DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT

Note: most of these excerpts come from documents that are copyright and are provided to give a direct insight into an author's style and level of contribution to the field. In recent years the publishing of full online texts has been an immense boon to students and the publishers deserve our gratitude. Students should follow the links for the original texts and, if copyright holders feel that the length of quotations is excessive, they should save themselves legal fees by sending an email detailing any objections or requirements for credit/removal, we will comply.

 

Contents

Philosophy of Consciousness: A Bibliographic Approach for Students

Philosophers have provided a remarkably consistent account of conscious experience as things arranged in some sort of mental space and time that is probably in the brain. The things are observed from an apparently impossible point within mental space and time.

Rene Descartes (1628). Rules For The Direction of The Mind

http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/philosophy/kbryson/rulesfor.htm

"Rules for the Direction of the Mind" demonstrates Descartes' dualism. He describes the brain as the part of the body that contains images or phantasies of the world but believes that there is a further, spiritual mind that processes the images in the brain:

"My fourth supposition is that the power of movement, in fact the nerves, originate in the brain, where the phantasy is seated; and that the phantasy moves them in various ways, as the external sense <organ> moves the <organ of> common sensibility, or as the whole pen is moved by its tip. This illustration also shows how it is that the phantasy can cause various movements in the nerves, although it has not images of these formed in itself, but certain other images, of which these movements are possible effects. For the pen as a whole does not move in the same way as its tip; indeed, the greater part of the pen seems to go along with an altogether different, contrary motion. This enables us to understand how the movements of all other animals are accomplished, although we suppose them to have no consciousness (rerum cognitio) but only a bodily <organ of> phantasy; and furthermore, how it is that in ourselves those operations are performed which occur without any aid of reason.

My fifth and last supposition is that the power of cognition properly so called is purely spiritual, and is just as distinct from the body as a whole as blood is from bone or a hand from an eye; and that it is a single power. Sometimes it receives images from the common sensibility at the same time as the phantasy does; sometimes it applies itself to the images preserved in memory; sometimes it forms new images, and these so occupy the imagination that often it is not able at the same time to receive ideas from the common sensibility, or to pass them on to the locomotive power in the way that the body left to itself -would. "

Rene Descartes 1641. Meditations on first philosophy

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Meditation1.html

Descartes reasons that, even if everything were a dream there could be a consistent body of knowledge within this dream: Meditation I:

"6. Let us suppose, then, that we are dreaming, and that all these particulars--namely, the opening of the eyes, the motion of the head, the forth- putting of the hands--are merely illusions; and even that we really possess neither an entire body nor hands such as we see. Nevertheless it must be admitted at least that the objects which appear to us in sleep are, as it were, painted representations which could not have been formed unless in the likeness of realities; and, therefore, that those general objects, at all events, namely, eyes, a head, hands, and an entire body, are not simply imaginary, but really existent. For, in truth, painters themselves, even when they study to represent sirens and satyrs by forms the most fantastic and extraordinary, cannot bestow upon them natures absolutely new, but can only make a certain medley of the members of different animals; or if they chance to imagine something so novel that nothing at all similar has ever been seen before, and such as is, therefore, purely fictitious and absolutely false, it is at least certain that the colors of which this is composed are real. And on the same principle, although these general objects, viz. [a body], eyes, a head, hands, and the like, be imaginary, we are nevertheless absolutely necessitated to admit the reality at least of some other objects still more simple and universal than these, of which, just as of certain real colors, all those images of things, whether true and real, or false and fantastic, that are found in our consciousness (cogitatio) are formed.

7. To this class of objects seem to belong corporeal nature in general and its extension; the figure of extended things, their quantity or magnitude, and their number, as also the place in, and the time during, which they exist, and other things of the same sort.

8. We will not, therefore, perhaps reason illegitimately if we conclude from this that Physics, Astronomy, Medicine, and all the other sciences that have for their end the consideration of composite objects, are indeed of a doubtful character; but that Arithmetic, Geometry, and the other sciences of the same class, which regard merely the simplest and most general objects, and scarcely inquire whether or not these are really existent, contain somewhat that is certain and indubitable: for whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three make five, and that a square has but four sides; nor does it seem possible that truths so apparent can ever fall under a suspicion of falsity [or incertitude]."

Descartes uses the term "idea" for the sensory content of conscious experience: Meditation III:

"5. Of my thoughts some are, as it were, images of things, and to these alone properly belongs the name IDEA; as when I think [ represent to my mind ] a man, a chimera, the sky, an angel or God. Others, again, have certain other forms; as when I will, fear, affirm, or deny, I always, indeed, apprehend something as the object of my thought, but I also embrace in thought something more than the representation of the object; and of this class of thoughts some are called volitions or affections, and others judgments."

 

He describes a concept of mental space and time in Meditation V:

"2. But before considering whether such objects as I conceive exist without me, I must examine their ideas in so far as these are to be found in my consciousness, and discover which of them are distinct and which confused.

3. In the first place, I distinctly imagine that quantity which the philosophers commonly call continuous, or the extension in length, breadth, and depth that is in this quantity, or rather in the object to which it is attributed. Further, I can enumerate in it many diverse parts, and attribute to each of these all sorts of sizes, figures, situations, and local motions; and, in fine, I can assign to each of these motions all degrees of duration."

He points out that sensation occurs by way of the brain, conceptualising the brain as the place in the body where the extended ideas are found : Meditations VI:

20. I remark, in the next place, that the mind does not immediately receive the impression from all the parts of the body, but only from the brain, or perhaps even from one small part of it, viz., that in which the common sense (senses communis) is said to be, which as often as it is affected in the same way gives rise to the same perception in the mind, although meanwhile the other parts of the body may be diversely disposed, as is proved by innumerable experiments, which it is unnecessary here to enumerate.  

He finds that ideas are extended things and hence in the (brain part) of the body. He also considers the origin of intuitions, suggesting that they can enter the mind without being consciously created: Meditations VI, 10 :

