used in the object-clause reporting intentional states of mind, it will seem natural to suppose that possession of mental content requires the possession of conceptual capacities of the sort involved in linguistic understanding - ‘grasping senses.’ But then, to the extent the phenomenal character of experience is inadequate to endow a creature with such capacities, it may seem that phenomenal consciousness has little to do with intentionality.
However, this raises large issues. One is this: it should not be granted without question that the phenomenal character of our experience could be as it is in the absence to the sorts of conceptual capacities sufficient for (at least some types of) intentionality. And this is tied to the issue of whether or not the phenomenal character of experience is (as some suppose) a purely sensory affair. Some would maintain, on the contrary, that thought (not just imagistic, but conceptual thought) has phenomenal character too. If so, then it is very far from clear that phenomenal character can be divorced from whatever conceptual capacities are necessary for intentionality.
Moreover, we may ask: Are concepts, properly speaking, always necessary for intentionality anyway? Here another issue rears its head: is there not perhaps a form of sensory intentionality, which does not require anything as distinctively intellectual or conceptual as is needed for the grasping of linguistic senses or propositions? (This presumably would be a kind of intentionality had by the pre-linguistic (e.g., babies) or by non-linguistic creatures (e.g., dogs).) Suppose that there is, and that this type of intentionality is inseparable from the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Then, even if one assumes that such phenomenal consciousness is insufficient to guarantee the possession of concepts, it would be wrong to say that it has little to do with intentionality. (Advocates of varying versions of the idea that there is a distinctively ‘non-conceptual’ kind of content include Bermudas 1998, Crane 1992, Evans 1982, Peacocke 1992, and Tye 1995 - for a notable voice of opposition to this trend, see McDowell 1994.) A deep difficulty in assessing these debates lies in getting an acceptable conception of concepts with which to work. We need to understand clearly what ‘having a concept of F’ does and does not require, before we can be clear about the content of and justification for the thesis of non-conceptual content.
These proposals about non-conceptual content bear some affinity with aspects of the Phenomenological tradition eluded too earlier: Husserl's notion of ‘pre-predicative’ experience as to Heidegger's procedures of ‘ready-to-hand;’ and Merleau-Ponty's idea that in normal active perception we are conscious of place, not via a determinate ‘representation’ of it, but rather, relative to our capacities for goal-directed bodily behaviour. Though to see the extent to which any of these are ‘non-conceptual’ in character would require not only more clarity about the conceptual/non-conceptual contrast, save that a considerable novel exegesis of these philosophers' works.
Also, one may plausibly try to find an affinity between externalist views in analytic philosophy, and the later phenomenologists' rejection of Husserl's reduction, based on their doubt that we can prise consciousness off from the world at which it is directed, and study its ‘intentional essence’ in solipsistic isolation. But if externalism can be defined broadly enough to encompass Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Kripke, and Burge, still the comparison is strained when we take account of the different sources of ‘externalism’ in the phenomenologists. These have to do it seems (very roughly) with the idea that the way we are conscious of things (or at least, for Heidegger, the way they ‘show themselves’ to us) in our everyday activity cannot be quite generally separated from our actual engagement with entities of which we are thus conscious (which show themselves in this way). Also relevant is the idea that one's use of language (hence one's capacity for thought) requires gearing one's activity to a social world or cultural tradition, in which antecedently employed linguistic meaning is taken up and made one's own through one's relation with others. All this is supposed to make it infeasible to study the nature of intentionality by globally uprooting, in thought, the connection of experience with one's spatial surroundings (and - crucially for Merleau-Ponty - one's own body), and one's social environment. Whatever the merits of this line of thought, we should note: Neither a causal connection with ‘natural kinds’ unmediated by reference-determining ‘modes of presentation,’ nor deference to the linguistic usage of specialists, nor belief in the need to reconstruct speakers’ meaning from observed behaviour, plays a role in the phenomenologists' doubts about the reduction.
The arduous exegesis required for a clearer and more detailed comparison of these views is not possible here. Nevertheless, following some of the main lines of thought in treatments of intentionality, descending on the one hand, primarily from Brentano and Husserl, and on the other, from Frége and Russell, certain fundamental issues concerning its relationship to consciousness have emerged. These include, first, the connection between consciousness and self-directed and self-reflexive intentionality. (It has already been seen that this topic preoccupied Brentano, Husserl and Sartre; its emergence as an important issue in analytic philosophy of mind will become more evident below, Second, there is concern with the way in which (and the extent to which) mind is world-involving. (In the Phenomenological tradition this can be seen in controversy over Husserl's Phenomenological reduction; That within Frégean cognitive traditions are exhibited through some formal critique as drawn upon sensationalism, in which only internalism/externalism are argued traditionally atypically in the passage through which are formally debated. Third, there is the putative distinction between conceptual and theoretical, and sensory or practical forms of intentionality. (In phenomenology this shows up in Husserl's contrast between judgment and pre-predicative experience, and related notions of his successors; In analytic philosophy this shows up in the (more recent) attention to the notion of ‘non-conceptual’ content.)
For more clarity regarding the consciousness-intentionality relationship and how these three topics figure prominently in views about it, it is necessary now to turn attention back to philosophical disagreements regarding consciousness that abruptly have of an abounding easy to each separate relation, til their distinctions have of occurring.
Consider the proposal that sense experience manifests a kind of intentionality distinct from and more basic than that involved in propositional thought and conceptual understanding. This might help form the basis for an account of consciousness. Perhaps conscious states of mind are distinguished partly by their possession of a type of content proper to the sensory subdivision of mind.
One source of the idea that a difference in type of content helps constitute a distinction between what is and is not phenomenally conscious, lies in the apparent distinction between sense experience and judgment. To have conscious visual experience of a stimulus - for it to look some way to you - is one thing. To make judgments about it is something else. (This seems evident in the persistence of a visual illusion, even once one has become convinced of the error.) However, on some accounts of consciousness, this distinction itself is doubtful, since conscious sense experience is taken to be nothing more than a form of judging. However, such to this view is expressed by Daniel Dummett (1991), who takes the relevant form of judging to consist in one's possession of information or mental content available to the appropriate sort of ‘probes’ - the availability of content he calls ‘cerebral celebrity.’ For Dummett what distinguishes conscious states of mind is not their possession of a distinctive type of intentional content, but rather the richness of that content, and its availability to the appropriate sort of cognitive operations. (Since the relevant class of operations is not sharply defined, neither, for Dummett, is the difference between which states of mind are conscious and which are not.)
Recent accounts of consciousness that, by contrast, give central place to a distinction between (conceptual) judgment and (non-conceptual - but still intentional) sense-experience includes Michael Tye's (1995) theory, holding that it is (by metaphysical necessity) sufficient to have a conscious sense-perception that some representation of sensory stimuli is formed in one's head, ‘map-like’ in character, whose (‘non-conceptual’) content is ‘poised’ to affect one's (conceptual) beliefs. This form of mental representation Tye would contrast with the ‘sentential’ form proper to belief and judgment - and in that way, he might preserve the judgment/experience contrast as Dummett does not. Consider also Fred Dretske's (1995) view, that phenomenally conscious sensory intentionality consists in a kind of mental representation whose content is bestowed through a naturally selected ‘function to indicate.’ Such natural (evolution-implanted) sensory representation can arise independently of learning (unlike the more conceptual, language dependent sort), and is found widely distributed among evolved lives.
Both Tye and Dretske's views of consciousness (unlike Dummett's) make crucial use of a contrast between the types of intentionality proper to sense-experience, and that proper to linguistically expressed judgment. On the other hand, there is also some similarity among the theories, which can be brought out by noting a criticism of Dummett's view, analogues of which arise for Tye and Dretske's views as well.
Some might think Dummett's account concerns only some variety of what Form would call ‘ascensive consciousness’. For on Dummett's account, it seems, to speak of visual consciousness is to speak of nothing over and above the sort of availability of informational content that is evinced in unprompted verbal discriminations of visual stimuli. And this view has been criticized for neglecting phenomenal consciousness. It seems we may conceive of a capacity for spontaneous judgment triggered by and responsive to visual stimuli, which would occur in the absence of the judger's phenomenally conscious visual experience of the stimuli: The stimuli do not look in any way impulsively subjective, and yet they trigger accurate judgments about their presence. The notion of such a (hypothetical) form of ‘blind-sight’ may be elaborated in such a way that we conceive of the judgment it affords for being at least as finely discriminatory (and as fine in informational content) as that enjoyed by those with extremely poor, blurry and un-acute conscious visual experience (as in the ‘legally blind’). But a view like Dummett's seems to make this scenario inconceivable.
However, this kind of criticism does not concern only those theories that would elide any experience/judgment distinction. For Tye and Dretske's theories, though they depend on forms of that contrast (and are offered as theories of phenomenal consciousness), can raise similar concerns. For one might think that the hypothetical blind-sighted would be as rightly regarded as having Tye ‘support’ some map-like representations in her visual system as would be someone with a comparable form of conscious vision. And one might find it unclear why we should think the visual system of such a blind-sighted must be performing naturally endowed indicating functions more poorly than the visual system of a consciously sighted subject would.
Whatever the cogency of these concerns, one should note their distinctness from the issues about ‘kinds of intentionality’ that appear to separate both Tye and Dretske from Dummett. The notion that there is a fundamental distinction to be drawn in kinds of intentional content (separating the more intellectual from the more sensory departments of mind) sometimes forms the basis of an account of consciousness (as with Dretske and Tye's, though not with Dummett's). But it is also important to recognize what unites Dummett, Tye, and Dretske. Despite their differences, all propose to account for consciousness by starting with a general understanding of intentionality (or mental content or representation) to which consciousness is inessential. Dummett is known for an uncompromising re-evaluation of the Western tradition, viewing writings before the rise of anaclitic philosophy as fatty and flawed by having take epistemology to be fundamental, whereas the correct approach, giving a foundational place to a concern with language, only took to a point-start with the work of Frége. Equally, the supposedly pure investigation of language in the 20th century has often kept some dubious epistemological and metaphysical company.
They then offer to explain consciousness as a special case of intentionality thus understood - so, in terms of the operations the content is available for, or the form in which it is represented, or the nature of its external source. The blind-sight-based objection to Dennett, and its possible extension to Dretske and Tye, helps bring this commonality to light. The last of these issues showed how some theories purport to account for consciousness on the basis of intentionality, in a way that focuses attention on attempts to discern a distinctively sensory type of intentionality. A different strategy for explaining consciousness via intentionality highlights the importance of clarity regarding the connection between consciousness and reflexivity. On such a view (roughly): Experiences or states of mind are conscious just insofar as the mind represents itself as having them.
In David Rosenthal's variant of this approach, a state is conscious just when it is a kind of (potentially non-conscious) mental state one has, which one (seemingly without inference) thinks that one is in. A theory of this sort starts with some way of classifying mental states that is supposed to apply to conscious and non-conscious states of mind alike. The proposal then is that such a state is conscious just when it belongs to one of those mental kinds, and the (‘higher order’) thought occurs to the person in that state that he or she is in a state of that kind. So, for example it is maintained that certain non-conscious states of mind can possess ‘sensory qualities’ of various sorts - one may, in a sense, be in pain without feeling pain, one may have a red sensory quality, even when nothing looks red to one. The idea is that one has a conscious visual experience of red, or a conscious pain sensation, just when one has such a red sensory quality, or pain-quality, and the thought (itself also potentially non-conscious) occurs to one that one has a red sensory quality, or pain-quality.
This way of accounting for consciousness in terms of intentionality may, like theories mentioned, provoke the concern that the distinctively phenomenal sense of consciousness has been slighted - though this time, not in favour of some ‘access’ consciousness, but in favour of reflexive consciousness. One focus of such criticism lies in the idea that such higher-order thought requires the possession of concepts - concepts of types of mental states - that may be lacking in creatures with first order mentality. And it is unclear (in fact it seems false to say) these beings would therefore have no conscious sensory experience in the phenomenal sense. Might that they enduringly exist in a way the world looks to rabbits, dogs, monkeys, and human babies, and might they agreeably feel pain, though they lack the conceptual wherewithal to think about their own experience?
One line of response to such concerns is simply to bite the bullet: dogs, babies and the like might altogether lack higher order thought, but that is no problem for the theory because, indeed, they also altogether lack feelings. Rosenthal, for his part, takes a different line: lack of cognitive sophistication need not instantly disqualify one for consciousness, since the possession of primitive mentalistic concepts requires so little that practically any organism we would consider a serious candidate for sensory consciousness (certainly babies, dogs and bunnies) would obviously pass conscription.
A number of additional worries have been raised about both the necessity and the sufficiency of ‘higher order thought’ for conscious sense experience. In the face of such doubts, one may preserve the idea that consciousness consists in some kind of higher order representation - the mind's ‘scanning’ itself - by abandoning ‘higher order thought’ for another form of representation: one that is not thought-like or conceptual, but somehow sensory in character. Maybe somewhat as we can distinguish between primitive sensory perception of things in our environment, and the more intellectual, conceptual operations based on them, so we can distinguish the thoughts we have about our own (‘inner’) mental goings-on from the (‘inner’) sensing of them. And, if we propose that consciousness consist in this latter sort of higher order representation, it seems we will escape the worries occasioned by the Rosenthalian variant of the ‘reflexivist’ doctrine. In considering such theories, two of the consciousness-themes that earlier discern had in coming together, namely the reflexivity of thought, or higher order representations, and, by contrast, between the conceptual and non-conceptual presentations, as sensory data,
Criticism of ‘inner sense’ theories is likely to focus not so much on the thought that such inner sensing can occur without phenomenal consciousness, or that the latter can occur without the former, as on the difficulty in understanding just what inner sensing (as distinct from higher order thought) is supposed to be, and why we should think we have it. It seems the inner sense theorist’s share with those who distinguish between conceptual and non-conceptual (or sensory) flavours of intentionality the challenge of clarifying and justifying some version of this distinction. But they bear the additional burden of showing how such a distinction can be applied not just to intentionality directed at tables and chairs, but at the "furniture of the mind" as well. One may grant that there are non-conceptual sensory experiences of objects in one's external environment while doubting one has anything analogous regarding the ‘inner’ landscape of mind.
It should be noted that, in spite of the difficulties faced by higher order representation theories, they draw on certain perennially influential sources of philosophical appeal. We do have some willingness to speak of conscious states of mind as states we are conscious or aware of being in. It is tempting to interpret this as indicating some kind of reflexivity. And the history of philosophy reveals many thinkers attracted to the idea that consciousness is inseparable from some kind of self-reflexivity of mind. As noted, varying versions of this idea can be found in Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre, as well as we can go further back in which case of Kant (1787) who spoke explicitly of ‘inner sense,’ and Locke (1690) defined consciousness as the ‘perception of what passes in a man's mind.’ Brentano (controversially) interpreted Aristotle's enigmatic and terse discussion of “seeing that one sees” in De Anima, as an anticipation of his own ‘inner perception’ view. However, there is this critical difference between the thinkers just cited and contemporary purveyors of higher order representation theories. The former does not maintain, as do the latter, that consciousness consists in one's forming the right sort of higher order representation of a possible non-conscious type of mental state. Even if they think that consciousness is inseparable from some sort of mental reflexivity, they do not suggest that consciousness can, so to speak, be analysed into mental parts, none of which they essentially require consciousness. (Some could not maintain this, since they explicitly deny mentality without consciousness.) There is a difference between saying that reflexivity is essential to consciousness and saying that consciousness just consists in or is reducible to a species of mental reflexivity. Advocacy of the former without advocacy of the latter is certainly possible.
Suppose one holds that phenomenal consciousness is distinguishable both from ‘access’ and ‘reflexivity,’ and that it cannot be explained as a special case of intentionality. One might conclude from this that phenomenal consciousness and intentionality are two composite structures exhibiting of themselves of distinct realms as founded in the psychic domain as called the mental, and embrace the idea that the phenomenal are a matter of non-intentional qualia or raw feels. One important current in the analytic tradition has evinced this attitude - it is found, for example, in Wilfrid Sellars' (1956) distinction between ‘sentience’ (sensation) and ‘sapience.’ Whereas the qualities of feelings involved in the former - mere sensations - require no cognitive sophistication and are readily attributable to brutes, the latter - involving awareness of, awareness that - requires that one have the appropriate concepts, which cannot be guaranteed by just having sensations; one needs learning and inferential capacities of a sort Sellars believed possibly only with language. “Awareness,” Sellars says, “is a linguistic affair.”
Thus we may arrive at a picture of mind that places sensation on one side, and thought, concepts, and ‘propositional attitudes’ on the other. If one recognizes the distinctively phenomenal consciousness not captured in ‘representationalist’ theories of the kinds just scouted, one may then want to say: that is because the phenomenal belong to mere sentience, and the intentional to sapience. Other influential philosophers of mind have operated with a similar picture. Consider Gilbert Ryle's (1949) contention that the stream of consciousness contains nothing but sensations that provide “no possibility of deciding whether the creature that had these was an animal or a human being; An ignoramus, simpletons, or a sane man, only from which nothing is appropriately asked of whether it is correct or incorrect, veridical or nonveridical. And Wittgenstein's (1953) influential criticism of the notion of understanding as an ‘inner process,’ and of the idea of a language for private sensation divorced from public criteria, could be interpreted in ways that sever (phenomenal) consciousness from intentionality. (Such an interpretation would assume that if consciousness could secure understanding, understanding would be an ‘inner process,’ and if phenomenal character bore intentionality with it, private sensations could impart meaning to words.) Also recall Putnam's conviction that the (internal) stream of consciousness cannot furnish the (externally fixed) content of meaning and belief. A similar attitude is evident in Donald Davidson's distinction between sensation and thought (the former is nothing more than a causal condition of knowledge, while the latter can furnish reasons and justifications, but cannot occur without language). Richard Rorty (1979) makes a Sellarsian distinction between the phenomenal and the intentional key to his polemic against epistemological philosophy overall, and ‘foundationalism’ in particular (and takes a generally deflationary view of the phenomenal or ‘qualitative’ side of this divide).
But it is possible to reject attempts to subsume the phenomenal under the intentional as in the ‘representationalist’ accounts of consciousness variously exemplified in Dennett, Dretske, Lycan, Rosenthal, and Tye, without adopting this ‘two separate realms’ conception. We can believe that there is no conception of the intentional from which the phenomenal can be explanatorily derived that does not already include the phenomenal, but still believe also that the phenomenal character of experience cannot be separated from its intentionality, and that having experience of the right sort of phenomenal character is sufficient for having certain forms of intentionality.
Here one might leave open the question whether there is also some kind of phenomenal character (perhaps that involved in some kinds of bodily sensation or after-images) whose possession is not sufficient for intentionality. (Though if we say there is such non-intentional phenomenal character, this would give us a special reason for rejecting the representationalist explanations of phenomenal consciousness) on the other hand, we say phenomenal character always brings intentionality with it, that might be ‘representational’’ of a sort. But its endorsement is consistent with a rejection of attempts to derive phenomenality from intentionality, or reduce the former to a species of the latter, which commonly attract the ‘representationalist’ label. We should distinguish the question of whether the phenomenal can be explained by the intentional from the question of whether the phenomenal are separable from the intentional.
Closer consideration of two of the three themes earlier identified as common to Phenomenological and analytic traditions is needed to come to grips with the latter question. It is necessary to inquire: (1) whether an externalist conception of intentionality can justify separating phenomenal character from intentionality. And one needs to ask: (2) whether one's verdict on the ‘separability’ question stands or falls with acceptance of some version of a distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual (or distinctively sensory) form of intentionality.
The dialectical situation regarding (1) is complex. One way it may seem plausible to answer question (1) in the affirmative, and restrict phenomenal character and intentionality to different sides of some internal/external divide, is to conduct a Cartesian thought experiment, in which one conceives of consciousness with all its subjective riches surviving the utter annihilation of the spatial realm of nature. (Similarly, but less radical, one may conceive of a ‘brain in a vat’ generating an extended history of sense experience indistinguishable in phenomenal character from that of an embodied subject.) If one is committed to an externalist view of intentionality - but rejects the internationalizing strategies for dealing with consciousness - one may conclude that phenomenal character is altogether separable from (and insufficient for) intentionality. However, one may draw rather different conclusions from the Cartesian thought experiment - turning it against externalism. It may seem to one that, since the intentionality of experience would apparently survive along with its phenomenal character, one may then infer that the causal tie between the mind's content and the world of objects beyond it that (according to some versions of externalism) fixes content, is in reality and in at least some cases (or for some contents), no more than contingent. Alternatively, whatever one relies on to argue that this or that relation of experience and world is essential to having any intentionality at all, one might take this to show that phenomenal character is also externally determined in a way that renders the Cartesian scenario of consciousness totally unmoored from the world an illusion. And, if Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger thinks that Husserl's Phenomenological reduction to a sphere of ‘pure’ consciousness cannot be completed, and their reasons make them externalists of some sort, it hardly seems to establish that they are committed to a realm of raw sensory phenomenal consciousness, devoid of intentionality. In fact their rejection of Husserl's notion of ‘uninterpreted’ sensory or ‘hyletic’ data in experience would seem to indicate them, at least, would strongly deny they held such views.
In this arena it is far from clear what we are entitled to regard as secure ground and what as ‘up for grabs.’ However, there do seem to be ways in which all would probably admit that the phenomenal character of experience and externally individuated content come apart, ways in which such content goes beyond anything phenomenal consciousness can supply. For the way it seems to me to experience this computer screen may be no different from the way it seems to my twin to experience some entirely distinct one. Thus where intentional contents are distinguished in such a way as to include the particular objects experienced or thought of, phenomenal character cannot determine the possession of content. Still, that does not show that no content of any sort is fixed by phenomenal character. Perhaps, as some would say, phenomenal character determines ‘narrow’ or ‘notional’ content, but not ‘wide’ (externally ‘fixed’) content. Nor is it even clear that we must judge the sufficiency of phenomenal character for intentionality by adopting some general account of content and its individuation (as ‘narrow’ or ‘wide’ for instance), and then ask whether one's possession of content so considered is entailed by the phenomenal character of one's experience. One may argue that the phenomenal character of one's experience suffices for intentionality as long as having it makes one assessable for truth, accuracy (or other sorts of ‘satisfaction’) without the addition of any interpretation, properly so-called, such as is involved in assessment of the truth or accuracy of sentences or pictures.
Even if one does not globally divide phenomenal character from intentionality along some inner/outer boundary line, to address questions of the sufficiency of phenomenal character for intentionality (and thus of the separability of the latter from the former), one still needs to look at question (2) as above, and the potential relevance of distinctions that have been proposed between conceptual and non-conceptual forms of content or intentionality. Again the situation is complex. Suppose one regards the notion of non-conceptual intentionality or content as unacceptable on the grounds that all content is conceptual. But suppose one also thinks it is clear that phenomenal character is confined to sensory experience and imagery, and that this cannot bring with it the rational and inferential capacities required for genuine concept possession. Then one will have accepted the separability of phenomenal consciousness from intentionality. However, one may, by contrast, take the apparent susceptiblity of phenomenally conscious sense experience to assessment for accuracy, without need for additional, potentially absent interpretation, to show that the phenomenal character of experience is inherently intentional. Then one will say that the burden lies on anyone who claims conceptual powers are crucial to such assessability and can be detached from the possession of such experience: They must identify those powers and show that they are both crucial and detachable in this way. Additionally, one may reasonably challenge the assumption that phenomenal consciousness is indeed confined to the sensory realm; One may say that conceptual thought also has phenomenal character. Even if one does not, one may still base one's confidence in the sufficiency of phenomenal character for intentionality on one's confidence that there is a kind of non-conceptual intentionality that clearly belongs essentially to sense experience.
These considerations, we can see that it is critical to answer the following questions in order to decide whether or not phenomenal character is wholly or significantly separable from intentionality. Does every sort of intentionality that belongs to thought and experiences require an external connection, for which phenomenal characters are insufficient?
Does every sort of intentionality that belongs to sense-experience and sensory imageries require conceptual abilities for which phenomenal character is insufficient? And does every sort of intentionality that belongs to thought require conceptual capacities for which phenomenal character is insufficient?
Suppose one finds phenomenal character quite generally inadequate for the intentionality of thought and sense-experience by answering ‘yes’ either to (i), or to both (ii) and (iii). And suppose one makes the plausible (if non-trivial) assumption that what guarantees’ intentionality for neither sensory experience, nor imagery, nor conceptual thought, guarantees no intentionality that belongs to our minds (including that of emotion, desire and intention - for these later presuppose the former). Then one will find phenomenal character altogether separable from intentionality. Phenomenal character could be as it is, even if intentionality were completely taken away. There is no form of phenomenal consciousness, and no sort of intentionality, such that the first suffices for the second.
A more moderate view might merely answer only one of either (ii) or (iii) in the affirmative (and probably (iii) would be the choice). But still, in that case one recognizes some broad mental domain whose intentionality is in no respect guaranteed by phenomenal character. And that too would mark a considerable limitation on the extent to which phenomenal consciousness brings intentionality with it.
On the other hand, suppose that one answer ‘no’ to (i), and to either (ii) or (iii). Now, external connections and conceptual capacities seem to be what we might most plausibly regard as conditions necessary for the intentionality of thought and experience that could be stripped away while phenomenal character remains constant. So if one thinks that actually neither are generally essential to intentionality and removable while phenomenal character persists unchanged, and one can think of nothing else that is essential for thought and experience to have any intentionality, but for which phenomenal character is insufficient, it seems reasonable to conclude that phenomenal character is indeed sufficient for intentionality of some sort. If one has gone this far, it seems unlikely that one will then think that actual differences in phenomenal character still leave massively underdetermined the different forms of intentionality we enjoy in perceiving and thinking. So, one will probably judge that some kind of phenomenal character suffices for, and is inseparable from, many significant forms of intentionality in at least one of these domains (sensory or cognitive): There are many differences in phenomenal character, and many in intentionality, such that you cannot have the former without the latter. If one also rejects both (ii) and (iii), then one will accept that appropriate forms of phenomenal consciousness are sufficient for a very broad and important range of human intentionality.
Suppose one rejects both the views that consciousness is explanatorily derived from a more fundamental intentionality, as well as the view that phenomenal character is insufficient for intentionality because it is a matter of a purely inward feeling. It seems one might then press farther, and argue for what Flanagan calls ‘consciousness essentialism’ - the view that the phenomenal character of experience is not only sufficient for various forms of intentionality, but necessary also.
This type of thesis needs careful formulation. It does not necessarily commit one to a Cartesian (or Brentanian or Sartrean) claim that all states of mind are conscious - a total denial of the reality of the unconscious. A more qualified thesis does seem desirable. Freud's waning prestige has weakened tendencies to assume that he had somehow demonstrated the reality of unconscious intentionality, the rise of cognitive science has created a new climate of educated opinion that also takes elaborate non-conscious mental machinations for granted. Even if we do not acquiesce in this view, we do (and long have) appealed to explanations of human behaviour that recognize some sort of intentional state other than phenomenally conscious experiences and thoughts.
The way of maintaining the necessity of consciousness to mind that can preserve some space for mind that is not conscious is Searle's agreement, roughly, that we should first distinguish between what he calls ‘intrinsic’ intentionality on the one hand, and merely ‘as if’ intentionality, and ‘interpreter relative’ intentionality, on the other. We may sometimes speak as if artifacts (like thermostats) had beliefs or desires - but this is not to be taken literally. And we may impose ‘conditions of satisfaction’ on our acts and creations (words, pictures, diagrams, etc.) by our interpretation of them - but they have no intentionality independent of our interpretive practices. Intrinsic intentionality, on the other hand - the kind that pertains to our beliefs, perception, and intentions - is neither a mere ‘manner of speech,’ nor our possession of it derived from others' interpretive stance toward us. But then, Searle asks, what accounts for the fact that some state of affairs in the world for which in having an intrinsic intentionality - that they are directed at objects under aspects - and why they are directed under the aspects they are (why they have the content they do)? With conscious states of mind, Searle says, their phenomenal or subjective character determines their ‘aspectual shape.’ Where non-conscious states of mind are concerned, there is nothing to do the job, but their relationship to consciousness. The right relationship, he holds, is this non-conscious state of mind and must be ‘potentially conscious.’ If some psychological theories (of language, of vision) postulated an unconscious so deeply buried that its mental representations cannot even potentially become conscious, so much the worse for those theories.
Searle's views have aroused a number of criticisms. Among the problems areas are these. First, how are we to explain the requirement that intrinsically intentional states be ‘potentially conscious,’ without making it either too easy or too difficult to satisfy? Second, just why is it that the intrinsic intentionality of non-conscious states need’s accounting for, while conscious states are somehow unproblematic. Third, it appears Searle's argument does not offer some general reason to rule out all efforts to give ‘naturalistic’ accounts of conditions sufficient to impose - without the help of consciousness - genuine and not merely interpreter relative intentionality.
Another approach is taken by Kirk Ludwig, who argues that there is nothing to determine whose state of mind a given non-conscious state of mind is, unless that state consists in a disposition to produce a conscious mental state of the right sort. Alleged mental processes that did not tend to produce someone's conscious states of mind appropriately would be no one's, which is to say that they would not be mental states at all. Roughly: consciousness is needed to provide that unity of mind without which there would be no mind. And Ludwig argues that it is therefore a mistake to attribute many of the unconscious inferences with which psychological theorists have long been wont to populate our minds.
The persuasiveness of Searle and Ludwig's arguments depends heavily on demonstrating the failure of alternative accounts of the job that they enlist consciousness to do (such as secure ‘aspectual shape,’ or ownership). One may grant (as does Colin McGinn 1991) that phenomenal character is inseparable from intentionality, but cannot be explained by it, while still maintaining that genuine intentionality (mental content) is quite adequately imposed on animal brains by their acquisition of natural functions of content-bearing - in which consciousness evidently plays no essential role. Or one may (like Jerry Fodor 1987) maintain a robust realist ‘representational theory of mind,’ proposing that the content of mental symbols is stamped on them by their being in the ‘right causal relation’ to the world - while despairing of the prospects for a credible naturalistic theory of consciousness.
The preceding discussion has conveyed some of the complexities and potential ambiguities in talk of ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality’ that must be appreciated if one is to resolve questions about the relationship between consciousness and intentionality with any clarity. Brief surveys of relevant aspects of Phenomenological and analytic traditions have brought out some shared areas of interest, namely: The relationship of consciousness to reflexivity and ‘self-directed’ intentionality manages to distinguish events between conceptual and non-conceptual (or sensory) forms of intentionality, and the concerns with which the extent is characterized by either conscious experience or intentional states of mind is essentially ‘world-involving.’ These concerns were seen to bear on attempts to account for consciousness in terms of intentionality, and on questions that arise even if those attempts are rejected - questions regarding the separability of phenomenal consciousness and intentionality. Some attention is given to views that, in some sense, reverse the order of explanation proposed by internationalizing views of consciousness, and take the facts of consciousness to explain the facts of intentionality. Now it is possible to step back and distinguish four general views of the consciousness-intentionality relationship discernable in the philosophical positions canvassed above, as follows.
(1) Consciousness is explanatorily derived from intention
(2) Consciousness is explanatorily derived from intentionality.
(3) Consciousness is underived and separable from intentionality.
(4) Consciousness is underived but also inseparable from intentionality.
(5) Consciousness is underived from, inseparable from, and essential to intentionality.
To adopted view (1) is to accept some internationalizing strategy with respect to consciousness, such as is variously represented by Dennett, Dretske, Lycan, Rosenthal, and Tye. These views differ importantly among themselves. Their differences have much to do with how they treat consciousness-reflexivity issues and the conceptual/non-conceptual (or conceptual/sensory) contrast, and how they view the intersection between the two. But if we accept (1), then our answer to the question of what consciousness has to do with intentionality will ultimately be given in some prior general account of content or intentionality. And there will be no special issue regarding the internal or external fixation of the phenomenal character of experience, over and above what arises for mental content generally.
On the other hand, suppose one reject (1), and holds that experiences are conscious in a phenomenal sense that does not yield to an approach in which one conceives of intentionality (or content, or information bearing) independently of consciousness, and then, by adverting to special operations, or sources, or contents, tells us what consciousness is. At this point, one would face a choice between (2) and (3).
By embracing (2) we yield the ‘raw feel’ in its conception of phenomenality seemingly implicit in Sellars and Ryle. If, on the other hand, we accept (3), we endorse a much more intimate relationship between consciousness and intentionality. Without proposing to account for the former on the basis of the latter, we would hold that phenomenal character is sufficient for intentionality.
But adoption of (3) leaves open a further basic question. Consciousness (of the appropriate sort) may be sufficient, but underived from intentionality. Yet, intentionality does not require consciousness. Thus we come to ask whether having conscious experience of an appropriate sort is necessary to having either sensory or more-than-sensory (conceptual) intentionality. Adopting theses (4), we say ‘yes’ - that such intentionality can come only with consciousness - we will probably have gone as far in making consciousness fundamental to mind as one reasonably can. Again, this is not necessarily to deny the reality of non-conscious mental phenomena. But it could, in a broad way, be interpreted as siding with Husserl, Ludwig and Searle in thinking of consciousness as the irreplaceable source of intentionality and meaning.
This abstract list of four options might leave one without a sense of what is at stake in adopting this or that view. Perhaps the positions themselves will become a little clearer if we make explicit four broad areas of philosophical concern to which the choice among them is relevant.
First, they are relevant to the issue of how to conceive of the mind or the domain of psychology as a whole. Is there some unity to the concept of mind or psychologically phenomenal? Is there something that deserves to be considered the essence of the mental? If consciousness can be thoroughly internationalized (as (1) would have it), maybe (with suitable qualifications), we could uphold the thesis that intentionality is the "mark of the mental." If we disapprove of (1) and embrace (3), seeing intentionality as inseparable from the phenomenal character of experience, then we still might maintain that both consciousness and intentionality are necessary for real minds - at least, if we adopt (4) as well. But a unified view of the mind seems difficult (if possible) to maintain if one segregates phenomenal character to non-intentional sensation - as in (2). Even if one does not, one may lack a unifying conception of the mental domain, if one is not satisfied with arguments that show that phenomenal consciousness is essential to genuine (not merely “as if” or “interpreter derived”) intentionality. In any case, both consciousness and intentionality signify a broad enough psychological categories, in that one's view of their extension and relationship will do much to draw one's map of psychology's terrain.
Second (and relatedly), views about the consciousness-intentionality relationship bear significantly on general questions about the explanation of mental phenomena. One may ask what kinds of things we might try to explain in the mental domain, what sorts of explanations we should seek, and what prospects of success we have in finding them. If we accept (1) and some internationalizing account of consciousness, we will not suppose as do some (Chalmers 1996, Levine 2001, McGinn 1991, and Nagel 1974) those phenomenal consciousness poses some specially recalcitrant (maybe hopelessly unsolvable) problem for reductive physicalist or materialist explanations. Rather, we will see the basic challenge as that of giving a natural scientific account of intentionality or mental representation. And this indeed is a reason some are attracted to (1). One may believe that it offers us the only hope for a natural scientific understanding of consciousness. The underlying thought is that a science of consciousness must adopt this strategy: First conceive of intentionality (or content or mental representation) in a way that separates it from consciousness, and see intentionality as the outcome of familiar (and non-intentional) natural causal processes. Then, by further specifying the kind of intentionality involved (in terms of its use, its sources, its content), we can account for consciousness. In other words: ‘naturalize’ intentionality, then internationalized consciousness, and mind has found its place in nature.
However, we should recognize a distinction between those whose envisioned naturalistic explanation would require underlying forms of necessity and impossibility stronger that pertaining to laws of nature generally - such as either conceptual or ‘metaphysical’ necessity - and those who see the link between explanans and explanandum as simply one of natural scientific law. David Chalmers' (1996) proposals for ‘naturalistic dualism’ (unlike those of the aforementioned naturalizers) put him in the second group. He argues that phenomenal consciousness in its various forms supervenes (not conceptually or metaphysically but only as a matter of nature's laws) on functional organization, and that this permits us to envisage (‘non-reductive’) ways of explaining consciousness by appeal to such organization.
Those who reject attempts to explain the phenomenal consciousness via a theory of intentionality still may reasonably proclaim allegiance to ‘naturalism.’ One may take phenomenal consciousness to be, in a sense, psychologically basic (if all that is mental is phenomenally either conscious or intentional, and no internationalizing account of phenomenal character is feasible). But one might still hold that some non-intentional neuropsychological, or other recognizable physicalist, there to some explanation of the phenomenal character of experience is to be had, because the explanatory link is otherwise to exhibit an appropriately strong conceptual or metaphysical necessity. Only for measures for which are regarded to that of nothing stronger than psychophysical laws of nature are needed to give us the prospect of a natural scientific account of consciousness.
However, if we not only reject internationalizing accounts of phenomenal character, but also see it as inseparable from intentionality (if we reject both (1) and (2) and agree to whatever problems are attached to physicalist explanations of consciousness will also infect prospects for explaining intentionality - to some extent at least. And this will hold, even if we remain aloof from (d), and do not claim that phenomenal consciousness is essential to intentionality. For if we think that much of the intentionality we have in perceiving, imagining, and thinking is integral to the phenomenal character of such experience, then without a reductive explanation of that phenomenal character, our possession of the intentionality it brings with it will not be reductively explained either.
Finally, it should be noted that if one holds (4), this may have important consequences for what forms of psychological explanation that once acceptably found the remaining agreement stems for that which one's mental processes must have the right relationship to one's conscious experiences to count as one's mental processes at all. If they are right, postulated processes that do not bear this relation to our experiential lives cannot be going on in our minds.
Regardlessly, another enlarging area of concern is of choice, in that between (1)-(4) tells of a direction among proven rights is to continue in having epistemological connections, in that if one is to embrace of (2), and something like a Sellarsian or Davidsonian distinction between sensation and thought, putting phenomenal character exclusively on the ‘sensation’ side, and intentionality exclusively on the ‘thought’ side of this divide, the place of consciousness in a philosophical account of knowledge will likely be meager - at most phenomenal character will be a causal condition, without a role to play in the warrant or justification of claims to knowledge. However, if one takes routes (1) or (3) the situation will appear rather different. If one is to consider the consequent for, either of which is to internationalize consciousness, or else views intentionality as inseparable from phenomenal character, there will then be more room to view consciousness as central to accounts of the warrant involved in first-person (‘introspective’) knowledge of mind, and empirical or perceptual knowledge. Though just how one goes about this, and with what success, will depend on how (if one chooses (1)) one internationalizes consciousness, and (if one chooses (1) or (3), that will depend on what sort of intentionality or content one thinks phenomenal consciousness brings with it. The place of consciousness in one's understanding of introspective or empirical knowledge will be rather different, depending on how one resolves the issues regarding: Reflexivity, the conceptual/non-conceptual distinction, and externalisms.
A fourth area of philosophical concern we may indicate broadly, closely bound to our conception of the relation of consciousness and intentionality, has to do with value. How intimately is consciously bound up with those features of our own and others' lives that give them intrinsic or non-instrumental value for us? We may think that the pleasure and suffering that demand our ethical concern are necessarily phenomenally conscious - and that this evaluative significance remains even if phenomenal character is non-intentional. However, the more intentionality is seen as inherent to the phenomenal character of experience, the more the latter will be bound to manifestations of intelligence, emotion, and understanding that appear to give human (and perhaps at least another animal life) its special importance for us. It may seem that those opting for (3) share at least this much ground with their internationalizing opponents who go for (1): They both (unlike those who adopt (2)) are in a position to claim consciousness is crucial to whatever special moral regard we think appropriate only toward those whose psychologies involve a kind of intentionality for which possession of painful or pleasant experience is not sufficient. However, this needs qualification on two counts. First, if one's embrace of (1) includes an internationalizing strategy that limits phenomenal character to the sensory realm, one will limit the moral significance of phenomenal consciousness accordingly. Second, to those who hold, it may seem their opponents' internationalizing theories remove from view those very qualities of experience that make life worth living, and so they will hardly seem like allies on the issue of value. Further, if the proponent of hesitant anticipations were in going insofar as to be taken on (4) - conscious essentialism - those who make that additional commitment might wonder how those who do not could ultimately accord the possession of consciousness much greater non-instrumental value than the possession of a sophisticated but totally non-conscious mind.
From this survey it seems fair to conclude that working out a detailed view of the relation between consciousness and intentionality is hardly a peripheral matter philosophically. Potentially it has extensive consequences for one's views concerning these four important, broad topics: (I) The unity of mental phenomena (Do consciousness or intentionality (or both together) somehow unifies the domain of the psychological?) (II) The explanation of mental phenomena (Can consciousness and intentionality are explained separately? (III) Is explaining the one key to explaining the other? Introspective and empirical knowledge (What relation to intentionality would give consciousness a central epistemological role in either?) (IV) The value of human and other animal life. (What relation of consciousness and intentionality (if any) underlies the non-instrumental value we accord ourselves and others?)
We collectively glorify our ability to think as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity; We personally and mistakenly glorify our thoughts as the distinguishing pattern of whom we are. From the inner voice of thought-as-words to the wordless images within our minds, thoughts create and limit our personal world. Through thinking we abstract and define reality, reason about it, react to it, recall past events and plan for the future. Yet thinking remains both woefully underdeveloped in most of us, as well as grossly overvalued. We can best gain some perspective on thinking in terms of energies.
Automatic thinking draws us away from the present, and wistfully allows our thoughts to meander where they would, carrying our passive attention along with them. Like water running down a mountain stream, thoughts running on auto-pilot careens through the spaces of perception, randomly triggering associative links within our vast storehouse of memory. By way of itself, such associative thought is harmless. However, our tendency to believe in, act upon, and drift away with such undirected thought keeps us operating in an automatic mode. Lulled into an inner passivity by our daydreams and thought streams, we lose contact with the world of actual perceptions, of real life. In the automatic mode of thinking, I am completely identified with my thoughts, believing my thoughts are I, and believing that I am the conceptualization forwarded by me to think of thoughts that are sometimes thought as unthinkable.
Another mode of automatic thinking consists of repetitious and habitual patterns of thought. These thought tapes and our running commentary on life, unexamined by the light of awareness, keep us enthralled, defining who we are and perpetuating all our limiting assumptions about what is possible for us. Driving and driven by our emotions, these ruts of thought create our false persona, the mask that keeps us disconnected from others and from our own authentic self. More than any other single factor, automatic thinking hinders our contact with presence, limits our being, and Forms our path. The autopilot of thought constantly calls us away from the most recent or the current of immediacy. Thus, keeping us fixed on the most superficial levels of our being.
Sometimes we even notice strange, unwanted thoughts that we consider horrible or shameful. We might be upset or shaken that we would think such thoughts, but those reactions only serves to sustain the problematic thoughts by feeding them energy. Furthermore, that self-disgust is based on the false assumption that we are our thoughts, that even unintentional thoughts, arising from our conditioned minds, are we. They are not we and we need not act upon or react to them. They are just thoughts with no inherent power and no real message about whom we are. We can just relax and let them go - or not. Troubling thoughts that recur over a long period and hinder our inner work may require us to examine and heal their roots in our conditioning, perhaps with the help of a psychotherapist.
Sensitive thinking puts us in touch with the meaning of our thoughts and enables us to think logically, solve problems, make plans, and carry on a substantive conversation. A good education develops our ability to think clearly and intentionally with the sensitive energy. With that energy level in our thinking brain, no longer totally submerged in the thought stream, we can move about in it, choosing among and directing our thoughts based on their meaning.
Conscious thinking means stepping out of the thought stream altogether, and surveying it from the shore. The thoughts themselves may even evaporate, leaving behind a temporary empty streambed. Consciousness reveals the banality and emptiness of ordinary thinking. Consciousness also permits us to think more powerfully, holding several ideas, their meanings and ramifications in our minds at once.
When the creative energy reaches thought, truly new ideas spring up. Creative thinking can happen after a struggle, after exhausting all known avenues of relevant ideas and giving up, shaping and emptying the stage so the creative spark may enter. The quiet, relaxed mind also leaves room for the creative thought, a clear channel for creativity. Creative and insightful thoughts come to all of us in regard to the situations we face in life. The trick is to be aware enough to catch them, to notice their significance, and if they withstand the light of sober and unbiased evaluation, to act on them.
In the spiritual path, we work to recognize the limitations of thought, to recognize its power over us, and especially to move beyond it. Along with Descartes, we subsist in the realm of “thoughts‘, but thoughts are just thoughts. They are not we. They are not who we are. No thought can enter the spiritual realms. Rather, the material world defines the boundaries of thought, despite its power to conceive lofty abstractions. We cannot think our way into the spiritual reality. On the contrary, identification with thinking prevents us from entering the depths. As long as we believe that refined thinking represents our highest capacity, we shackle ourselves exclusively to this world. All our thoughts, all our books, all our ideas wither before the immensity of the higher realms.
A richly developed body of spiritual practices engages of thought, from repetitive prayer and mantras, to contemplation of an idea, to visualizations of deities. In a most instructive and invaluable exercise, we learn to see beyond thought by embracing the gaps, the spaces between thoughts. After sitting quietly and relaxing for some time, we turn our attention toward the thought stream within us. We notice thoughts come and go of their own accord, without prodding or pushing from us. If we can abide in this relaxed watching of thought, without falling into the stream and flowing away with it, the thought stream begins to slow, the thoughts fragment. Less enthralled by our thoughts, we begin to see that we are not our thoughts. Less controlled by, and at the mercy of, our thoughts, we begin to be aware of the gaps between thought particles. These gaps open to consciousness, underlying all thought. Settling into these gaps, we enter and become the silent consciousness beneath thought. Instead of being in our thoughts, our thoughts are in us.
There is potentially a rich and productive interface between neuroscience/cognitive science. The two traditions, however, have evolved largely independent, based on differing sets of observations and objectives, and tend to use different conceptual frameworks and vocabulary representations. The distributive contributions to each their dynamic functions of finding a useful common reference to further exploration of the relations between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
Recent historical gaps between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy are being productively closed by, among other things, the suggestion that recent understandings of the nervous system as a modeler and predictor bear a close and useful similarity to the concepts of projection and transference. The gap could perhaps be valuably narrowed still further by a comparison in the two traditions of the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious" and the relations between the two. It is suggested that these be understood as two independent "story generators" - each with different styles of function and both operating optimally as reciprocal contributors to each others' ongoing story evolution. A parallel and comparably optimal relation might be imagined for neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy.
For the sake of argument, imagine that human behaviour and all that it entails (including the experience of being a human and interacting with a world that includes other humans) is a function of the nervous system. If this were so, then there would be lots of different people who are making observations of (perhaps different) aspects of the same thing, and telling (perhaps different) stories to make sense of their observations. The list would include neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and psychologists. It would include as well psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and social workers. If we were not too fussy about credentials, it should probably include as well educators, and parents and . . . babies? Arguably, all humans, from the time they are born, spend a considerable reckoning of time making observations of how people (others and themselves) behave and why, and telling stories to make sense of those observations.
The stories, of course, all differ from one another to greater or lesser degrees. In fact, the notion that "human behaviour and all that it entails . . . are a function of the nervous system" is itself a story used to make sense of observations by some people and not by any other? It is not my intent here to try to defend this particular story, or any other story for that matter. Very much to the contrary, what I want to do is to explore the implications and significance of the fact that there are different stories and that they might be about the same (some)thing.
In so doing, I want to try to create a new story that helps to facilitate an enhanced dialogue between neuroscience/cognitive science, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, on the other. That new stories of itself are stories of conflicting historical narratives . . . what is within being called the "nervous system" but others are free to call the "self," "mind," "soul," or whatever best fits their own stories. What is important is the idea that multiple things, evident by their conflicts, may not in fact be disconnected and adversarial entities but could rather be fundamentally, understandably, and valuably interconnected parts of the same thing.
"Non-conscious Prediction and a Role for Consciousness in Correcting Prediction Errors" by Regina Pally (Pally, 2004) is the take-off point for my enterprise. Pally is a practising psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist who have actively engaged with neuroscientists to help make sense of her own observations. I am a neuroscientists who recently spent two years as an Academic Fellow of the Psychoanalytic Centre of Philadelphia, an engagement intended to expand my own set of observations and forms of story-telling. The significance of this complementarity, and of our similarities and differences, is that something will emerge in this commentary.
Many psychoanalysts (and psychotherapists too, I suspect) feel that the observations/stories of neuroscience/cognitive science are for their own activities at best, find to some irrelevance, and at worst destructive or are they not the same probability that holds for many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists. Pally clearly feels otherwise, and it is worth exploring a bit why this is so in her case. A general key, I think, is in her line "In current paradigms, the brain has intrinsic activity, is highly integrated, is interactive with the environment, and is goal-oriented, with predictions operating at every level, from lower systems to . . . the highest functions of abstract thought.” Contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science has indeed uncovered an enormous complexity and richness in the nervous system, "making it not so different from how psychoanalysts (or most other people) would characterize the self, at least not in terms of complexity, potential, and vagary." Given this complexity and richness, there is substantially less reason than there once was to believe psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are dealing with two fundamentally different things.
Pally suspect, more aware of this than many psychotherapists because she has been working closely with contemporary neuroscientists who are excited about the complexity to be found in the nervous system. And that has an important lesson, but there is an additional one at least as important in the immediate context. In 1950, two neuroscientists wrote that, "the sooner we recognize the certainty of the complexity that is highly functional, just as those who recognize the Gestalts under which they leave the reflex physiologist confounded, in fact they support the simplest functions in the sooner that we will see that the previous terminological peculiarities that seem insurmountably carried between the lower levels of neurophysiology and higher behavioural theory simply dissolve away."
And in 1951 another said: " I am coming more to the conviction that the rudiments of every behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and represented in primitive activities of the nervous system."
Neuroscience (and what came to be cognitive science) was engaged from very early on in an enterprise committed to the same kind of understanding sought by psychotherapists, but passed through a phase (roughly from the 1950 through to the 1980's) when its own observations and stories were less rich in those terms. It was a period that gave rise to the notion that the nervous system was "simple" and "mechanistic," which in turn made neuroscience/cognitive science seem less relevant to those with broader concerns, perhaps even threatening and apparently adversarial if one equated the nervous system with "mind," or "self," or "soul," since mechanics seemed degrading to those ideas. Arguably, though, the period was an essential part of the evolution of the contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science story, one that laid needed groundwork for rediscovery and productive exploration of the richness of the nervous system. Psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, and, of course, move through their own story of evolution over its presented time. That the two stories seemed remote from one another during this period was never adequate evidence that they were not about the same thing but only an expression of their needed independent evolutions.
An additional reason that Pally is comfortable with the likelihood that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are talking about the same thing is her recognition of isomorphism (or congruities, Pulver 2003) between the two sets of stories, places where different vocabularies in fact seem to be representing the same (or quite similar) things. I am not sure I am comfortable calling these "shared assumptions" (as Pally does) since they are actually more interesting and probably more significant if they are instead instances of coming to the same ideas from different directions (as I think they are). In this case, the isomorphism tend to imply that rephrasing Gertrude Stein, that "there proves to be the actualization in the exception of there.” Regardless, Pally has entirely appropriately and, I think, usefully called attention to an important similarity between the psychotherapeutic concept of "transference" and an emerging recognition within neuroscience/cognitive science that the nervous system does not so much collect information about the world as generate a model of it, act in relation to that model, and then check incoming information against the predictions of that model. Pally's suggestion that this model reflects in part early interpersonal experiences, can be largely "unconscious," and so may cause inappropriate and troubling behaviour in current time seems to be entirely reasonable. So too, are those that constitute her thought, in that of the interactions with which an analyst can help by bringing the model to "consciousness" through the intermediary of recognizing the transference onto the analyst.
The increasing recognition of substantial complexity in the nervous system together with the presence of identifiable isomorphism that provide a solid foundation for suspecting that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are indeed talking about the same thing. But the significance of different stories for better understanding a single thing lies as much in the differences between the stories as it does in their similarities/isomorphism, in the potential for differing and not obviously isomorphic stories to modify another productively, and yielding a new story in the process. With this thought in mind, I want to call attention to some places where the psychotherapeutic and the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific stories have edges that rub against one another than smoothly fitting together. And perhaps to ways each could be usefully further evolved in response to those non-isomorphism.
Unconscious stories and "reality.” Though her primary concern is with interpersonal relations, Pally clearly recognizes that transference and related psychotherapeutic phenomena are one (actually relatively small) facet of a much more general phenomenon, the creation, largely unconsciously, of stories that are understood to be but are not that any necessary thoughtful pronunciations inclined for the "real world.” Ambiguous figures illustrate the same general phenomenon in a much simpler case, that of visual perception. Such figures may be seen in either of two ways; They represent two "stories" with the choice between them being, at any given time, largely unconscious. More generally, a serious consideration of a wide array of neurobiological/cognitive phenomena clearly implies that, as Pally says, we do not see "reality," but only have stories to describe it that result from processes of which we are not consciously aware.
All of this raises some quite serious philosophical questions about the meaning and usefulness of the concept of "reality." In the present context, what is important is that it is a set of questions that sometimes seem to provide an insurmountable barrier between the stories of neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, who largely think they are dealing with reality, and psychotherapists, who feel more comfortable in more idiosyncratic and fluid spaces. In fact, neuroscience and cognitive science can proceed perfectly well in the absence of a well-defined concept of "reality" and, without being fully conscious of it, committing to fact as they do so. And psychotherapists actually make more use of the idea of "reality" than is entirely appropriate. There is, for example, a tendency within the psychotherapeutic community to presume that unconscious stories reflect "traumas" and other historically verifiable events, while the neurobiological/cognitive science story says quite clearly that they may equally reflect predispositions whose origins reflect genetic information and hence bear little or no relation to "reality" in the sense usually meant. They may, in addition, reflect random "play," putting them even further out of reach of easy historical interpretation. In short, with regard to the relation between "story" and "reality," each set of stories could usefully be modified by greater attention to the other. Differing concepts of "reality" (perhaps the very concept itself) gets in the way of usefully sharing stories. The mental/cognitive scientists' preoccupation with "reality" as an essential touchstone could valuably be lessened, and the therapist's sense of the validation of stories in terms of personal and historical idiosyncrasies could be helpfully adjusted to include a sense of actual material underpinnings.
The Unconscious and the Conscious. Pally appropriately makes a distinction between the unconscious and the conscious, one that has always been fundamental to psychotherapy. Neuroscience/cognitive science has been slower to make a comparable distinction but is now rapidly beginning to catch up. Clearly some neural processes generate behaviour in the absence of awareness and intent and others yield awareness and intent with or without accompanying behaviour. An interesting question however, raised at a recent open discussion of the relations between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, is whether the "neurobiological unconscious" is the same thing as the "psychotherapeutic unconscious," and whether the perceived relations between the "unconscious" and the"conscious" are the same in the two sets of stories. Is this a case of an isomorphism or, perhaps more usefully, a masked difference?
An oddity of Pally's article is that she herself acknowledges that the unconscious has mechanisms for monitoring prediction errors and yet implies, both in the title of the paper, and in much of its argument, that there is something special or distinctive about consciousness (or conscious processing) in its ability to correct prediction errors. And here, I think, there is evidence of a potentially useful "rubbing of edges" between the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific tradition and the psychotherapeutic one. The issue is whether one regards consciousness (or conscious processing) as somehow "superior" to the unconscious (or unconscious processing). There is a sense in Pally of an old psychotherapeutic perspective of the conscious as a mechanism for overcoming the deficiencies of the unconscious, of the conscious as the wise father/mother and the unconscious as the willful child. Actually, Pally does not quite go this far, as I will point out in the following, but there is enough of a trend to illustrate the point and, without more elaboration, I do not think of many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists will catch Pally's more insightful lesson. I think Pally is almost certainly correct that the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious can achieve results unachievable by the unconscious alone, but think also that neither psychotherapy nor neuroscience/cognitive science are yet in a position to say exactly why this is so. So let me take a crack here at a new, perhaps bi-dimensional story that could help with that common problem and perhaps both traditions as well.
A major and surprising lesson of comparative neuroscience, supported more recently by neuropsychology (Weiskrantz, 1986) and, more recently still, by artificial intelligence, is that an extraordinarily rich repertoire of adaptive behaviour can occur unconsciously, in the absence of awareness of intent (be supported by unconscious neural processes). It is not only modelling the world and prediction. Error correction that can occur this way but virtually (and perhaps literally) the entire spectrum of behaviour externally observed, including fleeing from a threat, and of approaching good things, generating novel outputs, learning from doing so, and so on.
This extraordinary terrain, discovered by neuroanatomists, electro-physiologists, neurologists, behavioural biologists, and recently extended by others using more modern techniques, is the unconscious of which the neuroscientists/cognitive scientist speaks. It is the area that is so surprisingly rich that it creates, for some people, the puzzle about whether there is anything else at all. Moreover, it seems, at first glance, to be a totally different terrain from that of the psychotherapist, whose clinical experience reveals a territory occupied by drives, unfulfilled needs, and the detritus with which the conscious would prefer not to deal.
As indicated earlier, it is one of the great strengths of Pally's article to suggest that the two areas may in fact, turns out to be the same as in many ways that if they are of the same, then its question only compliments in what way are the "unconscious" and the "conscious" of showing to any difference? Where now are the "two stories?” Pally touches briefly on this point, suggesting that the two systems differ not so much (or at all?) In what they do, but rather in how they do it. This notion of two systems with different styles seems to me worth emphasizing and expanding. Unconscious processing is faster and handles many more variables simultaneously. Conscious processing is slower and handles numerously fewer variables at one time. It is likely that their equalling a host of other differences in style as well, in the handling of number for example, and of time.
In the present context, however, perhaps the most important difference in style is one that Lacan called attention to from a clinical/philosophical perspective - the conscious (conscious processing) have in themselves forwarded by some objective "coherence," that it attempts to create a story that makes sense simultaneously of all its parts. The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with bits and pieces lying around with no global order. To a neurobiologist/cognitive scientist, this makes perfectly good sense. The circuitry embodies that of the unconscious (sub-cortical circuitry?) Is an assembly of different parts organized for a large number of different specific purposes, and only secondarily linked together to try to assure some coordination? The circuitry, has, once, again, to involve in conscious processing (neo-cortical circuitry?) On the other hand, seems to both be more uniform and integrated and to have an objective for which coherence is central.
That central coherence is well-illustrated by the phenomena of "positive illusions,” exemplified by patients who receive a hypnotic suggestion that there is an object in a room and subsequently walk in ways that avoid the object while providing a variety of unrelated explanations for their behaviour. Similar "rationalization" is, of course, seen in schizophrenic patients and in a variety of fewer dramatic forms in psychotherapeutic settings. The "coherent" objective is to make a globally organized story out of the disorganized jumble, a story of (and constituting) the "self."
What all this introduces that which is the mind or brain for which it is actually organized to be constantly generating at least two different stories in two different styles. One, written by conscious processes in simpler terms, is a story of/about the "self" and experienced as such, for developing insights into how such a story can be constructed using neural circuitry. The other is an unconscious "story" about interactions with the world, perhaps better thought of as a series of different "models" about how various actions relate to various consequences. In many ways, the latter are the grist for the former.
In this sense, we are safely back to the two stories that are ideologically central in their manifestations as pronounced in psychotherapy, but perhaps with some added sophistication deriving from neuroscience/cognitive science. In particular, there is no reason to believe that one story is "better" than the other in any definitive sense. They are different stories based on different styles of story telling, with one having advantages in certain sorts of situations (quick responses, large numbers of variables, more direct relation to immediate experiences of pain and pleasure) and the other in other sorts of situations (time for more deliberate responses, challenges amenable to handling using smaller numbers of variables, more coherent, more able to defer immediate gratification/judgment.
In the clinical/psychotherapeutic context, an important implication of the more neutral view of two story-tellers outlined above is that one ought not to over-value the conscious, nor to expect miracles of the process of making conscious what is unconscious. In the immediate context, the issue is if the unconscious is capable of "correcting prediction errors,” then why appeal to the conscious to achieve this function? More generally, what is the function of that persistent aspect of psychotherapy that aspires to make the unconscious conscious? And why is it therapeutically effective when it is? Here, it is worth calling special attention to an aspect of Pally's argument that might otherwise get a bit lost in the details of her article: . . . the therapist encourages the wife consciously to stop and consider her assumption that her husband does not properly care about her, and effortfully to consider an alternative view and inhibit her impulse to reject him back. This, in turn, creates a new type of experience, one in which he is indeed more loving, such that she can develop new predictions."
It is not, as Pally describes it, the simple act of making something conscious that is therapeutically effective. What is necessary is to decompose the story consciously (something that is made possible by its being a story with a small number of variables) and, even what is more important, to see if the story generates a new "type of experience" that in turn causes the development of "new predictions." The latter, is an effect of the conscious on the unconscious, an alteration of the unconscious brought about by hearing, entertaining, and hence acting on a new story developed by the conscious. It is not "making things conscious" that is therapeutically effective; it is the exchange of stories that encourages the creation of a new story in the unconscious.
For quite different reasons, Grey (1995) earlier made a suggestion not dissimilar to Pally's, proposing that consciousness was activated when an internal model detected a prediction failure, but acknowledged he could see no reason "why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all." Seemingly, in spite of her title, there seems of nothing really to any detection of prediction errors, especially of what is important that Pally's story is the detection of mismatches between two stories. One unconscious and the other conscious, and the resulting opportunity for both to shape a less trouble-making new story. That, briefly may be why the brain "should generate conscious experience,” to reap the benefits of having a second story teller with a different style. Paraphrasing Descartes, one might say "I am, and I can think, therefore I can change who I am.” It is not only the neurobiological "conscious" that can undergo change; it is the neurobiological "unconscious" as well.
More generally, I want to suggest that the most effective psychotherapy requires the recognitions, rapidly emanating from the neuro- sciences and their cognitive counterpart for which are exposed of each within the paradigms of science, that the brain/mind has evolved with two (or more) independent story tellers and has done so precisely because there are advantages to having independent story tellers that generate and exchange different stories. The advantage is that each can learn from the other, and the mechanisms to convey the stories and forth and for each story teller to learn from the stories of the others occurring as a part of our evolutionary endowment as well. The problems that bring patients into a therapist's office are problems in the breakdown of story exchange, for any of a variety of reasons, and the challenge for the therapist is to reinstate the confidence of each story teller in the value of the stories created by the other. Neither the conscious nor the unconscious is primary; they function best as an interdependent loop with each developing its own story facilitated by the semi-independent story of the other. In such an organization, there are not only no "real,” and no primacy for consciousness, there is only the ongoing development and, ideally, effective sharing of different stories.
There are, in the story I am outlining, implications for neuroscience/cognitive science as well. The obvious key questions are what does one mean (in terms of neurons and neuronal assemblies) by "stories," and in what ways are their construction and representation different in unconscious and conscious neural processing. But even more important, if the story I have outlined makes sense, what are the neural mechanisms by which unconscious and conscious stories are exchanged and by which each kind of story impacts on the other? And why (again in neural terms) does the exchange sometimes break down and fail in a way that requires a psychotherapist - an additional story teller - to be repaired?
Just as the unconscious and the conscious are engaged in a process of evolving stories for separate reasons and using separate styles, so too have been and will continue to be neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy. And it is valuable that both communities continue to do so. But there is every reason to believe that the different stories are indeed about the same thing, not only because of isomorphism between the differing stories but equally because the stories of each can, if listened to, are demonstrably of value to the stories of the other. When breakdowns in story sharing occur, they require people in each community who are daring enough to listen and be affected by the stories of the other community. Pally has done us all a service as such a person. I hope to further the constructs that bridge her to lay, and that others will feel inclined to join in an act of collectivity such that has enormous intellectual potential and relates directly too more seriously psychological need in the mental health arena. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that an enhanced skill at hearing, respecting, and learning from differing stories about similar things would be useful in a wide array of contexts.
The physical basis of consciousness appears to be the major and most
singular challenge to the scientific, reductionist world view. In the closing years of the second millennium, advances in the ability to record the activity of individual neurons in the brains of monkeys or other animals while they carry out particular tasks, combined with the explosive development of functional brain imaging in normal humans, has lead to a renewed empirical program to discover the scientific explanation of consciousness. This article reviews some of the relevant experimental work and argues that the most advantageous strategy for now is to focus on discovering the neuronal correlates of consciousness.
Consciousness is a puzzling state-dependent property of certain types of complex, adaptive systems. The best example of one type of such systems is a healthy and attentive human brain. If the brain is anaesthetized, consciousness ceases. Small lesions in the midbrain and thalamus of patients can lead to a complete loss of consciousness, while destruction of circumscribed parts of the cerebral cortex of patients can eliminate very specific aspects of consciousness, such as the ability to be aware of motion or to recognize objects as faces, without a concomitant loss of vision usually. Given the similarity in brain structure and behaviour, biologists commonly assume that at least some animals, in particular non-human primates, share certain aspects of consciousness with humans. Brain scientists, in conjunction with cognitive neuroscientists, are exploiting a number of empirical approaches that shed light on the neural basis of consciousness. Since it is not known to what extent, artificial systems, such as computers and robots, can become conscious, this article will exclude these from consideration.
Largely, neuroscientists have made a number of working assumptions that, in the fullness of time, need to be justified more fully.
(1) There is something to be explained; that is, the subjective content associated with a conscious sensation - what philosophers point to the qualia - does exist and has its physical basis in the brain. To what extent qualia and all other subjective aspects of consciousness can or cannot be explained within some reductionist framework remains highly controversially.
(2) Consciousness is a vague term with many usages and will, in the fullness of time, be replaced by a vocabulary that more accurately reflect the contribution of different brain processes (for a similar evolution, consider the usage of memory, that has been replaced by an entire hierarchy of more specific concepts). Common to all forms of consciousness is that it feels like something (e.g., to “see blue," to “experience a headache,” or to "reflect upon a memory"). Self-consciousness is but one form of consciousness.
It is possible that all the different aspects of consciousness (smelling, pain, visual awareness, effect, self-consciousness, and so on) employ a basic common mechanism or perhaps a few such mechanisms. If one could understand the mechanism for one aspect, then one will have gone most of the way toward understanding them all.
(3) Consciousness is a property of the human brain, a highly evolved system. It therefore must have a useful function to perform. Crick and Koch (1998) assumes that the function of the neuronal correlate of consciousness is to produce the best current interpretation of the environment-in the light of past experiences-and to make it available, for a sufficient time, to the parts of the brain that contemplate, plan and execute voluntary motor outputs (including language). This needs to be contrasted with the on-line systems that bypass consciousness but that can generate stereotyped behaviours.
Note that in normally developed individuals motor output is not necessary for consciousness to occur. This is demonstrated by lock-in syndrome in which patients have lost (nearly) all ability to move yet are clearly conscious.
(4) At least some animal species posses some aspects of consciousness. In particular, this is assumed to be true for non-human primates, such as the macaque monkey. Consciousness associated with sensory events in humans is likely to be related to sensory consciousness in monkeys for several reasons. Firstly, trained monkeys show similar behaviour to that of humans for many low-level perceptual tasks (e.g., detection and discrimination of visual motion or depth. Secondly, the gross neuroanatomy of humans and non-human primates are rather similar once the difference in size has been accounted for. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging of human cerebral cortex is confirming the existence of a functional organization in sensory cortical areas similar to that discovered by the use of single cell electrophysiology in the monkey. As a corollary, it follows that language is not necessary for consciousness to occur (although it greatly enriches human consciousness).
It is important to distinguish the general, enabling factors in the brain that are needed for any form of consciousness to occur from modulating ones that can up-or-down regulate the level of arousal, attention and awareness and from the specific factors responsible for a particular content of consciousness.
An easy example of an enabling factor would be a proper blood supply. Inactivate the heart and consciousness ceases within a fraction of a minute. This does not imply that the neural correlate of consciousness is in the heart (as Aristotle thought). A neuronal enabling factor for consciousness is the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus. Acute bilateral loss of function in these small structures that are widely and reciprocally connected to the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex leads to an immediate coma or profound disruption in arousal and consciousness.
