Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[Constance]

@Constance would Strawson see Kafatos' as emergence?

Yes, I think so.

 

[smcder]

Amazon.com: Thinks . . . (9780142000861): David Lodge: Books

 

[Soupie]

Re your claim in (4), it's, imo, an improvement over what I understood to be your earlier position -- that processes in the brain generate, produce, our perceptions, including the experienced meaning of our perceptions. But the verb "computed" still seems to me to be misleading, implying that it is the neurons and neural nets that experience being and reflect on its possible meaning.

But I think that processes in the body/brain produce our perceptions. But this is not at all the same as saying that processes in the body/brain produce experience/consciousness.

If we think of consciousness/experience as something fundamental and suffused throughout what-is, then we can think of organisms/bodies as experiential processess (keeping in mind that all processes are experiential processes on this view) that form experiences such as emotions, perceptions, and conceptions.

In other words, consciousness may be fundamental but it doesnt follow that perceptions are fundamental.

[C]an interacting neurons and neural nets in the brain

sense the lived experience of being-in-the-world – of being present in an always temporally open-ended situation among things and others-- which begins in prereflective consciousness before reflection on experience begins? In what way are neurons and neural networks present in the experience of being and capable of ‘making sense’ of that experience?

If we are considering consciousness from the perspective of the mind-body problem, than we are faced with explaining how the body (including neurons and neural networks) is present in the experience of being.

There are two main models we've been discussing: dualism and monism.

Conscious Realism is a monist position. It holds that what-is is constituted of consciousness. Systems form within this substrate of consciousness. When these systems perceive themselves and one another, what-is appears to be material.

Thought experiment:

If one of these conscious systems were to be in such a state that the experience of green were manifested, and this system were to perceive itself via a mirror, it would see phsyiological/neurological processes.

The experience of green is primary and the perception of neurons is the derivative appearance. (Conscious Realism)

Materialists have it exactly backward: they hold that neurons are primary and experience is derivative. (Naive Realism)

Noumenon = green

Phenomenon = neurological processes

This is the sense in which a neurological process just is the experience green.

ps, how do you define 'Critical Realism'? We might as well try to get all our categorical ducks in a row

Critical realism (philosophy of perception) - Wikipedia

"In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data(for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. Put simply, critical realism highlights a mind-dependent aspect of the world that reaches to understand (and comes to an understanding of) the mind-independent world."

 

[Soupie]

What is it like to be EM waves? Something, but ironically not green.

What is it like to be (certain) neurological processes? Green.

 

[smcder]

@Constance - Strawson draws from Russell and Eddington to say it is a big mistake to think that we know something about matter that is incompatible with mind. He then follows Russell to say we don't know so much about matter otherwise.

One thing we know about physical stuff, given that (real) physicalism is true, is that when you put it together in the way in which it is put together in brains like ours, it regularly constitutes—is, literally is—experience like ours. Another thing we know about it, let us grant, is everything (true) that physics tells us. But what is this second kind of knowledge like? Well, there is a fundamental sense in which it is ‘abstract’, ‘purely formal’, merely a matter of ‘structure’, in Russell’s words.1 This is a well established but often overlooked point.2 ‘Physics is mathematical’, Russell says, ‘not because we know so much about the physical world’—and here he means the non-mental, non-experiential world, in my terms, because he is using ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ conventionally as opposed terms—but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative…. The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure—features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.

• Russell’s overall view is that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience’
• and that ‘as regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side’

Whether Russell or Eddington say anymore about why or wherefrom ... I do not know. It may just be a fait brut.

 

[Constance]

I dont know yet but I doubt it. He restarts a little into the paper section 9 or 10? Not sure. But I doubt he moves beyind this as I think he would have put that upfront.

I think that Strawson's problem is that he continues to think within the primarily positivist terms of analytical philosophy. I think he struggles within these presuppositions and cannot get beyond them. He has apparently not yet taken up and understood the contributions made by phenomenological philosophy to our understanding of the relationship between consciousness and world.

