the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge

8/10/2019 The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge

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The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy

Julian Jaynes

THE ORIGINOF CONSCIOUSNESSIN THE

BREAKDOWN OFTHE BICAMERAL MIND

University of Toronto Press, 1978

INTRODUCTION

The P!"le# !$ C!ns%i!usness

O& WHAT A WORLD of unseen visions and

heard silences, this insubstantial country of the

mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless

rememberings and unshowable reveries! nd the

Content

Introduction: The Problem ofConsciousnessConsciousness as a Property of MatterConsciousness as a Property of Protoplasm

Consciousness as LearningConsciousness as Metaphysical Imposition

The Helpless Spectator TheoryEmergent EvolutionehaviorismConsciousness as the !eticular "ctivatingSystem

Chapter #: The "uguries of Science

$$% $&EThe Mind of Man

Chapter ': The Consciousness ofConsciousness

The E(tensiveness of ConsciousnessConsciousness &ot a Copy of E(perienceConsciousness &ot &ecessary forConceptsConsciousness &ot &ecessary for LearningConsciousness &ot &ecessary for Thin)ingConsciousness &ot &ecessary for !eason

The Location of ConsciousnessIs Consciousness &ecessary*

$$% TH!EE+estiges of the icameral Mind in the

Modern ,orld
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o%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#Consciousness%20Not%20Necessary%20for%20Learninghttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#Consciousness%20Not%20Necessary%20for%20Thinkinghttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#Consciousness%20Not%20Necessary%20for%20Reasonhttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#The%20Location%20of%20Consciousnesshttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#Is%20Consciousness%20Necessaryhttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind3.htmhttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#BOOK%20THREEhttp://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm#BOOK%20THREE


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rivacy of it all! secret theater of seechless

monologue and revenient counsel, an invisible

mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an

infinite resort of disaointments and discoveries"

whole #ingdom where each of us reigns

reclusively alone, $uestioning what we will,commanding what we can" hidden hermitage

where we may study out the troubled boo# of what

we have done and yet may do" n introcosm that is

more myself than anything % can find in a mirror"

This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is

everything, and yet nothing at all &what is it'

nd where did it come from'

nd why'

(ew $uestions have endured longer or traversed

a more erle)ing history than this, the roblem of

consciousness and its lace in nature" *esite

centuries of ondering and e)eriment, of trying to

get together two suosed entities called mind and

matter in one age, sub+ect and ob+ect in another, or

soul and body in still others, desite endless

discoursing on the streams, states, or contents of

consciousness, of distinguishing terms li#e

intuitions, sense data, the given, raw feels, thesensa, resentations and reresentations, the

sensations, images, and affections of structuralist

introsections, the evidential data of the scientific

ositivist, henomenological fields, the aaritions

of obbes, the henomena of -ant, the aearances

of the idealist, the elements of .ach, the hanera of

Peirce, or the category errors of /yle, in


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1

site of all of these, the roblem of consciousness is

still with us" 0omething about it #ees returning,

not ta#ing a solution"

%t is the difference that will not go away, the

difference between what others see of us and our

sense of our inner selves and the dee feelings that

sustain it" The difference between the youandme

of the shared behavioral world and the unlocatable

location of things thought about" 2ur reflections

and dreams, and the imaginary conversations we

have with others, in which nevertobe#nownby

anyone we e)cuse, defend, roclaim our hoes and

regrets, our futures and our asts, all this thic#

fabric of fancy is so absolutely different from

handable, standable, #ic#able reality with its trees,grass, tables, oceans, hands, stars even brains!

ow is this ossible' ow do these ehemeral

e)istences of our lonely e)erience fit into the

ordered array of nature that somehow surrounds and

engulfs this core of #nowing'

.en have been conscious of the roblem of

consciousness almost since consciousness began"

nd each age has described consciousness in terms

of its own theme and concerns" %n the golden age of

3reece, when men traveled about in freedom whileslaves did the wor#, consciousness was as free as

that" eraclitus, in articular, called it an enormous

sace whose boundaries, even by traveling along

every ath, could never be found out" 415

millennium later, ugustine among the caverned

hills of 6arthage was astonished at the mountains


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and hills of my high imaginations, the lains and

caves and caverns of my memory with its recesses

of manifold and sacious chambers, wonderfully

furnished with unnumberable stores" 45 :ote how

the metahors of mind are the world it erceive"

The first half of the nineteenth century was

the age of the great geological discoveries in which

the record of the ast was written in layers of the

earth;s crust" nd this led to the oulari


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metahors e)cet to state that that is recisely what

they are"

:ow originally, this search into the nature of

consciousness was #nown as the mindbody

roblem, heavy with its onderous hilosohicalsolutions" Dut since the theory of evolution, it has

bared itself into a more scientific $uestion" %t has

become the roblem of the origin of mind, or, more

secifically, the origin of consciousness in

evolution" Where can this sub+ective e)erience

which we introsect uon, this constant comanion

of hosts of associations, hoes, fears, affections,

#nowledges, colors, smells, toothaches, thrills,

tic#les, leasures, distresses, and desires where

and how in evolution could all this wonderfultaestry of inner e)erience have evolved' ow

can we derive this inwardness out of mere matter'

nd if so, when'

B" (or a statement of this effect, see" 3"" Eewes, ThePhysical Basis of MindFEondon, Trubuner, 1877G, "BA>"

B

This roblem has been at the very center of

the thin#ing of the twentieth century" nd it will be

worthwhile here to briefly loo# at some of thesolutions that have been roosed" % shall mention

the eight that % thin# are most imortant"

Consciousness as a Property of Matter

The most e)tensive ossible solution is

attractive mostly to hysicists" %t states that the

succession of sub+ective states that we feel in

introsection has a continuity that stretches all the

way bac# through hylogenetic evolution and

beyond into a fundamental roerty of interacting

matter" The relationshi of consciousness to what

we are conscious of is not fundamentally different

from the relationshi of a tree to the ground in

which it is rooted, or even of the gravitational

relationshi between two celestial bodies" This

view was consicuous in the first $uarter of this


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century" What le)ander called comresence or

Whitehead called rehension rovided the

groundwor# of a monism that moved on into a

flourishing school called :eo/ealism" %f a iece

of chal# is droed on the lecture table, that

interaction of chal# and table is different only incomle)ity from the ercetions and #nowledges

that fill our minds" The chal# #nows the table +ust

as the table #nows the chal#" That is why the chal#

stos at the table"

This is something of a caricature of a very

subtly wor#ed out osition, but it nevertheless

reveals that this difficult theory is answering $uite

the wrong $uestion" We are not trying to e)lain

how we interact with our environment, but ratherthe articular e)erience that we have in

introsecting" The attractiveness of this #ind of

neorealism was really a art of an historical eoch

when the astonishing successes of article hysics

were being tal#ed of everywhere" The solidity of

matter was being dissolved into mere mathematical

relationshis in sace, and this seemed li#e the

same unhysical $uality as the relationshi of

individuals conscious of each other"