Among the neuronal modulating factors are the various activities in nuclei in the brain stem and the midbrain, often collectively referred to as the reticular activating system, that control in a widespread and quite specific manner the level of noradrenaline, serotonin and acetylcholine in the thalamus and forebrain. Appropriate levels of these neurotransmitters are needed for sleep, arousal, attention, memory and other functions critical to behaviour and consciousness.
Yet any particular content of consciousness is unlikely to arise from these structures, since they probably lack the specificity necessary to mediate a sharp pain in the right molar, the percept of the deep, blue California sky, the bouquet associated with a rich Bordeaux, a haunting musical melody and so on. These must be caused by specific neural activity in cortex, thalamus, basal ganglia and associated neuronal structures. The question motivating much of the current research into the neuronal basis of consciousness is the notion of the minimal neural activity that is sufficient to cause a specific conscious percept or memory.
For instance, when a subject consciously perceives a face, the retinal ganglion cells whose axons make up the optic nerve that carries the visual information to the brain proper are firing in response to the visual stimulus. Yet it is unlikely that this retinal activity directly correlates with visual perception. While such activity is evidently necessary for seeing a physical stimulus in the world, retinal neurons by themselves do not give rise to consciousness.
Given the comparative ease with which the brains of animals can be probed and manipulated, it seems opportune at this point in time to concentrate on the neural basis of sensory consciousness. Because primates are highly visual animals and much is known about the neuroanatomy, psychology and computational principles underling visual perception, visions has proven to be the most popular model systems in the brain sciences.
Cognitive and clinical research demonstrates that much complex information processing can occur without involving consciousness. This includes visual, auditory and linguistic priming, implicit memory, the implicit recognition of complex sequences, automatic behaviours such as driving a car or riding a bicycle and so on (Velmans 1991). The dissociations found in patients with lesions in the cerebral cortex (e.g., such as residual visual functions in the professed absence of any visual awareness known as clinical blind-sight in patients with lesions in preliminary visual cortex.
It can be said, that if one is without idea, then one is without concept, and as well, if one is without concept one is without an idea. An idea (Gk., eidos, visible form) be it a notion stretching all the way from one pole, where it denotes a subjective, internal presence in the mind, somehow thought of as representing something about the world, to the other pole, where it represents an eternal, timeless unchanging form or concept: The concept o the number series or of justice, for example, thought of as independent objected of enquiry and perhaps of knowledge. These two poles are not distinct meanings of the therm, although they give rise to many problems of interpretation, but between tem they define a space of philosophical problems. On the other hand, ideas are that with which er think, or in Locke’s terms, whatever the mind may be employed about in thinking. Looked at that way they seem to be inherently transient, fleeting, and unstable private presences. On the other hand, ideas provide the way in which objective knowledge can be expressed. They are the essential components of understanding, and any intelligible proposition that is true must be capable of being understood. Plato’s theory of Forms is a celebration of objective and timeless existence of ideas as concepts, and in his hands ideas are reified to the point where they make up the only rea world, of separate and perfect models of which the empirical world is only a poor cousin. This doctrine, notable in the Timaeus, opened the way for the Neoplatonic notion of ideas as the thoughts of God. The concept gradually lost this other-worldly aspect until after Descartes ideas become assimilated to whatever it is that lies in the mind of any thinking being.
The philosophical doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlatives or mind co-ordinated - that the real objects comprising the “external world” are mot independent of cognizing minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine centres on the conception that reality as we understand it reflects the working of mind. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind itself to make a formative contribution not merely to our understanding character we attribute to it.
The cognitive scientist Jackendoff (1987) argues at length against the notion that consciousness and thoughts are inseparable and that introspection can reveal the contents of the mind. What is conscious about thoughts, are sensory aspects, such as visual images, sounds or silent speech? Both the process of thought and its content are not directly accessible to consciousness. Indeed, one tradition in psychology and psychoanalysis - going back to Sigmund Freud-hypothesizes that higher-level decision making and creativity are not accessible at a conscious level, although they influence behaviour.
Within the visual modality, Milner and Goodale (1995) have made a masterful case for the existence of so-called on-line systems that by-pass consciousness. Their function is to mediate relative stereotype visuo-motor behaviours, such as eye and arm movements, reaching, grasping, and postural adjustment and so on. In a very rapid, reflex-like manner. On-line systems work in egocentric coordinate systems, and lack certain types of perceptual illusions (e.g., size illusion) as well as direct access to working memory. These contrasts are well within the function of consciousness as alluded to from above, namely to synthesize information from many different sources and use it to plan behavioural patterns over time. Milner and Goodale argue that on-line systems are associated with the dorsal stream of visual information in the cerebral cortex, originating in the primary visual cortex and terminating in the posterior parietal cortex. The problem of consciousness can be broken down into several separate questions. Most, if not all of these, can then be subjected to scientific inquiry.
The major question that neuroscience must ultimately answer can be bluntly stated as follows: It is probable that at any moment some active neuronal processes in our head correlates with consciousness, while others do not; what is the difference between them? The specific processes that correlate with the current content of consciousness are referred to as the neuronal correlate of consciousness, or as the NCC. Whenever some information is represented in the NCC, it is represented in consciousness. The NCC is the minimal (minimal, since it is known that the entire brain is sufficient to give rise to consciousness) set of neurons, most likely distributed throughout certain cortical and subcortical areas, whose firing directly correlates with the perception of the subject at the time. Conversely, stimulating these neurons in the right manner with some yet unheard of technology should give rise to the same perception as before.
Discovering the NCC and its properties will mark a major milestone in any scientific theory of consciousness.
What is the character of the NCC? Most popular has been the belief that consciousness arises as an emergent property of a very large collection of interacting neurons (for instance, Libet 1993). In this view, it would be foolish to locate consciousness at the level of individual neurons. An alternative hypothesis is that there are special sets of “consciousness" neurons distributed throughout cortex and associated systems. Such neurons represent the ultimate neuronal correlate of consciousness, in the sense that the relevant activity of an appropriate subset of them is both necessary and sufficient to give rise to an appropriate conscious experience or percept (Crick and Koch 1998). Generating the appropriate activity in these neurons, for instance by suitable electrical stimulation during open skull surgery, would give rise to the specific percept.
Any-one subtype of NCC neurons would, most likely, be characterized by a unique combination of molecular, biophysical, pharmacological and anatomical traits. It is possible, of course, that all cortical neurons may be capable of participating in the representation of one percept or another, though not necessarily doing so for all percepts. The secret of consciousness would then be the type of activity of a temporary subset of them, consisting of all those cortical neurons that represent that particular percept at that moment. How activity of neurons across a multitude of brain areas that encode all of the different aspects associated with an object (e.g., the colour of the face, its facial expression, its gender and identity, the sound issuing from its mouth) is combined into some single percept remains puzzling and is known as the binding problem.
What, if anything, can we infer about the location of neurons whose activity correlates with consciousness? In the case of visual consciousness, it was surmised that these neurons must have access to visual information and project to the planning stages of the brain; That is to premotor and frontal areas. Since no neurons in the primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey project to any area forward of the central sulcus, Crick and Koch (1998) propose that neurons in V1 do not give rise to consciousness (although it is necessary for most forms of vision, just as the retina is). Ongoing electro physiological, psycho physical and imaging research in monkeys and humans is evaluating this prediction.
While the set of neurons that can express anyone particular conscious percept might constitute a relative small fraction of all neurons in anyone area, many more neurons might be necessary to support the firing activity leading up to the NCC. This might resolve the apparent paradox between clinical lessoning data suggesting that small and discrete lesions in the cortex can lead to very specific deficits (such as the inability to see colours or to recognize faces in the absence of other visual losses) and the functional imaging data that anyone visual stimulus can activate large swaths of cortex.
Conceptually, several other questions need to be answered about the NCC. What type of activity corresponds to the NCC (it has been proposed as long ago as the early part of the twentieth century that spiking activity synchronized across a population of neurons is a necessary condition for consciousness to occur)? What causes the NCC to occur? And, finally, what effect does the NCC have on postsynaptic structures, including motor output.
A promising experimental approach to locate the NCC is the use of bistable percepts in which a constant retinal stimulus gives rise to two percepts alternating in time, as in a Necker cube (Logothetis 1998). One version of this is binocular rivalry in which small images, say of a horizontal grating, are presented to the left eye and another image, say the vertical grating is shown to the corresponding location in the right eye. In spite of the constant visual stimulus, observers “see" the horizontal grating alternately every few seconds with the vertical one (Blake 1989). The brain does not allow for the simultaneous perception of both images.
It is possible, though difficult, to train a macaque monkey to report whether it is currently seeing the left or the right image. The distribution of the switching times and the way in which changing the contrast in one eye affects these leaves little to doubt, in that monkeys and humans experience the same basic phenomenon. In a series of elegant experiments, Logothetis and colleagues (Logothetis 1998) recorded from a variety of visual cortical areas in the awake macaque monkey while the animal performed a binocular rivalry task. In undeveloped visual cortices, only a small fraction of cells modulates their response as a function of the percept of the monkey, while 20 to 30% of neurons in higher visual areas in the cortex do so. The majority of cells increased their firing rate in response to one or the other retinal stimulus with little regard to what the animal perceives at the time. In contrast, in a high-level cortical area such as the inferior temporal cortex, almost all neurons responded only to the perceptual dominant stimulus (in other words, a “face” cell only fired when the animal indicated by its performance that it saw the face and not the pattern presented to the other eye). This makes it likely that the NCC involves activity in neurons in the inferior temporal lobe. Lesions in the homologous area in the human brain are known to cause very specific deficits in the conscious face or object recognition. However, it is possible that specific interactions between IT cells and neurons in parts of the prefrontal cortex are necessary in order for the NCC to be generated
Functional brain imaging in humans undergoing binocular rivalry has revealed that areas in the right prefrontal cortex are in activating during the perceptual switch from one percept to the other.
A number of alternate experimental paradigms are being investigated using electro physiological recordings of individual neurons in behaving animals and human patients, combined with functional brain imaging. Common to these is the manipulation of the complex and changing relationship between physical stimulus and the conscious percept. For instance, when subjects are forced rapidly to respond to a low saliency target, both monkeys and human’s sometimes claim to perceive such a target in the absence of any physical target consciously (false alarm) or fail to respond to a target (miss). The NCC in the appropriate sensory area should mirror the perceptual report under these dissociated conditions. Visual illusions constitute another rich source of experiments that can provide information concerning the neurons underlying these illusory percepts. A classical example is the motion affected in which a subject stares at a constantly moving stimulus (such as a waterfall) for a fraction of a minute or longer. Immediately after this conditioning period, a stationary stimulus will appear to move in the opposite direction. Because of the conscious experience of motion, one would expect, the subject’s cortical motion areas to be activated in the absence of any moving stimulus.
Future techniques, most likely based on the molecular identification and manipulation of discrete and identifiable subpopulations of cortical cells in appropriate animals, will greatly help in this endeavour
Identifying the type of activity and the type of neurons that gives rise to specific conscious percept in animals and humans would only be the first, even if critical, step in understanding consciousness. One also needs to know where these cells project to, their postsynaptic action, how they develop in early childhood, what happens to them in mental diseases known to affect consciousness in patients, such as schizophrenia or autism, and so on. And, of course, a final theory of consciousness would have to explain the central mystery, why a physical system with particular architectures gives rise to feelings and qualia.
The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practised in various guises for centuries, however, its maturing qualities have begun in the early parts of the 20th century. The works that have dramatically empathized the growths of phenomenology are accredited through the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.
Phenomenology is commonly understood in either of two ways: as a disciplinary field in philosophy, or as a movement in the history of philosophy.
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of "phenomena": Appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meaning’s things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: Ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.
The historical movement of phenomenology is the philosophical tradition launched in the first half of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre. In that movement, the discipline of phenomenology was prized as the proper foundation of all philosophy - as opposed, say, to ethics or metaphysics or epistemology. The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated by Husserl and his successors, and these debates continue to the present day. (The definitions of Phenomenological offered above will thus be debatable, for example, by Heideggerians, but it remains the starting point in characterizing the discipline.)
In recent philosophy of mind, the term "phenomenology" is often restricted to the characterization of sensory qualities of seeing, hearing, etc.: What it is like to have sensations of various kinds. However, our experience is normally much richer in content than mere sensation. Accordingly, in the Phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our "life-world.”
Phenomenology as a discipline has been central to the tradition of continental European philosophy throughout the 20th century, while philosophy of mind has evolved in the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy that developed throughout the 20th century. Yet the fundamental character of our mental activity is pursued in overlapping ways within these two traditions. Accordingly, the perspective on phenomenology drawn in this article will accommodate both traditions. The main concern here will be to characterize the discipline of phenomenology, in contemporary views, while also highlighting the historical tradition that brought the discipline into its own.
Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called "intentionality,” that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something. According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experiences abide toward the direction that represents or "intends" of things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things they present or mean.
The basic intentional structure of consciousness, we come to find in reflection or analysis, in that of which involves further forms of experience. Thus, phenomenology develops a complex account of temporal awareness (within the stream of consciousness), spatial awareness (notably in perception), attention (distinguishing focal and marginal or "horizonal" awareness), awareness of one's own experience (self-consciousness, in one sense), self-awareness (awareness-of-oneself), the self in different roles (as thinking, acting, etc.), embodied action (including kinesthetic awareness of one's movement), determination or intention represents its desire for action (more or less explicit), awareness of other persons (in empathy, intersubjectivity, collectivity), linguistic activity (involving meaning, communication, understanding others), social interaction (including collective action), and everyday activity in our surrounding life-world (in a particular culture).
Furthermore, in a different dimension, we find various grounds or enabling conditions - conditions of the possibility - of intentionality, including embodiment, bodily skills, cultural context, language and other social practices, social background, and contextual aspects of intentional activities. Thus, phenomenology leads from conscious experience into conditions that help to give experience its intentionality. Traditional phenomenology has focussed on subjective, practical, and social conditions of experience. Recent philosophy of mind, however, has focussed especially on the neural substrate of experience, on how conscious experience and mental representation or intentionality is grounded in brain activity. It remains a difficult question how much of these grounds of experience fall within the province of phenomenology as a discipline. Cultural conditions thus seem closer to our experience and to our familiar self-understanding than do the electrochemical workings of our brain, much less our dependence on quantum-mechanical states of physical systems to which we may belong. The cautious thing to say is that phenomenology leads in some ways into at least some background conditions of our experience.
The discipline of phenomenology is defined by its domain of study, its methods, and its main results. Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world.
We all experience various types of experience including perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action. Thus, the domain of phenomenology is the range of experiences including these types (among others). Experience includes not only relatively passive experience as in vision or hearing, but also active experience as in walking or hammering a nail or kicking a ball. (The range will be specific to each species of being that enjoys consciousness; Our focus is on our own human experience. Not all conscious beings will, or will be able to, practice phenomenology, as we do.)
Conscious experiences have a unique feature: we experience them, we live through them or perform them. Other things in the world we may observe and engage. But we do not experience them, in the sense of living through or performing them. This experiential or first-person feature - that of being experienced - is an essential part of the nature or structure of conscious experience: as we say, "I see/think/desire/do . . ." This feature is both a Phenomenological and an ontological feature of each experience: it is part of what it is for the experience to be experienced (Phenomenological) and part of what it is for the experience to be (ontological).
How shall we study conscious experience? We reflect on various types of experiences just as we experience them. That is to say, we proceed from the first-person point of view. However, we do not normally characterize an experience at the time we are performing it. In many cases we do not have that capability: a state of intense anger or fear, for example, consumes the entire focus at the time. Rather, we acquire a background of having lived through a given type of experience, and we look to our familiarity with that type of experience: hearing a song, seeing a sunset, thinking about love, intending to jump a hurdle. The practice of phenomenology assumes such familiarity with the type of experiences to be characterized. Importantly, also, it is types of experience that phenomenology pursues, rather than a particular fleeting experience - unless its type is what interests us.
Classical phenomenologists practised some three distinguishable methods. (1) We describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own (past) experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. (2) We interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. (3) We analyse the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practised analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
These traditional methods have been ramified in recent decades, expanding the methods available to phenomenology. Thus: (4) In a logico-semantic model of phenomenology, we specify the truth conditions for a type of thinking (say, where I think that dogs chase cats) or the satisfaction conditions for a type of intention (say, where I intend or will to jump that hurdle). (5) In the experimental paradigm of cognitive neuroscience, we design empirical experiments that tend to confirm or refute aspects of experience (say, where a brain scan shows electrochemical activity in a specific region of the brain thought to subserve a type of vision or emotion or motor control). This style of "neurophenomenology" assumes that conscious experience is grounded in neural activity in embodied action in appropriate surroundings - mixing pure phenomenology with biological and physical science in a way that was not wholly congenial to traditional phenomenologists.
What makes an experience conscious is a certain awareness one has of the experience while living through or performing it. This form of inner awareness has been a topic of considerable debate, centuries after the issue arose with Locke's notion of self-consciousness on the heels of Descartes' sense of consciousness (conscience, co-knowledge). Does this awareness-of-experience consist in a kind of inner observation of the experience, as if one were doing two things at once? (Brentano argued no.) Is it a higher-order perception of one's mind's operation, or is it a higher-order thought about one's mental activity? (Recent theorists have proposed both.) Or is it a different form of inherent structure? (Sartre took this line, drawing on Brentano and Husserl.) These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but notice that these results of Phenomenological analysis, that shape the characterlogical domain of study and the methodology appropriate to the domain. For awareness-of-experience is a defining trait of conscious experience, the trait that gives experience a first-person, lived character. It is that lived character of experience that allows a first-person perspective on the object of study, namely, experiences, and that perspective is characteristic of the methodology of phenomenology.
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into fewer overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts have stressed, much of our intentional mental activity is not conscious at all, but may become conscious in the process of therapy or interrogation, as we come to realize how we feel or think about something. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology - our own experience - spreads out from conscious experience into semi-conscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. (These issues are subject to debate; the point here is to open the door to the question of where to draw the boundary of the domain of phenomenology.)
To begin an elementary exercise in phenomenology, consider some typical experiences one might have in everyday life, characterized in the first person: (1) I see that fishing boat off the coast as dusk descends over the Pacific. (2) I hear that helicopter whirring overhead as it approaches the hospital. (3) I am thinking that phenomenology differs from psychology. (4) I wish that warm rain from Mexico were falling like last week. (5) I imagine a fearsome creature like that in my nightmare. (6) I intend to finish my writing by noon. (7) I walk carefully around the broken glass on the sidewalk. (8) I stroke a backhand cross-court with that certain underspin. (9) I am searching for the words to make my point in conversation.
Here are rudimentary characterizations of some familiar types of experience. Each sentence is a simple form of Phenomenological description, articulating in everyday English the structure of the type of experience so described. The subject term "I" indicate the first-person structure of the experience: The intentionality proceeds from the subject. The verb indicates the type of intentional activity describing recognition, thought, imagination, etc. Of central importance is the way that objects of awareness are presented or intended in our experiences, especially, the way we see or conceive or think about objects. The direct-object expression ("that fishing boat off the coast") articulates the mode of presentation of the object in the experience: the content or meaning of the experience, the core of what Husserl called noema. In effect, the object-phrase expresses the noema of the act described, that is, to the extent that language has appropriate expressive power. The overall form of the given sentence articulates the basic form of intentionality in the experience: Subject-act-content-object.
Rich Phenomenological description or interpretation, as in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty et al., will far outrun such simple Phenomenological descriptions as above. But such simple descriptions bring out the basic form of intentionality. As we interpret the Phenomenological description further, we may assess the relevance of the context of experience. And we may turn to wider conditions of the possibility of that type of experience. In this way, in the practice of phenomenology, we classify, describe, interpret, and analyse structures of experiences in ways that answer to our own experience.
In such interpretive-descriptive analyses of experience, we immediately observe that we are analysing familiar forms of consciousness, conscious experience of or about this or that. Intentionality is thus the salient structure of our experience, and much of the phenomenology proceeds as the study of different aspects of intentionality. Thus, we explore structures of the stream of consciousness, the enduring self, the embodied self, and bodily action. Furthermore, as we reflect on how these phenomena work, we turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that enable our experiences to occur as they do, and to represent or intend as they do. Phenomenology then leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, backgrounding social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs, presents the following definition: "Phoneme, . . .”
The Oxford English Dictionary indicated of its knowledge, where science as itself is a contained source of phenomena as distinct from being (ontology). That division of any science that describes and classifies its phenomena. From the Greek phainomenon, appearance. In philosophy, the term is used in the first sense, amid debates of theory and methodology. In physics and philosophy of science, the term is used in the second sense, but only occasionally.
So its root meaning, then, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: Literally, appearances as opposed to reality. This ancient distinction launched philosophy as we emerged from Plato's cave. Yet the discipline of phenomenology did not blossom until the 20th century and remains poorly understood in many circles of contemporary philosophy. What is that discipline? How did philosophy move from a root concept of phenomena to the discipline of phenomenology?
Originally, in the 18th century, "phenomenology" meant the theory of appearances fundamental to empirical knowledge, especially sensory appearances. The term seems to have been introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert, a follower of Christian Wolff. Subsequently, Immanuel Kant used the term occasionally in various writings, as did Johann Gottlieb Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. By 1889 Franz Brentano used the term to characterize what he called "descriptive psychology. From there Edmund Husserl took up the term for his new science of consciousness, and the rest is history.
Suppose we say phenomenology study’s phenomena: Of what appears to us - and its appearing. How shall we understand phenomena? The term has a rich history in recent centuries, in which we can see traces of the emerging discipline of phenomenology.
In a strict empiricist vein, what appears before the mind accedes of sensory data or qualia: either patterns of one's own sensations (seeing red here now, feeling this ticklish feeling, hearing that resonant bass tone) or sensible patterns of worldly things, say, the looks and smells of flowers (what John Locke called secondary qualities of things). In a strict rationalist vein, by contrast, what appears before the mind of ideas, rationally formed "clear and distinct ideas" (in René Descartes' ideal). In Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, fusing rationalist and empiricist aims, what appears to the mind are phenomena defined as things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-represented (in a synthesis of sensory and conceptual forms of objects-as-known). In Auguste Comte's theory of science, phenomena (phenomenes) are the facts (faits, what occurs) that a given science would explain.
In 18th and 19th century epistemology, then, phenomena are the starting points in building knowledge, especially science. Accordingly, in a familiar and still current sense, phenomena are whatever we observe (perceive) and seek to explain. Discipline of psychology emerged late in the 19th century, however, phenomena took on a somewhat different guise. In Franz Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), phenomena are of what is to occur in the mind: Mental phenomena are acts of consciousness (or their contents), and physical phenomena are objects of external perception starting with colours and shapes. For Brentano, physical phenomena exist "intentionally" in acts of consciousness. This view revives a Medieval notion Brentano called "intentional in-existence. Nevertheless, the ontology remains undeveloped (what is it to exist in the mind, and do physical objects exist only in the mind?). More generally, we might say that phenomena are whatever we are conscious of: objects and events around us, other people, ourselves, even (in reflection) our own conscious experiences, as we experience these. In a certain technical sense, phenomena are things as they are given to our consciousness, whether in perception or imagination or thought or volition. This conception of phenomena would soon inform the new discipline of phenomenology.
Brentano distinguished descriptive psychology from genetic psychology. Where genetic psychology seeks the causes of various types of mental phenomena, descriptive psychology defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena, including perception, judgment, emotion, etc. According to Brentano, every mental phenomenon, or act of consciousness, is directed toward some object, and only mental phenomena are so directed. This thesis of intentional directedness was the hallmark of Brentano's descriptive psychology. In 1889 Brentano used the term "phenomenology" for descriptive psychology, and the way was paved for Husserl's new science of phenomenology.
Phenomenology as we know it was launched by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1900-01). Two importantly different lines of theory came together in that monumental work: Psychological theory, on the heels of Franz Brentano (and William James, whose Principles of Psychology appeared in 1891 and greatly impressed Husserl); Its logically semantic theory, are the heels of Bernard Bolzano and Husserl's contemporaries who founded modern logic, including Gottlob Frége. (Interestingly, both lines of research trace back to Aristotle, and both reached importantly new results in Husserl's day.)
Husserl's Logical Investigations was inspired by Bolzano's ideal of logic, while taking up Brentano's conception of descriptive psychology. In his Theory of Science (1835) Bolzano distinguished between subjective and objective ideas or representations (Vorstellungen). In effect Bolzano criticized Kant and before him the classical empiricists and rationalists for failing to make this sort of distinction, thereby rendering phenomena merely subjective. Logic studies objective ideas, including propositions, which in turn make up objective theories as in the sciences. Psychology would, by contrast, study subjective ideas, the concrete contents (occurrences) of mental activities in particular minds at a given time. Husserl was after both, within a single discipline. So phenomena must be reconceived as objective intentional contents (sometimes called intentional objects) of subjective acts of consciousness. Phenomenology would then study this complex of consciousness and correlated phenomena. In Ideas I (Book One, 1913) Husserl introduced two Greek words to capture his version of the Bolzanoan distinction: noesis and noema (from the Greek verb noéaw, meaning to perceive, thinks, intend, from where the noun nous or mind). The intentional process of consciousness is called noesis, while its ideal content is called noema. The noema of an act of consciousness Husserl characterized both as an ideal meaning and as "the object as intended.” Thus the phenomenon, or object-as-it-appears, becomes the noema, or object-as-it-is-intended. The interpretations of Husserl's theory of noema have been several and amount to different developments of Husserl's basic theory of intentionality. (Is the noema an aspect of the object intended, or rather a medium of intention?)
For Husserl, then, phenomenology integrates a kind of psychology with a kind of logic. It develops a descriptive or analytic psychology in that it describes and Analysed types of subjective mental activity or experience, in short, act of consciousness. Yet it develops a kind of logic - a theory of meaning (today we say logical semantics) - in that it describes and Analysed objective contents of consciousness: Ideas, concepts, images, propositions, in short, ideal meanings of various types that serve as intentional contents, or noematic meanings, of various types of experience. These contents are shareable by different acts of consciousness, and in that sense they are objective, ideal meanings. Following Bolzano (and to some extent the platonistic logician Hermann Lotze), Husserl opposed any reduction of logic or mathematics or science to mere psychology, to how the public happens to think, and in the same spirit he distinguished phenomenology from mere psychology. For Husserl, phenomenology would study consciousness without reducing the objective and shareable meanings that inhabit experience to merely subjective happenstances. Ideal meaning would be the engine of intentionality in acts of consciousness.
A clear conception of phenomenology awaited Husserl's development of a clear model of intentionality. Indeed, phenomenology and the modern concept of intentionality emerged hand-in-hand in Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-01). With theoretical foundations laid in the Investigations, Husserl would then promote the radical new science of phenomenology in Ideas I (1913). And alternative visions of phenomenology would soon follow.
Phenomenology matured and was nurtured through the works of Husserl, much as epistemology came about by means of its own nutrition but through Descartes study, and ontology or metaphysics came into its own with Aristotle on the heels of Plato. Yet phenomenology has been practised, with or without the name, for many centuries. When Hindu and Buddhist philosophers reflected on states of consciousness achieved in a variety of meditative states, they were practising phenomenology. When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practising phenomenology. When Brentano classified varieties of mental phenomena (defined by the directedness of consciousness), he was practising phenomenology. When William James appraised kinds of mental activity in the stream of consciousness (including their embodiment and their dependence on habit), he too was practising phenomenology. And when recent analytic philosophers of mind have addressed issues of consciousness and intentionality, they have often been practising phenomenology. Still, the discipline of phenomenology, its roots tracing back through the centuries, came full to flower in Husserl.
Husserl's work was followed by a flurry of Phenomenological writing in the first half of the 20th century. The diversity of traditional phenomenology is apparent in the Encyclopaedic of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, Dordrecht and Boston), which features separate articles on some seven types of phenomenology. (1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the natural world around us. (2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature. (3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations. (4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time. (5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one's own stream of experience. (6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our human world, including ourselves and others. (7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.
The most famous of the classical phenomenologists were Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. In these four thinkers we find different conceptions of phenomenology, different methods, and different results. A brief sketch of their differences will capture both a crucial period in the history of phenomenology and a sense of the diversity of the field of phenomenology.
In his Logical Investigations (1900-01) Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology (theory of universals and parts of wholes), to a Phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a Phenomenological theory of knowledge. Then in Ideas I (1913) he focussed squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as "the science of the essence of consciousness,” entered on the defining trait of intentionality, approached explicitly "in the first person." In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness - that is, conscious experience of various types - as experienced from the first-person point of view. In this discipline we study different forms of experience just as we experience them, from the perspective of the subject living through or performing them. Thus, we characterize experiences of seeing, hearing, imagining, thinking, feeling (i.e., emotion), wishing, desiring, willing, and acting, that is, embodied volitional activities of walking, talking, cooking, carpentering, etc. However, not just any characterization of an experience will do. Phenomenological analysis of a given type of experience will feature the ways in which we ourselves would experience that form of conscious activity. And the leading property of our familiar types of experience is their intentionality, their being a consciousness of or about something, something experienced or presented or engaged in a certain way. How I see or conceptualize or understand the object I am dealing with defines the meaning of that object in my current experience. Thus, phenomenology features a study of meaning, in a wide sense that includes more than what is expressed in language.
In Ideas I Husserl presented phenomenology with a transcendental turn. In part this means that Husserl took on the Kantian idiom of "transcendental idealism,” looking for conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or of consciousness generally, and arguably turning away from any reality beyond phenomena. But Husserl's transcendental, turn also involved his discovery of the method of epoché (from the Greek skeptics' notion of abstaining from belief). We are to practice phenomenology, Husserl proposed, by "bracketing" the question of the existence of the natural world around us. We thereby turn our attention, in reflection, to the structure of our own conscious experience. Our first key result is the observation that each act of consciousness is a consciousness of something, that is, intentional, or directed toward something. Consider my visual experience wherein I see a tree across the square. In Phenomenological reflection, we need not concern ourselves with whether the tree exists: my experience is of a tree whether or not such a tree exists. However, we do need to concern ourselves with how the object is meant or intended. I see a Eucalyptus tree, not a Yucca tree; I see that object as a referentially exposed Eucalyptus tree, with certain shape and with bark stripping off, etc. Thus, bracketing the tree itself, we turn our attention to my experience of the tree, and specifically to the content or meaning in my experience. This tree-as-perceived Husserl calls the noema or noematic sense of the experience.
Philosophers succeeding Husserl debated the proper characterization of phenomenology, arguing over its results and its methods. Adolf Reinach, an early student of Husserl's (who died in World War I), argued that phenomenology should remain merged with a total inference by some realistic ontologism, as in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Roman Ingarden, a Polish phenomenologist of the next generation, continued the resistance to Husserl's turn to transcendental idealism. For such philosophers, phenomenology should not bracket questions of being or ontology, as the method of epoché would suggest. And they were not alone. Martin Heidegger studied Husserl's early writings, worked as Assistant to Husserl in 1916, and in 1928, succeeded Husserl in the prestigious chair at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger had his own ideas about phenomenology.
In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger unfurled his rendition of phenomenology. For Heidegger, we and our activities are always "in the world,” our being is being-in-the-world, so we do not study our activities by bracketing the world, rather we interpret our activities and the meaning things have for us by looking to our contextual relations to things in the world. Indeed, for Heidegger, phenomenology resolves into what he called "fundamental ontology.” We must distinguish beings from their being, and we begin our investigation of the meaning of being in our own case, examining our own existence in the activity of "Dasein" (that being whose being is in each case my own). Heidegger resisted Husserl's neo-Cartesian emphasis on consciousness and subjectivity, including how perception presents things around us. By contrast, Heidegger held that our more basic ways of relating to things are in practical activities like hammering, where the phenomenology reveals our situation in a context of equipment and in being-with-others.
In Being and Time Heidegger approached phenomenology, in a quasi-poetic idiom, through the root meanings of "logos" and "phenomena,” so that phenomenology is defined as the art or practice of "letting things show themselves.” In Heidegger's inimitable linguistic play on the Greek roots, “phenomenology” means . . . - to let that which shows itself to be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. Here Heidegger explicitly parodies Husserl's call, "To the things themselves,” or "To the phenomena themselves!" Heidegger went on to emphasize practical forms of comportment or better relating (Verhalten) as in hammering a nail, as opposed to representational forms of intentionality as in seeing or thinking about a hammer. Much, of Being and Time develops an existential interpretation of our modes of being including, famously, our being-toward-death.
In a very different style, in clear analytical prose, in the text of a lecture course called The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), Heidegger traced the question of the meaning of being from Aristotle through many other thinkers into the issues of phenomenology. Our understanding of beings and their being comes ultimately through phenomenology. Here the connection with classical issues of ontology is more apparent, and consonant with Husserl's vision in the Logical Investigations (an early source of inspiration for Heidegger). One of Heidegger's most innovative ideas was his conception of the "ground" of being, looking to modes of being more fundamental than the things around us (from trees to hammers). Heidegger questioned the contemporary concern with technology, and his writing might suggest that our scientific theories are historical artifacts that we use in technological practice, rather than systems of ideal truth (as Husserl had held). Our deep understanding of being, in our own case, comes rather from phenomenology, Heidegger held.
In the 1930s phenomenology migrated from Austrian and then German philosophy into French philosophy. The way had been paved in Marcel Proust's in Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator recounts in close detail his vivid recollections of experiences, including his famous associations with the smell of freshly baked madeleines. This sensibility to experience traces to Descartes' work, and French phenomenology has been an effort to preserve the central thrust of Descartes' insights while rejecting mind-body dualism. The experience of one's own body, or one's lived or living body, has been an important motif in many French philosophers of the 20th century
In the novel Nausea (1936) Jean-Paul Sartre described a bizarre course of experience in which the protagonist, writing in the first person, describes how ordinary objects lose their meaning until he encounters pure being at the foot of a chestnut tree, and in that moment recovers his sense of his own freedom. In Being and Nothingness (1943, written partly while a prisoner of war), Sartre developed his conception of Phenomenological ontology. Consciousness is a consciousness of objects, as Husserl had stressed. In Sartre's model of intentionality, the central player in consciousness is a phenomenon, and the occurrence of a phenomenon is just a consciousness-of-an-object. The chestnut tree I see is, for Sartre, such a phenomenon in my consciousness. Indeed, all things in the world, as we normally experience them, are phenomena, beneath or behind which lies their "being-in-itself.” Consciousness, by contrast, has "being-for-itself,” inasmuch as consciousness is not only a consciousness-of-its-object but also a pre-reflective consciousness-of-itself (conscience de soi). Yet for Sartre, unlike Husserl, that "I" or self is nothing but a sequence of acts of consciousness, notably including radically free choices (like a Humean bundle of perceptions).
For Sartre, the practice of phenomenology proceeds by a deliberate reflection on the structure of consciousness. Sartre's method is in effect a literary style of interpretive description of different types of experience in relevant situations - a practice that does not really fit the methodological proposals of either Husserl or Heidegger, but makes use of Sartre's great literary skill. (Sartre wrote many plays and novels and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Sartre's phenomenology in Being and Nothingness became the philosophical foundation for his popular philosophy of existentialism, sketched in his famous lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1945). In Being and Nothingness Sartre emphasized the experience of freedom of choice, especially the project of choosing oneself, the defining pattern of one's past actions. Through vivid description of the "look" of the Other, Sartre laid groundwork for the contemporary political significance of the concept of the Other (as in other groups or ethnicities). Indeed, in The Second Sex (1949) Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's life-long companion, launched contemporary feminism with her nuance account of the perceived role of women as Other.
In 1940s Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty joined with Sartre and Beauvoir in developing phenomenology. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Merleau-Ponty developed a rich variety of phenomenology emphasizing the role of the body in human experience. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, Merleau-Ponty looked to experimental psychology, analysing the reported experience of amputees who felt sensations in a phantom limb. Merleau-Ponty rejected both associationist psychology, focussed on correlations between sensation and stimulus, and intellectualist psychology, focussed on rational construction of the world in the mind. (Think of the behaviorist and computationalist models of mind in more recent decades of empirical psychology.) Instead, Merleau-Ponty focussed on the "body image,” our experience of our own body and its significance in our activities. Extending Husserl's account of the lived body (as opposed to the physical body), Merleau-Ponty resisted the traditional Cartesian separation of mind and body. For the body image is neither in the mental realm nor in the mechanical-physical realm. Rather, my body is, as it were, me in my engaged action with things I perceive including other people.
The scope of Phenomenology of Perception is characteristic of the breadth of classical phenomenology, not least because Merleau-Ponty drew (with generosity) on Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre while fashioning his own innovative vision of phenomenology. His phenomenology addressed the role of attention in the phenomenal field, the experience of the body, the spatiality of the body, the motility of the body, the body in sexual being and in speech, other selves, temporality, and the character of freedom so important in French existentialism. Near the end of a chapter on the Cogito (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"), Merleau-Ponty succinctly captures his embodied, existential form of phenomenology, writing: Insofar as, when I reflect on the essence of subjectivity, I find it bound up with that of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity [= consciousness] is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because the subject that I am, for when taken seriously, is inseparable from this body and this world. In short, consciousness is embodied (in the world), and equally body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world).
In the years since Hussserl, Heidegger, et al. wrote that phenomenologists have dug into all these classical issues, including intentionality, temporal awareness, intersubjectivity, practical intentionality, and the social and linguistic contexts of human activity. Interpretation of historical texts by Husserl et al. has played a prominent role in this work, both because the texts are rich and difficult and because the historical dimension is itself part of the practice of continental European philosophy. Since the 1960s, philosophers trained in the methods of analytic philosophy have also dug into the foundations of phenomenology, with an eye to 20th century work in philosophy of logic, language, and mind.
Phenomenology was already linked with logical and semantic theory in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Analytic phenomenology picks up on that connection. In particular, Dagfinn F¿llesdal and J. N. Mohanty have explored historical and conceptual relations between Husserl's phenomenology and Frége's logical semantics (in Frége's "On Sense and Reference,” 1892). For Frége:: An expression refers to an object by way of a sense: Thus, two expressions (say, "the morning star" and "the evening star") may refer to the same object (Venus) but express different senses with different manners of presentation. For Husserl, similarly, an experience (or an act of consciousness) intends or refers to an object by way of a noema or noematic sense: Thus, two experiences may refer to the same object but have different noematic senses involving different ways of presenting the object (for example, in seeing the same object from different sides). Indeed, for Husserl, the theory of intentionality is a generalization of the theory of linguistic reference: as linguistic reference is mediated by sense, so intentional reference is mediated by noematic sense.
More recently, analytic philosophers of mind have rediscovered phenomenologically issues of mental representation, intentionality, consciousness, sensory experience, intentional content, and context-of-thought. Some of these analytic philosophers of mind hark back to William James and Franz Brentano at the origins of modern psychology, and some look to empirical research in today's cognitive neuroscience. Some researchers have begun to combine Phenomenological issues with issues of neuroscience and behavioural studies and mathematical modelling. Such studies will extend the methods of traditional phenomenology as the Zeitgeist moves on. We address philosophy of mind below.
The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?
Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: Ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic. Suppose phenomenology joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field: (1) Ontology is the study of beings or their being - what is. (2) Epistemology is the study of knowledge - how we know. (3) Logic is the study of valid reasoning - how to reason. (4) Ethics is the study of right and wrong - how we should act. (5) Phenomenology is the study of our experience - how we experience. The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.
Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is "first philosophy,” the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.
Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive description of the first-person knowledge. Through a form of intuition, consider logic, as a logical theory of meaning led Husserl into the theory of intentionality, the heart of phenomenology. On one account, phenomenology explicates the intentional or semantic force of ideal meanings, and propositional meanings are central to logical theory. But logical structure is expressed in language, either ordinary language or symbolic languages like those of predicate logic or mathematics or computer systems. It remains an important issue of debate where and whether language shapes specific forms of experience (thought, perception, emotion) and their content or meaning. So there is an important (if disputed) relation between phenomenology and logico-linguistic theory, especially philosophical logic and philosophy of language (as opposed to mathematical logic per se)
Consider ontology. Phenomenology studies (among other things) the nature of consciousness, which is a central issue in metaphysics or ontology, and one that leads into the traditional mind-body problem. Husserlian methodology would bracket the question of the existence of the surrounding world, thereby separating phenomenology from the ontology of the world. Yet Husserl's phenomenology presupposes theory about species and individuals (universals and particulars), relations of part and whole, and ideal meanings - all parts of ontology
Now consider ethics: Phenomenology might play a role in ethics by offering analyses of the structure of will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy and sympathy). Historically, though, ethics has been on the horizon of phenomenology. Husserl largely avoided ethics in his major works, though he featured the role of practical concerns in the structure of the life-world or of Geist (spirit, or culture, as in Zeitgeist). He once delivered a course of lectures giving ethics (like logic) a basic place in philosophy, indicating the importance of the phenomenology of sympathy in grounding ethics. In Being and Time Heidegger claimed not to pursue ethics while discussing phenomena ranging from care, conscience, and guilt to "falseness" and "authenticity" (all phenomena with theological echoes). In Being and Nothingness Sartre Analysed with subtlety the logical problem of "bad faith,” yet he developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith (which sounds like a revised Kantian foundation for morality). Beauvoir sketched an existentialist ethics, and Sartre left unpublished notebooks on ethics. However, an explicit Phenomenological approach to ethics emerged in the works of Emannuel Levinas, a Lithuanian phenomenologist who heard Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg before moving to Paris. In Totality and Infinity (1961), modifying themes drawn from Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas focussed on the significance of the "face" of the other, explicitly developing grounds for ethics in this range of phenomenology, writing an impressionistic style of prose with allusions to religious experience.
Allied with ethics are political and social philosophies. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were politically engaged, in 1940s Paris and their existential philosophies (phenomenologically based) suggest a political theory based in individual freedom. Sartre later sought an explicit blend of existentialism with Marxism. Still, political theory has remained on the borders of phenomenology. Social theory, however, has been closer to phenomenology as such. Husserl Analysed the Phenomenological structure of the life-world and Geist generally, including our role in social activity. Heidegger stressed social practice, which he found more primordial than individual consciousness. Alfred Schutz developed a phenomenology of the social world. Sartre continued the Phenomenological appraisal of the meaning of the other, the fundamental social formation. Moving outward from Phenomenological issues, Michel Foucault studied the genesis and meaning of social institutions, from prisons to insane asylums. And Jacques Derrida has long practised a kind of phenomenology of language, pursuing sociologic meaning in the "deconstruction" of wide-ranging texts. Aspects of French "poststructuralist" theory are sometimes interpreted as broadly Phenomenological, but such issues are beyond the present purview.
Classical phenomenology, then, ties into certain areas of epistemology, logic, and ontology, and leads into parts of ethical, social, and political theory.
It ought to be obvious that phenomenology has a lot to say in the area called philosophy of mind. Yet the traditions of phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind have not been closely joined, despite overlapping areas of interest. So it is appropriate to close this survey of phenomenology by addressing philosophy of mind, one of the most vigorously debated areas in recent philosophy.
The tradition of analytic philosophy began, early in the 20th century, with analyses of language, notably in the works of Gottlob Frége, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then in The Concept of Mind (1949) Gilbert Ryle developed a series of analyses of language about different mental states, including sensation, belief, and will. Though Ryle is commonly deemed a philosopher of ordinary language, Ryle himself said The Concept of Mind could be called phenomenology. In effect, Ryle Analysed our Phenomenological understanding of mental states as reflected in ordinary language about the mind. From this linguistic phenomenology Ryle argued that Cartesian mind-body dualism involves a category mistake (the logic or grammar of mental verbs - "believe,” "see,” etc. - does not mean that we ascribe belief, sensation, etc., to "the ghost in the machine"). With Ryle's rejection of mind-body dualism, the mind-body problem was re-awakened: What is the ontology of mind/body, and how are mind and body related?
René Descartes, in his epoch-making Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), had argued that minds and bodies are two distinct kinds of being or substance with two distinct kinds of attributes or modes: Bodies are characterized by spatiotemporal physical properties, while minds are characterized by properties of thinking (including seeing, feeling, etc.). Centuries later, phenomenology would find, with Brentano and Husserl, that mental acts are characterized by consciousness and intentionality, while natural science would find that physical systems are characterized by mass and force, ultimately by gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields. Where do we find consciousness and intentionality in the quantum-electromagnetic-gravitational field that, by hypothesis, orders everything in the natural world in which we humans and our minds exist? That is the mind-body problem today. In short, phenomenology by any other name lies at the heart of the contemporary, mind-body problem.
After Ryle, philosophers sought a more explicit and generally naturalistic ontology of mind. In the 1950s materialism was argued anew, urging that mental states are identical with states of the central nervous system. The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person's mind at a particular time) is identical with a token brain state (in that a person's brain at that time). The weaker of materialisms, holds instead, that each type of mental state is identical with a type of brain state. But materialism does not fit comfortably with phenomenology. For it is not obvious how conscious mental states as we experience them - sensations, thoughts, emotions - can simply be the complex neural states that somehow subserve or implement them. If mental states and neural states are simply identical, in token or in type, where in our scientific theory of mind does the phenomenology occur - is it not simply replaced by neuroscience? And yet experience is part of what is to be explained by neuroscience.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set it, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: They are function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behaviour proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human (or an animal) organism. More specifically, on a favourite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: Mind is to brain as software is to hardware; Thoughts are just programs running on the brain's "NetWare.” Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences - from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience - have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism. Gradually, however, philosophers found that Phenomenological aspects of the mind pose problems for the functionalist paradigm too.
In the early 1970s Thomas Nagel argued in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) that consciousness itself - especially the subjective character of what it is like to have a certain type of experience - escapes physical theory. Many philosophers pressed the case that sensory qualia - what it is like to feel pain, to see red, etc. - are not addressed or explained by a physical account of either brain structure or brain function. Consciousness has properties of its own. And yet, we know, it is closely tied to the brain. And, at some level of description, neural activities implement computation.
In the 1980s John Searle argued in Intentionality (1983) (and further in The Rediscovery of the Mind (1991)) that intentionality and consciousness are essential properties of mental states. For Searle, our brains produce mental states with properties of consciousness and intentionality, and this is all part of our biology, yet consciousness and intentionality require to "first-person" ontology. Searle also argued that computers simulate but do not have mental states characterized by intentionality. As Searle argued, a computer system has a syntax (processing symbols of certain shapes) but has no semantics (the symbols lack meaning: we interpret the symbols). In this way Searle rejected both materialism and functionalism, while insisting that mind is a biological property of organisms like us: our brains "secrete" consciousness
The analysis of consciousness and intentionality is central to phenomenology as appraised above, and Searle's theory of intentionality reads like a modernized version of Husserl's. (Contemporary logical theory takes the form of stating truth conditions for propositions, and Searle characterizes a mental state's intentionality by specifying its "satisfaction conditions"). However, there is an important difference in background theory. For Searle explicitly assumes the basic world view of natural science, holding that consciousness is part of nature. But Husserl explicitly brackets that assumption, and later phenomenologists - including Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty - seem to seek a certain sanctuary for phenomenology beyond the natural sciences. And yet phenomenology itself should be largely neutral about further theories of how experience arises, notably from brain activity.
The philosophy or theory of mind overall may be factored into the following disciplines or ranges of theory relevant to mind: Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced, analysing the structure - the types, intentional forms and meanings, dynamics, and (certain) enabling conditions - of perception, thought, imagination, emotion, and volition and action.
Neuroscience studies the neural activities that serve as biological substrate to the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Neuroscience will be framed by evolutionary biology (explaining how neural phenomena evolved) and ultimately by basic physics (explaining how biological phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena). Here lie the intricacies of the natural sciences. Part of what the sciences are accountable for is the structure of experience, Analysed by phenomenology.
Cultural analysis studies the social practices that help to shape or serve as cultural substrate of the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Here we study the import of language and other social practices.
Ontology of mind studies the ontological type of mental activity in general, ranging from perception (which involves causal input from environment to experience) to volitional action (which involves causal output from volition to bodily movement).
This division of labour in the theory of mind can be seen as an extension of Brentano's original distinction between descriptive and genetic psychology. Phenomenology offers descriptive analyses of mental phenomena, while neuroscience (and wider biology and ultimately physics) offers models of explanation of what causes or gives rise to mental phenomena. Cultural theory offers analyses of social activities and their impact on experience, including ways language shapes our thought, emotion, and motivation. And ontology frames all these results within a basic scheme of the structure of the world, including our own minds.
Meanwhile, from an epistemological standpoint, all these ranges of theory about mind begin with how we observe and reason about and seek to explain phenomena we encounter in the world. And that is where phenomenology begins. Moreover, how we understand each piece of theory, including theory about mind, is central to the theory of intentionality, as it was, the semantics of thought and experience in general. And that is the heart of phenomenology.
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined as the study of structures of experience or consciousness. Literally. , Phenomenology is the
Study of "phenomena": Appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meaning’s things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.
The historical movement of phenomenology is the philosophical tradition launched in the first half of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre. In that movement, the discipline of phenomenology was prized as the proper foundation of all philosophy - as opposed, say, to ethics or metaphysics or epistemology. The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated by Husserl and his successors, and these debates continue to the present day. (The definition of phenomenology offered above will thus is debatable, for example, by Heideggerians, but it remains the starting point in characterizing the discipline.)
In recent philosophy of mind, the term "phenomenology" is often restricted to the characterization of sensory qualities of seeing, hearing, etc.: what it is like to have sensations of various kinds. However, our experience is normally much richer in content than mere sensation. Accordingly, in the Phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our "life-world.”
Phenomenology as a discipline has been central to the tradition of continental European philosophy throughout the 20th century, while philosophy of mind has evolved in the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy that developed throughout the 20th century. Yet the fundamental character of our mental activity is pursued in overlapping ways within these two traditions. Accordingly, the perspective on phenomenology drawn in this article will accommodate both traditions. The main concern here will be to characterize the discipline of phenomenology, in contemporary views, while also highlighting the historical tradition that brought the discipline into its own.
Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called "intentionality,” that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something. According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experience remains directed towardly and represented or "intends" - things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things they present or mean.
The basic intentional structure of consciousness, we find in reflection or analysis, involves further forms of experience. Thus, phenomenology develops a complex account of temporal awareness (within the stream of consciousness), spatial awareness (notably in perception), attention (distinguishing focal and marginal or "horizonal" awareness), awareness of one's own experience (self-consciousness, in one sense), self-awareness (awareness-of-oneself), the self in different roles (as thinking, acting, etc.), embodied action (including kinesthetic awareness of one's movement), purposive intention for its desire for action (more or less explicit), awareness of other persons (in empathy, intersubjectivity, collectivity), linguistic activity (involving meaning, communication, understanding others), social interaction (including collective action), and everyday activity in our surrounding life-world (in a particular culture).
Furthermore, in a different dimension, we find various grounds or enabling conditions -conditions of the possibility - of intentionality, including embodiment, bodily skills, cultural context, language and other social practices, social background, and contextual aspects of intentional activities. Thus, phenomenology leads from conscious experience into conditions that help to give experience its intentionality. Traditional phenomenology has focussed on subjective, practical, and social conditions of experience. Recent philosophy of mind, however, has focussed especially on the neural substrate of experience, on how conscious experience and mental representation or intentionality is grounded in brain activity. It remains a difficult question how much of these grounds of experience fall within the province of phenomenology as a discipline. Cultural conditions thus seem closer to our experience and to our familiar self-understanding than do the electrochemical workings of our brain, much less our dependence on quantum-mechanical states of physical systems to which we may belong. The cautious thing to say is that phenomenology leads in some ways into at least some background conditions of our experience.
Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world.
We all experience various types of experience including perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action. Thus, the domain of phenomenology is the range of experiences including these types (among others). Experience includes not only relatively passive experience as in vision or hearing, but also active experience as in walking or hammering a nail or kicking a ball. (The range will be specific to each species of being that enjoys consciousness; Our focus is on our own, human, experience. Not all conscious beings will, or will be able to, practice phenomenology, as we do.)
Conscious experiences have a unique feature: We experience them, we live through them or perform them. Other things in the world we may observe and engage. But we do not experience them, in the sense of living through or performing them. This experiential or first-person feature - that of being experienced -is an essential part of the nature or structure of conscious experience: as we say, "I see / think / desire / do . . ." This feature is both a Phenomenological and an ontological feature of each experience: it is part of what it is for the experience to be experienced (Phenomenological) and part of what it is for the experience to be (ontological).
How shall we study conscious experience? We reflect on various types of experiences just as we experience them. That is to say, we proceed from the first-person point of view. However, we do not normally characterize an experience at the time we are performing it. In many cases we do not have that capability: a state of intense anger or fear, for example, consumes the entire focus at the time. Rather, we acquire a background of having lived through a given type of experience, and we look to our familiarity with that type of experience: While hearing a song, seeing the sun set, thinking about love, intending to jump a hurdle. The practice of phenomenology assumes such familiarity with the type of experiences to be characterized. Importantly, it is atypical of experience that phenomenology pursues, rather than a particular fleeting experience - unless its type is what interests us.
Classical phenomenologists practised some three distinguishable methods. (1) We describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own (past) experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. (2) We interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. (3) We analyse the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practised analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
These traditional methods have been ramified in recent decades, expanding the methods available to phenomenology. Thus: (4) In a logico-semantic model of phenomenology, we specify the truth conditions for a type of thinking (say, where I think that dogs chase cats) or the satisfaction conditions for a type of intention (say, where I intend or will to jump that hurdle). (5) In the experimental paradigm of cognitive neuroscience, we design empirical experiments that tend to confirm or refute aspects of experience (say, where a brain scan shows electrochemical activity in a specific region of the brain thought to subserve a type of vision or emotion or motor control). This style of "neurophenomenology" assumes that conscious experience is grounded in neural activity in embodied action in appropriate surroundings - mixing pure phenomenology with biological and physical science in a way that was not wholly congenial to traditional phenomenologists.
What makes an experience conscious is a certain awareness one has of the experience while living through or performing it. This form of inner awareness has been a topic of considerable debate, centuries after the issue arose with Locke's notion of self-consciousness on the heels of Descartes' sense of consciousness (conscience, co-knowledge). Does this awareness-of-experience consist in a kind of inner observation of the experience, as if one were doing two things at once? (Brentano argued no.) Is it a higher-order perception of one's mind's operation, or is it a higher-order thought about one's mental activity? (Recent theorists have proposed both.) Or is it a different form of inherent structure? (Sartre took this line, drawing on Brentano and Husserl.) These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but notice that these results of Phenomenological analysis shape the characterization of the domain of study and the methodology appropriate to the domain. For awareness-of-experience is a defining trait of conscious experience, the trait that gives experience a first-person, lived character. It is that a living characterization resembling its self, that life is to offer the experience through which allows a first-person perspective on the object of study, namely, experience, and that perspective is characteristic of the methodology of phenomenology.
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into fewer overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts have stressed, much of our intentional mental activity is not conscious at all, but may become conscious in the process of therapy or interrogation, as we come to realize how we feel or think about something. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology - our own experience - spreads out from conscious experience into semiconscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. (These issues are subject to debate; the point here is to open the door to the question of where to draw the boundary of the domain of phenomenology.)
To begin an elementary exercise in phenomenology, consider some typical experiences one might have in everyday life, characterized in the first person: (1) “I” witnesses that fishing boat off the coast as dusk descends over the Pacific. (2) I hear that helicopter whirring overhead as it approaches the hospital. (3) I am thinking that phenomenology differs from psychology. (4) I wish that warm rain from Mexico were falling like last week. (5) I imagine a fearsome creature like that in my nightmare. (6) I intend to finish my writing by noon. (7) I walk carefully around the broken glass on the sidewalk. (8) I stroke a backhand cross-court with that certain underspin. (9) I am searching for the words to make my point in conversation.
Here are rudimentary characterizations of some familiar types of experience. Each sentence is a simple form of Phenomenological description, articulating in everyday English the structure of the type of experience so described. The subject term of "I,” indicates the first-person structure of the experience: The intentionality proceeds from the subject. As the verb indicates, the type of intentional activity so described, as perception, thought, imagination, etc. Of central importance is the way that objects of awareness are presented or intended in our experiences, especially, the way we see or conceive or think about objects. The direct-object expression ("that fishing boat off the coast") articulates the mode of presentation of the object in the experience: The content or meaning of the experience, the core of what Husser called noema. In effect, the object-phrase expresses the noema of the act described, that is, to the extent that language has appropriate expressive power. The overall form of the given sentence articulates of a basic form of intentionality, in that of an experience has to its own subject-act-content-object.
Fruitful Phenomenological description or interpretation, as in Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, will far outrun such simple Phenomenological descriptions as above. But such simple descriptions bring out the basic form of intentionality. As we interpret the Phenomenological description further, we may assess the relevance of the context of experience. And we may turn to wider conditions of the possibility of that type of experience. In this way, in the practice of phenomenology, we classify, describe, interpret, and analyse structures of experiences in ways that answer to our own experience.
In such interpretive-descriptive analyses of experience, we immediately observe that we are analysing familiar forms of consciousness, conscious experience of or about this or that. Intentionality is thus the salient structure of our experience, and much of the phenomenology proceeds as the study of different aspects of intentionality. Thus, we explore structures of the stream of consciousness, the enduring self, the embodied self, and bodily action. Furthermore, as we reflect on how these phenomena work, we turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that enable our experiences to occur as they do, and to represent or intend as they do. Phenomenology then leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, backgrounding to social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs. The Oxford English Dictionary presents the following definition: "Phenomenology. (i) The science of phenomena as distinct from being (ontology). (ii) That division of any science that describes and classifies its phenomena. From the Greek phainomenon, appearance." In philosophy, the term is used in the first sense, amid debates of theory and methodology. In physics and philosophy of science, the term is used in the second sense, even if only occasionally.
In its root meaning, then, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: Literally, appearances as opposed to reality. This ancient distinction launched philosophy as we emerged from Plato's cave. Yet the discipline of phenomenology did not blossom until the 20th century and remains poorly understood in many circles of contemporary philosophy. What is that discipline? How did philosophy move from a root concept of phenomena to the discipline of phenomenology?
Originally, in the 18th century, "phenomenology" meant the theory of appearances fundamental to empirical knowledge, especially sensory appearances. The term seems to have been introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert, a follower of Christian Wolff. Subsequently, Immanuel Kant used the term occasionally in various writings, as did Johann Gottlieb Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. By 1889 Franz Brentano used the term to characterize what he called "descriptive psychology.” From there Edmund Husserl took up the term for his new science of consciousness, and the rest is history.
Suppose we say phenomenology study’s phenomena: what appears to us - and its appearing? How shall we understand phenomena? The term has a rich history in recent centuries, in which we can see traces of the emerging discipline of phenomenology.
In a strict empiricist vein, what appears before the mind are sensory data or qualia: either patterns of one's own sensations (seeing red here now, feeling this ticklish feeling, hearing that resonant bass tone) or sensible patterns of worldly things, say, the looks and smells of flowers (what John Locke called secondary qualities of things). In a strict rationalist vein, by contrast, what appears before the mind are ideas, rationally formed "clear and distinct ideas" (in René Descartes' ideal). In Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, fusing rationalist and empiricist aims, what appears to the mind are phenomena defined as things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-represented (in a synthesis of sensory and conceptual forms of objects-as-known). In Auguste Comte's theory of science, phenomena (phenomenes) are the facts (faits, what occurs) that a given science would explain.
In 18th and 19th century epistemology, then, phenomena are the starting points in building knowledge, especially science. Accordingly, in a familiar and still current sense, phenomena are whatever we observe (perceive) and seek to explain.
As the discipline of psychology emerged late in the 19th century, however, phenomena took on a somewhat different guise. In Franz Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), phenomena are of what occurs in the mind: Mental phenomena are acts of consciousness (or their contents), and physical phenomena are objects of external perception starting with colours and shapes. For Brentano, physical phenomena exist "intentionally" in acts of consciousness. This view revives a Medieval notion Brentano called "intentional in-existence. However, the ontology remains undeveloped (what is it to exist in the mind, and do physical objects exist only in the mind?). Moreover, phenomenons are whatever we are conscious of, as a phenomenon might that its events lay succumbantly around us, other people, ourselves. Even (in reflection) our own conscious experiences, as we experience these. In a certain technical sense, phenomena are things as they are given to our consciousness, whether in perception or imagination or thought or volition. This conception of phenomena would soon inform the new discipline of phenomenology.
Brentano distinguished descriptive psychology from genetic psychology. Where genetic psychology seeks the causes of various types of mental phenomena, descriptive psychology defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena, including perception, judgment, emotion, etc. According to Brentano, every mental phenomenon, or act of consciousness, is directed toward some object, and only mental phenomena are so directed. This thesis of intentional directedness was the hallmark of Brentano's descriptive psychology. In 1889 Brentano used the term "phenomenology" for descriptive psychology, and the way was paved for Husserl's new science of phenomenology.
Phenomenology as we know it was launched by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1900-01). Two importantly different lines of theory came together in that monumental work: Psychological theory, on the heels of Franz Brentano (and William James, whose Principles of Psychology appeared in 1891 and greatly impressed Husserl); And logical or semantic theory, on the heels of Bernard Bolzano and Hussserl's contemporaries who founded modern logic, including Gottlob Frége.
Hussserl's Logical Investigations was inspired by Bolzano's ideal of logic, while taking up Brentano's conception of descriptive psychology. In his Theory of Science (1835) Bolzano distinguished between subjective and objective ideas or representations (Vorstellungen). In effect Bolzano criticized Kant and before him the classical empiricists and rationalists for failing to make this sort of distinction, thereby rendering phenomena merely subjective. Logic studies objective ideas, including propositions, which in turn make up objective theories as in the sciences. Psychology would, by contrast, study subjective ideas, the concrete contents (occurrences) of mental activities in particular minds at a given time. Husserl was after both, within a single discipline. So phenomena must be reconceived as objective intentional contents (sometimes called intentional objects) of subjective acts of consciousness. Phenomenology would then study this complex of consciousness and correlated phenomena. In Ideas I (Book One, 1913) Husserl introduced two Greek words to capture his version of the Bolzanoan distinction: noesis and noema (from the Greek verb noéaw, meaning to perceive, think, intend, from what place the noun nous or mind). The intentional process of consciousness is called noesis, while its ideal content is called noema. The noema of an act of consciousness Husserl characterized both as an ideal meaning and as "the object as intended.” Thus the phenomenon, or object-as-it-appears, becomes the noema, or object-as-it-is-intended. The interpretations of Husserl's theory of noema have been several and amount to different developments of Husserl's basic theory of intentionality. (Is the noema an aspect of the object intended, or rather a medium of intention?)
For Husserl, then, phenomenology integrates a kind of psychology with a kind of logic. It develops a descriptive or analytic psychology in that it describes and analytical divisions of subjective mental activity or experience, in short, acts of consciousness. Yet it develops a kind of logic - a theory of meaning (today we say logical semantics) -by that, it describes and approves to analytical justification that an objective content of consciousness, brings forthwith the ideas, concepts, images, propositions, in short, ideal meanings of various types that serve as intentional contents, or noematic meanings, of various types of experience. These contents are shareable by different acts of consciousness, and in that sense they are objective, ideal meanings. Following Bolzano (and to some extent the platonistic logician Hermann Lotze), Husserl opposed any reduction of logic or mathematics or science to mere psychology, to how human beings happen to think, and in the same spirit he distinguished phenomenology from mere psychology. For Husserl, phenomenology would study consciousness without reducing the objective and shareable meanings that inhabit experience to merely subjective happenstances. Ideal meaning would be the engine of intentionality in acts of consciousness.
A clear conception of phenomenology awaited Husserl's development of a clear model of intentionality. Indeed, phenomenology and the modern concept of intentionality emerged hand-in-hand in Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-01). With theoretical foundations laid in the Investigations, Husserl would then promote the radical new science of phenomenology in Ideas. And alternative visions of phenomenology would soon follow.
Phenomenology came into its own with Husserl, much as epistemology came into its own with Descartes, and ontology or metaphysics came into its own with Aristotle on the heels of Plato. Yet phenomenology has been practised, with or without the name, for many centuries. When Hindu and Buddhist philosophers reflected on states of consciousness achieved in a variety of meditative states, they were practising phenomenology. When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practising phenomenology. When Brentano classified varieties of mental phenomena (defined by the directedness of consciousness), he was practising phenomenology. When William James appraised kinds of mental activity in the stream of consciousness (including their embodiment and their dependence on habit), he too was practising phenomenology. And when recent analytic philosophers of mind have addressed issues of consciousness and intentionality, they have often been practising phenomenology. Still, the discipline of phenomenology, its roots tracing back through the centuries, came full to flower in Husserl.
Husserl's work was followed by a flurry of Phenomenological writing in the first half of the 20th century. The diversity of traditional phenomenology is apparent in the Encyclopaedia of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, Dordrecht and Boston), which features separate articles on some seven types of phenomenology. (1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the natural world around us. (2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature. (3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations. (4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time. (5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one's own stream of experience. (6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our human world, including ourselves and others. (7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.
The most famous of the classical phenomenologists were Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. In these four thinkers we find different conceptions of phenomenology, different methods, and different results. A brief sketch of their differences will capture both a crucial period in the history of phenomenology and a sense of the diversity of the field of phenomenology.
In his Logical Investigations (1900-01) Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology (theory of universals and parts of wholes), to a Phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a Phenomenological theory of knowledge. Then in Ideas I (1913) he focussed squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as "the science of the essence of consciousness,” entered on the defining trait of intentionality, approached explicitly "in the first person." In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness - that is, conscious experience of various types - as experienced from the first-person point of view. In this discipline we study different forms of experience just as we experience them, from the perspective of its topic for living through or performing them. Thus, we characterize experiences of seeing, hearing, imagining, thinking, feeling (i.e., emotion), wishing, desiring, willing, and acting, that is, embodied volitional activities of walking, talking, cooking, carpentering, etc. However, not just any characterization of an experience will do. Phenomenological analysis of a given type of experience will feature the ways in which we ourselves would experience that form of conscious activity. And the leading property of our familiar types of experience is their intentionality, their being a consciousness of or about something, something experienced or presented or engaged in a certain way. How I see or conceptualize or understand the object I am dealing with defines the meaning of that object in my current experience. Thus, phenomenology features a study of meaning, in a wide sense that includes more than what is expressed in language.
In Ideas, Husserl presented phenomenology with a transcendental turn. In part this means that Husserl took on the Kantian idiom of "transcendental idealism,” looking for conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or of consciousness generally, and arguably turning away from any reality beyond phenomena. But Hussserl's transcendental, and turns to involve his discovery of the method of epoché (from the Greek skeptics' notion of abstaining from belief). We are to practice phenomenology, Husserl proposed, by "bracketing" the question of the existence of the natural world around us. We thereby turn our attention, in reflection, to the structure of our own conscious experience. Our first key result is the observation that each act of consciousness is a consciousness of something, that is, intentional, or directed toward something. Consider my visual experience wherein I see a tree across the square. In Phenomenological reflection, we need not concern ourselves with whether the tree exists: my experience is of a tree whether or not such a tree exists. However, we do need to concern ourselves with how the object is meant or intended. I see a Eucalyptus tree, not a Yucca tree; I see the object as a Eucalyptus tree, with a certain shape, with bark stripping off, etc. Thus, bracketing the tree itself, we turn our attention to my experience of the tree, and specifically to the content or meaning in my experience. This tree-as-perceived Husserl calls the noema or noematic sense of the experience.
Philosophers succeeding Husserl debated the proper characterization of phenomenology, arguing over its results and its methods. Adolf Reinach, an early student of Husserl's (who died in World War I), argued that phenomenology should remain cooperatively affiliated within there be of the view that finds to some associative values among the finer qualities that have to them the realist’s ontology, as in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Roman Ingarden, a Polish phenomenologist of the next generation, continued the resistance to Hussserl's turn to transcendental idealism. For such philosophers, phenomenology should not bracket questions of being or ontology, as the method of epoché would suggest. And they were not alone. Martin Heidegger studied Hussserl's early writings, worked as Assistant to Husserl in 1916, and in 1928 Husserl was to succeed in the prestigious chair at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger had his own ideas about phenomenology.