It's interesting that he apparently also struggles with how to interpret Descartes' dualism. Merleau-Ponty provided a critique of Descartes' dualism in the Phenomenology of Perception, but he also recognized there the significance of the cogito itself as foregrounded by Descartes. I'm trying to remember the exact quotation from MP in which he identified the real significance of Descartes' contribution as his having recognized (or at least sensed) consciousness as activity, as "thought in act," from which MP develops his own attempt to overcome radical dualism in the Phenomenology of Perception. Here is a paper that might interest you concerning MP's position on the cogito.

Perception and Self-Awareness in Merleau-Ponty: The Problem of the Tacit Cogito in the Phenomenology of Perception

Wai-Shun Hung, Chinese University of Hong Kong

http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rih/phs/events/200405_PEACE/papers/HUNGWaiShun.pdf

The first several paragraphs:

"Introduction: The Phenomenology of Perception and the Philosophy of Consciousness

If the legacy of Descartes is his idea of consciousness as a realm of interiority and transparency, the contributions of many twentieth-century philosophers consist precisely in their efforts to criticize this Cartesian notion of self. Among these efforts, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception occupies an ambiguous position. While its analysis of being-in-the-world as bodily insertion, of expression as incarnation of sense, and of the opaqueness of our inner life challenges the idea of consciousness as a realm of transparency and self-presence, its notion of a tacit cogito seems to remain a notion of self-presence, especially when compared to the critique of the metaphysics of presence put forth by Derrida, with whom Merleau-Ponty has much in common. 1 As to Merleau-Ponty himself, it is well known that he later concludes that the “problems posed” in the Phenomenology are “insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’–‘object’ distinction” (VI 253/200) and that “what I call the tacit cogito is impossible” (VI 224/171).2 However, the meaning of these criticisms remains to be clarified, and it is clear from the start that while the tacit cogito fails as a solution, the “problems posed” with this notion are indeed genuine and remain to be clarified. In this essay, we will attempt to understand Merleau-Ponty’s considerations behind the notion of the tacit cogito, and suggest that while this notion does not resolve the issue that it was intended to, the Phenomenology already contains another line of thought that will lead to Merleau-Ponty’s later solution to the same issue, namely, the relation between self-awareness and intentionality. Merleau-Ponty describes his work in the Phenomenology of Perception as a study of perception as “an original modality of consciousness” (PrP 41/12). In opposition to the two reductionistic approaches that he calls “empiricism” and “intellectualism,” he shows that the perceptual subject eludes the simple dichotomy of activity and passivity, the for-itself and the in-itself, but is rather an ambiguous junction of the two. We neither discover a ready-made meaning in the world nor impose a meaning upon it with the sense-giving acts of a pure consciousness; instead, meaning arises from perception, our primordial contact with the world. Drawing on the results of psychology and physiology, Merleau-Ponty describes how the conscious subject carries out tasks against a background of habitual skills sedimented in its body, and shows that that prior to these conscious acts the body already has a hold on the world and itself in perception and sensory-motor skills, which enables the subject to “‘be at home in’ (fréquenter) the world, ‘understand’ it and find a meaning in it” (PhP 274/237). Hence, instead of the constituting consciousness of idealism, “the truly transcendental” is the ambiguous life (PhP 418/364-365) which is both the personal life of the subject and the pre-personal, natural life of the body.3 As the two basic features of subjectivity –– transcendence and self-awareness –– can already be found in it, the body can be described as “a natural self” or as “the subject of perception” (PhP 239/206), but strictly speaking it is rather a “pre-subject” or natural subject “beneath” the conscious, reflective subject: “there is, therefore, another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here, and who marked out my place in it. This captive or natural spirit is my body” (PhP 294/254).