=

Consciousness as a Property of Protoplasm

The ne)t most e)tensive solution asserts that

consciousness is not in matterper se; rather it is the

fundamental roerty of all living things" %t is the

very irritability of the smallest onecelled animals

that has had a continuous and glorious evolution u

through coelenterates, the rotochordates, fish,

amhibians, retiles, and mammals to man"

wide variety of nineteenth and twentieth

century scientists, including 6harles *arwin and H"

D" Titchener, found this thesis un$uestionable,

initiating in the first art of this century a great deal

of e)cellent observation of lower organisms" The

search for rudimentary consciousnesses was on"

Doo#s with titles such as The Animal Mind or The


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Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms were eagerly

written and eagerly read" 4=5 nd anyone who

observes amoebas hunting food or resonding to

various stimuli, or aramecia avoiding obstacles or

con+ugating, will #now the almost assionate

temtation to aly human categories to suchbehavior"

nd this brings us to a very imortant art of

the roblem our symathy and identification with

other living things" Whatever conclusions we may

hold on the matter, it is certainly a art of our

consciousness to Isee; into the consciousness of

others, to identify with our friends and families so

as to imagine what they are thin#ing and feeling"

nd so if animals are behaving such as we would insimilar situations, so well are we trained in our

human symathies that it re$uires a articular vigor

of mind to suress such identifications when they

are not warranted" The e)lanation for our

imuting consciousness to roto5 Dut surely

if the worm felt ain as we do, surely it would be


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the art with the brain that would do the agoni


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fully calibrated tactile stimulus where it +oined the

stem" fter over a thousand airings of the light

and the tactile stimulus, my atient lant was as

green as ever" %t was not conscious"

That e)ected failure behind me, % moved onto roto


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A" (or the most recent discussion of this imortant but

methodologically difficult roblem of the evolution oflearning, see ." H" Ditterman;s Thorndi#e 6entenary

ddress, The 6omarative nalysis of Eearning,

cience! 197>, 188 ?A99&7@9" 2ther references may be

found in /" " inde;sAnimal Behavior! nd ed" F:ewJor#? .c3rawill, >97@G, articularly " A>8&AAB"

7

guage" That error was, and still is, that

consciousness is an actual sace inhabited by

elements called sensations and ideas, and the

association of these elements because they are li#e

each other, or because they have been made by the

e)ternal world to occur together, is indeed what

learning is and what the mind is all about" 0o

learning and consciousness are confused and

muddled u with that vaguest of terms, e)erience"

%t is this confusion that lingered unseen

behind my first struggles with the roblem, as well

as the huge emhasis on animal learning in the first

half of the twentieth century" Dut it is now

absolutely clear that in evolution the origin of

learning and the origin of consciousness are two

utterly searate roblems" We shall be

demonstrating this assertion with more evidence inthe ne)t chater"

Consciousness as a Metaphysical "mposition

ll" the theories % have so far mentioned

begin in the assumtion that consciousness evolved

biologically by simle natural selection" Dut

another osition denies that such an assumtion is

even ossible"

%s this consciousness, it as#s, this enormousinfluence of ideas, rinciles, beliefs over our lives

and actions, really derivable from animal behavior'

lone of secies, all alone! we try to understand

ourselves and the world" We become rebels or

atriots or martyrs on" the basis of ideas" We build

6hartres and comuters, write oems and tensor


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account for something so different as

consciousness"

0uch thin#ing began with the beginning of

modern evolutionary theory, articularly in the

wor# of lfred /ussel Wallace, the codiscoverer ofthe theory of natural selection" (ollowing their twin

announcements of the theory in 18>8, both *arwin

and Wallace struggled li#e EaocoLns with the

serentine roblem of human evolution and its

encoiling difficulty of consciousness" Dut where

*arwin clouded the roblem with his own naivetM,

seeing only continuity in evolution, Wallace could

not do so" The discontinuities were terrifying and

absolute" .an;s conscious faculties, articularly,

could not ossibly have been develoed by meansof the same laws which have determined the

rogressive develoment of the organic world in

general, and also of man;s

9

hysical organism" 485 e felt the evidence

showed that some metahysical force had directed

evolution at three different oints? the beginning of

life, the beginning of consciousness, and the

beginning of civili


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materialist view" %t was a osition more consistent

with straight natural selection" %t even had inherent

in it that acrid essimism that is sometimes

curiously associated with really hard science" This

doctrine assures us consciousness does nothing at

all, and in fact can do nothing" .any toughmindede)erimentalists still agree with erbert 0encer

that such a downgrading of consciousness is the

only view that is consistent with straight

evolutionary theory" nimals are evolvedK nervous

systems and their mechanical refle)es increase in

comle)ityK when some unsecifled degree of

nervous comle)ity is reached, consciousness

aears, and so begins its futile course as a helless

sectator of cosmic events"

What we do is comletely controlled by the

wiring diagram of the brain and its refle)es to

e)ternal stimuli" 6onsciousness is not

8#arwinism! an %&position of the Theory of 'aturalelection FEondon? .acmillan, 1889G, " =7> see also

Wallace;s Contri(utions to the Theory of 'atural

election! 6h" 1@"

1@

more than the heat given off by the wires, a mereeihenomenon" 6onscious feelings, as odgson

ut it, are mere colors laid on the surface of a

mosaic which is held together by its stones, not by

the colors" 495 2r as u)ley insisted in a famous

essay, we are conscious automata" 41@5

6onsciousness can no more modify the wor#ing

mechanism of the body or its behavior than can the

whistle of a train modify its machinery or where it

goes" .oan as it will, the trac#s have long ago

decided where the train will go" 6onsciousness isthe melody that floats from the har and cannot

luc# its strings, the foam struc# raging from the

river that cannot change its course, the shadow that

loyally wal#s ste for ste beside the edestrian, but

is $uite unable to influence his +ourney"

%t is William Cames who has given the best


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discussion of the conscious automaton theory" 4115

is argument here is a little li#e 0amuel Cohnson;s

downing hilosohical idealism by #ic#ing a stone

and crying, % refute it thus! %t is +ust lain

inconceivable that consciousness should have

nothing to do with a business which it so faithfullyattends" %f consciousness is the mere imotent

shadow of action, why is it more intense when

action is most hesitant' nd why are we least

conscious when doing something most habitual'

6ertainly this seesawing relationshi between

consciousness and actions is something that any

theory of consciousness must e)lain"

%mergent %volution

The doctrine of emergent evolution was very

secifically welcomed into court to rescure

consciousness from this undignified

9" 0hadworth, odgson, The Theory of Practice FEondon?Eongmans 3reen, 187@G, 1?=>A"

1@" nd volitions merelysym(ols of brainstates" T""

u)ley, Collected %ssays F:ew Jor#? leton, 189AG,Nol" 1, " =="

11" William Cames,Principles of Psychology F:ew Jor#?