In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger unfurled his rendition of phenomenology. For Heidegger, we and our activities are always "in the world,” our being is being-in-the-world, so we do not study our activities by bracketing the world, rather we interpret our activities and the meaning things have for us by looking to our contextual relations to things in the world. Indeed, for Heidegger, phenomenology resolves into what he called "fundamental ontology.” We must distinguish beings from their being, and we begin our investigation of the meaning of being in our own case, examining our own existence in the activity of "Dasein" (that being whose being is in each case my own). Heidegger resisted Husserl's neo-Cartesian emphasis on consciousness and subjectivity, including how perception presents things around us. By contrast, Heidegger held that our more basic ways of relating to things are in practical activities like hammering, where the phenomenology reveals our situation in a context of equipment and in being-with-others
In Being and Time Heidegger approached phenomenology, in a quasi-poetic idiom, through the root meanings of "logos" and "phenomena,” so that phenomenology is defined as the art or practice of "letting things show themselves.” In Heidegger's inimitable linguistic play on the Greek roots, “phenomenology” means, . . . to let that which shows itself be seen from themselves in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. Here Heidegger explicitly parodies Hussserl's call, "To the things themselves!", or "To the phenomena themselves!" Heidegger went on to emphasize practical forms of comportment or better relating (Verhalten) as in hammering a nail, as opposed to representational forms of intentionality as in seeing or thinking about a hammer. Being and Time developed an existential interpretation of our modes of being including, famously, our being-toward-death.
In a very different style, in clear analytical prose, in the text of a lecture course called The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), Heidegger traced the question of the meaning of being from Aristotle through many other thinkers into the issues of phenomenology. Our understanding of beings and their being comes ultimately through phenomenology. Here the connection with classical issues of ontology is more apparent, and consonant with Hussserl's vision in the Logical Investigations (an early source of inspiration for Heidegger). One of Heidegger's most innovative ideas was his conception of the "ground" of being, looking to modes of being more fundamental than the things around us (from trees to hammers). Heidegger questioned the contemporary concern with technology, and his writing might suggest that our scientific theories are historical artifacts that we use in technological practice, rather than systems of ideal truth (as Husserl had held). Our deep understanding of being, in our own case, comes rather from phenomenology, Heidegger held.
In the 1930s phenomenology migrated from Austrian and then German philosophy into French philosophy. The way had been paved in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator recounts in close detail his vivid recollections of experiences, including his famous associations with the smell of freshly baked madeleines. This sensibility to experience traces to Descartes' work, and French phenomenology has been an effort to preserve the central thrust of Descartes' insights while rejecting mind-body dualism. The experience of one's own body, or one's lived or living body, has been an important motif in many French philosophers of the 20th century.
In the novel Nausea (1936) Jean-Paul Sartre described a bizarre course of experience in which the protagonist, writing in the first person, describes how ordinary objects lose their meaning until he encounters pure being at the foot of a chestnut tree, and in that moment recovers his sense of his own freedom. In Being and Nothingness (1943, written partly while a prisoner of war), Sartre developed his conception of Phenomenological ontology. Consciousness is a consciousness of objects, as Husserl had stressed. In Sartre's model of intentionality, the central player in consciousness is a phenomenon, and the occurrence of a phenomenon is just a consciousness-of-an-object. The chestnut tree I see is, for Sartre, such a phenomenon in my consciousness. Indeed, all things in the world, as we normally experience them, are phenomena, beneath or behind which lies their "being-in-itself.” Consciousness, by contrast, has "being-for-itself,” since everything conscious is not only a consciousness-of-its-object but also a pre-reflective consciousness-of-itself (conscience). Yet for Sartre, unlike Husserl, the formal "I" or self is nothing but a sequence of acts of consciousness, notably including radically free choices (like a Humean bundle of perceptions).
For Sartre, the practice of phenomenology proceeds by a deliberate reflection on the structure of consciousness. Sartre's method is in effect a literary style of interpretive description of different types of experience in relevant situations - a practice that does not really fit the methodological proposals of either Husserl or Heidegger, but makes benefit from Sartre's great literary skill. (Sartre wrote many plays and novels and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Sartre's phenomenology in Being and Nothingness became the philosophical foundation for his popular philosophy of existentialism, sketched in his famous lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1945). In Being and Nothingness Sartre emphasized the experience of freedom of choice, especially the project of choosing oneself, the defining pattern of one's past actions. Through vivid description of the "look" of the Other, Sartre laid groundwork for the contemporary political significance of the concept of the Other (as in other groups or ethnicities). Indeed, in The Second Sex (1949) Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's life-long companion, launched contemporary feminism with her nuance account of the perceived role of women as Other.
In 1940s Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty joined with Sartre and Beauvoir in developing phenomenology. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Merleau-Ponty developed a rich variety of phenomenology emphasizing the role of the body in human experience. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, Merleau-Ponty looked to experimental psychology, analysing the reported experience of amputees who felt sensations in a phantom limb. Merleau-Ponty rejected both associationist psychology, focussed on correlations between sensation and stimulus, and intellectualist psychology, focussed on rational construction of the world in the mind. (Think of the behaviorist and computationalist models of mind in more recent decades of empirical psychology.) Instead, Merleau-Ponty focussed on the "body image,” our experience of our own body and its significance in our activities. Extending Hussserl's account of the lived body (as opposed to the physical body), Merleau-Ponty resisted the traditional Cartesian separation of mind and body. For the body image is neither in the mental realm nor in the mechanical-physical realm. Rather, my body is, as it were, me in my engaged action with things I perceive including other people.
The scope of Phenomenology of Perception is characteristic of the breadth of classical phenomenology, not least because Merleau-Ponty drew (with generosity) on Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre while fashioning his own innovative vision of phenomenology. His phenomenology addressed the role of attention in the phenomenal field, the experience of the body, the spatiality of the body, the motility of the body, the body in sexual being and in speech, other selves, temporality, and the character of freedom so important in French existentialism. Near the end of a chapter on the Cogito (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"), Merleau-Ponty succinctly captures his embodied, existential form of phenomenology, writing: Insofar as, when I reflect on the essence of subjectivity, I find it bound up with that of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity [= consciousness] is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because the subject that I am, when appropriated concrete, it is inseparable from this body and this world.
In short, consciousness is embodied (in the world), and equally body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world).
In the years since Hussserl, Heidegger, et al, wrote that its topic or ways of conventional study are to phenomenologists of having in accord dug into all these classical disseminations that include, intentionality, temporal awareness, intersubjectivity, practical intentionality, and the social and linguistic contexts of human activity. Interpretation of historical texts by Husserl et al. has played a prominent role in this work, both because the texts are rich and difficult and because the historical dimension is itself part of the practice of continental European philosophy. Since the 1960s, philosophers trained in the methods of analytic philosophy have also dug into the foundations of phenomenology, with an eye to 20th century work in philosophy of logic, language, and mind.
Phenomenology was already linked with logical and semantic theory in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Analytic phenomenology picks up on that connection. In particular, Dagfinn F¿llesdal and J. N. Mohanty have explored historical and conceptual relations between Husserl's phenomenology and Frége's logical semantics (in Frége's "On Sense and Reference,” 1892). For Frége, an expression refers to an object by way of a sense: Thus, two expressions (say, "the morning star" and "the evening star") may refer to the same object (Venus) but express different senses with different manners of presentation. For Husserl, similarly, an experience (or act of consciousness) intends or refers to an object by way of a noema or noematic sense: Consequently, two experiences may refer to the same object but have different noematic senses involving different ways of presenting the object (for example, in seeing the same object from different sides). Indeed, for Husserl, the theory of intentionality is a generalization of the theory of linguistic reference: as linguistic reference is mediated by sense, so intentional reference is mediated by noematic sense.
More recently, analytic philosophers of mind have rediscovered Phenomenological issues of mental representation, intentionality, consciousness, sensory experience, intentional content, and context-of-thought. Some of these analytic philosophers of mind hark back to William James and Franz Brentano at the origins of modern psychology, and some look to empirical research in today's cognitive neuroscience. Some researchers have begun to combine Phenomenological issues with issues of neuroscience and behavioural studies and mathematical modelling. Such studies will extend the methods of traditional phenomenology as the Zeitgeist moves on.
The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?
Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: Ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic presupposes phenomenology as it joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field: (1) Ontology is the study of beings or their being - what is. (2) Epistemology is the study of knowledge - how we know. (3) Logic is the study of valid reasoning - how to reason. (4) Ethics is the study of right and wrong - how we should act. (5) Phenomenology is the study of our experience - how we experience.
The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.
Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is "first philosophy,” the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.
Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive description of first-person knowledge, through a form of intuition.
Consider logic saw being a logical theory of meaning, in that this had persuaded Husserl into the theory of intentionality, the heart of phenomenology. On one account, phenomenology explicates the intentional or semantic force of ideal meanings, and propositional meanings are central to logical theory. But logical structure is expressed in language, either ordinary language or symbolic languages like those of predicate logic or mathematics or computer systems. It remains an important issue of debate where and whether language shapes specific forms of experience (thought, perception, emotion) and their content or meaning. So there is an important (if disputed) relation between phenomenology and logico-linguistic theory, especially philosophical logic and philosophy of language (as opposed to mathematical logic per se).
Consider ontology. Phenomenology studies (among other things) the nature of consciousness, which is a central issue in metaphysics or ontology, and one that lead into the traditional mind-body problem. Husserlian methodology would bracket the question of the existence of the surrounding world, thereby separating phenomenology from the ontology of the world. Yet Husserl's phenomenology presupposes theory about species and individuals (universals and particulars), relations of part and whole, and ideal meanings - all parts of ontology.
Now consider ethics. Phenomenology might play a role in ethics by offering analyses of the structure of will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy and sympathy). Historically, though, ethics has been on the horizon of phenomenology. Husserl largely avoided ethics in his major works, though he featured the role of practical concerns in the structure of the life-world or of Geist (spirit, or culture, as in Zeitgeist). He once delivered a course of lectures giving ethics (like logic) a basic place in philosophy, indicating the importance of the phenomenology of sympathy in grounding ethics. In Being and Time Heidegger claimed not to pursue ethics while discussing phenomena ranging from care, conscience, and guilt to "falseness" and "authenticity" (all phenomena with theological echoes). In Being and Nothingness Sartre analysed with subtlety the logical problem of "bad faith,” yet he developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith (which sounds like a revised Kantian foundation for morality). Beauvoir sketched an existentialist ethics, and Sartre left unpublished notebooks on ethics. However, an explicit Phenomenological approach to ethics emerged in the works of Emannuel Levinas, a Lithuanian phenomenologist who heard Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg before moving to Paris. In Totality and Infinity (1961), modifying themes drawn from Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas focussed on the significance of the "face" of the other, explicitly developing grounds for ethics in this range of phenomenology, writing an impressionistic style of prose with allusions to religious experience.
Allied with ethics that on the same line, signify political and social philosophy. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were politically captivated in 1940s Paris, and their existential philosophies (phenomenologically based) suggest a political theory based in individual freedom. Sartre later sought an explicit blend of existentialism with Marxism. Still, political theory has remained on the borders of phenomenology. Social theory, however, has been closer to phenomenology as such. Husserl analysed the Phenomenological structure of the life-world and Geist generally, including our role in social activity. Heidegger stressed social practice, which he found more primordial than individual consciousness. Alfred Schutz developed a phenomenology of the social world. Sartre continued the Phenomenological appraisal of the meaning of the other, the fundamental social formation. Moving outward from Phenomenological issues, Michel Foucault studied the genesis and meaning of social institutions, from prisons to insane asylums. And Jacques Derrida has long practised a kind of phenomenology of language, seeking socially meaning in the "deconstruction" of wide-ranging texts. Aspects of French "poststructuralist" theory are sometimes interpreted as broadly Phenomenological, but such issues are beyond the present purview.
Classical phenomenology, then, ties into certain areas of epistemology, logic, and ontology, and leads into parts of ethical, social, and political theory.
It ought to be obvious that phenomenology has a lot to say in the area called philosophy of mind. Yet the traditions of phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind have not been closely joined, despite overlapping areas of interest. So it is appropriate to close this survey of phenomenology by addressing philosophy of mind, one of the most vigorously debated areas in recent philosophy.
The tradition of analytic philosophy began, early in the 20th century, with analyses of language, notably in the works of Gottlob Frége, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then in The Concept of Mind (1949) Gilbert Ryle developed a series of analyses of language about different mental states, including sensation, belief, and will. Though Ryle is commonly deemed a philosopher of ordinary language, Ryle himself said The Concept of Mind could be called phenomenology. In effect, Ryle analysed our Phenomenological understanding of mental states as reflected in ordinary language about the mind. From this linguistic phenomenology Ryle argued that Cartesian mind-body dualism involves a category mistake (the logic or grammar of mental verbs - "believe,” "see,” etc. -does not mean that we ascribe belief, sensation, etc., to "the ghost in the machine"). With Ryle's rejection of mind-body dualism, the mind-body problem was re-awakened: What is the ontology of mind/body, and how are mind and body related?
René Descartes, in his epoch-making Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), had argued that minds and bodies are two distinct kinds of being or substance with two distinct kinds of attributes or modes: bodies are characterized by spatiotemporal physical properties, while minds are characterized by properties of thinking (including seeing, feeling, etc.). Centuries later, phenomenology would find, with Brentano and Husserl, that mental acts are characterized by consciousness and intentionality, while natural science would find that physical systems are characterized by mass and force, ultimately by gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields. Where do we find consciousness and intentionality in the quantum-electromagnetic-gravitational field that, by hypothesis, orders everything in the natural world in which we humans and our minds exist? That is the mind-body problem today. In short, phenomenology by any other name lies at the heart of the contemporary, mind-body problem.
After Ryle, philosophers sought a more explicit and generally naturalistic ontology of mind. In the 1950s materialism was argued anew, urging that mental states are identical with states of the central nervous system. The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person's mind at a particular time) is identical with a token brain state (in that person's brain at that time). A weaker materialism holds, instead, that each type of mental state is identical with a type of brain state. But materialism does not fit comfortably with phenomenology. For it is not obvious how conscious mental states as we experience them - sensations, thoughts, emotions - can simply be the complex neural states that somehow subserve or implement them. If mental states and neural states are simply identical, in token or in type, where in our scientific theory of mind does the phenomenology occur - is it not simply replaced by neuroscience? And yet experience is part of what is to be explained by neuroscience.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set it, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: They are function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behaviour proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human or an animal organism. More specifically, on a favourite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: Mind is to brain as software is to hardware; Thoughts are just programs running on the brain's "NetWare.” Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences - from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience - have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism. Gradually, however, philosophers found that Phenomenological aspects of the mind pose problems for the functionalist paradigm too.
In the early 1970s Thomas Nagel argued in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) that consciousness itself - especially the subjective character of what it is like to have a certain type of experience - escapes physical theory. Many philosophers pressed the case that sensory qualia - what it is like to feel pain, to see red, etc. - are not addressed or explained by a physical account of either brain structure or brain function. Consciousness has properties of its own. And yet, we know, it is closely tied to the brain. And, at some level of description, neural activities implement computation.
In the 1980s John Searle argued in Intentionality (1983) (and further in The Rediscovery of the Mind (1991)) that intentionality and consciousness are essential properties of mental states. For Searle, our brains produce mental states with properties of consciousness and intentionality, and this is all part of our biology, yet consciousness and intentionality require the "first-person" ontology. Searle also argued that computers simulate but do not have mental states characterized by intentionality. As Searle argued, a computer system has of the syntax (processing symbols of certain shapes) but has no semantics (the symbols lack meaning: We interpret the symbols). In this way Searle rejected both materialism and functionalism, while insisting that mind is a biological property of organisms like us: Our brains "secrete" consciousness.
The analysis of consciousness and intentionality is central to phenomenology as appraised above, and Searle's theory of intentionality reads like a modernized version of Husserl's. (Contemporary logical theory takes the form of stating truth conditions for propositions, and Searle characterizes a mental state's intentionality by specifying its "satisfaction conditions"). However, there is an important difference in background theory. For Searle explicitly assumes the basic world view of natural science, holding that consciousness is part of nature. But Husserl explicitly brackets that assumption, and later phenomenologists - including Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty - seem to seek a certain sanctuary for phenomenology beyond the natural sciences. And yet phenomenology itself should be largely neutral about further theories of how experience arises, notably from brain activity.
The philosophy or theory of mind overall may be factored into the following disciplines or ranges of theory relevant to mind: Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced, analysing the structure - the types, intentional forms and meanings, dynamics, and (certain) enabling conditions - of perception, thought, imagination, emotion, and volition and action.
Neuroscience studies the neural activities that serve as biological substrate to the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Neuroscience will be framed by evolutionary biology (explaining how neural phenomena evolved) and ultimately by basic physics (explaining how biological phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena). Here lie the intricacies of the natural sciences. Part of what the sciences are accountable for is the structure of experience, analysed by phenomenology.
Cultural analysis studies the social practices that help to shape or serve as cultural substrate of the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Here we study the import of language and other social practices. Ontology of mind studies the ontological type of mental activity in general, ranging from perception (which involves causal input from environment to experience) to volitional action (which involves causal output from volition to bodily movement).
This division of labour in the theory of mind can be seen as an extension of Brentano's original distinction between descriptive and genetic psychology. Phenomenology offers descriptive analyses of mental phenomena, while neuroscience (and wider biology and ultimately physics) offers models of explanation of what causes or gives rise to mental phenomena. Cultural theory offers analyses of social activities and their impact on experience, including ways language shapes our thought, emotion, and motivation. And ontology frames all these results within a basic scheme of the structure of the world, including our own minds.
Meanwhile, from an epistemological standpoint, all these ranges of theory about mind begin with how we observe and reason about and seek to explain phenomena we encounter in the world. And that is where phenomenology begins. Moreover, how we understand each piece of theory, including theory about mind, is central to the theory of intentionality, as it were, the semantics of thought and experience in general. And that is the heart of phenomenology.
There is potentially a rich and productive interface between neuroscience/cognitive science. The two traditions, however, have evolved largely independent, based on differing sets of observations and objectives, and tend to use different conceptual frameworks and vocabulary representations. The distributive contributions to each their dynamic functions of finding a useful common reference to further exploration of the relations between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
Forthwith, is the existence of a historical gap between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy is being productively closed by, among other things, the suggestion that recent understandings of the nervous system as a modeler and predictor bear a close and useful similarity to the concepts of projection and transference. The gap could perhaps be valuably narrowed still further by a comparison in the two traditions of the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious" and the relations between the two. It is suggested that these be understood as two independent "story generators" - each with different styles of function and both operating optimally as reciprocal contributors to each others' ongoing story evolution. A parallel and comparably optimal relation might be imagined for neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy.
For the sake of argument, imagine that human behaviour and all that it entails (including the experience of being a human and interacting with a world that includes other humans) is a function of the nervous system. If this were so, then there would be lots of different people who are making observations of (perhaps different) aspects of the same thing, and telling (perhaps different) stories to make sense of their observations. The list would include neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and psychologists. It would include as well psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and social workers. If we were not too fussy about credentials, it should probably include as well educators, and parents and . . . babies? Arguably, all humans, from the time they are born, spend significant measures of their time making observations of how people (others and themselves) behave and why, and telling stories to make sense of those observations.
The stories, of course, all differ from one another to greater or lesser degrees. In fact, the notion that "human behaviour and all that it entails . . . is a function of the nervous system" is itself a story used to make sense of observations by some people and not by others. It is not my intent here to try to defend this particular story, or any other story for that matter. Very much to the contrary, is to explore the implications and significance of the fact that there ARE different stories and that they might be about the same (some)thing
In so doing, I want to try to create a new story that helps to facilitate an enhanced dialogue between neuroscience/cognitive science, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, on the other. That new story is itself is a story of conflicting stories within . . . what is called the "nervous system" but others are free to call the "self," "mind," "soul," or whatever best fits their own stories. What is important is the idea that multiple things, evident by their conflicts, may not in fact be disconnected and adversarial entities but could rather be fundamentally, understandably, and valuably interconnected parts of the same thing.
Many practising psychoanalysts (and psychotherapists too, I suspect) feel that the observations/stories of neuroscience/cognitive science are for their own activities, least of mention, are at primes of irrelevance, and at worst destructive, and the same probable holds for many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists. Pally clearly feels otherwise, and it is worth exploring a bit why this is so in her case. A general key, I think, is in her line "In current paradigms, the brain has intrinsic activity, is highly integrated, is interactive with the environment, and is goal-oriented, with predictions operating at every level, from lower systems to . . . the highest functions of abstract thought." Contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science has indeed uncovered an enormous complexity and richness in the nervous system, "making it not so different from how psychoanalysts (or most other people) would characterize the self, at least not in terms of complexity, potential, and vagary." Given this complexity and richness, there is substantially less reason than there once was to believe psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are dealing with two fundamentally different thing’s ally suspects, more aware of this than many psychotherapists because she has been working closely with contemporary neuroscientists who are excited about the complexity to be found in the nervous system. And that has an important lesson, but there is an additional one at least as important in the immediate context. In 1950, two neuroscientists wrote: "The sooner we realize that not to expect of expectation itself, which we would recognize the fact that the complex and higher functional Gestalts that leave the reflex physiologist dumfounded in fact send roots down to the simplest basal functions of the CNS, the sooner we will see that the previously terminologically insurmountable barrier between the lower levels of neurophysiology and higher behavioural theory simply dissolves away."
And in 1951 another said, "I am becoming subsequently forwarded by the conviction that the rudiments of every behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and represented in primitive activities of the nervous system."
Neuroscience (and what came to be cognitive science) was engaged from very early on in an enterprise committed to the same kind of understanding sought by psychotherapists, but passed through a phase (roughly from the 1950's to the 1980's) when its own observations and stories were less rich in those terms. It was a period that gave rise to the notion that the nervous system was "simple" and "mechanistic," which in turn made neuroscience/cognitive science seem less relevant to those with broader concerns, perhaps even threatening and apparently adversarial if one equated the nervous system with "mind," or "self," or "soul," since mechanics seemed degrading to those ideas. Arguably, though, the period was an essential part of the evolution of the contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science story, one that laid needed groundwork for rediscovery and productive exploration of the richness of the nervous system. Psychoanalysis/psychotherapy of course went through its own story evolution over this time. That the two stories seemed remote from one another during this period was never adequate evidence that they were not about the same thing but only an expression of their needed independent evolutions.
An additional reason that Pally is comfortable with the likelihood that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are talking about the same thing is her recognition of isomorphism (or congruities, Pulver 2003) between the two sets of stories, places where different vocabularies in fact seem to be representing the same (or quite similar) things. I am not sure I am comfortable calling these "shared assumptions" (as Pally does) since they are actually more interesting and probably more significant if they are instead instances of coming to the same ideas from different directions (as I think they are). In this case, the isomorphism tend to imply that, rephrasing Gertrude Stein, "that there exists an actual there.” Regardless, Pally has entirely appropriately and, I think, usefully called attention to an important similarity between the psychotherapeutic concept of "transference" and an emerging recognition within neuroscience/cognitive science that the nervous system does not so much collect information about the world as generate a model of it, act in relation to that model, and then check incoming information against the predictions of that model. Pally's suggestion that this model reflects in part early interpersonal experiences, can be largely "unconscious," and so may cause inappropriate and troubling behaviour in current time seems entirely reasonable. So too is she to think of thoughts that there is an interaction with the analyst, and this can be of some help by bringing the model to "consciousness" through the intermediary of recognizing the transference onto the analyst.
The increasing recognition of substantial complexity in the nervous system together with the presence of identifiable isomorphism provides a solid foundation for suspecting that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are indeed talking about the same thing. But the significance of different stories for better understanding a single thing lies as much in the differences between the stories as it does in their similarities/isomorphism, in the potential for differing and not obviously isomorphic stories productively to modify each other, yielding a new story in the process. With this thought in mind, I want to call attention to some places where the psychotherapeutic and the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific stories have edges that rub against one another rather than smoothly fitting together. And perhaps to ways each could be usefully further evolved in response to those non-isomorphism.
Unconscious stories and "reality.” Though her primary concern is with interpersonal relations, Pally clearly recognizes that transference and related psychotherapeutic phenomena are one (actually relatively small) facet of a much more general phenomenon, the creation, largely unconsciously, of stories that are understood to be that of what are not necessarily reflective of the "real world.” Ambiguous figures illustrate the same general phenomenon in a much simpler case, that of visual perception. Such figures may be seen in either of two ways; They represent two "stories" with the choice between them being, at any given time, largely unconscious. More generally, a serious consideration of a wide array of neurobiological/cognitive phenomena clearly implies that, as Pally said, that if we could ever see "reality," but only have stories to describe it that result from processes of which we are not consciously aware.
All of this raises some quite serious philosophical questions about the meaning and usefulness of the concept of "reality." In the present context, what is important is that it is a set of questions that sometimes seem to provide an insurmountable barrier between the stories of neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, who by and large think they are dealing with reality, and psychotherapists, who feel more comfortable in more idiosyncratic and fluid spaces. In fact, neuroscience and cognitive science can proceed perfectly well in the absence of a well-defined concept of "reality" and, without being fully conscious of it, does in fact do so. And psychotherapists actually make more use of the idea of "reality" than is entirely appropriate. There is, for example, a tendency within the psychotherapeutic community to presume that unconscious stories reflect "traumas" and other historically verifiable events, while the neurobiological/cognitive science story says quite clearly that they may equally reflect predispositions whose origins reflect genetic information and hence bear little or no relation to "reality" in the sense usually meant. They may, in addition, reflect random "play" (Grobstein, 1994), putting them even further out of reach of easy historical interpretation. In short, with regard to the relation between "story" and "reality," each set of stories could usefully be modified by greater attention to the other. Differing concepts of "reality" (perhaps the very concept itself) gets in the way of usefully sharing stories. The neurobiologists and/or/cognitive scientists' preoccupation with "reality" as an essential touchstone could valuably be lessened, and the therapist's sense of the validation of story in terms of personal and historical idiosyncrasies could be helpfully adjusted to include a sense of actual material underpinnings.
The Unconscious and the Conscious. Pally appropriately makes a distinction between the unconscious and the conscious, one that has always been fundamental to psychotherapy. Neuroscience/cognitive science has been slower to make a comparable distinction but is now rapidly beginning to catch up. Clearly some neural processes generate behaviour in the absence of awareness and intent and others yield awareness and intent with or without accompanying behaviour. An interesting question however, raised at a recent open discussion of the relations between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, is whether the "neurobiological unconscious" is the same thing as the "psychotherapeutic unconscious," and whether the perceived relations between the "unconscious" and the"conscious" are the same in the two sets of stories. Is this a case of an isomorphism or, perhaps more usefully, a masked difference?
An oddity of Pally's article is that she herself acknowledges that the unconscious has mechanisms for monitoring prediction errors and yet implies, both in the title of the paper, and in much of its argument, that there is something special or distinctive about consciousness (or conscious processing) in its ability to correct prediction errors. And here, I think, there is evidence of a potentially useful "rubbing of edges" between the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific tradition and the psychotherapeutic one. The issue is whether one regards consciousness (or conscious processing) as somehow "superior" to the unconscious (or unconscious processing). There is a sense in Pally of an old psychotherapeutic perspective of the conscious as a mechanism for overcoming the deficiencies of the unconscious, of the conscious as the wise father/mother and the unconscious as the willful child. Actually, Pally does not quite go this far, but there is enough of a trend to illustrate the point and, without more elaboration, I do not think many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists will catch Pally's more insightful lesson. I think Pally is almost certainly correct that the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious can achieve results unachievable by the unconscious alone, but think also that neither psychotherapy nor neuroscience/cognitive science are yet in a position to say exactly why this is so. So let me take a crack here at a new, perhaps bi-dimensional story that could help with that common problem and perhaps both traditions as well.
A major and surprising lesson of comparative neuroscience, supported more recently by neuropsychology (Weiskrantz, 1986) and, more recently still, by artificial intelligence is that an extraordinarily rich repertoire of adaptive behaviour can occur unconsciously, in the absence of awareness of intent (be supported by unconscious neural processes). It is not only modelling of the world and prediction and error correction that can occur this way but virtually (and perhaps literally) the entire spectrum of behaviour externally observed, including fleeing from threat, approaching good things, generating novel outputs, learning from doing so, and so on.
This extraordinary terrain, discovered by neuroanatomists, electrophysiologists, neurologists, behavioural biologists, and recently extended by others using more modern techniques, is the unconscious of which the neuroscientists/cognitive scientist speaks. It is a terrain so surprisingly rich that it creates, for some people, the inpuzzlement about whether there is anything else at all. Moreover, it seems, at first glance, to be a totally different terrain from that of the psychotherapist, whose clinical experience reveals a territory occupied by drives, unfulfilled needs, and the detritus with which the conscious would prefer not to deal.
As indicated earlier, it is one of the great strengths of Pally's article to suggest that the two terrains may in fact turns out to be the same in many ways, but if they are of the same line, it then becomes the question of whether or not it feels in what way nature resembles the "unconscious" and the "conscious" different? Where now are the "two stories?” Pally touches briefly on this point, suggesting that the two systems differ not so much (or at all?) in what they do, but rather in how they do it. This notion of two systems with different styles seems to me worth emphasizing and expanding. Unconscious processing is faster and handles many more variables simultaneously. Conscious processing is slower and handles several variables at one time. It is likely that there appear to a host of other differences in style as well, in the handling of number for example, and of time.
In the present context, however, perhaps the most important difference in style is one that Lacan called attention to from a clinical/philosophical perspective - the conscious (conscious processing) that has in resemblance to some objective "coherence," that is, it attempts to create a story that makes sense simultaneously of all its parts. The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with bits and pieces lying around with no global order. To a neurobiologist/cognitive scientist, this makes perfectly good sense. The circuitry includes the unconscious (sub-cortical circuitry?) assembly of different parts organized for a large number of different specific purposes, and only secondarily linked together to try to assure some coordination? The circuitry preserves the conscious precessing (neo-cortical circuitry?), that, on the other hand, seems to both be more uniform and integrated and to have an objective for which coherence is central.
That central coherence is well-illustrated by the phenomena of "positive illusions,” exemplified by patients who receive a hypnotic suggestion that there is an object in a room and subsequently walk in ways that avoid the object while providing a variety of unrelated explanations for their behaviour. Similar "rationalization" is, of course, seen in schizophrenic patients and in a variety of fewer dramatic forms in psychotherapeutic settings. The "coherent" objective is to make a globally organized story out of the disorganized jumble, a story of (and constituting) the "self."
What this thoroughly suggests is that the mind/brain be actually organized to be constantly generating at least two different stories in two different styles. One, written by conscious processes in simpler terms, is a story of/about the "self" and experienced as such, for developing insights into how such a story can be constructed using neural circuitry. The other is an unconscious "story" about interactions with the world, perhaps better thought of as a series of different "models" about how various actions relate to various consequences. In many ways, the latter is the grist for the former.
In this sense, we are safely back to the two story ideas that has been central to psychotherapy, but perhaps with some added sophistication deriving from neuroscience/cognitive science. In particular, there is no reason to believe that one story is "better" than the other in any definitive sense. They are different stories based on different styles of story telling, with one having advantages in certain sorts of situations (quick responses, large numbers of variables, more direct relation to immediate experiences of pain and pleasure) and the other in other sorts of situations (time for more deliberate responses, challenges amenable to handling using smaller numbers of variables, more coherent, more able to defer immediate gratification/judgment.
In the clinical/psychotherapeutic context, an important implication of the more neutral view of two story-tellers outlined above is that one ought not to over-value the conscious, nor to expect miracles of the process of making conscious what is unconscious. In the immediate context, the issue is if the unconscious is capable of "correcting prediction errors,” then why appeal to the conscious to achieve this function? More generally, what is the function of that persistent aspect of psychotherapy that aspires to make the unconscious conscious? And why is it therapeutically effective when it is? Here, it is worth calling special attention to an aspect of Pally's argument that might otherwise get a bit lost in the details of her article: . . . the therapist encourages the wife to stop consciously and consider her assumption that her husband does not properly care about her, and to effort fully consider an alternative view and inhibit her impulse to reject him back. This, in turn, creates a new type of experience, one in which he is indeed more loving, such that she can develop new predictions."
It is not, as Pally describes it, the simple act of making something conscious that is therapeutically effective. What is necessary is too consciously decompose the story (something that is made possible by its being a story with a small number of variables) and, even more important, to see if the story generates a new "type of experience" that in turn causes the development of "new predictions." The latter, I suggest, is an effect of the conscious on the unconscious, an alteration of the unconscious brought about by hearing, entertaining, and hence acting on a new story developed by the conscious. It is not "making things conscious" that is therapeutically effective; it is the exchange of stories that encourages the creation of a new story in the unconscious.
For quite different reasons, Grey (1995) earlier made a suggestion not dissimilar to Pally's, proposing that consciousness was activated when an internal model detected a prediction failure, but acknowledged he could see no reason "why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all." It seems to me that, despite her title, it is not the detection of prediction errors that is important in Pally's story. Instead, it is the detection of mismatches between two stories, one unconscious and the other conscious, and the resulting opportunity for both to shape a less trouble-making new story. That, in brief, is it to why the brain "should generate conscious experience,” and reap the benefits of having a second story teller with which a different style of paraphrasing Descartes, one might know of another in what one might say "I am, and I can think, therefore I can change who I am.” It is not only the neurobiological "conscious" that can undergo change; it is the neurobiological "unconscious" as well.
More generally, the most effective psychotherapy requires the recognitions that assume their responsibility is rapidly emerging from neuroscience/cognitive science, that the brain/mind has evolved with two (or more) independent story tellers and has done so precisely because there are advantages to having independent story tellers that generate and exchange different stories. The advantage is that each can learn from the other, and the mechanisms to convey the stories and forth and for each story teller to learn from the stories of the other are a part of our evolutionary endowment as well. The problems that bring patients into a therapist's office are problems in the breakdown of story exchange, for any of a variety of reasons, and the challenge for the therapist is to reinstate the confidence of each story teller in the value of the stories created by the other. Neither the conscious nor the unconscious is primary; they function best as an interdependent loop with each developing its own story facilitated by the semi-independent story of the other. In such an organization, there is not only no "real,” and no primacy for consciousness, there is only the ongoing development and, ideally, effective sharing of different stories.
There are, in the story I am outlining, implications for neuroscience/cognitive science as well. The obvious key questions are what does one mean (in terms of neurons and neuronal assemblies) by "stories," and in what ways are their construction and representation different in unconscious and conscious neural processing. But even more important, if the story I have outlined makes sense, what are the neural mechanisms by which unconscious and conscious stories are exchanged and by which each kind of story impacts on the other? And why (again in neural terms) does the exchange sometimes break down and fail in a way that requires a psychotherapist - an additional story teller - to be repaired?
Just as the unconscious and the conscious are engaged in a process of evolving stories for separate reasons and using separate styles, so too have been and will continue to be neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy. And it is valuable that both communities continue to do so. But there is every reason to believe that the different stories are indeed about the same thing, not only because of isomorphism between the differing stories but equally because the stories of each can, if listened to, be demonstrably of value to the stories of the other. When breakdowns in story sharing occur, they require people in each community who are daring enough to listen and be affected by the stories of the other community. Pally has done us all a service as such a person. I hope my reactions to her article will help further to construct the bridge she has helped to lay, and that others will feel inclined to join in an act of collective story telling that has enormous intellectual potential and relates as well very directly to a serious social need in the mental health arena. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that an enhanced skill at hearing, respecting, and learning from differing stories about similar things would be useful in a wide array of contexts.
There is now a more satisfactory range of ideas available [in the field of consciousness studies] . . . They involve mostly quantum objects called Bose-Einstein condensates that may be capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain (Pessa). Marshall's original idea (based on the work of Frölich) was that the condensates that comprise the physical basis of mind, form from activity of vibrating molecules (dipoles) in nerve cell membranes. One of us (Clarke) has found theoretical evidence that the distribution of energy levels for such arrays of molecules prevents this happening in the way that Marshall first thought. However, the occurrence of similar condensates centring around the microtubules that are an important part of the structure of every cell, including nerve cells, remains a theoretical possibility (del Giudice et al.). Hameroff has pointed out that single-cell organisms such as 'paramecium' can perform quite complicated actions normally thought to need a brain. He suggests that their 'brain' be in their microtubules. Shape changes in the constituent proteins (tubulin) could subserve computational functions and would involve quantum phenomena of the sort envisaged by del Giudice. This raises the intriguing possibility that the most basic cognitive unit is provided, not by the nerve cell synapse as is usually supposed, but by the microtubular structure within cells. The underlying intuition is that the structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building Forms of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a pleasant view, say, into a mental structure that represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
We thought that, if there is anything to ideas of this sort, the quantum nature of awareness should be detectable experimentally. Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world with no precise classical equivalents. The former presupposes that the interacting systems have to be considered as wholes - you cannot deal with one part in isolation from the rest. Non-locality means, among other things, that spatial separation between its parts does not alter the requirement to deal with an interacting system holistically. If we could detect these in relation to awareness, we would show that consciousness cannot be understood solely in terms of classical concepts.
Generative thought and words are the attempts to discover the relation between thought and speech at the earliest stages of phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. We found no specific interdependence between the genetic roots of thought and of word. It became plain that the inner relationship we were looking for was not a prerequisite for, but rather a product of, the historical development of human consciousness.
In animals, even in anthropoids whose speech is phonetically like human speech and whose intellect is akin to man’s, speech and thinking are not interrelated. A prelinguistic epoché through which times interval in thought and a preintellectual period in speech undoubtedly exist also in the development of the child. Thought and word are not connected by a primary bond. A connection originates, changes, and grows in the course of the evolution of thinking and speech.
It would be wrong, however, to regard thought and speech as two unrelated processes either parallel or crossing at certain points and mechanically influencing each other. The absence of a primary bond does not mean that a connection between them can be formed only in a mechanical way. The futility of most of the earlier investigations was largely due to the assumption that thought and word were isolated, independent elements, and verbal thought the fruit of their external union.
The method of analysis based on this conception was bound to fail. It sought to explain the properties of verbal thought by breaking it up into its component elements, thought and word, neither of which, taken separately, possessed the properties of the whole. This method is not true analysis helpful in solving concrete problems. It leads, rather, to generalisation. We compared it with the analysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen - which can result only in findings applicable to all water existing in nature, from the Pacific Ocean to a raindrop. Similarly, the statement that verbal thought is composed of intellectual processes and speech is functionally proper applications to all verbal thought and all its manifestations and explains none of the specific problems facing the student of verbal thought.
We tried a new approach to the subject and replaced analysis into elements by analysis into units, each of which retains in simple form all the properties of the whole. We found this unit of verbal thought in word meaning.
The meaning of a word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought. A word without meaning is an empty sound; meaning, therefore, is a criterion of “word,” its indispensable component. It would seem, then, that it may be regarded as a phenomenon of speech. But from the point of view of psychology, the meaning of every word is a generalisation or a concept. And since generalisations and concepts are undeniably acts of thought, but we may regard meaning as a phenomenon of thinking. It does not follow, however, that meaning formally belongs in two different spheres of psychic life. Word meaning is a phenomenon of thought only insofar as thought is embodied in speech, and of speech only insofar as speech is connected with thought and illumined by it. It is a phenomenon of verbal thought, or meaningful speech - a union of word and thought.
Our experimental investigations fully confirm this basic thesis. They not only proved that concrete study of the development of verbal thought is made possible by the use of word meaning as the analytical unit but they also led to a further thesis, which we consider the major result of our study and which issues directly from the further thesis that word meanings develop. This insight must replace the postulate of the immutability of word meanings.
From the point of view of the old schools of psychology, the bond between word and meaning is an associative bond, established through the repeated simultaneous perception of a certain sound and a certain object. A word calls to mind its content as the overcoat of a friend reminds us of that friend, or a house of its inhabitants. The association between word and meaning may grow stronger or weaker, be enriched by linkage with other objects of a similar kind, spread over a wider field, or become more limited, i.e., it may undergo quantitative and external changes, but it cannot change its psychological nature. To do that, it would have to cease being an association. From that point of view, any development in word meanings is inexplicable and impossible - an implication that impeded linguistics as well as psychology. Once having committed itself to the association theory, semantics persisted in treating word meaning as an association between a word’s sound and its content. All words, from the most concrete to the most abstract, appeared to be formed in the same manner in regard to meaning, and to contain nothing peculiar to speech as such; a word made us think of its meaning just as any object might remind us of another. It is hardly surprising that semantics did not even pose the larger question of the development of word meanings. Development was reduced to changes in the associative connections between single words and single objects: A word brawn to denote at first one object and then become associated with another, just as an overcoat, having changed owners, might remind us first of one person and later of another. Linguistics did not realize that in the historical evolution of language the very structure of meaning and its psychological nature also change. From primitive generalisations, verbal thought rises to the most abstract concepts. It is not merely the content of a word that changes, but the way in which reality is generalised and reflected in a word.
Equally inadequate is the association theory in explaining the development of word meanings in childhood. Here, too, it can account only for the pure external, quantitative changes in the bonds uniting word and meaning, for their enrichment and strengthening, but not for the fundamental structural and psychological changes that can and do occur in the development of language in children.
Oddly enough, the fact that associationism in general had been abandoned for some time did not seem to affect the interpretation of word and meaning. The Wuerzburg school, whose main object was to prove the impossibility of reducing thinking to a mere play of associations and to demonstrate the existence of specific laws governing the flow of thought, did not revise the association theory of word and meaning, or even recognise the need for such a revision. It freed thought from the fetters of sensation and imagery and from the laws of association, and turned it into a purely spiritual act. By so doing, it went back to the prescientific concepts of St. Augustine and Descartes and finally reached extreme subjective idealism. The psychology of thought was moving toward the ideas of Plato. Speech, at the same time, was left at the mercy of association. Even after the work of the Wuerzburg school, the connection between a word and its meaning was still considered a simple associative bond. The word was seen as the external concomitant of thought, its attire only, having no influence on its inner life. Thought and speech had never been as widely separated as during the Wuerzburg period. The overthrow of the association theory in the field of thought actually increased its sway in the field of speech.
The work of other psychologists further reinforced this trend. Selz continued to investigate thought without considering its relation to speech and came to the conclusion that man’s productive thinking and the mental operations of chimpanzees were identical in nature – so completely did he ignore the influence of words on thought.
Even Ach, who made a special studies in phraseology, by the meaning of who tried to overcome the correlation in his theory of concepts, did not go beyond assuming the presence of “determining tendencies” operative, along with associations, in the process of concept formation. Hence, the conclusions he reached did not change the old understanding of word meaning. By identifying concept with meaning, he did not allow for development and changes in concepts. Once established, the meaning of a word was set forever; Its development was completed. The same principles were taught by the very psychologists Ach attacked. To both sides, the starting point was also the end of the development of a concept; the disagreement concerned only the way in which the formation of word meanings began.
In Gestalt psychology, the situation was not very different. This school was more consistent than others in trying to surmount the general principle of a collective associationism. Not satisfied with a partial solution of the problem, it tried to liberate thinking and speech from the rule of association and to put both under the laws of structure formation. Surprisingly, even this most progressive of modern psychological schools made no progress in the theory of thought and speech.
For one thing, it retained the complete separation of these two functions. In the light of Gestalt psychology, the relationship between thought and word appears as a simple analogy, a reduction of both to a common structural denominator. The formation of the first meaningful words of a child is seen as similar to the intellectual operations of chimpanzees in Koehler’s experiments. Words that filter through the structure of things and acquire a certain functional meaning, in much the same way as the stick, to the chimpanzee, becomes part of the structure of obtaining the fruit and acquires the functional meaning of tool, that the connection between word and meaning is no longer regarded as a matter of simple association but as a matter of structure. That seems like a step forward. But if we look more closely at the new approach, it is easy to see that the step forward is an illusion and that we are still standing in the same place. The principle of structure is applied to all relations between things in the same sweeping, undifferentiated way as the principle of association was before it. It remains impossible to deal with the specific relations between word and meaning.
They are from the outset accepted as identical in principle with any and all other relations between things. All cats are as grey in the dusk of Gestalt psychology as in the earlier plexuities that assemble in universal associationism.
While Ach sought to overcome the associationism with “determining tendencies,” Gestalt psychology combatted it with the principle of structure - retaining, however, the two fundamental errors of the older theory: the assumption of the identical nature of all connections and the assumption that word meanings do not change. The old and the new psychology both assume that the development of a word’s meaning is finished as soon as it emerges. The new trends in psychology brought progress in all branches except in the study of thought and speech. Here the new principles resemble the old ones like twins.
If Gestalt psychology is at a standstill in the field of speech, it has made a big step backward in the field of thought. The Wuerzburg school at least recognised that thought had laws of its own. Gestalt psychology denies their existence. By reducing to a common structural denominator the perceptions of domestic fowl, the mental operations of chimpanzees, the first meaningful words of the child, and the conceptual thinking of the adult, it obliterates every distinction between the most elementary perception and the highest forms of thought.
This may be summed up as follows: All the psychological schools and trends overlook the cardinal point that every thought is a generalisation. They all study word and meaning without any reference to development. As long as these two conditions persist in the successive trends, there cannot be much difference in the treatment of the problem.
The discovery that word meanings evolve leads the study of thought and speech out of a blind alley. Word meanings are dynamic rather than static formations. They change as the child develops; they change also with the various ways in which thought functions.
If word meanings change in their inner nature, then the relation of thought to word also changes. To understand the dynamics of that relationship, we must supplement the genetic approach of our main study by functional analysis and examine the role of word meaning in the process of thought.
Let us consider the process of verbal thinking from the first dim stirring of a thought to its formulation. What we want to show now is not how meanings develop over long periods of time but the way they function in the live process of verbal thought. On the basis of such a functional analysis, we will be able to show also that each stage in the development of word meaning has its own particular relationship between thought and speech. Since functional problems are most readily solved by examining the highest form of a given activity, we will, for a while, put aside the problem of development and consider the relations between thought and word in the mature mind.
The leading idea in the following discussion can be reduced to this formula: The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process the relation of thought to word undergoes changes that they may be regarded as development in the functional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to establish a relationship between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem. This flow of thought occurs as an inner movement through a series of planes. An analysis of the interaction of thought and word must begin with an investigation of the different phases and planes a thought traverses before it is embodied in words.
The first thing such a study reveals is the need to distinguish between two planes of speech. Both the inner, meaningful, semantic aspect of speech and the external, phonetic aspects, though forming a true unity, have their own laws of movement. The unity of speech is a complex, not a homogeneous, unity. A number of facts in the linguistic development of the child indicate independent movement in the phonetic and the semantic spheres. We will point out two of the most important of these facts.
In mastering external speech, the child starts from one word, then connects two or three words; a little later, he advances from simple sentences to more complicated ones, and finally to coherent speech made up of series of such sentences; in other words, he proceeds from a part to the whole. In regard to meaning on the other hand, the first word of the child is a whole sentence. Semantically, the child starts from the whole, from a meaningful complex, and only later begins to master the separate semantic units, the meanings of words, and to divide his formerly undifferentiated thought into those units. The external and the semantic aspects of speech develop in opposite directions – one from the particular to the whole, from word to sentence, and the other from the whole to the particular, from sentence to word.
This in itself suffices to show how important it is to distinguish between the vocal and the semantic aspects of speech. Since they move in reverse directions, their development does not coincide, but that does not mean that they are independent of each other. On the contrary, their difference is the first stage of a close union. In fact, our example reveals their inner relatedness as clearly as it does their distinction. A child’s thought, precisely because it is born as a dim, amorphous whole, must find expression in a single word. As his thought becomes more differentiated, the child is less apt to express it in single words but constructs a composite whole. Conversely, progress in speech to the differentiated whole of a sentence helps the child’s thoughts to progress from a homogeneous whole to well-defined parts. Thought and word are not cut from one pattern. In a sense, there are more differences than likenesses between them. The structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought that is why words cannot be put on by thought like a ready-made garment. Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; It finds its reality and form. The semantic and the phonetic developmental processes are essentially one, precisely because of their reverse directions.
The second, equally important fact emerges at a later period of development. Piaget demonstrated that the child uses subordinate clauses with because, although, etc., long before he grasps the structures of meaning corresponding to these syntactic forms. Grammar precedes logic. Here, too, as in our previous example, the discrepancy does not exclude union but is, in fact, necessary for union.
In adults the divergence between the semantic and the phonetic aspects of speech is even more striking. Modern, psychologically oriented linguistics is familiar with this phenomenon, especially in regard too grammatical and psychological subject and predicate. For example, in the sentence “The clock fell,” emphasis and meaning may change in different situations. Suppose I notice that the clock has stopped and ask how this happened. The answer is, “The clock fell.” Grammatical and psychological subject coincide: “The clock” is the first idea in my consciousness; “fell” is what is said about the clock. But if I hear a crash in the next room and inquire what happened, and get the same answer, subject and predicate are psychologically reversed. I knew something had fallen – that is what we are talking about. “The clock” completes the idea. The sentence could be changed to: “What has fallen is the clock”; Then the grammatical and the psychological subject would coincide. In the prologue to his play Duke Ernst von Schwaben, Uhland says: “Grim scenes will pass before you.” Psychologically, “will pass” is the subject. The spectator knows he will see events unfold the additional idea, the predicate, remains in “grim scenes.” Uhland meant, “What will pass before your eyes are a tragedy.” Any part of a sentence may become the psychological predicate, the carrier of topical emphasis: on the other hand, entirely different meanings may lie hidden behind one grammatical structure. Accord between syntactical and psychological organisation is not as prevalent as we tend to assume – rather, it is a requirement that is seldom met. Not only subject and predicate, but grammatical gender, number, case, tense, degree, etc. has their psychological doubles. A spontaneous utterance wrong from the point of view of grammar, may have charm and aesthetic value. Absolute correctness is achieved only beyond natural language, in mathematics. Our daily speech continually fluctuates between the ideals of mathematical and of imaginative harmony.
We will illustrate the interdependence of the semantic and the grammatical aspects of language by citing two examples that show that changes in formal structure can entail far-reaching changes in meaning.
In translating the fable “La Cigale et la Fourmi,” Krylov substituted a dragonfly for La Fontaine’s grasshopper. In French Grasshopper is feminine and therefore well suited to symbolise a light-hearted, carefree attitude. The nuance would be lost in a literal translation, since in Russian Grasshopper is masculine. When he settled for dragonflies, which is feminine in Russian, Krylov disregarded the literal meaning in favour of the grammatical form required to render La Fontaine’s thought.
Tjutchev did the same in his translation of Heine’s poem about a fir and a palm. In German fir is masculine and palm feminine, and the poem suggests the love of a man for a woman. In Russian, both trees are feminine. To retain the implication, Tjutchev replaced the fir by a masculine cedar. Lermontov, in his more literal translation of the same poem, deprived it of these poetic overtones and gave it an essentially different meaning, more abstract and generalised. One grammatical detail may, on occasion, change the whole of which is to purport of what is said.
Behind words, there is the independent grammar of thought, the syntax of word meanings. The simplest utterance, far from reflecting a constant, rigid correspondence between sound and meaning, is really a process. Verbal expressions cannot emerge fully formed but must develop gradually. This complex process of transition from meaning to sound must itself be developed and perfected. The child must learn to distinguish between semantics and phonetics and understand the nature of the difference. At first he uses verbal forms and meanings without being conscious of them as separate. The word, to the child, is an integral part of the object it denotes. Such a conception seems to be characteristic of primitive linguistic consciousness. We all know the old story about the rustic who said he wasn’t surprised that savants with all their instruments could figure out the size of stars and their course – what baffled him was how they found out their names. Simple experiments show that preschool children “explain” the names of objects by their attributes. According to them, an animal is called “cow” because it has horns, “calves” because its horns are still small, “dog” because it is small and has no horns; an object is called “car” because it is not an animal. When asked whether one could interchange the names of objects, for instance call a cow “ink,” and ink “cow,” children will answer no, “because ink is used for writing, and the cow gives milk.” An exchange of names would mean an exchange of characteristic features, so inseparable is the connection between them in the child’s mind. In one experiment, the children were told that in a game a dog would be called “cow.” Here is a typical sample of questions and answers: Does a cow have horns? “Yes.” “But do you not remember that the cow is really a dog? Come now, does a dog have horns? “Sure, if it is a cow, if it is called cow, it has horns. That kind of dog has to have little horns.
We can see how difficult it is for children to separate the name of an object from its attributes, which cling to the name when it is transferred like possessions following their owner.
The fusion of the two planes of speech, semantic and vocal begins to break down as the child grows older, and the distance between them gradually increases. Each stage in the development of word meanings has its own specific interrelation of the two planes. A child’s ability to communicate through language is directly related to the differentiation of word meanings in his speech and consciousness.
To understand this, we must remember a basic characteristic of the structure of word meanings. In the semantic structure of a word, we distinguish between referent and meaning correspondingly, we distinguish a word’s nominative from its significative function. When we compare these structural and functional relations at the earliest, middle, and advanced stages of development, we find the following genetic regularity: In the beginning, only the nominative functions exist, and semantically, only the unbiased objective becomes the reference, and independent of naming, and meaning independent of reference, appear later and develop along the paths we have attempted to trace and describe.
Only when this development is completed does the child become fully able to formulate his own thought and to understand the speech of others. Until then, his usage of words coincides with that of adults in its objective reference but not in its meaning.
We must probe still deeper and explore the plane of inner speech lying beyond the semantic plane. We will discuss here some of the data of the special investigation we have made of it. The relationship of thought and word cannot be understood in all its complexity without a clear understanding of the psychological nature of inner speech. Yet, of all the problems connected with thought and language, this is perhaps the most complicated, beset as it is with terminological and other misunderstandings.
The term inner speech, or endophasy, has been applied to various phenomena, and authors argue about different things that they call by the same name. Originally, inner speech seems to have been understood as verbal memory. An example would be the silent recital of a poem known by heart. In that case, inner speech differs from vocal speech only as the idea or image of an object differs from the real object. It was in this sense that inner speech was understood by the French authors who tried to find out how words were reproduced in memory – whether as auditory, visual, motor, or synthetic images. We will see that word memory is indeed one of the constituent elements of inner speech but not all of it.
In a second interpretation, inner speech is seen as truncated external speech - as “speech minus sound” (Mueller) or “sub-vocal speech” (Watson). Bekhterev defined it as a speech reflex inhibited in its motor part. Such an explanation is by no measure of sufficiency. Silent “pronouncing” of words is not equivalent to the total process of inner speech.
The third definition is, on the contrary, too broad. To Goldstein, the term covers everything that precedes the motor act of speaking, including Wundt’s “motives of speech” and the indefinable, non-sensory and non-motor specific speech experience -, i.e., the whole interior aspect of any speech activity. It is hard to accept the equation of inner speech with an inarticulate inner experience in which the separate identifiable structural planes are dissolved without trace. This central experience is common to all linguistic activity, and for this reason alone Goldstein’s interpretation does not fit that specific, unique function that alone deserves the name of inner speech. Logically developed, Goldstein’s view must lead to the thesis that inner speech is not speech at all but rather an intellectual and affective-volitional activity, since it includes the motives of speech and the thought that is expressed in words.
To get a true picture of inner speech, one must embark upon that which is a specific formation, with its own laws and complex relations to the other forms of speech activity. Before we can study its relation to thought, on the one hand, and to speech, on the other, we must determine its special characteristics and function.
Inner speech allows one to speak for one’s external oration, for which of the others would be surprising, if such a difference in function did not affect the structure of the two kinds of speech. Absence of vocalisation per se is only a consequence of the specific nature of inner speech, which is neither an antecedent of external speech nor its reproduction in memory but is, in a sense, the opposite of external speech. The latter is the turning of thought into words, its materialisation and objectification. With inner speech, the process is reversed: Speech turns into inward thought. Consequently, their structures must differ.
The area of inner speech is one of the most difficult to investigate. It remained almost inaccessible to experiments until ways were found to apply the genetic method of experimentation. Piaget was the first to pay attention to the child’s egocentric speech and to see its theoretical significance, but he remained blind to the most important trait of egocentric speech - its genetic connection with inner speech – and this warped his interpretation of its function and structure. We made that relationship the central problem of our study and thus were able to investigate the nature of inner speech with unusual completeness. A number of considerations and observations led us to conclude that egocentric speech is a stage of development preceding inner speech: Both fulfil intellectual functions; Their structures are similar; egocentric speech disappears at school age, when inner speech begins to develop. From all this we infer that one change into the other.
If this transformation does take place, then egocentric speech provides the key to the study of inner speech. One advantage of approaching inner speech through egocentric speech is its accessibility to experimentation and observation. It is still vocalised, audible speech, i.e., external in its mode of expression, but at the same time inner speech in function and structure. To study an internal process, in that it is necessary to externalise it experimentally, by connecting it with some outer activity; barely then is objective functional analysis possible. Egocentric speech is, in fact, a natural experiment of this type.
This method has another great advantage: Since egocentric speech can be studied at the time when some of its characteristics are waning and new ones forming, we are able to judge which traits are essential to inner speech and which are only temporary, and thus to determine the goal of this movement from egocentric to inner speech -, i.e., the nature of inner speech.
Before we go on to the results obtained by this method, we will briefly discuss the nature of egocentric speech, stressing the differences between our theory and Piaget’s. Piaget contends that the child’s egocentric speech is a direct expression of the egocentrism of his thought, which in turn is a compromise between the primary autism of his thinking and its gradual socialisation. As the child grows older, and as autism overturns the associative remembers affiliated to socialisation progresses, leading to the waning of egocentrism in his thinking and speech.
In Piaget’s conception, the child in his egocentric speech does not adapt himself to the thinking of adults. His thought remains entirely egocentric; This makes his talk incomprehensibly to others. Egocentric speech has no function in the child’s realistic thinking or activity, but it merely accompanies them. And since it is an expression of egocentric thought, it disappears together with the child’s egocentrism. From its climax at the beginning of the child’s development, egocentric speech drops to zero on the threshold of school age. Its history is one of involution rather than evolution. It has no future.
In our conception, egocentric speech is a phenomenon of the transition from interpsychic to intrapsychic functioning, i.e., from the social, collective activity of the child to his more individualised activity - a pattern of development common to all the higher psychological functions. Speech for oneself originates through differentiation from speech for others. Since the main course of the child’s development is one of gradual individualisation, this tendency is reflected in the function and structure of his speech.
The function of egocentric speech is similar to that of inner speech: It does not merely accompany the child’s activity; it serves mental orientation, conscious understanding; it helps in overcoming difficulties; it is speech for oneself, intimately and usefully connected with the child’s thinking. Its fate is very different from that described by Piaget. Egocentric speech develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech.
Our hypothesis has several advantages over Piaget’s: It explains the function and development of egocentric speech and, in particular, its sudden increase when the child’s face’s difficulties that demand consciousness and reflection – a fact uncovered by our experiments and which Piaget’s theory cannot explain. But the greatest advantage of our theory is that it supplies a satisfying answer to a paradoxical situation described by Piaget himself. To Piaget, the quantitative drop in egocentric speech as the child grows older means the withering of that form of speech. If that were so, its structural peculiarities might also be expected to decline; it is hard to believe that the process would affect only its quantity, and not its inner structure. The child’s thought becomes infinitely less egocentric between the ages of three and seven. If the characteristics of egocentric speech that make it incomprehensible to others are indeed rooted in egocentrism, they should become less apparent as that form of speech becomes less frequent; Egocentric speech should approach social speech and become ever more intelligible. Yet what are the facts? Is the talk of a three-year-old harder to follow than that of a seven-year-old? Our investigation established that the traits of egocentric speech that makes for inscrutability are at their lowest point at three and at their peak at seven. They develop in a reverse direction to the frequency of egocentric speech. While the latter keeps declining and reaches the point of zero at school age, the structural characteristics become more pronounced.
This throws a new light on the quantitative decrease in egocentric speech, which is the cornerstone of Piaget’s thesis.
What does this decrease mean? The structural peculiarities of speech for oneself and its differentiation from external speech increase with age. What is it that diminishes? Only one of its aspects verbalizes. Does this mean that egocentric speech as a whole is dying out? We believe that it does not, for how then could we explain the growth of the functional and structural traits of egocentric speech? On the other hand, their growth is perfectly compatible with the decrease of vocalisation - indeed, clarifies its meaning. Its rapid dwindling and the equally rapid growth of the other characteristics are contradictory in appearance only.
To explain this, let us start from an undeniable, experimentally established fact. The structural and functional qualities of egocentric speech become more marked as the child develops. At three, the difference between egocentric and social speech matches that to zero; At seven, we have speech that in structure and function is totally unlike social speech. A differentiation of the two speech functions has taken place. This is a fact - and facts are notoriously hard to refute.
Once we accept this, everything else falls into place. If the developing structural and functional peculiarities of egocentric speech progressively isolate it from external speech, then its vocal aspect must fade away. This is exactly what happens between three and seven years. With the progressive isolation of speech for oneself, its vocalisation becomes unnecessary and meaningless and, because of its growing structural peculiarities, also impossible. Speech for oneself cannot find expression in external speech. The more independent and autonomous egocentric speech becomes, the poorer it grows in its external manifestations. In the end it separates itself entirely from speech for others, ceases to be vocalised, and thus appears to die out.
But this is only an illusion. To interpret the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech as a sign that this kind of speech is dying out is like saying that the child stops counting when he ceases to use his fingers and starts adding in his head. In reality, behind the symptoms of dissolution lies a progressive development, the birth of a new speech form.
The decreasing vocalisation of egocentric speech denotes a developing abstraction from sound, the child’s new faculty to “think words” instead of pronouncing them. This is the positive meaning of the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech. The downward curve indicates development toward inner speech.
We can see that all the known facts about the functional, structural, and genetic characteristics of self-indulgent or egocentric speech points to one thing: It develops in the direction of inner speech. Its developmental history can be understood only as a gradual unfolding of the traits of inner speech.
We believe that this corroborates our hypothesis about the origin and nature of egocentric speech. To turn our hypothesis into a certainty, we must devise an experiment capable of showing which of the two interpretations is correct. What are the data for this critical experiment?
Let us restate the theories between which we must decide as for Piaget believes, that egocentric speech stems from the insufficient socialisation of speech and that its only development is decrease and eventual death. Its culmination lies in the past. Inner speech is something new brought in from the outside along with socialisation. We demonstrated that in egocentric speech stems from the insufficient individualisation of primary social speech. Its culmination lies in the future. It develops into inner speech.
To obtain evidence for one or the other view, we must place the child alternately in experimental situations encouraging social speech and in situations discouraging it, and see how these changes affect egocentric speech. We consider this an experimentum crucis for the following reasons.
If the child’s egocentric talk results from the egocentrism of his thinking and its insufficient socialisation, then any weakening of the social elements in the experimental setup, any factor contributing to the child’s isolation from the group, must lead to a sudden increase in egocentric speech. But if the latter results from an insufficient differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, then the same changes must cause it to decrease.
We took as the starting point of our experiment three of Piaget’s own observations: (1) Egocentric speech occurs only in the presence of other children engaged in the same activity, and not when the child is alone; i.e., it is a collective monologue. (2) The child is under the illusion that his egocentric talk, directed to nobody, is understood by those who surround him. (3) Egocentric speech has the character of external speech: It is audible or whispered. These are certainly not chance peculiarities. From the child’s own point of view, egocentric speech is not yet separated from social speech. It occurs under the subjective and objective conditions of social speech and may be considered a correlate of the insufficient isolation of the child’s individual consciousness from the social whole.
In our first series of experiments, we tried to destroy the illusion of being understood. After measuring the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation similar to that of Piaget’s experiments, we put him into a new situation: Either with deaf-mute children or with children speaking a foreign language. In all other respects the setup remained the same. The coefficient of egocentric speech dropped to zero in the majority of cases, and in the rest to one-eighth of the previous figure, on the average. This proves that the illusion of being understood is not a mere epiphenomenon of egocentric speech but is functionally connected with it. Our results must seem paradoxical from the point of view of Piaget’s theory: The weaker the child’s contact is with the group – amounting to less of the social situation forces’ him to adjust his thoughts to others and to use social speech – that there is more as freely should be the egocentrism of his thinking and speech manifest itself. But from the point of view of our hypothesis, the meaning of these findings is clear: Egocentric speech, springing from the lack of differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, disappears when the feeling of being understood, essential for social speech, is absent.
In the second series of experiments, the variable factor was the possibility of some collective monologue. Having measured the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation permitting collective monologue, we put him into a situation excluding it - in a group of children who were strangers to him, or by his being of self, at which point, a separate table in a corner of the room, for which he worked entirely alone, even the experimenter leaving the room. The results of this series agreed with the first results. The exclusion of the group monologue caused a drop in the coefficient of egocentric speech, though not such a striking one as in the first case - seldom to zero and, on the average, to one-sixth of the original figure. The different methods of precluding a collective characterize monologues that were not equally effective in reducing the coefficient of egocentric speech. The trend, however, was obvious in all the variations of the experiment. The exclusion of the collective factor, instead of giving full freedom to egocentric speech, depressed it. Our hypothesis was once more confirmed.
In the third series of experiments, the variable factor was the vocal quality of egocentric speech. Just outside the laboratory where the experiment was in progress, an orchestra played so loudly, or so much noise was made, that it drowned out not only the voices of others but the child’s own; in a variant of the experiment, the child was expressly forbidden to talk loudly and allowed to talk only in whispers. Once again the coefficient of egocentric speech went down, the relation to the original unit being the different methods were not equally effective, but the basic trend was invariably present.
The purpose of all three series of experiments was to eliminate those characteristics of egocentric speech that bring it close to social speech. We found that this always led to the dwindling of egocentric speech. It is logical, then, to assume that egocentric speech is a form developing out of social speech and not yet separated from it in its manifestation, though already distinct in function and structure.
The disagreement between us and Piaget on this point will be made quite clear by the following example: I am sitting at my desk talking to a person who is behind me and whom I cannot see; he leaves the room without my noticing it, and I continue to talk, under the illusion that he listens and understands. Outwardly, I am talking with myself and for myself, but psychologically my speech is social. From the point of view of Piaget’s theory, the opposite happens in the case of the child: His egocentric talk is for and with himself; it only has the appearance of social speech, just as my speech gave the false impression of being egocentric. From our point of view, the whole situation is much more complicated than that: Subjectively, the child’s egocentric speech already has its own peculiar function - to that extent, it is independent from social speech; Yet its independence is not complete because it is not felt as inner speech and is not distinguished by the child from speech for others. Objectively, also, it is different from social speech but again not entirely, because it functions only within social situations. Both subjectively and objectively, egocentric speech represents a transition from speech for others to speech for oneself. It already has the function of inner speech but remains similar to social speech in its expression.
The investigation of egocentric speech has paved the way to the understanding of inner speech, while our experiments convinced us that inner speech must be regarded, not as speech minus sound, but as an entirely separate speech function. Its main distinguishing trait is its peculiar syntax. Compared with external speech, inner speech appears disconnected and incomplete.
This is not a new observation. All the students of inner speech, even those who approached it from the behaviouristic standpoint, noted this trait. The method of genetic analysis permits us to go beyond a mere description of it. We applied this method and found that as egocentric speech transforms by its showing tendencies toward an altogether specific form of abbreviation: Namely, omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connected with it, while preserving the predicate. This tendency toward predication appears in all our experiments with such regularity that we must assume it to be the basic syntactic form of inner speech.