10. Moreover, I find in myself diverse faculties of thinking that have each their special mode: for example, I find I possess the faculties of imagining and perceiving, without which I can indeed clearly and distinctly conceive myself as entire, but I cannot reciprocally conceive them without conceiving myself, that is to say, without an intelligent substance in which they reside, for [in the notion we have of them, or to use the terms of the schools] in their formal concept, they comprise some sort of intellection; whence I perceive that they are distinct from myself as modes are from things. I remark likewise certain other faculties, as the power of changing place, of assuming diverse figures, and the like, that cannot be conceived and cannot therefore exist, any more than the preceding, apart from a substance in which they inhere. It is very evident, however, that these faculties, if they really exist, must belong to some corporeal or extended substance, since in their clear and distinct concept there is contained some sort of extension, but no intellection at all. Further, I cannot doubt but that there is in me a certain passive faculty of perception, that is, of receiving and taking knowledge of the ideas of sensible things; but this would be useless to me, if there did not also exist in me, or in some other thing, another active faculty capable of forming and producing those ideas. But this active faculty cannot be in me [in as far as I am but a thinking thing], seeing that it does not presuppose thought, and also that those ideas are frequently produced in my mind without my contributing to it in any way, and even frequently contrary to my will. This faculty must therefore exist in some substance different from me, in which all the objective reality of the ideas that are produced by this faculty is contained formally or eminently, as I before remarked; and this substance is either a body, that is to say, a corporeal nature in which is contained formally [and in effect] all that is objectively [and by representation] in those ideas; or it is God himself, or some other creature, of a rank superior to body, in which the same is contained eminently. But as God is no deceiver, it is manifest that he does not of himself and immediately communicate those ideas to me, nor even by the intervention of any creature in which their objective reality is not formally, but only eminently, contained. For as he has given me no faculty whereby I can discover this to be the case, but, on the contrary, a very strong inclination to believe that those ideas arise from corporeal objects, I do not see how he could be vindicated from the charge of deceit, if in truth they proceeded from any other source, or were produced by other causes than corporeal things: and accordingly it must be concluded, that corporeal objects exist. Nevertheless, they are not perhaps exactly such as we perceive by the senses, for their comprehension by the senses is, in many instances, very obscure and confused; but it is at least necessary to admit that all which I clearly and distinctly conceive as in them, that is, generally speaking all that is comprehended in the object of speculative geometry, really exists external to me.

He considers that the mind itself is the thing that generates thoughts and is not extended (occupies no space). The mind works on the ideas that exist in that part of the body called the brain. This is Descartes' dualism: it is the proposition that there is an unextended place called the mind that acts upon the extended things in the brain. Meditations VI, 9:

"... And although I may, or rather, as I will shortly say, although I certainly do possess a body with which I am very closely conjoined; nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I, [that is, my mind, by which I am what I am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it."

Descartes' dualism seems to have arisen because in 1641 there was no concept of a non-conscious information processor (computer) and hence the non-conscious origin of intuitions appeared miraculous.

Nicholas Malebranche (1674-5). The Search After Truth (De la Recherche de la Verite, 3 vol. 1674-1675).

Malebranche proposed that what we perceive is a copy, or representation, of the external world. He was one of the first Philosophers to enunciate the homunculus problem. He reasons that to see external objects there must be a transfer of something material from the objects to the place where they are seen. He also realises that these things appear to be seen from a point. Compressing the substance that transmits the image into a point appears to be impossible. Especially given that we perceive the parts of the image at an instant. Malebranche called the representations of external objects "ideas".

Nicholas Malebranche (1674-5). Meditations sur l'humilité et la pénitence

http://abu.cnam.fr/cgi-bin/go?humilite3

Ce n'est point l'homme qui produit en lui les idées par lesquel les il apperçoit toutes choses; car il n'est pas à lui-même sa lumiére. Et la Philosophie m'apprenant que les objets ne peuvent pas former dans l'esprit les idées qui les représentent, il faut reconnoître qu'il n'y a que Dieu qui puisse nous éclairer.

He proposed that ideas themselves derived from God, hence avoiding the problem of simultaneous perception at a point.

 

Locke, J. (1689). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Locke/echu/

Locke is an Indirect Realist, admitting of external objects but describing these as represented within the mind. He considers that what is sensed becomes a mental thing: Chapter IX: Of Perception paragraph 1:

"This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind; whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the mind; wherein consists actual perception. "

Locke calls the contents of consciousness "ideas" (cf: Descartes, Malebranche) and regards sensation, imagination etc. as being similar or even alike. Chapter I: Of Ideas in general, and their Original:

"1. Idea is the object of thinking. Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas,- such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them?

I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already; and, I suppose what I have said in the foregoing Book will be much more easily admitted, when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has; and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind;- for which I shall appeal to every one's own observation and experience.

2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:- How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.

3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. First, our Senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

4. The operations of our minds, the other source of them. Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is,- the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got;- which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds;- which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.

5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these. The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. "

This last line in paragraph 5 vaguely distinguishes Locke from Cartesian dualists: "..and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations." Yet he argues against all conscious experience being in mental time and space (does not consider that taste might be on the tongue or a smell come from a cheese): Chapter XIII: Complex Ideas of Simple Modes:- and First, of the Simple Modes of the Idea of Space - paragraph 25:

"I shall not now argue with those men, who take the measure and possibility of all being only from their narrow and gross imaginations: but having here to do only with those who conclude the essence of body to be extension, because they say they cannot imagine any sensible quality of any body without extension,- I shall desire them to consider, that, had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and smells as much as on those of sight and touch; nay, had they examined their ideas of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would have found that they included in them no idea of extension at all, which is but an affection of body, as well as the rest, discoverable by our senses, which are scarce acute enough to look into the pure essences of things."

Locke understood the "specious" or extended present but conflates this with longer periods of time: Chapter XIV. Idea of Duration and its Simple Modes - paragraph 1:

"Duration is fleeting extension. There is another sort of distance, or length, the idea whereof we get not from the permanent parts of space, but from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession. This we call duration; the simple modes whereof are any different lengths of it whereof we have distinct ideas, as hours, days, years, &c., time and eternity."

Hume (1739-40). A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects.

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/ToC/hume%20treatise%20ToC.htm

Hume represents a type of pure empiricism where certainty is only assigned to present experience. As we can only directly know the mind he works within this constraint. He admits that there can be consistent bodies of knowledge within experience and would probably regard himself as an Indirect Realist but with the caveat that the things that are inferred to be outside the mind, in the physical world, could be no more than inferences within the mind.

Hume has a clear concept of mental space and time that is informed by the senses:

"The idea of space is convey'd to the mind by two senses, the sight and touch; nor does anything ever appear extended, that is not either visible or tangible. That compound impression, which represents extension, consists of several lesser impressions, that are indivisible to the eye or feeling, and may be call'd impressions of atoms or corpuscles endow'd with colour and solidity. But this is not all. 'Tis not only requisite, that these atoms shou'd be colour'd or tangible, in order to discover themselves to our senses; 'tis also necessary we shou'd preserve the idea of their colour or tangibility in order to comprehend them by our imagination. There is nothing but the idea of their colour or tangibility, which can render them conceivable by the mind. Upon the removal of the ideas of these sensible qualities, they are utterly annihilated to the thought or imagination.'

Now such as the parts are, such is the whole. If a point be not consider'd as colour'd or tangible, it can convey to us no idea; and consequently the idea of extension, which is compos'd of the ideas of these points, can never possibly exist. But if the idea of extension really can exist, as we are conscious it does, its parts must also exist; and in order to that, must be consider'd as colour'd or tangible. We have therefore no idea of space or extension, but when we regard it as an object either of our sight or feeling.

The same reasoning will prove, that the indivisible moments of time must be fill'd with some real object or existence, whose succession forms the duration, and makes it be conceivable by the mind."

In common with Locke and Eastern Philosophy, Hume considers reflection and sensation to be similar, perhaps identical:

"Thus it appears, that the belief or assent, which always attends the memory and senses, is nothing but the vivacity of those perceptions they present; and that this alone distinguishes them from the imagination. To believe is in this case to feel an immediate impression of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory. 'Tis merely the force and liveliness of the perception, which constitutes the first act of the judgment, and lays the foundation of that reasoning, which we build upon it, when we trace the relation of cause and effect."

