Reading Notes: June 20th, 2022

“The thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain is put forward as a reasonable scientific hypothesis, not to be dismissed on logical grounds alone….It is suggested that we can identify consciousness with a given pattern of brain activity, if we can explain the subject’s introspective observations by reference to the brain processes with which they are correlated….[The] problem of providing a physiological explanation of introspective observations is made to seem more difficult than it really is by…the mistaken idea that descriptions of the appearances of things are descriptions of the actual state of affairs in a mysterious internal environment….The view that there exists a separate class of events, mental events, which cannot be described in terms of the concepts employed by the physical sciences no longer commands the universal and unquestioning acceptance amongst philosophers and psychologists which it once did. Modern physicalism, however, unlike the materialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is behavioristic. Consciousness on this view is either a special type of behaviour….or a disposition to behave in a certain way….In the case of cognitive concepts like “knowing,” believing,” “understanding,” “remembering” and volitional concepts like “wanting” and “intending,” there can be little doubt, I think, that an analysis in terms of dispositions to behave is fundamentally sound. On the other hand, there would seem to be an intractable residue of concepts clustering around the notions of consciousness, experience, sensation and mental imagery, where some sort of inner process story is unavoidable.” (Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, 44) 

“[In] defending the thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain, I am not trying to argue that when we describe our dreams, fantasies and sensations we are talking about processes in our brains. That is, I am not claiming that statements about sensations and mental images are reducible to or analyzable into statements about brain processes….To say that statements about consciousness are statements about brain processes is manifestly false. This is shown (a) by the fact that you can describe your sensations and mental imagery without knowing anything about your brain processes or even that such things exist, (b) by the fact that statements about one’s consciousness and statements about one’s brain processes are verified in entirely different ways, and (c) by the fact that there is nothing self-contradictory about the statement “X has a pain but there is nothing going on in his brain”. What I do want to assert, however, is that the statement “consciousness is a process in the brain”, on my view is neither self-contradictory nor self-evident; it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis…” (Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, 44-45) 

“The “phenomenological fallacy” is the mistake of supposing that when the subject describes his experience, when he describes how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel to him, he is describing the literal properties of objects and events on a peculiar sort of internal cinema or television screen, usually referred to in the modern psychological literature as the “phenomenal field”. If we assume, for example, that when a subject reports a green after-image he is asserting the occurrence inside himself of an object which is literally green, it is clear that we have on our hands an entity for which there is no place in the world of physics. In the case of the green after-image there is no green object in the subject’s environment corresponding to the description that he gives. Nor is there anything green in his brain….Brain processes are not the sort of things to which color concepts can be properly applied. The phenomenological fallacy on which this argument is based depends on the mistaken assumption that because our ability to describe things in our environment depends on our consciousness of them, our descriptions of things are primarily descriptions of our conscious experience and only secondarily, indirectly and inferentially descriptions of the objects and events in our environments. It is assumed that because we recognize things in our environment by their look, sound, smell, taste and feel, we begin by describing their phenomenal properties, i.e. the properties of the looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels which they produce in us, and infer their real properties from their phenomenal properties. In fact, the reverse is the case. We begin by learning to recognize the real properties of things in our environment….Indeed, it is only after we have learnt to describe the things in our environment that we can learn to describe our consciousness of them.” (Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, 49) 

“It is the object of philosophy to interpret experience so as to render it intelligible. A philosophy is successful so far as it enables us to “think” experience, i.e. to take it in as a coherent system, as a whole which is interconnected by an immanent necessity….But the demand for intelligent apprehension, which we have made on philosophy, requires further explanation. A philosophy is not necessarily condemned, if it fail to “think” experience through and thought, to render it “intelligible” in all its details. Such a demand would be preposterous, and would condemn all philosophies in advance. The detail of experience cannot be rendered transparent for human knowledge. Nothing short of infinite or absolute knowledge could completely apprehend the infinite or whole Reality. What we can attempt, and what all philosophies claim to do, is to gain a rational and consistent view of the general nature of Reality—to render experience intelligible in its main outline. And so far as a philosopher fails to do this, he may justly be criticized. But failure does not consist merely in leaving details unexplained and in their special nature unconnected with the general principles. Deficiencies of this kind are inevitable; in a metaphysical theory; and since they detract nothing from its value, it need fear no criticism on their account. No one, e.g., can be expected to show exactly how and why finite existence, error, evil, change, are and consist with the general nature of Reality.” (Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza?, 99-100) 

“So long as it can be shown that the detail of experience does not positively collide with the general conditions of Reality as established in a theory, but is in principle consistent with an intelligible view of things—so long, the existence of outstanding facts, the failure to resolve them, to render them transparent, does not of itself destroy the value of the general theory. If the general nature of Reality has been consistently and intelligibly thought out, and if it has been shown that the features which are not in detail comprehended in the general theory are yet in principle not hostile—then so far the theory maintains itself against criticism. But a philosopher lays himself open to attack if his general theory is inwardly inconsistent, or—and this is another side of the same fault—is incomplete, inadequate to comprehend the whole outline of Reality. And again, he may justly be criticized if he offers an explanation of the details which conflicts with his general principles. Or, lastly, his theory is untenable if it forces us to conceive the general nature of Reality in such a way that the details of experience—all or some of them—cannot conceivably for any apprehension be intelligible: if, that is, we can see that even the fullest understanding would but render the discrepancies and the conflict between details and general theory more certain. [Footnote: I am indebted to Bradley, Appearance and Reality, more than usual for the view developed in this section. Cf. App. & R. 2nd edition, pp. 562 ff., pp. 184 ff., &c.].” (Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 100-101) 