It may help us to understand this tendency if we recall certain situations in which external speech shows a similar structure. Pure predication occurs in external speech in two cases: Either as an answer or when the subject of the sentence is known beforehand to all concerned. The answer to “Would you like a cup of tea?” is never “No, I do not want a cup of tea “ but a simple “No.?” Obviously, such a sentence is possible only because its subject is tacitly understood by both parties. To “Has your brother read this book?” No one ever replies, “Yes, my brother has read this book.” The answer is a short “Yes,” or “Yes, he has.” Now let us imagine that several people are waiting for a bus. No one will say, on seeing the bus approach, “The bus for which we are waiting is coming.” The sentence is likely to be an abbreviated “Coming,” or some such expression, because the subject is plain from the situation. Exceptionally hold to a frequent shortened sentence causing confusion. The listener may relate the sentence to a subject foremost in his own mind, not the one meant by the speaker. If the thoughts of two people coincide, perfect understanding can be achieved through the use of mere predicates, but if they are thinking about different things they are bound to misunderstand each other.
Having examined abbreviation in external speech, we can now return enriched to the same phenomenon in inner speech, where it is not an exception but the rule. It will be instructive to compare abbreviation in oral, inner, and written speech. Communication in writing relies on the formal meanings of words and requires a much greater number of words than oral speech to convey the same idea. It is addressed to an absent person who rarely has in mind the same subject as the writer. Therefore, it must be fully deployed; Syntactic differentiation is at a maximum, and expressions are used that would seem unnatural in conversation. Griboedov’s “He talks like writing” refers to the droll effect of elaborate constructions in daily speech.
The multifunctional nature of language, which has recently attracted the close attention of linguists, had already been pointed out by Humboldt in relation to poetry and prose – two forms very different in function and in the means they use. Poetry, according to Humboldt, is inseparable from music, while prose depends entirely on language and is dominated by thought. Consequently, each has its own diction, grammar, and syntax. This is a conception of primary importance, although neither Humboldt nor those who encourage in developing his thought fully realised its implications. They distinguished only between poetry and prose, and within the latter between the exchange of ideas and ordinary conversation, i.e., the mere exchange of news or conventional chatter. There are other important functional distinctions in speech. One of them is the distinction between dialogue and monologue, as if written through the avenue of inner speech representation whereby it seems profoundly definitely strung by the monologue; The totalities of expression are uttered of some oral fashion as their linguistic manner as to be inferred by the spoken exchange that might be correlated by speech, in that in most cases, are contained through dialogue.
Dialogue always presupposes that in accordance with the collaborator’s formality that holds within the forming of knowledge, which it is maintained by its subject and is likely to be approved by an abbreviated speech and, under certain conditions, purely predicative sentences. It also presupposes that each person can see his partners, their facial expressions and gestures, and hear the tone of their voices. We have already discussed abbreviation and will consider here only its auditory aspect, using a classical example from Dostoevski’s, The Diary of a Writer, to show how much intonation helps the subtly differentiated understanding of a word’s meaning.
Dostoevski relates a conversation of drunks that entirely consisted of one unprintable word: “One Sunday night I happened to walk for some fifteen paces next to a group of six drunken young labourers, and I suddenly realised that all thoughts, feelings and even a whole chain of reasoning could be expressed by that one noun, which is moreover extremely short. One young fellow said it harshly and forcefully, to express his utter contempt for whatever it was they had all been talking about. Another answered with the same noun but in a quite different tone and sense - doubting that the negative attitude of the first one was warranted. A third suddenly became incensed against the first and roughly intruded on the conversation, excitedly shouting the same noun, this time as a curse and obscenity. Here the second fellow interfered again, angry with the third, the aggressor, and restraining him, in the sense of “Presently, as to implicate the now in question why to do you have to butt in, we were discussing things quietly and here you come and start swearing. And he told this whole thought in one word, the same venerable word, except that he also raised his hand and put it on the third fellow’s shoulder. All at once a fourth, the youngest of the group, who had kept silent till then, probably having suddenly found a solution to the original difficulty that had started the argument, raised his hand in a transport of joy and shouted . . . Eureka, do you think? I have it? No, not eureka and not I have it; he repeated the unprintable noun, one word, merely one word, but with ecstasy, in a shriek of delight - which was apparently too strong, because the sixth and the oldest, a glum-looking fellow, did not like it and cut the infantile joy of the other one short, addressing him in a sullen, exhortative bass and repeating . . . yes, still the same noun, forbidden in the presence of ladies but which this time clearly meant “What are you yelling yourself hoarse for? So, without uttering a single other word, they repeated that one beloved word is six times in a row, and only one after another, and understood one another completely.” [The Diary of a Writer]
Inflection reveals the psychological context within which a word is to be understood. In Dostoevski’s story, it was contemptuous negation in one case, doubt in another, anger in the third. When the context is as clear as in this example, it really becomes possible to convey all thoughts, feelings, and even a whole chain of reasoning by one word.
In written speech, as tone of voice and knowledge of subject are excluded, we are obliged to use many more words, and to use them more exactly. Written speech is the most elaborate form of speech.
Some linguists consider dialogue the natural form of oral speech, the one in which language fully reveals its nature, and monologue to a greater degree for being artificial. Psychological investigation leaves no doubt that monologue is indeed the higher, more complicated form, and of later historical development. At present, however, we are interested in comparing them only in regard with the tendency toward abbreviation.
The speed of oral speech is unfavourable to a complicated process of formulation, but it does not leave time for deliberation and choice. Dialogue implies immediate unpremeditated utterance. It consists of replies, repartee; it is a chain of reactions. Monologue, by comparison, is a complex formation; the linguistic elaboration can be attended too leisurely and consciously.
In written speech, lacking situational and expressive supports, communication must be achieved only through words and their combinations; this requires the speech activity to take complicated forms - hence the use of first drafts. The evolution from the draft to the final copy reflects our mental process. Planning has an important part in written speech, even when we do not actually write out a draft. Usually we say to ourselves what we are going to write; This is also a draft, though in thought only. As we tried to show in the preceding chapter, this mental draft is inner speech. Since inner speech functions as a draft not only in written but also in oral speech, we will now compare both these forms with inner speech in respect to the tendency toward abbreviation and predication.
This tendency, never found in written speech and only some times in oral speech, arises in inner speech always. Predication is the natural form of inner speech, psychologically as it consists of predicates only. It is as much a law of inner speech to omit subjects as it is a law of written speech to contain both subjects and predicates.
The key to this experimentally established fact is the invariable, inevitable presence in inner speech of the factors that facilitate pure predication: We know what we are thinking about -, i.e., we always know the subject and the situation. Psychological contact between partners in a conversation may establish a mutual perception leading to the understanding of abbreviated speech. In inner speech, the “mutual” perception is always there, in absolute form; Therefore, a practically wordless “communisation” of even the most complicated thoughts is the rule. The predominance of predication is a product of development. In the beginning, egocentric speech is identical in structure with social speech, but in the process of its transformation into inner speech it gradually becomes less thorough and coherent as it becomes governed by the entire predicative syntax. Experiments show clearly how and why the new syntax takes hold. The child talks about the things he sees or hears or does at a given moment. As a result, he tends to leave out the subject and all words connected with it, condensing his speech frequently until only predicates are left. The more differentiated the specific function of egocentric speech becomes, the more pronounced are its syntactic peculiarities - simplification and predication. Hand in hand with this change goes decreasing vocalisation. When we converse with ourselves, we need even fewer words than Kitty and Levin did. Inner speech is speech almost without words.
With syntax and sound reduced to a minimum, meaning is more than ever in the forefront. Inner speech works with semantics, not phonetics. The specific semantic structure of inner speech also contributes to abbreviation. The syntax of meanings in inner speech is no less original than its grammatical syntax. Our investigation established three main semantic peculiarities of inner speech.
The first and basic one is the preponderance of the sense of a word over its meaning, and a distinction we accredit to Paulhan. The sense of a word, according to him, is the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, fluid, complex whole, which has several zones of unequal stability. Means is only one of the zones of sense, are the most stable and precise area. A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realisation in speech.
The last words of the previously mentioned fable by Krylov, “The Dragonfly and the Ant,” is a good illustration of the difference between sense and meaning. The words “Go and dances” comprise of a definite and constant meaning, but in the context of the fable they acquire a much broader intellectual and affective sense. They mean both to “Enjoy yourself” and “Perish.” This enrichment of words by the sense they gain from the context is the fundamental law of the dynamics of word meanings. A frame in the circumstance of having to a context, it means both are more and fewer than the same word in isolation: More, because it acquires new content; less, because its meaning is limited and narrowed by the context. The sense of a word, says Paulhan, is a complex, mobile, protean phenomenon; it changes in different minds and situations and is almost unlimited. A word derives its sense from the sentence, which in turn gets its sense from the paragraph, the paragraph from the book, the book from all the works of the author.
Paulhan rendered a further service to psychology by analysing the relation between word and sense and showing that they are much more independent of each other than word and meaning. It has long been known that words can change their sense. Recently it was pointed out that sense can change words or, better, that ideas often change their names. Just as the sense of a word is connected with the whole word, and not with its single sounds, the sense of a sentence is connected with the whole sentence, and not with its individual words. Therefore, a word may sometimes be replaced by another without any change in sense. Words and sense are relatively independent of each other.
In inner speech, the predominance of sense over meaning, of the sentences over communicative words as their formalities and of context over sentences that are the rule.
This leads us to the other semantic peculiarities of inner speech. Both concern word combination. One of them is rather like agglutination, and a way of combining words fairly frequents in some languages and comparatively rare in others. German often forms one noun out of several words or phrases. In some primitive languages, such adhesion of words is a general rule. When several words are merged into one word, the new word not only expresses a rather complex idea but designates all the separate elements contained in that idea. Because the stress is always on the main root or idea, such languages are easy to understand. The egocentric speech of the child displays some analogous phenomena. As egocentric speech approaches inner speech, the child uses agglutination frequently as a way of forming compound words to express complex ideas.
The third basic semantic peculiarity of inner speech is the way in which senses of words combine and unite - a process governed by different laws from those governing combinations of meanings. When we observed this singular way of uniting words in egocentric speech, we called it “influx of sense.” The senses of different words flow into one another - literally “influence” one and another - so that the earlier ones are contained in, and modify, the later ones. Thus, a word that keeps recurring in a book or a poem sometimes absorbs all the variety of sense contained in it and becomes, in a way, equivalent to the work itself. The title of literary works expresses its content and completes its sense to a much greater degree than does the name of a painting or of a piece of music. Titles like Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Anna Karenina illustrate this very clearly - the whole sense of its operative word is contained in one name. Another excellent example is Gogol’s Dead Souls. Originally, the title referred to dead serfs whose names had not yet been removed from the official lists and who could still be bought and sold as if they were alive. It is in this sense that the words are used throughout the book, which is built up around this traffic in the dead. But through their intimate relationship with which the work as a whole, as these two words acquire the diversity of new and changing significance, an infinitely broader sense. When we reach the end of the book, “Dead Souls” means to us not so much the defunct serfs as all the characters in the story, who are alive physically but dead spiritually.
In inner speech, the phenomenon reaches its peak. A single word is so saturated with sense that many words would be required to explain it in external speech. No wonder about why egocentric speech is incomprehensible to others. Watson says that inner speech would be incomprehensible even if it could be recorded. Its opaqueness is further increased by a related phenomenon that, incidentally, Tolstoy noted in external speech: In Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth, he describes how between people in close psychological contact words acquire special meanings understood only by the initiated. In inner speech, the same kind of idiom develops – the kind that is difficult to translate into the language of external speech.
With this we will conclude our survey of the peculiarities of inner speech, which we first observed in our investigation of egocentric speech. In looking for comparisons in external speech, we found that the latter already contain, potentially at least, the traits typical of inner speech; Predication, decreases the vocalisation, and preponderance of sense over meaning, agglutinations, etc., appear under certain conditions also in external speech. This, we believe, is the best confirmation of our hypothesis that inner speech originates through the differentiation of egocentric speech from the child’s primary social speech.
All our observations indicate that inner speech is an autonomous speech function. We can confidently regard it as a distinct plane of verbal thought. It is evident that the transition from inner to external speech is not a simple translation from one language into another. It cannot be achieved by merely vocalising silent speech. It is a complex, dynamic process involving the transformation of the predicative, idiomatic structure of inner speech into syntactically articulated speech intelligible to others.
We can now return to the definition of inner speech that we proposed before presenting our analysis. Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech, but it is a function in itself. It remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings. It is a dynamic, shifting, unstable thing, fluttering between word and thought, as two more or less sensible stables that are more or less firmly delineated components of verbal thought. Its true nature and place can be understood only after examining the next plane of verbal thought the one still more inward than inner speech.
That plane is thought itself. As we have said, every thought creates a connection, fulfils a function, solves a problem. The flow of thought is not accompanied by a simultaneous unfolding of speech. The two processes are not identical, and there is no rigid correspondence between the units of thought and speech. This is especially obvious when a thought process miscarries - when, as Dostoevski put it, a thought “will not enter words.” Thought has its own structure, and the transition from it to speech is no easy matter. The theatre faced the problem of the thought behind the words before psychology did. In teaching his system of acting, Stanislavsky required the actors to uncover the “subtext” of their lines in a play. In Griboedov’s comedy Woe from Wit, the hero, Chatsky, says to the hero, who maintains that she has never stopped thinking of him, “Thrice blessed who believes. Believing warms the heart.” Stanislavsky interpreted this as “Let us stop this mutter”; However, to stop, it could just as well be interpreted as “I do not believe you. You say it to comfort me,” or as “Don’t you see how you torment me? I wish I could believe you. That would be bliss.” Every sentence that we say in real life has some kind of subtext, a thought hidden behind it. In the examples we gave earlier of the lack of coincidence between grammatical and psychological subject and predicate, we did not pursue our analysis to the end. Just as one sentence may express different thoughts, one thought may be expressed in different sentences. For instance, “The clock fell,” in answer to the question “Why did the clock stop?” Could mean? “It is not my fault that the clock is out of order; it fell.” The same thought, for determining the self justification, could take the form of “It is not my habit to touch other people’s things. I was just dusting here,” or a number of others.
Though, unlike speech, does not consist of separate units. When I wish to communicate the thought that today I saw a barefoot boy in a blue shirt running down the street, I do not see every item separately: the boy, the shirt, its blue colour, his running, the absence of shoes. I conceive of all this in one thought, but I put it into separate words. A speaker often takes several minutes to disclose one thought. In his mind the whole thought is present at once, but in speech it has to be developed successively. A thought may be compared with a cloud shedding a shower of words. Precisely because thought does not have its automatic counterpart in words, the transition from thought to word leads through meaning. In our speech, there is always the hidden thought, the subtext. Because a direct transition from thought to word is impossible, there have always been laments about the inexpressibility of thought: “How shall the heart express itself? How shall another understand?”
Direct communication between minds is impossible, not only physically but psychologically. Communication can be achieved only in a roundabout way. Thought must pass first through meanings and then through words.
We come now to the last step in our analysis of verbal thought. Though to be itself is too engendered by motivation, i.e., by our desires and needs, our interests and emotions. Behind every thought there is an affective-volitional tendency, which holds the answer to the last “why” in the analysis of thinking. A true and full understanding of another’s thought is possible only when we understand its affective-volitional basis. We will illustrate this by an example already used: The interpretation of parts in a play. Stanislavsky, in his instructions to actors, listed the motives behind the words of their parts.
To understand another’s speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words, but we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough - we must also know its motivation. No psychological analysis of an utterance is complete until that plane is reached.
In the end, the verbal thought appeared as a complex, dynamic entity, and the relation of thought and word within it as a movement through a series of planes. Our analysis followed the process from the outermost to the innermost plane. In reality, the development of verbal thought takes the opposite course: From the motive that engenders a thought to the shaping of the thought, first in inner speech, then in meanings of words, and finally in words. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that this is the only road from thought to word. The development may stop at any point in its complicated course; An infinite variety of movements back and forth, of ways still unknown to us, is possible. A study of these manifold variations lies beyond the scope of our present task.
Here we have wished to study the inner workings of thought and speech, hidden from direct observation. Meaning and the whole inward aspects of language, the position of which its turning toward the person, is not toward the outer world, have been so far an almost unknown territory. No matter how they were interpreted, the relations between thought and word were always considered constant, established forever. Our investigation has shown that they are, on the contrary, delicate, changeable relations between processes, which arise during the development of verbal thought. We did not intend to, and could not, exhaust the subject of verbal thought. We tried only to give a general conception of the infinite complexity of this dynamic structure - a conception starting from experimentally documented facts.
To association psychology, thought and its inscription of words was united by external bonds, similar to the bonds between two nonsense syllables. Gestalt psychology introduced the concept of structural bonds but, like the older theory, did not account for the specific relations between thought and word. All the other theories grouped themselves around two poles - either the behaviourist concept of thought as speech minus sound or the idealistic view, held by the Wuerzburg school and Bergson, that thought could be “pure,” unrelated to language, and that it was distorted by words. Tjutchev’s “A thought once uttered is a lie” could well serve as an epigraph for the latter group. Whether inclining toward pure naturalism or extreme idealism, all these theories have one trait in common - their antihistorical bias. They study thought and speech without any reference to their developmental history.
A historical theory of inner speech can deal with this immense and complex problem. The relation between thought and word is a living process; Thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow. The connection between them, however, is not a preformed and constant one. It emerges in the course of development, and it evolves. To the Biblical “In the beginning was the Word,” Goethe makes Faust reply, “In the beginning was the deed.” The intent here is to detract from the value of the word, but we can accept this version if we emphasise it differently: In the beginning was the deed. The word was not the beginning, and action was there first; it is the end of development, crowning the deed.
We cannot, without mentioning the perspectives that our investigation opens. We studied the inward aspects of speech, which were as unknown to science as the other side of the moon. We showed that a generalised reflection of reality is the basic characteristic of words. This aspect of the word brings us to the threshold of a wider and deeper subject - the general problem of consciousness. Though and language, for which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, that which is the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness
The hermetic tradition has long been concerned with the relationship between the inner world of our consciousness and the outer world of nature, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, below and the above, the material and the spiritual, the centric and the peripheral. The hermetic world view held by such as Robert Fludd, having conceived by some great chain of being linking our inner spark of consciousness with all the facets of the Great World. There were grands to see the platonic metaphysical clockwork, as it were, through which our inner world was linked by means of a hierarchy of beings and planes to the highest unity of the Divine.
This view though comforting is philosophically unsound, and the developments in thought since the early 17th century have made such a hermetic world view seems as untenable and still philosophically naive. It is impossible to try to argue the case for such an hermetic metaphysic with anyone who has had philosophical training, for they will quickly and mercilessly reveal deep philosophical contradictions in this world view.
So do we now have to abandon such a beautiful and spiritual world view and adopt the prevailing reductionist materialist conception of the world that has become accepted in the intellectual tradition of the West?
I am not so sure. There still remains the problem of our consciousness and its relationship to our material form - the Mind / Brain problem. Behavioural psychologists such as Skinner tried to reduce this to one level - the material brain - by viewing the mental or consciousness events from the outside for being merely, stimulus-response loops. This simplistic view works well for basic reflex actions - "I itch therefore I scratch" - but dissolves into absurdity when applied to any real act of the creative intellect or artistic imagination. Skinners’ determinism collapses when confronted with trying to explain the creative source of our consciousness revealing itself in an artist at work or a mathematician discovering through his thinking a new property of an abstract mathematical system. The psychologists' attempts to reduce the mind/brain problem to a merely material one of neurophysiology obviously failed. The idea that consciousness is merely a secretion or manifestation of a complex net of electrical impulses working within the mass of cells in our brain, is now discredited. The advocates of this view are strongly motivated by a desire to reduce the world to one level, to get rid of the necessity for "consciousness,” "mind" or "spirit" as a real facet of the world.
This materialistic determinism in which everything in the world (including the phenomenon of consciousness) can be reduced to simple interactions on a physical/chemical level, belongs really to the nineteenth century scientific landscape. Nineteenth century science was founded upon a "Newtonian Absolute Physics" which provided a description of the world as an interplay of forces obeying immutable laws and following a predetermined pattern. This is the "billiard ball" view of the world - one in which, provided we are given the initial state of the system (the layout of the balls on the table, and the exact trajectory, momentum and other parameters of the cue ball, etc.) then theoretically the exact layout after each interaction can be precisely calculated to absolute precision. All could be reduced to the determinate interplay of matter obeying the immutable laws of physics. The concept of the "spiritual" was unnecessary, even "mind" was dispensable, and "God" of course had no place in this scheme of things.
This comfortably solid "Newtonian" world view of the materialists has however been entirely undermined by the new physics of the twentieth century, and in particular through Quantum Theory. Physicists investigating the properties of sub-atomic matter, found that the deterministic Newtonian absolutism broke down at the foundation level of matter. An element of probability had to be introduced into the physicists' calculations, and each sub-atomic event was itself inherently unpredictably - one could only ascribe a probability to the outcome. The simple billiard ball model collapsed at the sub-atomic level. For if the billiard table was intended as a picture of a small region of space on the atomic scale and each ball was to be a particle (an electron, proton, or neutron, etc.), then physicists came to realise that this model could not represent reality on that level. For in Quantum theory one could not define the position and momentum of a particle both at the same moment. As soon as we establish the parameters of motion of a body, its position is uncertain and can only be described mathematically as a wave of probability. Our billiard table dissolved into a fluid ever-moving undulating surface, with each ball at one moment focussed to a point then at another dissolving and spreading itself out over an area of the space of the table. Trying to play billiards at this sub-atomic level was rather difficult.
In the Quantum picture of the world, each individual event cannot be determined exactly, but has to be described by a wave of probability. There is a kind of polarity between the position and energy of any particle in which they cannot be simultaneously determined. This was not a failing of experimental method but a property of the kinds of mathematical structures that physicists have to use to describe this realm of the world. The famous equation of Quantum theory embodying Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is: Planck's constant = (uncertainty in energy) x (uncertainty in position)
Thus if we try to fix the position of the particle (i.e., reduce the uncertainty in its position to a small factor) then as a consequence of this equation the uncertainty in the energy must increase to balance this, and therefore we cannot find a value for the energy of the particle simultaneous with fixing its position. Planck's constant being very small means that these infractions as based of the factors only become dominant on the extremely small scale, which are within the realm of the atom.
So we see that the Quantum picture of reality has at its foundation a non-deterministic view of the fundamental building Forms of matter. Of course, when dealing with large masses of particles these quantum indeterminacies effectively cancel each other out, and physicists can determine and predict the state of large systems. Obviously planets, suns, galaxies being composed of large numbers of particles do not exhibit any uncertainty in their position and energies, for when we look at such large aggregates as some of its totality, the total quantum uncertainty is a systems reduction as placed by zero, and in respect to their large scale properties can effectively be treated as deterministic systems.
Thus on the large scale we can effectively apply a deterministic physics, but when we wish to look in detail at the properties of the sub-atomic realm, lying at the root and foundation of our world, we must enter a domain of quantum uncertainties and find the neat ordered picture dissolving into a sea of ever flowing forces that we cannot tie down or set into fixed patterns.
Some people when faced with this picture of reality find comfort in dismissing the quantum world as having little to do with the "real world" of appearances. We do not live within the sub-atomic level after all. However, it does spill out into our outer world. Most of the various electronic devices of the past decades rely on the quantum tunnelling effect in transistors and silicon chips. The revolution in quantum physics has begun to influence the life sciences, and biologists and botanists are beginning to come up against quantum events as the basis of living systems, in the structure of complex molecules in the living tissues and membranes of cells for example. When we look at the blue of the sky, we are looking at a phenomenon only recently understood through quantum theory.
Although the Quantum picture of reality might seem strange indeed, I believe the picture it presents of the foundations of the material world, the ever flowing sea of forces metamorphosing and interacting through the medium of "virtual" or quantum messenger particles, has certain parallels with nature of our consciousness.
I believe that if we try to examine the nature of our consciousness we will find at its basis it exhibits "quantum" like qualities. Seen from a distant, large scale and external perspective, we seem to be able to structure our consciousness in an exact and precise way, articulating thoughts and linking them together into long chains of arguments and intricate structures. Our consciousness can build complex images through its activity and seems to have all the qualities of predictability and solidity. The consciousness of a talented architect is capable of designing and holding within itself an image of large solid structures such as great cathedrals or public buildings. A mathematician is capable of inwardly picturing an abstract mathematical system, deriving its properties from a set of axioms.
In this sense our consciousness might appear as an ordered and deterministic structure, capable of behaving like and being explicable in the same terms as other large scale structures in the world. However, this is not so. For if we through introspection try to examine the way in which we are conscious, in a sense to look at the atoms of our consciousness, this regular structure disappears. Our consciousness does not actually work in such an ordered way. We only nurture an illusion if we try to hold to the view that our consciousness is fixed by an ordered deterministic structure. True, we can create the large scale designs of the architect, the abstract mathematical systems, a cello concerto, but anyone who has built such structures within their consciousness knows that this is not achieved by a linear deterministic route.
Our consciousness is at its root a maverick, ever moving, increasing by its accommodating perception, feeling, thought, to another. We can never hold it still or focus it at a point for long. Like the quantum nature of matter, the more we try to hold our consciousness to a fixed point, the greater the uncertainty in its energy will become. So when we focus and narrow our consciousness to a fixed centre, it is all the more likely to jump with a great rush of energy to some seemingly unrelated aspect of our inner life suddenly. We all have such experiences each moment of the day. As in our daily work we try to focus our mind upon some problem only to experience a shift to another domain in ourselves suddenly, another image or emotional current intrudes then vanishes again, like an ephemeral virtual particle in quantum theory.
Those who begin to work upon their consciousness through some kinds of meditative exercises will experience these quantum uncertainties in the field of consciousness in a strong way.
In treating our consciousness as if it were a digital computer or deterministic machine after the model of 19th century science, I believe we foster a limited and false view of our inner world. We must now take the step toward a quantum view of consciousness, recognising that at its base and root our consciousness behaves like the ever flowing sea of the sub-atomic world. The ancient hermeticists foresaw consciousness as the "Inner Mercury.” Those who have experienced the paradoxical way in which the metal Mercury is both dense and metallic and yet so elusive, flowing and breaking up into small globules, and just as easily coming together again, will see how perceptive the alchemists were of the inner nature of consciousness, in choosing this analogy. Educators who treat the consciousness of children as if it were a filing cabinet to be filled with ordered arrays of knowledge are hopelessly wrong.
We can believe of the stepping stones whereby the formidable combinations await to the presence of the future, yet the nature of consciousness, and the look upon of what we see is justly to how this overlays links’ us with the mind/brain problem. The great difficulty in developing a theory of the way in which consciousness/mind is embodied in the activity of the brain, has I believe arisen out of the erroneous attempt to press a deterministic view onto our brain activity. Skinner and the behaviourist psychologists attempted to picture the activity of the brain as a computer where each cell behaved as an input/output device or a complex flip/flop. They saw nerve cells with their axons (output fibres) and dendrites (input fibres) being linked together into complex networks. An electrical impulse travelling onto a dendrite made a cell ‘fire’ and sent an impulse out along its axon so setting another nerve cell into action. The resulting patterns of nerve impulses constituted a reflex action, an impulse to move a muscle, a thought, a feeling, an intuitive experience. All could be reduced to the behaviour of this web of axons and dendrites of the nerve cells.
This simplistic picture, of course, was insufficient to explain even the behaviour of creatures like worms with primitive nervous systems, and in recent years this approach has largely been abandoned as it is becoming recognised that these events on the membranes of nerve cells are often triggered by shifts in the energy levels of sub-atomic particles such as electrons. In fact, at the root of such interactions lie quantum events, and the activity of the brain must now be seen as reflecting these quantum events.
The brain can no longer be seen as a vast piece of organic clockwork, but as a subtle device amplifying quantum events. If we trace a nerve impulse down to its root, there lies a quantum uncertainty, a sea of probability. So just how is it that this sea of probability can cast up such ordered structures and systems as the conception of a cello concerto or abstract mathematical entities? Perhaps here we may glimpse a way in which "spirit" can return into our physics.
The inner sea of quantum effects in our brain is in some way coupled to our ever flowing consciousness. When our consciousness focusses to a point, and we concentrate on some abstract problem or outer phenomenon, the physical events in our brain, the pattern of impulses, shifts in some ordered way. In a sense, the probability waves of a number of quantum systems in different parts of the brain, are brought into resonance, and our consciousness is able momentarily to create an ordered pattern that manifests physically through the brain. The thought, feeling, perception is momentarily earthed in physical reality, brought from the realm of the spiritual potential into outer actuality. This focussed ordering of the probability waves of many quantum systems requires an enormous amount of energy, but this can be borrowed in the quantum sense for a short instant of time. Thus we have through this quantum borrowing a virtual quantum state that is the physical embodiment of a thought, feeling, etc. However, as this can only be held for a short time, the quantum debt must be paid and the point of our consciousness is forced to jump to another quantum state, perhaps in another region of the brain. Thus our thoughts are jumbled up with emotions, perceptions, fantasy images.
The central point within our consciousness, our "spirit" in the hermetic sense, can now be seen as an entity that can work to control quantum probabilities. To our "spirits" our brain is a quantum sea providing a rich realm in which it can incarnate and manifest patterns down into the electrical/chemical impulses of the nervous system. (It has been calculated that the number of interconnections existing in our brains far exceeds the number of atoms in the whole universe - so in this sense the microcosm truly mirrors the macrocosm!). Our "spirit" allows the unswerving quantum, of which it borrows momentarily to press of a certain order into this sea that manifests the containment of a thought, emotion, etc. Such an ordered state can only exist momentarily, before our spirit or point of consciousness is forced to jump and move to other regions of the brain, where at that moment the pattern of probability waves for the particles in these nerve cells, can reflect the form that our spirit is trying with which to work.
This quantum borrowing to create regular patterns of probability waves is bought for a high price in that a degree of disorder must inevitably arise whenever the spirit tries to focus and reflect a linked sequential chain of patterns into the brain (such as we would experience as a logical adaption of our thought or some inward picture of some elaborate structure). Thus, it is not surprising that our consciousness sometimes brings to adrift and jumps about in a seemingly chaotic way. The quantum borrowing might also be behind our need for sleep and dream, allowing the physical brain to rid itself of the shadowy echos of these patterns pressed into it during waking consciousness. Dreaming may be that point in a cycle where consciousness and its vehicle interpenetrate and flow together, allowing the patterns and waves of probability to appear without any attempt to focus them to a point. In dream and sleep we experience our point of consciousness dissolving, decoupling and defocussing.
The central point of our consciousness, when actively thinking or feeling, must jump around the sea of patterns in our brain. (It is well known through neurophysiology that function cannot be located at a certain point in the brain, but that different areas and groups of nerve cells can take on a variety of different functions.) We all experience this when in meditation we merely let our consciousness move as it will. Then we come to sense the elusive mercurial eternal movement of the point of our consciousness within our inner space. You will find it to be a powerful and convincing experience if you try in meditation to follow the point of your consciousness moving within the space of your skull. Many religious traditions teach methods for experiencing this inner point of spirit.
I believe the movement of this point of consciousness, which appears as a pattern of probability waves in the quantum sea, must occur in extremely short segments of time, of necessity shorter than the time an electron takes to move from one state to another within the molecular structure of the nerve cell membranes. We are thus dealing in time scales significantly less than 10 to the power -16 of a second and possibly down to 10 to the power -43 of a second. During such short periods of time, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that lies at the basis of quantum theory, means that this central spark of consciousness can borrow a large amount of energy, which explains how it can bring a large degree of ordering into a pattern. Although our point of consciousness lives at this enormously fast speed, our brain, which transforms this into a pattern of electro/chemical activity runs at a much slower rate. Between creating each pattern our spark of consciousness must wait almost an eternity for this to be manifested on the physical level. Perhaps this may account for the sense we all have sometimes of taking an enormous leap in consciousness, or travelling though vast realms of ideas, or flashes of images, in what is only a fleeting moment.
At around 10 to the power -43 of a second, time itself becomes quantized, that is it appears as discontinuous particles of time, for there is no way in which time can manifest in quantities less than 10 to the power -43 (the so-called Planck time). For here the borrowed quantum energies distort the fabric of space turning it back upon themselves. Their time must have a stop. At such short intervals the energies available are enormous enough to create virtual black holes and wormhole in space-time, and at this level we have only a sea of quantum probabilities - the so-called Quantum Foam. Contemporary physics suggests that through these virtual wormhole in space-time there are links with all time past and future, and through the virtual black holes even with parallel universes.
It must be somewhat above this level that our consciousness works, weaving probability waves into patterns and incarnating them in the receptive structure of our brains. Our being or spirit lives in this Quantum Foam, which is thus the Eternal Now, infinite in extent and a plenum of all possibilities. The patterns of everything that has been, that is now, and will come to be, exists latently in this quantum foam. Perhaps this is the realm though which the mystics stepped into timelessness, the eternal present, and sensed the omnipotence and omniscience of the spirit.
I believe that these exciting discoveries of modern physics could be the basis for a new view of consciousness and the way it is coupled to our physical nature in the brain. (Indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of Quantum theory which puzzles’ and mystifies contemporary physicists is the way in which their quantum description of matter requires that they recognise the consciousness of the observer as a factor in certain experiments. This enigma has caused not a few physicists to take an interest in spirituality especially inclining them to eastern traditions like Taoism or Buddhism, and in time I hope that perhaps even the hermetic traditions might prove worthy of their interest).
An important experiment carried out as recently as summer 1982 by the French physicist, Aspect, has unequivocally demonstrated the fact that physicists cannot get round the Uncertainty Principle and simultaneously determine the quantum states of particles, and confirmed that physicists cannot divorce the consciousness of the observer from the events observed. This experiment (in disproving the separability of quantum measurements) has confirmed what Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg were only able to debate over philosophically - that with quantum theory we have to leave behind our naive picture of reality under which there happens as some unvaryingly compound structure if only to support its pictured clockwork. We are challenged by quantum theory to build new ways in which to picture reality, a physics, moreover, in which consciousness plays a central role, in which the observer is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of reality.
In a sense it may now be possible to build a new model of quantum consciousness, compatible with contemporary physics and which allows a space for the inclusion of the hermetic idea of the spirit. It may be that science has taken a long roundabout route through the reductionist determinism of the 19th century and returned to a more hermetic conception of our inner world.
In this short essay, incompletely argued though it may be, I hope I have at least presented some of the challenging ideas that lie behind the seeming negativity of our present age. For behind the hopelessness and despair of our times we stand on the brink of a great breakthrough to a new recognition of the vast spiritual depths that live within us all as human beings.
The idea that people may create devices that are conscious is known as artificial consciousness (AC). This is an ancient idea, perhaps dating back to the ancient Greek Promethean myth in which conscious people were supposedly manufactured from clay, pottery being an advanced technology in those days. In modern science fiction artificial people or conscious beings are described for being manufactured from electronic components. The idea of artificial consciousness (which is also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness) is an interesting philosophical problem in the twenty first century because, with increased understanding of genetics, neuroscience and information processing it may soon be possible to create an entity that is conscious. It may be possible biologically to create a being by manufacturing a genome that had the genes necessary for a human brain, and to inject this into a suitable host germ cell. Such a creature, when implanted and born from a suitable womb, would very possibly be conscious and artificial. But what properties of this organism would be responsible for its consciousness? Could such a being be made from non-biological components? Can, technological technique be used in the design of computers and be to adapt and create a conscious entity? Would it ever be ethical to do such a thing? Neuroscience hypothesizes that consciousness is the synergy generated with the inter-operation of various parts of our brain, what have come to be called the neuronal correlates of consciousness, or NCC. The brain seems to do this while avoiding the problem described in the Homunculus fallacy and overcoming the problems described below in the section on the nature of consciousness. A quest for proponents of artificial consciousness is therefore to manufacture a machine to emulate this inter-operation, which no one yet claims fully to understand.
Consciousness is described at length in the consciousness article in Wikipedia. Wherefore, some informal type of naivete has to the structural foundation of realism and the direct of realism are that we perceive things in the world directly and our brains perform processing. On the other hand, according to indirect realism and dualism our brains contain data about the world that is obtained by processing but what we perceive is some sort of mental model or state that appears to overlay physical things as a result of projective geometry (such as the point observation in Rene Descartes dualism). Which of these general approaches to consciousness is correct has not been resolved and is the subject of fierce debate. The theory of direct perception is problematical because it would seem to require some new physical theory that allows conscious experience to supervene directly on the world outside the brain. On the other hand, if we perceive things indirectly, via a model of the world in our brains, then some new physical phenomenon, other than the endless further flow of data, would be needed to explain how the model becomes experience. If we perceive things directly self-awareness is difficult to explain because one of the principal reasons for proposing direct perception is to avoid Ryle's regress where internal processing becomes an infinite loop or recursion. The belief in direct perception also demands that we cannot 'really' be aware of dreams, imagination, mental images or any inner life because these would involve recursion. Self awareness is less problematic for entities that perceive indirectly because, by definition, they are perceiving their own state. However, as mentioned above, proponents of indirect perception must suggest some phenomenon, either physical or dialyzed to prevent Ryle's regress. If we perceive things indirectly then self awareness might result from the extension of experience in time described by Immanuel Kant, William James and Descartes. Unfortunately this extension in time may not be consistent with our current understanding of physics.
Information processing consists of encoding a state, such as the geometry of an image, on a carrier such as a stream of electrons, and then submitting this encoded state to a series of transformations specified by a set of instructions called a program. In principle the carrier could be anything, even steel balls or onions, and the machine that implement the instructions need not be electronic, it could be mechanical or fluids. Digital computers implement information processing. From the earliest days of digital computers people have suggested that these devices may one day be conscious. One of the earliest workers to consider this idea seriously was Alan Turing. The Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) considers this problem in depth. If technologists were limited to the use of the principles of digital computing when creating a conscious entity, they would have the problems associated with the philosophy of strong AI. The most serious problem is John Searle's Chinese room argument in which it is demonstrated that the contents of an information processor have no intrinsic meaning - at any moment they are just a set of electrons or steel balls etc. Searle's objection does not convince those who believe in direct perception because they would maintain that 'meaning' is only to be found in the objects of perception, which they believe is the world itself. The objection is also countered by the concept of emergence in which it is proposed that some unspecified new physical phenomenon arise in very complex processors as a result of their complexity. It is interesting that the misnomer digital sentience is sometimes used in the context of artificial intelligence research. Sentience means the ability to feel or perceive in the absence of thoughts, especially inner speech. It draws attention to the way that conscious experience is a state rather than a process that might occur in processors.
The debate about whether a machine could be conscious under any circumstances is usually described as the conflict between physicalism and dualism. Dualities believe that there is something nonphysical about consciousness while physicalist hold that all things are physical. Those who believe that consciousness is physical are not limited to those who hold that consciousness is a property of encoded information on carrier signals. Several indirect realist philosophers and scientists have proposed that, although information processing might deliver the content of consciousness, the state that is consciousness be due to another physical phenomenon. The eminent neurologist Wilder Penfield was of this opinion and scientists such as Arthur Stanley Eddington, Roger Penrose, Herman Weyl, Karl Pribram and Henry Stapp among many others, have also proposed that consciousness involve physical phenomena that are more subtle than simple information processing. Even some of the most ardent supporters of consciousness in information processors such as Dennett suggests that some new, emergent, scientific theory may be required to account for consciousness. As was mentioned above, neither the ideas that involve direct perception nor those that involve models of the world in the brain seem to be compatible with current physical theory. It seems that new physical theory may be required and the possibility of dualism is not, as yet, ruled out.
Some technologists working in the field of artificial consciousness are trying to create devices that appear conscious. These devices might simulate consciousness or actually be conscious but provided are those that appear conscious in the desired result that has been achieved. In computer science, the term digital sentience is used to describe the concept of digital numeration could someday be capable of independent thought. Digital sentience, if it ever comes to exist, is likely to be a form of artificial intelligence. A generally accepted criterion for sentience is self-awareness and this is also one of the definitions of consciousness. To support the concept of self-awareness, a definition of conscious can be cited: "having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.” In more general terms, an AC system should be theoretically capable of achieving various or by a more strict view all verifiable, known, objective, and observable aspects of consciousness so that the device appears conscious. Another, but less to agree about, that its responsible and corresponding definition as extracted in the word of “conscious,” slowly emerges as to be inferred through the avenue in being of, "Possessing knowledge by the seismical provisions that allow whether are by means through which ane existently internal and/or externally is given to its observable property, whereas of becoming labelled for reasons that posit in themselves to any assemblage that has forwarded by ways of the conscious experience. Although, the observably existing provinces are those that are by their own nature the given properties from each that occasion to natural properties of a properly ordered approving for which knowledgeable entities must somehow endure to exist in the awarenesses of sensibility.
There are various aspects and/or abilities that are generally considered necessary for an AC system, or an AC system should be able to learn them; These are very useful as criteria to determine whether a certain machine is artificially conscious. These are only the most cited, however, there are many others that are not covered. The ability to predict (or anticipate) foreseeable events is considered a highly desirable attribute of AC by Igor Aleksander: He writes in Artificial Neuro-consciousness: An Update: "Prediction is one of the key functions of consciousness. An organism that cannot predict would have itself its own serious hamper of consciousness." The emergent’s multiple draft’s principle proposed by Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained may be useful for prediction: It involves the evaluation and selection of the most appropriate "draft" to fit the current environment. Consciousness is sometimes defined as self-awareness. While self-awareness is very important, it may be subjective and is generally difficult to test. Another test of AC, in the opinion of some, should include a demonstration that machines can learn the ability to filter out certain stimuli in its environment, to focus on certain stimuli, and to show attention toward its environment in general. The mechanisms that govern how human attention is driven are not yet fully understood by scientists. This absence of knowledge could be exploited by engineers of AC; Since we don't understand attentiveness in humans, we do not have specific and known criteria to measure it in machines. Since unconsciousness in humans equates to total inattentiveness, the AC should have outputs that indicate where its attention is focussed at anyone time, at least during the aforementioned test. By Antonio Chella from University of Palermo "The mapping between the conceptual and the linguistic areas gives the interpretation of linguistic symbols in terms of conceptual structures. It is achieved through a focus of attentive mechanistic implementation, by means of suitable recurrent neural networks with internal states. A sequential attentive mechanism is hypothesized that suitably scans the conceptual representation and, according to the hypotheses generated on the basis of previous knowledge, it predicts and detects the interesting events occurring in the scene. Hence, starting from the incoming information, such a mechanism generates expectations and it makes contexts in which hypotheses may be verified and, if necessary, adjusted. "Awareness could be another required aspect. However, again, there are some problems with the exact definition of awareness. To illustrate this point is the philosopher David Chalmers (1996) controversially puts forward the panpsychism argument that a thermostat could be considered conscious: it has states corresponding too hot, too cold, or at the correct temperature. The results of the experiments of neuro-scanning on monkeys suggest that a process, not a state or object activate neurons. For such reaction there must be created a model of the process based on the information received through the senses, creating models in such that its way demands a lot of flexibility, and is also useful for making predictions. Personality is another characteristic that is generally considered vital for a machine to appear conscious. In the area of behavioural psychology, there is a somewhat popular theory that personality is an illusion created by the brain in order to interact with other people. It is argued that without other people to interact with, humans (and possibly other animals) would have no need of personalities, and human personality would never have evolved. An artificially conscious machine may need to have a personality capable of expression such that human observers can interact with it in a meaningful way. However, this is often questioned by computer scientists; The Turing test, which measures by a machine's personality, is not considered generally useful anymore. Learning is also considered necessary for AC. By engineering consciousness, a summary by Ron Chrisley, studying at the University of Sussex, says that of consciousness is and involves self, transparency, learning (of dynamics), planning, heterophenomenology, split of attentional signal, action selection, attention and timing management. Daniel Dennett said in his article "Consciousness in Human and Robotic Minds" are said that, "It might be vastly easier to make an initial unconscious or nonconscious "infant, as a, robot and let it "grow up" into consciousness, is more or less the way we all do. Chrisley explained that the robot Cog, is easily described, "Will did not bring about the adult at first, in spite of its adult size. But it is being designed to pass through an extended period of artificial infancy, during which it will have to learn from experience, experience it will gain in the rough-and-tumble environment of the real world, and in addition, ‘nobody doubts that any agent capable of interacting intelligently with a human being on human terms must have access too literally millions if not billions of logically independent items of world knowledge. In that of either of these must be hand-coded individually by human programmers-a tactic being pursued, notoriously, by Douglas Lenat and his CYC team in Dallas-or some way must be found for the artificial agent to learn its world knowledge from (real) interactions with the (real) world. An interesting article about learning is Implicit learning and consciousness by Axel Cleeremans, University of Brussels and Luis Jiménez, University of Santiago, where learning is defined as “a set of phylogenetically advanced adaptation processes that critically depend on an evolved sensitivity to subjective experience so as to enable agents to afford flexible control over their actions in complex, unpredictable environments. Anticipation is the final characteristic that could possibly be used to make a machine appear conscious. An artificially conscious machine should be able to anticipate events correctly in order to be ready to respond to them when they occur. The implication here is that the machine needs real-time components, making it possible to demonstrate that it possesses artificial consciousness in the present and not just in the past. In order to do this, the machine being tested must operate coherently in an unpredictable environment, to simulate the real world.
Newborn babies have been trying for centuries to convince us they are, like the rest of us, sensing, feeling, thinking human beings. Struggling by implies of its position, but now seems as contrary to thousands of years of ignorant supposition that newborns are partly human, sub-human, or not-yet human, the vast majority of babies arrive in hospitals today, greeted by medical specialists who are still sceptical as to whether they can actually see, feel pain, learn, and remember what happens to them. Physicians, immersed in protocol, employ painful procedures, confident no permanent impression, certainly no lasting damage, will result from the manner in which babies are received into this world.
The way "standard medicine" sees infants-by no means universally shared by women or by the midwives who used to assist them at birth-has taken on increasing importance in a country where more than 95% are hospitals born and a quarter of these surgically delivered. While this radical change was occurring, the psychological aspects of birth were little considered. In fact, for most of the century, medical beliefs about the infants nervous system prevailed in psychology as well. However, in the last three decades, research psychology has invested heavily in infant studies and uncovered many previously hidden talents of both the fetus and the newborn baby. The findings are surprising: Babies are more sensitive, more emotional, and more cognitive than we used to believe. They are not what we thought. Babies are so different that we must create new paradigms to describe accurately who they are and what they can do.
Not long ago, experts in pediatrics and psychology were teaching that babies were virtually blind, had no sense of colour, could not recognize their mothers, and heard in "echoes.” They believed babies cared little about sharp changes in temperature at birth and had only a crude sense of smell and taste. Their pain was "not like our pain" yet, their cries not meaningful, their smiles were "gas," and their emotion’s undeveloped. Worst of all, most professionals believed babies were not equipped with enough brain matter to permit them to remember, learn, or find meaning in their experiences.
These false and unflattering views are still widely spread between both professionals and the public. No wonder people find it hard to believe that a traumatic birth, whether it is by cesarean section or vaginal, has significant, on-going effects.
Unfortunately, today these unfounded prejudices still have the weight of "science" behind them, but the harmful results to babies are hardly better than the rank superstitions of the past. The resistance of "experts" who continue to see infants in terms of their traditional incapacities may be the last great obstacle for babies to leap over before being embraced for whom they really are. Old ideas are bound to die under the sheer weight of new evidence, but not before millions of babies suffer unnecessarily because their parents and their doctors do not know they are fully human.
As the light of research reaches into the dark corners of prejudice, we may thank those in the emerging field of prenatal/perinatal psychology. Since this field is often an enter professional collaboration and does not fit conveniently to accepted academic departments, the field is not yet recognized in the academic world by endowed chairs or even by formal courses. At present only a few courses exist throughout the world. Yet research teams have achieved a succession of breakthroughs that challenge standard "scientific" ideas of human development.
Scholars in this field respect the full range of evidence of infant capabilities, whether from personal reports contributed by parents, revelations arising from therapeutic work, or from formal experiments. Putting together all the bits and pieces of information gathered from around the globe yields a fundamentally different picture of a baby.
The main way information about sentient, conscious babies has reached the public, especially pregnant parents, has been via popular media: books, movies, magazine features, and television. Among the most outstanding have been The Secret Life of the Unborn Child by Canadian psychiatrist Thomas Verny (now in 25 languages), movies like Look Who's Talking, and several talk shows, including Oprah Winfrey, where a program on therapeutic treatment of womb and birth traumas probably reached 25 million viewers in 25 countries. Two scholarly journals are devoted entirely to prenatal/perinatal psychology, one in North America that began in 1986, and one in Europe beginning in 1989. The Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) is a gathering place for people interested in this field and who keep informed through newsletters, journals, and conferences.
Evidence that babies are sensitive, cognitive, and are affected by their birth experiences may come from various sources. The oldest evidence is anecdotal and intuitive. Mothers are the principal contributors to the idea of baby as a person, one you can talk to, and one who can talk back as well. This process, potentially available to any mother, is better explained in psychic terms than in word-based language. This exchange of thoughts is probably telepathic rather than linguistic.
Mothers who communicate with their infants know that the baby is a person, mind and soul, with understanding, wisdom, and purpose. This phenomenon is cross-cultural, probably universal, although all mothers do not necessarily engage in this dialogue. In an age of "science," a mother's intuitive knowledge is too often dismissed. What mothers know has not been considered as valid data. What mothers say about their infants must be venal, self-serving, or imaginary, and can never be equal to what is known by "experts" or "scientists."
This prejudice extends into a second category of information about babies, and the evidence derived from clinical work. Although the work of psychotherapy is usually done by formally educated, scientifically trained, licensed persons who are considered expert in their field, the information they listen to is anecdotal and their methods are the blending of science and art.
Their testimony of infant intelligence, based on the recollections of clients, is often compelling. Therapists are privy to clients' surprising revelations, many of which show a direct connection between traumas surrounding birth and later disabilities of heart and mind. Although it is possible for these connections to be purely imaginary, we know they are not when hospital records and eyewitness reports confirm the validity of the memories. Obstetrician David Cheek, using hypnosis with a series of subjects, discovered that they could accurately report the full set of left and right turns and sequences involved in their own deliveries. This is technical information that no ordinary person would have unless his memories are accurate.
Psychologists using hypnosis, have found it necessary to test the reliability of memories people gave me about their traumas during the birth process, memories that had not previously been conscious. I hypnotized mother and child pairs who said they had never spoken in any detail about that child's birth. I received a detailed report of what happened from the now-adult child that I compared with the mother's report, given also in hypnosis.
The reports dovetailed at many points and were clearly reports of the same birth. By comparing one story with the other, I could see when the adult child was fantasizing, rather than having accurate recall, but fantasy was rare. It is to conclude that these birth memories were real memories, and were a reliable guide to what had happened.
Some of the first indications that babies are sentient came from the practice of psychoanalysis, stretching back to the beginning of the century to the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud. Although Freud himself was sceptical about the operation of the infant mind, his clients kept bringing him information that seemed to link their anxieties and fears to events surrounding their births. He theorized that birth might be the original trauma upon which later anxiety was constructed.
Otto Rank, Freud's associate, was more certain that birth traumas underlay many later neuroses, so he reorganized psychoanalysis around the assumption of birth trauma. He was rewarded by the rapid recovery of his clients who were "cured" in far less time than was required for a customary psychoanalysis. In the second half of the century, important advances have been made in resolving early trauma and memories of trauma.
Hypnotherapy, primal therapy, psychedelic therapies, various combinations of body work with breathing and sound stimulation, sand tray therapy, and art effects have all proved useful in accessing important imprints, decisions, and memories stored by the infant mind. If there had been no working mind in infancy, of course there would be no need to return to it to heal bad impressions, change decisions, and otherwise resolve mental and emotional problems.
A third burgeoning source of information about the conscious nature of babies comes from scientific experiments and systematic observations utilizing breakthrough technologies. In our culture, with its preference for refined measurement and strict protocols, these are the studies that get funding. And the results are surprising from this contemporary line of empirical research.
We have learned so much about babies in the last twenty years that most of what we thought we knew before is suspect, and much of it is obsolete. I will highlight the new knowledge in three sections: development of the physical senses, beginnings of self-expression, and evidence of active mental life.
First, we have a much better idea of our physical development, the process of the embodiment from conception to birth. Our focus here is on the senses and when they become available during gestation. Touch is our first sense and perhaps our last. Sensitivity to touch begins in our faces about seven weeks gestational age. Tactile sensitivity expands steadily to include most parts of the fetal body by 17 weeks. In the normal womb, touch is never rough, and temperature is relatively constant. At birth, this placid environment ends with dramatic new experiences of touch that no baby can overlook.
By only 14 weeks gestational age, the taste buds are formed, and ultrasound shows both sucking and swallowing. A fetus controls the frequency of swallowing amniotic fluid, and will speed up or slow in reaction to sweet and bitter tastes. Studies show babies have a definite preference for sweet tastes. Hearing begins earlier than anyone thought possible at 16 weeks. The ear is not complete until about 24 weeks, a fact revealing the complex nature of listening, which includes reception of vibes through our skin, skeleton, and vestibular system as well as the ear. Babies in the womb are listening to maternal sounds and to the immediate environment for almost six months. By birth, their hearing is about as good as ours.
Our sense of sight also develops before birth, although our eyelids remain fused from week 10 through 26. Nevertheless, babies in the womb will react to light flashed on the mother's abdomen. By the time of birth, vision is well-advanced, though not yet perfect. Babies have no trouble focussing at the intimate 16-inch distance where the faces of mothers and fathers are usually found.
Mechanisms for pain perception like those for touch, develop early. By about three month, if babies are accidentally struck by a needle inserted into the womb to withdraw fluid during amniocentesis, they quickly twist away and try to escape from the needle. Intrauterine surgery, a new aspect of fetal medicine made possibly in part by our new ability to see inside the womb, means new opportunities for fetal pain.
Although surgeons have long denied prenates experience pain, a recent experiment in London proved unborn babies feel pain. Babies who were needled for intrauterine transfusions showed a 600% increase in beta-endorphins, hormones generated to deal with stress. In just ten minutes of needling, even 23 week old fetuses were mounting a full-scale stress response. Needling at the intrahapatic vein provokes vigorous body and breathing movements.
Finally, our muscle systems develop under buoyant conditions in the fluid environment of the womb and are regularly used in navigating the area. However, after birth, in the dry world of normal gravity, our muscle systems look feeble. As everyone knows, babies cannot walk, and they struggle, usually in vain, to hold up their own heads. Because the muscles are still relatively undeveloped, babies give a misleading appearance of incompetence. In truth, babies have remarkably useful sensory equipment very much like our own.
A second category of evidence for baby consciousness comes from empirical research on bodily movement in utero. Except for the movement a mother and father could sometimes feel, we have had almost no knowledge of the extent and variety of movement inside the womb. This changed with the advent of real-time ultrasound imaging, giving us moment by moment pictures of fetal activity.
One of the surprises is that movement commences between eight and ten weeks gestational age. This has been determined with the aid of the latest round of ultrasound improvements. Fetal movement is voluntary, spontaneous, and graceful, not jerky and reflexive as previously reported. By ten weeks, babies move their hands to their heads, face, and mouth; they flex and extend their arms and legs; They open and close their mouths and rotate longitudinally. From 10 to 12 weeks onward, the repertoire of body language is largely complete and continues throughout gestation. Periodic exercise alternates with rest periods on a voluntary basis reflecting individual needs and interests. Movement is self-expression and expressional personalities.
Twins viewed periodically via ultrasound during gestation often show highly independent motor profiles, and, over time continue to distinguish themselves through movement both inside and outside the womb. They are expressing their individuality.
Close observation has brought many unexpected behaviours to light. By 16 weeks, male babies are having their first erections. As soon as they have hands, they are busy exploring everywhere and everything, feet, toes, mouth, and the umbilical cord: these are their first toys.
By 30 weeks, babies have an intense dream life, spending more time in the dream state of sleep than they ever do after they are born. This is significant because dreaming is definitely a cognitive activity, a creative exercise of the mind, and because it is a spontaneous and personal activity.
Observations of the fetus also reveal a number of reactions to conditions in the womb. Such are the reactions to provocative circumstances is a further sign of selfhood. Consciousness of danger and manoeuver of the self-defence are visible in fetal reactions to amniocentesis. Even when things go normally and babies are not struck by needles, they react with wild variations of normal heart activity, alter their breathing movements, may "hide" from the needle, and often remain motionless for a time - suggesting fear and shock.
Babies react with alarm to loud noises, car accidents, earthquakes, and even to their mother's watching terrifying scenes on television. They swallow less when they do not like the taste of amniotic fluid, and they stop their usual breathing movements when their mothers drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
In a documented report of work via ultrasound, a baby struck accidentally by a needle not only twisted away, but located the needle barrel and collide repeatedly-surely an aggressive and angry behaviours. Similarly, ultrasound experts have reported seeing twins hitting each other, while others have seen twins playing together, gently awakening one-another, rendering cheek-to-cheek, and even kissing. Such scenes, some at only 20 weeks, were never anticipated in developmental psychology. No one anticipated sociable behaviour nor emotional behaviour until months after a baby's birth.
We can see emotion expressed in crying and smiling long before 40 weeks, the usual time of birth. We see first smiles on the faces of premature infants who are dreaming. Smiles and pleasant looks, along with a variety of unhappy facial expressions, tell us dreams have pleasant or unpleasant contents to which babies are reacting. Mental activity is causing emotional activity. Audible crying has been reported by 23 weeks, in cases of abortion, revealing that babies are experiencing very appropriate emotion by that time. Close to the time of birth, medical personnel have documented crying from within the womb, in association with obstetrical procedures that have allowed air to enter the space around the fetal larynx.
Finally, a third source of evidence for infant consciousness is the research that confirms various forms of learning and memory both in the fetus and the newborn. Since infant consciousness was considered impossible until recently, experts have had to accept a growing body of experimental findings illustrating that babies learn from their experiences. In studies that began in Europe in 1925 and America in 1938, babies have demonstrated all the types of learning formally recognized in psychology at the time: classical conditioning, habituation, and reinforcement conditioning, both inside and outside the womb.
In modern times, as learning has been understood more broadly, experiments have shown a range of learning abilities. Immediately after birth, babies show recognition of musical passages, which they have heard repeatedly before birth, whether it is the bassoon passage in Peter and the Wolf, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," or the theme music of a popular soap opera.
Language acquisition begins in the womb as babies listen repeatedly to their mothers' intonations and learn their mother tongue. As early as 25 weeks, the recording of a baby's first cry contains so many rhythms, intonations, and other features common to their mother's speech that their spectrographs can be matched. In experiments shortly after birth, babies recognize their mother's voice and prefer her voice to other female voices. In the delivery room, babies recognize their father's voice and recognize specific sentences their fathers have spoken, especially if the babies have heard these sentences frequently while they were in the womb. After birth, babies show special regard for their native language, preferring it to a foreign language.
Fetal learning and memory also consist of stories that are read aloud to them repeatedly before birth. At birth, babies will alter their sucking behaviour to obtain recordings of the familiar stories. In a recent experiment, a French and American team had mothers repeat a particular children's rhyme each day from week 33 to week 37. After four weeks of exposure, babies reacted to the target rhymes and not to other rhymes, proving they recognize specific language patterns while they are in the womb.
Newborn babies quickly learn to distinguish their mother's face from other female faces, their mother's breast pads from other breast pads, their mother's distinctive underarm odour, and their mother's perfume if she has worn the same perfume consistently.
Premature babies learn from their unfortunate experiences in neonatal intensive care units. One boy, who endured surgery parlayed with curare, but was given no pain-killing anaesthetics, of developed and pervading fear of doctors and hospitals that remains undiminished in his teens. He also learned to fear the sound and sight of adhesive bandages. This was in reaction to having some of his skin pulled off with adhesive tape during his stay in the premature nursery.
Confirmation that early experiences of pain have serious consequences later has come from recent studies of babies at the time of first vaccinations. Researchers who studied infants being vaccinated four to six months after birth discovered that babies who had experienced the pain of circumcision had higher pain scores and cried longer. The painful ordeal of circumcision had apparently conditioned them to pain and set their pain threshold lower. This is an example of learning from experience: Perinatal pain.
Happily, there are other things to learn besides pain and torture. The Prenatal Classroom is a popular program of prenatal stimulation for parents who want to establish strong bonds of communication with a baby in the womb. One of the many exercises is the "Kick Game," which you play by responding to the child's kick by touching the spot your baby just kicked, and saying "kick, baby kick." Babies quickly learn to respond to this kind of attention: They do kick again and they learn to kick anywhere their parents touch. One father taught his baby to kick in a complete circle.
Babies also remember consciously the big event of birth itself, at least during the first years of their lives. Proof of this comes from little children just learning to talk. Usually around two or three years of age, when children are first able to speak about their experiences, some spontaneously recall what their birth was like. They tell what happened in plain language, sometimes accompanied by pantomime, pointing and sound effects. They describe water, black and red colours, the coming light, or dazzling light, and the squeezing sensations. Cesarean babies tell about a door or window suddenly opening, or a zipper that zipped open and let them out. Some babies remember fear and danger. They also remember and can reveal secrets.
One of my favourite stories of a secret birth memory came from Cathy, a midwife's assistant. With the birth completed, she found herself alone with a hungry, restless baby after her mother had gone to bathe and the chief midwife was busy in another room. Instinctively, Cathy offered the baby her own breast for a short time: then she wondered if this were appropriate and stopped feeding the infant without telling anyone what had happened. Years later, when the little young woman was almost four, Cathy was babysitting her. In a quiet moment, she asked the child if she remembered her birth. The child did, and volunteered various accurate details. Then, moving closer to whisper a secret, she said "You held me and gave me titty when I cried, and Mommy wasn't there." Cathy said to herself, "Nobody can tell me babies don't remember their births"
Is a baby a conscious and real person? To me it is no longer appropriate to speculate. It is too late to speculate when so much is known. The range of evidence now available in the form of knowledge of the fetal sensory system, observations of fetal behaviour in the womb, and experimental proof of learning and memory - all of this evidence-amply verifies what some mothers and fathers have sensed from time immemorial, that a baby is a real person. The baby is real in having a sense of self that can be seen in creative efforts to adjust or to influence its environment. Babies show self-regulation (as in restricting swallowing and breathing), the self-defence (as in retreating from invasive needles and strong light), self-assertion, combat with a needle, or striking out at a bothersome twin.
Babies are like us in having clearly manifested feelings in their reactions to assaults, injuries, irritations, or medically inflicted pain. They smile, cry, and kick in protest, manifest fear, anger, grief, pleasure, or displeasure in ways that seem entirely appropriate in relation to their circumstances. Babies are cognitive beings, thinking their own thoughts, dreaming their own dreams, learning from their own experiences, and remembering their own experiences.
An iceberg can serve as a useful metaphor to understand the unconscious mind, its relationship to the conscious mind and how the two parts of our mind can better work together. As an iceberg floats in the water, the huge mass of it remains below the surface.
Only a small percentage of the whole iceberg is visible above the surface. In this way, the iceberg is like the mind. The conscious mind is what we notice above the surface while the unconscious mind, the largest and most powerful part, remains unseen below the surface.
In our metaphor that regards of the small amount of icebergs, far and above the surface represents the conscious mind; The huge mass below the surface, the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind holds all awareness that is not presently in the conscious mind. All memories, feelings and thoughts that are out of conscious awareness are by definition "unconscious." It is also called the subconscious and is known as the dreaming mind or deep mind.
Knowledgeable and powerful in a different way than the conscious mind, the unconscious mind handles the responsibility of keeping the body running well. It has memory of every event we've ever experienced; it is the source and storehouse of our emotions; and it is often considered our connection with Spirit and with each other.
No model of how the mind works disputes, the tremendous power, which is in constant action below the tip of the iceberg. The conscious mind is constantly supported by unconscious resources. Just think of all the things you know how to do without conscious awareness. If you drive, you use more than 30 specific skills . . . without being aware of them. These are skills, not facts; they are processes, requiring intelligence, decision-making and training.
Besides these learned resources that operate below the surface of consciousness there are important natural resources. For instance, the unconscious mind regulates all the systems of the body and keeps them in harmony with each other. It controls heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, the endocrine system and the nervous system, just to name a few of its natural, automatic duties.
The conscious mind, like the part of the iceberg above the surface, is a small portion of the whole being. The conscious mind is what we ordinarily think of when we say "my mind." It's associated with thinking, analysing and making judgments and decisions. The conscious mind is actively sorting and filtering its perceptions because only so much information can reside in consciousness at once. Everything else falls back below the water line, into unconsciousness.
Only seven bits of information, and/or minus two can be held consciously at one time. Everything else we are thinking, feeling or perceiving now . . . along with all our memories remains unconscious, until called into consciousness or until rising spontaneously.
The imagination is the medium of communication between the two parts of the mind. In the iceberg metaphor, the imagination is at the surface of the water. It functions as a medium through which content from the unconscious mind can come into conscious awareness.
Communication through the imagination is two-way. The conscious mind can also use the medium of the imagination to communicate with the unconscious mind. The conscious mind sends suggestions about what it wants through the imagination to the unconscious. It imagines things, and the subconscious intelligencer work to make them happen.
The suggestions can be words, feelings or images. Athletes commonly use images mentally to rehearse how they want to perform by picturing themselves successfully completing their competition. A tennis player may see a tennis ball striking the racket at just the right spot, at just the perfect moment in the swing. Studies show that this form of imaging improves performance.
However, the unconscious mind uses the imagination to communicate with the conscious mind far more often than the other way around. New ideas, hunches, daydreams and intuitions come from the unconscious to the conscious mind through the medium of the imagination.
An undeniable example of the power in the lower part of the iceberg is dreaming. Dream images, visions, sounds and feelings come from the unconscious. Those who are aware of their dreams know how rich and real they can be. Even filtered, as they are when remembered later by the conscious mind, dreams can be quite powerful experiences.
Many people have received workable new ideas and insights, relaxing daydreams, accurate hunches, and unexpected intuitive understandings by replaying their dreams in a waking state. These are everyday examples of what happens when unconscious intelligencer and processes communicate through the imagination with the conscious mind.
Unfortunately, the culture has discouraged us from giving this information credibility. "It's just, but your imagination" is a commonly heard dismissal of information coming from the deep mind. This kind of conditioning has served to keep us disconnected from the deep richness of our vast unconscious resources.
In the self-healing work we'll be using the faculty of the imagination in several ways. In regression processes to access previously unconscious material from childhood, perinatal experiences and past lives, and even deeper realms of the "universal unconscious." Inner dialogue is another essential tool that makes use of the imagination in process work.
To shoulder atop the iceberg metaphor forward, each of us can be represented an iceberg, with the larger part of ourselves remain deeply submerged. And there's a place in the depths where all of our icebergs come together, a place in the unconscious where we connect with each other
The psychologist Carl Jung has named this realm the "Collective Unconscious." This is the area of mind where all humanity shares experience, and from where we draw on the archetypal energies and symbols that are common to us all. "Past life" memories are drawn from this level of the unconscious.
Another, even deeper level can be termed the "Universal Unconscious" where experiences beyond just humanity's can also be accessed with regression process. It is at this level that many "core issues" begin, and where their healing needs to be accomplished.
The unconscious connection "under the iceberg" between people is often more potent than the conscious level connection, and important consideration in doing the healing work. Relationship is an area rich with triggers to deeply buried material needing healing. And some parts of us cannot be triggered in any way other than "under the iceberg."
Although the conscious mind, steeped in cognition and thought, is able to deceive another . . . the unconscious mind, based in feeling, will often give us information from under the iceberg that contradicts what is being communicated consciously.
"Sounds right but feels wrong," is an example of information from under the iceberg surfacing in the conscious mind, but conflicting with what the conscious mind was ably to attain of its own. This kind of awareness is also called "intuition."
Intuitive information comes without a searching of the conscious memory or a formulation to be filled by imagination. When we access the intuition, we seem to arrive at an insight by a path from unknown sources directly to the conscious awareness. Wham! Out of nowhere, in no time.
No matter what the precise neurological process, the ability to access and use information from the intuition is extremely valuable in the effective and creative use of the tools of self healing. In relating with others, it's important to realize that your intuition will bring you information about the other and your relationship from under the iceberg.
When your intuition is the source of your words and actions, they are usually much more appropriate and helpful than what thinking or other functions of the conscious mind could muster. What you do and say from the intuition in earnest communication will be meaningful to the other, even though it may not make sense to you.