Hume considers that the origin of sensation can never be known, believing that the canvass of the mind contains our view of the world whatever the ultimate source of the images within the view and that we can construct consistent bodies of knowledge within these constraints:

"As to those impressions, which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, and 'twill always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or are produc'd by the creative power of the mind, or are deriv'd from the author of our being. Nor is such a question any way material to our present purpose. We may draw inferences from the coherence of our perceptions, whether they be true or false; whether they represent nature justly, or be mere illusions of the senses."

It may be possible to trace the origins of Jackson's Knowledge Argument in Hume's work:

" Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be plac'd before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; 'tis plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, said will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether 'tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, tho' it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe i here are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived from the correspondent impressions; tho' the instance is so particular and singular, that 'tis scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim."

David Hume (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/david_hume/human_understanding.html

Hume's view of Locke and Malebranche:

"The fame of Cicero flourishes at present; but that of Aristotle is utterly decayed. La Bruyere passes the seas, and still maintains his reputation: But the glory of Malebranche is confined to his own nation, and to his own age. And Addison, perhaps, will be read with pleasure, when Locke shall be entirely forgotten."

He is clear about relational knowledge in space and time:

"13. .. But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted."

...

19. Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together; I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect."

He is also clear that, although we experience the output of processes, we do not experience the processes themselves:

"29. It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends. Our senses inform us of the colour, weight, and consistence of bread; but neither sense nor reason can ever inform us of those qualities which fit it for the nourishment and support of a human body. Sight or feeling conveys an idea of the actual motion of bodies; but as to that wonderful force or power, which would carry on a moving body for ever in a continued change of place, and which bodies never lose but by communicating it to others; of this we cannot form the most distant conception. ..

58. ... All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. "

Our idea of process is not a direct experience but seems to originate from remembering the repetition of events:

"59 ..It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connexion among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights and positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only, that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist."

 

Immanuel Kant (1781). Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith with preface by Howard Caygill. Pub: Palgrave Macmillan.

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html

See also John Clarke's study notes at: http://www.bright.net/~jclarke/kant/ 

Notice the title of this most influential work in philosophy. Kant describes his objective in this work as discovering the axioms ("a priori concepts") and then the processes of 'understanding'.

P12 "This enquiry, which is somewhat deeply grounded, has two sides. The one refers to the objects of pure understanding, and is intended to expound and render intelligible the objective validity of its a priori concepts. It is therefore essential to my purposes. The other seeks to investigate the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it rests; and so deals with it in its subjective aspect. Although this latter exposition is of great importance for my chief purpose, it does not form an essential part of it. For the chief question is always simply this: - what and how much can the understanding and reason know apart from all experience?"

'Experience' is simply accepted. Kant believes that the physical world exists but is not known directly:

P 24 "For we are brought to the conclusion that we can never transcend the limits of possible experience, though that is precisely what this science is concerned, above all else, to achieve. This situation yields, however, just the very experiment by which, indirectly, we are enabled to prove the truth of this first estimate of our a priori knowledge of reason, namely, that such knowledge has to do only with appearances, and must leave the thing in itself as indeed real per se, but as not known by us. "

 

Kant is clear about the form and content of conscious experience. He notes that we can only experience things that have appearance and 'form' - content and geometrical arrangement.

P65-66 "IN whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way. The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us. The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by it, is sensation. That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance. That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term its matter; but that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the form of appearance. That in which alone the sensations can be posited and ordered in a certain form, cannot itself be sensation; and therefore, while the matter of all appearance is given to us a posteriori only, its form must lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind, and so must allow of being considered apart from all sensation. "

Furthermore he realises that experience exists without much content. That consciousness depends on form:

P66 "The pure form of sensible intuitions in general, in which all the manifold of intuition is intuited in certain relations, must be found in the mind a priori. This pure form of sensibility may also itself be called pure intuition. Thus, if I take away from the representation of a body that which the understanding thinks in regard to it, substance, force, divisibility, etc. , and likewise what belongs to sensation, impenetrability, hardness, colour, etc. , something still remains over from this empirical intuition, namely, extension and figure. These belong to pure intuition, which, even without any actual object of the senses or of sensation, exists in the mind a priori as a mere form of sensibility. The science of all principles of a priori sensibility I call transcendental aesthetic."

Kant proposes that space exists in our experience and that experience could not exist without it (apodeictic means 'incontrovertible):

P 68 "1. Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the representation of space must be presupposed. The representation of space cannot, therefore, be empirically obtained from the relations of outer appearance. On the contrary, this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation. 2. Space is a necessary a priori representation, which underlies all outer intuitions. We can never represent to ourselves the absence of space, though we can quite well think it as empty of objects. It must therefore be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a determina- tion dependent upon them. It is an a priori representation, which necessarily underlies outer appearances. * 3. The apodeictic certainty of all geometrical propositions and the possibility of their a priori construction is grounded in this a priori necessity of space. ..4. ...5..."

He is equally clear about the necessity of time as part of experience but he has no clear exposition of the (specious present) extended present:

P 74 "1. Time is not an empirical concept that has been derived from any experience. For neither coexistence nor succession would ever come within our perception, if the representation of time were not presupposed as underlying them a priori. Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively). P 073a They are connected with P 074a the appearances only as effects accidentally added by the particular constitution of the sense organs. Accordingly, they are not a priori representations, but are grounded in sensation, and, indeed, in the case of taste, even upon feeling (pleasure and pain), as an effect of sensation. Further, no one can have a priori a representation of a colour or of any taste; whereas, since space concerns only the pure form of intuition, and therefore involves no sensation whatsoever, and nothing empirical, all kinds and determinations of space can and must be represented a priori, if concepts of figures and of their relations are to arise. Through space alone is it possible that things should be outer objects to us. ..2. 3.. 4.. 5..."

Kant has a model of experience as a succession of 3D instants, based on conventional 18th century thinking, allowing his reason to overcome his observation. He says of time that:

P 79 " It is nothing but the form of our inner intuition. If we take away from our inner intuition the peculiar condition of our sensibility, the concept of time likewise vanishes; it does not inhere in the objects, but merely in the subject which intuits them. I can indeed say that my representations follow one another; but this is only to say that we are conscious of them as in a time sequence, that is, in conformity with the form of inner sense. Time is not, therefore, something in itself, nor is it an objective determination inherent in things."

This analysis is strange because if uses the geometric term "form" but then uses the processing term "succession".

 

Edmund Husserl (1937). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenology

(The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1954) publ. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970. Sections 22 - 25 and 57 - 68, 53 pages in all.)

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl.htm

Husserl writes in a style that presents a multitude of views, many of which are opposed to each other. He is also rather obscure when concepts become difficult, for instance:

"The genuine intentional synthesis is discovered in the synthesis of several acts into one act, such that, in a unique manner of binding one meaning to another, there emerges not merely a whole, an amalgam whose parts are meanings, but rather a single meaning in which these meanings themselves are contained, but in a meaningful way. With this the problems of correlation, too, already announce themselves; and thus, in fact, this work contains the first, though of course very imperfect, beginnings of "phenomenology.""