The first two parts of the Phenomenology of Perception is mainly concerned with describing the transcendence and self-awareness of the body-subject as well as the world unfolded before it, and as Renaud Barbaras notes, the turn, in part three of the book, towards “being-for-itself” is not unsurprising, as “one would think that the discovery of the body as natural subject of perception invalidates the question of for itself”. 4 Now in the “cogito” chapter Merleau-Ponty does pursue a critique of the Cartesian notion of consciousness, yet immediately after this critique is a renewed discussion of the notion of consciousness. Here the Cartesian position is represented by Descartes himself and Lachièze-Rey. The main thrust of Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is that, just as our perceptual experience is marked by “a thickness and an opacity” (PhP 56n./45n.), in our “inner life” consciousness is never totally transparent to itself, whether it is in its self-understanding in its emotive life, or in its experience of the hanging-together of a geometrical proof. Our emotions, instead of being transparent, are ambiguous even to ourselves. We can and do distinguish between “true” and “false” feelings and different degrees of reality for them (PhP 432/377), but when a feeling is described as “false”, it is not by appealing to knowledge gained from introspection. Sartre’s analysis has already shown that emotion is primarily a certain manner of apprehending the world, and our consciousness of it is non-reflective. Instead of being objects of our “internal perception” and relating only contingently to the world, emotions are ways of situating ourselves in the world and cannot be severed from it. They are projections of the intentions with which we pattern our behaviour, and, as in the case of perception, the awareness that we have of our emotions is also incomplete and open-ended. Thus when I become “disillusioned” of a relationship, or when I “discover” feelings that I have without realizing it, my discovery does not consist in the discovery of something hidden in unconsciousness, but rather comes from my observation and reflection on my own behaviour (PhP 436/381). Here my “introspection” is not a special kind of inner perception, but refers to a group of activities such as observation, recalling and taking note of my actions.

In the case of the geometrical proof, it would seem that I do not “create” a geometrical truth by proving it, and that it must have existed before I set to construct a figure to prove it; that, for example, a triangle has its properties independently of my attempt to prove them, and what I do in my proof is only to draw out what is eternally and unchangeably contained in the idea of a triangle. Thus while the synthesis in my actual perception of a triangular object will never be complete, the geometrical idea of a triangle is completely and immediately present to me. However, Merleau-Ponty immediately points out that the properties to be proved (that the angles of a triangle are 4 equal to two right angles, for example) and the steps leading to this conclusion are not really contained in the definition of a triangle, and the definition only serves as the starting point of my proof. Grasping that the steps hang together as the steps of one proof requires an act on my part, and the construction I make in the proof does not consist in the purely manual operation of my hand and pen on the paper (otherwise there would be no difference between a demonstration and any arbitrary set of strokes). It is rather a gesture, meaning that the lines I draw are the expression of an intention (PhP 442/386). What happens when it dawns on me that I can, by drawing a line through the apex of a triangle parallel to the opposite side, prove that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, is not that I now have a more adequate idea of the triangle, closer to its eternal ideal. Instead, in an act of “productive imagination” (PhP 443/386) I take up one of the possibilities suggested to me by the physiognomy or Gestalt (PhP 441/385) of the triangle. What this Gestalt gives me is not a set of “characteristics” arrayed exhaustively in thought, but a “dynamic formula” (PhP 443/386) that contains an indefinite number of possible structurations of space that my body can act out. In this way, the essences that geometry speaks of are “concrete essences,” and geometrical truths are proven when my body acts on the spatial possibilities presented by the Gestalt of an actual or imagined figure. These spatial possibilities are indefinite, and the triangle is always “bursting” with indefinite possibilities (PhP 443/386). Thus the sense of a geometrical truth is not determined once and for all. It can be fitted into new contexts (for example, from Euclidean to nonEuclidean space) and assume a new sense (PhP 454/396). On the other hand, the truths of geometry are not purely products of my imagination, and their truth is not grounded in my thought (PhP 444/387). For when I add further constructions to the triangle, I can bring to light more of its properties, and yet I assume that this newly transformed triangle does not cease to be the same one that I began with. This is because my body performs in this process a synthesis which is not upheld by an eidos of the triangle but is grounded in its spatiality and derives its necessity from it. The idea of the “essence of the triangle” is nothing more than the presumption of a completed synthesis, while the idea of a completed synthesis itself is borrowed from perceptual synthesis: “unless the perceived thing has for good and ever implanted within us the ideal notion of a being which is what it is, there would be no phenomenon of being. What I call the essence of triangle is nothing but this presumption of a completed synthesis, in terms of which we have defined the thing” (PhP 444-445/388).