olt, 189@G, Nol" 1, 6h" >G, but also see William.c*ougall,Body and Mind FEondon? .ethuen, 1911G,6hs" 11, 1"

11

osition as a mere helless sectator" %t was also

designed to e)lain scientifically the observed

evolutionary discontinuities that had been the heart

of the metahysical imosition argument" nd

when % first began to study it some time ago, %, too,felt with a shimmering flash how everything, the

roblem of consciousness and all, seemed to

shiveringly fall into accurate and wonderful lace"

%ts main idea is a metahor? Cust as the

roerty of wetness cannot be derived from the

roerties of hydrogen and o)ygen alone, so


15/68

consciousness emerged at some oint in evolution

in a way underivable from its constituent arts"

While this simle idea goes bac# to Cohn

0tuart .ill and 3" " Eewes, it was Eloyd .organ;s

version in his %mergent %volution of 19B thatreally catured the cheering" This boo# is a

thoroughgoing scheme of emergent evolution

vigorously carried all the way bac# into the hysical

realm" ll the roerties of matter have emerged

from some unsecified forerunner" Those of

comle) chemical comounds have emerged from

the con+unction of simler chemical comonents"

Proerties distinctive of living things have emerged

from the con+unctions of these comle) molecules"

nd consciousness emerged from living things":ew con+unctions bring about new #inds of

relatedness which bring about new emergents" 0o

the new emergent roerties are in each case

effectively related to the systems from which they

emerge" %n fact, the new relations emergent at each

higher level guide and sustain the course of events

distinctive of that level" 6onsciousness, then,

emerges as something genuinely new at a critical

stage of evolutionary advance" When it has

emerged, it guides the course of events in the brainand has causal efficacy in bodily behavior"

The whoo with which this antireductionist

doctrine was greeted by the ma+ority of rominent

biological and comarative sychologists, frustrated

dualists all, was $uite undignified" Diologists called

it a new *eclaration of %ndeendence from hysics

and chemistry" :o longer can the biologist be

bullied into su

1ressing observed results because they are not

discovered nor e)ected from wor# on the non

living" Diology becomes a science in its own

right" Prominent neurologists agreed that now we

no longer had to thin# of consciousness as merely

dancing an assiduous but futile attendance uon our


16/68

brain rocesses" 41 5 The origin of consciousness

seemed to have been ointed at in such a way as to

restore consciousness to its usured throne as the

governor of behavior and even to romise new and

unredictable emergents in the future"

Dut had it' %f consciousness emerged in

evolution, when' %n what secies' What #ind of a

nervous system is necessary' nd as the first flush

of a theoretical brea#through waned, it was seen

that nothing about the roblem had really changed"

%t is these secifics that need to be answered" What

is wrong about emergent evolution is not the

doctrine, but the release bac# into old comfortable

ways of thin#ing about consciousness and behavior,

the license that it gives to broad and vacuousgeneralities"

istorically, it is of interest here to note that

all this dancing in the aisles of biology over

emergent evolution was going on at the same time

that a stronger, lesseducated doctrine with a

rigorous e)erimental camaign was beginning its

robust con$uest of sychology" 6ertainly one way

of solving the roblem of consciousness and its

lace in nature is to deny that consciousness e)ists

at all"

Behaviorism

%t is an interesting e)ercise to sit down and

try to be conscious of what it means to say that

consciousness does not e)ist" istory has not

recorded whether or not this feat was attemted by

the early behaviorists" Dut it has recorded

everywhere and in large

1" The $uote here is from " 0" Cennings and thearahrase from 6" Cudson erric#" (or these and other

reactions to emergent evolution, see (" .ason, Creation(y %volution FEondon? *uc#worth, 198G and W"

.c*ougall,Modern Materialism and %mergent %volution

F:ew Jor#? Nan :ostrand, 199G"

1B


17/68

the enormous influence which the doctrine that

consciousness does not e)ist has had on sychology

in this century"

nd this is behaviorism" %ts roots rummage

far bac# into the musty history of thought, to the socalled Hicureans of the eighteenth century and

before, to attemts to generali


18/68

ciences! 19A8, =? +,-+.+) nd for a good discussion,

/ichard errnstein;s %ntroduction to Cohn D" Watson;s6omarative Psychology in$istorical Conceptions of

Psychology! ." enle, C" Caynes, and C" C" 0ullivan, eds"

F:ew Jor#? 0ringer, ./0,1!98&11.)

1=

wary of sub+ective thought and longed for ob+ective

fact" nd in merica ob+ective fact was ragmatic

fact" Dehaviorism rovided this in sychology" %t

allowed a new generation to swee aside with one

imatient gesture all the wornout comle)ities of

the roblem of consciousness and its origin" We

would turn over a new leaf" We would ma#e a fresh

start"

nd the fresh start was a success in one

laboratory after another" Dut the single inherent

reason for its success was not its truth, but its

rogram" nd what a truly vigorous and e)citing

rogram of research it was! with its gleaming

stainlesssteel romise of reducing all conduct to a

handful of refle)es and conditional resonses

develoed from them, of generali


19/68

what it seemed" 2ff the rinted age, behaviorism

was only a refusal to tal# about consciousness"

:obody really believed he was not conscious" nd

there was a very real hyocrisy abroad, as those

interested in its roblems were forcibly e)cluded

from academic sychology, as te)t after te)t tried tosmother the unwanted roblem from student view"

%n essence, behaviorism was a method, not the

theory that it tried to be" nd as a method, it

1=" The unfortunate sub+ect of Watson;s e)eriments on

conditioned fear"

1>

e)orcised old ghosts" %t gave sychology a

thorough house cleaning" nd now the closets have

been swet out and the cuboards washed and

aired, and we are ready to e)amine the roblem

again"

Consciousness as the 2eticular Activating ystem

Dut before doing so, one final aroach, a

wholly different aroach, and one that has

occuied me most recently, the nervous system"

ow often in our frustrations with trying to solve

the mysteries of mind do we comfort our $uestionswith anatomy, real or fancied, and thin# of a

thought as a articular neuron or a mood as a

articular neurotransmitter! %t is a temtation born

of e)aseration with the untestableness and

vagueness of all the above solutions" way with

these verbal subtleties! These esoteric oses of

hilosohy and even the aer theories of

behaviorists are mere subterfuges to avoid the very

material we are tal#ing about! ere we have an

animal ma#e him a man if you will here he is onthe table of our analysis" %f he is conscious, it has to

be here, right here in him, in the brain in front of us,

not in the resumtuous in#lings of hilosohy

bac# in the incaable ast! nd today we at last

have the techni$ues to e)lore the nervous system

directly, brain to brain" 0omewhere here in a mere


20/68

threeandahalf ound lum of in#ishgray matter,

the answer has to be"

ll we have to do is to find those arts of the

brain that are resonsible for consciousness, then

trace out their anatomical evolution, and we willsolve the roblem of the origin of consciousness"