Husserl seems to be largely a Humean in the sense that he gives precedence to mental experience as the only thing that may be known directly and hence certainly. He regards the components of experience as part of consciousness, so the intention to move, the movement and the sensation of movement are bound or 'bracketed' together into an a single meaning.

"In my perceptual field I find myself holding sway as ego through my organs and generally through everything belonging to me as an ego in my ego-acts and faculties. However, though the objects of the life-world, if they are to show their very own being, necessarily show themselves as physical bodies, this does not mean that they show themselves only in this way; and [similarly] we, though we are related through the living body to all objects which exist for us, are not related to them solely as a living body. Thus if it is a question of objects in the perceptual field, we are perceptually also in the field; and the same is true, in modification, of every intuitive field, and even of every nonintuitive one, since we are obviously capable of "representing" to ourselves everything which is non-intuitively before us (though we are sometimes temporally limited in this). [Being related] "through the living body" clearly does not mean merely [being related] "as a physical body"; rather, the expression refers to the kinesthetic, to functioning as an ego in this peculiar way, primarily through seeing, hearing, etc.; and of course other modes of the ego belong to this (for example, lifting, carrying, pushing, and the like). "

Despite a penchant for long sentences with dubious meanings Husserl seems to share Locke's view that experience is extended in time. He is obscure about whether he believes consciousness itself is a process that initiates action. Although he use of the term "intention" in this book as an attribute of consciousness he does not justify this usage.

Edmund Husserl(1928) The Amsterdam Lectures. 

EDMUND HUSSERL. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CONFRONTATION WITH HEIDEGGER (1927-1931). edited and translated by Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/faculty/sheehan.bak/TSbookcontents.html

Husserl uses a linguistic argument to justify the idea of consciousness as a form of action

"2. Whatever becomes accessible to us through reflection has a noteworthy universal character: that of being consciousness of something, of having something as an object of consciousness, or correlatively, to be aware of it we are speaking here of intentionality. This is the essential character of mental life in the full sense of the word, and is thus simply inseparable from it. It is, for example, inseparable from the perceiving that reflection reveals to us, that it is of this or that; just as the process of remembering is, in itself, remembering or recalling of this or that; just as thinking is thinking of this or that thought, fearing is of something, love is of something; and so on. We can also bring in here the language we use in speaking of appearing or having something appear."

Intentionality is mentioned but not described. Intentionality is a process and Husserl seems to be suggesting that consciousness is a process but he does not describe any consciousness of the transformation that is this process. He simply assumes, as a cornerstone of his approach, that consciousness is a process:

"5. The Purely Mental in Experience of the Self and of Community. The All-Embracing Description of Intentional Processes."

then, not surprisingly, fails to find any processes within it and changes his view of consciousness to that of observation:

"... But I <must> immediately add that the universality of the phenomenological epoche as practiced by the phenomenologist from the very beginning the universality in which he or she becomes the mere impartial observer of the totality of his conscious life-process brings about not only a thematic purification of the individual processes of consciousness and thereby discloses its noematic components;"

Husserl seems to be aware of the problem of the extended present:

"How can we account for the fact that a presently occurring experience in one's consciousness called "recollection" makes us conscious of a not-present event and indeed makes us aware of it as past? And how is it that in the "remembered" moment, that sense can be included in an evidential way with the sense: "have earlier perceived"? How are we to understand the fact that a perceptual, that is to say, bodily characterized present can at the same time contain a co-presence with the sense of a perceivability that goes beyond the <immediate> perceivedness? How are we to understand the fact that the actual perceptual present as a totality does not close out the world but rather always carries within itself the sense of an infinite plus ultra <more beyond>?"

But is vague about whether mental time is a continuum or has three components of remembered past, present and some sort of intuition of the future. His rejection of the possibility of describing the mind through the spatio-temporal models of the physical sciences limits his interpretation of mental space and time.

 

Modern Philosophical Approaches

The centuries of failure to explain consciousness have led many philosophers to reject the definition of consciousness and others to fight against this tide of despair.

John Searle (1980) Minds, Brains and Programs.

Minds, Brains, and Programs, John R. Searle, from The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3. Copyright 1980 Cambridge University Press.

http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/MindsBrainsPrograms.html

Searle formulated the famous "Chinese Room" argument about the level of 'understanding' possible in computers showing that computers just shift around symbols according to a set of rules:

"One way to test any theory of the mind is to ask oneself what it would be like if my mind actually worked on the principles that the theory says all minds work on. Let us apply this test to the Schank program with the following Gedankenexperiment. Suppose that I'm locked in a room and given a large batch of Chinese writing. Suppose furthermore (as is indeed the case) that I know no Chinese, either written or spoken, and that I'm not even confident that I could recognize Chinese writing as Chinese writing distinct from, say, Japanese writing or meaningless squiggles. To me, Chinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles. Now suppose further that after this first batch of Chinese writing I am given a second batch of Chinese script together with a set of rules for correlating the second batch with the first batch. The rules are in English, and I understand these rules as well as any other native speaker of English. They enable me to correlate one set of formal symbols with another set of formal symbols, and all that "formal" means here is that I can identify the symbols entirely by their shapes. Now suppose also that I am given a third batch of Chinese symbols together with some instructions, again in English, that enable me to correlate elements of this third batch with the first two batches, and these rules instruct me how to give back certain Chinese symbols with certain sorts of shapes in response to certain sorts of shapes given me in the third batch. Unknown to me, the people who are giving me all of these symbols call the first batch a "script," they call the second batch a "story," and they call the third batch "questions." Furthermore, they call the symbols I give them back in response to the third batch "answers to the questions," and the set of rules in English that they gave me, they call the "program." Now just to complicate the story a little, imagine that these people also give me stories in English, which I understand, and they then ask me questions in English about these stories, and I give them back answers in English. Suppose also that after a while I get so good at following the instructions for manipulating the Chinese symbols and the programmers get so good at writing the programs that from the external point of view-that is, from tile point of view of somebody outside the room in which I am locked-my answers to the questions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers. Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don't speak a word of Chinese. Let us also suppose that my answers to the English questions are, as they no doubt would be, indistinguishable from those of other native English speakers, for the simple reason that I am a native English speaker. From the external point of view-from the point of view of someone reading my "answers"-the answers to the Chinese questions and the English questions are equally good. But in the Chinese case, unlike the English case, I produce the answers by manipulating uninterpreted formal symbols. As far as the Chinese is concerned, I simply behave like a computer; I perform computational operations on formally specified elements. For the purposes of the Chinese, I am simply an instantiation of the computer program."