“We “know” our body, not as being it—not from within—but as having knowledge “about” it; and such knowledge remains always to some extent inadequate and untrue and different from its “object.” In anything short of perfect apprehension, therefore, thought always implies a distinction between itself and its object, and this distinction is never completely overcome. Thought is “one” with its object in a very imperfect and ambiguous sense. The “oneness” is a relation between two distincts; a “oneness” of two, which never by complete coalescence justify the “oneness” which we ascribe to them. And even in the oneness of adequate thought and its object, the oneness is a unity of two, though a unity which overcomes and sustains the differences….But in his conception of “idea ideae,” Spinoza renders it impossible to maintain any difference between thought and its object. The unity of “idea ideae” is not a unity of two, but a blank unity. And, as such, it does not answer to any possible form of self-consciousness or even self-feeling….[The] idea which is the “object” is identical with and indistinguishable from the subject-idea. The identity of subject-idea and object-idea is so absolute, that all possibility of regarding it as a unity of two has vanished. In fact, so absolutely one are they, that they cannot even be conceived as identical: for identity with no difference is a meaningless term.” (Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 139-140) 

“The facts which the philosopher studies are amongst the most concrete of realities. They are spiritual facts—embodiments-of-mind, manifestations-to-mind; below or above the division (between perceiving, thinking, willing, &c., and their objects) which the mathematical and natural sciences presuppose—which they unconsciously assume, and within which they work.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 3) 

“A system is in no way analogous to an exhaustive collection, a sum-total, of unit truths. Speculation is systematic, in proportion as it takes nothing for granted or on faith, neglects nothing relevant and is continuous and coherent. If we speak of logic as a science or system of knowledge, we must not think of it as a completed tale of finally established doctrines, as an aggregation of bits of knowledge. We must think of it rather as a single truth gradually emerging and expanding, as a development, or growth, which in all its stages is self-adjusting, self-correcting, and self-fulfilling, but never self-fulfilled, i.e. frozen into the rigidity of a creed. Or we may think of it perhaps, though the analogy is very far from satisfactory, as an integral whole or unity, which nevertheless is such that it must show itself in our experience as an uncompleted and incompletable sequence of parts or components….The principles of thought, the rules of sound thinking, are at most crystalized deposits of that speculative activity, that reasoned and reasoning account, which is the science; crystals which, to continue the metaphor, continue to grow, and may even change their forms, as the activity proceeds.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 7-9) 

“The facts which constitute the subject-matter of any special science presuppose a division between object and subject of experience. They are abstracted objects of cognizance, objects cut off from the knowing or other experiencing of them. But the facts which constitute the subject-matter of logic (or, for that matter, of any philosophical study) are neither abstracted objects of experience nor abstracted subjects (subjective states, processes, activities). They are concrete or spiritual facts, totalities, so to say, or unities, underlying and overriding the division between, for example, what is known and the knowing of it; what is willed and the willing of it; or generally what is object of experience and the experiencing of it.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 11) 

“The facts of number and figure, and the facts of nature…are assumed by the sciences which study them to be what they are in independence of any experiencing…of them, and to involve no thought, no spiritual activity of any kind, in their constitution. As subjects of mathematical and physical study, they are taken to be cut off from all activities of mind. They are taken by the men of science to form self-contained systems or domains, which thought may be said to posit or recognize, but only to posit or recognize as closed to, as excluding and excluded by, thought itself. [They] have their being and reality, their existence or subsistence and their nature or character, in themselves. Thought plays no part whatever in their constitution, neither the thought which posits and studies them….They stand there, so to speak, fixed and self-established, confronting the man of science. It is irrelevant to their being, that its independence has been posited by thought; a mere accident to it that, as the science progresses, it gets more fully known. Now facts thus posited are…abstractions. And…the facts which form the subject-matter of any philosophical study…are in principle concrete, the full or complete totalities, from which the former have been split off. For thought is not only included within the entirety of things: not only something that occurs here and there, in patches…within the universe: not only the occasional activity of this or that thinker—the exercise of a function peculiar to…a privileged group of beings within the whole. So much, of course, even the special sciences and even a material or a realist philosophy would readily admit. But thought—to put it roughly and, for the present, dogmatically—is a power of the universe, a power rooted in the very nature of things; a spiritual force or energy which pervades, penetrates, and at least contributes to constitute the universe itself, both as a whole and in its detail.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 13) 

“Nothing, I am suggesting, therefore, can be what the facts of the mathematical and physical sciences are posited as being. So to posit them—to taken them as thought they were in no sense related to, or constituted by, thought—is to omit a relevant and essential condition of their being. They are, i.e. as they are posited, in some degree unreal—in some degree shorn of their full being, mutilated results of inadequate conception, abstractions.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 13-14)