.oreover, if we study the behavior of resentday

secies corresonding to various stages in the

develoment of these neurological structures, we

will be able at last to reveal with e)erimental

e)actness +ust what consciousness basically is"

:ow this sounds li#e an e)cellent scientific

rogram" Hver since *escartes chose the brain;s

ineal body as the seat of consciousness and was

roundly refuted by the hysiologists of his

1A

day, there has been a fervent if often suerficial

search for where in the brain consciousness e)ists"

41>5 nd the search is still on"

t the resent, a lausible nominee for the

neural substrate of consciousness is one of the most

imortant neurological discoveries of our time"

This is that tangle of tiny internuncial neurons

called the reticular formation, which has long lain

hidden and unsusected in the brainstem" %t e)tends

from the to of the sinal cord through the

brainstem on u into the thalamus and

hyothalamus, attracting collaterals from sensory

and motor nerves, almost li#e a system of wiretabs

on the communication lines that ass near it' Dut

this is not all" %t also has direct lines of command to

half a do


21/68

The reticular formation is also often called

by its functional name, the reticular activating

system" %t is the lace where general anesthesia

roduces its effect by deactivating its neurons"

6utting it roduces ermanent slee and coma"

0timulating it through an imlanted electrode inmost of its regions wa#es u a sleeing animal"

.oreover, it is caable of grading the activity of

most other arts of the brain, doing this as a

reflection of its own internal e)citability and the

titer of its neurochemistry" There are e)cetions,

too comlicated for discussion here" Dut they are

not such as to diminish the e)citing idea that this

disordered networ# of short neurons that connect u

with the entire brain, this central transactional core

between the strictly sensory and motor systems of

classical neurology, is the longsought answer to the

whole roblem"

1>" % have discussed this at greater length in my aer,

The Problem of nimate .otion in the 0eventeenth

6entury,*ournal of the $istory of "deas! 197@, B1? 19B="

1A" 0ee " W" .agoun, The 3a4ing Brain F0ringfield,

%llinois? Thomas, 19>8G"

17

%f we now loo# at the evolution of the

reticular formation, as#ing if it could be correlated

with the evolution of consciousness, we find no

encouragement whatever" %t turns out to be one of

the oldest arts of the nervous system" %ndeed, a

good case could be made that this is the very oldest

art of the nervous system, around which the more

orderly, more secific, and more highly evolvedtracts and nuclei develoed" The little that we at

resent #now about the evolution of the reticular

formation does not seem to indicate that the

roblem of consciousness and its origin will be

solved by such a study"

.oreover, there is a delusion in such


22/68

reasoning" %t is one that is all too common and

unso#en in our tendency to translate sychological

henomena into neuroanatomy and chemistry" We

can only #now in the nervous system what we have

#nown in behavior first" Hven if we had a comlete

wiring diagram of the nervous system, we stillwould not be able to answer our basic $uestion"

Though we #new the connections of every tic#ling

thread of every single a)on and dendrite in every

secies that ever e)isted, together with all its

neurotransmitters and how they varied in its billions

of synases of every brain that ever e)isted, we

could still never not ever from a #nowledge of

the brain alone #now if that brain contained a

consciousness li#e our own" We first have to start

from the to, from some concetion of what

consciousness is, from what our own introsection

is" We have to be sure of that, before we can enter

the nervous system and tal# about its neurology"

We must therefore try to ma#e a new

beginning by stating what consciousness is" We

have already seen that this is no easy matter, and

that the history of the sub+ect is an enormous

confusion of metahor with designation" %n any

such situation, where something is so resistant toeven the beginnings of clarity, it is wisdom to begin

by determining what that something is not) nd

that is the tas# of the ne)t chater"

BOOK ONE

The Min( !$ Man

Cha)*e +, The C!ns%i!usness !$ C!ns%i!usness

WH: 0-H* the $uestion, what is

consciousness' we become conscious ofconsciousness" nd most of us ta#e this

consciousness of consciousness to be what

consciousness is" This is not true"

%n being conscious of consciousness, we feel

it is the most selfevident thing imaginable" We feel

it is the defining attribute of all our wa#ing states,


23/68

our moods and affections, our memories, our

thoughts, attentions, and volitions" We feel

comfortably certain that consciousness is the basis

of concets, of learning and reasoning, of thought

and +udgment, and that it is so because it records

and stores our e)eriences as they haen, allowingus to introsect on them and learn from them at

will" We are also $uite conscious that all this

wonderful set of oerations and contents that we

call consciousness is located somewhere in the

head"

2n critical e)amination, all of these

statements are false" They are the costume that

consciousness has been mas$uerading in for

centuries" They are the misconcetions that haverevented a solution to the roblem of the origin of

consciousness" To demonstrate these errors and

show what consciousness is not, is the long but %

hoe adventurous tas# of this chater"

The %&tensiveness of Consciousness

To begin with, there are several uses of the

word consciousness which we may immediately

discard as incorrect" We have for1

e)amle the hrase to lose consciousness after

receiving a blow on the head" Dut if this were

correct, we would then have no word for those

somnambulistic states #nown in the clinical

literature where an individual is clearly not

conscious and yet is resonsive to things in a way in

which a #noc#edout erson is not" Therefore, inthe first instance we should say that the erson

suffering a severe blow on the head loses both

consciousness and what % am calling reactivity, and

they are therefore different things"

This distinction is also imortant in normal

everyday life" We are constantly reacting to things


24/68

without being conscious of them at the time" 0itting

against a tree, % am always reacting to the tree and

to the ground and to my own osture, since if % wish

to wal#, % will $uite unconsciously stand u from

the ground to do so"

%mmersed in the ideas of this first chater, %

am rarely conscious even of where % am" %n writing,

% am reacting to a encil in my hand since % hold on

to it, and am reacting to my writing ad since % hold

it on my #nees, and to its lines since % write uon

them, but % am only conscious of what % am trying

to say and whether or not % am being clear to you"

%f a bird bursts u from the cose nearby and

flies crying to the hori


25/68

contrast effects, and other ercetual constancies all

go on every minute of our wa#ing and even

dreaming e)erience without our being in the least

conscious of them" nd these instances are barely

touching the multitude of rocesses which by the

older definitions of consciousness one might e)ectto be conscious of, but which we definitely are not"

% am here thin#ing of Titchener;s designation of

consciousness as the sum total of mental rocesses

occurring now" We are now very far from such a

osition"

Dut let us go further" 6onsciousness is a

much smaller art of our mental life than we are

conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of

what we are not conscious of" ow simle that is tosayK how difficult to areciate! %t is li#e as#ing a

flashlight in a dar# room to search around for

something that does not have any light shining uon

it" The flashlight, since there is light in whatever

direction it turns, would have to conclude that there

is light everywhere" nd so consciousness can

seem to ervade all mentality when actually it does

not"