He points out that those who believe in AI as a way of constructing minds are dualists:

"Third, this residual operationalism is joined to a residual form of dualism; indeed strong AI only makes sense given the dualistic assumption that, where the mind is concerned, the brain doesn't matter. In strong AI (and in functionalism, as well) what matters are programs, and programs are independent of their realization in machines; indeed, as far as AI is concerned, the same program could be realized by an electronic machine, a Cartesian mental substance, or a Hegelian world spirit. The single most surprising discovery that I have made in discussing these issues is that many AI workers are quite shocked by my idea that actual human mental phenomena might be dependent on actual physical-chemical properties of actual human brains. But if you think about it a minute you can see that I should not have been surprised; for unless you accept some form of dualism, the strong AI project hasn't got a chance. The project is to reproduce and explain the mental by designing programs, but unless the mind is not only conceptually but empirically independent of the brain you couldn't carry out the project, for the program is completely independent of any realization. "

Daniel Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne (1992) The Multiple Drafts Model.

Dennett, D. & Kinsbourne, M. Time and the Observer. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual, Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23-68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., Cognitive Science, Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp.210-274.

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/time&obs.htm

Dennett & Kinsbourne set up a paper tiger called the Cartesian Theatre Model and then argue against this. In doing so they are pointing out that conscious experience cannot consist of a display of events with a little man (homunculus) looking at them:

"The standard Cartesian Theater model postulates a place in the brain where "it all comes together": where the discriminations in all modalities are somehow put into registration and "presented" for subjective judgment. In particular, the Cartesian Theater model implies that the temporal properties of the content-bearing events occurring within this privileged representational medium determine subjective order. The alternative, Multiple Drafts model holds that whereas the brain events that discriminate various perceptual contents are distributed in both space and time in the brain, and whereas the temporal properties of these various events are determinate, none of these temporal properties determine subjective order, since there is no single, constitutive "stream of consciousness" but rather a parallel stream of conflicting and continuously revised contents."

They notice that our subjective experience is an experience of being at a point but reason that this point may not exist:

"Wherever there is a conscious mind, there is a point of view. A conscious mind is an observer, who takes in the information that is available at a particular (roughly) continuous sequence of times and places in the universe. A mind is thus a locus of subjectivity, a thing it is like something to be (Farrell, 1950, Nagel, 1974). What it is like to be that thing is partly determined by what is available to be observed or experienced along the trajectory through space-time of that moving point of view, which for most practical purposes is just that: a point. For instance, the startling dissociation of the sound and appearance of distant fireworks is explained by the different transmission speeds of sound and light, arriving at the observer (at that point) at different times, even though they left the source simultaneously.

But if we ask where precisely in the brain that point of view is located, the simple assumptions that work so well on larger scales of space and time break down. It is now quite clear that there is no single point in the brain where all information funnels in, and this fact has some far from obvious consequences."

...

"If the "point" of view of the observer is spread over a rather large volume in the observer's brain, the observer's own subjective sense of sequence and simultaneity must be determined by something other than a unique "order of arrival" since order of arrival is incompletely defined until we specify the relevant destination. If A beats B to one finish line but B beats A to another, which result fixes subjective sequence in consciousness? (cf. Minsky, 1985, p.61) Which point or points of "central availability" would "count" as a determiner of experienced order, and why? "

They then draw on evidence of the timing of events in Libet's experiments, the phi effect and Geldard & Sherrick's 'cutaneous rabbit' effect. Instead of considering that these effects might be due to a 0.5 second delay before cortical modelling becomes part of conscious experience they propose that the timing anomalies are due to verbal reporting:

"Put more neutrally (pending clarification of what Libet means by the "mental 'sphere'"), only through the subjects' verbalizations about their subjective experiences do we gain access to a perspective from which the anomalies can appear. Once their verbalizations (including communicative button-pushes, etc., (Dennett, 1982) are interpreted as a sequence of speech acts, their content yields a time series, the subjective sequence of the stream of consciousness. One can then attempt to put this series into registration with another time series, the objective sequence of observed events in the environment and in the nervous system. It is the apparent failures of registration, holding constant the assumption that causes precede their effects, that constitute the supposed anomalies (cf. Hoy, 1982). "

This seems to abolish any idea of a non-verbal consciousness (this is proposed even though we are obviously conscious without verbal thoughts or speech). The authors also differ from other philosophers in assuming that conscious experience is a process:

"In each example an apparent dislocation in time threatens the prima facie plausible thesis that our conscious perceptions are caused by events in our nervous systems, and our conscious acts, in turn, cause events in our nervous systems that control our bodily acts. To first appearances, the anomalous phenomena show that these two standard causal links cannot be sustained unless we abandon a foundational--some would say a logically necessary--principle: causes precede their effects. It seems that in one case (subjective delay of awareness of intention), our conscious intentions occur too late to be the causes of their bodily expressions or implementations, and in the other cases, percepts occur too early to have been caused by their stimuli, The vertiginous alternative, that something in the brain (or "conscious self") can "play tricks with time" by "projecting" mental events backwards in time, would require us to abandon the foundational principle that causes precede their effects. "

This leads them to argue against the slightly absurd 'backwards in time' explanation, perhaps ignoring the widely acknowledged possibility of a simple 0.5 second delay because it would obviate the concept of consciousness as a process. They notice that some events in experience can be descriptions of other events, language in particular being used to describe experience:

"In general, we must distinguish features of representings from the features of representeds (Neumann, 1990b); someone can shout "softly, on tiptoe" at the top of his lungs, there are gigantic pictures of microscopic objects, and oil paintings of artists making charcoal sketches. The top sentence of a written description of a standing man need not describe his head, nor the bottom sentence his feet. To suppose otherwise is to confusedly superimpose two different spaces: the representing space and the represented space. The same applies to time. Consider the spoken phrase "a bright, brief flash of red light." The beginning of it is "a bright" and the end of it is "red light". Those portions of that speech event are not themselves representations of onsets or terminations of a brief red flash (Cf. Efron, 1967, p.714). No informing event in the nervous system can have zero duration (any more than it can have zero spatial extent), so it has an onset and termination separated by some amount of time. If it represents an event in experience, then the event it represents must itself have non-zero duration, an onset, a middle, and a termination. But there is no reason to suppose that the beginning of the representing represents the beginning of the represented."

The authors consider the phi phenomenon in depth. In the phi phenomenon a red dot is flashed on the screen for a brief interval and then a green pot is flashed a short distance away from it. Provided the flashes occur within about 0.5 secs of each other there is an impression of the red spot moving across to the green spot, changing colour to green on the way. They propose two interpretations of this effect, in the "Orwellian" interpretation it is proposed that subjects experience the red flash then the green flash but on recall describe the event as a red spot moving across the screen to change colour. In the Stalinesque interpretation it is proposed that there is a delay before subjects become conscious of the dots so that the brain can fill in the scene with the requisite motion:

"Consider, first, a Stalinesque mechanism: in the brain's editing room, located before consciousness, there is a delay, a loop of slack like the "tape delay" used in broadcasts of "live" programs which gives the censors in the control room a few seconds to bleep out obscenities before broadcasting the signal. In the editing room, first frame A, of the red spot, arrives, and then, when frame B, of the green spot, arrives, some interstitial frames (C and D) can be created and then spliced into the film (in the order A,C,D,B) on its way to projection in the theater of consciousness. By the time the "finished product" arrives at consciousness, it already has its illusory insertion.

..