The most skilful and comprehending way to nurture and develop your intuition is to trust all of your intuitive insights. Trust encourages the intuition to be more present. Its information is then more accessible and the conscious mind finds less reason to question, analyse or judge intuitive insights.
The primary skills needed for easy access and trust of intuitive information are: (1) The ability to get out of the way. (2) The ability to accept the information without judgment.
Two easy ways to access intuition and help the conscious mind get out of the way occur: (3) Focus your attention in your abdominal area and imagine you have a "belly brain.” As you feel into and sense this area, "listen" to what your belly brain has to say. This is often referred to as listening to our "gut feelings." (4) With your eyes looking down and to your left and slightly de focussed, simply feel into what to say next.
Once the intuition is flowing, it will continue easily, unless it is Formed. The most usual Formage is for which we may become of, and only because the conscious mind's finds within to all judgments of the intuitive information. The best way to avoid this is to get the cooperation of the conscious mind so it will step aside and become the observer when intuition is being accessed. Cosmic Consciousness is an ultra high state of illumination in the human Mind that is beyond that of "self-awareness," and "ego-awareness." In the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness, the human Mind has entered a state of Knowledge instead of mere beliefs, a state of "I know," instead of "I believe." This state of Mind is beyond that of the sense reasoning in that it has attained an awareness of the Universe and its relation to being and a recognition of the Oneness in all things that is not easily shared with others who have not personally experienced this state of Mind. The attainment of Cosmic illumination will cause an individual to seek solitude from the multitude, and isolation from the noisy world of mental pollution.
Carl Jung was a student and follower of Freud. He was born in a small town in Switzerland in 1875 and all his life was fascinated by folk tales, myths and religious stories. Nonetheless, he had a close friendship with Freud early in their relationship, his independent and questioning mind soon caused a break.
Jung did not accept Freud’s contention that the primary motivations behind behaviour was sexual urges. Instead of Freud’s instinctual drives of sex and aggression, Jung believed that people are motivated by a more general psychological energy that pushes them to achieve psychological growth, self-realization, psychic wholeness and harmony. Also, unlike Freud, he believed that personality continues to develop throughout the lifespan.
It is for his ideas of the collective unconscious that students of literature and mythology are indebted to Jung. In studying different cultures, he was struck by the universality of many themes, patterns, stories and images. These same images, he found, frequently appeared in the dreams of his patients. From these observations, Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.
Like Freud, Jung posited the existence of a conscious and an unconscious mind. A model that psychologists frequently use here is an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water is seen as the conscious mind. Consciousness is the part of the mind we know directly. It is where we think, feel, sense and intuit. It is through conscious activity that the person becomes an individual. It’s the part of the mind that we “live in” most of the time, and contains information that is in our immediate awareness, the level of the conscious mind, and the bulk of the ice berg, is what Freud would call the unconscious, and what Jung would call the “personal unconscious.” Here we will find thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to bring to consciousness. Experiences that do not reach consciousness, experiences that are not congruent with whom we think we are, and things that have become “repressed” would make up the material at this level. The contents of the personal unconscious are available through hypnosis, guided imagery, and especially dreams. Although not directly accessible, material in the personal unconscious has gotten there sometime during our lifetime. For example, the reason you are going to school now, why you picked a particular shirt to wear or your choice of a career may be a choice you reached consciously. But it is also possible that education, career, or clothing style has been influenced by a great deal of unconscious material: Parents’ preferences, childhood experiences, even movies you have seen but about which you do not think when you make choices or decisions. Thus, the depth psychologist would say that many decisions, indeed some of the most important ones that have to do with choosing a mate or a career, are determined by unconscious factors. But still, material in the personal unconscious has been environmentally determined.
The collective unconscious is different. It’s like eye colour. If someone were to ask you, “How did you get your eye colour,” you would have to say that there was no choice involved – conscious or unconscious. You inherited it. Material in the collective unconscious is like a dramatization for this as self bequeathed. It never came from our current environment. It is the part of the mind that is determined by heredity. So we inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective unconscious; the mind is pre-figured by evolution just as is the body. The individual is linked to the past of the whole species and the long stretch of evolution of the organism. Jung thus placed the psyche within the evolutionary process.
What’s in the collective unconscious? Psychological archetypes. This idea of psychological archetypes is among Jung’s most important contributions to Western thought. An ancient idea somewhat like Plato’s idea of Forms or “patterns” in the divine mind that determine the form material objects will take, and the archetype is in all of us. The word “archetype” comes from the Greek “Arche” meaning first, and type meant to “imprinting or patterns.” Psychological archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that form the basic blueprint for major dynamic counterparts of the human personality. For Jung, archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and behave. These patterns are inborn within us. They are part of our inheritance as human beings. They reside as energy within the collective unconscious and are part the psychological life of all peoples everywhere at all times. They are inside us and they are outside us. We can meet them by going inward to our dreams or fantasies. We can meet them by going outward to our myths, legends, literature and religions. The archetype can be a pattern, such as a kind of story. Or it can be a figure, such as a kind of character.
In her book Awakening the Heroes Within, Carolyn Pearson identifies twelve archetypes that are fairly easy to understand. These are the Innocent, the Orphan, the Warrior, the Caregiver, the Seeker, the Destroyer, the Lover, the Creator, the Ruler, the Magician, the Sage, and the Fool. If we look at art, literature, mythology and the media, we can easily identify some of these patterns. One familiarized is the contemporary western culture is the Warrior. We find the warrior myth encoded in all the great heroes whoever took on the dragon, stood up to the tyrant, fought the sorcerer, or did battle with the monster: And in so doing rescued himself and others. The true Warrior is not just overbearing. The aggressive man (or women) fights to feel superior to others, to keep them down. The warrior fights to protect and ennoble others. The warrior protects the perimeters of the castle or the family or the psyche. The warrior’s myth is active in each of us any time we stand up against unfair authority, be it a boss, teacher or parent. The highest level warrior has at some time confronted his or her own inner dragons. We see the Warrior’s archetype in the form of pagan deities, for example the Greek god of war, Mars. David, who fights Goliath, or Michael, who casts Satan out of Heaven is familiar Biblical warrior. Hercules, Xena (warrior princess) and Conan the Barbarian are more contemporary media forms the warrior takes. And it is in this widely historical variety that we can find an important point about the archetype. It really is unconscious. The archetype is like the invisible man in famous story. In the story, a man invents a potion that, when ingested, renders him invisible. He becomes visible only when he puts on clothes. The archetype is like this. It remains invisible until it unfolds within the Dawn of its particular culture: in the Middle Ages this was King Arthur; in modern America, it may be Luke Skywalker. But if the archetype were not a universal pattern imprinted on our collective psyche, we would not be able to continue to recognize it over and over. The love goddess is another familiar archetypal pattern. Aphrodite to the Greeks, Venus to the Romans, she now appears in the form of familiar models in magazines like “Elle” and “Vanity Fair.” And whereas in ancient Greece her place of worship was the temple, today is it the movie theatre and the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom’s. The archetype remains; the garments it dawns are those of its particular time and place.
This brings us to our discussion of the Shadow as archetype. The clearest and most articulate discussion of this subject is contained in Johnson’s book Owning Your Own Shadow. The Shadow is not a difficult concept. It is merely the “dark side” of the psyche. It’s everything that doesn’t fit into the Persona. The word “persona” comes from the theatre. In the Roman theatre, characters would put on a mask that represented who the character was in the drama. The word “persona” literally means “mask.” Johnson says that the persona is how we would like to be seen by the world, a kind of psychological clothing that “mediates between our true elves and our environment” in much the same way that clothing gives an image. The Shadow is what doesn’t fit into this Persona. These “refused and unacceptable” characteristics don’t go away; They are stuffed or repressed and can, if unattended to, begin to take on a life of their own. One Jungian likens the process to that of filling a bag. We learn at a very young age that there are certain ways of thinking, being and relating that are not acceptable in our culture, and so we stuff them into the shadow bag. In our Western culture, particularly in the United States, thoughts about sex are among the most prevalent that are unacceptable and so sex gets stuffed into the bag. The shadow side of sexuality is quite evident in our culture in the form of pornography, prostitution, and topless bars. Psychic energy that is not dealt within a healthy way takes a dark or shadow form and begins to take on a life of its own. As children our bag is fairly small, but as we get older, it becomes larger and more difficult to drag.
Therefore, it is not difficult to see that there is a shadow side to the Archetypes discussed earlier. The shadow side to the warrior is the tyrant, the villain, the Darth Vader, who uses his or her skills for power and ego enhancement. And whereas the Seeker Archetype quests after truth and purity, the shadow Seeker is controlled by pride, ambition, and addictions. If the Lover follows his/her bliss, commits and bonds, the shadow lover signifies a seducer a sex addict or interestingly enough, a puritan.
But we can use the term “shadow” in a more general sense. It is not merely the dark side of a particular archetypal pattern or form. Wherever Persona is, Shadow is also. Wherever good is, is evil. We first know the shadow as the personal unconsciousness, for in all that we abhor, deny and repressing power, greed, cruel and murderous thoughts, unacceptable impulses, morally and ethically wrong actions. All the demonic things by which human beings betray their inhumanity to other beings are shadow. Shadow is unconscious. This is a very important idea. Since it is unconscious, we know it only indirectly, projection, just as we know the other Archetypes of Warrior, Seeker and Lover. We encounter the shadow in other people, things, and places where we project it. The scape goat is a perfect example of shadow projection. The Nazi’s projection of shadow onto the Jews gives us some insight into how powerful and horrific the archetype is. Jung says that when you are in the grips of the archetype, you don’t have it, it has you.
This idea of projection raises an interesting point. It means that the shadow stuff isn’t “out there” at all; it is really “in here”; that is inside us. We only know it is inside us because we see it outside. Shadow projections have a fateful attraction to us. It seems that we have discovered where the bad stuff really is: in him, in her, in that place, there! There it is! We have found the beast, the demon, the bad guy. But does Obscenity really exist, or is what we see as evil all merely projection of our own shadow side? Jung would say that there really is such a thing as evil, but that most of what we see as evil, particularly collectively, is shadow projection. The difficulty is separating the two. And we can only do that when we discover where the projection ends. Hence, Johnson’s book title “Owning Your own Shadow.”
Amid all the talk about the "Collective Unconscious" and other sexy issues, most readers are likely to miss the fact that C.G. Jung was a good Kantian. His famous theory of Synchronicity, "an accusal connecting principle," is based on Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves and on Kant's theory that causality will not operate among thing-in-themselves the way it does in phenomena. Thus, Kant could allow for free will (unconditioned causes) among things-in-themselves, as Jung allows for synchronicity ("meaningful coincidences"). Next to Kant, Jung is close to Schopenhauer, praising him as the first philosopher he had read, "who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentalists of the universe" [Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 69]. Jung was probably unaware of the Friesian background of Otto's term "numinosity" when he began to use it for his Archetypes, but it is unlikely that he would object to the way in which Otto's theory, through Fries, fits into Kantian epistemology and metaphysics.
Jung's place in the Kant-Friesian tradition is on a side that would have been distasteful to Kant, Fries, and Nelson, whose systems were basically rationalistic. Thus Kant saw religion as properly a rational expression of morality, and Fries and Nelson, although allowing an aesthetic content to religion different from morality, nevertheless did not expect religion to embody much more than good morality and good art. Schopenhauer, Otto, and Jung all represent an awareness that more exists to religion and to human psychological life than this. The terrifying, uncanny, and fascinating elements of religion and ordinary life are beneath the notice of Kant, Fries, and Nelson, while they are indisputable and irreducible elements of life, for which there must be an account, with Schopenhauer, Otto, and Jung. As Jung once, again said of Schopenhauer: "He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil - all those things that the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility." It is an awareness of this aspect of the world that renders the religious ideas of "salvation" meaningful; yet "salvation" as such is always missing from moralistic or aesthetic renderings of religion. Only Jung could have written his Answer to Job.
Jung's great Answer to Job, indeed, represents an approach to religion that is all but unique. Placing God in the Unconscious might strike most people as reducing him to a mere psychological object; Nevertheless, that is to overlook Jung's Kantianism. The unconscious, and especially the Collective Unconscious, belongs to Kantian things-in-themselves, or to the transcendent Will of Schopenhauer. Jung was often at pains not to complicate his theory of the Archetypes by committing himself to a metaphysical theory - he wanted the theory to work whether he was talking about the brain or about the Transcendent - but that was merely a concession to the materialistic bias of contemporary science. He had no materialistic commitment himself and, when it came down to it, was not going to accept such naive reductionism. Instead, he was willing to rethink how the Transcendent might operate. Thus, he says about Schopenhauer: I felt sure that by "Will" he really meant God, the Creator, and that he was saying that God was blind. Since I knew from experience that God was not offended by any blasphemy, which on the contrary, he could even encourages it on the account that He wished to evoke not only man's bright and positive side but also his darkness and ungodliness, Schopenhauer's view did not distress me.
The Problem of Evil, which for so many people simply dehumanizes religion, and which Schopenhauer used to reject the value of the world, became a challenge for Jung in the psychoanalysis of God. The God of the Bible is indeed a personality, and seemingly not always the same one. God as a morally evolving personality is the extraordinary conception of Answer to Job. What Otto saw as the evolution of human moral consciousness, Jung turns right around on the basis of the principle that the human unconscious, expressed spontaneously in religious practice and literature, transcends mere human subjectivity. But the transcendent reality in the unconscious is different in kind from consciousness. As Jung said in Memories, Dreams, Reflections again: If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes - the second cosmogony [ed. note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the "oosphere," the layer of "mind"]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain - found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.
In other words, a "meaningful coincidence." Jung also says, As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.
However, Jung has missed something there. If consciousness is "the light in the darkness of mere being," consciousness alone cannot be the "sole purpose of human existence," since consciousness as such could appear as just a place of "mere being" and so would easily become an empty, absurd, and meaningless Existentialist existence. Instead, consciousness allows for the meaningful instantiation of existence, both through Jung's process of Individuation, by which the Archetypes are given unique expression in a specific human life, and from the historic process that Jung examines in Answer to Job, by which interaction with the unconscious alters in turn the Archetypes that come to be instantiated. While Otto could understand Job's reaction to God, as the incomprehensible Numen, Jung thinks of God's reaction to Job, as an innocent and righteous man jerked around by God's unconsciousness. Jung's idea that the Incarnation then is the means by which God redeems Himself from His morally false position in Job is an extraordinary reversal (I hesitate to say "deconstruction") of the consciously expressed dogma that the Incarnation is to redeem humanity.
It is not too difficult to see this turn in other religions. The compassion of the Buddhas in Mahâyâna Buddhism, especially when the Buddha Shakyamuni comes to be seen as the expression of a cosmic and eternal Dharma Body, is a hand of salvation stretched out from the Transcendent, without, however, the complication that the Buddha is ever thought responsible for the nature of the world and its evils as their Creator. That complication, however, does occur with Hindu views of the divine Incarnations of Vishnu. Closer to a Jungian synthesis, on the other hand, is the Bahá'í theory that divine contact is though "Manifestations," which are neither wholly human nor wholly divine: merely human in relation to God, but entirely divine in relation to other humans. Such a theory must appear Christianizing in comparison to Islam, but it avoids the uniqueness of Christ as the only Incarnation in Christianity itself. This is conformable to the Jungian proposition that the unconscious is both a side of the human mind and a door into the Transcendent. When that door opens, the expression of the Transcendent is then conditioned by the person through which it is expressed, possessing that person, but it is also genuinely Transcendent and reflecting the ongoing interaction that the person historically embodies. The possible "mere being" even of consciousness then becomes the place of meaning and value.
Whether "psychoanalysis” as practised by Freud or Jung is to be taken seriously and no less than questions asked; however both men will survive as philosophers long after their claims to science or medicine may be discounted. Jung's Kantianism enables him to avoid the materialism and reductionism of Freud ("all of the civilization is a substitute for incest") and, with a great breadth of learning, employs principles from Kant, Schopenhauer, and Otto that are easily conformable to the Kant-Friesian tradition. The Answer to Job, indeed, represents a considerable advance beyond Otto, into the real paradoxes that are the only way we can conceive transcendent reality.
In the state of Cosmic Consciousness has an individual developed a keen awareness of his own mental states and activities and that of others around him or her. This individual is aware of a very distinct "I" personality that empowers the individual with a powerful expression of the "I am" that is not swayed or moved by the external impressions of the trifling mental states of others. This individual stands on a "rock solid" foundation that is not easily understood by the common mind. Cosmic Consciousness is void of the "superficial" ego.
The existence of the conscious "I" and the "Subconscious Mind" on the Mental Plane is a manifestation of the seventh Hermetic principle, the Principle of Gender. Every human, male and female, is composed of the Masculine and Feminine aspect of Mind on the Mental Plane. Each male has its female element, and each female has its male element of Mental Gender from which the creation of all thoughts proceed. The "I" being the masculine aspect of Mind, and the Subconscious Mind being the feminine. The Principle of Gender manifests itself as male and female in all species of Life and Being that makes the sexual reproduction and multiplication of the species possible on the Great Physical Plane. The phenomena of this principle can be found in all three great groups of life manifestations, as questionably answered to those that are duly respected thereof, that in the Spiritual, Mental, and Physical plane of Life and Being.
On the Physical Plane, its role is recognized as sexual reproduction, while on the higher planes it takes on higher, more subtler functions of Mental and Spiritual Gender. Its role is always in the direction of reproduction, generation and regeneration. The Masculine and Feminine principles are always present and active in all phases of phenomena and every plane of Life. An understanding in the manifesting power of this Principle, will give us a greater understanding of ourselves and an awareness of the enormous latent power awaiting to be tapped.
In the Spiritual developed individual, the person who becomes aware of, and recognizes the conscious "I," or "I am" within, will be able to exert its will upon the subconscious mind with definite causation and purpose. The recognition and awareness of the "I," will enable a person to expand his or her mind into regions of consciousness that is unthinkable to the societal conditioned thinking process of the world community.
True Spiritual, or Mental development, enables the sharpening of the five bodily senses, enhancing the richness of Life as our minds are allowed to expand into advanced Spiritual knowledge. Knowledge that will enable the proper use of the five wonderful bodily senses as they report to us the external world from which we derive information to store in the memory banks of the brain to create a knowledge base of experience. The greater the Conscious awareness, the more acute the bodily senses become. At the same time, the lesser the Conscious awareness (nonmaterial sixth sense), the minor acutely of the five bodily senses become and considerably of our external world would not even be acknowledged. This difference of mental states is most likely the cause of debate between religious and scientific circles.
The "I" Consciousness in each human is the true "Higher Self." The "Higher Self" of each human exists as a constant moving whirlpool of Cosmic Consciousness, or an eddy in the Infinite Spirit of "The all," which manifest’s LIFE in all of us and all living entities of the lower and higher planes. The "I" within all of us for being apart of the Mind but not separated exists in all of us and is the instrument of the conscious "I." It is Eternal and indestructible and mortality and Immortality is not an issue in existence. There is no force in existence capable of destroying the "I." This "I" or "Higher Self" is the SOUL of the Soul and is holographically connected to The all, giving the powerful "I" the Image of its Creator. All of us are created in the image of GOD without any exceptions or exclusions and none can escape its Omnipresent Infinite Living Mind. The all, of being the Ruler of all fate, or destiny, in all peoples, nations, governments, religious institutions, suns, worlds, galaxies, planes, dimensions, and Universes. All are subject to its Wills and Efforts, and is the Law that keeps all things in relationship to their Source. There is no "existence" outside of The all.
When the particular "I" is consciously recognized within ourselves, the "Will" of "I" is powerfully exerted upon the Subconscious Mind, giving the Subconscious Mind purpose and a sense of direction in Life. The Mind is the instrument by which the conscious "I" pries open the many deep, and hidden secrets of Nature.
To cause advancement, each individual would have to initiate the effort in learning the deep secrets of their nature, setting aside all the trifling efforts of self-condemnation, low self esteem, and hurts in their daily living that is caused by allowing the ignorant brainwashing of societal conditioning and self inflicted wounds. All the brainwashing, and imagined hurts that we experience in our lives are lessons to overcome these obstacles and to learn, and recognize the powerful "I."
Only the person who created the negative state of Mind can eliminate this by making a fundamental change in the way they think and what is held in their thoughts and to allow them the Spiritual education that is needed in for advancement. There is no red carpet treatment or royal road in accomplishing this. It takes a will, a desire, diligent effort, and perseverance in cultivating this knowledge. The resulting rewards of this attainment will far exceed the greatest worldly rewards known to humanity.
Most people fail to recognize this reality and they will unconsciously and painfully race through Life from cradle to grave and not even experience a momentary glimpse of this great Truth.
The "I," when recognized in a conscious and deliberate manner, will enable a person to accomplish things in Life that is limited only to his or her own imagination. The accomplishments of educators, scientists, engineers, and leaders, who make up the smaller percentage of the world population, have to a degree recognized this "I" within themselves, mostly in an unconscious manner, nevertheless, many have accomplished successful professional careers. They have accomplished a mental focus on a subject (or object), that escaped the ability of most people, giving them a sense of direction and a meaningful purpose in society. Every human is capable of accomplishing this, if they will only learn to focus and concentrate on one subject at a time.
When the will of "I" is utilized and exerted in an unrecognized and unconscious manner, it becomes misused and abused, bringing misery to the individual and others around him or her. Often, is this reality seen in the work place between people and where persons are in a position of authority, such as supervisors, managers, directors, etc., who bring misery to themselves and to their workers because of the powerful will of the unrecognized "I" or "I am." This aspect will cause a lack of harmony in an individual corporate, or company structure and at times bring chaos to the organization when enough of these types of individuals are employed in one place. Teamwork becomes a very labouring effort as competition between employees becomes its theme causing discontent and thus reducing the efficiency of a corporate environment. There is strength in number, either positive or negative. The realm of Spirit affects all levels of our society.
When the human Mind learns to become focussed on a single object or subject at a time, without wandering, excluding all other objects/subjects waiting in line, the Mind is capable of gathering previously unknown energy and information about a given subject or object. The entire world of that person seems to revolve in such a manner that it would bring them information from the unknown regions of the Mind. This is true meditation, to gather information about the unknown while being in a focussed meditative state of Mind. Each true meditation should bring a person information that will cause his or her Mind to expand with Knowledge, especially, when the focal point of concentration is that of Spirit. A person who learns to master this mental art will find that the proper books will manifest into their Life and bring to them the missing puzzles of Life. Books that will draw the attention of an individual on a given subject, and when the new knowledge is applied to the individual's Mind, it is allowed to expand further upon the subject by allowing the Mind to gather additional information and increasing the knowledge base, causing further advancement for others as well.
The mental art of concentration by employing the exertion of the will and creating desire upon a given subject or object is very rare because the lazy human mind is content with wandering twirlingly through Life. The untrained average human Mind is constantly rapidly wandering from one subject/object to another and is unable to focus on a single subject because of the constant carousel of external impressions of objects from the surrounding material world. The untrained mind is constantly jumping from one subject/object to another, like the jumping around of a wild monkey, never able to pause for a moment, to concentrate, and focalize long enough to allow the Mind to gather information about a given subject or object. This is what thinking is. To allow the Mind to gather information about the unknown. When this is disallowed, a person will wander aimlessly through Life and maintaining an ignorant state of Mind.
Wandering aimlessly through Life is a dangerous mental state to maintain because of the possible danger of other minds with stronger wills and efforts to manipulate the person who has not taken responsibility in the discipline and control of their own mind. A person having no control of their own responsibilities are more to wander of mind, having no control in Life's destiny because of the lack of focus and direction in Life. It can be compared with a rudderless ship that is constantly tossed by the rise and fall of the waves from the powerful ocean.
When the Mind becomes trained and learns to concentrate and focalize on a single object or subject at a time, that state of Mind will bring the individual Universal Knowledge and Wisdom. This is how genius is created by applying the mental art of concentration and focalizing on any worthwhile subject. The famous theories and hypothesis come into being such as Einstein's theory of relativity, man's ability to fly through the air, space travel, etc., by applying the mental art of concentration. It is an unbending mental aspect of the human mind as it continues to expand and gathers ever more information about all known and unknown subjects and objects, constantly causing change and advancement in Spirituality and technology. Unbiased, Spiritual Wisdom enables the proper use of technology and is the catalyst for its increasingly rapid advancement. It may be difficult, however, to conceive that Spirituality and technology go hand in hand, but are nonetheless, the lack of Spiritual Wisdom will dampen the infinite possibilities because of a limited, diminutive belief system.
Technology ends where the mortal barrier begins, then, it becomes a necessity to look into the realm of Spirit in order to continue human evolution. Without the continuous advancement of evolution, this civilization will become dissolved and perish off the face of the earth, like the many previous civilizations before us. The mortal barrier begins when science and technology will reach the limitation of the atomic and sub-atomic particles and a quantum leap into the realm of the Waveform (Spirit) becomes a necessity in order to continue upward progress
When a person learns to find a quiet moment in their lives to be able to become mentally focussed and entered on their profession, job, Spirituality, whatever the endeavour, they will find the answers and renewed energy to solve problems and create new knowledge and ideas.
When a person (no matter who) learns to focus and concentrate on Spirit, their Mind will gather from their Cosmic Consciousness, the deepest secrets of the Universe, as to how it is composed, by what means, and to what end. But, the enigma of the deepest inner secret Nature of The all, or God will always remain unknowable to us by reason of its Infinite stature to which no human qualities can, or should, ever be ascribed.
There is more on the subject of the powerful "I" consciousness the "I Am," the "Higher Self," which is, each one of us.
In what could turn out to be one of the most important discoveries in cognitive studies of our decade, it has been found that there are five million magnetite crystals per gram in the human brain. Interestingly, The meninges, (the membrane that envelops the brain), has twenty times that number. These ‘bio magnetite' crystals demonstrate two interesting features. The first is that their shapes do not occur in nature, suggesting that they were formed in the tissue, rather than being absorbed from outside. The other is that these crystals appear to be oriented so as to maximize their magnetic moment, which tends to give groups of these crystals the capacity to act as a system. The brain has also been found to emit very low intensity magnetic fields, a phenomenon that forms the basis of a whole diagnostic field, Magnetoencephalography.
Unfortunately for the present discussion, there is no way to ‘read' any signals that might be carried by the brain’s magnetic emissions at present. We expect that subtle enough means of detecting such signals will eventually appear, as there is compelling evidence that they do exist, and constitute a means whereby communication happens between various parts of the brain. This system, we speculate, is what makes the selection of which neural areas to recruit, so that States (of consciousness) can elicit the appropriate Phenomenological, behavioural, and affective responses.
While there have been many studies that have examined the effects of magnetic fields on human consciousness, none have yielded findings more germane to understanding the role of neuromagnetic signalling than the work of the Laurentian University Behavioural Neuroscience group. They have pursued a course of experiments that rely on stimulating the brain, especially the temporal lobes, with complex low intensity magnetic signals. It turns out that different signal’s produce different phenomena.
One example of such phenomenons is vestibular sensation, in which one's normal sense of balance is replaced by illusions of motion similar to the feelings of levitation reported in spiritual literature as well as the sensation of vertigo. Transient ‘visions', whose content includes motifs that also appear in near-death experiences and alien abduction scenarios have also appeared. Positive effectual parasthesias (electric-like buzzes in the body) have occurred. Another experiences that has been elicited neuromagnetically is bursts of emotion, most commonly of fear and joy. Although the content of these experiences can be quite striking, the way they present themselves is much more ordinary. It approximates the ‘twilight state' between waking and sleep called hypnogogia. This can produce brief, fleeting visions, feelings that the bed is moving, rocking, floating or sinking. Electric-buzz like somatic sensations and hearing an inner voice call one's name can also occur in hypnogogia. The range of experiences it can produce is quite broad. If all signals produced the same phenomena, then it would be difficult to conclude that these magnetic signals approximate the postulated endogenous neuromagnetic signals that create alterations in State. In fact, the former produces a wide variety of phenomena. One such signal makes some women apprehensive, but another doesn't. One signal creates such strong vestibular sensations that one can't stand up. Another doesn't.
The temporal lobes are the parts of the brain that mediate states of consciousness. EEG readouts from the temporal lobes are markedly different when a person is asleep, having a hallucinogenic seizure, or on LSD. Siezural disorders confined to the temporal lobes (complex partial seizures) have been characterized as impairments of consciousness. There was also a study done in which monkeys were given LSD after having various parts of their brains removed. The monkeys continued to ‘trip' no matter what part or parts of their brains were missing until both temporal lobes were taken out. In these cases, the substance did not seem to affect the monkeys at all. The conclusion seems unavoidable. In addition to all their other functions (aspects of memory, language, music, etc.), the temporal lobes mediate states of consciousness.
If exposing the temporal lobes to magnetic signals can induce alterations in States, then it seems reasonable to suppose that States find part of their neural basis in our postulated neuromagnetic signals, arising out of the temporal lobes.
Hallucinations are known to be the Phenomenological correlates of altered States. Alterations in state of consciousness leads, following input, and phenomena, whether hallucinatory or not, follows in response. We can offer two reasons for drawing this conclusion.
The first is one of the results obtained by a study of hallucinations caused by electrical stimulation deep in the brain. In this study, the content of the hallucinations was found to be related to the circumstances in which they occurred, so that the same stimulations could produce different hallucinations. The conclusion was that the stimulation induced altered states, and the states facilitated the hallucinations.
The second has to do with the relative speeds of the operant neural processes.
Neurochemical response times are limited by the time required for their transmission across the synaptic gap, .5 to 2msec.
By comparison, the propagation of action potentials is much faster. For example, an action potential can travel a full centimetre (a couple of orders of magnitude larger than a synaptic gap) in about 1.3 msec. The brain's electrical responses, therefore, happen orders of magnitude more quickly than do its chemical ones.
Magnetic signals are propagated with greater speeds than those of action potentials moving through neurons. Contemporary physics requires that magnetic signals be propagated at a significant fraction of the velocity of light, so that the entire brain could be exposed to a neuromagnetic signal in vanishingly small amounts of time.
It seems possible that neuromagnetic signals arise from structures that mediate our various sensory and cognitive modalities. These signals then recruit those functions (primarily in the limbic system) that adjust the changes in state. These temporal lobe signals, we speculate, then initiate signals to structures that mediate modalities that are enhanced or suppressed as the state changes.
The problem of defining the phrase ‘state of consciousness' has plagued the field of cognitive studies for some time. Without going into the history of studies in the area, we would like to outline a hypothesis concerning states of consciousness in which the management of states gives rise to the phenomenon of consciousness
There are theories that suggest that cognitive modalities (such as memory, affect, ideation and attention) may be seen as analogs to sensory modalities.
We hypothesize that the entire set of modalities, cognitive and sensory, may be heuristically compared with a sound mixing board. In this metaphor, all the various modalities are represented as vertical rheostats with enhanced functioning increasing towards the top, and suppressed function increasing toward the bottom. Further, the act of becoming conscious of phenomena in any given modality involves the adjustment of that modality's ‘rheostat'
Sensory input from any modality can alter one's state. The sight of a sexy person, the smell of fire, the unexpected sensation of movement against one's skin (there's a bug on me!), a sudden bitter taste experienced while eating ice cream, or the sound of one's child screaming in pain; all of these phenomena can induce alterations in State. Although the phrase ‘altered states' has come to be associated with dramatic, otherworldly experiences, alterations in state, as we will be using the phrase, refer primarily to those alterations that take us from one normal state to another.
Alterations in state can create changes within the various sensory and cognitive modalities. An increase in arousal following the sight of a predator will typically suppress the sense of smell (very few are able to stop and ‘smell the roses' while a jaguar is chasing them), suppressive introspection (nobody wants to know ‘who I really am?' Nonetheless, an anaconda breeds for wrapping itself around them, suppresses sexual arousal, and alters vision so that the centre of the visual field is better attended then one's peripheral vision allowing one to see the predator's movement better? The sight of a predator will also introduce a host of other changes, all of which reflect the State.
In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, there is a dialogue between the legendary warrior, Arjuna, and his archery teacher. Arjuna was told by his teacher to train his bow on a straw bird used as a target. Arjuna was asked to describe the bird. He answered ‘I can't'. ‘Why not?', Asked his teacher. ‘I can only see its eye', he answered. ‘Release your arrow', commanded the teacher. Arjuna did, and hit the target in the eye. ‘I'll make you the finest archer in the world', said his teacher.
In this story, attention to peripheral vision had ceased so completely that only the very centre of his visual field received any. Our model of states would be constrained to interpret Arjuna's (mythical) feat as a behaviour specific to a state. The unique combination of sensory enhancement, heightened attention, and sufficient suppression of emotion, ideation, and introspection that support such an act suggests specific settings for our metaphorical rheostats.
Changes in state make changes in sensory and cognitive modalities, and they in turn, trigger changes in state. We can reasonably conclude that there is a feedback mechanism whereby each modality is connected to the others.
States also create tendencies to behave in specific ways in specific circumstances, maximizing the adaptivity of behaviour in those circumstances; behaviour that tends to meet our needs and respond to threats to our ability to meet those needs.
Each circumstance adjusts each modality’s setting, tending to maximize that modality's contribution to adaptive behaviour in that circumstance. The mechanism may function by using both learned and inherited default settings for each circumstance and then repeating those settings in similar circumstances later on. Sadly, this often makes states maladaptive. Habitually to alteration in State, in response to threats from an abusive parent, for example, can make for self-defeating responses to stress in other circumstances, where theses same responses are no longer advantageous.
Because different States are going to be dominated by specific combinations of modalities, it makes sense that a possible strategy for aligning the rheostats (making alterations in state) is to move them in tandem, so that after a person associates the sound of a scream to the concept of a threat, that sound, with its unique auditory signature, will cause all the affected modalities (most likely most of them in most cases) to take the positions they had at the time the association was made.
hen we say changing states, we are referring to much more than the dramatic states created by LSD, isolation tanks, REM. sleep, etc. We are also including normal states of consciousness, which we can imagine as kindled ‘default settings' of our various modalities. When any one of these settings returns to one of its default settings, it will, we conjecture, tend to entrain all the other modalities to the settings they habitually take in that state.
To accomplish this, we must suggest that each modality be connected to every other one. A sight, a smell, a sound, or a tactile feeling can all inspire fear. Fear can motivate ideation. Ideation can inspire arousal. Changes in effect can initiate alterations in introspection. Introspection alters affect. State specific settings of individual modalities could initiate settings for other modalities.
Our main hypothesis here is that all these intermodal connections, as operating as a single system, have a single Phenomenological correlate. The phenomena of subjective awareness.
The structures associated with that modality then broadcasts are neuromagnetic signals to the temporal lobes, which then produces signals that then recruits various structures throughout the brain. Specifically, those structures whose associated modalities' values must be changed in order to accomplish the appropriate alteration in state. In the second section, we found the possibility that states are settings for the variable aspects of cognitive and sensory modalities. We also offered the suggestion that consciousness is the Phenomenological correlate of the feedback between the management of states on the one hand, and the various cognitive and sensory modalities, on the other. If all of these conclusions were to stand up to testing, we could conclude that the content of the brain's hypothesized endogenous magnetic signals might consist of a set of values for adjusting each sensory and cognitive rheostat. We might also conclude that neuromagnetic signalling is the context in which consciousness occurs.
The specific mechanism whereby subjectivity is generated is out of the reach of this work. Nevertheless, we can say that the fact that multiple modalities are experienced simultaneously, together with our model's implication that they are ‘reset,' all at once, with each alteration in state suggests that our postulated neuromagnetic signals may come in pairs, with the two signals running slightly out of condition with one another. In this way, neuromagnetic signals, like the two laser beams used to produce a hologram, might be able to store information in a similar way, as has already been explored by Karl Pibhram. The speed at which neuromagnetic signals continue to propagate, and together with their capacity to recruit/alter multiple modalities suggests that the underlying mechanism have been selected to make instant choices on which specific portions to recruit in order to facilitate the behaviours acted out of the State, and to do so quickly.
In this way, the onset time for the initiation of States is kept to a minimum, and with it, the times needed to make the initial, cognitive response to stimuli. When it comes to response to threats, or sighting prey, the evolutionary advantages are obvious.
Higher-order theories of consciousness try to explain the distinctive properties of consciousness in terms of some relation obtaining between the conscious state in question and a higher-order representation of some sort (either a higher-order experience of that state, or a higher-order thought or belief about it). The most challenging properties to explain are those involved in phenomenal consciousness - the sort of state that has a subjective dimension, which has ‘feel’, or which it is like something to undergo.
One of the advances made in recent years has been in distinguishing between different questions concerning consciousness. Not everyone agrees on quite which distinctions need to be drawn. But all are agreeing that we should distinguish creature consciousness from mental-state consciousness. It is one thing to say of an individual or organism that it is conscious (either in general or of something in particular). It is quite another thing to say of one of the mental states of a creature that it is conscious.
It is also agreed that within creature-consciousness itself we should distinguish between intransitive and transitive variants. To say of an organism that it is conscious, and finds of its own sorted simplicities (intransitive) is to say just that it is awake, as opposing to an ever vanquishing state of unconsciousness, only to premises the fact, that the unconscious is literally resting, not of an awakening state. There do not appear to be any deep philosophical difficulties lurking here (or at least, they are not difficulties specific to the topic of consciousness, as opposed to mentality in general). But to say of an organism that it is conscious of such-and-such (transitive) is normally to say at least that it is perceiving such-and-such, or aware of such-and-such. So we say of the mouse that it is conscious of the cat outside its hole, in explaining why it does not come out is, perhaps, to mean that it perceives the cat's presence. To provide an account of transitive creature-consciousness would thus be to attempt a theory of perception.
There is a choice to be made concerning transitive creature-consciousness, failure to notice which may be a potential source of confusion. For we have to decide whether the perceptual state in virtue of which an organism may be said to be transitively-conscious of something must itself be a conscious one (state-conscious). If we say ‘Yes’ then we will need to know more about the mouse than merely that it perceives the cat if we are to be assured that it is conscious of the cat - we will need to establish that its percept of the cat is itself conscious. If we say ‘No’, on the other hand, then the mouse's perception of the cat will be sufficient for the mouse to count as conscious of the cat, but we may have to say that although it is conscious of the cat, the mental state in virtue of which it is so conscious is not itself a conscious one! It may be best to by-pass any danger of confusion here by avoiding the language of transitive-creature-consciousness altogether. Nothing of importance would be lost to us by doing this. We can say simply that organism O observes or perceives x. We can then assert, explicitly, that if we wish, that its percept be or is not conscious.
Turning now to the notion of mental-state consciousness, the major distinction here is between phenomenal consciousness, on the one hand - which is a property of states that it is like something to be in, which have a distinctive ‘feel’ (Nagel, 1974) - and various functionally-definable forms of access consciousness, on the other. Most theorists believe that there are mental states - such as occurrent thoughts or judgments - which are access-conscious (in whatever is the correct functionally-definable sense), but which are not phenomenally conscious. In contrast, there is considerable dispute as to whether mental states can be phenomenally-conscious without also being conscious in the functionally-definable sense - and even more dispute about whether phenomenal consciousness can be reductively explained in functional and/or representational terms.
It seems plain that there is nothing deeply problematic about functionally-definable notions of mental-state consciousness, from a naturalistic perspective. For mental functions and mental representations are the staple fares of naturalistic accounts of the mind. But this leaves plenty of room for dispute about the form that the correct functional account should take. Some claim that for a state to be conscious in the relevant sense is for it to be poised to have an impact on the organism's decision-making processes, perhaps also with the additional requirement that those processes should be distinctively rational ones. Others think that the relevant requirement for access-consciousness is that the state should be suitably related to higher-order representations - experiences and/or beliefs - of that very state.
What is often thought to be naturalistically problematic, in contrast, is phenomenal consciousness. And what is really and deeply controversial is whether phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of some or other functionally-definable notion. Cognitive (or representational) theories maintain that it can. Higher-order cognitive theories maintain that phenomenal consciousness can be reductively explained in terms of representations (either experiences or beliefs) which are higher-order. Such theories concern us here.
Higher-order theories, like cognitive/representational theories in general, assume that the right level at which to seek an explanation of phenomenal consciousness is a cognitive one, providing an explanation in terms of some combination of causal role and intentional content. All such theories claim that phenomenal consciousness consists in a certain kind of intentional or representational content (analog or ‘fine-grained’ in comparison with any concepts we may possess) figuring in a certain distinctive position in the causal architecture of the mind. They must therefore maintain that these latter sorts of mental property do not already implicate or presuppose phenomenal consciousness. In fact, all cognitive accounts are united in rejecting the thesis that the very properties of mind or mentality already presuppose phenomenal consciousness, as proposed by Searle (1992, 1997) for example.
The major divides among representational theories of phenomenal consciousness in general, is between accounts that are provided in purely first-order terms and those that implicate higher-order representations of one sort or another (see below). These higher-order theorists will allow that first-order accounts - of the sort defended by Dretske (1995) and Tye (1995), for example - can already make some progress with the problem of consciousness. According to first-order views, phenomenal consciousness consists in analog or fine-grained contents that are available to the first-order processes that guide thought and action. So a phenomenally-conscious percept of red, for example, consisting in a state, with which the parallel contentual representations are red under which are betokened in such a way as to take food into thoughts about red, or into actions that are in one way or another guide by way of redness. Now, the point to note in favour of such an account is that it can explain the natural temptation to think that phenomenal consciousness is in some sense ineffable, or indescribable. This will be because such states have fine-grained contents that can slip through the mesh of any conceptual net. We can always distinguish many more shades of red than we have concepts for, or could describe in language (other than indexically -, e.g., ‘That shade’)
The main motivation behind higher-order theories of consciousness, in contrast, derives from the belief that all (or at least most) mental-state types admit of both conscious and non-conscious varieties. Almost everyone now accepts, for example, (post-Freud) that beliefs and desires can be activated non-consciously. (Think, here, of the way in which problems can apparently become resolved during sleep, or while one's attention is directed to other tasks. Notice, that appearance to non-conscious intentional states is now routine in cognitive science.) And then if we ask what makes the difference between a conscious and a non-conscious mental state, one natural answer is that consciously states are states we are aware of them but not as to their actualization as based upon its nature. And if awareness is thought to be a form of creature-consciousness, then this will translate into the view that conscious states are states of which the subject is aware, or states of which the subject is creature-conscious. That is to say, these are states that are the objects of some sort of higher-order representation - whether to some higher-order of perception or experience, or a higher-order of belief or thought.
One crucial question, then, is whether perceptual states as well as beliefs admit of both conscious and non-conscious varieties. Can there be, for example, such a thing as a non-conscious visual perceptual state? Higher-order theorists are united in thinking that there can. Armstrong (1968) uses the example of absent-minded driving to make the point. Most of us at some time have had the rather unnerving experience of ‘coming to’ after having been driving on ‘automatic pilot’ while our attention was directed elsewhere - perhaps having been day-dreaming or engaged in intense conversation with a passenger. We were apparently not consciously aware of any of the route we have recently taken, nor of any of the obstacles we avoided on the way. Yet we must surely have been seeing, or we would have crashed the car. Others have used the example of blind-sight. This is a condition in which subjects have had a portion of their primary visual cortex destroyed, and apparently become blind in a region of their visual field as a result. But it has now been known for some time that if subjects are asked to guess at the properties of their ‘blind’ field (e.g., whether it contains a horizontal or vertical grating, or whether it contains an ‘X’ or an ‘O’), they prove remarkably accurate. Subjects can also reach out and grasp objects in their ‘blind’ field with something like 80% or more of normal accuracy, and can catch a ball thrown from their ‘blind’ side, all without conscious awareness.
More recently, a powerful case for the existence of non-conscious visual experience has been generated by the two-systems theory of vision proposed and defended by Milner and Goodale (1995). They review a wide variety of kinds of neurological and neuro-psychological evidence for the substantial independence of two distinct visual systems, instantiated in the temporal and parietal lobes respectively. They conclude that the parietal lobes provide a set of specialized semi-independent modules for the on-line visual control of action; Though the temporal lobes are primarily concerned with subsequent off-line functioning, such as visual learning and object recognition. And only the experiences generated by the temporal-lobe system are phenomenally conscious, on their account.
(Note that this is not the familiar distinction between what and where visual systems, but is rather a successor to it. For the temporal-lobe system is supposed to have access both to property information and to spatial information. Instead, it is a distinction between a combined what-where system located in the temporal lobes and a how-to or action-guiding system located in the parietal lobes.)
To get the flavour of Milner and Goodale's hypothesis, consider just one strand from the wealth of evidence they provide. This is a neurological syndrome called visual form agnosia, which results from damage localized to both temporal lobes, leaving primary visual cortex and the parietal lobes composed. (Visual form agnosia is normally caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, for reasons that are little understood.) Such patients cannot recognize objects or shapes, and may be capable of little conscious visual experience; still, their sensorimotor abilities remain largely intact
One particular patient has now been examined in considerable detail. While D.F. is severely agnosia, she is not completely lacking in conscious visual experience. Her capacities to perceive colours and textures are almost completely preserved. (Why just these sub-modules in her temporal cortex should have been spared is not known.) As a result, she can sometimes guess the identity of a presented object - recognizing a banana, say, from its yellow Collor and the distinctive texture of its surface. Nevertheless, she is unable to perceive the shape of the banana (whether straight or curved, say); Nor its orientation (upright or horizontal), nor of many of her sensorimotor abilities are close too normal - she would be able to reach out and grasp the banana, orienting her hand and wrist appropriately for its position and orientation, and using a normal and appropriate finger grip. Under experimental conditions it turns out that although D.F. is at chance in identifying the orientation of a broad line or letter box, she is almost normal when posting a letter through a similarly-shaped slot oriented at random angles. In the same way, although she is at chance when trying to choose as between the rectangular Forms of very different sizes, her reaching and grasping behaviours when asked to pick up such a Form are virtually indistinguishable from those of normal controls. It is very hard to make sense of this data without supposing that the sensorimotor perceptual system is functionally and anatomically distinct from the object-recognition/conscious system.
There is a powerful case, then, for thinking that there are non-conscious as well as conscious visual percepts. While the perceptions that ground your thoughts when you plan in relation to the perceived environment (‘I'll pick up that one’) may be conscious, and while you will continue to enjoy conscious perceptions of what you are doing while you act, the perceptual states that actually guide the details of your movements when you reach out and grab the object will not be conscious ones, if Milner and Goodale (1995) are correct
But what implication does this have for phenomenal consciousness? Must these non-conscious percepts also be lacking in phenomenal properties? Most people think so. While it may be possible to get oneself to believe that the perceptions of the absent-minded car driver can remain phenomenally conscious (perhaps lying outside of the focus of attention, or being instantly forgotten), it is very hard to believe that either blind-sight percepts or D.F.'s sensorimotor perceptual states might be phenomenally conscious ones. For these perceptions are ones to which the subjects of those states are blind, and of which they cannot be aware. And the question, then, is what makes the relevant difference? What is it about a conscious perception that renders it phenomenal, which a blind-sight perceptual state would correspondingly lack? Higher-order theorists are united in thinking that the relevant difference consists in the presence of something higher-order in the first case that is absent in the second. The core intuition is that a phenomenally conscious state will be a state of which the subject is aware.
What options does a first-order theorist have to resist this conclusion? One is to deny the data, it can be said that the non-conscious states in question lack the kind of fineness of grain and richness of content necessary to count as genuinely perceptual states. On this view, the contrast discussed above isn't really a difference between conscious and non-conscious perceptions, but rather between conscious perceptions, on the one hand, and non-conscious belief-like states, on the other. Another option is to accept the distinction between conscious and non-conscious perceptions, and then to explain that distinction in first-order terms. It might be said, for example, that conscious perceptions are those that are available to belief and thought, whereas non-conscious ones are those that are available to guide movement. A final option is to bite the bullet, and insist that blind-sight and sensorimotor perceptual states are indeed phenomenally conscious while not being access-conscious. On this account, blind-sight percepts are phenomenally conscious states to which the subjects of those states are blind. Higher-order theorists will argue, of course, that none of these alternatives is acceptable.
In general, then, higher-order theories of phenomenal consciousness claim the following: A phenomenally conscious mental state is a mental state (of a certain sort - see below) which either is, or is disposed to be, the object of a higher-order representation of a certain sort. Higher-order theorists will allow, of course, that mental states can be targets of higher-order representation without being phenomenally conscious. For example, a belief can give rise to a higher-order belief without thereby being phenomenally conscious. What is distinctive of phenomenal consciousness is that the states in question should be perceptual or quasi-perceptual ones (e.g., visual images as well as visual percepts). Moreover, most cognitive/representational theorists will maintain that these states must possess a certain kind of analog (fine-grained) or non-conceptual intentional content. What makes perceptual states, mental images, bodily sensations, and emotions phenomenally conscious, on this approach, is that they are conscious states with analog or non-conceptual contents. So putting these points together, we get the view that phenomenally conscious states are those states that possess fine-grained intentional contents of which the subject is aware, being the target or potential target of some sort of higher-order representation.
There are then two main dimensions along which higher-order theorists disagree among themselves. One relate to whether the higher-order states in question are belief-like or perception-like. That taking to the former option is higher-order thought theorists, and those taking the latter are higher-order experience or ‘inner-sense’ theorists. The other disagreement is internal to higher-order thought approaches, and concerns whether the relevant relation between the first-order state and the higher-order thought is one of availability or not. That is, the question is whether a state is conscious by virtue of being disposed to give rise to a higher-order thought, or rather by virtue of being the actual target of such a thought. These are the options that will now concern us.
According to this view, humans not only have first-order non-conceptual and/or analog perceptions of states of their environments and bodies, they also have second-order non-conceptual and/or analog perceptions of their first-order states of perception. Humans (and perhaps other animals) not only have sense-organs that scan the environment/body to produce fine-grained representations that can then serve to ground thoughts and action-planning, but they also have inner senses, charged with scanning the outputs of the first-order senses (i.e., perceptual experiences) to produce equally fine-grained, but higher-order, representations of those outputs (i.e., to produce higher-order experiences). A version of this view was first proposed by the British Empiricist philosopher John Locke (1690). In our own time it has been defended especially by Armstrong.
(A terminological point: this view is sometimes called a ‘higher-order experience (HOE) theory’ of phenomenal consciousness; But the term ‘inner-sense theory’ is more accurate. For as we will see in section 5, there are versions of a higher-order thought (HOT) approaches that also implicate higher-order perceptions, but without needing to appeal to any organs of inner sense.
(Another terminological point: ‘Inner-sense theory’ should more strictly be called ‘higher-order-sense theory’, since we of course have senses that are physically ‘inner’, such as pain-perception and internal touch-perception, which are not intended to fall under its scope. For these are first-order senses on a par with vision and hearing, differing only in that their purpose is to detect properties of the body rather than of the external world. According to the sort of higher-order theory under discussion in this section, these senses, too, determine what needs have their outputs scanned to produce higher-order analog contents in order for them to become phenomenally conscious. In what follows, however, the term ‘inner sense’ will be used to mean, more strictly, ‘higher-order sense’, since this terminology is now pretty firmly established.)
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is in turn the target of a higher-order analog/non-conceptual intentional state, via the operations of a faculty of ‘inner sense’.
On this account, the difference between a phenomenally conscious percept of red and the sort of non-conscious percepts of red that guide the guesses of a blind-sighted and the activity of sensorimotor system, is as follows. The former is scanned by our inner senses to produce a higher-order analog state with the content experience of red or seems red, whereas the latter states are not - they remain merely first-order states with the analog content red. In so remaining, they lack any dimension of seeming or subjectivity. According to inner-sense theory, it is our higher-order experiential themes produced by the operations of our inner-senses which make some mental states with analog contents, but not others, available to their subjects. And these same higher-order contents constitute the subjective dimension or ‘feel’ of the former set of states, thus rendering them phenomenally conscious.
One of the main advantages of inner-sense theory is that it can explain how it is possible for us to acquire purely recognisable concepts of experience. For if we possess higher-order perceptual contents, then it should be possible for us to learn to recognize the occurrence of our own perceptual states immediately - or ‘straight off’ - grounded in those higher-order analog contents. And this should be possible without those recognizable concepts thereby having any conceptual connections with our beliefs about the nature or content of the states recognized, nor with any of our surrounding mental concepts. This is then how inner-sense theory will claim to explain the familiar philosophical thought-experiments concerning one's own experiences, which are supposed to cause such problems for physicalist/naturalistic accounts of the mind.
For example, I can think, ‘This type of experience [as of red] might have occurred in me, or might normally occur in others, in the absence of any of its actual causes and effects.’ So on any view of intentional content that sees content as tied to normal causes (i.e., to information carried) and/or to normal effects (i.e., teleological or an inferential role), this type of experience might occur without representing red. In the same sort of way, I will be able to think, ‘This type of experience [pain] might have occurred in me, or might occur in others, in the absence of any of the usual causes and effects of pains. There could be someone in whom these experiences occur but who isn't bothered by them, and where those experiences are never caused by tissue damage or other forms of a bodily insult. And conversely, there could be someone who behaves and acts just as I do when in pain, and in response to the same physical causes, but who is never subject to this type of experience.’ If we possess purely recognitional concepts of experience, grounded in higher-order percepts of those experiences, then the thinkability of such thoughts is both readily explicable, and apparently unthreatening to a naturalistic approach to the mind.
Inner-sense theory does face a number of difficulties, however. If inner-sense theory were true, then how is it that there is no phenomenology distinctive of inner sense, in the way that there is a phenomenology associated with each outer sense? Since each of the outer senses gives rise to a distinctive set of Phenomenological properties, you might expect that if there were such a thing as inner sense, then there would also be a phenomenology distinctive of its operation. But there doesn't appear to be any.
This point turns on the so-called ‘transparency’ of our perceptual experience (Harman, 1990). Concentrate as hard as you like on your ‘outer’ (first-order) experiences - you will not find any further Phenomenological properties arising out of the attention you pay to them, beyond those already belonging to the contents of the experiences themselves. Paying close attention to your experience of the Collor of the red rose, for example, just produces attention to the redness - a property of the rose. But put like this, however, the objection just seems to beg the question in favour of first-order theories of phenomenal consciousness. It assumes that first-order - ‘outer’ - perceptions already have a phenomenology independently of their targeting by inner sense. But this is just what an inner-sense theorist will deny. And then in order to explain the absence of any kind of higher-order phenomenology, an inner-sense theorist only needs to maintain that our higher-order experiences are never themselves targeted by an inner-sense-organ that might produce third-order analog representations of them in turn.
Another objection to inner-sense theory is as follows if there really were an organ of inner sense, then it ought to be possible for it to malfunction, just as our first-order senses sometimes do. And in that case, it ought to be possible for someone to have a first-order percept with the analog content red causing a higher-order percept with the analog content seems-orange. Someone in this situation would be disposed to judge, ‘It is rouge red, but, till, it immediately stands as non-inferential (i.e., not influenced by beliefs about the object's normal Collor or their own physical state). But at the same time they would be disposed to judge, ‘It seems orange’. Not only does this sort of thing never apparently occur, but the idea that it might do so conflicts with a powerful intuition. This is that our awareness of our own experiences is immediate, in such a way that to believe that you are undergoing an experience of a certain sort is to be undergoing an experience of that sort. But if inner-sense theory is correct, then it ought to be possible for someone to believe that they are in a state of seeming-orange when they are actually in a state of seeming-red.
A different sort of objection to inner-sense theory is developed by Carruthers (2000). It starts from the fact that the internal monitors postulated by such theories would need to have considerable computational complexity in order to generate the requisite higher-order experiences. In order to perceive an experience, the organism would need to have mechanisms to generate a set of internal representations with an analog or non-conceptual content representing the content of that experience, in all its richness and fine-grained detail. And notice that any inner scanner would have to be a physical device (just as the visual system of itself is) which depends upon the detection of those physical events in the brain that is the output of the various sensory systems (just as the visual system is a physical device that depends upon detection of physical properties of surfaces via the reflection of light). For it is hard to see how any inner scanner could detect the presence of an experience as experience. Rather, it would have to detect the physical realizations of experiences in the brain, and construct the requisite higher-order representation of the experiences that those physical events realize, on the basis of that physical-information input. This makes is seem inevitable that the scanning device that supposedly generates higher-order experiences of our first-order visual experience would have to be almost as sophisticated and complex as the visual system itself
Now the problem that arises here is this. Given this complexity in the operations of our organs of inner sense, there had better be some plausible story to tell about the evolutionary pressures that led to their construction. For natural selection is the only theory that can explain the existence of organized functional complexity in nature. But there would seem to be no such stories on the market. The most plausible suggestion is that inner-sense might have evolved to subserve our capacity to think about the mental states of conspecific, thus enabling us to predict their actions and manipulate their responses. (This is the so-called ‘Machiavellian hypothesis’ to explain the evolution of intelligence in the great-ape lineage. But this suggestion presupposes that the organism must already have some capacity for higher-order thought, since such thoughts in which an inner sense is supposed to subserve. And yet, some higher-order thought theories can claim all of the advantages of inner-sense theory as an explanation of phenomenal consciousness, but without the need to postulate any ‘inner scanners’. At any rate, the ‘computational complexity objection’ to inner-sense theories remains as a challenge to be answered.
Non-dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory is a proposal about the nature of state-consciousness in general, of which phenomenal consciousness is but one species. Its main proponent has been Rosenthal. The proposal is this: a conscious mental state M, of mine, is a state that is actually causing an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and causing it non-inferentially. (The qualification concerning non-inferential causation is included to avoid one having to say that my non-conscious motives become conscious when I learn of them under psychoanalysis, or that my jealousy is conscious when I learn of it by interpreting my own behaviour.) An account of phenomenal consciousness can then be generated by stipulating that the mental state M should have an analog content in order to count as an experience, and that when M is an experience (or a mental image, bodily sensation, or emotion), it will be phenomenally conscious when (and only when) suitably targeted.
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is the object of a higher-order thought, and which causes that thought non-inferentially.
This account avoids some of the difficulties inherent in inner-sense theory, while retaining the latter's ability to explain the distinction between conscious and non-conscious perceptions. (Conscious perceptions will be analog states that are targeted by a higher-order thought, whereas perceptions such as those involved in blind-sight will be non-conscious by virtue of not being so targeted.) In particular, it is easy to see a function for higher-order thoughts, in general, and to tell a story about their likely evolution. A capacity to entertain higher-order thoughts about experiences would enable a creature to negotiate the is and seems distinction, perhaps learning not to trust its own experiences in certain circumstances, and to induce appearances in others, by deceit. And a capacity to entertain higher-order thoughts about thoughts (beliefs and desires) would enable a creature to reflect on, and to alter, its own beliefs and patterns of reasoning, as well as to predict and manipulate the thoughts and behaviours of others. Indeed, it can plausibly be claimed that it is our capacity to target higher-order thoughts on our own mental state in which underlies our status as rational agents. One well-known objection to this sort of higher-order thought theory is due to Dretske (1993). We are asked to imagine a case in which we carefully examine two line-drawings, say (or in Dretske's example, two patterns of differently-sized spots). These drawings are similar in almost all respects, but differ in just one aspect - in Dretske's example, one of the pictures contains a black spot that the other lacks. It is surely plausible that, in the course of examining these two pictures, one will have enjoyed a conscious visual experience of the respect in which they differ -, e.g., of the offending spot. But, as is familiar, one can be in this position while not knowing that the two pictures are different, or in what way they are different. In which case, since one can have a conscious experience (e.g., of the spot) without being aware that one is having it, consciousness cannot require higher-order awareness.
Replies to this objection have been made by Seager (1994) and by Byrne (1997). They point out that it is one thing to have a conscious experience of the aspect that differentiates the two pictures, and quite another to experience consciously that the two pictures are differentiated by that aspect. That is, seeing the extra spot in one picture needn't mean seeing that this is the difference between the two pictures. So while scanning the two pictures one will enjoy conscious experience of the extra spot. A higher-order thought theorist will say that this means undergoing a percept with the content spot here which forms the target of a higher-order belief that one is undergoing a perception with that content. But this can perfectly well be true without undergoing a percept with the content spot here in this picture but absent here in that one. And it can also be true without forming any higher-order belief to the effect that one is undergoing a perception with the content spot here when looking at a given picture but not when looking at the other. In which case the purported counter-example isn't really a counter-example.
A different sort of problem with the Non-dispositionalist version of higher-order thought theory relates to the huge number of beliefs that would have to be caused by any given phenomenally conscious experience. (This is the analogue of the ‘computational complexity’ objection to inner-sense theory, Consider just how rich and detailed a conscious experience can be. It would seem that there can be an immense amount of which we can be consciously aware at any-one time. Imagine looking down on a city from a window high up in a tower-Form, for example. In such a case you can have phenomenally conscious percepts of a complex distribution of trees, roads, and buildings, colours on the ground and in the sky above, moving cars and pedestrians, . . . and so on. And you can - it seems - be conscious of all of this simultaneously. According to Non-dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, then, you would need to have a distinct activated higher-order belief for each distinct aspect of your experience is that, of just a few such beliefs with immensely complex contents. By contrast, the objection is the same, for which it seems implausible that all of this higher-order activity should be taking place, even if non-consciously, in every time someone is the subject of a complex conscious experience. For what would be the point? And think of the amount of cognitive space that these beliefs would take up,
This objection to Non-dispositionalist forms of higher-order thought theory is considered at some length in Carruthers (2000), where a variety of possible replies are discussed and evaluated. Perhaps the most plausible and challenging such replies would be to deny the main premise lying behind the objection, concerning the rich and integrated nature of phenomenally conscious experience. Rather, the theory could align itself with Dennett's (1991) conception of consciousness as highly fragmented, with multiple streams of perceptual content being processed in parallel in different regions of the brain, and with no stage at which all of these contents are routinely integrated into a phenomenally conscious perceptual manifold. Rather, contents become conscious on a piecemeal basis, as a result of internal or external probing that gives rise to a higher-order belief about the content in question. (Dennett himself sees this process as essentially linguistic, with both probes and higher-order thoughts being formulated in natural language. This variant of the view, although important in its own right, is not relevant to our present concerns.) This serves to convey to us the mere illusion of riches, because wherever we direct our attention, there we find a conscious perceptual content. It is doubtful whether this sort of ‘fragmental’ account can really explain the phenomenology of our experience, however. For it still faces the objection that the objects of attention can be immensely rich and varied at any given moment, hence requiring there to be an equally rich and varied repertoire of higher-order thoughts tokened at the same time. Think of immersing yourself in the colours and textures of a Van Gogh painting, for example, or the scene as your look out at your garden - it would seem that one can be phenomenally conscious of a highly complex set of properties, which one could not even begin to describe or conceptualize in any detail. However, since the issues here are large and controversial, it cannot yet be concluded that Non-dispositionalist forms of higher-order thought theory have been decisively refuted.
According to all forms of dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, the conscious status of an experience consists in its availability to higher-order thought (Dennett, 1978). As with the Non-dispositionalist version of the theory, in its simplest form we have here a quite general proposal concerning the conscious status of any type of occurrent mental state, which becomes an account of phenomenal consciousness when the states in question are experiences (or images, emotions, etc.) with analog content. The proposal is this: a conscious mental event M, of mine, is one that is disposed to cause an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and to cause it non-inferentially.
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is held in a special-purpose short-term memory store in such a way as to be available to cause (non-inferentially) higher-order thoughts about any of the contents of that store.
In contrast with the Non-dispositionalist form of theory, the higher-order thoughts that render a percept conscious are not necessarily actual, but potential, on this account. So the objection now disappears, that an unbelievable amount of cognitive space would have to be taken up with every conscious experience. (There need not actually be any higher-order thought occurring, in order for a given perceptual state to count as phenomenally conscious, on this view.) So we can retain our belief in the rich and integrated nature of phenomenally conscious experience - we just have to suppose that all of the contents in question are simultaneously available to higher-order thought. Nor will there be any problem in explaining why our faculty of higher-order thought should have evolved, nor why it should have access to perceptual contents in the first place - this can be the standard sort of story in terms of Machiavellian intelligence.
It might be wondered how their mere availability to higher-order thoughts could confer on our perceptual states the positive properties distinctive of phenomenal consciousness - that is, of states having a subjective dimension, or a distinctive subjective feel. The answer may lie in the theory of content. Suppose that one agrees with Millikan (1984) that the representational content of a state depends, in part, upon the powers of the systems that consume that state. That is, suppose one thinks that what a state represents will depend, in part, on the kinds of inferences that the cognitive system is prepared to make in the presence of that state, or on the kinds of behavioural control that it can exert. In which case the presence of first-order perceptual representations to a consumer-system that can deploy a ‘theory of mind’, and which is capable of recognitizable applications of theoretically-embedded concepts of experience, may be sufficient to render those representations at the same time as higher-order ones. This would be what confers on our phenomenally conscious experiences the dimension of subjectivity. Each experience would at the same time (while also representing some state of the world, or of our own bodies) be a representation that we are undergoing just such an experience, by virtue of the powers of the ‘theory of mind’ consumer-system. Each percept of green, for example, would at one and the same time be an analog representation of green and an analog representation of seems green or experience of green. In fact, the attachment of a ‘theory of mind’ faculty to our perceptual systems may completely transform the contents of the latter's outputs.
This account might seem to achieve all of the benefits of inner-sense theory, but without the associated costs. (Some potential drawbacks will be noted in a moment.) In particular, we can endorse the claim that phenomenal consciousness consists in a set of higher-order perceptions. This enables us to explain, not only the difference between conscious and non-conscious perception, but also how analog states come to acquire a subjective dimension or ‘feel’. And we can also explain how it can be possible for us to acquire some purely recognitizable concepts of experience (thus explaining the standard philosophical thought-experiments). But we don't have to appeal to the existence of any ‘inner scanners’ or organs of inner sense (together with their associated problems) in order to do this. Moreover, it should also be obvious why there can be no question of our higher-order contents getting out of line with their first-order counterparts, in such a way that one might be disposed to make recognitizable judgments of red and seems orange at the same time. This is because the content of the higher-order experience is parasitic on the content of the first-order one, being formed from it by virtue of the latter's availability to a ‘theory of mind’ system.
On the downside, for which the account is not neutral on questions of semantic theory. On the contrary, it requires us to reject any form of pure input-semantics, in favour of some sort of consumer-semantics. We cannot then accept that intentional content reduces to informational content, nor that it can be explicated purely in terms of causal covariance relations to the environment. So anyone who finds such views attractive will think that the account is a hard one to swallow.
What will no doubt be seen by most people as the biggest difficulty with dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, however, is that it may have to deny phenomenal consciousness to most species of non-human animals. This objection will be discussed, among others, in the section following, since it can arguably also be raised against any form of higher-order theory.
There has been the whole host of objections raised against higher-order theories of phenomenal consciousness. Unfortunately, many of these objections, although perhaps intended as objections to higher-order theories as such, are often framed in terms of one or another particular version of such a theory. One general moral to be taken away from the present discussion should then be this: the different versions of a higher-order theory of phenomenal consciousness need to be kept distinct from one another, and critics should take care to state which version of the approach is under attack, or to frame objections that turn merely on the higher-order character of all of these approaches.
One generic objection is that higher-order theory, when combined with plausible empirical claims about the representational powers of non-human animals, will conflict with our commonsense intuition that such animals enjoy phenomenally conscious experience. This objection can be pressed most forcefully against higher-order thought theories, of either variety; However it is also faced by inner-sense theory (depending on what account can be offered of the evolutionary function of organs of inner sense). Since there is considerable dispute as to whether even chimpanzees have the kind of sophisticated ‘theory of mind’ which would enable them to entertain thoughts about experiential states as such (Byrne and Whiten, 1988, 1998; Povinelli, 2000), it seems most implausible that many other species of a mammal (let alone reptiles, birds and fish) would qualify as phenomenally conscious, on these accounts. Yet the intuition that such creatures enjoy phenomenally conscious experiences is a powerful and deep-seated one, for many people.