The timing of consciousness is also an

interesting $uestion" When we are awa#e, are weconscious all the time' We thin# so" %n fact, we are

sure so! % shut my eyes and even if % try not to

thin#, consciousness still streams on, a great river of

contents in a succession of different conditions

which % have been taught to call thoughts, images,

memories, interior dialogues, regrets, wishes,

resolves, all interweaving with the constantly

changing ageant of e)terior sensations of which %

am selectively aware" lways the continuity"

6ertainly this is the feeling" nd whatever we;re

doing, we feel that our very self, our deeest of

dee

B

identity, is indeed this continuing flow that only


26/68

ceases in slee between remembered dreams" This

is our e)erience" nd many thin#ers have ta#en

this sirit of continuity to be the lace to start from

in hilosohy, the very ground of certainty which

no one can doubt" 6ogito, ergo sum"

Dut what could this continuity mean' %f we

thin# of a minute as being si)ty thousand

milliseconds, are we conscious for every one of

those milliseconds' %f you still thin# so, go on

dividing the time units, remembering that the firing

of neurons is of a finite order although we have no

idea what that has to do with our sense of the

continuity of consciousness" (ew ersons would

wish to maintain that consciousness somehow floats

li#e a mist above and about the nervous systemcomletely ununited to any earthly necessities of

neural refractory eriods"

%t is much more robable that the seeming

continuity of consciousness is really an illusion, +ust

as most of the other metahors about consciousness

are" %n our flashlight analogy, the flashlight would

be conscious of being on only when it is on"

Though huge gas of time occurred, roviding

things were generally the same, it would seem to

the flashlight itself that the light had beencontinuously on" We are thus conscious less of the

time than we thin#, because we cannot be conscious

of when we are not conscious" nd the feeling of a

great uninterruted stream of rich inner

e)eriences, now slowly gliding through dreamy

moods, now tumbling in e)cited torrents down

gorges of reciitous insight, or surging evenly

through our nobler days, is what it is on this age, a

metahor for how sub+ective consciousness seems

to sub+ective consciousness"

Dut there is a better way to oint this out" %f

you close your left eye and stare at the left margin

of this age, you are not at all conscious of alarge

ga in your vision about four inches to the right"

Dut, still staring with your right eye only, ta#e your


27/68


28/68

destroyed, are not conscious of any alteration in their

vision" Eoo#ing straight ahead, they have the illusion ofseeing a comlete visual world, as you or % do"

B" This e)amle with similar hrasing was used by W" D"

6arenter to illustrate his unconscious cerebration,

robably the first imortant statement of the idea in thenineteenth century" %t was first described in the fourth

edition of 6arenter;s$uman Physiology in 18>, but

more e)tensively in his later wor#s, as in his influentialPrinciples of Mental Physiology FEondon? -egan Paul,

187=G, Doo# , 6h" 1B"

>

time the erformer, the conscious erformer, is in a

seventh heaven of artistic rature at the results of all

this tremendous business, or erchance lost in

contemlation of the individual who turns theleaves of the music boo#, +ustly ersuaded he is

showing her his very soul! 2f course consciousness

usually has a role in the learning of such comle)

activities, but not necessarily in their erformance,

and that is the only oint % am trying to ma#e here"

6onsciousness is often not only unnecessaryK

it can be $uite undesirable" 2ur ianist suddenly

conscious of his fingers during a furious set of

areggios would have to sto laying" :i+ins#ysomewhere says that when he danced, it was as if

he were in the orchestra it loo#ing bac# at himselfK

he was not conscious of every movement, but of

how he was loo#ing to others" srinter may be

conscious of where he is relative to the others in the

race, but he is certainly not conscious of utting one

leg in front of the otherK such consciousness might

indeed cause him to tri" nd anyone who lays

tennis at my indifferent level #nows the

e)aseration of having his service suddenly Igo toieces; and of serving consecutive double faults!

The more doubles, the more conscious one becomes

of one;s motions Fand of one;s disosition!G and the

worse things get" 4=5

0uch henomena of e)ertion are not to be

e)lained away on the basis of hysical e)citement,


29/68

for the same henomena in regard to consciousness

occur in less strenuous occuations" /ight at this

moment, you are not conscious of how you are

sitting, of where your hands are laced, of how fast

you are reading, though even as % mentioned these

items, you were" nd as you read, you are notconscious of the letters or even of the words or even

of the synta) or the sentences and unctuation,

=" The resent writer imrovises on the iano, and his best

laying is when he is not conscious of the erformanceside as he invents new themes or develoments, but only

when he is somnambulistic about it and is conscious of his

laying only as if he were another erson"

A

but only of their meaning" s you listen to anaddress, honemes disaear into words and words

into sentences and sentences disaear into what

they are trying to say, into meaning" To be

conscious of the elements of seech is to destroy

the intention of the seech"

nd also on the roduction side" Try

sea#ing with a full consciousness of your

articulation as you do it" Jou will simly sto

sea#ing"

nd so in writing, it is as if the encil or en

or tyewriter itself sells the words, saces them,

unctuates roerly, goes to the ne)t line, does not

begin consecutive sentences in the same way,

determines that we lace a $uestion here, an

e)clamation there, even as we ourselves are

engrossed in what we are trying to e)ress and the

erson we are addressing"

(or in sea#ing or writing we are not really

conscious of what we are actually doing at the time"

6onsciousness functions in the decision as to what

to say, how we are to say it, and when we say it, but

then the orderly and accomlished succession of

honemes or of written letters is somehow done for

us"


30/68

Consciousness 'ot a Copy of %&perience

lthough the metahor of the blan# mind

had been used in the writings ascribed to ristotle,

it is really only since Cohn Eoc#e thought of the

mind as a ta(ula rasa in the seventeenth centurythat we have emhasi


31/68

is the distinction between recognition and recall"

What you can consciously recall is a thimbleful to

the huge oceans of your actual #nowledge"

H)eriments of this sort demonstrate that

conscious memory is not a storing u of sensoryimages, as is sometimes thought" 2nly if you have

at some time consciously noticed your finger

lengths or your door, have at some time counted

your teeth, though you have observed these things

countless times, can you remember" Unless you

have articularly noted what is on the wall or

recently cleaned or ainted it- you will be surrised

at what you have left out" nd introsect uon the

matter" *id you not in each of these instances as#

what must be there' 0tarting with ideas andreasoning, rather than with any image' 6onscious

retrosection is not the retrieval of images, but the

retrieval of what you have been conscious of

before, 4>5 and the rewor#ing of these elements into

rational or lausible atterns"

>" 0ee in this connection the discussion of /obert 0"

Woodworth in hisPsychological "ssues F:ew Jor#?6olumbia University Press, 19B9 6h" 7

8

Eet us demonstrate this in another way"

Thin#, if you will, of when you entered the room

you are now in and when you ic#ed u this boo#"