The Return of the Cogito

However, it is immediately clear that for Merleau-Ponty, the critique of the Cartesian notion of consciousness does not imply a total critique of any conception of consciousness whatsoever. In fact, even the Cartesian conception already draws attention to an important feature of consciousness. The certainty of the Cartesian cogito lies in its immediate grasp of itself in its acts of thinking. In including not only understanding, doubting, judging but also willing, imagining and even perceiving as thoughts, Descartes is drawing on what he takes to be essential to these acts, namely, that they are conscious acts, acts which we are aware of immediately as happening “within us” (Principles of Philosophy, I, 9, AT VIII 7, AT IX 27), and it is this immediate awareness that grants thought its certainty. Thereby Descartes sets up a subjective realm of consciousness, an inner realm of immediacy and certainty, in opposition to an objective realm, the “external” world, and distinguishes between the “thought of seeing,” which is certain when taken by itself, and the transcendent interpretation of this thought articulated in judgement, which is open to doubt. This consciousness is reflexive, that is, it is always aware of its contents,5 as well as transparent, in that none of its contents can elude its grasp.

The Cartesian cogito is thus a “sphere of immanence,” a “realm in which my consciousness is fully at home and secure against all risks of error” (PhP 431/376). It is a self defined in terms of self-possession (PhP 428/373), and the relation of this consciousness to the body is merely contingent, that is, the body is not a necessary condition for there to be thoughts (Principles, I, 9, AT VII 7-8/IX 28). Yet we can already find in Descartes the idea of a transcendence which is given immediately in perception,6 only that his opposition between the inner and the outer (and between the thought of seeing and its interpretation in judgement) renders this transcendence problematic. If our relation to the transcendent things is understood in terms of the passivity of our consciousness, if the “thought of seeing” is taken to mean an “impression of seeing,” then its certainty amounts only to a probability and is no more certain than the purported existence of the thing seen.7 What’s more, talks of a probable “thought of seeing” make sense only in comparison with cases of “genuine seeing” (PhP 430/375). On the other hand, if this relation is understood in terms of the activity of our consciousness, if the “thought of seeing” is our awareness of the constituting power of our consciousness, then the certainty of this constituting power must extend to the constituted (PhP 430-431/376). Instead of providing grounds for a distinction between the inner and the outer and for the establishment of a realm of pure thought, the analysis of perception shows us that all my perceptions have to take place from a certain perspective, namely my body, and the perceived object is always given with each perception but never completely:

"Perception is precisely that kind of act in which there can be no question of setting the act itself apart from the end to which it is directed. Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality, since perception is inseparable from the consciousness which it has, or rather is, of reaching the thing itself…. If I see an astray, in the full sense of the word see, there must be an astray there. (PhP 429/374)"

Furthermore, when Descartes outlines the three aspects of the certainty of my experience, he is in effect highlighting the fact that my experience is always given to me as mine, and in this regard, the Cartesian return to the self contains a valid insight: “the very experience of transcendent things is possible only provided that I bear and find their project in myself” (PhP 423/369). This “double sense of the cogito” is, for Merleau-Ponty, “the fundamental fact of metaphysics”: “I am sure that there is being –– on the condition that I do not seek another sort of being than being-for-me.”8

"The question is always how I can be open to phenomena which transcend me, and which nevertheless exist only to the extent that I take them up and live them; how the presence to myself (Urpräsenz) which establishes my own limits and conditions every alien presence is at the same time depresentation (Entgegenwärtigung) and throws me outside myself." (PhP 417/363)

In other words, the question posed by the Cartesian cogito is that of the relation between self-awareness and intentionality, and what it should have revealed is that self awareness is given in the awareness of an object, albeit in a different manner: “The primary truth is indeed ‘I think,’ but only provided that we understand thereby ‘I belong to myself’ while belonging to the world” (PhP 466/407). . . . . . .