The grounds for this commonsense intuition can be challenged, however. (How, after all, are we supposed to know whether it is like something to be a bat?) And that intuition can perhaps be explained away as a mere by-product of imaginative identification with the animal. (Since our images of their experiences are phenomenally conscious, that the experience’s imageable is similarly conscious. But there is no doubt that one crux of resistance to higher-order theories will lie here, for many people.
Another generic objection is that higher-order approaches cannot really explain the distinctive properties of phenomenal consciousness. Whereas the argument from animals is that higher-order representations aren't necessary for phenomenal consciousness, the argument here is that such representations aren't sufficient. It is claimed, for example, that we can easily conceive of creatures who enjoy the postulated kinds of higher-order representation, related in the right sort of way to their first-order perceptual states, but where those creatures are wholly lacking in phenomenal consciousness.
In response to this objection, higher-order theorists will join forces with first-order theorists and others in claiming that these objectors pitch the standards for explaining phenomenal consciousness too high. We will insist that a reductive explanation of something - and of phenomenal consciousness in particular - don’t have to be such that we cannot conceive of the explanandum (that which is being explained) in the absence of the explanans (that which does the explaining). Rather, we just need to have good reason to think that the explained properties are constituted by the explaining ones, in such a way that nothing else needed to be added to the world once the explaining properties were present, in order for the world to contain the target phenomenon. But this is disputed territory. And it is on this ground that the battle for phenomenal consciousness may ultimately be won or lost
While orthodox medical research adheres to a linear, deterministic physical model, alternative therapist typically theorize upon that which is indeterminately nonphysical and nonlinear relationships are significant to outcome and patient satisfaction. The concept of nonlocal reality as nuocontinuum helps resolve the differences in therapeutic approach, and lets us frame a world view that recognizes the great value of both reductive science and holistic integration. It helps distinguish the levels of description appropriate to the discussion of each, and helps in examining the relationships among consciousness, nonlocal reality, and healing.
Most recently addressed is to some informal discussion for which the problems of evaluating alternative therapies, but Dossey highlighted the stark philosophic division between orthodox and alternative health care models. While orthodox medical research adheres to a linear, deterministic physical model, alternative therapist typically postulates that indeterminate nonphysical and nonlinear relationships are significant to outcome and patient satisfaction. As Dossey summarizes that position, "Everything that counts cannot be counted."
The problems, of course, go beyond the research issues. The respective models bring different attitudes and approaches to the therapeutic encounter. Further, their different philosophic languages limit discussions among practitioners. Rapproachment becomes all the more unlikely when each camp considers the other, "wrong." It is believed to be helpful if we were to visualize the conflict as deriving from different frames of reference. Our collective task then becomes the finding of a common frame of reference a "cosmos in common," to echo Heraclitus sufficiently broad and deep to encompass both linear and nonlinear, local and nonlocal therapeutic points of view.
If we are to remain true to science, we must integrate the data that science provides us, and be willing to follow where the process leads. It is increasingly apparent that physics requires us to acknowledge meta considerations, that is, considerations that lie above and beyond physics. Those of us biomedical practitioners who base our work on physics cannot disparage as "merely metaphysics" a meta physics to which physics itself points.
As a point of departure, I would like to "frame" in general outlines a world view that recognizes the great value of both reductive science and holistic integration, and which helps distinguish the levels of description appropriate to the discussion of each. In doing so, I will suggest a new and unweighted ecumenical term for discussing the relationships among consciousness, nonlocal reality, and healing.
The cosmos is the general descriptive term for all-that-is, which we have come to understand as an organic system of interrelated nested subsystems. Yet its most ancient representation in art is a circle. In our ordinary positivist view of things conditioned by science, the term denotes only the material nature of the universe, governed by the laws of physics. In the ordinary local cause-effect world, time-distance relationships apply, and the speed limit is that of light. Actions are mediated through a field, and forces are dissipated over distance.
However, Bell's Theorem in quantum physics establishes that "underneath" ordinary space-time phenomena there lies a deep nonlocal reality in which none of these limitations applies. To diagram cosmos one must find an appropriate way to divide the one circle. We might add an inner concentric circle, but the cosmos, as the term is currently used, would identify only the outer material "shell" of our experience of physical things. We have no agreed technical term for that which is "more" than matter, or beyond or outside it, or inside it. Syche has scientific validity as a psychological term. It denotes an inner personal dimension representing that aspect of experience that is normally unconscious to us, but which nevertheless influences individual human behaviour. However, in ordinary usage, the term psyche (soul, spirits) has no meaning apart from the individual human personality. To speak of the soul or spirit of matter (one hardly dare do so publicly) does not compute. Yet, now physics says there is a nonlocal more to the matter-work of the cosmos, and that domain is somehow related to the existence of consciousness.
But there needs to be still another inner concentric circle, or at least a centre-point. Cosmologists are beginning to speak more openly about a purposeful cosmos. For example, Hawking has asked, "Why does the universe go to the integral of the bother of existing?" If science is to ask "Why" as Hawking does, it must seek the "meaning" of matter. But Meaning ordinarily has no significance in science. To speak of meaning is to speak of significance or order beyond superficial appearances. To speak of meaning in relation to the cosmos is to speak of metaphysics, the realm of religion and philosophy.
Yet, such meaning is implicit in the anthropic principle of physics, and in the strange attractors by which order emerges from chaotic chemical and nonlinear mathematical systems. Though such meaning is an idea new to modern science, religion and philosophy have variously described it as logos, to Way, and Word. In that of residing in "lure" of an orienting change, as mentioned by Whitehead, and in the function of the radial energy of which Teilhard spoke.
Now, on scientific grounds alone, we must devise a "cosmorama" of at least three compartments, if it is to encompass the phenomena of the universe. Resolving and explaining these relationships may be quite complex; or it may be surprisingly simple. In any case, there are a number of questions to be answered, and a number of problems in physics and psychology that invite us to frame a unification theory.
One principal problems in quantum physics is the question of observer effect. What is the role of consciousness in resolving the uncertainties of actions at the quantum level? Before an observation, the question of whether a quantum event has occurred can be resolved only by calculating a probability. The unconscious reality of the event is that it is a mix of the probabilities that it has happened and that it has not. That "wave function" of probabilities is said to "collapse" only at the point of observation, that is, only in the interaction of unconsciousness with consciousness.
Schrödinger illustrated the problem by describing a thought experiment involving a cat in a sealed box: If the quantum event happened, the cat would be poisoned; if not, when the box was opened, the cat would be found alive. Until then, we could know the result only as a calculation of probabilities. Under the condition’s Schrödinger described, we may think of the cat's condition only mathematically: the cat is both dead and alive, with equal probability. Only by the interaction of event with observer is the "wave function collapsed."
If a tree falls in the forest when there is no one present to hear it, has there been a sound? That question can be resolved by adjusting the definition of sound. In the question of the quantum "event in the box" we are dealing with something much more fundamental. Can creation occur without an observer? Without consciousness? Or without at least the prospect of consciousness emerging from the act of creation? That may be the most basic question that begs resolving.
Another of our unification problems is the virtual particle phenomenon. Some particles appear unpredictably, exist for extremely short periods of time, then disappear. Why does a particle appear in the force field suddenly, without apparent cause? What distinguishes stable particles from the temporary ones? Something in the force field? Something related to the act of observation?
Another major concern of physics is the unification of the elemental physical forces. Study of the "several" forces has progressively merged them. Electricity and magnetism came to be understood as one force, not two. More recently, effects associated with the weak nuclear force were reconciled with electromagnetism, so that now we recognize one electroweak force. Further, there have been mathematical demonstrations that unify the electroweak and the strong nuclear force.
If it could be demonstrated that the "electronuclear" force and the force of gravity are one super force (as has been widely expected), energy effects at the largest and the smallest scales of the universe would be explained. That unification process has led to a theory of a multidimensional universe, in which there are at least seven "extra" dimensions that account for the forces and the conservation laws (symmetries) of physics. They are not extra dimensions of space-time, for which one could devise bizarre travel itineraries, but abstract mathematical dimensions that in some sense constitute the nonlocal (non-space time) reality within which cosmos resides.
However, the search for a unified theory has led to an apparent impasse, for theories of unification seem also to require a continuing proliferation of particles. A new messenger particle (or class of particles) called the Higgs boson, seems to be needed to explain how particles acquire mass, and to avoid having infinity terms (the result of a division by zero) crop up in the formulas that unify the forces. Leon Lederman, experimental physicist and Nobelist, calls it "The God Particle." He writes, "The Higgs field, the standard model, and our picture of how God made the universe depend on finding the Higgs boson."
Still, major questions remain. To some others, particle physics has seemed to reach its limit, theoretically as well as experimentally. Oxford physicist Roger Penrose has written: If there is to be a final theory, it could only be a scheme of a very different nature. Rather than being a physical theory in the ordinary sense, it would have to remain a principle, as a mathematical principle of whose implementation might have itself involve nonmechanical subtlety.
Perhaps the time has come for us to accept that cosmos has "infinity terms" after all.
Psychology is conventionally defined as the study of behaviour, but for our purposes, it must be returned to the meaning implied in the roots of the word: the study of soul and spirit. Of course, the most obvious phenomenon of psychology is the emergence of consciousness. In the light of the anthropic principle of physics, we now must ask, as a distinctively psychological question, what purpose for the cosmos does consciousness serve?
Another question: Jung has presented the evidence for an archetypal collective unconscious that, on the basis of current understandings, must certainly be inherited as the base-content of human nature. Archetypal genetics has yet to be defined. Symbol processing certainly does have its "local" physical aspect, in the function of the brain and the whole-body physiology that supports it. Nonetheless, that there is a nonlocal reality undergirding psyche is readily evident.
The reality of the dream experience is nonlocal, unconfined by rules of time and space and normal effect. Further, it is nonlocal in that the reality extends beyond the individual, consistently following patterns evident throughout the recorded history of dream and myth. The psyche functions as though the brain, or at least its mechanisms of consciousness, is "observer" for the dream "event in the box" of an unconscious nonlocal collective reality. The archetypal unconscious suggests that there be a psychological substrate from which consciousness and its content have emerged.
In the emergence of consciousness primally, and in the extension of consciousness in modern people through the dreaming process, the collective unconscious (self) seems to serve a nonlocal integrating function, yielding images that the conscious (ego) must differentiate from its "local" observations of the external space-time world. Thus, is consciousness extended.
In that process, however, the ego must self-reflectively also "keep in mind" that our perception of the external physical world is not the reality of the physical world, but an interpretation of it; Nor is the external phenomenal world the only reality. To keep our interpretations of the physical world "honest," we must subject observation to tests of consistency and reason, but the calculus of consciousness is the calculus of whole process, both differential and integral. Consciousness cannot be extended, but is diminished, when it denies the reality of the unconscious.
Jung has also pointed to certain meaningful associations between events in psyche and events in the physical world, but which are not related causally. He called such an association a synchronicity, which he defines as "an accusal connecting principle." These are simultaneous or closely associated conversions that not have connected physically, in any ordinary cause-effect way. However, they are connected meaningfully, that is, psychically. They may have very powerful impact on a person's psychic state and on the subsequent unfolding of personality. Jung studied them with Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physicists in whose life such phenomena were overly frequent.
A synchronicity seems to suggest that a nonlocal psychological reality either communicate with or is identical to the nonlocal reality known in physics. Since it is inconceivable to have two nonlocal realities coexisting separately from one, another, we can confidently assert that there is indeed, only one nonlocal reality.
Another set of phenomena inviting consideration is that which includes group hysteria and mob action. A classic example is that of a high school band on a bus trip, on which all members get "food poisoning" simultaneously before a big game. After exhaustive epidemiological work, no evidence of infection or toxins is found, and the "cause" is attributed to significant amounts where stress and the power of suggestion lay. The mechanisms are entirely unconscious to the band members; it is as though their psyches have "communicated" in a way that makes them act together. Similarly, in mob action, though the members may be conscious of the anger that moves them, generally the event seems to be loaded with an unconscious dynamic within the group that prepares the way for the event itself.
Physicist Paul Davy has written that one of the basic problems is constructing an adequate definition of the dimensionality. The ordinary dictionary definition describes a dimension in terms of magnitude or direction (height, depth, width), and we ordinarily think of the dimensions as perpendicular to each other. But that works only for the familiar spatial dimensions and the actions of ordinary objects. Imagine compressing all three-dimensional space toward a single point; As it comes close to a point, the concept of being perpendicular loses all meaning. Another problem is that it does not really make sense to think of time (which is a dimension, too) as perpendicular to anything.
A dimension is one of the domains of action permitted to or on an object. By domain I mean something like a field of influence or action. Verticality is not a thing that acts on an object, but is rather than which permits and influences a movement in space, and which influences our description of the movement. For example, verticality is one particular aspect of abstract reality that determines the behaviour of an object. But the abstract is real! Take verticality away from three-dimensional space, and an object is permitted to move only in a way that we can analyse as a mix of horizontal and forward-backward motions. Take the horizontal away, and the object may move only along a straight line (one-dimensional space). "String" theories, which approach a "Grand Unification" of all of the physical forces, posit dimensions beyond the four of the space-time. There is no theoretical limit to the number of dimensions, for external to space-time there is no concept of "container" or limit.
Since all of the non-space time dimensions, by definition, are not extended in space or time, we must conceive of them as represented by points. Since they act together of o space-time, they must "intersect" or somehow communicate with the primal space-time point. For that reason (and because in the absence of space-time no point can be offset from another), we must imagine the dimensions as many points superimposed into one. Let's call it the SuperPaint. We may in fact imagine as many superimposed points (dimensions) as past and future experiments might require to explain the phenomena of creation.
The initial conditions of our space-time universe are defined in that one SuperPaint; the Big Bang represents the explosive expansion of four of those dimensions, space-time. The creation-energy (super force) responsible for that expansion is concentrated in and at the multidimensional SuperPaint. Yet we must also think of other changes at the SuperPaint, for as energy levels dissipate immediately after the Big Bang, the super force quickly "evolves" into the four physical forces conventionally known.
We have said that only the space-time dimensions are expanding, because the force dimensions ("contained" in the SuperPaint) are not spatial. By definition, we may not imagine non-space time points as extended in space. However, all points in expanding space-time must still "communicate" with the force dimensions (and the symmetry dimensions, but we are neglecting them for the moment). All points in space-time must intersect the force dimensions.
It is as if the force dimensions too have been expanded to the size of space-time, for they are acting on each particle of energy/matter in the universe. One might imagine that one point has been stretched as a featureless elastic sheet, a continuum in which the point is everywhere the same.
However, quantum theory deals with these forces as discrete waves/particles. For example, the force of gravity is communicated by gravitons; The strong nuclear force by gluons is the electromagnetic force by photons. If we conceive the stretched points of the dimensions as "sheets," the sheets must have waves in them. These "stretched sheets" which constitute the field in which energy interacts with particles to sustain (and indeed, to continue the creation of) the universe. As I have expressed it in a poem, it is the field "where the forces play pinball / with gravitons and gluons / and modulate / the all."
Let us imagine again that space-time (four dimensions) is compressed toward a point. It is futile to ask what is outside that small pellet of space-time, for the concept of "outside ness" has no meaning but within space-time. As the pellet becomes smaller still, it shrinks toward nothingness, for a point is an abstract concept of zero dimensions, not extended in space or time, and thus it cannot "contain" anything. At that point, nothing exists except the thinker who is trying to imagine nothingness.
If we could model thought as only an epiphenomenon of matter, reached at a certain degree of complexity, it has no fundamental reality of its own. In that case, our thought experiment to shrink the cosmos reaches a point at which thought is extinguished, and the experiment must stop, if it is to follow the "rules" that it is modelling. However, by accepting that thought might have a reality of its own, and by considering the problem from a whole-system perspective, we were able to continue the thought experiment to the point at which only the thought remains. The epiphenomenon idea is not an adequate model of reality, since we can indeed continue the experiment under the conditions outlined.
This "negative proof" is indirect, serving only to eliminate the epiphenomenon model. It does not prove that there is an independent and fundamental reality beyond space-time and matter; the experiments supporting Bell's Theorem do that. This line of thinking, however, does lead us to suggest that thought be a primary aspect of reality. It seems that the cosmos itself is saying with Descartes, "I think, therefore I am."
Because of this inescapable "relativistic" connection between cosmos and thought, I cannot imagine creation ex nihilo (from nothing), for the concept of nothing always collides with the existence of the one who is the thinker. Nothing has any meaning apart from something. The dimension of thinking is required to imagine a zero-dimensional space-time.
The epiphenomenon model posits that nothing is defined as the absence of matter. If that is so, thought is nothing; However, if it were nothing, I could not be thinking that thought, so thought must be of something. There can be no nothingness, for even if all that exists is reduced to nothingness, a dimension of reality remains. Reality requires at least one dimension in addition to space-time and that reality seems inseparable from the dimension of thought.
What is missing from our existing scheme of dimensions is a description of that dimension that we could not eliminate by playing the videotape of creation in reverse: that reality at the SuperPaint from which the dimension of thought cannot be separated. That leads to a rather extravagant and intuitive proposal, following Anaxagoras: Thought is the missing particle, the missing dimension.
Quantum physics already acknowledges the importance of consciousness as "observer." Consciousness is the substrate of thought. Thought is consciousness dimensionally extended, whether in time or some other dimension. Thought is process. Any unification of the laws of physics must necessarily take into account the thought/consciousness dimension, and thus must unify physics with psyche as well.
In his book. The self-aware Universe, Admit Goswami uses the term consciousness to mean transcendental consciousness, which forms (or is) the nonlocal reality. Other physicists seem to define the term of cautiously, and one often wonders whether a given text about observer effect is referring to ordinary individual awareness, or to some more general property of psyche.
It is useful to preserve the important distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Psychologically, ordinary human consciousness is the realm of ego and the cognitive functions called mind. Neurologically it refers to a patient's observed state of awareness. The clinical unconscious is the realm of psyche, with both personal and collective aspects. Perhaps a better language will come along in time. Until then, let me suggest an interim language for discussing, and perhaps a framework for someday testing, the relationship between matter and psyche. Its proposal is that there is a unit of psyche, which I designate the neon, from the Greek word nous, for mind. Nuons represent the dimensions of thought that exist in (at, as) the SuperPaint defining the initial conditions of the Big Bang. As the domain of the force dimensions, those Nuons must be imagined to expand as a field or continuum (the nuocontinuum) as the space-time continuum expands, a "stretched sheet" with "waves" which are also Nuons. The Nuons of the SuperPaint are extended in space-time in a way conceptually analogous to the action of the forces.
Yet Nuons must also be construed as the domain of the symmetries, such as the principle of conservation of energy, which are nonlocal. That is, they are everywhere in effect, without being constrained by the speed-limit of light. The nuocontinuum thus represents a multidimensional bridge between forces, symmetries, and space-time. Nuons collectively contain all potentialities, but the collective (nuocontinuum) is the unit, itself the symmetry that unifies the forces and symmetries. The Nuons is the "infinity particle" which solves the formulas.
Does the nuocontinuum represent a fractal (fractional dimensions) such as those that give the mathematical order to the "chaos" images? Does it provide the prime tone of which the symmetries and the forces are harmonics? Whether construed mathematically or poetically, the nuocontinuum contains the information necessary to create a universe, but a universe that is organically creating itself.
Human awareness, which occurs at a level of extraordinary complexity in the organization of space-time particles, would involve, not a "creation" of consciousness as an epiphenomenon, but a sensing of a quality that is already there, as the reality dimension of the cosmos. The observer effect at the quantum level (and the health of Schr”dinger's cat) is then to be understood as an interaction, not with a particle of concrete matter, but with the reality substrate from which matter arises.
If we construe the whole nuocontinuum (rather than the experimenter) to be the "observer" of the quantum event in the box, we avoid much of the confusion and exasperation that Schroedinger's thought experiment evokes. Hawking wrote, "When I hear of Schroedinger's cat, and I reach for my gun." Even Einstein was repelled by quantum uncertainty. DeBroglie especially held out for an interpretation of quantum physics which supported concreteness. We rebel against the idea of a universe based on uncertainty, and we seek to assure ourselves that what we experience is a concrete reality.
However, if the nuocontinuum is the observer that resolves the quantum uncertainty, our own individual sense of uncertainty is also resolved. The collapse of the particle wave function (the coming into being of the particle at a particular point in space-time) would be a function of the nuocontinuum acting as a whole, rather than as a local observer. The nuocontinuum is the observer who actualized creation the cosmic event in the box prior to the development of human consciousness. It is that cosmic observer who unifies the quantum effects of the electronuclear forces and the cosmic effects of gravity.
The Nuocontinuum, then, designates an unlimited, infinite connecting principle that binds all that is. Because it accounts for the material characteristics of the cosmos, it is "Creator." Because it presents itself through the agency of human consciousness, it may be sensed as Person and named Holy Spirit or Great Mystery. It is the source of that compelling "passion" of which Teilhard spoke, "to become one with the world that envelops us." Thus, though well beyond the scope of this article, the concept has implications for depth psychology and for theology. It has potential to help humans globally recapture a sense of meaning to human life, and to understand the experiences of those whose terminologies differ. Unless we do so, or at least critical masses of us do, we remain at great risk for destroying ourselves.
But its implications for the healing arts are also profound, for it makes us look at familiar concepts in quite a different light. In its affirmation of meaningful order in the cosmos as a whole, the nuocontinuum concept gives further definition and import to homeostasis as a healing, balancing principle that has more than physiological significance. When we invoke the term "placebo effect" we (usually unwittingly) are invoking a principle of the connectedness between an intervention and an effect, which now can be named and conceptualized. "Spontaneous remissions" of disease would be seen as something less than miracles but clearly more than merely chemical. After all, if physics can reach a limit to its powers of description, so too must be psychoneuroimmunology.
Practitioners, have become aware of the connectedness principle, we will become more aware that our own attitudes and approaches are significant to treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction. We will then realize that even though an experiment may be "doubly-blind" to some experimenters and to some persons being tested, there may be other influences outside the cause-effect "loop" and connections of which other persons may be conscious. Further, we will better understand that there are different levels of connectivity at work in every action, which require different levels of description to explain. And we might become more sensitive to patient's hopes and expectations that so are often stated in religious terms.
At this point in our harvest of knowledge, this synthesis is quite intuitive and speculative. However, even highly abstract drawings are often helpful in organizing thought. I hope that through some such synthesis as this, couched in whatever language, we will be given that courage to which Dossey eludes, to enter the "doorway through which we may encounter a radically new understanding of the physical world and our place in it." And, ones hope, assure the continued development of our abilities, together, to offer help to all in need of healing.
We collectively glorify our ability to think as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity; we personally and mistakenly glorify our thoughts as the distinguishing pattern of whom we are. From the inner voice of thought-as-words to the wordless images within our minds, thoughts create and limit our personal world. Through thinking we abstract and define reality, reason about it, react to it, recall past events and plan for the future. Yet thinking remains both woefully underdeveloped in most of us, as well as grossly overvalued. We can best gain some perspective on thinking in terms of energies.
We are hanging in language. We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down, Niels Bohr lamented in the 1920s when confronted with the paradoxes, absurdities, and seeming impossibilities encountered in the then newly discovered quantum domain. The problem, he insisted, was not the quantum wonderland itself, but our language, our ways of thinking and talking about it. His colleague, Werner Heisenberg, went a step further and proclaimed that events in the quantum wonderland are not only unspeakable, they are unimaginable.
The same situation confronts today us when we try to talk about consciousness and how it relates to matter-energy. Go fishing for consciousness using the net of language and it always, inevitably, slips through the holes in our net. The limits of language-and imagination in talk about consciousness have been recently underlined, yet again, by the exchanges between philosopher Mark Woodhouse and physician Larry Dossey in the pages of Network.
Essentially, both men take opposing positions regarding the appropriateness of "energy talk" as a way of describing or explaining consciousness or mental phenomena. Woodhouse defends the use of energy talk (and proposes what he seems to think is a novel solution); Dossey denies the appropriateness of talking about consciousness in terms of energy. In for Woodhouse, consciousness is energy ("each is the other"); for Dossey, consciousness is not energy. As a philosopher passionately committed to exploring the relationship between consciousness and matter, between mind and body, and, specifically, the question "Can we have a science of consciousness?" I think the dialogue between Woodhouse and Dossey opens up a crucially important issue for philosophy of mind and for a science of consciousness. I believe the "energy question" is central to any significant advance we may make into understanding consciousness and how it relates to the physical world.
This relationship, is nevertheless, accredited by a double-aspect perspective: "Energy is the 'outside' of consciousness and consciousness is the 'inside' of energy throughout the universe." But making or that we have fallen into a fundamental philosophical error. As of urging to entice us for which we hold to bind of a particularly atypical sensibility for engaging the encounter with the narratives that belong to some "energy talk" about consciousness. But this study as at times happens to be of something to mention as a double-prospective that foregoes the most important point, and thereby fails to acknowledge what it is of true philosophically and by virtue of its existing character whose value we model.
A major challenge facing philosophers and scientists of consciousness (and anybody else who wishes to talk about it) is finding appropriate concepts, words and metaphors. So much of our language is derived from our two most dominant senses: vision and touch. Vision feeds language with spatial metaphors, while touch-or rather, kinesthetics-feeds language with muscular push-pull metaphors. The visuo-muscular senses dominate our perception and interaction with the world, and consequently metaphors derived from these senses dominate our ways of conceiving and talking about the world. It is no accident that spatial and mechanical descriptions and explanations predominate in physics-the paradigm science (and our culture's paradigm for all knowledge). Given our evolutionary heritage, with its selective bias toward vision and kinesthetics, we live predominantly in a spatial-push-pull world-the world of classical mechanics, a "billiard-ball" universe of moving, colliding, and recoiling massive bodies. Ours is a world of matter in motion, of things in space acted on by physical forces.
It should not be surprising, then, that when we come to talk about consciousness, our grooves of thinking channels us toward physics-talk-expressed today as "energy talk." Forces are felt-experienced in the body and we are tempted to think that the experience of force is identical to the energy exchanges between bodies described by physics. But this is to confuse the feeler's feeling (the subject) with what is felt (the object). More on this later.
Previously mentioned, was that the Woodhouse-Dossey debate highlights yet again the limits of language when we try to talk about consciousness. This problem is at least as old as Descartes' mind-body dualism (though, as we will see, it is not confined to Cartesian dualism-it is there, too, in forms of idealism known as the "Perennial Philosophy"). When Descartes made his famous distinction between mind and matter, he found himself "suspended in the language" of physics. He could find no better way to define mind than negatively in the terminology of physics. He defined matter as that which occupies space"res’ extensa," extended things. He defined the mental world as "res comitans," thinking things-and thinking things differ from physical things in that they do not occupy space. The problem was how could material, physical, things interact with nonphysical things? What conceivably could be the nature of their point of contact-material or mental? Centuries later, Freud, too, resorted to physics-energy talk when to specify the "mechanisms" and dynamics of the psyche-e.g. his concept of the libido. Today, the same tendency to use energy technologically to converse in talking, as Dossey points out, is rife in much new age talk about consciousness, soul, and spirit, exemplified in Woodhouse's article and his book Paradigm Wars.
Because of our reliance on the senses of vision and kinesthetics, we have an evolutionary predisposition, it seems, to talk in the language of physics or mechanics-and by that I mean "matter talk," or "energy talk." Yet all such talk seems to miss something essential when we come to speak of phenomena in the domain of the mind-for example, emotions, desires, beliefs, pains, and other felt qualities of consciousness. The inappropriate chunkiness of mechanistic metaphors borrowed from classical physics seems obvious enough. The mind just isn't at all like matter or machines, as Descartes was keenly aware. But then came Einstein's relativity, and the quantum revolution. First, Einstein's E = mc2 showed that matter was a form of energy, and so, with the advent of quantum theory, the material world began to dissolve into unimaginable, paradoxical bundles of energy or action. Matter itself was now understood to be a ghostly swirl of energy, and began to take on qualities formerly associated with mind. A great physicist, Sir James Jeans, even declared that "universe begins to look more like a great thought." Quantum events were so tiny, so undetermined, so un-mechanical in the classical sense, they seemed just the sort of thing that could respond to the influence of the mind.
The quantum-consciousness connection was boosted further by the need (at least in one interpretation of quantum theory) to include the observer (and his/her consciousness) in any complete description of the collapse of the quantum wave function. According to this view, the quantum system must include the consciousness of the observer. Ghostly energy fields from relativity and the quantum-consciousness connection triggered the imaginations of pop-science writers and dabblers in new age pseudo-science: Quantum theory, many believe, has finally opened the way for science to explore and talk about the mind. But the excitement was-and is-premature. It involves the linguistic and conceptual sleight-of-hand, whereas the clucky mechanical language that is in fact a matter that was obviously at best in metaphoric principles, just when applied to consciousness, it now seemed more reasonable to use the language of energy literally-particularly if cloaked in the "spooky" garb of quantum physics. But this shift from "metaphorical matter" to "literal energy" was unwarranted, unfounded, and deceptive.
Dissolving matter into energy makes neither of them are less conceptual. And the mark of the physical, as Descartes had pointed out, is that it is extended in space. Despite the insuperable problems with his dualism, Descartes' key insight remains valid: What distinguishes mind from matter is precisely that it does not occupy space. And this distinction holds just as fast between mind and energy-even so-called subtle energy (hypothetical "subtle energy" bodies are described as having extension, and other spatial attributes such as waves, vibrations, frequencies). Energy, even in the form of infinitesimal quanta or "subtle vibrations," still occupies space. And any theory of energy as a field clearly makes it spatial. Notions of "quantum consciousness" or "field consciousness"-and Woodhouse's "vibrations," "ripples," or "waves" of consciousness-therefore, are no more than vacuous jargon because they continue to fail to address the very distinction that Descartes formulated nearly four hundred years ago.
But that's not even the most troublesome deficiency of energy talk. It is equitably to suppose that physicists were proficient to show that quanta of energy did not occupy space; Suppose the behaviour of quanta was so bizarre that they could do all sorts of "non-physical" things-such as transcend space and time; Suppose that even if it could be shown that quanta were not "physical" in Descartes' sense . . . even supposing all of this, any proposed identity between energy and consciousness would still be invalid.
Energies talk fails to account for what is fundamentally most characteristic about consciousness, namely its subjectivity. No matter how fine-grained, or "subtle," energy could become, as an objective phenomenon it could never account for the fact of subjectivity-the "what-it-feels-like-from-within-experience." Ontologically, subjectivity cannot just emerge from wholly objective reality. Unless energy, at its ontologically most fundamental level, already came with some form of proto-consciousness, proto-experience, or proto-subjectivity, consciousness, experience, or subjectivity would never emerge or evolve in the universe.
Which brings us to Woodhouse's "energy monism" model, and the notion that "consciousness is the 'inside' of energy throughout the universe." Despite Dossey's criticism of this position, I think Woodhouse is here proposing a version of the only ontology that can account for a universe where both matter-energy and consciousness are real. He briefly summarizes why dualism, idealism, and materialism cannot adequately account for a universe consisting of both matter/energy and consciousness. (He adds "Epiphenomenalism" to these three as though it were distinctly ontological. It is not. Epiphenomenalism is a form of property dualism, which in turn is a form of materialism.) He then proceeds to outline a "fifth" alternative: "Energy monism." And although I believe his fundamental insight is correct, his discussion of this model in terms of double-aspectism falls victim to a common error in metaphysics: He confuses epistemology with ontology.
Woodhouse proposes that the weaknesses of the other ontologies-dualism, idealism, and materialism-can be avoided by adopting a "double-aspect theory that does not attempt to reduce either energy or consciousness to the other." And he goes on to build his alternative ontology on a double-aspect foundation. Now, I happen to be highly sympathetic with double-aspectism: It is a coherent and comprehensive (even "holistic") epistemology. As a way of knowing the world, double-aspectism opens up the possibility of a complementarity of subjective and objective perspectives.
But a perspective on the world yields epistemology-it reveals’ something about how we know what we know about the world. It does not reveal the nature of the world, which is the aim of ontology. Woodhouse makes an illegitimate leap from epistemology to ontology when he says, "This [energy monism] is a dualism of perspective, not of fundamental stuff," and concludes that "each is the other." Given his epistemological double-aspectism, the best Woodhouse can claim to be an ontological agnostic (as, in fact, Dossey does). He can talk about viewing the world from two complementary perspectives, but he cannot talk about the nature of the world in itself. Certainly, he cannot legitimately conclude from talk about aspects or perspectives that the ultimate nature of the world is "energy monism" or that "consciousness is energy." Epistemology talk cannot yield ontology talk-as Kant, and later Bohr, were well aware. Kant said we cannot know the thing-in-itself. The best we can hope for is to know some details about the instrument of knowing. Bohr said that the task of quantum physics is not to describe reality as it is in itself, but to describe what we can say about reality.
The issue of whether energy talk is appropriate for consciousness is to resolve ontologically not epistemological ly. At issue is whether consciousness is or is not a form of energy-not whether it can be known from different perspectives. If it is a form of energy, then energy talk is legitimate. If not, energy talk is illegitimate. But the nature of consciousness is not to be "determined by perspective," as Woodhouse states: "insides and outsides are determined by perspectives." If "insides" (or "outsides") were merely a matter of perspective, then any ontology would do, as long as we allowed for epistemological dualism or complementarity (though, of course, the meaning of "inside" and "outside" would differ according to each ontology). What Woodhouse doesn't do (which he needs to do to make his epistemology grow ontological legs) has established an ontology compatible with his epistemology of "inside" and "outside." In short, he needs to establish an ontological distinction between consciousness and energy. But this is precisely what Woodhouse aim to avoid with his model of energy monism. Dossey is right, I think, to describe energy talk about consciousness as a legacy of Newtonian physics (i.e., of visuo-kinesthetic mechanics). This applies equally to "classical energy talk," "quantum-energy talk," "subtle-energy talk," and Woodhouse's "dual-aspect energy talk." In an effort to defend energy talk about consciousness, Woodhouse substitutes epistemology for ontology, and leaves the crucial issue unresolved.
Unless Woodhouse is willing to ground his double-aspect epistemology in an ontological complementarity that distinguishes mind from matter, but does not separate them, he runs the risk of unwittingly committing "reductionism all over again"-despite his best intentions. In fact, Woodhouse comes very close to proposing just the kind of complementary ontology his model needs: "Consciousness isn't just a different level or wave form of vibrating energy; it is the 'inside' of energy-the pole of interiority perfectly understandable to every person who has had a subjective experience of any kind" (emphasis added). This is ontology talk, not epistemology talk. Woodhouse's error is to claim that the distinction "inside" (consciousness) and "outside" (energy) is merely a matter of perspective.
In order to defend his thesis of "energy monism," Woodhouse seems to want it both ways. On the one hand, he talks of being conscious and energy being ontologically identical"each is the other"; on the other, he makes a distinction between consciousness and energy: Energy is the 'outside' of consciousness and consciousness is the 'inside' of energy. He attempts to avoid the looming contradiction of consciousness and energy being both "identical yet distinct" by claiming that the identity is ontological while the distinction is epistemological. But the distinction cannot be merely epistemological-otherwise, as already pointed out, any ontology would do. But this is clearly not Woodhouse's position. Energy monism, as proposed by Woodhouse, is an ontological claim. Woodhouse admits as much when he calls energy monism "a fifth alternative" to the ontologism of dualism, idealism, materialism (and Epiphenomenalism [sic]) which he previously dismissed.
Furthermore, Woodhouse "inside" and "outside" are not merely epistemological when he means them to be synonyms for "subjectivity" and "objectivity" respectively. Although subjectivity and objectivity are epistemological perspectives, they are not only that. Subjectivity and objectivity can have epistemological meaning only if they refer to some implications of a primary ontological distinction-between what Sartre (1956) called the "for-itself" and the "in-itself," between that which feels and that which is felt. Despite his claims to the contrary, Woodhouse's distinction between "inside" and "outside" is ontological-not mere epistemological. And as an ontological distinction between consciousness and energy, it is illegitimate to conclude from his double-aspect epistemology the identity claim that "consciousness is energy." Woodhouse's consciousness-energy monism confusion, it seems to me, is a result of: (1) a failure to distinguish between non-identity and separation, and (2) a desire to avoid the pitfalls of Cartesian dualism. The first is a mistake, the second is not-but he conflates the two. He seems to think that if he allows for a non-identity between consciousness and energy this is tantamount to their being ontologically separate (as in Cartesian dualism). But (1) does not encompass that of (2): Ontological distinction does not entail separation. It is possible to distinguish two phenomena (such as the form and substance of a thing), yet recognize them as inseparable elements of a unity. Unity does not mean identity, and distinction does not mean separation. (I will return to this point shortly.) This muddle between epistemology and ontology is my major criticism of Woodhouse's position. Though if he had the courage or foresight to follow through on his epistemological convictions, and recognize that his position is compatible with (and would be grounded by) an ontological complementarity of consciousness and energy.
The ontological level of understanding (though explicitly denied) in Woodhouse's double-aspect model-where consciousness ("inside") and energy (“outside”) is actual throughout the universe is none other than panpsychism, or what has been variously called pan experientialism (Griffin, 1997) and radical materialism (de Quincey, 1997). It is the fourth alternative to the major ontologism of dualism, idealism, and materialism, and has a very long lineage in the Western philosophical tradition-going all the way back to Aristotle and beyond to the Presocratics. Woodhouse does not acknowledge any of this lineage, as if his double-aspect model was a novel contribution to the mind-matter debate. Besides Aristotle's hylemorphism, he could have referred to Leibniz' monads, Whitehead "actual occasion," and de Chardin's "tangential energy" and the "within" as precursors to the distinction he makes between "inside" and "outside." This oversight weakens the presentation of his case. Of course, to have introduced any or all of these mind-body theories would have made Woodhouse's ontological omission all the more noticeable.
One other weakness in Woodhouse's article is his reference to the Perennial Philosophy and the Great Chain of Being as supportive of energy talk that unites spiritual and physical realities. "The non-dual Source of some spiritual traditions . . . is said to express itself energetically (outwardly) on different levels in the Great Chain of Being (matter being the densest form of energy) . . ." Woodhouse is here referring to the many variations of idealist emanationism, where spirit is said to pour itself forth through a sequence of ontological levels and condense into matter. But just as I would say Woodhouse's energy monism unwittingly ultimately entails physicalist reductionism, my criticism of emanationism is that it, too, ultimately "physicalizes" spirit-which no idealist worth his or her salt would want to claim. Energy monism runs the same risk of "physicalizing" spirit as emanationism. So I see no support for Woodhouse's position as an alternative to dualism or materialism coming from the Perennial Philosophy. Both run the risk of covert dualism or covert materialism.
Dossey's critique of Woodhouse's energy monism and energy talk, particularly his caution not to assume that the "nonlocal" phenomena of quantum physics are related to the "nonlocal" phenomena of consciousness and distant healing other than a commonalty of terminology is sound. The caution is wise. However, his critique of Woodhouse's "inside" and "outside" fails to address Woodhouse's confusing epistemology and ontology. If Dossey saw that Woodhouse's intent was to confine the "inside/outside" distinction to epistemology, he might not have couched his critique in ontological terms. Dossey says, "By emphasizing inside and outside, interior and exterior, we merely create new boundaries and interfaces that require their own explanations." The "boundaries and interfaces" Dossey is talking about being ontological, not epistemological. And to this extent, Dossey's critique misses the fact that Woodhouse is explicitly engaged in epistemology talk. On the other hand, Dossey is correct to assume that Woodhouse's epistemological distinction between "inside and outside" necessarily implies an ontological distinction-between "inside" (consciousness) and "outside" energy.
Dossey's criticism of Woodhouse's energy monism, thus, rests on an ontological objection: Even if we do not yet have any idea of how to talk ontologically about consciousness, we at least know that (despite Woodhouse's contrary claim) consciousness and energy are not ontologically identical. There is an ontological distinction between "inside/consciousness" and "outside/energy." Thus, Dossey concludes, energy talk (which is ontological talk) is inappropriate for consciousness. On this, I agree with Dossey, and disagree with Woodhouse. However, Dossey goes on to take issue with Woodhouse's "inside/outside" distinction as a solution to the mind-body relation. If taken literally, Dossey's criticism is valid: "Instead of grappling with the nature of the connection between energy and consciousness, we are now obliged to clarify the nature of the boundary between 'inside' and 'outside' . . ." But I suspect that Woodhouse uses the spatial concepts "inside/outside" metaphorically because like the rest of us he finds our language short on nonphysical metaphors (though, as we will see, nonspatial metaphors are available).
It may be, of course, that Woodhouse has not carefully thought through the implications of this spatial metaphor, and how it leaves him open to just the sort of critique that Dossey levels. Dossey, I presume, is as much concerned with Woodhouse's claim that "consciousness is energy," meaning it is the "inside" of energy, as he is about the difficulties in taking the spatial metaphor of "inside/outside" literally. On the first point, I share Dossey's concern. I am less concerned about the second. As long as we remember that talk of "interiority" and "exteriority" are metaphors, I believe they can be very useful ways of pointing toward a crucial distinction between consciousness and energy.
The metaphor becomes a problem if we slip into thinking that it points to a literal distinction between two kinds of "stuff" (as Descartes did), or indeed to a distinction revealing two aspects of a single kind of "stuff." This latter slip seems to be precisely the mistake that Woodhouse makes with his energy monism. By claiming that consciousness is energy, Woodhouse in effect-despite his best intentions to the contrary-succeeds in equating (and this means "reducing") consciousness to physical "stuff." His mistake-and one that Dossey may be buying into-is to use "stuff-talk" for consciousness. It is a logical error to conclude from (1) there is only one kind of fundamental "stuff" (call it energy), and (2) this "stuff" has an interiority (call it consciousness), that (3) the interiority is also composed of that same "stuff” -, i.e., that consciousness is energy. It could be that "interiority/consciousness" is not "stuff" but something more collectively distinct ontologically-for examples, feeling or process-something which is intrinsic to, and therefore inseparable from, the "stuff." It could be that the world is made up of stuff that feels, where there is an ontological distinction between the feeling (subjectivity, experience, consciousness) and what is felt (objectivity, matter-energy).
Dossey's rejection of the "inside/outside" metaphor seems to presume (à la Woodhouse) that "inside" means the interior of some "stuff" and is that "stuff"-in this case, energy-stuff. But that is not the position of panpsychism and process philosophers from Leibniz down through Bergson, James, and Whitehead, to Hartshorns and Griffin. If we make the switch from a "stuff-oriented" to a process oriented ontology, then the kind of distinction between consciousness and energy dimly implicit in Woodhouse's model avoids the kind of criticism that Dossey levels at the "inside/outside" metaphor. Process philosophers prefer to use "time-talk" over "space-talk." Instead of talking about consciousness in terms of "insides," they talk about "moments of experience" or "duration." Thus, if we view the relationship between consciousness and energy in terms of temporal processes rather than spatial stuff, we can arrive at an ontology similar to Whiteheads relationship between consciousness and energy is understood as temporal. It is the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, where the subject is the present state of an experiential process, and the object is its prior state. Substitute "present" for "interior" and "past" or "prior" for "exterior" and we have a process ontology that avoids the "boundary" difficulties raised by Dossey. (There is no boundary between past and present-the one flows into the other; the present incorporates the past.) From the perspective of panpsychism or radical materialism, consciousness and energy, mind and matter, subject and object always go together. All matter-energy is intrinsically sentient and experiential. Sentience-consciousness and matter-energy are inseparable, but nevertheless distinct. On this view, consciousness is the process of matter-energy informing itself.
Although our language is biassed toward physics-energy talk, full of mechanistic metaphors, this is clearly not the whole story. The vernacular of the marketplace, as well as the language of science itself, is also rich with non-mechanistic metaphors, metaphors that flow direct from experience itself. Ironically, not only do we apply these consciousness metaphors to the mind and mental events, but also to the world of matter in our attempts to understand its deeper complexities and dynamics. For example, systems theory and evolutionary biology-even at the reductionist level of molecular genetics-are replete with words such as "codes," "information," "meaning," "self-organizing," and the p-word: "purpose." So we are not limited to mechanistic metaphors when describing either the world of matter or the world of mind. But-and this is the important point-because of our bias toward visuo-muscular images, we tend to forget that metaphors of the mind are sui generis, and, because of our scientific and philosophical bias in favour of a mechanism, we often attempt to reduce metaphors of the mind to metaphors of matter. My proposal for consciousness talk is this: Recognize the limitations of mechanistic metaphors, and the inappropriateness of literal energy talk, when discussing consciousness. Instead, acknowledge the richness and appropriateness of metaphors of meaning when talking about the mind. In short: Drop mechanistic metaphors (energy talk) and take up meaning metaphors (consciousness talk) when talking about consciousness.
One of the thorniest issues in "energy" and "consciousness" work is the tendency to confuse the two. Consciousness does not equal energy, yet the two are inseparable. Consciousness is the "witness" which experiences the flow of energy, but it is not the flow of energy. We might say consciousness is the felt interiority of energy/matter - but it is not energy.
If we say that consciousness is a form of energy, then we have two options. Either It is a physical form of energy (even if it is very subtle energy), or It is not a physical form of energy. If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is physical, then we are reducing consciousness (and spirit) to physics. And few of us, unless we are materialists, want to do that. If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is not physical, then we need to say in what way psychic energy differs from physical energy. If we cannot explain what we mean by "psychic energy" and how it is different from physical energy, in that then we should ask ourselves why use the term "energy" at all? Our third alternative is to say that consciousness is not a form of energy (physical or nonphysical). This is not to imply that consciousness has nothing to do with energy. In fact, the position I emphasize in my graduate classes is that consciousness and energy always go together. They cannot ever be separated. But this is not to say they are not distinct. They are distinct-energy is energy, consciousness is consciousness-but they are inseparable (like two sides of a coin, or, better, like the shape and substance of a tennis ball. You can't separate the shape from the substance of the ball, but shape and substance are definitely distinct).
So, for example, if someone has a kundalini experience, they may feel a rush of energy up the chakra system . . . but to say that the energy flow is consciousness is to mistake the object (energy flow) for the subject, for what perceives (consciousness) the object. Note the two importantly distinct words in the phrase "feel the rush of energy . . . " On the one hand there is the "feeling" (or the "feeler"), on the other, there is what is being felt or experienced (the energy). Even our way of talking about it reveals that we detect a distinction between feeling (consciousness) and what we feel (energy). Yes, the two go together, but they are not the same. Unity, or unification, or holism, does not equal identity. To say that one aspect of reality (say, consciousness) cannot be separated from another aspect of reality (say, matter-energy) is not to say both aspects of reality (consciousness and matter-energy) are identical.
Consciousness, is neither identical to energy (monism) nor it a separate substance or energy in addition to physical matter or energy (dualism)-it is the "interiority," the what-it-feels-like-from-within, the subjectivity that is intrinsic to the reality of all matter and energy (panpsychism or radical materialism). If you take a moment to pay attention to what's going on in your own body right now, you'll see-or feel-what I mean: The physical matter of your body, including the flow of whatever energies are pulsing through you, is the "stuff" of your organism. But there is also a part of you that is aware of, or feels, the pumping of your blood (and other energy streams). That aspect of you that feels the matter-energy in your body is your consciousness. We could express it this way: "Consciousness is the process of matter-energy informing itself." Consciousness is the ability that matter-energy has to feel, to know, and to direct itself. The universe could be (and probably is) full of energy flows, vortices, and vibrations, but without consciousness, all this activity would be completely unfelt and unknown. Only because there is consciousness can the flow of energy be felt, known, and purposefully directed.
Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly "local." Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neuroscience. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest ways that "naturalistic" programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favour
The literature distinguishes "philosophy of neuroscience" and "neurophilosophy." The former concern foundational issues within the neuroscience. The latter concerns application of neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions. Exploring various concepts of representation employed in neuroscientific theories is an example of the former. Examining implications of neurological syndromes for the concept of a unified self is an example of the latter. In this entry, we will assume this distinction and discuss examples of both.
Contrary to some opinion, actual neuroscientific discoveries have exerted little influence on the details of materialist philosophies of mind. The "neuroscientific milieu" of the past four decades has made it harder for philosophers to adopt dualism. But even the "type-type" or "central state" identity theories that rose to brief prominence in the late 1950s drew upon few actual details of the emerging neuroscience. Recall the favourite early example of a psychoneural identity claim: pain is identical to C-fibre firing. The "C fibres" turned out to be related to only a single aspect of pain transmission. Early identity theorists did not emphasize psychoneural identity hypotheses, admitting that their "neuro" terms were placeholder for concepts from future neuroscience. Their arguments and motivations were philosophical, even if the ultimate justification of the program was held to be empirical.
The apology for this lacuna by early identity theorists was that neuroscience at that time was too nascent to provide any plausible identities. But potential identities were afoot. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel's (1962) electro physiological demonstrations of the receptive field properties of visual neurons had been reported with great fanfare. Using their techniques, neuro physiologists began discovering neurons throughout visual cortex responsive to increasingly abstract features of visual stimuli: from edges to motion direction to colours to properties of faces and hands. More notably, Donald Hebb had published The Organization of Behaviour (1949) a decade earlier. Therein he offered detailed explanations of psychological phenomena in terms of known neural mechanisms and anatomical circuits. His psychological explananda included features of perception, learning, memory, and even emotional disorders. He offered these explanations as potential identities. One philosopher did take note of some available neuroscientific detail was Barbara Von Eckardt-Klein (1975). She discussed the identity theory with respect to sensations of touch and pressure, and incorporated then-current hypotheses about neural coding of sensation modality, intensity, duration, and location as theorized by Mountcastle, Libet, and Jasper. Yet she was a glaring exception. Largely, available neuroscience at the time was ignored by both philosophical friends and foes of early identity theories.
Philosophical indifference to neuroscientific detail became "principled" with the rise and prominence of functionalism in the 1970s. The functionalists' favourite argument was based on multiple reliability: a given mental state or event can be realized in a wide variety of physical types (Putnam, 1967 and Fodor, 1974). So a detailed understanding of one type of realizing physical system (e.g., brains) will not shed light on the fundamental nature of mind. A psychological state-type is autonomous from any single type of its possible realizing physical mechanisms. Instead of neuroscience, scientifically-minded philosophers influenced by functionalism sought evidence and inspiration from cognitive psychology and "program-writing" artificial intelligence. These disciplines résumé being of themselves away from underlying physical mechanisms and emphasize the "information-bearing" properties and capacities of representations (Haugeland, 1985). At this same time neuroscience was delving directly into cognition, especially learning and memory. For example, Eric Kandel (1976) proposed parasynaptic mechanisms governing transmitter release rates as a cell-biological explanation of simple forms of associative learning. With Robert Hawkins (1984) he demonstrated how cognitivist aspects of associative learning (e.g., Forming, second-order conditioning, overshadowing) could be explained cell-biologically by sequences and combinations of these basic forms implemented in higher neural anatomies. Working on the postsynaptic side, neuroscientists began unravelling the cellular mechanisms of long term potentiation (LTP). Physiological psychologists quickly noted its explanatory potential for various forms of learning and memory. Yet few "materialist" philosophers paid any attention. Why should they? Most were convinced functionalists, who believed that the "engineering level" details might be important to the clinician, but were irrelevant to the theorist of mind.
A major turning point in philosophers' interest in neuroscience came with the publication of Patricia Churchland's Neurophilosophy (1986). The Churchlands (Pat and husband Paul) were already notorious for advocating eliminative materialism. In her (1986) book, Churchland distilled eliminativist arguments of the past decade, unified the pieces of the philosophy of science underlying them, and sandwiched the philosophy between a five-chapter introduction and neuroscience and a 70-page chapter on three then-current theories of brain function. She was unapologetic about her intent. She was introducing philosophy of science to neuroscientists and neuroscience to philosophers. Nothing could be more obvious, she insisted, than the relevance of empirical facts about how the brain works to concerns in the philosophy of mind. Her term for this interdisciplinary method was "co-evolution" (borrowed from biology). This method seeks resources and ideas from anywhere on the theory hierarchy above or below the question at issue. Standing on the shoulders of philosophers like Quine and Sellars, Churchland insisted that specifying some point where neuroscience ends and philosophy of science begins is hopeless because the boundaries are poorly defined. neuro philosophers would carefully choose resources from both disciplines as they saw fit.
Three themes predominate Churchlands philosophical discussion: Developing an alternative to the logical empiricist theory of intertheoretic cause to be connected to property-dualistic arguments based on subjectivity and sensory qualia, and responding to anti-reductionist multiple reliability arguments. These projects have remained central to neurophilosophy over the past decade. John Bickle (1998) extends the principal insight of Clifford Hooker's (1981) post-empiricist theory of intertheoretic reduction. He quantifies key notions using a model-theoretic account of theory structure adapted from the structuralist program in philosophy of science. He also makes explicit the form of argument scientist’s employ to draw ontological conclusions (cross-theoretic identities, revisions, or eliminations) based on the nature of the intertheoretic reduction relations obtaining in specific cases. For example, physicists concluded that visible light, a theoretical posit of optics, is electromagnetic radiation within specified wavelengths, a theoretical posit of electromagnetism: a cross-theoretic ontological identity. In another case, however, chemists concluded that phlogiston did not exist: an elimination of a kind from our scientific ontology. Bickle explicates the nature of the reduction relation in a specific case using a semi-formal account of ‘an interior theoretic approximation’ inspired by structuralist results. Paul Churchland (1996) has carried on the attack on property-dualistic arguments for the ir reducibility of conscious experience and sensory qualia. He argues that acquiring some knowledge of existing sensory neuroscience increases one's ability to ‘imagine’ or ‘conceive of’ a comprehensive neurobiological explanation of consciousness. He defends this conclusion using a thought-experiment based on the history of optics and electromagnetism. Finally, the literature critical of the multiple reliability argument has begun to flourish. Although the multiple reliability argument remains influential among nonreductive physicalists, it no longer commanded the universal acceptance it once did. Replies to the multiple reliability argument based on neuroscientific details have appeared. For example, William Bechtel and Jennifer Mundale (1997, in press) argue that neuroscientists use psychological criteria in brain mapping studies. This fact undercuts the likelihood that psychological kinds are multiplying realized.
Eliminative materialism (EM) is the conjunction of two claims. First, our common sense ‘belief-desire’ conception of mental events and processes, our ‘folk psychology,’ is a false and misleading account of the causes of human behaviour. Second, like other false conceptual frameworks from both folk theory and the history of science, it will be replaced by, rather than smoothly reduced or incorporated into, a future neuroscience. Folk psychology is the collection of common homilies about the causes of human behaviour. You ask me why Marica is not accompanying me this evening. I reply that her grant deadline is looming. You nod sympathetically. You understand my explanation because you share with me a generalization that relates beliefs about looming deadlines, desires about meeting professionally and financially significant ones, and ensuing free-time behaviour. It is the collection of these kinds of homilies that EM claims to be flawed beyond significant revision. Although this example involves only beliefs and desires, folk psychology contains an extensive repertoire of propositional attitudes in its explanatory nexus: hopes, intentions, fears, imaginings, and more. To the extent that scientific psychology (and neuroscience) retains folk concepts, EM applies to it as well.
EM is physicalist in the classical sense, postulating some future brain science as the ultimately correct account of (human) behaviour. It is eliminative in predicting the future removal of folk psychological kinds from our post-neuroscientific ontology. EM proponents often employ scientific analogies. Oxidative reactions as characterized within elemental chemistry bear no resemblance to phlogiston release. Even the "direction" of the two processes differ. Oxygen is gained when an object burns (or rusts), phlogiston was said to be lost. The result of this theoretical change was the elimination of phlogiston from our scientific ontology. There is no such thing. For the same reasons, according to EM, continuing development in neuroscience will reveal that there are no such things as beliefs and desires as characterized by common sense.
Here we focus only on the way that neuroscientific results have shaped the arguments for EM. Surprisingly, only one argument has been strongly influenced. (Most arguments for EM stress the failures of folk psychology as an explanatory theory of behaviour.) This argument is based on a development in cognitive and computational neuroscience that might provide a genuine alternative to the representations and computations implicit in folk psychological generalizations. Many eliminative materialists assume that folk psychology is committed to propositional representations and computations over their contents that mimic logical inferences. Even though discovering such an alternative has been an eliminativist goal for some time, neuroscience only began delivering on this goal over the past fifteen years. Points in and trajectories through vector spaces, as an interpretation of synaptic events and neural activity patterns in biological neural networks are key feature of this development. This argument for EM hinges on the differences between these notions of cognitive representation and the propositional attitudes of folk psychology (Churchland, 1987). However, this argument will be opaque to those with no background in contemporary cognitive and computational neuroscience, so we need to present a few scientific details. With these details in place, we will return to this argument for EM.
At one level of analysis the basic computational element of a neural network (biological or artificial) is the neuron. This analysis treats neurons as simple computational devices, transforming inputs into output. Both neuronal inputs and outputs reflect biological variables. For the remainder of this discussion, we will assume that neuronal inputs are frequencies of action potentials (neuronal "spikes") in the axons whose terminal branches synapse onto the neuron in question. Neuronal output is the frequency of action potentials in the axon of the neuron in question. A neuron computes its total input (usually treated mathematically as the sum of the products of the signal strength along each input line times the synaptic weight on that line). It then computes a new activation state based on its total input and current activation state, and a new output state based on its new activation value. The neuron's output state is transmitted as a signal strength to whatever neurons on which its axon synapses. The output state reflects systematically the neuron's new activation state.
Analysed at this level, both biological and artificial neural networks are interpreted naturally as vector-to-vector transformers. The input vector consists of values reflecting activity patterns in axons synapsing on the network's neurons from outside (e.g., from sensory transducers or other neural networks). The output vector consists of values reflecting the activity patterns generated in the network's neurons that project beyond the net (e.g., to motor effectors or other neural networks). Given that neurons' activity depends partly upon their total input, and total input depends partly on synaptic weights (e.g., parasynaptic neurotransmitter release rate, number and efficacy of postsynaptic receptors, availability of enzymes in synaptic cleft), the capacity of biological networks to change their synaptic pressures to initiate a plastic vector-to-vector transformer. In principle, a biological network with plastic synapses can come to implement any vector-to-vector transformation that its composition permits (number of input units, output units, processing layers, recurrence, cross-connections, etc.)
The anatomical organization of the cerebellum provides a clear example of a network amendable to this computational interpretation. The cerebellum is the bulbous convoluted structure dorsal to the brainstem. A variety of studies (behavioural, neuropsychological, single-cell electros), implicate this structure in motor integration and fine motor coordination. Mossy fibres (axons) from neurons outside the cerebellum synapse on cerebellular granule cells, which in turn project to parallel fibres. Activity patterns’ across the collection of mossy fibres (frequency of action potentials per time unit in each fibre projecting into the cerebellum) provide values for the input vector. Parallel fibres make multiple synapses on the dendritic trees and cell bodies of cerebellular Purkinje neurons. Each Purkinje neuron "sums" its post-synaptic potentials (PSPs) and emits a train of action potentials down its axon based (partly) on its total input and previous activation state. Purkinje axons project outside the cerebellum. The network's output vectors is thus the ordered values representing the pattern of activity generated in each Purkinje axon. Changes to the efficacy of individual synapses on the parallel fibres and the Purkinje neurons alter the resulting PSPs in Purkinje axons, generating different axonal spiking frequencies. Computationally, this amounts to a different output vector to the same input activity pattern (plasticity).
This interpretation puts the useful mathematical resources of dynamical systems into the hands of computational neuroscientists. Vector spaces are an example. For example, learning can be characterized fruitfully in terms of changes in synaptic weights in the network and subsequent reduction of error in network output. (This approach goes back to Hebb, 1949, although within the vector-space interpretation that follows.) A useful representation of this account is on a synaptic weight-error space, where one dimension represents the global error in the network's output to a given task, and all other dimensions represent the weight values of individual synapses in the network. Points in this multidimensional state space represent the global performance error correlated with each possible collection of synaptic weights in the network. As the weights change with each performance (in accordance with a biologically-implemented learning algorithm), the global error of network performance continually decreases. Learning is represented as synaptic weight changes correlated with a descent along the error dimension in the space (Churchland and Sejnowski, 1992). Representations (concepts) can be portrayed as partitions in multidimensional vector spaces. An example is a neuron activation vector space. A graph of such a space contains one dimension for the activation value of each neuron in the network (or some subset). A point in this space represents one possible pattern of activity in all neurons in the network. Activity patterns generated by input vectors that the network has learned to group together will cluster around a (hyper-) point or sub volume in the activity vector space. Any input pattern sufficiently similar to this group will produce an activity pattern lying in geometrical proximity to this point or sub volume. Paul Churchland (1989) has argued that this interpretation of network activity provides a quantitative, neurally-inspired basis for prototype theories of concepts developed recently in cognitive psychology.
Using this theoretical development, has offered a novel argument for EM. According to this approach, activity vectors are the central kind of representation and vector-to-vector transformations are the central kind of computation in the brain. This contrasts sharply with the propositional representations and logical/semantic computations postulated by folk psychology. Vectorial content is unfamiliar and alien to common sense. This cross-theoretic difference is at least as great as that between oxidative and phlogiston concepts, or kinetic-corpuscular and caloric fluid heat concepts. Phlogiston and caloric fluid are two "parade" examples of kinds eliminated from our scientific ontology due to the nature of the intertheoretic relation obtaining between the theories with which they are affiliated and the theories that replaced these. The structural and dynamic differences between the folk psychological and emerging cognitive neuroscientific kinds suggest that the theories affiliated with the latter will also correct significantly the theory affiliated with the former. This is the key premise of an eliminativist argument based on predicted intertheoretic relations. And these intertheoretic contrasts are no longer just an eliminativist's goal. Computational and cognitive neuroscience has begun to deliver an alternative kinematics for cognition, one that provides no structural analogue for the propositional attitudes.
Certainly the replacement of propositional contents by vectorial alternatives implies significant correction to folk psychology. But does it justifies EM? Even though this central feature of folk-psychologically posits in the finding of no analogues in one hot theoretical development in recent cognitive and computational neuroscience, there might be other aspects of cognition that folk psychology gets right. Within neurophilosophy, concluding that a cross-theoretic identity claim is true (e.g., folk psychological state F is identical to neural state N) or that an eliminativist claim is true (there is no such thing as folk psychological state F) depends on the nature of the intertheoretic reduction obtaining between the theories affiliated with the posits in question. But the underlying account of intertheoretic reduction recognizes a spectrum of possible reductions, ranging from relatively "smooth" through "significantly revisionary" to "extremely bumpy." Might the reduction of folk psychology and a "vectorial" neurobiology occupy the middle ground between "smooth" and "bumpy" intertheoretic reductions, and hence suggest a "revisionary" conclusion? The reduction of classical equilibrium thermodynamics to statistical mechanics to microphysics provides a potential analogy. John Bickle argues on empirical grounds that such a outcome is likely. He specifies conditions on "revisionary" reductions from historical examples and suggests that these conditions are obtaining between folk psychology and cognitive neuroscience as the latter develops. In particular, folk psychology appears to have gotten right the grossly-specified functional profile of many cognitive states, especially those closely related to sensory input and behavioural output. It also appears to get right the "intentionality" of many cognitive states - the object that the state is of or about - even though cognitive neuroscience eschews its implicit linguistic explanation of this feature. Revisionary physicalism predicts significant conceptual change to folk psychological concepts, but denies total elimination of the caloric fluid-phlogiston variety.
The philosophy of science is another area where vector space interpretations of neural network activity patterns have impacted philosophy. In the Introduction to his (1989) book, Paul Churchland asserts that it will soon be impossible to do serious work in the philosophy of science without drawing on empirical work in the brain and behavioural sciences. To justify this claim, he suggests neurocomputational reformulation of key concepts from this area. At the heart is a neurocomputational account of the structure of scientific theories. Problems with the orthodox "sets-of-sentences" view have been known for more than three decades. Churchland advocates replacing the orthodox view with one inspired by the "vectorial" interpretation of neural network activity. Representations implemented in neural networks (as discussed above) compose a system that corresponds to important distinctions in the external environment, are not explicitly represented as such within the input corpus, and allow the trained network to respond to inputs in a fashion that continually reduces error. These are exactly the functions of theories. Churchland is bold in his assertion: an individual's theory-of-the-world is a specific point in that individual's error-synaptic weight vector space. It is a configuration of synaptic weights that partitions the individual's activation vector space into subdivisions that reduce future error messages to both familiar and novel inputs.
This reformulation invites an objection, however. Churchland boasts that his theory of theories is preferable to existing alternatives to the orthodox "sets-of-sentences" account - for example, the semantic view (Suppe, 1974; van Fraassen, 1980) - because his is closer to the "buzzing brains" that use theories. But as Bickle notes, neurocomputational models based on the mathematical resources described above are a long way into the realm of abstractia. Even now, they remain little more than novel (and suggestive) applications of the mathematics of quasi-linear dynamical system to simplified schemata of brain circuitries. neuro philosophers owe some account of identifications across ontological categories before the philosophy of science community will accept the claim that theories are points in high-dimensional state spaces implemented in biological neural networks. (There is an important methodological assumption lurking in this objection.
Churchlands neurocomputational reformulation of scientific and epistemological concepts build on this account of theories. He sketches "neutralized" accounts of the theory-ladenness of perception, the nature of concept unification, the virtues of theoretical simplicity, the nature of Kuhnian paradigms, the kinematics of conceptual change, the character of abduction, the nature of explanation, and even moral knowledge and epistemological normativity. Conceptual redeployment, for example, is the activation of an already-existing prototype representation - a counterpoint or region of a partition of a high-dimensional vector space in a trained neural network - a novel type of input pattern. Obviously, we can't here do justice to Churchlands various attempts at reformulation. We urge the intrigued reader to examine his suggestions in their original form. But a word about philosophical methodology is in order. Churchland is not attempting "conceptual analysis" in anything resembling its traditional philosophical sense and neither, typically, are neuro philosophers. (This is why a discussion of neuro philosophical reformulation fits with a discussion of EM.) There are philosophers who take the discipline's ideal to be a relatively simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions, expressed in non-technical natural language, governing the application of important concepts (like justice, knowledge, theory, or explanation). These analyses should square, to the extent possible, with pre-theoretical usage. Ideally, they should preserve synonymy. Other philosophers view this ideal as sterile, misguided, and perhaps deeply mistaken about the underlying structure of human knowledge. neuro philosophers tend to reside in the latter camp. Those who dislike philosophical speculation about the promise and potential of nascent science in an effort to reformulate ("reformlulate") traditional philosophical concepts have probably already discovered that neurophilosophy is not for them. But the charge that neurocomputational reformulation of the sort Churchland attempts are "philosophically uninteresting" or "irrelevant" because they fail to provide "adequate analyses" of theory, explanation, and the like will get ignored among many contemporary philosophers, as well as their cognitive-scientific and neuroscientific friends. Before we leave the neuro philosophical applications of this theoretical development from recent cognitive/computational neuroscience, one more point of scientific detail is in order. The popularity of treating the neuron as the basic computational unit among neural modelers, as opposed to cognitive modelers, is declining rapidly. Compartmental modelling enables computational neuroscientists to mimic activity in and interactions between patches of neuronal membrane. This endorses modelers to control and manipulate a variety of subcellular factors that determine action potentials per time unit (including the topology of membrane structure in individual neurons, variations in ion channels across membrane patches, field properties of post-synaptic potentials depending on the location of the synapse on the dendrite or soma). Modelers can "custom-build" the neurons in their target circuitry without sacrificing the ability to study circuit properties of networks. For these reasons, few serious computational neuroscientists continue to work at a level that treats neurons as unstructured computational devices. But the above interpretative points still stand. With compartmental modelling, not only are simulated neural networks interpretable as vector-to-vector transformers. The neurons composing them are, too.