%ntrosect uon it and then as# the $uestion? are the

images of which you have coies the actual sensory

fields as you came in and sat down and began

reading' *on;t you have an image of yourself

coming through one of the doors, erhas even a

bird;seye view of one of the entrances, and then

erhas vaguely see yourself sitting down andic#ing u the boo#' Things which you have never

e)erienced e)cet in this introsection! nd can

you retrieve the sound fields around the event' 2r

the cutaneous sensations as you sat, too# the

ressure off your feet, and oened this boo#' 2f

course, if you go on with your thin#ing you can also


32/68

rearrange your imaginal retrosection such that you

do indeed Isee; entering the room +ust as it might

have beenK and Ihear; the sound of the chair and the

boo# oening, and Ifeel; the s#in sensations" Dut %

suggest that this has a large element of created

imagery what we shall call narrati


33/68

uni$uely the lace where concets are formed" This

is a very ancient idea? that we have various concrete

conscious e)eriences and then ut the similar ones

together into a concet" This idea has even been the

aradigm of a slew of e)eriments by sychologists

who thought they were thus studying concetformation"

.a) .uller, in one of his fascinating

discussions in the last century, brought the roblem

to a oint by as#ing, whoever saw a tree' :o one

ever saw a tree, but only this or that fir tree, or oa#

tree, or ale tree " " " Tree, therefore, is a concet,

and as such can never be seen or erceived by the

senses" 475 Particular trees alone were outside in

the environment, and only in consciousness did thegeneral concet of tree e)ist"

:ow the relation between concets and

consciousness could have an e)tensive discussion"

Dut let it suffice here simly to show that there is no

necessary connection between them" When .uller

says no one has ever seen a tree, he is mista#ing

what he #nows about an ob+ect for the ob+ect itself"

Hvery weary wayfarer after miles under the hot sun

has seen a tree" 0o has every cat, s$uirrel, and

chimun# when chased by a dog" The bee has aconcet of" a flower, the eagle a concet of a sheer

faced roc#y

7" .a) .uller, The cience of Though7 FEondon?Eongmans 3reen, 1887G, 7879" Hugenio /ignano in his

The Psychology of 2easoning F:ew Jor#? arcourt,

Drace, 19BG, " 1@8f", ma#es a similar criticism to mine"

B@

ledge, as a nesting thrush has a concet of a crotch

of uer branch awninged with green leaves"6oncets are simly classes of behaviorally

e$uivalent things" /oot concets are rior to

e)erience" They are fundamental to the atic

structures that allow behavior to occur at all"8

%ndeed what .uller should have said was, no one

has ever been conscious of a tree" (or


34/68

consciousness, indeed, not only is not the reository

of concetsK it does not usually wor# with them at

all! When we consciously thin# of a tree, we are

indeed conscious of a articular tree, of the fir or

the oa# or the elm that grew beside our house, and

let it stand for the concet, +ust as we can let aconcet word stand for it as well" %n fact, one of the

great functions of language is to let the word stand

for a concet, which is e)actly what we do in

writing or sea#ing about concetual material" nd

we must do this because concets are usually not in

consciousness at all"

Consciousness 'ot 'ecessary for Learning

third imortant misconcetion ofconsciousness is that it is the basis for learning"

Particularly for the long and illustrious series of

ssociationist sychologists through the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries, learning was a matter of

ideas in consciousness being groued by similarity,

contiguity, or occasionally some other relationshi"

:or did it matter whether we were sea#ing of a

man or an animalK all learning was rofiting from

e)erience or ideas coming together in

consciousness as % said in the %ntroduction" ndso contemorary common #nowledge, without

reali


35/68

disfigured in sychology by a sometimes forbidding

+argon, which is really an overgenerali


36/68

1@" These studies are those of 3regory /a


37/68

4115

%n the cointossing e)eriment, you may

have even discovered that consciousness if resent

imeded your learning" This is a very common

finding in the learning of s#ills, +ust as we saw itwas in their erformance" Eet the learning go on

without your being too conscious of it, and it is all

done more smoothly and

11" W"(" Doo#, The Psychology of 4ill, F:ew Jor#?

3regg, 19>G"

BB

efficiently" 0ometimes too much so, for, in

comle) s#ills li#e tying, one may learn to

consistently tye Ihte; for Ithe;" The remedy is toreverse the rocess by consciously racticing the

mista#e Ihte;, whereuon contrary to the usual idea

of Iractice ma#es erfect;, the mista#e dros away

a henomenon called negative ractice"

%n the common motor s#ills studied in the

laboratory as well, such as comle) ursuitrotor

systems or mirrortracing, the sub+ects who are

as#ed to be very conscious of their movements do

worse" 415 nd athletic trainers whom % have

interviewed are unwittingly following suchlaboratoryroven rinciles when they urge their

trainees not to thin# so much about what they are

doing" The Oen e)ercise of learning archery is

e)tremely e)licit on this, advising the archer not to

thin# of himself as drawing the bow and releasing

the arrow, but releasing himself from the

consciousness of what he is doing by letting the

bow stretch itself and the arrow release itself from

the fingers at the roer time"

0olution learning For instrumental learning or

oerant conditioningG is a more comle) case"

Usually when one is ac$uiring some solution to a

roblem or some ath to a goal, consciousness

lays a very considerable role in setting u the

roblem in a certain way" Dut consciousness is not


38/68

necessary" %nstances can be shown in which a

erson has no consciousness whatever of either the

goal he is see#ing or the solution he is finding to

achieve that goal"

nother simle e)eriment can demonstratethis" s# someone to sit oosite you and to say

words, as many words as he can thin# of, ausing

two or three seconds after each of them for you to

write them down" %f after every lural noun For

ad+ective, or abstract word, or whatever you

chooseG you say good or right as you write it

down, or simly mmmhmm or smile, or reeat

the lural word leasantly, the fre$uency of lural

nouns For

1" "E" Was#om, n e)erimental analysis of incentiveand forced alication and their effect uon learning,

*ournal of Psychology, 19BA, ? B9B=@8"

B=

whateverG will increase significantly as he goes on

saying words" The imortant thing here is that the

sub+ect is not aware that he is learning anything at

all" 41B5 e is not conscious that he is trying to find

a way to ma#e you increase your encouraging

remar#s, or even of his solution to that roblem"Hvery day, in all our conversations, we are

constantly training and being trained by each other

in this manner, and yet we are never conscious of it"

0uch unconscious learning is not confined to

verbal behavior" .embers of a sychology class

were as#ed to comliment any girl at the college

wearing red" Within a wee# the cafeteria was a

bla


39/68

The critical roblem with most of these

studies is that if the sub+ect decided beforehand to

loo# for such contingencies, he would of course be

conscious of what he was learning to do" 2ne way

to get around this is to use a behavioral resonse

which is imercetible to the sub+ect" nd this hasbeen done, using a very small muscle in the thumb

whose movements are imercetible to us and can

only be detected by an electrical recording

aaratus" The sub+ects were told that the

e)eriments were concerned with the effect of

intermittent unleasant noise com

1B" C" 3reensoon, The reinforcing effect of two so#en

sounds on the fre$uency of two resonses,American*ournal of Psychology! 19>>, A8? =@9=1A" Dut there is

considerable controversy here, articularly in the order

and wording of oste)erimental $uestions" There mayeven be a #ind of tacit contract between sub+ect and

e)erimenter" 0ee /obert /osenthal,%&perimenter

%ffects in Behavioral 2esearch F:ew Jor#? leton

6entury6rofts, 19AAG" %n this controversy, % resentlyagree with Postman that the learning occurs (efore the

sub+ect becomes conscious of the reinforcement

contingency, and indeed that consciousness would notoccur unless this had been so" E" Postman and E"

0assenrath, The automatic action of verbal rewards and

unishment,*ournal of 8eneral Psychology! 19A1, 9.71@91BA"

1=" W" Eamnbert 3ardiner,Psychology7 A tory of a

earch FDelmont, 6alifornia?