Alternatively, there is the hypothesis of an Orwellian mechanism: shortly after the awareness of the first spot and the second spot (with no illusion of apparent motion at all), a revisionist historian of sorts, in the brain's memory-library receiving station, notices that the unvarnished history of this incident doesn't make enough sense, so he "interprets" the brute events, red-followed-by-green, by making up a narrative about the intervening passage, complete with midcourse color change, and installs this history, incorporating his glosses, frames C and D (in figure 4), in the memory library for all future reference. Since he works fast, within a fraction of a second--the amount of time it takes to frame (but not utter) a verbal report of what you have experienced--the record you rely on, stored in the library of memory, is already contaminated. You say and believe that you saw the illusory motion and color change, but that is really a memory hallucination, not an accurate recollection of your original awareness. "

They seem to maintain that perception is illusory, it is only the account of the perception that is real:

"So, in spite of first appearances, there is really only a verbal difference between the two theories (cf. Reingold and Merikle, 1990). They tell exactly the same story except for where they place a mythical Great Divide, a point in time (and hence a place in space) whose fine-grained location is nothing that subjects can help them locate, and whose location is also neutral with regard to all other features of their theories. This is a difference that makes no difference.

Consider a contemporary analogy. With the advent of word-processing and desktop publishing and electronic mail, we are losing the previously quite hard-edged distinction between pre-publication editing, and post-publication correction of "errata". With multiple drafts in electronic circulation, and with the author readily making revisions in response to comments received by electronic mail, calling one of the drafts the canonical text--the text of "record", the one to cite in one's own publications--becomes a somewhat arbitrary matter. Often most of the intended readers, the readers whose reading of the text matters, read only an early draft; the "published" version is archival and inert. If it is important effects we are looking for, then, most if not all the important effects of writing a text are now spread out over many drafts, not postponed until after publication. It used to be otherwise; virtually all of a text's important effects happened after appearance in a book or journal and because of its making such an appearance. All the facts are in, and now that the various candidates for the "gate" of publication can be seen no longer to be functionally important, if we feel we need the distinction at all, we will have to decide arbitrarily what is to count as publishing a text. There is no natural summit or turning point in the path from draft to archive.

Similarly--and this is the fundamental implication of the Multiple Drafts model--if one wants to settle on some moment of processing in the brain as the moment of consciousness, this has to be arbitrary. One can always "draw a line" in the stream of processing in the brain, but there are no functional differences that could motivate declaring all prior stages and revisions unconscious or preconscious adjustments, and all subsequent emendations to the content (as revealed by recollection) to be post-experiential memory-contamination. The distinction lapses at close quarters.

...

As the Multiple Drafts model makes explicit, once a discrimination has been made once, it does not have to be made again; the brain just adjusts to the conclusion that is drawn, making the new interpretation of the information available for the modulation of subsequent behavior. Recall the Commander in Chief in Calcutta; he just had to judge that the truce came before the battle; he didn't also have to mount some sort of pageant of "historical reconstruction" to watch, in which he receives the letters in the "proper" order"

A small flaw in this analysis is the 'crank handle illusion'. If, at the moment the second dot is displayed on a screen the positions of the two dots are connected by a thin rectangle of another colour above them it seems as if, whilst the dots are flashing the rectangle is elongating and contracting. This effect is consistent with the Stalinesque interpretation and the idea of a 0.5 second delay, "a loop of slack" in the brain. The effect is continuous allowing no time for the Orwellian censor to deny history. As those who have witnessed the continuity of the phi illusion can testify the conclusion of Dennett and Kinsbourne that:

" Our Multiple Drafts model agrees with Goodman that retrospectively the brain creates the content (the judgment) that there was intervening motion, and this content is then available to govern activity and leave its mark on memory. But our model claims that the brain does not bother "constructing" any representations that go to the trouble of "filling in" the blanks. That would be a waste of time and (shall we say?) paint. The judgment is already in, so the brain can get on with other tasks! "

seems contrary to experience. The authors also seem to be unaware of the "specious" or extended present although they describe it:

"Consider the familiar span of apprehension. Multiple letters are simultaneously briefly exposed. Some are identified. The rest were certainly seen. The subject insists they were there, knows their number, and has the impression that they were clear-cut and distinct. Yet he cannot identify them. Has he failed "really" to perceive them, or has he rapidly "forgotten" them? Or consider an acoustic memory span test, administered at a rapid rate, e.g., 4 items a second, such that the subject perforce cannot respond till the acoustic event is over. He identifies some, not others. Yet, subjectively he heard all of them clearly and equally well. Did he not genuinely perceive, or did he forget, the rest?"

They are committed to the idea that consciousness is a process that controls the body:

"He [Libet] claims that when conscious intentions to act (at least of his special sort) are put into registration with the brain events that actually initiate the acts, there is an offset: consciousness of intention lags 300-500msec behind the relevant brain events. This does look ominous to anyone committed to the principle that "our conscious decisions" control our bodily motions. It looks as if we are located in Cartesian theaters where we are shown, with a half-second tape delay, the real decision-making that is going on elsewhere (somewhere we aren't). We are not quite "out of the loop" (as they say in the White House), but since our access to information is thus delayed, the most we can do is intervene with last-moment "vetoes" or "triggers."

They conclude with the following statement that interpretation can be more important that perception:

The Multiple Drafts model has many other implications for scientific theories of consciousness (Dennett, 1991), but our main conclusion in this paper is restricted to temporal properties of experience: the representation of sequence in the stream of consciousness is a product of the brain's interpretive processes, not a direct reflection of the sequence of events making up those processes. Indeed, as Ray Jackendoff has pointed out to us, what we are arguing for in this essay is a straightforward extension to experience of time of the common wisdom about experience of space; the representation of space in the brain does not always use space-in-the-brain to represent space, and the representation of time in the brain does not always use time-in-the-brain.

 

John Searle (1992) The Problem of Consciousness.

Searle, J.R. The Rediscovery of the Mind, MIT Press, 1992

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.prob.html

He gives the following operational definition of consciousness:

"Like most words, `consciousness' does not admit of a definition in terms of genus and differentia or necessary and sufficient conditions. Nonetheless, it is important to say exactly what we are talking about because the phenomenon of consciousness that we are interested in needs to be distinguished from certain other phenomena such as attention, knowledge, and self-consciousness. By `consciousness' I simply mean those subjective states of sentience or awareness that begin when one awakes in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until one goes to sleep at night or falls into a coma, or dies, or otherwise becomes, as one would say, `unconscious'. "

He is clear about the role of space and time in conscious experience:

"All of my non-pathological states of consciousness come to me with a certain sense of what one might call their `situatedness'. Though I am not thinking about it, and though it is not part of the field of my consciousness, I nonetheless know what year it is, what place I am in, what time of day it is, the season of the year it is, and usually even what month it is. All of these are the boundary conditions or the situatedness of nonpathological conscious states. Again, one can become aware of the pervasiveness of this phenomenon when it is absent. So, for example, as one gets older there is a certain feeling of vertigo that comes over one when one loses a sense of what time of year it is or what month it is. The point I am making now is that conscious states are situated and they are experienced as situated even though the details of the situation need not be part of the content of the conscious states."