The Philosophy of science, and scientific epistemology are not the only area where philosophers have lately urged the relevance of neuroscientific discoveries. Kathleen Akins argues that a "traditional" view of the senses underlies the variety of sophisticated "naturalistic" programs about intentionality. Current neuroscientific understanding of the mechanisms and coding strategies implemented by sensory receptors shows that this traditional view is mistaken. The traditional view holds that sensory systems are "veridical" in at least three ways. (1) Each signal in the system correlates with a small range of properties in the external (to the body) environment. (2) The structure in the relevant relations between the external properties the receptors are sensitive to is preserved in the structure of the relations between the resulting sensory states. And (3) the sensory system reconstructively in faithfully, without fictive additions or embellishments, the external events. Using recent neurobiological discoveries about response properties of thermal receptors in the skin as an illustration, Akins shows that sensory systems are "narcissistic" rather than "veridical." All three traditional assumptions are violated. These neurobiological details and their philosophical implications open novel questions for the philosophy of perception and for the appropriate foundations for naturalistic projects about intentionality. Armed with the known neurophysiology of sensory receptors, for example, our "philosophy of perception" or of "perceptual intentionality" will no longer focus on the search for correlations between states of sensory systems and "veridically detected" external properties. This traditional philosophical (and scientific) project rests upon a mistaken "veridical" view of the senses. Neuroscientific knowledge of sensory receptor activity also shows that sensory experience does not serve the naturalist well as a "simple paradigm case" of an intentional relation between representation and world. Once again, available scientific detail shows the naivety of some traditional philosophical projects.
Focussing on the anatomy and physiology of the pain transmission system, Valerie Hardcastle (1997) urges a similar negative implication for a popular methodological assumption. Pain experiences have long been philosophers' favourite cases for analysis and theorizing about conscious experience generally. Nevertheless, every position about pain experiences has been defended recently: eliminativist, a variety of objectivists view, relational views, and subjectivist views. Why so little agreement, despite agreement that pain experience is the place to start an analysis or theory of consciousness? Hardcastle urges two answers. First, philosophers tend to be uninformed about the neuronal complexity of our pain transmission systems, and build their analyses or theories on the outcome of a single component of a multi-component system. Second, even those who understand some of the underlying neurobiology of pain tends to advocate gate-control theories. But the best existing gate-control theories are vague about the neural mechanisms of the gates. Hardcastle instead proposes a dissociable dual system of pain transmission, consisting of a pain sensory system closely analogous in its neurobiological implementation to other sensory systems, and a descending pain inhibitory system. She argues that this dual system is consistent with recent neuroscientific discoveries and accounts for all the pain phenomena that have tempted philosophers toward particular (but limited) theories of pain experience. The neurobiological uniqueness of the pain inhibitory system, contrasted with the mechanisms of other sensory modalities, renders pain processing atypical. In particular, the pain inhibitory system dissociates pains sensation from stimulation of nociceptors (pain receptors). Hardcastle concludes from the neurobiological uniqueness of pain transmission that pain experiences are atypical conscious events, and hence not a good place to start theorizing about or analysing the general type.
Developing and defending theories of content is a central topic in current philosophy of mind. A common desideratum in this debate is a theory of cognitive representation consistent with a physical or naturalistic ontology. We'll here describe a few contributions neuro philosophers have made to this literature.
When one perceives or remembers that he is out of coffee, his brain state possesses intentionality or "aboutness." The percept or memory is about one's being out of coffee, and it represents one for being out of coffee. The representational state has content. A psychosemantics seeks to explain what it is for a representational state to be about something: to provide an account of how states and events can have specific representational content. A physicalist psychosemantics seeks to do this using resources of the physical sciences exclusively. neuro philosophers have contributed to two types of physicalist psychosemantics: the Functional Role approach and the Informational approach.
The core claim of functional roles of semantics holds that a representation has its content in virtue of relations it bears to other representations. Its paradigm application is to concepts of truth-functional logic, like the conjunctive ‘and’ or disjunctive ‘or.’ A physical event instantiates the ‘and’ function just in case it maps two true inputs onto a single true output. Thus an expression bears the relations to others that give it the semantic content of ‘and.’ Proponents of functional role semantics propose similar analyses for the content of all representations (Form 1986). A physical event represents birds, for example, if it bears the right relations to events representing feathers and others representing beaks. By contrast, informational semantics associates content to a state depending upon the causal relations obtaining between the state and the object it represents. A physical state represents birds, for example, just in case an appropriate causal relation obtains between it and birds. At the heart of informational semantics is a causal account of information. Red spots on a face carry the information that one has measles because the red spots are caused by the measles virus. A common criticism of informational semantics holds that mere causal covariation is insufficient for representation, since information (in the causal sense) is by definition, always veridical while representations can misrepresent. A popular solution to this challenge invokes a teleological analysis of ‘function.’ A brain state represents X by virtue of having the function of carrying information about being caused by X (Dretske 1988). These two approaches do not exhaust the popular options for a psychosemantics, but are the ones to which neuro philosophers have contributed.
Paul Churchlands allegiance to functional role semantics goes back to his earliest views about the semantics of terms in a language. In his (1979) book, he insists that the semantic identity (content) of a term derive from its place in the network of sentences of the entire language. The functional economies envisioned by early functional role semanticists were networks with nodes corresponding to the objects and properties denoted by expressions in a language. Thus one node, appropriately connected, might represent birds, another feathers, and another beaks. Activation of one of these would tend to spread to the others. As ‘connectionist’ network modelling developed, alternatives arose to this one-representation-per-node ‘localist’ approach. By the time Churchland provided a neuroscientific elaboration of functional role semantics for cognitive representations generally, he too had abandoned the ‘localist’ interpretation. Instead, he offered a ‘state-space semantics’.
We saw in the section just above how (vector) state spaces provide a natural interpretation for activity patterns in neural networks (biological and artificial). A state-space semantics for cognitive representations is a species of functional role semantics because the individuation of a particular state depends upon the relations obtaining between it and other states. A representation is a point in an appropriate state space, and points (or sub volumes) in a space are individuated by their relations to other points (locations, geometrical proximity). Churchland illustrates a state-space semantics for neural states by appealing to sensory systems. One popular theory in sensory neuroscience of how the brain codes for sensory qualities (like Collor) are the opponent process account. Churchland describes a three-dimensional activation vector state-space in which all Collor perceivable by humans is represented as a point (or sub value). Each dimension corresponds to activity rates in one of three classes of photoreceptors present in the human retina and their efferent paths: The red-green opponent pathway, yellow-blue opponent pathway, and black-white (contrast) opponent pathway. Photons striking the retina are transduced by the receptors, producing an activity rate in each of the segregated pathways. The characterized Cellos have a triplet of activation frequency rates. Each dimension in that three-dimensional space will represent average frequency of action potentials in the axons of one class of ganglion cells projecting out of the retina. Face-to-face, the Collor perceivable by humans will be a region of that space. For example, an orange stimulus produces a relatively low level of activity in both the red-green and yellow-blue opponent pathways (x-axis and y-axis, respectively), and middle-range activity in the black-white (contrast) opponent pathways (z-axis). Pink stimuli, on the other hand, produce low activity in the red-green opponent pathway, middle-range activity in the yellow-blue opponent pathway, and high activity in the black-white (contrast) an opponent pathway. The location of each colour in the space generates a ‘colour solid.’ Location on the solid and geometrical proximity between regions reflect structural similarities between the perceived colours. Human gustatory representations are points in a four-dimensional state space, with each dimension coding for activity rates generated by gustatory stimuli in each type of taste receptor (sweet, salty, sour, bitter) and their segregated efferent pathways. When implemented in a neural network with structural and hence computational resources as vast as the human brain, the state space approach to psychosemantics generates a theory of content for a huge number of cognitive states.
Jerry Fodor and Ernest LePore raise an important challenge to Churchlands psychosemantics. Location in a state space alone seems insufficient to fix a state's representational content. Churchland never explains why a point in a three-dimensional state space represents the Collor, as opposed to any other quality, object, or event that varies along three dimensions. Churchlands account achieves its explanatory power by the interpretation imposed on the dimensions. Fodor and LePore allege that Churchland never specifies how a dimension comes to represent, e.g., degree of saltiness, as opposed to yellow-blue wavelength opposition. One obvious answer appeals to the stimuli that form the ‘external’ inputs to the neural network in question. Then, for example, the individuating conditions on neural representations of colours are that opponent processing neurons receive input from a specific class of photoreceptors. The latter in turn have electromagnetic radiation (of a specific portion of the visible spectrum) as their activating stimuli. However, this appeal to ‘external’ stimuli as the ultimate individuating conditions for representational content makes the resulting approach a version of informational semantics. Is this approach consonant with other neurobiological details?
The neurobiological paradigm for informational semantics is the feature detector: One or more neurons that are (i) maximally responsive to a particular type of stimulus, and (ii) have the function of indicating the presence of that stimulus type. Examples of such stimulus-types for visual feature detectors include high-contrast edges, motion direction, and colours. A favourite feature detector among philosophers is the alleged fly detector in the frog. Lettvin et al. (1959) identified cells in the frog retina that responded maximally to small shapes moving across the visual field. The idea that these cells' activity functioned to detect flies rested upon knowledge of the frogs' diet. Using experimental techniques ranging from single-cell recording to sophisticated functional imaging, neuroscientists have recently discovered a host of neurons that are maximally responsive to a variety of stimuli. However, establishing condition (ii) on a feature detector is much more difficult. Even some paradigm examples have been called into question. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel's (1962) Nobel Prize winning work establishing the receptive fields of neurons in striate cortices are often interpreted as revealing cells whose function is edge detection. However, Lehky and Sejnowski (1988) have challenged this interpretation. They trained an artificial neural network to distinguish the three-dimensional shape and orientation of an object from its two-dimensional shading pattern. Their network incorporates many features of visual neurophysiology. Nodes in the trained network turned out to be maximally responsive to edge contrasts, but did not appear to have the function of edge detection.
Kathleen Akins (1996) offers a different neuro philosophical challenge to informational semantics and its affiliated feature-detection view of sensory representation. We saw in the previous section how Akins argues that the physiology of thermoreceptor violates three necessary conditions on ‘veridical’ representation. From this fact she draws doubts about looking for feature detecting neurons to ground a psychosemantics generally, including thought contents. Human thoughts about flies, for example, are sensitive to numerical distinctions between particular flies and the particular locations they can occupy. But the ends of frog nutrition are well served without a representational system sensitive to such ontological refinements. Whether a fly seen now is numerically identical to one seen a moment ago, need not, and perhaps cannot, figure into the frog's feature detection repertoire. Akins' critique casts doubt on whether details of sensory transduction will scale up to encompass of some adequately unified psychosemantics. It also raises new questions for human intentionality. How do we get from activity patterns in "narcissistic" sensory receptors, keyed not to "objective" environmental features but rather only to effects of the stimuli on the patch of tissue enervated, to the human ontology replete with enduring objects with stable configurations of properties and relations, types and their tokens (as the "fly-thought" example presented above reveals), and the rest? And how did the development of a stable, and rich ontology confer survival advantages to human ancestors?
Consciousness has reemerged as a topic in philosophy of mind and the cognitive and brain sciences over the past three decades. Instead of ignoring it, many physicalists now seek to explain it (Dennett, 1991). Here we focus exclusively on ways those neuroscientific discoveries have impacted philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness and its relation to physical mechanisms. Thomas Nagel argues that conscious experience is subjective, and thus permanently recalcitrant to objective scientific understanding. He invites us to ponder ‘what it is like to be a bat’ and urges the intuition that no amount of physical-scientific knowledge (including neuroscientific) supplies a complete answer. Nagel's intuition pump has generated extensive philosophical discussion. At least two well-known replies make direct appeal to neurophysiology. John Biro suggests that part of the intuition pumped by Nagel, that bat experience is substantially different from human experience, presupposes systematic relations between physiology and phenomenology. Kathleen Akins (1993a) delves deeper into existing knowledge of bat physiology and reports much that is pertinent to Nagel's question. She argues that many of the questions about bat subjectivity that we still consider open hinge on questions that remain unanswered about neuroscientific details. One example of the latter is the function of various cortical activity profiles in the active bat.
More recently philosopher David Chalmers (1996) has argued that any possible brain-process account of consciousness will leave open an ‘explanatory gap’ between the brain process and properties of the conscious experience. This is because no brain-process theory can answer the "hard" question: Why should that particular brain process give rise to conscious experience? We can always imagine ("conceive of") a universe populated by creatures having those brain processes but completely lacking conscious experience. A theory of consciousness requires an explanation of how and why some brain process causes consciousness replete with all the features we commonly experience. The fact that the hard question remains unanswered shows that we will probably never get a complete explanation of consciousness at the level of neural mechanisms. Paul and Patricia Churchland have recently offered the following diagnosis and reply. Chalmers offer a conceptual argument, based on our ability to imagine creatures possessing brains like ours but wholly lacking in conscious experience. But the more one learns about how the brain produces conscious experience-and literature is beginning to emerge (e.g., Gazzaniga, 1995) - the harder it becomes to imagine a universe consisting of creatures with brain processes like ours but lacking consciousness. This is not just to bare assertions. The Churchlands appeal to some neurobiological detail. For example, Paul Churchland (1995) develops a neuroscientific account of consciousness based on recurrent connections between thalamic nuclei (particularly "diffusely projecting" nuclei like the intralaminar nuclei) and the cortex. Churchland argues that the thalamocortical recurrency accounts for the selective features of consciousness, for the effects of short-term memory on conscious experience, for vivid dreaming during REM. (rapid-eye movement) sleep, and other "core" features of conscious experience. In other words, the Churchlands are claiming that when one learns about activity patterns in these recurrent circuits, one can't "imagine" or "conceive of" this activity occurring without these core features of conscious experience. (Other than just mouthing the words, "I am now imagining activity in these circuits without selective attention/the effects of short-term memory/vivid dreaming . . . ")
A second focus of sceptical arguments about a complete neuroscientific explanation of consciousness is sensory qualia: the introspectable qualitative aspects of sensory experience, the features by which subjects discern similarities and differences among their experiences. The colours of visual sensations are a philosopher's favourite example. One famous puzzle about colour qualia is the alleged conceivability of spectral inversions. Many philosophers claim that it is conceptually possible (if perhaps physically impossible) for two humans not to differ neurophysiological, while the Collor that fire engines and tomatoes appear to have to one subject is the Collor that grass and frogs appear to have to the other (and vice versa). A large amount of neuroscientifically-informed philosophy has addressed this question. A related area where neurophilosophical considerations have emerged concerns the metaphysics of colours themselves (rather than Collor experiences). A longstanding philosophical dispute is whether colours are objective property’s Existing external to perceiver or rather identifiable as or dependent upon minds or nervous systems. Some recent work on this problem begins with characteristics of Collor experiences: For example that Collor similarity judgments produce Collor orderings that align on a circle. With this resource, one can seek mappings of phenomenology onto environmental or physiological regularities. Identifying colours with particular frequencies of electromagnetic radiation does not preserve the structure of the hue circle, whereas identifying colours with activity in opponent processing neurons does. Such a tidbit is not decisive for the Collor objectivist-subjectivist debate, but it does convey the type of neurophilosophical work being done on traditional metaphysical issues beyond the philosophy of mind.
We saw in the discussion of Hardcastle (1997) two sections above that Neurophilosophers have entered disputes about the nature and methodological import of pain experiences. Two decades earlier, Dan Dennett (1978) took up the question of whether it is possible to build a computer that feels pain. He compares and notes pressure between neurophysiological discoveries and common sense intuitions about pain experience. He suspects that the incommensurability between scientific and common sense views is due to incoherence in the latter. His attitude is wait-and-see. But foreshadowing Churchland's reply to Chalmers, Dennett favours scientific investigations over conceivability-based philosophical arguments.
Neurological deficits have attracted philosophical interest. For thirty years philosophers have found implications for the unity of the self in experiments with commissurotomy patients. In carefully controlled experiments, commissurotomy patients display two dissociable seats of consciousness. Patricia Churchland scouts philosophical implications of a variety of neurological deficits. One deficit is blind-sight. Some patients with lesions to primary visual cortex report being unable to see items in regions of their visual fields, yet perform far better than chance in forced guess trials about stimuli in those regions. A variety of scientific and philosophical interpretations have been offered. Ned Form (1988) worries that many of these conflate distinct notions of consciousness. He labels these notions ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (‘P-consciousness’) and ‘access consciousness’ (‘A-consciousness’). The former is that which, ‘what it is like-ness of experience. The latter is the availability of representational content to self-initiated action and speech. Form argues that P-consciousness is not always representational whereas A-consciousness is. Dennett and Michael Tye are sceptical of non-representational analyses of consciousness in general. They provide accounts of blind-sight that do not depend on Form's distinction.
Many other topics are worth neurophilosophical pursuit. We mentioned commissurotomy and the unity of consciousness and the self, which continues to generate discussion. Qualia beyond those of Collor and pain have begun to attract neurophilosophical attention has self-consciousness. The first issues to arise in the ‘philosophy of neuroscience’ (before there was a recognized area) was the localization of cognitive functions to specific neural regions. Although the ‘localization’ approach had dubious origins in the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, and was challenged severely by Flourens throughout the early nineteenth century, it reemerged in the study of aphasia by Bouillaud, Auburtin, Broca, and Wernicke. These neurologists made careful studies (where possible) of linguistic deficits in their aphasic patients followed by brain autopsies postmortem. Broca's initial study of twenty-two patients in the mid-nineteenth century confirmed that damage to the left cortical hemisphere was predominant, and that damage to the second and third frontal convolutions was necessary to produce speech production deficits. Although the anatomical coordinates’ Broca postulates for the ‘speech production centres do not correlate exactly with damage producing production deficits, both are that in this area of frontal cortex and speech production deficits still bear his name (‘Broca's area’ and ‘Broca's aphasia’). Less than two decades later Carl Wernicke published evidence for a second language centre. This area is anatomically distinct from Broca's area, and damage to it produced a very different set of aphasic symptoms. The cortical area that still bears his name (‘Wernicke's area’) is located around the first and second convolutions in temporal cortex, and the aphasia that bears his name (‘Wernicke's aphasia’) involves deficits in language comprehension. Wernicke's method, like Broca's, was based on lesion studies: a careful evaluation of the behavioural deficits followed by post mortem examination to find the sites of tissue damage and atrophy. Lesion studies suggesting more precise localization of specific linguistic functions remain a cornerstone to this day in aphasic research
Lesion studies have also produced evidence for the localization of other cognitive functions: for example, sensory processing and certain types of learning and memory. However, localization arguments for these other functions invariably include studies using animal models. With an animal model, one can perform careful behavioural measures in highly controlled settings, then ablate specific areas of neural tissue (or use a variety of other techniques to Form or enhance activity in these areas) and remeasure performance on the same behavioural tests. But since we lack an animal model for (human) language production and comprehension, this additional evidence isn't available to the neurologist or neurolinguist. This fact makes the study of language a paradigm case for evaluating the logic of the lesion/deficit method of inferring functional localization. Philosopher Barbara Von Eckardt (1978) attempts to make explicit the steps of reasoning involved in this common and historically important method. Her analysis begins with Robert Cummins' early analysis of functional explanation, but she extends it into a notion of structurally adequate functional analysis. These analyses break down a complex capacity C into its constituent capacity’s c1, c2, . . . cn, where the constituent capacities are consistent with the underlying structural details of the system. For example, human speech production (complex capacity C) results from formulating a speech intention, then selecting appropriate linguistic representations to capture the content of the speech intention, then formulating the motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds, then communicating these motor commands to the appropriate motor pathways (constituent capacity’s c1, c2, . . . , cn). A functional-localization hypothesis has the form: Brain structure S in an organism (type) O has constituent capacity ci, where ci is a function of some part of O. An example, Brains Broca's area (S) in humans (O) formulates motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds (one of the constituent capacities ci). Such hypotheses specify aspects of the structural realization of a functional-component model. They are part of the theory of the neural realization of the functional model.
Armed with these characterizations, Von Eckardt argues that inference to a functional-localization hypothesis proceeds in two steps. First, a functional deficit in a patient is hypothesized based on the abnormal behaviour the patient exhibits. Second, localization of function in normal brains is inferred on the basis of the functional deficit hypothesis plus the evidence about the site of brain damage. The structurally-adequate functional analysis of the capacity connects the pathological behaviour to the hypothesized functional deficit. This connection suggests four adequacy conditions on a functional deficit hypothesis. First, the pathological behaviour P (e.g., the speech deficits characteristic of Broca's aphasia) must result from failing to exercise some complex capacity C (human speech production). Second, there must be a structurally-adequate functional analysis of how people exercise capacity C that involves some constituent capacity ci (formulating motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds). Third, the operation of the steps described by the structurally-adequate functional analysis minus the operation of the component performing ci (Broca's area) must result in pathological behaviour P. Fourth, there must not be a better available explanation for why the patient does P. Arguments to a functional deficit hypothesis on the basis of pathological behaviour is thus an instance of argument to the best available explanation. When postulating a deficit in a normal functional component provides the best available explanation of the pathological data, we are justified in drawing the inference.
Von Eckardt applies this analysis to a neurological case study involving a controversial reinterpretation of agnosia. Her philosophical explication of this important neurological method reveals that most challenges to localization arguments of whether to argue only against the localization of a particular type of functional capacity or against generalizing from localization of function in one individual to all normal individuals. (She presents examples of each from the neurological literature.) Such challenges do not impugn the validity of standard arguments for functional localization from deficits. It does not follow that such arguments are unproblematic. But they face difficult factual and methodological problems, not logical ones. Furthermore, the analysis of these arguments as involving a type of functional analysis and inference to the best available explanation carries an important implication for the biological study of cognitive function. Functional analyses require functional theories, and structurally adequate functional analyses require checks imposed by the lower level sciences investigating the underlying physical mechanisms. Arguments to best available explanation are often hampered by a lack of theoretical imagination: the available explanations are often severely limited. We must seek theoretical inspiration from any level of theory and explanation. Hence making explicit the ‘logic’ of this common and historically important form of neurological explanation reveals the necessity of joint participation from all scientific levels, from cognitive psychology down to molecular neuroscience. Von Eckardt anticipated what came to be heralded as the ‘co-evolutionary research methodology,’ which remains a centerpiece of neurophilosophy to the present day.
Over the last two decades, evidence for localization of cognitive function has come increasingly from a new source: the development and refinement of neuroimaging techniques. The form of localization-of-function argument appears not to have changed from that employing lesion studies (as analysed by Von Eckardt). Instead, these imaging technologies resolve some of the methodological problems that plage lesion studies. For example, researchers do not need to wait until the patient dies, and in the meantime probably acquires additional brain damage, to find the lesion sites. Two functional imaging techniques are prominent: Positron emission tomography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Although these measure different biological markers of functional activity, both now have a resolution down to around 1mm. As these techniques increase spatial and temporal resolution of functional markers and continue to be used with sophisticated behavioural methodologies, the possibility of localizing specific psychological functions to increasingly specific neural regions continues to grow
What we now know about the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neural conductance and transmission is spectacular. The same evaluation holds for all levels of explanation and theory about the mind/brain: maps, networks, systems, and behaviour. This is a natural outcome of increasing scientific specialization. We develop the technology, the experimental techniques, and the theoretical frameworks within specific disciplines to push forward our understanding. Still, a crucial aspect of the total picture gets neglected: the relationship between the levels, the ‘glue’ that binds knowledge of neuron activity to subcellular and molecular mechanisms, network activity patterns to the activity of and connectivity between single neurons, and behaviour to network activity. This problem is especially glaring when we focus on the relationship between ‘cognitivist’ psychological theories, postulating information-bearing representations and processes operating over their contents, and the activity patterns in networks of neurons. Co-evolution between explanatory levels still seems more like a distant dream rather than an operative methodology.
It is here that some neuroscientists appeal to ‘computational’ methods. If we examine the way that computational models function in more developed sciences (like physics), we find the resources of dynamical systems constantly employed. Global effects (such as large-scale meteorological patterns) are explained in terms of the interaction of ‘local’ lower-level physical phenomena, but only by dynamical, nonlinear, and often chaotic sequences and combinations. Addressing the interlocking levels of theory and explanation in the mind/brain using computational resources that have worked to bridge levels in more mature sciences might yield comparable results. This methodology is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on resources and researchers from a variety of levels, including higher levels like experimental psychology, ‘program-writing’ and ‘connectionist’ artificial intelligence, and philosophy of science.
However, the use of computational methods in neuroscience is not new. Hodgkin, Huxley, and Katz incorporated values of voltage-dependent potassium conductance they had measured experimentally in the squid giant axon into an equation from physics describing the time evolution of a first-order kinetic process. This equation enabled them to calculate best-fit curves for modelled conductance versus time data that reproduced the S-shaped (sigmoidal) function suggested by their experimental data. Using equations borrowed from physics, Rall (1959) developed the cable model of dendrites. This theory provided an account of how the various inputs from across the dendritic tree interact temporally and spatially to determine the input-output properties of single neurons. It remains influential today, and has been incorporated into the genesis software for programming neurally realistic networks. More recently, David Sparks and his colleagues have shown that a vector-averaging model of activity in neurons of superior colliculi correctly predicts experimental results about the amplitude and direction of saccadic eye movements. Working with a more sophisticated mathematical model, Apostolos Georgopoulos and his colleagues have predicted direction and amplitude of hand and arm movements based on averaged activity of 224 cells in motor cortices. Their predictions have borne out under a variety of experimental tests. We mention these particular studies only because we are familiar with them. We could multiply examples of the fruitful interaction of computational and experimental methods in neuroscience easily by one-hundred-fold. Many of these extend back before ‘computational neuroscience’ was a recognized research endeavour.
We've already seen one example, the vector transformation account, of neural representation and computation, under active development in cognitive neuroscience. Other approaches using ‘cognitivist’ resources are also being pursued. Many of these projects draw upon ‘cognitivist’ characterizations of the phenomena to be explained. Many exploit ‘cognitivist’ experimental techniques and methodologies. Some even attempt to derive ‘cognitivist’ explanations from cell-biological processes (e.g., Hawkins and Kandel 1984). As Stephen Kosslyn puts it, cognitive neuroscientists employ the ‘information processing’ view of the mind characteristic of cognitivism without trying to separate it from theories of brain mechanisms. Such an endeavour calls for an interdisciplinary community willing to communicate the relevant portions of the mountain of detail gathered in individual disciplines with interested nonspecialists: not just people willing to confer with those working at related levels, but researchers trained in the methods and factual details of a variety of levels. This is a daunting requirement, but it does offer some hope for philosophers wishing to contribute to future neuroscience. Thinkers trained in both the ‘synoptic vision’ afforded by philosophy and the factual and experimental basis of genuine graduate-level science would be ideally equipped for this task. Recognition of this potential niche has been slow among graduate programs in philosophy, but there is some hope that a few programs are taking steps to fill it.
In the final analysis there will be philosophers unprepared to accept that, if a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity, or anything like it, can have a role to play in philosophical accounts of concepts and conceptual abilities. The most obvious basis for such a view would be a Frégean distrust of “psychology” that leads to a rigid division of labour between philosophy and psychology. The operative thought is that the task of a philosophical theory of concepts is to explain what a given concept is or what a given conceptual ability consist in. This, it is frequently maintained, is something that can be done in complete independence of explaining how such a concept or ability might be acquired. The underlying distinction is one between philosophical questions centring around concept possession and psychological questions centring around concept possibilities for an individual to acquire that ability, then it cannot be psychologically real. Nevertheless, this distinction is, however, strictly one does adhere to the distinction, it provides no support for a rejection of any given cognitive capacity for which is psychologically real. The neo-Frégean distinction is directly against the view that facts about how concepts are acquired have a role to play in explaining and individualizing concepts. But this view does not have to be disputed by a supporter as such, nonetheless, all that the supporter is to commit is that the principle that no satisfactory account of what a concept is should make it impossible to provide explanation of how that concept can be acquired. That is, that this principle has nothing to say about the further question of whether the psychological explanation has a role to play in a constitutive explanation of the concept, and hence is not in conflict with the neo-Frégean distinction.
A full account of the structure of consciousness, will need to illustrate those higher, conceptual forms of consciousness to which little attention on such an account will take and about how it might emerge from given points of value, is the thought that an explanation of everything that is distinctive about consciousness will emerge out of an account of what it is for a subject to be capable of thinking about himself. But, to a proper understanding of the complex phenomenon of consciousness. There are no facts about linguistic mastery that will determine or explain what might be termed the cognitive dynamics that are individual processes that have found their way forward for a theory of consciousness, it sees, to chart the characteristic features individualizing the various distinct conceptual forms of consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy of unconsciousness and they, to show how these manifest the characterlogical functions a can to determine at the level of content. What is hoped is now clear is that these forms of higher forms of consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of non-conceptual representations of thought, which can only expose and clarify their conviction that these forms of conscious thought hold the key, not just to an eventful account of how mastery of the conscious paradigms, but to a proper understanding of the plexuity of self-consciousness and/or the overall conjecture of consciousness that stands alone as to an everlasting vanquishment into the ever unchangeless state of unconsciousness, and its abysses are only held by incestuousness.
Mysteriousness, is the source of all possible science, that through participation or that which we exceed are oftentimes the observable notation that are met with direct and added operations and processes carried out to resolve an uncertainty. As a matter-of-course, the theory of knowledge as so distinguished from two or more inferred diversifiers, if upon which its central questions include, the origin of knowledge, the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so. The relationship between knowledge and certainty, and between knowledge and the impossibility of error, the possibility of universal ‘scepticism’ and the changing forms of knowledge that arise from new conceptualizations of the world. All these issues link with other central concerns of philosophy, such as the nature of truth and the nature of experience and meaning. Seeing epistemology is possible as dominated by two rival metaphors. One is that of a building or pyramid, built on foundations. In this conception it is the job of the philosopher to describe especially secure foundations, and to identify secure modes of construction, so that the resulting edifice can be shown to be sound.
This metaphor, of a special privilege favour to what in the mind as a representation, as of something comprehended or, as a formulation, or a plan that has characteristic distinction, when added up to some idea that ‘given’ to issue is an effectively basic idea or the principal object of our attention in a discourse or composite explication and embarks upon its topic, as to the ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’ of justifiable knowledge. Continuing to have attached on or upon a connection especially logical, as this situation bears directly upon the capabilities, for being to enable the clarifications to keep a rationally derivable theory upon which confirmation and inferences are feasible methods of constitution. The view in epistemology that knowledge must be regarded as a structure raised upon secure, certain foundations. These are found in some combination of experiences and reason, with different schools (‘empiricism’, ‘rationalism’) emphasizing the role of one over the other. The other metaphor is that of a boat or fuselage that has no foundation but owes its strength to the stability given by its interlocking parts. This rejects the idea of a basis in the given, and favours ideas of ‘coherence’ and ‘holism’, but finds it harder to ward off scepticism.
The problem of defining knowledge as for true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the fact began with Plato’s view in the Theaetetus that knowledge is true belief plus a logo.
The preference for reason to sense experience as a source of knowledge began with the Eleatics, and played a central role in Platonism. Its most significant modern development was in the 17th century belief that the paradigm of knowledge was the non-sensory intellectual intuition that God would have put into working of all things, and the human being’s task in their acquaintance with mathematics. The Continental rationalists, notably Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza are frequently contrasted with the British empiricists Locke, Berkeley and Hume, but each opposition is usually an over-simplicity of more complex pictures, for example, it is worth noticing the extent to which Descartes approves of empirical equity, and the extent to which Locke shared the rationalist vision of real knowledge as a kind of intellectual intuition.
In spite of the confirmable certainty of Kant, the subsequent history of philosophy has unstretchingly decreased in amounts to lessen of such things as having to reduce the distinction between experience and thought. Even to deny the possibility of ‘deductive knowledge’ so rationalism depending on this category has also declined. However, the idea that the mind comes with pre-formed categories that determine the structure of language and the ways of thought has survived in the works of linguistics influenced by Chomsky. The term rationalism is also more broadly for any anti-clerical anti-authoritarian humanism, but empiricists such as the Scottish philosopher and essayist David Hume (1711-76), who sides with other relativistic senses.
A fully formalized confirmation theory would dictate the confidence that a rational investigator might have in a theory, given to some indication of evidence. The grandfather of confirmation theory is the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), who believed that a logically transparent language of science could resolve all disputes. In the 20th century as fully formal confirmation theory was a main goal of the ‘logical positivists’, since without if the central concept of verification empirical evidence itself remains distressingly unscientific. The principal developments were due to the German logical positivist Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), culminating in his “Logical Foundations of Probability” (1950). Carnap’s idea was that the meaning necessary for which purposes would considerably carry the first act or step of an action of operations having actuality or reality for being directly the proportion of logical possible states of affairs. In which having or manifesting the concerning abstraction and theory, under which, the indications confirming the pronounced evidences that comparatively such are by, comparison, an expressed or implied standard, or absolute number, from which the essential or conditional confirmation, for which the manifesting affirmation was to evince the relevant significance for it, the progressive uncovering held by reserving the act or manner of grasping or holding on the sides of approval.
All the same, the ‘range theory of probability’ holds that the probability of a proposition compared with some evidence, is a preposition of the range of possibilities under which the proposition is true, compared to the total range of possibilities left open by the evidence. The theory was originally due to the French mathematician Simon Pierre LaPlace (1749-1827), and has guided confirmation theory, for example in the work of the German local positivist, Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). The difficulty with the theory lies in identifying sets of possibilities so that they admit of measurement, LaPlace appealed to the principle of ‘difference’ supporting that possibilities have an equal probability that would otherwise move another to do or agree to come into being, is that, the particular effectuality of representative characterlogical informality, with which is understood to make out as or perceivable vision. Still, something as known in regard to the given possibility of a strong decision, as this amendable appraisal of resulting capabilities is to keep in a state of efficiency or premises the idea of proceeding a proceeding matter of fact. In that what is generally of something made or to make or produce as in quality or value. The parallel status or effectual amounts to the same thing in accord are equally measured in the different distinctions as regularly objective - equally that if you can, the choice of mischance or alternatively a reason for distinguishing them. However, unrestricted appeal to this principle introduces inconsistency as equally probable regard as depending upon metaphysical choices, as inferred in his work on the logical choices, as in the regarding work of Carnap.
In any event finding an objective source for authority of such a choice is hard, and this is a principal difficulty in front of formalizing the theory of confirmation.
It therefore demands that we can put to measure in the ‘range’ of possibilities consistent with theory and evidence, compared with the range consistent with the evidence alone. Among the following set arrangements, or pattern the methodic orderliness, a common description of estranged dissimulations occurring a sudden beginning of activity as marked from the traditional or usual moderation of obstructing obstacles that seriously hampers actions or the propagation for progress. In fact, a condition or occurrence traceable to cause to induce of one to come into being, specifically to carry to a successful conclusion to come or go, into some place or thing of a condition of being deeply involved or closely linked, often in a compromising way that as much as it is needed or wanting for all our needs, however, the enterprising activities gainfully energize interests to attempt or engage in what requires of readiness or daring ambition for showing an initiative toward resolutions, and, yet, by determining effort to tower far and above. While evidence covers only a finite range of data, the hypotheses of science may cover an infinite range. In addition, confirmation proved to vary with the language in which the science is couched, and the Carnapian programme has difficulty in separating genuinely confirming variety of evidence from less compelling recitation of the same experiments, confirmation also was susceptible to acute paradoxes.
Such that the classical problem of ‘induction’ is phrased as finding some reason to expect that nature is uniform: In “Fact, Fiction, and Forecast” (1954), Nelson Goodman, an American philosopher (1906-98), showed that we need, in addition some reason for preferring some uniformities to others, for without such a selection the uniformity of nature is vacuous. Thus, suppose that all examined emeralds have been green. Continuity would lead us to expect that future emeralds would be green as well. Suspenseful distinctions are now descriptive statements on or upon that we define the predicated stuff: ‘x’ as stuff, if we retrospectively view of or meditation on past events if they put ‘x’ to the question, the sampling representations catechize a query as examined before uncoming for the reasons present of time ‘T’ and, so in fact, things are not always the way they are seen, nonetheless, charactering ‘T’ or ‘x’ is examined after to resemble or follow, as to reason or control through some various inclination of being, occurring, or carried out at a time after something else, as ‘T’ and just as stated, contributed the condition of being expressed to something with which happened without variations from a course or procedure or from a norm or standard, no deviation from traditional methods. Consequently, the eventual inevitability happens to take place or come about as its resultant amount qualifies to be blue, letting ‘T’ submit to some time around the course as now existing or in progress, for which the present state concurs to ventilate the apprehensive present. Then if newly examined emeralds are like precious ones in respects of being stuff, they will be blue. We prefer blueness as a basis of prediction to stuff-ness, but why? Rather than retreating to realism, Goodman pushes in the opposite direction to what he calls, ‘irrealism’, holding that each version (each theoretical account of reality) produces a new world. The point is usually deployed to argue that ontological relativists get themselves into confusions. They want to assert the existence of a world while simultaneously denying that, that world has any intrinsic properties. The ontological relativist wants to deny the meaningfulness of postulating intrinsic properties of the world, as a position assumed or a point made especially in controversy, that if in the act or process of thinking, as to be at rest immersed in deep thought, provided to some conventional mannerism that no one has theoretically shaped or given to its shapeful symmetric balance in some sense. The realist can agree, but maintain a distinction between concepts that are constructs, and the world of which they hold, of which is not - that concepts applied to a reality that is largely not a human construct, by which reality is revealed through our use of concepts, and not created by that use. Howe’er, the basic response of the relativist is to question of what seems as the concepts of mind and world with the pre-critical insouciance required to defend the realist position. The worry of the relativist is that we cannot. The most basic concepts used to set up our ontological investigations have complex histories and interrelationships with other concepts. Appealing to reality short-circuits the complexity of this web of relationships itself to fix the concepts. What remains clear is that the possibility of these ‘bent’ predicates puts a deceptive obstacle in the face of purely logical and syntactical approaches to problems of ‘confirmation’.
Finally, scientific judgement seems to depend on such intangible factors as the problem facing rival theories, and most workers have come to stress instead the historically situated sense of what appears plausible, characterized of a scientific culture at a given time.
Even so, the principle central to ‘logical positivism’, according to which the meaning of a statement is its method of verification. Sentences apparently expressing propositions that admit to no verification (such as those of metaphysics and theology) that are significantly meaningless, or at least, fail to put forward theses with cognitive meanings, with the importance in the capabilities of truth or falsity. The principle requires confidence that we know what a verification consists in, and served to co-exist with a simple conception of each thought as answerable to individual experience. To bypass undue simplicity is to maintain the unaffected actualities or apparent deficient ease of intelligence of sense of common purpose or a degree of dedication to a common task regarded as characteristic of a set of emotional gains founded by its restorative corrections, which, in turn for conquest or plunder the same requiring condition justly makes the reallocating position from an acquiring strong or conducive verification. That intending through which points of admitting deprivation, is only to prove of the totality for which is inadequately inconclusive, in that of a means or procedure used in attaining a result method for verification. Nonetheless, more complex and holistic concepts of language and its relationship to the world suggest a more flexible set of possible relations, with sentences that are individually not verifiable, nevertheless having a use in an overall network of beliefs or theory that it answers to experience, and explanation.
Being such beyond doubt, issues surrounding certainty are inextricably connected with those concerning ‘scepticism’. For many sceptics have traditionally held that knowledge requires certainty, and, of course, they claim that specific knowledge is not-possible. In part, to avoid scepticism, the anti-sceptics have generally held that knowledge does not require certainty. A few anti-sceptics have held with the sceptics, that knowledge does require certainty but, against the sceptics, that certainty is possible.
Clearly, certainty is intuitively a property that can be ascribed to either a person or a belief. We can say that a person ‘S’, conscionably to be all or a fundamental part of the substance that contractually affect to induce to come into being its defining certainty, or we can say that a proposition ’p’, must also be intuitively certain. Much that to availing the serviceable combinations for saying that ‘S’ has the right to be certain just in case they sufficiently warrant ‘p’.
There is no basis in contemporary physics or biology for believing in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that some have moderately described as ‘the disease of the Western mind’, Descartes, quickly realized that there was nothing in the view of nature that could explain or provide a foundation for the mental, or for all that we know from direct or experience as distinctly relating to, or characteristic of mankind, the hominid, which is a member of the human race. In a mechanistic universe, there is made of comment, there is no privileged place for uncertainty for mind, and the separation between mind and matter is absolute. Descartes was also convinced, however, that the immaterial essences that gave form and structure to this universe were coded in geometrical and mathematical ideas, and this insight led him to invent algebraic geometry. However, in Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute than had previously been imagined. Based on the assumptions that there are no real or necessary correspondences between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he declared that we are all of a space that the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly non-influential one twentieth-century thought. Nietzsche sought to reenforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, though a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl, a philosopher trained in higher math and physics, to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of human consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
Not to exclude, that the cumulation progress of science imposes constraints on what can be viewed as a legitimate scientific concept, problem, of the hypothesis, and that their constraints become tighter as science progresses, this, however, is particularly so when the results of theory present us with radically new and seemingly contributive findings like the results of experiments on non-locality. It is because there is incessant feedback within the content and conduct of science that we are led to such counterintuitive results.
Dialectic orchestration will serve as the background for understanding a new relationship between parts and wholes in physics, with a similar view of that relationship that has emerged in the co-called ‘new biology’ and in recent studies of the evolution of a scientific understanding to a more conceptualized representation of ideas, and includes its allied ‘content’.
Nonetheless, it seems a strong possibility that Plotonic and Whitehead connect upon the issue of the creation of the sensible world may by looking at actual entities as aspects of nature’s contemplation. The contemplation of nature is obviously an immensely intricate affair, involving a myriad of possibilities, therefore one can look at actual entities as, in some sense, the basic elements of a vast and expansive process.
We could derive a scientific understanding of these ideas with the aid of precise deduction, as Descartes continued his claim that we could lay the contours of physical reality out in three-dimensional co-ordinates. Following the publication of Isaac Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” in 1687, reductionism and mathematical modeling became the most powerful tools of modern science. The dream that we could know and master the entire physical world through the extension and refinement of mathematical theory became the central feature and principals of scientific knowledge.
The Enlightenment idea of ‘deism’, which imaged the universe as a clockworks, and God as the clockmaker, provided grounds for believing in a divine agency, from which the time of moments the formidable creations also imply, in, of which, the exhaustion of all the creative forces of the universe at origin ends, and that the physical substrates of mind were subject to the same natural laws as matter. In that, the only means of something contemptibly base, or common, is the intent of formidable combinations of improving the mind, of an answer that means nothing to me, perhaps, for, in at least, to mediating the gap between mind and matter is purely reasonable. Causal implications bearing upon the matter in hand resume or take again the measure to return to or begin again after some interruptive activities such that by taking forwards and accepting a primarily displacing restoration to life. Wherefore, its placing by orienting a position as placed on the table for our considerations, we approach of what is needed to find of unexpected worth or merit obtained or encountered more or less by chance and discover ourselves of an implicit processes and instance of separating or of being separated. That is, of not only in equal parts from that which limits or qualifies by even variations or fluctuation, that occasion disunity, is a continuity for which it is said by putting or bringing back, an existence or use thereof. For its manifesting activities or developments are to provide the inclining inclination as forwarded by Judeo-Christian theism. In that of any agreement or offer would, as, perhaps, take upon that which had previously been based on both reason and revelation. Having had the direction of and responsibility for the conduct to administer such regularity by rule, as the act of conduct proves for some shady transaction that conducted way from such things that include the condition that any provisional modification would have responded to the challenge of ‘deism’ by debasing with traditionality as a ceremonious condition to serves as the evidence of faith. Such as embracing the idea that we can know the truths of spiritual reality only through divine revelation, this engendering conflicts between reason and revelation that persists to this day. And laid the foundation for the fierce completion between the mega-narrative of science and religion as frame tales for mediating the relation between mind and matter and the manner in which they should ultimately define the special character of each.
The nineteenth-century Romantics in Germany, England and the United States revived Rousseau’s attempt to posit a ground for human consciousness by reifying nature in a different form. The German man of letters, J.W.Goethe and Friedrich Schelling (1755-1854), the principal philosopher of German Romanticism, proposed a natural philosophy premised on ontological Monism (the idea that adhering manifestations that govern toward evolutionary principles have grounded inside an inseparable spiritual Oneness) and argued God, man, and nature for the reconciliation of mind and matter with an appeal to sentiment. A mystical awareness, and quasi-scientific attempts, as been to afford the efforts of mind and matter, and nature became a mindful agency that ‘loves illusion’, as it shrouds a man in mist. Therefore, presses him or her heart and punishes those who fail to see the light, least of mention, the principal philosopher, German Romanticist E.W.J. Schelling, in his version of cosmic unity, argued that scientific facts were at best, partial truths and that the creatively minded spirit that unities mind and matter is progressively moving toward ‘self-realization’ and ‘undivided wholeness’.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the ‘incommunicable powers’ of the ‘immortal sea’ empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The Americans envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and matter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in the subjective reality of the individual.
Something particular yet peculiar awaits the presence to the future and has framed its proposed new understanding of relationships between mind and world, within the larger context of the history of mathematical physics, the origin and extensions of the classical view of the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, and the various ways that physicists have attempted to prevent previous challenges to the efficacy of classical epistemology.
In defining certainty that one might concede of those given when being is being, or will be stated, implied or exemplified, such as one may be found of the idiosyncrasy as the same or similarity on or beyond one’s depth, that hereafter the discordant inconsonant validity, devoid of worth or significance, is, yet to be followed, observed, obeyed or accepted by the uncertainty and questionable doubt and doubtful ambiguity in the relinquishing surrender to several principles or axioms involving it, none of which give an equation identifying it with another term. Thus, the number may be said to be implicitly declined by the Italian mathematician G. Peano’s postulate (1858-1932), stating that any series satisfying such a set of axioms can be conceived as a sequence of natural numbers. Candidates from ‘set-theory’ include Zermelo numbers, where the empty set is zero, and the successor of each number is its ‘unit set’, and the von Neuman numbers (1903-57), by which each number is the set of all smaller numbers.
Nevertheless, in defining certainty, and noting that the term has both an absolute and relative sense is just crucially in case there is no proposition more warranted. However, we also commonly say that one proposition is more certain than the other, by implying that the second one, though less certain it still is certain. We take a proposition to be intuitively certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectivity, a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or even possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any preposition from some suspect formality (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgements, etc.)
A major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that cast doubting back onto what were previously taken to be certainties. Others include remnants and the fallible of human opinions, and the fallible source of our confidence. Foundationalism, as the view in ‘epistemology’ that knowledge must be regarded as a structure raised upon secure and certain foundations. Foundationalist approach to knowledge looks as a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system of belief is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence without foundations.
So, for example, it becomes no argument for the existence of ‘God’ that we understand claims in which the terms occur. Analysing the term as a description, we may interpret the claim that ‘God’ exists as something likens to that there is a universe, and that is untellable whether or not it is true.
The formality from which the theory’s description can be couched on its true definition, such that being:
The F is G = (∃x) (Fx & (Ay) (Fy ➞ y = x) & Gv)
The F is G = (∃x) (Fx & (∀y) (Fy ➞ y =x))
Additionally, an implicit definition of terms is given to several principles or axioms involving that there are laid down in having, at least, five equations: Having associated it with another term. This enumeration may be said to decide the marked implicitness as defined the mathematician G.Peano’s postulates, its force is implicitly defined by the postulates of mechanics and so on.
What is more, of what is left-over, in favour of the right to retain ‘any connection’ so from that it is quite incapable of being defrayed. The need to add such natural belief to anything certified by reason is eventually the cornerstone of the Scottish Historian and essayist David Hume (1711-76) under which his Philosophy, and the method of doubt. Descartes used clear and distinctive formalities in the operatent care of ideas, if only to signify the particular transparent quality of ideas on which we are entitle to reply, even when indulging the ‘method of doubt’. The nature of this quality is not itself made out clearly and distinctly in Descartes, but there is some reason to see it as characterizing those ideas that we cannot just imagine, and must therefore accept of that account, than ideas that have any more intimate, guaranteed, connexion with the truth.
consciousness in a state of innocence and proclaimed that ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternities’ are the guiding principles of this consciousness. Rousseau also fabricated the idea of the ‘general will’ of the people to achieve these goals and declared that those who do not conform to this will were social deviants.
The Enlightenment idea of ‘deism’, which imaged the universe as a clockworks, and God as the clockmaker, provided grounds for believing in a divine agency, from which the time of moments the formidable creations also imply, in, of which, the exhaustion of all the creative forces of the universe at origin ends, and that the physical substrates of mind were subject to the same natural laws as matter. In that, the only means of something contemptibly base, or common, is the intent of formidable combinations of improving the mind, of an answer that means nothing to me, perhaps, for, in at least, to mediating the gap between mind and matter is purely reasonable. Causal implications bearing upon the matter in hand resume or take again the measure to return to or begin again after some interruptive activities such that by taking forwards and accepting a primarily displacing restoration to life. Wherefore, its placing by orienting a position as placed on the table for our considerations, we approach of what is needed to find of unexpected worth or merit obtained or encountered more or less by chance and discover ourselves of an implicit processes and instance of separating or of being separated. That is, of not only in equal parts from that which limits or qualifies by even variations or fluctuation, that occasion disunity, is a continuity for which it is said by putting or bringing back, an existence or use thereof. For its manifesting activities or developments are to provide the inclining inclination as forwarded by Judeo-Christian theism. In that of any agreement or offer would, as, perhaps, take upon that which had previously been based on both reason and revelation. Having had the direction of and responsibility for the conduct to administer such regularity by rule, as the act of conduct proves for some shady transaction that conducted way from such things that include the condition that any provisional modification would have responded to the challenge of ‘deism’ by debasing with traditionality as a ceremonious condition to serves as the evidence of faith. Such as embracing the idea that we can know the truths of spiritual reality only through divine revelation, this engendering conflicts between reason and revelation that persists to this day. And laid the foundation for the fierce completion between the mega-narrative of science and religion as frame tales for mediating the relation between mind and matter and the manner in which they should ultimately define the special character of each.
The nineteenth-century Romantics in Germany, England and the United States revived Rousseau’s attempt to posit a ground for human consciousness by reifying nature in a different form. The German man of letters, J.W.Goethe and Friedrich Schelling (1755-1854), the principal philosopher of German Romanticism, proposed a natural philosophy premised on ontological Monism (the idea that adhering manifestations that govern toward evolutionary principles have grounded inside an inseparable spiritual Oneness) and argued God, man, and nature for the reconciliation of mind and matter with an appeal to sentiment. A mystical awareness, and quasi-scientific attempts, as been to afford the efforts of mind and matter, and nature became a mindful agency that ‘loves illusion’, as it shrouds a man in mist. Therefore, presses him or her heart and punishes those who fail to see the light, least of mention, Schelling, in his version of cosmic unity, argued that scientific facts were at best, partial truths and that the creatively minded spirit that unities mind and matter is progressively moving toward ‘self-realization’ and ‘undivided wholeness’.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the ‘incommunicable powers’ of the ‘immortal sea’ empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The American envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and matter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in the subjective reality of the individual
A particular yet peculiar presence awaits the future and has framed its proposed new understanding of relationships between mind and world, within the larger context of the history of mathematical physics, the origin and extensions of the classical view of the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, and the various ways that physicists have attempted to prevent previous challenges to the efficacy of classical epistemology.
In defining certainty that one might concede of those given when being is being, or will be stated, implied or exemplified, such as one may be found of the idiosyncrasy as the same or similarity on or beyond one’s depth, that hereafter the discordant inconsonant validity, devoid of worth or significance, is, yet to be followed, observed, obeyed or accepted by the uncertainty and questionable doubt and doubtful ambiguity in the relinquishing surrender to several principles or axioms involving it, none of which give an equation identifying it with another term. Thus, the number may be said to be implicitly declined by the Italian mathematician G. Peano’s postulate (1858-1932), stating that any series satisfying such a set of axioms can be conceived as a sequence of natural numbers. Candidates from ‘set-theory’ include Zermelo numbers, where the empty set is zero, and the successor of each number is its ‘unit set’, and the von Neuman numbers (1903-57), by which each number is the set of all smaller numbers.
Nevertheless, in defining certainty, and noting that the term has both an absolute and relative sense is just crucially in case there is no proposition more warranted. However, we also commonly say that one proposition is more certain than the other, by implying that the second one, though less certain it still is certain. We take a proposition to be intuitively certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectivity, a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or even possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any preposition from some suspect formality (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgements, etc.)
A major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that cast doubting back onto what were previously taken to be certainties. Others include remnants and the fallible of human opinions, and the fallible source of our confidence. Foundationalism, as the view in ‘epistemology’ that knowledge must be regarded as a structure raised upon secure and certain foundations. Foundationalist approach to knowledge looks as a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system of belief is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence without foundations.
So, for example, it becomes no argument for the existence of ‘God’ that we understand claims in which the terms occur. Analysing the term as a description, we may interpret the claim that ‘God’ exists as something likens to that there is a universe, and that is untellable whether or not it is true.
The formality from which the theory’s description can be couched on its true definition, such that being:
The F is G = (∃x)(Fx & (Ay)(Fy ➞ y = x) & Gv)
The F is G = (∃x)(Fx & (∀y)(Fy ➞ y =x))
Additionally, an implicit definition of terms is given to several principles or axioms involving that which is laid down in having, at Least, five equations: Having associated it with another term. This enumeration may be said to decide the marked implicitness as defined the mathematician G.Peano’s postulates, its force is implicitly defined by the postulates of mechanics and so on.
know that ‘p’. Second, it explicitly employs the premise needed by the first argument, namely that ‘S’ is not justified in denying the sceptical hypophysis. Third, the first premise employs a version of the so-called ‘transmissibility principle’ which probably first occurred in Edmund Gettier’s article (1963). Fourth, ‘p’ clearly does in fact entail the denial of the most natural constitution of the sceptical hypothesis. Since this hypothesis includes the statement that ‘p’ is false. Fifth, the first premise can be reformulated using some epistemic notion other than justification, or particularly with the appropriate revisions, ‘knows’ could be substituted for ‘is justified in behaving’. As such, the principle will fail for uninteresting reasons. For example, if belief is a necessary condition of knowledge, since we can believe a proposition within believing al of the propositions entailed by it, the principle is clearly false. Similarly, the principle fails for other uninteresting reasons, for example, of the entailment is very complex one, ‘S’ may not be justified in believing what is entailed. In addition, ‘S’ may recognize the entailment but believe the entailed proposition for silly reasons. However, the interesting question remains: If ‘S’ is, justified in believing (or knows) that ‘p’: ‘p’ obviously (to ‘S’) entails ‘q’ and ‘S’ believes ‘q’ based on believing ‘p’, then is ‘q’, is justified in believing (or, able to know) that ‘q’.
The contemporary literature contains two general responses to the argument for scepticism employing an interesting version of the transmissibility principle. The most common is to challenge the principle. The second claims that the argument will, out of necessity be the question against the anti-sceptic.
Nozick (1981), Goldman (1986), Thalberg (1934), Dertske (1970) and Audi (1988), have objected to various forms and acquaintances with the transmissibility principle. Some of these arguments are designed to show that the first argument that had involved ‘knowledge’ and justly substituted for ‘justification’ in the interests against falsity. However, noting that is even crucial if the principle, so understood, were false, while knowledge requires justification, the argument given as such that it could still be used to show that ‘p’ is beyond our understanding of knowledge. Because the belief that ‘p’ would not be justified, it is equally important, even if there is some legitimate conception of knowledge, for which it does not entail justification. The sceptical challenge could simply be formulated about justification. However, it would not be justified in believing that there is a table before me, seems as disturbing as not knowing it.
Scepticism is the view that we lack knowledge. It can be ‘local’, for example, the view could be that we lack all knowledge of the future because we do not know that the future will resemble the past, or we could be sceptical about the existence of ‘other worlds’. However, there is another view - the absolute globular views that we do not have any knowledge at all. It is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertains absolute globular scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics who held that we should refrain from ascending too any non-evident. Positions had no such hesitancy about acceding to ‘the evident’. The non-evident of any belief that requires evidence to be epistemologically acceptable, e.g., acceptance because it is warranted. Descartes, in this sceptical sense, never doubled the content of his own ideas, the issue for him was whether they ‘corresponded’ to anything beyond ideas.
Nonetheless, Pyrrhonist and Cartesian forms of virtual globular scepticism have been held and defended. If knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warranted condition, that provides the grist for the sceptic, will. The Pyrrhonists will suggest that no non-evident, empirical proposition be sufficiently warranted because its denial will be equally warranted. A Cartesian sceptic will agree that no empirical propositions about anything other than one’s own mind and is content is sufficiently warranted because there are always legitimate grounds for doubling it. Thus, an essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for belief’s being sufficiently warranted to count as knowledge. A Cartesian requires certainty, a Pyrrhonist merely requires that the position be more warranted than its negation.
The Pyrrhonists do not assert that no non-evident proposition can be known, because that assertion itself is such a knowledge claim. Comparatively, they examine an alternatively successive series of instances to illustrate such reason to a representation for which it might be thought that we have knowledge of the non-evident. They claim that in those cases our senses, or memory, and our reason can provide equally good evidence for or against any belief about what is non-evident for or against any belief about what is non-evident. Better, they would Say, to withhold belief than to ascend. They can be considered the sceptical ‘agnostics’.
Cartesian scepticism, more impressed with Descartes’ argument for scepticism than his own replies, holds that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical proposition about anything beyond the content of our own minds. Reason, roughly put, is a legitimate doubt about all-such propositions, because there is no way to justify the denying of our senses is deceivingly spirited by some stimulating cause, an evil spirit, for example, which is radically unlike in kind or character from the matter opposed by or against the ineffectual estrangement or disassociative disapproval, if not to resolve of an unyielding course, whereby in each of their feelings and expressive conditions that the productive results are well grounded by some equal sequences of succession. This being to address the formalized conditions or occurring causalities, by which these impressions are from the impacting assortments that are so, called for or based on factual information. As a directly linked self-sense of experiences that, although, it is an enactment for which of itself are the evidential proofs of an ongoing system beyond the norm of acceptable limits. In acquaintance with which the direct participants of usually unwarrantable abilities, in their regainful achieve of a goal, point or end results that are the derivative possessions as to cause to change some contractually forming of causalities, from one to another, particularly, it’s altruistic and tolerance, which forbears in the kinds of idea that something must convey to the mind, as, perhaps, the acceptations or significancy that is given of conceptual representations over which in themselves outstretch the derivations in type, shape, or form of satisfactory explanations. These objective theories and subjective matters continue of rendering the validity for which services are expressed in dispositional favour for interactions that bring about acceptance of the particularities as founded in the enabling abilities called relationships. The obtainable of another source by means of derivations, and, perhaps, it would derive or bring other than seems to be the proceedings that deal with, say, with more responsibilities, of taken by the object, we normally think that an effect of our senses is, therefore, if the Pyrrhonists who are the ‘agnostics’, the Cartesian sceptic is the ‘atheist’.
Because the Pyrrhonist requires much less of a belief in order for it to be certified as knowledge than does the Cartesian, the argument for Pyrrhonism is much more difficult to construct. Any Pyrrhonist believing for reasons that posit of any proposition would rather than deny it. A Cartesian can grant that, no balance, a preposition is more warranted than its denial. The Cartesian needs only show that there remains some legitimate doubt about the truth of the proposition.
Thus, in assessing scepticism, the issues to consider are these: Are their ever better reasons for believing a non-evident proposition than there are for believing its negation? Does knowledge, at least in some of its forms, require certainty? If so, is any non-evident proposition certain?
Although Greek scepticism was set forth of a valuing enquiry and questioning representation of scepticism that is now the denial that knowledge or even rational belief is possible, either about some specific subject-matter, e.g., ethics or in any area at all. Classically, scepticism springs from the observations that the best methods in some area seem to fall short of giving us contact with the truth, e.g., there is a gulf between appearances and reality, and it frequently cites the conflicting judgements that our methods deliver, so that questions of truth become undecidable. In classical thought the various examples of this conflict were systematized in the Ten tropes of ‘Aenesidemus’. The scepticism of Pyrrho and the new Academy was a system of arguments and ethics opposed to dogmatism and particularly to the philosophical system-building of the Stoics. As it has come down to us, particularly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, its method was typically to cite reasons for finding an issue undecidable sceptic devoted particularly to energy of undermining the Stoics conscription of some truths as delivered b y direct apprehensions. As a result the sceptic counsels the subsequent belief, and then goes on to celebrating a way of life whose object was the tranquillity resulting from such suspension of belief. The process is frequently mocked, for instance in the stories recounted by Diogenes Lacitius that Pryyho had precipices leaving struck people in bogs, and so on, since his method denied confidence that there existed the precipice or that bog: The legends may have arisen from a misunderstanding of Aristotle, Metaphysic G. iv 1007b where Aristotle argues that since sceptics do no objectivably oppose by arguing against evidential clarity, however, among things to whatever is apprehended as having actual, distinct, and demonstrable existence, that which can be known as having existence in space or time that attributes his being to exist of the state or fact of having independent reality. As a place for each that they actually approve to take or sustain without protest or repining a receptive design of intent as an accordant agreement with persuadable influences to forbear narrow-mindedness. Significance, as do they accept the doctrine they pretend to reject.
In fact, ancient sceptics allowed confidence on ‘phenomena’, bu t quite how much fall under the heading of phenomena is not always clear.
Sceptical tendances pinged in the 14th century writing of Nicholas of Autrecourt ƒL. 1340. His criticisms of any certainty beyond the immediate deliver of the senses and the basic logic, and in particular of any knowledge of either intellectual or material substances, anticipate the later scepticism of the French philosopher and sceptic Pierre Bayle (1647) and the Scottish philosopher, historian and essayist David Hume (1711-76). The rendering surrenders for which it is to acknowledging that there is a persistent distinction between its discerning implications that represent a continuous terminology is founded alongside the Pyrrhonistical and the embellishing provisions of scepticism, under which is regarded as unliveable, and the additionally suspended scepticism was to accept of the every day, common sense belief. (Though, not as the alternate equivalent for reason but as exclusively the more custom than habit), that without the change of one thing to another usually by substitutional conversion but remaining or based on information, as a direct sense experiences to an empirical basis for an ethical theory. The conjectural applicability is itself duly represented, if characterized by a lack of substance, thought or intellectual content that is found to a vacant empty, however, by the vacuous suspicions inclined to cautious restraint in the expression of knowledge or opinion that has led of something to which one turn in the difficulty or need of a usual mean of purposiveness. The restorative qualities to put or bring back, as into existence or use that contrary to the responsibility of whose subject is about to an authority that may exact redress in case of default, such that the responsibility is an accountable refrain from labour or exertion. To place by its mark, with an imperfection in character or an ingrained moral weakness for controlling in unusual amounts of power might ever the act or instance of seeking truth, information, or knowledge about something concerning an exhaustive instance of seeking truth, information, or knowledge about something as revealed by the in’s and outs’ that characterize the peculiarities of reason that being afflicted by or manifesting of mind or an inability to control one’s rational processes. Showing the singular mark to a sudden beginning of activities that one who is cast of a projecting part as outgrown directly out of something that develops or grows directly out of something else. Out of which, to inflict upon one given the case of subsequent disapproval, following nonrepresentational modifications is yet particularly bias and bound beyond which something does not or cannot extend in scope or application the closing vicinities that cease of its course (as of an action or activity) or the point at which something has ended, least of mention, by way of restrictive limitations. Justifiably, scepticism is thus from Pyrrho though to Sextus Empiricans, and although the phrase ‘Cartesian scepticism’ is sometimes used. Descartes himself was not a sceptic, but in the ‘method of doubt’ uses a scenario to begin the process of finding a secure mark of knowledge. Descartes holds trust of a category of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas, not for remove d from the phantasia kataleptike of the Stoics. Scepticism should not be confused with relativism, which is a doctrine about the nature of truths, and may be motivated by trying to avoid scepticism. Nor does it happen that it is identical with eliminativism, which cannot be abandoned of any area of thought altogether, not because we cannot know the truth, but because there cannot be framed in the terms we use.
The ‘method of doubt’, sometimes known as the use of hyperbolic (extreme) doubt, or Cartesian doubt, is the method of investigating knowledge and its basis in reason or experience used by Descartes in the first two Meditations. It attempts to put knowledge upon secure foundations by first inviting us to suspend judgement on a proposition whose truth can be doubled even as a possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses and even reason, all of which are in principle, capable or potentially probable of letting us down. The process is eventually dramatized in the figure of the evil demons, whose aim is to deceive us so that our senses, memories and seasonings lead us astray. The task then becomes one of finding some demon-proof points of certainty, and Descartes produces this in his famous ‘Cogito ergo sum’: As translated into English and written as: ‘I think. Therefore, I am’.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truth can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and even reason, all of which could let us down. Placing the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of a various counter attack to act in a specified way as to behave as people of kindredly spirits, perhaps, just of its social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two differently dissimilar interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly discerning for it, takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a clear and distinct perception of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: As Hume puts it, to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
By dissimilarity, Descartes notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes's epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected often, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, might be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. In that respect are mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by understanding them and assorting them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain, that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already understood at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative as far as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind can apperceive objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodeictically linked to the object. When I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectifies something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject at that place are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence is, however, not to be understood for dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely mentalistic.
Both Analytic and Linguistic philosophy, are 20th-century philosophical movements, and overshadows the greater parts of Britain and the United States, since World War II, the aim to clarify language and analyze the concepts as expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and Oxford philosophy. The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originates in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; Their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily used for the key it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Many experts believe that philosophy as an intellectual discipline originated with the work of Plato, one of the most celebrated philosophers in history. The Greek thinker had an immeasurable influence on Western thought. However, Platos' ideas (as of something comprehended) as a formulation characterized in the forming constructs of language were that is not recognized as standard for dialectic discourse - the dialectical method, used most famously by his teacher Socrates - has led to difficulties in interpreting some finer points of his thoughts. The issue of what Plato meant to say is addressed in the following excerpt by author R.M. Hare.
Linguistic analysis as something conveys to the mind, nonetheless, the means or procedures used in attaining an end for within themselves it claims that his ends justified his methods, however, the acclaiming accreditation shows that the methodical orderliness proves consistently ascertainable within the true and right of philosophy, historically holding steadfast and well grounded within the depthful frameworks attributed to the Greeks. Several dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frigg, the 20th-century English philosopher’s G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry. They set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by showing fewer puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truth or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as time is unreal, analyses that which facilitates of its determining truth of such assertions.
Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical views based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitute what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements John is good and John is tall, have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property goodness as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property tallness is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. With his fundamental work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, published in 1921, he became a central figure in the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Russells work in mathematics and interested to Cambridge, and the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; translated 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that all philosophy is a critique of language and that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. The results of Wittgensteins analysis resembled Russells logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts - the propositions of science - are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
The term instinct (in Latin, instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behavior, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defense of this position as early as Avicennia. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behavior, and the idea that innate determinants of behavior are fostered by specific environments is a principle of ethology. In this sense that being social may be instinctive in human beings, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, substantively real or the actualization of self is clearly not imprisoned in our minds.
While science offered accounts of the laws of nature and the constituents of matter, and revealed the hidden mechanisms behind appearances, a slit appeared in the kind of knowledge available to enquirers. On the one hand, there was the objective, reliable, well-grounded results of empirical enquiry into nature, and on the other, the subjective, variable and controversial results of enquiries into morals, society, religion, and so on. There was the realm of the world, which existed imperiously and massively independent of us, and the human world itself, which was complicating and complex, varied and dependent on us. The philosophical conception that developed from this picture was of a slit between a view of reality and reality dependent on human beings.