5Cf. Conversation with Burman, AT V 149. 6 For example, in the famous analysis of our perception of a piece of wax, an outward movement from the interiority of the thinking self to the world is provided in the reflection on the indefinite series of possible aspects of the wax, and it is this indefiniteness, which is understood by the intellect, rather than their perceptibility by the senses, that constitutes the essence of things as such (Second Meditation, AT VII 31-34, Letter to Henry More, 5th February 1649, AT V 268). It is this definition of transcendence as possessing an indefinite and regular series of aspects that allows us to distinguish dreams from waking experience (Sixth Meditation, AT VII 89-90). However, Descartes does not follow this path to the end and maintains a separate notion of existence (SC 211-212/196). 7 Also, following the empiricist definition of perception as the possession of qualities impressed upon the subject by the stimuli, the awareness of anything other than the immediately given will be a judgement in the sense of an interpretation. Therefore, the assumption of an indefinite series of aspects will be a judgement, a jump from the object’s perceived qualities such as smell, colour and taste, and when I judge that what I see from the window, hidden by coats and hats, are humans instead of automatons, I am making an inference from given qualities to qualities which are “hermetically sealed” (PhP 41). However, as Alquié points out, in this passage in the Second Meditation (AT VII 32), Descartes’ point is that while perception is psychologically immediate, it is logically (and as far as its truth is concerned) a judgement. Ferdinand Alquié, La Découverte métaphysique de l’homme chez Descartes (Paris: PUF, 1966), p.194. 8 Sens et non-sens (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 114/Sense and Non-sense, tr. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 93.

 

[smcder]

From the course I posted above

Introduction

The Unconscious Mind

It is now clear that our introspective knowledge of our own minds is incomplete. In the first place, the mental processes giving rise to conscious cognitive, emotional, and motivational states may lie outside our conscious control. Such processes are often labeled automatic, as opposed to controlled. Research on attention and automaticity suggests that at least some mental processes operate outside of conscious awareness, and voluntary control. In fact, there is some tendency to identify the psychological unconscious with these automatic processes.

However, the failure of introspection may also extend to mental states themselves. In psychology, there has been a general assumption that while conscious states -- what we perceive, remember, know, believe, think, feel, and want -- may be generated by automatic processes, mental states (or contents) themselves can't be unconscious. But there is now a large literature that suggests that mental states as well as mental processes can be unconscious -- that is, that our experience, thought, and action can be influenced by percepts, memories, and the like of which we are not aware. This viewpoint is best developed in the literature on implicit memory, but we will see how the implicit-explicit distinction can be extended beyond memory to other cognitive domains, such as perception and thinking, and beyond cognition to the domains of emotion and motivation. This body of research now indicates that it is indeed meaningful to speak of percepts, memories, and the like that are unconscious in the sense that they are inaccessible to introspective phenomenal awareness.

In a sense, the question of unconscious mental life returns us to the metaphysical question, of whether there are two kinds of mind -- one conscious and the other unconscious. If there is an unconscious mind, what is the difference that makes for consciousness? The difference between automatic and controlled processes, and between conscious and unconscious mental states provides another perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness.

 

[smcder]

From the same source under the section on Altered States

Meditation raises a number of interesting questions about consciousness:

• Is it possible to have consciousness without intentionality or "aboutness"? That is, is it possible to be conscious without being conscious of anything?

So will see if there is some kind of answer to this.

 

[smcder]

In opposition to the two reductionistic approaches that he calls “empiricism” and “intellectualism,” he shows that the perceptual subject eludes the simple dichotomy of activity and passivity, the for-itself and the in-itself, but is rather an ambiguous junction of the two. We neither discover a ready-made meaning in the world nor impose a meaning upon it with the sense-giving acts of a pure consciousness; instead, meaning arises from perception, our primordial contact with the world.

This is what is exciting about phenomenology to me, that it steps outside of logic that gives discrete categories, that gives eitherors then struggles to fit fluid experience to these categories. I run into this time after time in terms of terms. There is a long forking path from simple starts until one finds oneself as a neo-Strawsonianpseudocriticalnonemergentalphysiomaterialist ... with a twist. Because in real experience there is always a twist.

Drawing on the results of psychology and physiology, Merleau-Ponty describes how the conscious subject carries out tasks against a background of habitual skills sedimented in its body, and shows that that prior to these conscious acts the body already has a hold on the world and itself in perception and sensory-motor skills, which enables the subject to “‘be at home in’ (fréquenter) the world, ‘understand’ it and find a meaning in it” (PhP 274/237).