And clearly distinguishes between form and process, stressing that process alone does not constitute consciousness:

"There is a simple demonstration that the computational model of consciousness is not sufficient for consciousness. I have given it many times before so I will not dwell on it here. Its point is simply this: Computation is defined syntactically. It is defined in terms of the manipulation of symbols. But the syntax by itself can never be sufficient for the sort of contents that characteristically go with conscious thoughts. Just having zeros and ones by themselves is insufficient to guarantee mental content, conscious or unconscious. This argument is sometimes called `the Chinese room argument' because I originally illustrated the point with the example of the person who goes through the computational steps for answering questions in Chinese but does not thereby acquire any understanding of Chinese.[1] The point of the parable is clear but it is usually neglected. Syntax by itself is not sufficient for semantic content. In all of the attacks on the Chinese room argument, I have never seen anyone come out baldly and say they think that syntax is sufficient for semantic content."

Max Velmans (1990-2003) A Reflexive Science of Consciousness

1. Velmans, Max (1990) Consciousness, Brain and the Physical World. Philosophical Psychology 3(1):pp. 77-99. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000238/00/199801005.html

2. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002756/01/Lehar-Velmans_Commentary(cogprints).htm

Velmans is clear about the relationship of conscious experience to processes, being sceptical that these experiences are a process at all:

(1) "Functionalism, in viewing consciousness as a brain process or mode of functioning attempts to sidestep such problems. Modes of brain functioning need not have a precise location or extension in that they may be emergent properties of the entire, interconnected brain. Furthermore, as Putnam(1975) (and Aristotle before him) points out, such functions are not physical properties in the normal sense. They describe the form rather than the matter of the brain, thereby capturing something of the "insubstantiality" of consciousness without needing to postulate the existence of some added, non-material substance or entity. However, properties 3,4 and 5 refer not to how consciousness functions but rather to its contents (often referred to as qualia in modern philosophy of mind). More to the point, there is reason to doubt that consciousness has a function (let alone is a function) in the activities of brain (see e.g. Kihlstrom,1987; Velmans,1989)."

He points out the paradox of some modern approaches to conscious experience where our everyday intuitions of that experience, such as extension, are simply dismissed:

(1) "Central-state Identity theory, which attempts to identify consciousness with the neurophysiological structure of the brain faces similar problems. If the contents of consciousness are insubstantial, and have no location or extension in space, then how can they be ontologically identical to brain states which undoubtedly do have physical properties, and do have both location and extension in space? Identity theorists have responded by challenging the legitimacy of our everyday intuitions about consciousness, likening them to a primitive theory which is destined for replacement by the advance of neurophysiological science (Armstrong,1968; Churchland, 1988). Alternatively, according to Searle(1987) we need to extend our concept of the "physical", accepting, for example, that physical systems such as the brain have subjective properties (which account for the "privacy" of conscious experience)."

He makes a veiled accusation of naive realism against many of the 'modern' approaches to consciousness, stressing that perception is also part of consciousness:

(1) "But, as noted above, the contents of consciousness include not only "inner" experiences such as images, thoughts and dreams but also the body as-experienced, and experiences of physical objects beyond the body surface, which are, in a sense, none other than physical objects as-perceived. Physical objects as-perceived, therefore, cannot be contrasted with the contents of consciousness, for they are included amongst the contents of consciousness. In short, we are dealing here with a "category error" (but one of a very different kind to that described by Ryle, 1949).

The consequences for how one thinks about consciousness are profound. While some contents of consciousness are relatively insubstantial ("inner experiences") other contents of consciousness are very substantial indeed....for they are none-other than the experienced physical world.

To those of a Dualist or Reductionist persuasion, this way of thinking about the contents of consciousness may not be easy to grasp and I return to it, from the perspective of Psychological science, below. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that this 'radical' claim is far from new and appears in various guises in the work of George Berkeley (1710) Immanuel Kant (1781) C.H. Lewes (1877) W.K. Clifford (1878) Ernst Mach (1885) Morton Prince (1885) William James (1890, 1904) A.N. Whitehead (1932) Charles Sherrington (1942) Bertrand Russell (1948) Lord Brain (1966) Wolfgang Kohler (1966) and Karl Pribram (1971, 1974, 1979)."

He then proposes a "reflexive model" of conscious experience in which the experience is projected onto the location in the world where it is judged to occur:

(1) "Note, to begin with, that the Reflexive model makes the conventional assumption that causal sequences in exteroception are initiated by events in the external world, and that these events as described by Physics may be very different to the same events as-perceived. Subsequent links in the causal chain are also entirely conventional. Visual perception, for example, involves stimulation of the retina, innervation of the optic

nerve and occipital lobes, and the formation of representations of the initiating events within the brain. The main departure from the conventional occurs in the last step - which deals with the experienced effects of such neural causal sequences. Whereas Dualists locate percepts of external events 'within the mind', and Reductionists locate these percepts within the brain, the Reflexive model states that external events as-perceived are "projected" by the brain to the judged location of the initiating stimulus. This claim is not a metaphysical claim. While the operation of perceptual "projection" has not, as yet, received the full attention it deserves in Psychological science, the evidence for it, in various sense modalities, is clear (see the review above). While our knowledge of its underlying mechanisms remains rudimentary, these can be (and, to some extent, already have been) explored by experimental means."

The nature of this 'projection' is very vague and is not explained by Velmans. It is stated as an empirical fact. It is very similar to the 'view' of geometrical phenomenalism. Velmans has been accused of either claiming that we experience things 'in themselves' or proposing some form of spiritual projection. Velmans denies this:

(2) "Lehar and I agree (with Kant) that whether we are "subjects" or "external observers" we do not perceive things as they are in themselves-only phenomena that represent things themselves, and, together, such phenomena comprise our personal phenomenal worlds."

 

Chalmers (1996) The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory.

Chalmers (1996) The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press. New York.

Professor Chalmers hosts a valuable set of consciousness links on the Internet ( http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online.html ). "The Conscious Mind" is an excellent resource for any student of consciousness science and represents one of several modern approaches to the problem.

Unlike earlier philosophers who have described the components of conscious experience in depth, Chalmers begins this work with a statement of belief that consciousness is undefinable and fundamental:

P 4 "Trying to define conscious experience in terms of more primitive notions is fruitless. One might as well try to define matter or space in terms of something more fundamental."

Chalmers concentrates on the idea of "supervenience":

P 32 "The notion of supervenience formalizes the intuitive idea that one set of facts can fully determine another set of facts. The physical facts about the world seem to determine the biological facts, for instance, in that once all the physical facts about the world are fixed, there is no room for the biological facts to vary.

Practical, experimental scientists will feel deeply uncomfortable with this possibility of knowing everything and might ask "how will you know when you know everything"? Chalmers introduces the concept of "reductive explanation". (Experimental scientists check theories by examining the variable that gives rise to a certain observation then controlling these carefully and predictably so that an observation can be made. They do not test theories by observing a thing then trying to work out the variables that caused it.) Fortunately he does not actually mean reductive but rather means the 'synthetic explanation' that scientists use:

P 42 "Biological phenomena provide a clear explanation. Reproduction can be explained by giving an account of the genetic and cellular mechanisms that allow organisms to produce other organisms."