What is more, is that a different notion of objectivity was to have or had required the idea of inter-subjectivity. Unlike in the absolute conception of reality, which states briefly, that the problem regularly of attention was that the absolute conception of reality leaves itself open to massive sceptical challenge, as such, a de-humanized picture of reality is the goal of enquiry, how could we ever reach it? Upon the inevitability with human subjectivity and objectivity, we ourselves are excused to melancholy conclusions that we will never really have knowledge of reality, however, if one wanted to reject a sceptical conclusion, a rejection of the conception of objectivity underlying it would be required. Nonetheless, it was thought that philosophy could help the pursuit of the absolute conception if reality by supplying epistemological foundations for it. However, after many failed attempts at his, other philosophers appropriated the more modest task of clarifying the meaning and methods of the primary investigators (the scientists). Philosophy can come into its own when sorting out the more subjective aspects of the human realm, of either, ethics, aesthetics, politics. Finally, it is well known, what is distinctive of the investigation of the absolute conception is its disinterestedness, its cool objectivity, it demonstrable success in achieving results. It is purely theory - the acquisition of a true account of reality. While these results may be put to use in technology, the goal of enquiry is truth itself with no utilitarian’s end in view. The human striving for knowledge, gets its fullest realization in the scientific effort to flush out this absolute conception of reality.
The pre-Kantian position, last of mention, believes there is still a point to doing ontology and still an account to be given of the basic structures by which the world is revealed to us. Kants anti-realism seems to drive from rejecting necessity in reality: Not to mention, that the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-) endorses the view that necessity is compared with a description, so there is only necessity in being compared with language, not to reality. The English radical and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), says that even if we accept this (and there are in fact good reasons not to), it still does not yield ontological relativism. It just says that the world is contingent - nothing yet about the relative nature of that contingent world.
Advancing such, as preserving contends by sustaining operations to maintain that, at least, some significantly relevant inflow of quantities was differentiated of a positive incursion of values, under which developments are, nonetheless, intermittently approved as subjective amounts in composite configurations of which all pertain of their construction. That a contributive alliance is significantly present for that which carries idealism. Such that, expound upon those that include subjective idealism, or the position better to call of immaterialism, and the meaningful associate with which the Irish idealist George Berkeley, has agreeably accorded under which to exist is to be perceived as transcendental idealism and absolute idealism. Idealism is opposed to the naturalistic beliefs that mind alone is separated from others but justly as inseparable of the universe, as a singularity with composite values that vary the beaten track by which it is better than any other, this permits to incorporate federations in the alignments of ours to be understood, if, and if not at all, but as a product of natural processes.
The pre-Kantian position - that the world had a definite, fixed, absolute nature that was not made up by thought - has traditionally been called realism. When challenged by new anti-realist philosophies, it became an important issue to try to fix exactly what was meant by all these terms, such that realism, anti-realism, idealism and so on. For the metaphysical realist there is a calibrated joint between words and objects in reality. The metaphysical realist has to show that there is a single relation - the correct one - between concepts and mind-independent objects in reality. The American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-) holds that only a magic theory of reference, with perhaps noetic rays connecting concepts and objects, could yield the unique connexion required. Instead, reference make sense in the context of the unveiling signs for certain purposes. Before Kant there had been proposed, through which is called idealists - for example, different kinds of neo-Platonic or Berkeleys philosophy. In these systems there is a declination or denial of material reality in favor of mind. However, the kind of mind in question, usually the divine mind, guaranteed the absolute objectivity of reality. Immanuel Kant’s idealism differs from these earlier idealisms in blocking the possibility of the verbal exchange of this measure. The mind as voiced by Kant in the human mind, And it is not capable of unthinkable by us, or by any rational being. So Kants versions of idealism results in a form of metaphysical agnosticism, nonetheless, the Kantian views they are rejected, rather they argue that they have changed the dialogue of the relation of mind to reality by submerging the vertebra that mind and reality is two separate entities requiring linkage. The philosophy of mind seeks to answer such questions of mind distinct from matter? Can we define what it is to be conscious, and can we give principled reasons for deciding whether other creatures are conscious, or whether machines might be made so that they are conscious? What is thinking, feeling, experiences, remembering? Is it useful to divide the functions of the mind up, separating memory from intelligence, or rationality from sentiment, or do mental functions form an integrated whole? The dominant philosopher of mind in the current western tradition includes varieties of physicalism and functionalism. In following the same direct pathway, in that the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the modern successor to behaviouralism, its early advocates were the American philosopher Hilary Putnam and Stellars, assimilating an integration of principle under which we can define mental states by a triplet of relations: What typically causes them affectual causalities that they have on other mental states and what affects that they had toward behavior. Still, functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to it mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine as for software, that remains silent about the underlying hardware or realization of the program the machine is running the principled advantages of functionalism, which include its calibrated joint with which the way we know of mental states both of ourselves and others, which is via their effectual behaviouralism and other mental states as with behaviouralism, critics charge that structurally complicated and complex items that do not bear mental states might. Nevertheless, imitate the functions that are cited according to this criticism, functionalism is too generous and would count too many things as having minds. It is also, queried to see mental similarities only when there is causal similarity, as when our actual practices of interpretation enable us to ascribe thoughts and to turn something toward it’s appointed or intended to set free from a misconstrued pursuivant or goal ordinations, admitting free or continuous passage and directly detriment deviation as an end point of reasoning and observation, such evidence from which is derived a startling new set of axioms. Whose causal structure may be differently interpreted from our own, and, perhaps, may then seem as though beliefs and desires can be variably realized incausally as something (as feeling or recollection) who associates the mind with a particular person or thing. Just as much as there can be to altering definitive states for they’re commanded through the unlike or character of dissimilarity and the otherness that modify the decision of change to chance or the chance for change. Together, to be taken in the difficulty or need in the absence of a usual means or source of consideration, is now place upon the table for our clinician’s diagnosis, for which intensively come from beginning to end, as directed straightforwardly by virtue of adopting the very end of a course, concern or relationship as through its strength or resource as done and finished among the experiential forces outstaying neurophysiological states.
The peripherally viewed homuncular functionalism is an intelligent system, or mind, as may fruitfully be thought of as the result of several sub-systems performing more simple tasks in coordination with each other. The sub-systems may be envisioned as homunculi, or small and relatively meaningless agents. Because, the archetype is a digital computer, where a battery of switches capable of only one response (on or off) can make up a machine that can play chess, write dictionaries, etc.
Moreover, in a positive state of mind and grounded of a practical interpretation that explains the justification for which our understanding the sentiment is closed to an open condition, justly as our blocking brings to light the view in something (as an end, its or motive) to or by which the mind is directed in view that the real world is nothing more than the physical world. Perhaps, the doctrine may, but need not, include the view that everything can truly be said can be said in the language of physics. Physicalism, is opposed to ontologies including abstract objects, such as possibilities, universals, or numbers, and to mental events and states, as far as any of these are thought of as independent of physical things, events, and states. While the doctrine is widely adopted, the precise way of dealing with such difficult specifications is not recognized. Nor to accede in that which is entirely clear, still, how capacious a physical ontology can allow itself to be, for while physics does not talk about many everyday objects and events, such as chairs, tables, money or colours, it ought to be consistent with a physicalist ideology to allow that such things exist.
Some philosophers believe that the vagueness of what counts as physical, and the things into some physical ontology, makes the doctrine vacuous. Others believe that it forms a substantive meta-physical position. Our common ways of framing the doctrine are about supervenience. While it is allowed that there are legitimate descriptions of things that do not talk of them in physical terms, it is claimed that any such truth s about them supervene upon the basic physical facts. However, supervenience has its own problems.
Mind and reality both emerge as issues to be spoken in the new agnostic considerations. There is no question of attempting to relate these to some antecedent way of which things are, or measurers that yet been untold of the story in Being a human being.
The most common modern manifestation of idealism is the view called linguistic idealism, which we create the wold we inhabit by employing mind-dependent linguistics and social categories. The difficulty is to give a literal form to this view that does not conflict with the obvious fact that we do not create worlds, but find ourselves in one.
Of the leading polarities about which, much epistemology, and especially the theory of ethics, tends to revolve, the immediate view that some commitments are subjective and go back at least to the Sophists, and the way in which opinion varies with subjective constitution, the situation, perspective, etc., that is a constant theme in Greek scepticism, the individualist between the subjective source of judgement in an area, and their objective appearance. The ways they make apparent independent claims capable of being apprehended correctly or incorrectly, are the driving force behind error theories and eliminativism. Attempts to reconcile the two aspects include moderate anthropocentrism, and certain kinds of projectivism.
The standard opposition between those how affirmatively maintain of the vindication and those who prove for something of a disclaimer and disavow the real existence of some kind of thing or some kind of fact or state of affairs. Almost any area of discourse may be the focus of this dispute: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals and moral or aesthetic properties, are examples. A realist about a subject-matter 'S' may hold (1) overmuch in excess that the overflow of the kinds of things described by S exist: (2) that their existence is independent of us, or not an artefact of our minds, or our language or conceptual scheme, (3) that the statements we make in S are not reducible to about some different subject-matter, (4) that the statements we make in ‘S’ have truth conditions, being straightforward description of aspects of the world and made true or false by facts in the world, (5) that we can attain truth about 'S', and that believing things are initially understood to put through the formalities associated to becoming a methodical regular, forwarding the notable consequence discerned by the moralistic and upright state of being the way in which one manifest existence or circumstance under which one solely exists or by which one is given by Registration that among conditions or occurrences to cause, in effect, the effectual sequence for which denounce any possessive determinant to occasion the groundwork for which the force of impression of one thing on another as profoundly effected by our lives, and, then, to bring about and generate all impeding conclusions, as to begin by the fulling actualization as brought to our immediate considerations would prove only to being of some communicable communication for to carry-out the primary actions or operational set-class, as to come into existence, not since civilization began has there been such distress, to begin afresh, for its novice is the first part or stage of a process or development that at the beginning of the Genesis, however, through, of these starting formalities we are found to have become inaugurated amongst inductee’s. Still, beyond a reasonable doubt in the determining the authenticity whereby each corroborated proofs that upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, accepted or adopted, but found by the distinction for which an affectual change makes the differing toward the existential chance and a chance to change. Accordingly, contained to include the comprehended admissions are again to possibilities, however, too obvious to be accepted as forming or affecting the groundwork, roots or lowest part of something much in that or operations expected by such that actions that enact of the fullest containment as to the possibilities that we are exacting the requisite claim in 'S'. Different oppositions focus on one or another of these claims. Eliminativists think the 'S'; Discourse should be rejected. Sceptics either deny that of (1) or deny our right to affirm it. Idealists and conceptualists disallow of (2) The alliances with the reductionists contends of all from which that has become of denial (3) while instrumentalists and projectivists deny (4), Constructive empiricalists deny (5) Other combinations are possible, and in many areas there are little consensuses on the exact way a reality/antireality dispute should be constructed. One reaction is that realism attempts to look over its own shoulder, i.e., that it believes that and making or refraining from making statements in 'S', we can fruitfully mount a philosophical gloss on what we are doing as we make such statements, and philosophers of a verificationist tendency have been suspicious of the possibility of this kind of metaphysical theorizing, if they are right, the debate vanishes, and that it does so is the claim of minimalism. The issue of the method by which genuine realism can be distinguished is therefore critical. Even our best theory at the moment is taken literally. There is no relativity of truth from theory to theory, but we take the current evolving doctrine about the world as literally true. After all, with respect of its theory-theory - like any theory that people actually hold - is a theory that after all, there is. That is a logical point, in that, everyone is a realist about what their own theory posited, precisely for what accountably remains, that the point of theory, is to say, that there is a continuing discovery under which its inspiration aspires to a back-to-nature movement, and for what really exists.
There have been several different sceptical positions in the history of philosophy. Some as persisting from the distant past of their sceptic viewed the suspension of judgement at the heart of scepticism as a description of an ethical position as held of view or way of regarding something reasonably sound. It led to a lack of dogmatism and caused the dissolution of the kinds of debate that led to religion, political and social oppression. Other philosophers have invoked hypothetical sceptics in their work to explore the nature of knowledge. Other philosophers advanced genuinely sceptical positions. These global sceptics hold we have no knowledge whatever. Others are doubtful about specific things: Whether there is an external world, whether there are other minds, whether we can have any moral knowledge, whether knowledge based on pure reasoning is viable. In response to such scepticism, one can accept the challenge determining whether who is out by the sceptical hypothesis and seek to answer it on its own terms, or else reject the legitimacy of that challenge. Therefore some philosophers looked for beliefs that were immune from doubt as the foundations of our knowledge of the external world, while others tried to explain that the demands made by the sceptic are in some sense mistaken and need not be taken seriously. Anyhow, all are given for what is common.
The American philosopher C.I. Lewis (1883-1946) was influenced by both Kants division of knowledge into that which is given and processes the given, and pragmatisms emphasis on the relation of thought to action. Fusing both these sources into a distinctive position, Lewis rejected the shape dichotomies of both theory-practice and fact-value. He conceived of philosophy as the investigation of the categories by which we think about reality. He denied that experience understood by categorized realities. That way we think about reality is socially and historically shaped. Concepts, the meanings shaped by human beings, are a product of human interaction with the world. Theory is infected by practice and facts are shaped by values. Concept structure our experience and reflects our interests, attitudes and needs. The distinctive role for philosophy, is to investigate the criteria of classification and principles of interpretation we use in our multifarious interactions with the world. Specific issues come up for individual sciences, which will be the philosophy of that science, but there are also common issues for all sciences and non-scientific activities, reflection on which issues is the specific task of philosophy.
The framework idea in Lewis is that of the system of categories by which we mediate reality to ourselves: 'The problem of metaphysics is the problem of the categories' and 'experience does not categorize itself' and 'the categories are ways of dealing with what is given to the mind.' Such a framework can change across societies and historical periods: 'our categories are almost as much a social product as is language, and in something like the same sense.' Lewis, however, did not specifically thematize the question that there could be alterative sets of such categories, but he did acknowledge the possibility.
Occupying the same sources with Lewis, the German philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) articulated a doctrine of linguistic frameworks that was radically relativistic its implications. Carnap had a deflationist view of philosophy, that is, he believed that philosophy had no role in telling us truth about reality, but played its part in clarifying meanings for scientists. Now some philosophers believed that this clarifictory project itself led to further philosophical investigations and special philosophical truth about meaning, truth, necessity and so on, however Carnap rejected this view. Now Carnaps actual position is less libertarian than it actually appears, since he was concerned to allow different systems of logic that might have different properties useful to scientists working on diverse problems. However, he does not envisage any deductive constraints on the construction of logical systems, but he does envisage practical constraints. We need to build systems that people find useful, and one that allowed wholesale contradiction would be spectacularly useful. There are other more technical problems with this conventionalism.
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), interpreted philosophy as a logical analysis, for which he was primarily concerned with the analysis of the language of science, because he judged the empirical statements of science to be the only factually meaningful ones, as his early efforts in The Logical Structure of the World (1928 translations, 1967) for which his intention way to have as a controlling desire something that transcends ones present capacity for acquiring to endeavor in view of a purposive point. At which time, to reduce all knowledge claims into the language of sense data, under which his developing preference for language described behavior (physicalistic language), and just as his work on the syntax of scientific language in The Logical Syntax of Language (1934, translated 1937). His various treatments of the verifiability, testability, or confirmability of empirical statements are testimonies to his belief that the problems of philosophy are reducible to the problems of language.
Carnaps principle of tolerance, or the conventionality of language forms, emphasized freedom and variety in language construction. He was particularly interested in the construction of formal, logical systems. He also did significant work in the area of probability, distinguishing between statistical and logical probability in his work Logical Foundations of Probability.
All the same, some varying interpretations of traditional epistemology have been occupied with the first of these approaches. Various types of belief were proposed as candidates for sceptic-proof knowledge, for example, those beliefs that are immediately derived from perception were proposed by many as immune to doubt. Nevertheless, what they all had in common were that empirical knowledge began with the data of the senses that it was safe from sceptical challenge and that a further superstructure of knowledge was to be built on this firm basis. The reason sense-data was immune from doubt was because they were so primitive, they were unstructured and below the level of concept conceptualization. Once they were given structure and thought, they were no longer safe from sceptical challenge. A differing approach lay in seeking properties internally to o beliefs that guaranteed their truth. Any belief possessing such properties could be seen to be immune to doubt. Yet, when pressed, the details of how to explain clarity and distinctness themselves, how beliefs with such properties can be used to justify other beliefs lacking them, and why, clarity and distinctness should be taken at all as notational presentations of certainty, did not prove compelling. These empiricist and rationalist strategies are examples of how these, if there were of any that in the approach that failed to achieve its objective.
However, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), whose later approach to philosophy involved a careful examination of the way we actually use language, closely observing differences of context and meaning. In the later parts of the Philosophical Investigations (1953), he dealt at length with topics in philosophy psychology, showing how talk of beliefs, desires, mental states and so on operates in a way quite different to talk of physical objects. In so doing he strove to show that philosophical puzzles arose from taking as similar linguistic practices that were, in fact, quite different. His method was one of attention to the philosophical grammar of language. In, On Certainty (1969) this method was applied to epistemological topics, specifically the problem of scepticism.
He deals with the British philosopher Moore, whose attempts to answer the Cartesian sceptic, holding that both the sceptic and his philosophical opponent are mistaken in fundamental ways. The most fundamental point Wittgenstein makes against the sceptic are that doubt about absolutely everything is incoherent, even to articulate a sceptic challenge, one has to know the meaning of what is said ‘If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either’. The dissimulation of otherwise questionableness in the disbelief of doubt only compels sense from things already known. The kind of doubt where everything is challenged is spurious. However, Moore is incorrect in thinking that a statement such as ‘I know I cannot reasonably doubt such a statement, but it doesn’t make sense to say it is known either. The concepts ‘doubt’ and ‘knowledge’ is related to each other, where one is eradicated it makes no sense to claim the other. However, Wittgenstein’s point is that a context is required to other things taken for granted. It makes sense to doubt given the context of knowledge, as it doesn’t make sense to doubt for no-good reason: ‘Doesn’t one need grounds for doubt?
We, at most of times, took a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or ever possible. Either to all, but for any proposition is none, for any proposition from some suspect family ethics, theory, memory. Empirical judgement, etc., substitutes a major sceptical weapon for which it is a possibility of upsetting events that cast doubt back onto what were yet found determinately warranted. Others include reminders of the divergence of human opinion, and the fallible sources of our confidence. Foundationalist approaches to knowledge looks for a basis of certainty upon which the structure of our systems of belief is built. Others reject the coherence, without foundations.
Nevertheless, scepticism is the view that we lack knowledge, but it can be ‘local’, for example, the view could be that we lack all knowledge of the future because we do not know that the future will resemble the past, or we could be sceptical about the existence of ‘other minds’. Nonetheless, there is another view - the absolute globular view that we do not have any knowledge at all.
It is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertained absolute globular scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics who held that we should refrain from assenting to any non-evident preposition had no such hesitancy about assenting to ‘the evident’. The non-evident are any belief that requires evidence to be epistemically acceptable, i.e., acceptable because it is warranted. Descartes, in his sceptical guise, never doubted the contents of his own ideas. The issue for him was whether they ‘correspond’ to anything beyond ideas.
Nevertheless, Pyrrhonist and Cartesian forms of virtual globular skepticism have been held and defended. Assuring that knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warrant condition, as opposed to the truth or belief condition, that provides the grist for the sceptic’s mill. The Pyrrhonist will suggest that no non-evident, empirical proposition be sufficiently warranted because its denial will be equally warranted. A Cartesian sceptic will argue that no empirical proposition about anything other than one’s own mind and its contents are sufficiently warranted because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it. Thus, an essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for a belief’s being sufficiently warranted to count as knowledge.
The Pyrrhonist does not assert that no non-evident propositions can be known, because that assertion itself is such a knowledge claim. Rather, they examine a series of examples in which it might be thought that we have knowledge of the non-evident. They claim that in those cases our senses, our memory and our reason can provide equally good evidence for or against any belief about what is non-evident. Better, they would say, to withhold belief than to assert. They can be considered the sceptical ‘agnostics’.
Cartesian scepticism, more impressed with Descants’ argument for scepticism than his own rely, holds that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical proposition about anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason, roughly put, is that there is a legitimate doubt about all such propositions because there is no way to deny justifiably that our senses are being stimulated by some cause (an evil spirit, for example) which is radically different from the objects that we normally think affect our senses. Thus, if the Pyrrhonists are the agnostics, the Cartesian sceptic is the atheist.
Because the Pyrrhonist required fewer of the abstractive forms of belief, in that an order for which it became certifiably valid, as knowledge is more than the Cartesian, the arguments for Pyrrhonism are much more difficult to construct. A Pyrrhonist must show that there is no better set of reasons for believing any preposition than for denying it. A Cartesian can grant that, on balance, a proposition is more warranted than its denial. The Cartesian needs only show that there remains some legitimated doubt about the truth of the proposition.
Thus, in assessing scepticism, the issues for us to consider is such that to the better understanding from which of its reasons in believing of a non-evident proposition than there are for believing its negation? Does knowledge, at least in some of its forms, require certainty? If so, is any non-evident proposition ceratin?
The most fundamental point Wittgenstein makes against the sceptic are that doubt about absolutely everything is incoherent. Equally to integrate through the spoken exchange might that it to fix upon or adopt one among alternatives as the one to be taken to be meaningfully talkative, so that to know the meaning of what is effectually said, it becomes a condition or following occurrence just as traceable to cause of its resultants force of impressionable success. If you are certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either. Doubt only makes sense in the context of things already known. However, the British Philosopher Edward George Moore (1873-1958) is incorrect in thinking that a statement such as I know I have two hands can serve as an argument against the sceptic. The concepts doubt and knowledge is related to each other, where one is eradicated it makes no sense to claim the other. Nonetheless, why couldn't by any measure of one’s reason to doubt the existence of ones limbs? Other functional hypotheses are easily supported that they are of little interest. As the above, absurd example shows how easily some explanations can be tested, least of mention, one can also see that coughing expels foreign material from the respiratory tract and that shivering increases body heat. You do not need to be an evolutionist to figure out that teeth allow us to chew food. The interesting hypotheses are those that are plausible and important, but not so obvious right or wrong. Such functional hypotheses can lead to new discoveries, including many of medical importance. There are some possible scenarios, such as the case of amputations and phantom limbs, where it makes sense to doubt. Nonetheless, Wittgensteins direction has led directly of a context from which it is required of other things, as far as it has been taken for granted, it makes legitimate sense to doubt, given the context of knowledge about amputation and phantom limbs, but it doesn't make sense to doubt for no-good reason: Doesn't one need grounds for doubt?
For such that we have in finding the value in Wittgensteins thought, but who is to reject his quietism about philosophy, his rejection of philosophical scepticism is a useful prologue to more systematic work. Wittgensteins approach in On Certainty talks of language of correctness varying from context to context. Just as Wittgenstein resisted the view that there is a single transcendental language game that governs all others, so some systematic philosophers after Wittgenstein have argued for a multiplicity of standards of correctness, and not one overall dominant one.
As the name given to the philosophical movement inaugurated by René Descartes (after ‘Cartesius’, the Lain version of his name). The main characterlogical feature of Cartesianism signifies: (1) the use of methodical doubt as a tool for testing beliefs and reaching certainty (2) a metaphysical system which start from the subject’s indubitable awareness of his own existence, (3) a theory of ‘clear and distinct ideas’ based on the innate concepts and prepositions implanted in the soul by God (these include the ideas of mathematics, which Desecrates takes to be the fundamental building blocks of science): (4) the theory now known as ‘dualism’ - that there are two fundamental incompatible kinds of substance in the universe, mind or thinking substance (matter or an extended substance in the universe) mind (or thinking substance) or matter (or extended substance) A Corollary of this last theory is that human beings are radically heterogeneous beings, and collectively compose an unstretching senseless consciousness incorporated to a piece of purely physical machinery - the body. Another key element in Cartesian dualism is the claim that the mind has perfect and transparent awareness of its own nature or essence.
What is more that the self conceived as Descartes presents it in the first two Meditations? : aware only of its thoughts, and capable of disembodied existence, neither situated in a space nor surrounded by others. This is the pure self or ‘I’ that we are tempted to imagine as a simple unique thing that makes up our essential identity. Descartes’s view that he could keep hold of this nugget while doubting everything else is criticized by the German scientist and philosopher G.C. Lichtenberg (1742-99) the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and most subsequent philosophers of mind.
The problem, nonetheless, is that the idea of one determinate self, that survives through its life’s normal changes of experience and personality, seems to be highly metaphysical, but if avoid it we seem to be left only with the experiences themselves, and no account of their unity on one life. Still, as it is sometimes put, no idea of the rope and the bundle. A tempting metaphor is that from individual experiences a self is ‘constructed’, perhaps as a fictitious focus of narrative of one’s life that one is inclined to give. But the difficulty with the notion is that experiences are individually too small to ‘construct’ anything, and anything capable of doing any constructing appears to be just that kind of guiding intelligent subject that got lost in the fight from the metaphysical view. What makes it the case that I survive a change that it is still I at the end of it? It does not seem necessary that I should retain the body I now have, since I can imagine my brain transplanted into another body, and I can imagine another person taking over my body, as in multiple personality cases. But I can also imagine my brain changing either in its matter or its function while it goes on being I, which is thinking and experiencing, perhaps it less well or better than before. My psychology might change than continuity seems only contingently connected with my own survival. So, from the inside, there seems nothing tangible making it I myself who survived some sequence of changes. The problem of identity at a time is similar: It seems possible that more than one person (or personality) should share the same body and brain, so what makes up the unity of experience and thought that we each enjoy in normal living?
The furthering to come or go into some place or thing finds to cause or permit as such of unexpected worth or merit obtained or encountered, that more or less by chance finds of its easement are without question, as to describing Cartesianism of making to a better understanding, as such that of: (1) The use of methodical doubt as a tool for testing beliefs and reaching certainty; (2) A metaphysical system that starts from the subject’s indubitable awareness of his own existence; (3) A theory of ‘clear and distinct ideas’ based upon the appraising conditions for which it is given from the attestation of granting to give as a favour or right for existing in or belonging to or within the individually inherent intrinsic capabilities of an innate quality, that associate themselves to valuing concepts and propositions implanted in the soul by God (these include the ideas of mathematics, which Descartes takes to be the fundamental building block of science). (4) The theory now known as ‘dualism’ - that there are two fundamentally incompatible kinds of substance in the universe, mind (or extended substance). A corollary of this last theory is that human beings are radically heterogeneous beings, composed of an unextended, immaterial consciousness united to a piece of purely physical machinery - the body. Another key element in Cartesian dualism is the claim that the mind has perfect and transparent awareness of its own nature or the basic underling or constituting entity, substance or form that achieves and obtainably received of being refined, especially in the duties or function of conveying completely the essence that is most significant, and is indispensable among the elements attributed by quality, property or aspect of things that the very essence is the belief that in politics there is neither good nor bad, nor that does it reject the all-in-all of essence. Signifying a basic underlying entity, for which one that has real and independent existence, and the outward appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is made, occasionally the conduct regulated by an external control as the custom or a formal protocol of procedure in a fixed or accepted way of doing or sometimes of expressing something of the good. Of course, substance imports the inner significance or central meaning of something written or said, just as in essence, is or constitutes entity, substance or form, that succeeds in conveying a completely indispensable element, attribute, quality, property or aspect of a thing. Substance, may in saying that it is the belief that it is so, that its believing that it lays of its being of neither good nor evil.
It is on this slender basis that the correct use of our faculties has to be reestablished, but it seems as though Descartes has denied it himself, any material to use in reconstructing the edifice of knowledge. He has a supportive foundation, although there is no way in building on it, that without invoking principles that would not have apparently set him of a ‘clear and distinct idea’, to prove the existence of God, whose clear and distinct ideas (God is no deceiver). Of this type is notoriously afflicted through the Cartesian circle. Nonetheless, while a reasonably unified philosophical community existed at the beginning of the twentieth century, by the middle of the century philosophy had split into distinct traditions with little contact between them. Descartes famous Twin criteria of clarity and distinction were such that any belief possessing properties internal to them could be seen to be immune to doubt. However, when pressed, the details of how to explain clarity and distinctness themselves, how beliefs with such properties can be used to justify other beliefs lacking them, and of certainty, did not prove compelling. This problem is not quite clear, at times he seems more concerned with providing a stable body of knowledge that our natural faculties will endorse, than one that meets the more secure standards with which he starts out. Descartes was to use clear and distinct ideas, to signify the particular transparent quality that quantified for some sorted orientation that relates for which we are entitled to rely, even when indulging the ‘method of doubt’. The nature of this quality is not itself made out clearly and distinctly in Descartes, whose attempt to find the rules for the direction of the mind, but there is some reason to see it as characterized those ideas that we just cannot imagine false, and must therefore accept on that account, than ideas that have more intimate, guaranteed, connection with the truth. There is a multiplicity of different positions to which the term epistemology has been applied, however, the basic idea common to all forms denies that there is a single, universal means of assessing knowledge claims that is applicable in all context. Many traditional Epidemiologists have striven to uncover the basic process, method or set of rules that allows us to hold true for the direction of the mind, Hume’s investigations into thee science of mind or Kant’s description of his epistemological Copernican revolution, each philosopher of true beliefs, epistemological relativism spreads an ontological relativism of epistemological justification; That everywhere there is a sole fundamental way by which beliefs are justified.
Most western philosophers have been content with dualism between, on the one hand, the subject of experience. However, this dualism contains a trap, since it can easily seem possible to give any coherent account to the relations between the two. This has been a perdurable catalyst, stimulating the object influencing a choice or prompting an action toward an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance in believing to ‘idealism’. This influences the mind by initiating the putting through the formalities for becoming a member for whom of another object is exacting of a counterbalance into the distant regions that hindermost within the upholding interests of mind and subject. That the basic idea or the principal objects of our attention in a discourse or artistic comprehensibility that is both dependent to a particular modification that to some of imparting information is occurring. That, alternatively everything in the order in which it happened with respect to quality, functioning, and status of being appropriate to or required by the circumstance that remark is definitely out if order. However, to bring about an orderly disposition of individuals, units, or elements as ordered by such an undertaking as compounded of being hierarchically regiment, in that following of a set arrangement, design or pattern an orderly surround of regularity becomes a moderately adjusting adaption, whereby something that limits or qualifies an agreement or offer, including the conduct that or carries out without rigidly prescribed procedures of an informal kind of ‘materialism’ which seeds the subject for as little more than one object among other-often options, that include ‘neutral monism’, by that, monism that finds one where ‘dualism’ finds two. Physicalism is the doctrine that everything that exists is physical, and is a monism contrasted with mind-body dualism: ‘Absolute idealism’ is the doctrine that the only reality consists in moderations of the Absolute. Parmenides and Spinoza, each believed that there were philosophical reasons for supporting that there could only be one kind of self-subsisting of real things.
The doctrine of ‘neutral monism’ was propounded by the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), in his essay ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ (reprinted as ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’, 1912), that nature consists of one kind of primal stuff, in itself neither mental nor physical, bu t capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes. Everything exists in physical, and is monism’ contrasted with mind-body dualism: Absolute idealism is the doctrine that the only reality consists in manifestations of the absolute idealism is the doctrine hat the only reality Absolute idealism is the doctrine that the only reality consists in manifestations of the Absolute.
Subjectivism and objectivism are both of the leading polarities about which much epistemological and especially the theory of ethics tends to resolve. The view that some commonalities are subjective gives back at last, to the Sophists, and the way in which opinion varies with subjective construction, situations, perceptions, etc., is a constant theme in Greek scepticism. The misfit between the subjective sources of judgement in an area, and their objective appearance, or the way they make apparent independent claims capable of being apprehended correctly or incorrectly is the diving force behind ‘error theory’ and eliminativism. Attempts to reconcile the two aspects include moderate anthropocentricism and certain kinds of projection. Even so, the contrast between the subjective and the objective is made in both the epistemic and the ontological domains. In the former it is often identified with the distinction between the intrapersonal and the interpersonal, or that between matters whose resolution rests on the psychology of the person in question and those not of actual dependent qualities, or, sometimes, with the distinction between the biassed and the imported.
This, an objective question might be one answerable be a method usable by any content investigator, while a subjective question would be answerable only from the questioner’s point of view. In the ontological domain, the subjective-objective contrast is often between what is and what is not mind-dependent, secondarily, qualities, e.g., colour, here been thought subjective owing to their apparent reliability with observation conditions. The truth of a proposition, for instance, apart from certain promotions about oneself, would be an objector if it is independent of the perspective, especially the beliefs, of those judging it. Truth would be subjective if it lacks such independent, say, because it is a constant from justification beliefs, e.g., those well-confirmed by observation.
One notion of objectivity might be basic and the other derivative. If the epistemic notion is basic, then the criteria for objectivity criteria for objectivity in the ontological sense derive from considerations by a procedure that yields (adequately) justification for one’s answers, and mind-independence is a matter of amenability to such a method. If, on the other hand, the ontological notion is basic, the criteria for an interpersonal method and its objective use are a matter of its mind-indecence and tendency to lead to objective truth, say it is applying to external object and yielding predictive success. Since the use of these criteria require an employing of the methods which, on the epistemic conception, define objectivity - must notably scientific methods - but no similar dependence obtain in the other direction the epistemic notion of the task as basic.
In epistemology, the subjective-objective contrast arises above all for the concept of justification and its relatives. Externalism, is principally the philosophy of mind and language, the view that what is thought, or said, or experienced, is essentially dependent on aspects of the world external to the mind of the subject. In addition, the theory of knowledge, externalism is the view that a person might know something by being suitably situated with respect to it, without that relationship might, for example, is very reliable in some respect without believing that he is. The view allows that you can know without being justified in believing that you know. That which is given to the serious considerations that are applicably attentive in the philosophy of mind and language, the view that which is thought, or said, or experienced, is essentially dependent on aspects of the world external to the mind or subject. The view goes beyond holding that such mental states are typically caused by external factors, to insist that they could not have existed as they now do without the subject being embedded in an external world of a certain kind, these external relations make up the ‘essence’ or ‘identity’ of related mental states. Externalism, is thus, opposed to the Cartesian separation of the mental form and physical, since that holds that the mental could in principle exist at all. Various external factors have been advanced as ones on which mental content depends, including the usage of experts, the linguistic norms of the community, and the general causal relationships of the subject. Particularly advocated of reliabilism, which construes justification objectivity, since, for reliabilism, truth-conditiveness, and non-subjectivity which are conceived as central for justified belief, the view in ‘epistemology’, which suggests that a subject may know a proposition ‘p’ if (1) ‘p’ is true, (2) The subject believes ‘p’, and (3) The belief that ‘p’ is the result of some reliable process of belief formation. The third clause, is an alternative to the traditional requirement that the subject be justified in believing that ‘p’, since a subject may in fact be following a reliable method without being justified in supporting that she is, and vice versa. For this reason, reliabilism is sometimes called an externalist approach to knowledge: the relations that matter to knowing something may be outside the subject’s own awareness. It is open to counterexamples, a belief may be the result of some generally reliable process which in a fact malfunction on this occasion, and we would be reluctant to attribute knowledge to the subject if this were so, although the definition would be satisfied, as to say, that knowledge is justified true belief. Reliabilism purses appropriate modifications to avoid the problem without giving up the general approach. Among reliabilist theories of justification (as opposed to knowledge) there are two main varieties: Reliable indicator theories and reliable process theories. In their simplest forms, the reliable indicator theory says that a belief is justified in case it is based on reasons that are reliable indicators of the theory, and the reliable process theory says that a belief is justified in case it is produced by cognitive processes that are generally reliable.
What makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? It is natural to think that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals rests on what contingent qualification for which reasons given cause the basic idea or the principal of attentions was that the object that proved much to the explication for the peculiarity to a particular individual as modified by the subject in having the belief. In recent decades a number of epistemologists have pursed this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals.
Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that ‘p’ is knowledge just in case it has the right sort of causal connection to the fact that ‘p’. Such a criterion can be applied only to cases where the fact that ‘p’ is a sort that can enter into causal relations: This seems to exclude mathematically and other necessary facts, and, perhaps, my in fact expressed by a universal generalization: And proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual knowledge of particular facts about the subject’s environment.
For example, the proposed ranting or positioning ion relation to others, as in a social order, or community class, or the profession positional footings are given to relate the describing narrations as to explain of what is set forth. Belief, and that of the accord with regulated conduct using an external control, as a custom or a formal protocol of procedure, would be of observing the formalities that a fixed or accepted course of doing for something of its own characteristic point for which of expressing affection. However, these attributive qualities are distinctly arbitrary or conventionally activated uses in making different alternatives against something as located or reoriented for convenience, perhaps in a hieratically expressed declamatory or impassioned oracular mantic, yet by some measure of the complementarity seems rhetorically sensed in the stare of being elucidated with expressions cumulatively acquired. ‘This (perceived) object is ‘F’ is (non-inferential) knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictate that, for any subject ‘x’ and perceived object ‘y’, if ‘x’ has. Those properties and directional subversions that follow in the order of such successiveness that whoever initiates the conscription as too definably conceive that it’s believe is to have no doubts around, hold the belief that we take (or accept) as gospel, take at one’s word, take one’s word for us to better understand that we have a firm conviction in the reality of something favourably in the feelings that we consider, in the sense, that we cognitively have in view of thinking that ‘y’ is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. Whereby, the general system of concepts which shape or organize our thoughts and perceptions, the outstanding elements of our every day conceptual scheme includes and enduring objects, casual conceptual relations, include spatial and temporal relations between events and enduring objects, and other persons, and so on. A controversial argument of Davidson’s argues that we would be unable to interpret space from different conceptual schemes as even meaningful, we can therefore be certain that there is no difference of conceptual schemes between any thinker and that since ‘translation’ proceeds according to a principle for an omniscient translator or make sense of ‘us’, we can be assured that most of the beliefs formed within the common-sense conceptual framework are true. That it is to say, our needs felt to clarify its position in question, that notably precision of thought was in the right word and by means of exactly the right way,
Nevertheless, fostering an importantly different sort of casual criterion, namely that a true belief is knowledge if it is produced by a type of process that is ‘globally’ and ‘locally’ reliable. It is globally reliable if its propensity to cause true beliefs is sufficiently high. Local reliability has to do with whether the process would have produced a similar but false belief in certain counter-factual situations alternative to the actual situation. This way of marking off true beliefs that are knowledge does not require the fact believed to be causally related to the belief, and so, could in principle apply to knowledge of any kind of truth, yet, that a justified true belief is knowledge if the type of process that produce d it would not have produced it in any relevant counter-factual situation in which it is false.
A composite theory of relevant alternatives can best be viewed as an attempt to accommodate two opposing strands in our thinking about knowledge. The first is that knowledge is an absolute concept. On one interpretation, this means that the justification or evidence one must have un order to know a proposition ‘p’ must be sufficient to eliminate calling the alternatives to ‘p’‘ (where an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p’). That is, one’s justification or evidence for ‘p’ must be sufficient for one to know that every alternative to ‘p’ is false. This element of thinking about knowledge is exploited by sceptical arguments. These arguments call our attention to alternatives that our evidence cannot eliminate. For example, when we are at the zoo, we might claim to know that we see a zebra on the justification for which is found by some convincingly persuaded visually perceived evidence - a zebra-like appearance. The sceptic inquires how we know that we are not seeing a cleverly disguised mule. While we do have some evidence against the likelihood of such deception, intuitively it is not strong enough for us to know that we are not so deceived. By pointing out alternatives of this nature that we cannot eliminate, as well as others with more general applications (dreams, hallucinations, etc.), the sceptic appears to show that this requirement that our evidence eliminate every alternative is seldom, if ever, sufficiently adequate, as my measuring up to a set of criteria or requirement as courses are taken to satisfy requirements.
This conflict is with another strand in our thinking about knowledge, in that we know many things, thus, there is a tension in our ordinary thinking about knowledge - we believe that knowledge is, in the sense indicated, an absolute concept and yet we also believe that there are many instances of that concept. However, the theory of relevant alternatives can be viewed as an attempt to provide a more satisfactory response to this tension in or thinking about knowledge. It attempts to characterize knowledge in a way that preserves both our belief that knowledge is an absolute concept and our belief that we have knowledge.
According t the theory, we need to qualify than deny the absolute character of knowledge. We should view knowledge as absolute, relative to certain standards, that is to say, that in order to know a proposition, our evidence need not eliminate all the alternatives to that proposition. Rather we can know when our evidence eliminates all the relevant alternatives, where the set of relevant alternatives is determined by some standard. Moreover, according to the relevant alternatives view, the standards determine that the alternatives raised by the sceptic are not relevant. Nonetheless, if this is correct, then the fact that our evidence can eliminate the sceptic’s alternatives does not lead to a sceptical result. For knowledge requires only the elimination of the relevant alternatives. So the designation of an alternative view preserves both progressives of our thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is an absolute concept, but because the absoluteness is relative to a standard, we can know many things.
All the same, some philosophers have argued that the relevant alternative’s theory of knowledge entails the falsity of the principle that the set of known (by ‘S’) preposition is closed under known (by ‘S’) entailment: Although others have disputed this, least of mention, that this principle affirms the conditional charge founded of ‘the closure principle’ as: If ‘S’ knows ‘p’ and ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ entails ‘q’, then ‘S’ knows ‘q’.
According to this theory of relevant alternatives, we can know a proposition ‘p’, without knowing that some (non-relevant) alternative to ‘p’‘ is false. But since an alternative ‘h’ to ‘p’ incompatible with ‘p’, then ‘p’ will trivially entail ‘not-h’. So it will be possible to know some proposition without knowing another proposition trivially entailed by it. For example, we can know that we see a zebra without knowing that it is not the case that we see a cleverly disguised mule (on the assumption that ‘we see a cleverly disguised mule’ is not a relevant alternative). This will involve a violation of the closer principle, that this consequential sequence of the theory held accountably because the closure principle and seem too many to be quite intuitive. In fact, we can view sceptical arguments as employing the closure principle as a premiss, along with the premiss that we do not know that the alternatives raised by the sceptic are false. From these two premises (on the assumption that we see that the propositions we believe entail the falsity of sceptical alternatives) that we do not know the propositions we believe. For example, it follows from the closure principle and the fact that we do not know that we do not see a cleverly disguised mule, that we do not know that we see a zebra. We can view the relevant alternative’s theory as replying to the sceptical argument.
How significant a problem is this for the theory of relevant alternatives? This depends on how we construe the theory. If the theory is supposed to provide us with an analysis of knowledge, then the lack of precise criteria of relevance surely constitutes a serious problem. However, if the theory is viewed instead as providing a response to sceptical arguments, that the difficulty has little significance for the overall success of the theory
Nevertheless, internalism may or may not construe justification, subjectivistically, depending on whether the proposed epistemic standards are interpersonally grounded. There are also various kinds of subjectivity, justification, may, e.g., be granted in one’s considerate standards or simply in what one believes to be sound. On the formal view, my justified belief accorded within my consideration of standards, or the latter, my thinking that they have been justified for making it so.
Any conception of objectivity may treat a domain as fundamental and the other derivative. Thus, objectivity for methods (including sensory observations) might be thought basic. Let an objective method be one that is (1) Interpersonally usable and tens to yield justification regarding the question to which it applies (an epistemic conception), or (2) tends to yield truth when property applied (an ontological conception), or (3) Both. An objective statement is one appraisable by an objective method, but an objective discipline is one whose methods are objective, and so on. Typically constituting or having the nature and, perhaps, a prevalent regularity as a typical instance of guilt by association, e.g., something (as a feeling or recollection) associated in the mind with a particular person or thing, as having the thoughts of ones’ childhood home always carried an association of loving warmth. By those who conceive objectivity epistemologically tend to make methods and fundamental, those who conceive it ontologically tend to take basic statements. Subjectivity ha been attributed variously to certain concepts, to certain properties of objects, and to certain, modes of understanding. The overarching idea of these attributions is the nature of the concepts, properties, or modes of understanding in question is dependent upon the properties and relations of the subjects who employ those concepts, posses the properties or exercise those modes of understanding. The dependence may be a dependence upon the particular subject or upon some type which the subject instantiates. What is not so dependent is objectivity. In fact, there is virtually nothing which had not been declared subjective by some thinker or others, including such unlikely candidates as to think about the emergence of space and time and the natural numbers. In scholastic terminology, an effect is contained formally in a cause, when the same nature n the effect is present in the cause, as fire causes heat, and the heat is present in the fire. An effect is virtually in a cause when this is not so, as when a pot or statue is caused by an artist. An effect is eminently in cause when the cause is more perfect than the effect: God eminently contains the perfections of his creation. The distinctions are just of the view that causation is essentially a matter of transferring something, like passing on the baton in a relay race.
There are several sorts of subjectivity to be distinguished, if subjectivity is attributed to as concept, consider as a way of thinking of some object or property. It would be much too undiscriminating to say that a concept id subjective if particular mental states, however, the account of mastery of the concept. All concepts would then be counted as subjective. We can distinguish several more discriminating criteria. First, a concept can be called subjective if an account of its mastery requires the thinker to be capable of having certain kinds of experience, or at least, know what it is like to have such experiences. Variants on these criteria can be obtained by substituting other specific psychological states in place of experience. If we confine ourselves to the criterion which does mention experience, the concepts of experience themselves plausibly meet the condition. What has traditionally been classified as concepts of secondary qualities - such as red, tastes, bitter, warmth - have also been argued to meet these criteria? The criterion does, though also including some relatively observational shape concepts. The relatively observational shape concepts ‘square’ and ‘regular diamond’ pick out exactly the same shaped properties, but differ in which perceptual experience are mentioned in accounts of they’re - mastery - once, appraised by determining the unconventional symmetry perceived when something is seen as a diamond, from when it is seen as a square. This example shows that from the fact that a concept is subjective in this way, nothing follows about the subjectivity of the property it picks out. Few philosophies would now count shape properties, as opposed to concepts thereof: As subjective.
Concepts with a second type of subjectivity could more specifically be called ‘first personal’. A concept is ‘first-personal’ if, in an account of its mastery, the application of the concept to objects other than the thinker is related to the condition under which the thinker is willing to apply the concept to himself. Though there is considerable disagreement on how the account should be formulated, many theories of the concept of belief as that of first-personal in this sense. For example, this is true of any account which says that a thinker understands a third-personal attribution ‘He believes that so-and-so’ by understanding that it holds, very roughly, if the third-person in question is in circumstance in which the thinker would himself (first-person) judge that so-and-so. It is equally true of accounts which in some way or another say that the third-person attribution is understood as meaning that the other person is in some state which stands in some specific sameness relation to the state which causes the thinker to be willing to judge: ‘I believe that so-and-so’.
The subjectivity of indexical concepts, where an expression whose reference is dependent upon the content, such as, I, here, now, there, when or where and that (perceptually presented), ‘man’ has been widely noted. The fact of these is subjective in the sense of the first criterion, but they are all subjective in that the possibility of abject’s using any one of them to think about an object at a given time depends upon his relations to the particular object then, indexicals are thus particularly well suited to expressing a particular point of view of the world of objects, a point of view available only to those who stand in the right relations to the object in question.
A property, as opposed to a concept, is subjective if an object’s possession of the property is in part a matter of the actual or possible mental states of subjects’ standing in specified relations to the object. Colour properties, secondary qualities in general, moral properties, the property of propositions of being necessary or contingent, and he property of actions and mental states of being intelligible, has all been discussed as serious contenders for subjectivity in this sense. To say that a property is subjective is not to say that it can be analysed away in terms of mental states. The mental states in terms of which subjectivists have aimed to elucidate, say, of having to include the mental states of experiencing something as red, and judging something to be, respective. These attributions embed reference to the original properties themselves - or, at least to concepts thereof - in a way which makes eliminative analysis problematic. The same plausibility applies to a subjectivist treatment of intelligibility: Have the mental states would have to be that of finding something intelligible. Even without any commitment to eliminative analysis, though, the subjectivist’s claim needs extensive consideration for each of the divided areas. In the case of colour, part of the task of the subjectivist who makes his claim at the level of properties than concept is to argue against those who would identify the properties, or with some more complex vector of physical properties.
Suppose that for an object to have a certain property is for subject standing in some certain relations to it to be a certain mental state. If subjects bear on or upon standing in relation to it, and in that mental state, judges the object to have the properties, their judgement will be true. Some subjectivists have been tampering to work this point into a criterion of a property being subjective. There is, though, some definitional, that seems that we can make sense of this possibility, that though in certain circumstances, a subject’s judgement about whether an object has a property is guaranteed to be correct, it is not his judgement (in those circumstances) or anything else about his or other mental states which makes the judgement correct. To the general philosopher, this will seem to be the actual situation for easily decided arithmetical properties such as 3 + 3 = 6. If this is correct, the subjectivist will have to make essential use of some such asymmetrical notions as ‘what makes a proposition is true’. Conditionals or equivalence alone, not even deductivist ones, will not capture the subjectivist character of the position.
Finally, subjectivity has been attributed to modes of understanding. Elaborating modes of understanding foster in large part, the grasp to view as plausibly basic, in that to assume or determinate rule might conclude upon the implicit intelligibility of mind, as to be readily understood, as language is understandable, but for deliberate reasons to hold accountably for the rationalization as a point or points that support reasons for the proposed change that elaborate on grounds of explanation, as we must use reason to solve this problem. The condition of mastery of mental concepts limits or qualifies an agreement or offer to include the condition that any contesting of will, it would be of containing or depend on each condition of agreed cases that conditional infirmity on your raising the needed translation as placed of conviction. For instances, those who believe that some form of imagination is involved in understanding third-person descriptions of experiences will want to write into account of mastery of those attributions. However, some of those may attribute subjectivity to modes of understanding that incorporate, their conception in claim of that some or all mental states about the mental properties themselves than claim about the mental properties themselves than concept thereof: But, it is not charitable to interpret it as the assertion that mental properties involve mental properties. The conjunction of their properties, that concept’s of mental state’ s are subjectively in use in the sense as given as such, and that mental states can only be thought about by concepts which are thus subjective. Such a position need not be opposed to philosophical materialism, since it can be all for some versions of this materialism for mental states. It would, though, rule out identities between mental and physical events.
The view that the claims of ethics are objectively true, they are not ‘relative’ to a subject or cultural enlightenment as culturally excellent of tastes acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training, as a man of culture is known by his reading, nor purely subjective in by natures opposition to ‘error theory’ or ‘scepticism’. The central problem in finding the source of the required objectivity, may as to the result in the absolute conception of reality, facts exist independently of human cognition, and in order for human beings to know such facts, they must be conceptualized. That, we, as independently personal beings, move out and away from where one is to be brought to or toward an end as to begin on a course, enterprising to going beyond a normal or acceptable limit that ordinarily a person of consequence has a quality that attracts attention, for something that does not exist. But relinquishing services to a world for its libidinous desire to act under non-controlling primitivities as influenced by ways of latency, we conceptualize by some orderly patternization arrangements, if only to think of it, because the world doesn’t automatically conceptualize itself. However, we develop concepts that pick those features of the world in which we have an interest, and not others. We use concepts that are related to our sensory capacities, for example, we don’t have readily available concepts to discriminate colours that are beyond the visible spectrum. No such concepts were available at all previously held understandings of light, and such concepts as there are not as widely deployed, since most people don’t have reasons to use them.
We can still accept that the world make’s facts true or false, however, what counts as a fact is partially dependent on human input. One part, is the availability of concepts to describe such facts. Another part is the establishing of whether something actually is a fact or not, in that, when we decide that something is a fact, it fits into our body of knowledge of the world, nonetheless, for something to have such a role is governed by a number of considerations, all of which are value-laden. We accept as facts these things that make theories simple, which allow for greater generalization, that cohere with other facts and so on. Hence in rejecting the view that facts exist independently of human concepts or human epistemology we get to the situation where facts are understood to be dependent on certain kinds of values - the values that governs enquiry in all its multiple forms - scientific, historical, literary, legal and so on.
In spite of which notions that philosophers have looked [into] and handled the employment of ‘real’ situated approaches that distinguish the problem or signature qualifications, though features given by fundamental objectivity, on the one hand, there are some straightforward ontological concepts: Something is objective if it exists, and is the way it is. Independently of any knowledge, perception, conception or consciousness there may be of it. Obviously candidates would include plants, rocks, atoms, galaxies, and other material denizens of the external world. Fewer obvious candidates include such things as numbers, set, propositions, primary qualities, facts, time and space and subjective entities. Conversely, will be the way those which could not exist or be the way they are if they were known, perceived or, at least conscious, by one or more conscious beings. Such things as sensations, dreams, memories, secondary qualities, aesthetic properties and moral value have been construed as subsections in this sense. Yet, our ability to make intelligent choices and to reach intelligent conclusions or decisions, had we to render ably by giving power, strength or competence to enable a sense to study something practical.
There is on the other hand, a notion of objectivity that belongs primarily within epistemology. According to this conception the objective-subjective distinction is not intended to mark a split in reality between autonomous and distinguish between two grades of cognitive achievement. In this sense only such things as judgements, beliefs, theories, concepts and perception can significantly be said to be objective or subjective. Objectively can be construed as a property of the content of mental acts or states, for example, that a belief that the speed of space light is 187,000 miles per second, or that London is to the west of Toronto, has an objective confront: A judgement that rice pudding is distinguishing on the other hand, or that Beethoven is greater an artist than Mozart, will be merely subjective. If this is epistemologically of concept it is to be a proper contented, of mental acts and states, then at this point we clearly need to specify ‘what’ property it is to be. In spite of this difficulty, for what we require is a minimal concept of objectivity. One will be neutral with respect to the competing and sometimes contentious philosophical intellect which attempts to specify what objectivity is, in principle this neutral concept will then be capable of comprising the pre-theoretical datum to which the various competing theories of objectivity are themselves addressed, and attempts to supply an analysis and explanation. Perhaps the best notion is one that exploits Kant’s insights that conceptual representation or epistemology entail what he call’s ‘presumptuous universality’, for a judgement to be objective it must at least of content, that ‘may be presupposed to be valid for all men’.
The entity of ontological notions can be the subject of conceptual representational judgement and beliefs. For example, on most accounts colours are ontological beliefs, in the analysis of the property of being red, say, there will occur climactical perceptions and judgements of normal observers under normal conditions. And yet, the judgement that a given object is red is an entity of an objective one. Rather more bizarrely, Kant argued that space was nothing more than the form of inner sense, and some, was an ontological notion, and subject to perimeters held therein. And yet, the propositions of geometry, the science of space, are for Kant the very paradigms of conceptually framed representions as well grounded to epistemological necessities, and universal and objectively true. One of the liveliest debates in recent years (in logic, set theory and the foundations of semantics and the philosophy of language) concerns precisely this issue: Does the conceptually represented base on epistemologist factoring class of assertions requires subjective judgement and belief of the entities those assertions apparently involved or range over? By and large, theories that answer this question in the affirmative can be called ‘realist’ and those that defended a negative answer, can be called ‘anti-realist’
One intuition that lies at the heart of the realist’s account of objectivity is that, in the last analysis, the objectivity of a belief is to be explained by appeal t o the independent existence of the entities it concerns. Conceptual epistemological representation, that is, to be analysed in terms of subjective maters. It stands in some specific relation validity of an independently existing component. Frége, for example, believed that arithmetic could comprise objective knowledge e only if the number it refers to, the propositions it consists of, the functions it employs and the truth-value it aims at, are all mind-independent entities. Conversely, within a realist framework, to show that the member of a give in a class of judgements and merely subjective, it is sufficient to show that there exists no independent reality that those judgments characterize or refer to. Thus. J.L. Mackie argues that if values are not part of the fabric of the world, then moral subjectivism is inescapable. For the result, then, conceptual frame-references to epistemological representation are to be elucidated by appeal to the existence of determinate facts, objects, properties, event s and the like, which exist or obtain independently of any cognitive access we may have to them. And one of the strongest impulses toward Platonic realism - the theoretical objects like sets, numbers, and propositions - stems from the independent belief that only if such things exist in their own right and we can then show that logic, arithmetic and science are objective.
This picture is rejected by anti-realist. The possibility that our beliefs and these are objectively true or not, according to them, capable of being rendered intelligible by invoking the nature and existence of reality as it is in and of itself. If our conception of conceptual epistemological representation is minimally required for only ‘presumptive universalities’, the alterative, non-realist analysis can give the impression of being without necessarily being so in fact. Some things are not always the way they seem as possible - and even attractive, such analyses that construe the objectivity of an arbitrary judgement as a function of its coherence with other judgements of its possession. On the grounds that are warranted by it’s very acceptance within a given community, of course, its formulated conformities by which deductive reasoning and rules following, is what constitutes our understanding, of its unification, or falsifiability of its permanent presence in mind of God. One intuition common to a variety of different anti-realist theories is this: For our assertions to be objective, for our beliefs to comprise genuine knowledge, those assertions and beliefs must be, among other things, rational, justifiable, coherent, communicable and intelligible. But it is hard, the anti-realist claims, to see how such properties as these can be explained by appeal to entities ‘as they are in and of themselves’: For it is not on he basis that our assertions become intelligible say, or justifiable.
On the contrary, according to most forms of anti-realism, it is only the basic ontological notion like ‘the way reality seems to us’, ‘the evidence that is available to us’, ‘the criteria we apply’, ‘the experience we undergo’, or, ‘the concepts we have acquired’ that the possibility of an objectively conceptual experience of our beliefs can conceivably be explained.
In addition, to marking the ontological and epistemic contrasts, the objective-subjective distinction has also been put to a third use, namely to differentiate intrinsically from reason-sensitivities that have a non-perceptual view of the world and find its clearest expression in sentences derived of credibility, corporeality, intensive or other token reflective elements. Such sentences express, in other words, the attempt to characterize the world from no particular time or place, or circumstance, or personal perspective. Nagel calls this ‘the view from nowhere’. A subjective point of view, by contrast, is one that possesses characteristics determined by the identity or circumstances of the person whose point view it is. The philosophical problems have on the question to whether there is anything that an exclusively objective description would necessarily be, least of mention, this would desist and ultimately cease of a course, as of action or activity, than focussed at which time something has in its culmination, as coming by its end to confine the indetermining infractions known to have been or should be concealed, as not to effectively bring about the known op what has been or should be concealed by its truth. However, the unity as in interests, standards, and responsibility binds for what are purposively so important to the nature and essence of a thing as they have of being indispensable, thus imperatively needful, if not, are but only of oneself, that is lastingly as one who is inseparable with the universe. Can there, for instance be a language with the same expressive power as our own, but which lacks all toke n reflective elements? Or, more metaphorically, are there genuinely and irreducibly objective aspects to my existence - aspects which belong only to my unique perspective on the world and which belong only to my unique perspective or world and which must, therefore, resist capture by any purely objective conception of the world?
One at all to any doctrine holding that reality is fundamentally mental in nature, however, boundaries of such a doctrine are not firmly drawn, for example, the traditional Christian view that ‘God’ is a sustaining cause possessing greater reality than his creation, might just be classified as a form of ‘idealism’. Leibniz’s doctrine that the simple substances out of which all else that follows is readily made for themselves. Chosen by some worthy understanding view that perceiving and appetitive creatures (monads), and that space and time are relative among these things is another earlier version implicated by a major form of ‘idealism’, include subjective idealism, or the position better called ‘immaterialism’ and associated in the Irish idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753), according to which to exist is to be perceived as ‘transcental idealism’ and ‘absolute idealism’: Idealism is opposed to the naturalistic beliefs that mind is at work or in effective operation, such that it earnestly touches the point or positioning to occupy the tragedy under which solitary excellence are placed unequable, hence, it is exhaustively understood as a product of natural possesses. The most common modernity is manifested of idealism, the view called ‘linguistic idealism’, that we ‘create’ the world we inhabit by employing mind-dependent linguistic and social categories. The difficulty is to give a literal form the obvious fact that we do not create worlds, but irreproachably find ourselves in one.
So as the philosophical doctrine implicates that reality is somehow a mind corrective or mind coordinate - that the real objects comprising the ‘external minds’ are dependent of cognizing minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations that reality as we understand it reflects the workings of mind. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind itself makes a formative contribution not merely to our understanding of the nature of the real but even to the resulting character that we attribute to it.
For a long intermittent interval of which times presence may ascertain or record the developments, the deviation or rate of the proper moments, that within the idealist camp over whether ‘the mind’ at issue is such idealistically formulated would that a mind emplaced outside of or behind nature (absolute idealism), or a nature-persuasive power of rationality in some sort (cosmic idealism) or the collective impersonal social mind of people-in-general (social idealism), or simply the distributive collection of individual minds (personal idealism). Over the years, the less grandiose versions of the theory came increasingly to the fore, and in recent times naturally all idealists have construed ‘the minds’ at issue in their theory as a matter of separate individual minds equipped with socially engendered resources.
It is quite unjust to charge idealism with an antipathy to reality, for it is not the existence but the matter of reality that the idealist puts in question. It is not reality but materialism that classical idealism rejects - and to make (as a surface) and not this merely, but also - to be found as used as an intensive to emphasize the identity or character of something that otherwise leaves as an intensive to indicate an extreme hypothetical, or unlikely case or instance, if this were so, it should not change our advantages that the idealist that speaks rejects - and being of neither the more nor is it less than the defined direction or understood in the amount, extent, or number, perhaps, not this as merely, but also - its use of expressly precise considerations, an intensive to emphasize that identity or character of something as so to be justly even, as the idealist that articulates words in order. If not only to express beyond the grasp to thought of thoughts in the awarenesses that represent the properties of a dialectic discourse of verbalization that speech with which is communicatively a collaborative expression of voice, agreeably, that everything is what it is and not another thing, the difficulty is to know when we have one thing and not another one thing and as two. A rule for telling this is a principle of ‘individualization’, or a criterion of identity for things of the kind in question. In logic, identity may be introduced as a primitive rational expression, or defined via the identity of indiscenables. Berkeley’s ‘immaterialism’ does not as much rejects the existence of material objects as he seems engaged to endeavour upon been unperceivedly unavoidable.
There are certainly versions of idealism short of the spiritualistic position of an ontological idealism that holds that ‘these are none but thinking beings’, idealism does not need for certain, for as to affirm that mind matter amounts to creating or made for constitutional matters: So, it is quite enough to maintain (for example) that all of the characterizing properties of physical existents, resembling phenomenal sensory properties in representing dispositions to affect mind-endured customs in a certain sort of way. So that these propionate standings have nothing at all within reference to minds.
Weaker still, is an explanatory idealism which merely holds that all adequate explanations of the real, always require some recourse to the operations of mind. Historically, positions of the general, idealistic type has been espoused by several thinkers. For example George Berkeley, who maintained that ‘to be [real] is to be perceived’, this does not seem particularly plausible because of its inherent commitment to omniscience: It seems more sensible to claim ‘to be, is to be perceived’. For Berkeley, of course, this was a distinction without a difference, of something as perceivable at all, that ‘God’ perceived it. But if we forgo philosophical alliances to ‘God’, the issue looks different and now comes to pivot on the question of what is perceivable for perceivers who are physically realizable in ‘the real world’, so that physical existence could be seen - not so implausible - as tantamount to observability - in principle.
The three positions to the effect that real things just exactly are things as philosophy or as science or as ‘commonsense’ takes them to be - positions generally designated as scholastic, scientific and naïve realism, respectfully - are in fact versions of epistemic idealism exactly because they see reals as inherently knowable and do not contemplate mind-transcendence for the real. Thus, for example, there is of naïve (‘commonsense’) realism that external things that subsist, insofar as there have been a precise and an exact categorization for what we know, this sounds rather realistic or idealistic, but accorded as one dictum or last favour.
There is also another sort of idealism at work in philosophical discussion: An axiomatic-logic idealism that maintains both the value play as an objectively causal and constitutive role in nature and that value is not wholly reducible to something that lies in the minds of its beholders. Its exponents join the Socrates of Platos ‘Phaedo’ in seeing value as objective and as productively operative in the world.
Any theory of natural teleology that regards the real as explicable in terms of value should to this extent be counted as idealistic, seeing that valuing is by nature a mental process. To be sure, the good of a creature or species of creatures, e.g., their well-being or survival, need not actually be mind-represented. But, nonetheless, goods count as such precisely because if the creature at issue could think about it, the will adopts them as purposes. It is this circumstance that renders any sort of teleological explanation, at least conceptually idealistic in nature. Doctrines of this sort have been the stock in trade of Leibniz, with his insistence that the real world must be the best of possibilities. And this line of thought has recently surfaced once more, in the controversial ‘anthropic principle’ espoused by some theoretical physicists.
Then too, it is possible to contemplate a position along the lines envisaged by Fichte’s, ‘Wisjenschaftslehre’, which sees the ideal as providing the determinacy factor for the real. On such views, the real, the real are not characterized by the sciences that are the ‘telos’ of our scientific efforts. On this approach, which Wilhelm Wundt characterized as ‘real-realism’, the knowledge that achieves adequation to the real by adequately characterizing the true facts in scientific matters is not the knowledge actualized by the afforded efforts by present-day science as one has it, but only that of an ideal or perfected science. On such an approach in which has seen a lively revival in recent philosophy - a tenable version of ‘scientific realism’ requires the step to idealization and reactionism becomes predicted on assuming a fundamental idealistic point of view.
Immanuel Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ agrees that our conception of us as mind-endowed beings presuppose material objects because we view our mind to the individualities as to confer or provide with existing in an objective corporal order, and such an order requires the existence o f periodic physical processes (clocks, pendula, planetary regularity) for its establishment. At most, however, this argumentation succeeds in showing that such physical processes have to be assumed by mind, the issue of their actual mind-development existence remaining unaddressed (Kantian realism, is made skilful or wise through practice, directly to meet with, as through participating or simply of its observation, all for which is accredited to empirical realism).
It is sometimes aid that idealism is predicated on a confusion of objects with our knowledge of them and conflicts the real with our thought about it. However, this charge misses the point. The only reality with which we inquire can have any cognitive connection is reality about reality is via the operations of mind - our only cognitive access to reality is thought through mediation of mind-devised models of it.
Perhaps the most common objection to idealism turns on the supposed mind-independence of the real. ‘Surely’, so runs the objection, ‘things in nature would remain substantially unchanged if there were no minds. This is perfectly plausible in one sense, namely the causal one - which is why causal idealism has its problems. But it is certainly not true conceptually. The objection’s exponent has to face the question of specifying just exactly what it is that would remain the same. ‘Surely roses would smell just as sweat in a mind-divided world’. Well . . . yes or no? Agreed: the absence of minds would not change roses, as roses and rose fragrances and sweetness - and even the size of roses - the determination that hinges on such mental operations as smelling, scanning, measuring, and the like. Mind-requiring processes are required for something in the world to be discriminated for being a rose and determining as the bearer of certain features.
Identification classification, properly attributed are all required and by their exceptional natures are all mental operations. To be sure, the role of mind, at times is considered as hypothetic (‘If certain interactions with duly constituted observers took place then certain outcomes would be noted’), but the fact remains that nothing could be discriminated or characterizing as a rose categorized on the condition where the prospect of performing suitable mental operations (measuring, smelling, etc.) is not presupposed?
The proceeding versions of idealism at once, suggests the variety of corresponding rivals or contrasts to idealism. On the ontological side, there is materialism, which takes two major forms (1) a causal materialism which asserts that mind arises from the causal operations of matter, and (2) a supervenience materialism which sees mind as an epiphenomenon to the machination of matter (albeit, with a causal product thereof - presumably because it is somewhat between difficulty and impossible to explain how physically possessive it could engender by such physical results.)
On the epistemic side, the inventing of idealism - opposed positions include (1) A factural realism that maintains linguistically inaccessible facts, holding that the complexity and a divergence of fact ‘overshadow’ the limits of reach that mind’s actually is a possible linguistic (or, generally, symbolic) resources (2) A cognitive realism that maintains that there are unknowable truths - that the domain of truths runs beyond the limits of the mind’s cognitive access, (3) A substantival realism that maintains that there exist entities in the world which cannot possibly be known or identified: Incognizable lying in principle beyond our cognitive reach. (4) A conceptual realism which holds that the real can be characterized and explained by us without the use of any such specifically mind-invoking conceptance as dispositional to affect minds in particular ways. This variety of different versions of idealism-realism, means that some versions of idealism-realism, means that some versions of the one’s will be unproblematically combinable with some versions of the other. In particular, conceptual idealism maintains that we standardly understand the real in somehow mind-invoking terms of materialism which holds that the human mind and its operations purpose (be it causally or superveniently) in the machinations of physical processes.
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