This is what I understand Dreyfus to base his critiques of AI on - I mention this because the critique emerged from GOFAI's failure to accomplish what appeared to be "simple tasks" and which engendered optimistic projections in the community - things like walking across a room crowded with furniture. This proves very difficult for a machine but very easy for the simplest organisms using "skillful coping" as Dreyfus would put it. This critique of AI resulted in two books for Dreyfus and presumably is part of why his focus is on skillful coping and this focus then is the basis of criticism of his approach. So, with what little I now, I'd say it's not that he gets wrong what he does say about phenomenology but rather that what he says has a narrow focus. I've heard him referred to as a kind of "pragmatist".

 

[smcder]

Just found this in the Wikipedia article on Merleau-Ponty and I think this is right about Dreyfus as far as I understand it.

Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology— he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.

Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.

...

Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist[citation needed], and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)

 

[Constance]

Just found this in the Wikipedia article on Merleau-Ponty and I think this is right about Dreyfus as far as I understand it.

Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology— he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.

Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.

...

Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist[citation needed], and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)

I'm delighted with the direction you've taken with these last four posts and I'll read with interest the material you've linked. I agree that we need to explore various aspects of subliminal consciousness if we are to gain some grasp of consciousness as a whole. It seems to me that psychology as a field of inquiry into consciousness, mind, and self remains deeply fragmented and incomplete. F.W.H. Myers and Kelly and Kelly seem to me to provide the most comprehensive texts available to us at present in surveying expressions of subliminal consciousness as it variously influences ordinary 'waking consciousness'.

 

[Constance]

From the course I posted above

Introduction

The Unconscious Mind

It is now clear that our introspective knowledge of our own minds is incomplete. In the first place, the mental processes giving rise to conscious cognitive, emotional, and motivational states may lie outside our conscious control. Such processes are often labeled automatic, as opposed to controlled. Research on attention and automaticity suggests that at least some mental processes operate outside of conscious awareness, and voluntary control. In fact, there is some tendency to identify the psychological unconscious with these automatic processes.

However, the failure of introspection may also extend to mental states themselves. In psychology, there has been a general assumption that while conscious states -- what we perceive, remember, know, believe, think, feel, and want -- may be generated by automatic processes, mental states (or contents) themselves can't be unconscious. But there is now a large literature that suggests that mental states as well as mental processes can be unconscious -- that is, that our experience, thought, and action can be influenced by percepts, memories, and the like of which we are not aware. This viewpoint is best developed in the literature on implicit memory, but we will see how the implicit-explicit distinction can be extended beyond memory to other cognitive domains, such as perception and thinking, and beyond cognition to the domains of emotion and motivation. This body of research now indicates that it is indeed meaningful to speak of percepts, memories, and the like that are unconscious in the sense that they are inaccessible to introspective phenomenal awareness.

In a sense, the question of unconscious mental life returns us to the metaphysical question, of whether there are two kinds of mind -- one conscious and the other unconscious. If there is an unconscious mind, what is the difference that makes for consciousness? The difference between automatic and controlled processes, and between conscious and unconscious mental states provides another perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness.

Reading the linked page I became curious about the referenced material provided by Bryn Mawr
concerning progress in philosophy and psychology from Descartes to James. Turned up this first page of links that includes that material and more concerning the history of dualism. First the link to the search page, and then, if it will copy, the live links on the first page of search results.

Serendip Studio Projects | Serendip Studio's One World

About 493 results (0.25 seconds)



Rene Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism

Dec 2, 1996 ... RENÉ DESCARTES AND THE LEGACY OF MIND/BODY DUALISM. René Descartes. The 17th Century: Reaction to the Dualism of Mind and ...
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/Descartes.html


Mind and Body

Jun 30, 2005 ... ... AND BODY: RENÉ DESCARTES TO WILLIAM JAMES ... Citation: Wozniak, Robert H. "Mind and Body: Rene Déscartes to William James"
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/

The 17th Century: Reaction to the Dualism of Mind and Body

Sep 3, 1996 ... The history of philosophizing about the relation of body and mind sinceDescartes is the history of attempts to escape the Cartesian impasse.
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/17th.html