Droo#s6ole, >97@G, " 7A"

B>

bined with music uon muscle tension" (our

electrodes were laced on their bodies, the only real

one being the one over the small thumb muscle, the

other three being dummy electrodes" The aaratus

was so arranged that whenever the imercetible

thumbmuscle twitch was electrically detected, the

unleasant noise was stoed for 1> seconds if it

was already sounding, or delayed for 1>seconds if

was not turned on at the time of the twitch" %n all


40/68

sub+ects, the imercetible thumb twitch that turned

off the distressing noise increased in rate without

the sub+ects; being the slightest bit conscious that

they were learning to turn off the unleasant noise"

1>

Thus, consciousness is not a necessary art

of the learning rocess, and this is true whether it be

the learning of signals, s#ills, or solutions" There is,

of course, much more to say on this fascinating

sub+ect, for the whole thrust of contemorary

research in behavior modification is along these

lines" Dut, for the resent, we have simly

established that the older doctrine that conscious

e)erience is the substrate of all learning is clearly

and absolutely false" t this oint, we can at leastconclude that it is ossible ossible % say to

conceive of human beings who are not conscious

and yet can learn and solve roblems"

Consciousness 'ot 'ecessary for Thin4ing

s we go from simle to more comlicated

asects of mentality, we enter vaguer and vaguer

territory, where the terms we use become more

difficult to travel with" Thin#ing is certainly one of

these" nd to say that consciousness is notnecessary for thin#ing ma#es us immediately bristle

with rotest" 0urely thin#ing is the very heart and

bone of consciousness! Dut let us go slowly

1>" /" (" efferline, D" -eenan, /" " arford, Hscae

and avoidance conditioning in human sub+ects withouttheir observation of the resonse, cience! 19>9, 1B@?

1BB8>BB9" nother study which shows unconscious

solution learning very clearly is that of C" *" -eehn?H)erimental 0tudies of the Unconscious? oerant

conditioning of unconscious eye blin#ing,Behavior2esearch and Therapy! 19A7, >? 9>%@"

BA

here" What we would be referring to would be that

tye of free associating which might be called

thin#ingabout or thin#ingof, which, indeed,


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always seems to be fully surrounded and immersed

in the imageeoled rovince of consciousness"

Dut the matter is really not that clear at all"

Eet us begin with the tye of thin#ing that

ends in a result to which may be redicated theterms right or wrong" That is what is commonly

referred to as ma#ing +udgments, and is very similar

to one e)treme of solution learning that we have

discussed"

simle e)eriment, so simle as to seem

trivial, will bring us directly to the heart of the

matter" Ta#e any two une$ual ob+ects, such as a en

and encil or two une$ually filled glasses of water,

and lace them on the des# in front of you" Then

artially closing your eyes to increase yourattention to the tas#, ic# u each one with the

thumb and forefinger and +udge which is heavier"

:ow introsect on everything you are doing" Jou

will find your self conscious of the feel of the

ob+ects against the s#in of your fingers, conscious

of the slight downward ressure as you feel the

weight of each, conscious of any rotrubances on

the sides of the ob+ects, and so forth" nd now the

actual +udging of which is heavier" Where is that'

Eo! the very act of +udgment that one ob+ect isheavier than the other is not conscious" %t is

somehow +ust given to you by your nervous system"

%f we call that rocess of +udgment thin#ing, we are

finding that such thin#ing is not conscious at all"

simle e)eriment, yes, but e)tremely imortant" %t

demolishes at once the entire tradition that such

thought rocesses are" the structure of the conscious

mind"

This tye of e)eriment came to be studiede)tensively bac# at the beginning of this century in

what came to be #nown as the Wur


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1A" -" .arbe,%&perimentell-Psychologische

:ntersuchungen u(er das :rteil! eine %inleitung in die

Logi4FEei


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ordinate Foa#elmG, or subordinate Foa#beamGK or a

whole Foa#forestG, a art Foa#acornG, or another

art of a common whole

17" "C" Wattt, H)erimentelle Deitrage ,=? 89=BA"

B8

Foa#athG" The nature of this tas# of constrained

associations made it ossible to divide the

consciousness of it into four eriods? the

instructions as to which of the constraints it was to

be Fe"g", suerordinateG, the resentation of the

stimulus noun Fe"g", oa#G, the search for anaroriate association, and the so#en rely Fe"g",

treeG" The introsecting observers were as#ed to

confine themselves first to one eriod and then to

another, and thus get a more accurate account of

consciousness in each"

%t was e)ected that the recision of this

fractionation method would rove .arbe;s

conclusions wrong, and that the consciousness of

thin#ing would be found in Watt;s third eriod, the

eriod of the search for the word that would suit thearticular constrained association" Dut nothing of

the sort haened" %t was the third eriod that was

introsectively blan#" What seemed to be

haening was that thin#ing was automatic and not

really conscious once a stimulus word had been

given, and, revious to that, the articular tye of

association demanded had been ade$uately

understood by the observer" This was a remar#able

result" nother way of saying it is that one does

one6s thin4ing (efore one 4nows what one is tothin4 a(out) The imortant art of the matter is the

instruction, which allows the whole business to go

off automatically" This % shall shorten to the term

struction! by which % mean it to have the

connotation of both instruction and construction"

4185


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Thin#ing, then, is not conscious" /ather, it is

an automatic rocess following a struction and the

materials on which the struction is to oerate"

Dut we do not have to stay with verbal

associationsK any tye of roblem will do, eventhose closer to voluntary actions" %f % say to

18" The termsset! determining tendency! andstruction

need to be distinguished" set is the more inclusive term,being an engaged atic structure which in mammals can

be ordered from a general limbic comonent of readiness

to a secific cortical comonent of a determiningtendency, the final art of which in humans is often a

struction"

B9

myself, % shall thin# about an oa# in summer, that is

a struction, and what % call thin#ing about is really a

file of associated images cast u on the shores of

my consciousness out of an un#nown sea, +ust li#e

the constrained associations in Watt;s e)eriment"

%f we have the figures A and , divided by a

vertical line, A, the ideas roduced by such a

stimulus will be eight, four, or three, according to

whether the struction rescribed is addition,subtraction, or division" The imortant thing is that

the struction itself, the rocess of addition,

subtraction, or division, disaears into the nervous

system once it is given" Dut it is obviously there Iin

the mind; since the same stimulus can result in any

of three different resonses" nd that is something

we are not in the least aware of, once it is ut in

motion"

0uose we have a series of figures such asthe following?

