by Thomas Scarborough
Part I. Mind and Matter
I
tap my finger on a table-top. I drink a glass of milk. I feel the warmth of the sun on my
face. Such experiences seem perfectly real to me. So does the passion I have for my diesel
pick-up, my grief
over my grandmother's passing, or the fact that I am a Yorkshireman. Which means that, on
the surface of it, my life seems real to me, through and
through.
Now
consider what this means to me philosophically. It seems to me,
therefore, that I am living in a real world. It is not imagined, or
illusory. Further, it would seem to me that I am an observer
of this world, not merely a “robotic” presence there. And on
this basis, it would seem to me that I have a mind which observes
reality: mind here, reality there, which separates my mind from the
matter which it observes.
If
it were so simple. As
to what reality really is, is
another question. It
is a problem which has become acute in
recent generations. Three things in particular have changed.
Firstly, the natural sciences have enabled us to get behind our
surface impressions, to understand that the physical world is no more than it seems
to be to me.
Secondly, psychologists have discovered that our senses can
all of them without exception be wrong: sight, smell, touch, and all.
And thirdly, an increasingly materialistic outlook has led us to
wonder whether there is any mind at all: the
mind, said D.M. Armstrong, is nothing but the brain.
What
should we do, then, with the old intuitive view, which leads
us to set our mind apart from
matter?
Since the 1950's, linguistics has been integral to the study of the mind, and it is linguistics we shall call upon here for help. Francis Bacon, four-hundred years ago, in his Novum Organum (Book 1:59), may have given us an unwitting clue as to what may be so different about the mind. There is an evil, he wrote, in dealing with natural and material things: the definitionsof these things consist of words, and these words beget words.
To paraphrase Bacon, definitions consist of words, which have definitions which consist of words. This is much like having money in a bank, which has its money in another bank, which has its money in another bank, and so on. It is easy to see that one will never access one's money – which is the whole point of it after all. Similarly, our language, when we examine it closely, deals in nothings – yet nothing is the antithesis of the something that our reality is – or seems to be.
Since the 1950's, linguistics has been integral to the study of the mind, and it is linguistics we shall call upon here for help. Francis Bacon, four-hundred years ago, in his Novum Organum (Book 1:59), may have given us an unwitting clue as to what may be so different about the mind. There is an evil, he wrote, in dealing with natural and material things: the definitionsof these things consist of words, and these words beget words.
To paraphrase Bacon, definitions consist of words, which have definitions which consist of words. This is much like having money in a bank, which has its money in another bank, which has its money in another bank, and so on. It is easy to see that one will never access one's money – which is the whole point of it after all. Similarly, our language, when we examine it closely, deals in nothings – yet nothing is the antithesis of the something that our reality is – or seems to be.
There
are other ways of proving this “disjunction”
between
our
language and
reality. One of these is described in my Metaphysical Notes Part III. What seems clear is that, if this disjunction did not exist, we would be mere “machines”.
We therefore have a real reality, so to speak –
which is however partnered with an unreal language which can never
really get a grip on this reality we seem to know. The very nature
of our language curiously distances our words – in fact our mental
processes – from the reality which they describe. There is no real
correspondence between the two. The mind, in a sense, hovers over
the surface of reality. The mind is wholly other.
The
mind, one might say, functions in a completely different mode
to the reality which we seem to know. This
may well
explain
why
we perceive our mind to be so different. It may
explain, too, the many situations and states of mind which give us a
sense of unreality or detachment: déjà
vu,
for instance, or
the
imposter syndrome, or a sense of alienation.
As to why
the mind is wholly other, and what this means, are different
questions, which we may examine in time.
Part II. Consciousness and
Attention
Pointing
to my arm,
you ask me,
“How did you cut yourself there?” “Oh!”
I exclaim. “I really
don't know. It completely escaped my attention!”
Then,
with a philosophical turn of mind, you
ask me,
“Were you conscious
at the time that you cut yourself?” “Well
of
course!” I
reply. “At least, presumably I was! But, not about the cut.”
This
imaginary conversation
contrasts the concepts “attention” and “consciousness”.
Consciousness is of course
the more familiar of the two, although nobody really seems to know
what it is, let alone how to explain it. Simon Blackburn tentatively
suggests: the theatre where my thoughts and feelings have their
existence. Attention, on the other hand, while not as well known, is
well established in psychology. Daniel
Dennett defines it as the conscious awareness of information.
Could
the two be one and the same? And if not, then what is the
relationship between the two?
Just
one-hundred years ago, it first came to the public attention that we
might not be as
conscious as
we think – and at the time,
people were (and they still
are) loath to accept it. Yet
one should have guessed it. Our very language is replete with words
which speak of our lack of conscious awareness:
we are oblivious, inattentive, napping, and so on. Alternatively,
we may
lose ourselves in what we are doing: we are, for instance, absorbed,
preoccupied, immersed.
If
then I am oblivious to
my surroundings – or more accurately,
to aspects
of my surroundings – am I always
conscious? Similarly, if I
am absorbed in my
surroundings, am I always conscious? If I am absorbed in myself,
or in the problems of the imaginary world of constructs, am I always
conscious? Clearly, none of these states of
mind would seem to be quite
the same as being fully aware,
awake, or alert.
There
are, too, degrees of
awareness. Norman Dixon famously ranked the conscious and
non-conscious aspects of our sensory modalities (see the image). We easily become
aware of pain, he noted. We
are vaguely aware of smell. Yet we hardly become aware of what are
called visceral interceptors, such as our
heartbeat or breathing – even riding a bicycle, perhaps,
while sending a text message. It is a hierarchy of that
which, so to speak, grabs our
attention.
Consciousness
and attention might
seem to
be frightfully
complex subjects
– yet we find a common thread which runs through all our
attentive moments, if not our conscious ones. We take notice of (and
sometimes we especially ignore) novelty,
discrepancy,
and interruption – or perhaps rather, we take notice of that which
represents
novelty,
discrepancy,
and interruption, to me.
In short, we detect the “unexpected”, writes Richard Gregory.
Let us pause at this point, to notice that this speaks
of my taking notice, in every case, of some kind of contradiction.
Novelty is a contradiction of that which I have been accustomed to.
Discrepancy is a contradiction of that which I know. Interruption is
a contradiction of that which I expect. Therefore, it is
contradiction that arrests my attention, more than anything else. It
is in moments of contradiction that I am most aware. And one does not need to see far to see that this further relates to reason – which we may explore, too, in time.
In
short, consciousness has a lot to do with attention – and attention
has a lot to do with those things which conflict.
Now combine this with the fact that the pace of modern society today
is such that we need to process far more contradictions of many kinds
than
people used to do – many of which
were not even contemplated one-hundred years ago. David Gelernter
writes,
with this
in mind, that the modern mind is
characterised by an ever more acute self-consciousness.
Not
only this, notes Gelernter, but previous generations were far more disposed to
low-focus thought – a
thought which had and has little concept of contradiction or logicality.
Pre-historic societies, perhaps, were no less intelligent than we
are. Rather they
entertained less contradictions – and perhaps,
thereby, they were happier.
Part III: Reason and Contradiction.
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