Mind, Brain, and Adaptation

Sep 3, 1996 ... Mind, Brain, and Adaptation: the Localization of Cerebral Function ..... Wozniak, Robert H. "Mind and Body: Rene Déscartes to William James"
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/Adaptation.html

The 18th Century: Mind, Matter, and Monism

Sep 3, 1996 ... This was the view offered a century after Descartes by Julien Offray de la Mettrie ( 1709-1751) [see figure 6]. [Figure 7] La Mettrie was born in ...
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/18th.html

Descartes Error: Reviews

Jul 9, 2013 ... Review of Descartes' Error by students in Neural and Behavior ... In explaining his view of body, brain, and mind, he admits the limits of science ...
serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/damasio/Damasioreview.html


Biological Consciousness and the Experience of the Transcendent

Oct 26, 1998 ... All trends pertaining to the mind/body problem in the late 19th century, .... the mind/body dilemma originally posed so trenchantly by Descartes.
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/James.html


The 19th Century: Mind and Brain

Sep 3, 1996 ... Although the theories of mind/brain relationship prevalent in the 19th century ... Descartes, of course, had conceived the idea that animals were ...
Serendip Studio's One WorldMind/19th.html


Descartes: Being and Thinking

Mind and Body: From René Descartes to William James. Writing Descartes: I Am .... I am just reading Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind ... In my mind ...
serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/lesswrong/descartes/


Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain | Serendip ...

Dec 18, 2008 ... In his book, Descartes' Error, Antonio Damasio challenges the idea of mind-body dualism that has so pervaded culture since Descartes' ...
serendip.brynmawr.edu/.../descartes’-error-emotion-reason-and-human-brain

ETA: there are many significant additional references provided in succeeding pages of the search linked above.

 

[Constance]

From the course I posted above

Introduction

The Unconscious Mind

It is now clear that our introspective knowledge of our own minds is incomplete. In the first place, the mental processes giving rise to conscious cognitive, emotional, and motivational states may lie outside our conscious control. Such processes are often labeled automatic, as opposed to controlled. Research on attention and automaticity suggests that at least some mental processes operate outside of conscious awareness, and voluntary control. In fact, there is some tendency to identify the psychological unconscious with these automatic processes.

However, the failure of introspection may also extend to mental states themselves. In psychology, there has been a general assumption that while conscious states -- what we perceive, remember, know, believe, think, feel, and want -- may be generated by automatic processes, mental states (or contents) themselves can't be unconscious. But there is now a large literature that suggests that mental states as well as mental processes can be unconscious -- that is, that our experience, thought, and action can be influenced by percepts, memories, and the like of which we are not aware. This viewpoint is best developed in the literature on implicit memory, but we will see how the implicit-explicit distinction can be extended beyond memory to other cognitive domains, such as perception and thinking, and beyond cognition to the domains of emotion and motivation. This body of research now indicates that it is indeed meaningful to speak of percepts, memories, and the like that are unconscious in the sense that they are inaccessible to introspective phenomenal awareness.

In a sense, the question of unconscious mental life returns us to the metaphysical question, of whether there are two kinds of mind -- one conscious and the other unconscious. If there is an unconscious mind, what is the difference that makes for consciousness? The difference between automatic and controlled processes, and between conscious and unconscious mental states provides another perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness.

Here is further section of the website you linked that I think we should look at next:

"The Explicit and the Implicit: Unconscious Mental States."

Extract

Distinguishing States from Processes

​

How do we know whether something is a state or a process? That's where the philosophical concept of intentionality comes in.

Brentano argued that "Intentionality is the mark of the mental". Intentional states are aboutsomething, they refer to something, they represent something, other than themselves.

James made the same point when he asserted that mental states "deal with objects independent of themselves". Mental states are truly cognitive, in that they "possess the function of knowing". We perceive objects, we remember events, we think thoughts, we form mental images, we feel emotions, we desire objects or activities.

And Searle repeated the point when he wrote that mental states have "content", in that they refer to some specific feature of the world.

So, in the cognitive domain, unconscious mental states refer to percepts, memories, thoughts, and pieces of knowledge which, when conscious, obviously have intentionality -- precisely because their "content" is "about" something "other than themselves".