He argues that there are things called 'facts' and 'properties':

P33 "The A-facts and B-facts about the world are the facts concerning the instantiation and distribution of A-properties and B-properties."

And gives a formal definition of supervenience as:

"B-properties supervene on A-properties if no two possible situations are identical with respect to their A-properties while differing in their B-properties.

For instance, biological properties supervene on physical properties insofar as any two possible situations that are physically identical are biologically identical"

To add to Chalmer's description, an example of supervenience in science is that, if the inferred physical world exists, a length of 10cm on a ruler as experienced by a scientist must correspond to an arrangement of something in his brain if this brain is both physical and the carrier of experience.

Chalmers notes that consciousness is not a process. He identifies science with theoretical science rather than with the set of descriptions and predictions that go between the observations of an experimental scientist (the "phenomenal elements" that are connected by processes):

P 47 "Phenomenal states, unlike psychological states, are not defined by the causal roles that they play. It follows that explaining how some causal role is played is not sufficient to explain consciousness."

He is quite clear about what is required to prove that there can be no reductive explanation of consciousness:

P 50 "What is most important is that, if logical supervenience fails (as I will argue it does for consciousness), then any kind of reductive explanation fails, even if we are generous about what counts as explanation."

He then makes three arguments to support this point. In the first he makes the assumption that an exact replica of a person's body could be a zombie, without consciousness. (We know from medicine that people without consciousness are in persistent vegetative states, comas, delirious etc.) Chalmers claims that such a being would be identical to us in every way:

P 95 "What is going on in my zombie twin? He is physically identical to me, and we may as well suppose that he is embedded in an identical environment. He will certainly be identical to me functionally: he will be processing the same sort of information, reacting in a similar way to inputs, with his internal configurations being modified appropriately and with indistinguishable behaviour resulting."

He seems to prejudice his argument at the outset by claiming that it is possible to create a zombie of this type, although if such zombies are possible then consciousness and the physical world must be separate in some way. (But it is known that a non-conscious person with intact properties is not possible.)

In the second argument he proposes that a person could exist who sees an inverted colour spectrum without any physiological changes to their brain. (We know from medicine that anomalies of colour vision are always accompanied by neurological defects). Chalmers makes the assertion that:

P 100 "To achieve such an inversion in the actual world, presumably we would need to rewire neural processes in an appropriate way, but as a logical possibility, it seems entirely coherent that experiences could be inverted while physical structure is duplicated exactly. Nothing in the neurophysiology dictates that one sort of processing should be accompanied by red experiences rather than by red experiences."

He then argues that, given the assumption that colour vision is not dependent on the physical world then consciousness is not dependent on the physical world. His third argument is that, because we have not, as yet, found the physical basis of consciousness in physics it is non-physical. His fourth argument is based on Jackson's knowledge argument (see Chapter 1) and maintains that because Mary could not know red from scientific knowledge science cannot explain red, this seems to equate the description of a thing with a thing in itself. In his fifth and final argument he cites a lack of convincing physical theories as evidence that consciousness cannot be explained from physical theory:

P 104 " The only analysis of consciousness that seems even remotely tenable for these purposes is a functional analysis. Upon such an analysis, it would be seen that all there is to the notion of something's being conscious is that it should play a certain functional role."

Again, Chalmers realises that consciousness is not and cannot be a process:

P 105: "Another objection is that the functionalist analysis collapses the important distinction, outlined in Chapter 1, between the notions of awareness and consciousness. Presumably if consciousness is to be functionally analysed, it will be roughly analyzed as we analyzed awareness then: in terms of a certain accessibility of information in later processing and in the control of behavior. Awareness is a perfectly good concept, but it is quite distinct from the concept of conscious experience. The functionalist treatment collapses the two notions of consciousness and awareness into one, and therefore does not do justice to our conceptual system."

He concludes this analysis in favour of dualism:

P 168 " The moral is that those who want to come to grips with the phenomenon must embrace a form of dualism. One might say: You can't have your materialist cake and eat your consciousness too."

 

Francis Crick (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis. The Scientific Search for the Soul.

 Francis Crick (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis. The Scientific Search for the Soul. Simon & Schuster Ltd. London.

Crick begins this book with a statement about his opinion of the insignificance of human beings:

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: "you're nothing but a pack of neurons". This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing."

Crick is not a philosopher so might be forgiven the derogatory "no more than..", as a scientist he realises that the assembly of nerve cells that form a brain are complex beyond our imagination.

He suggests that the hypothesis is "so surprising" for three reasons:

"The first is that many people are reluctant to accept what is often called the "reductionist approach" - that a complex system can be explained by the behaviour of its parts and their interactions with each other."

......

"The second reason why the Astonishing Hypothesis seems so strange is the nature of consciousness. We have, for example, a vivid internal picture of the external world. It might seem a category mistake to believe this is merely another way of talking about the behavior of neurons, but we have just seen that arguments of this type are not always to be trusted."

......

"The third reason why the Astonishing Hypothesis seems strange springs from our undeniable feeling that Free Will is free. ... I believe that if we solve the problem of awareness (or consciousness), the explanation of Free Will is likely to be easier to solve."

Crick believes that many phenomena in the brain are "emergent" with the vague implication that consciousness may also be emergent. He defines this term in the following way:

"The scientific meaning of emergent, or at least the one I use, assumes that, while the whole may not be the simple sum of the separate parts, its behavior can, at least in principle, be understood from the nature and behavior of its parts plus the knowledge of how all these parts interact."

He wants to avoid the philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness:

"1. Everyone has a rough idea of what is meant by consciousness. It is better to avoid a precise definition of consciousness because of the dangers of premature definition.

Footnote: If this seems like cheating, try defining for me the word gene. So much is now known about genes that any simple definition is likely to be inadequate. How much more difficult, then, to define a biological term when rather little is known about it."

This is an odd standpoint because any brief review of the ideas of philosophers (see above) shows that they conceive of consciousness as things, probably in the brain, that appear to be laid out in space and time and viewed at a point. The only problem lies in explaining such a bizarre experience, not in defining it.

He then elaborates a further four points covering general features of consciousness and avoiding various types of speculation about consciousness. Excluded are: "what consciousness is for", speculations about consciousness in lower animals and the "self-referential aspect of consciousness"; included are the concept of consciousness in "higher mammals".

As a guide for the scientific investigation of consciousness he puts forward three basic ideas:

"1. Not all the operations of the brain correspond to consciousness.

2. Consciousness involves some form of memory, probably a very short term one.

3. Consciousness is closely associated with attention."

The operations of the brain that do correspond to consciousness are the "neural correlates of consciousness" a term that probably predates Crick's work. Crick shows the openness of ideal science when he concludes with:

"The Astonishing Hypothesis may be proved correct. Alternatively some view closer to the religious one may become more plausible. There is always a third possibility: that the facts support a new, alternative way of looking at the mind-brain problem that is significantly different from the rather crude materialistic view many neuroscientists hold today and also from the religious point of view."