What is the ne)t figure in this series' ow


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did you arrive at your answer' 2nce % have given

you the struction, you automatically Isee; that it is

to be another triangle" % submit that if you try to

introsect on the rocess by which you came u

with the answer you are not truly retrieving the

rocesses involved, but inventing what you thin#they must have been by giving yourself another

struction to that effect" %n the tas# itself, all you

were really conscious of was the struction, the

figures before you on the age, and then the

solution"

:or is this different from the case of seech

which % mentioned earlier" When we sea#, we are

not really conscious either of the search for words,

or of utting the words together into hrases, or ofutting the hrases into sentences" We are only

conscious of the ongoing series of structions that we

give ourselves, which then, automatically, without

any consciousness whatever, result in seech" The

seech itself we can be conscious of as it is

=@

roduced if we wish, thus giving some feedbac# to

result in further structions"

0o we arrive at the osition that the actualrocess of thin#ing, so usually thought to be the

very life of consciousness, is not conscious at all

and that only its rearation, its materials, and its

end result are consciously erceived"

Consciousness 'ot 'ecessary for 2eason

The long tradition of man as the rational

animal, the tradition that enthroned him as $omo

sapiens! rests in all its ontifical generality on thegracile assumtion that consciousness is the seat of

reason" ny discussion of such an assumtion is

embarrassed by the vagueness of the term reason

itself" This vagueness is the legacy we have from

an older Ifaculty; sychology that so#e of a

Ifaculty; of reason, which was of course situated

Iin; consciousness" nd this forced deosition of


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reason and consciousness was further confused with

ideas of truth, of how we ought to reason, or logic

all $uite different things" nd hence logic was

suosed to be the structure of conscious reason

confounding generations of oor scholars who

#new erfectly well that syllogisms were not whatwas on their side of introsection"

/easoning and logic are to each other as

health is to medicine, or better as conduct is to

morality" /easoning refers to a gamut of natural

thought rocesses in the everyday world" Eogic is

how we ought to thin# if ob+ective truth is our goal

and the everyday world is very little concerned

with ob+ective truth" Eogic is the science of the

+ustification of conclusions we have reached bynatural reasoning" .y oint here is that, for such

natural reasoning to occur, consciousness is not

necessary" The very reason we need logic at all is

because most reasoning is not conscious at all"

6onsider to begin with the many henomena

we have already established as going on without

consciousness which can be

=1

called elementary #inds of reasoning" 6hoosing

aths, words, notes, motions, the ercetual

corrections in si


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sometimes called reasoning from articulars, and is

simly e)ectation based on generali


48/68

$uietly into my thin#ing without my susecting

their imortance " " " in other cases they arrived

suddenly, without any effort on my art " " " they

li#ed esecially to ma#e their aearance while %

was ta#ing an easy wal# over wooded hills in sunny

weather! @

nd 3auss, referring to an arithmetical

theorem which he had unsuccessfully tried to rove

for years, wrote how li#e a sudden flash of

lightning, the riddle haened to be solved" %

myself cannot say what was the conducting thread

which connected what % reviously #new with what

made my success ossible" 1

nd the brilliant mathematician PoincarM

was articularly interested in the manner in whichhe came uon his own discoveries" %n a celebrated

lecture at the 0ociMtM de Psychologie in Paris, he

described how he set out on a geologic e)cursion?

The incidents of the +ourney made me forget my

mathematical wor#" aving reached 6outances, we

entered an omnibus to go some lace or other" t

the moment when % ut my footon the ste, the idea

came to me, without anything in my former

thoughts seeming to have aved the way for it, the

transformation % had used to define the (uchsianfunctions were identical with those of non

Huclidian geometry!

%t does seem that it is in the more abstract

sciences, where the materials of scrutiny are less

and less interfered with by everyday

@" s $uoted by /obert 0" Woodworth,%&perimentalPsychology F:ew Jor#? olt, 19B8G, " 818"

1" s $uoted by Cac$ues adamard, The Psychology of

"nvention in the Mathematical ield FPrinceton? PrincetonUniversity Press, 19=>G, " 1>"

" enri PoincarM, .athematical creation, in his The

oundations of cience! 3" Druce alsted, trans" F:ew

Jor#? The 0cience Press, 191BG, " B87"

=B

e)erience, that this business of sudden flooding


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insights is most obvious" close friend of

Hinstein;s has told me that many of the hysicist;s

greatest ideas came to him so suddenly while he

was shaving that he had to move the blade of the

straight ra


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eyes sometimes to introsect even more clearly"

Uon what' %ts satial

==

character seems un$uestionable" .oreover we

seem to move or at least Iloo#; in different

directions" nd if we ress ourselves too strongly

to further characteri


51/68

will not have found this discussion valid since they

locate their thin#ing selves somewhere in the uer

chest" (or most of us, however, the habit of

locating consciousness in the head is so ingrained

that it

B" %t is so obvious that the writing ascribed to ristotle

were not written by the same hand that % refer this

designation"

=>

is difficult to thin# otherwise" Dut, actually, you

could, as you remain where you are, +ust as well

locate your consciousness around the corner in the

ne)t room against the wall near the floor, and do

your thin#ing there as well as in your head" :ot

really +ust as well" (or there are very good reasonswhy it is better to imagine your mindsace inside

of you, reasons to do with volition and internal

sensations, with the relationshi of your body and

your I%; which will become aarent as we go on"

That there is no henomenal necessity in

locating consciousness in the brain is further

reinforced by various abnormal instances in which

consciousness seems to be outside the body"

friend who received a left frontal brain in+ury in thewar regained consciousness in the corner of the

ceiling of a hosital ward loo#ing down

euhorically at himself on the cot swathed in

bandages" Those who have ta#en lysergic acid

diethylamide commonly reort similar outofthe

body or e)osomatic e)eriences, as they are called"

0uch occurrences do not demonstrate anything

metahysical whateverK simly that locating

consciousness can be an arbitrary matter"

Eet us not ma#e a mista#e" When % amconscious, % am always and definitely using certain

arts of my brain inside my head" Dut so am %

when riding a bicycle, and the bicycle riding does

not go on inside my head" The cases are different

of course, since bicycle riding has a definite

geograhical location, while consciousness does


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not" %n reality, consciousness has no location

whatever e)cet as we imagine it has"

"s Consciousness 'ecessary

:o e)cetion at all" %t began in what seemed

in my ersonal narrati


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innocence of certainty among the mythologies of

facts"

==A

the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge

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