The question is, then, whether intentional states -- percepts, memories, thoughts, and other aspects of knowledge -- can be unconscious and still have this defining feature of intentionality."

Implicit Cognition

 

[smcder]

I'm delighted with the direction you've taken with these last four posts and I'll read with interest the material you've linked. I agree that we need to explore various aspects of subliminal consciousness if we are to gain some grasp of consciousness as a whole. It seems to me that psychology as a field of inquiry into consciousness, mind, and self remains deeply fragmented and incomplete. F.W.H. Myers and Kelly and Kelly seem to me to provide the most comprehensive texts available to us at present in surveying expressions of subliminal consciousness as it variously influences ordinary 'waking consciousness'.

Didn't we come across a follow up book or preview by Kelly & Kelly or other authors?

Let me search.

 

[smcder]

Here is further section of the website you linked that I think we should look at next:

"The Explicit and the Implicit: Unconscious Mental States."

Extract

Distinguishing States from Processes

​

How do we know whether something is a state or a process? That's where the philosophical concept of intentionality comes in.

Brentano argued that "Intentionality is the mark of the mental". Intentional states are aboutsomething, they refer to something, they represent something, other than themselves.

James made the same point when he asserted that mental states "deal with objects independent of themselves". Mental states are truly cognitive, in that they "possess the function of knowing". We perceive objects, we remember events, we think thoughts, we form mental images, we feel emotions, we desire objects or activities.

And Searle repeated the point when he wrote that mental states have "content", in that they refer to some specific feature of the world.

So, in the cognitive domain, unconscious mental states refer to percepts, memories, thoughts, and pieces of knowledge which, when conscious, obviously have intentionality -- precisely because their "content" is "about" something "other than themselves".

The question is, then, whether intentional states -- percepts, memories, thoughts, and other aspects of knowledge -- can be unconscious and still have this defining feature of intentionality."

Implicit Cognition

Ok let me read this

 

[Constance]

Didn't we come across a follow up book or preview by Kelly & Kelly or other authors?

Let me search.

Yes, another book, but I'm not recalling the title.

 

[Constance]

Ok let me read this

One has to slog through the first 2/3 to 3/4s of it {at least that was my experience} but it becomes much more interesting after that. It links to another page entitled "Beyond the Cognitive Unconscious: Implicit Motivation and Emotion," which I'm just beginning and which looks intensely interesting.

Emotion/Motivation

The site as a whole offers much more to pursue as well. A great find. Thank you for finding it.

 

[smcder]

One has to slog through the first 2/3 to 3/4s of it {at least that was my experience} but it becomes much more interesting after that. It links to another page entitled "Beyond the Cognitive Unconscious: Implicit Motivation and Emotion," which I'm just beginning and which looks intensely interesting.

Emotion/Motivation

The site as a whole offers much more to pursue as well. A great find. Thank you for finding it.

Ok I'll read it too. I'm moving my son this weekend so it may be Sun but I'll catch up!

 

[smcder]

Listening to the Cognitive Science Lecture 3 ... Psychophysics ...fascinating.

 

[Constance]

Listening to the Cognitive Science Lecture 3 ... Psychophysics ...fascinating.

I'll watch and listen to this tonight. Right now I'm reading the section titled 'Psychophysics' at the website we've been reading. Questioning this sentence in the text:

"Put another way, we see electromagnetic waves, and we hear sound waves, etc."

I have a long way to go in the Psychophysics section and in this topic as a whole, but this claim strikes me as an ultimately misleading abstraction. Of course, as a phenomenologist I'd say that. But I think that I do not see or hear EM waves; I see and hear the local, palpable, temporal, physical, world -- the actual environing mileau -- in which I experience my temporal existence, moment by moment, year by year. I also think that the more our generation becomes persuaded that our existential experience -- grounded in the evolved and evolving nature of our lived being and of our lived world's being -- is 'unreal', the more we lose the ability to comprehend and appreciate the intrinsic meaning of our being. And the more we become willing to erase ourselves and our existence to make way for the projected technological 'singularity'.

Psychophysics