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Andrews UK - Zdravko Radman

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229 pages

English

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Without consciousness we would not have the experientially flavoured world we have, but without the non-conscious we would not have it at all; for we would not be able to breathe, eat, move, walk, feel, mimic, gesture, laugh, etc., and even see, talk, remember, reason, understand, think, imagine, and make myriad spontaneous decisions as we continuously do in all life situations, from trivial to existential ones. Without consciousness we would not be the kind of creatures we are, but what makes us really unique is our specific non-conscious constellation - a basis from which all mentality germinates and which is irreducible, that is, not representable or in any way simulable.This collection of essays by leading scholars in consciousness aims to show that in order to understand mind as a whole we have to also consider its non-conscious part. Obtaining a more thorough insight into the non-conscious is indispensable for a better understanding of consciousness - the two spheres are to be perceived not as separated but rather as interconnected. The non-conscious is habitually associated with automatized motor behaviour, skills, and habits, but even in their most elementary forms these aspects of mind require a high level of sophistication and cognitive competence. Most complex cognitive tasks, such as perception, memory, decision making, etc. also rely heavily on non-conscious processing, which is not only faster but also proves to be in many respects more fundamental.The investigations included in this volume point to the conclusion that we can behave in a cognitively competent way without recourse to consciousness; that we may act in a reasoned manner even away from awareness; that thinking can be instantiated without engaging the sober conscious reasoner; that our coping in the world is meaningful and fulfilling even when conscious control and volition are dormant. This book aims to integrate the non-conscious as a constitutive dimension of the mind and also to outline how it is indispensable in virtually everything we do.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy of mind

Cognitivism

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	24 avril 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781845409357
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Before Consciousness
In Search of the Fundamentals of Mind
Edited by Zdravko Radman

imprint-academic.com

2017 digital version converted and published by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Imprint Academic, 2017
Individual contributions © the respective authors 2017
The chapter titled ‘Auditory Verbal Hallucinations and Inner Speech’ by Wilkinson and Fernyhough is made freely available via a CC-BY licence.
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK

Foreword Zdravko Radman
Without consciousness we would not have the experientially flavoured world we have, but without the non-conscious we would not have it at all; for we would not be able to breathe, eat, move, walk, feel, mimic, gesture, laugh, etc., and even see, talk, remember, understand, think, imagine, and make myriad spontaneous decisions as we continuously do in all life situations, from trivial to existential ones.
Without consciousness we would not be the kind of creatures we are, but what makes us really unique is our specific non-conscious constellation - a basis from which all mentality germinates and which is irreducible, that is, not representable or in any way simulable. Much effort has been put in the philosophy of mind to emphasize the irreducible nature of consciousness and to prove that the qualitative cannot be adequately transcribed. What is really irreducible, however, is our ‘silent’ self, acting in the background, yet powerful enough to become ‘audible’ in the conscious mode. The long-lasting conviction that what makes us different is our thoughts, ideas, views, etc. is now ripe for a revision: what makes each of us specific is not so much a matter of intellect but has to do with the fact that our individual non-conscious ‘physiognomies’ are unique. These differences, in turn, are a result of social and cultural happenings that leave their trace on the flesh. That is why my cat is differently unconscious than myself and why my unconscious ‘it’ does not match the one of an infant or a savage.
The non-conscious apparatus is the mind’s vital organ that is never at rest and from which the deliberative ‘self’ can never retreat or find shelter. As there are no mind-lids, there is no way we can shut off its ongoing fabrication of ‘mute’ (but effective) inputs, signalling, and suggesting. The non-conscious intervenes in virtually all acts of mind and it is a steady companion to agency; not even experience is exempt from this. Experience is thus not to be seen as autonomous (and neither, I think, can we study it as an isolated phenomenon, as the mainstream currently does). The qualitative does not originate out of the blue - the ‘blueness’ emerges powered by the non-conscious mechanisms that give it growth.
Further, the non-conscious is neither passive nor static for it undergoes permanent reconfiguration so that it is justified to claim that it has its own growth and evolution. There would be no development in the matters of mind if the non-conscious were not capable of keeping in mind (or ‘keeping in body’) all that is no longer actuality; there would be no progress in our cognitive competence if the non-conscious were not empowered to acquire whatever the conscious agent is capable of accomplishing. If it were not so, for instance, memory and learning would not be able to fulfil their functions, for the frame of the attentive mind is small and the processes underlying it slow. It simply means that the potentiality for any sort of action, motor or mental, lies outside of that frame.
We become masters of crafts and arts as skills required for their performance get acquired by the body and become routine actions that are exercised best if there is no intrusion of an attentive subject. There would hardly be any expertise of any kind if the unconscious mind and body were not able to absorb and store even the most complex motor and cognitive tasks. Because it is the case, the non-conscious has the potential of increasing its cognitive capacity. How else can we explain the highly skilled and competent coping of which we are capable without engaging in conscious awareness?
Minds are unconscious long before they are conscious - as Joseph LeDoux states straightforwardly in his introductory essay to this volume. Yet the unconscious does not cease to exist with the emergence of consciousness, for it permanently exercises its impact on whatever we do. In addition, we can no longer ignore the scientific fact that most of what constitutes mind by far is non-conscious in nature (from the neuroscientific perspective as much as 95% to 98% of all neural processing is not conscious). The unconscious mind is ubiquitous and always at stake. Nothing we mentally perform can bypass the unconscious dynamics at some level or at some point.
There are sufficient philosophical reasons to want to devise methodological strategies to account for mind’s ‘extendedness’ not only in the outward direction (as suggested by the originators of the hypothesis, Andy Clark and David Chalmers), but also to awaken sensitivity for the alternative approach according to which minds are ‘extended’ also inwardly, towards the sphere of the mental below the threshold of awareness from which it all originates.
It is somewhat awkward that the most prominent view from ‘within’ that has ambitions to capture the subjective basis of our being seldom goes further than the description of phenomenal experience with emphasis on the qualitative. Such attempts are in that respect weak, as they more often than not leave out the genuine ‘within-ness’ associated with the fundamentals of mind not under the surveillance of an attentive subject. Any scientifically founded insight into the mental world within should then open toward (or at least not ignore) the ‘silent’ rooms of the mind.
Our current philosophies of mind are almost exclusively philosophies of conscious mind and are in that sense discriminatory of all that lies outside of its confines. Textbooks and introductions to philosophy of mind habitually define the mental in terms of ‘beliefs’, ‘desires’, ‘wishes’, ‘plans’, etc., and in such a way create the conviction that these are not only representative of the mind but that they also exhaust the scope of mentality. The truth is there is a lot of mental activity before believing, desiring, wishing, planning, etc. become present to the conscious mind. Nowadays we have sufficient scientific reasons to claim that such approaches are partial and inadequate for they leave out a huge sphere of mentality which by its nature, however, cannot speak for itself.
Inhibitions and preselections, motivations and moods, affinities and aversions, inclinations and intuitions, prejudices and dislikings, as well as endless variants of emotionality, all pre-shape mental events before they become conscious acts. Actually, consciousness comes as a late (but eloquent and vivid) witness of the processes already taking place at some more fundamental level. To think that when it comes to complex mental processes the non-conscious loses its import is largely unfounded; in all high-level cognition the non-conscious is at stake and serves as a tool without which cognition seems impossible. For instance, perception is shaped in such a way; no less is this the case with memory , which mutates with the ever-changing actual mental landscape, with ‘self’ having no authority over this very process; learning is unimaginable without the possibility of storing in the background and ‘forgetting’ the learned; unconscious thinking is no oxymoron, as thought is just in its most complex version inspired by and impacted by the processes of which we are largely unaware; decision making , as well as judgments , have their roots in the sphere preceding the emergence of consciousness. Its stamp is also present in all of intentionality . Before the intentional bond to the world gets expressed in consciousness, ‘aboutness’ is already (pre-)shaped by means of non-conscious modulations.
One of the conclusions we reach in this collective attempt to better understand the mind in its entirety is that by the metonymic taking of consciousness to represent the entire mind we neglect, or refuse to accept, that the mental is instantiated in incomparably many more ways than is conceived by intellectualist approaches, and those mechanisms need no consciousness for the mind to matter and be relevant.
A further lesson following from this project could probably be that the mind has many forms and that we have for too long been blinded by the intellectualist dogma that narrowed the scope of the mind and impoverished it, ignoring the function and import of the huge sphere that’s not accessible to consciousness and not in command of volition. I guess we are now in a good position to recognize the relevance of the claim that ‘mind is more than consciousness’ (John Dewey) and provide support to the credo ‘the whole man counts’ (William James). Indeed, the mind itself is not discriminatory in regard to the processes and features that do not conform to dictates of the conscious ‘self’; our theories, however, obviously are.
It will probably still take a while until the science of the brain and the study of mind feel mature (and courageous) enough to proclaim a new paradigm that would mark a shift away from conscious-centredness toward recognizing the fundamentality of the non-conscious, though the scientifically supported conviction grows that we have already advanced enough to inaugurate it.
Acknowledgment
I am indebted to Joseph LeDoux and Chris Frith who kindly accepted m