In terms of the study of emotions, Antonio Damasio describes the 20th century as “the century of neglect.” If the research of emotion is said to begin with Aristotle, then by the end of 19th century we have a body of work that includes the writings of Pascal, Spinoza, Darwin, Freud, Sartre and William James among many others. But all of this success in the study of emotions was cut short in the 20th century when the study of emotion was given increasingly short shrift by scientists and thinkers who embraced a philosophically outdated Cartesian model of the mind in order to support the computational theories of intelligence made so popular by the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950’s. Today, the computational model of the mind advocated by the strong AI theory and Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar, has been upset—-philosophically by Searle, Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus; in mathematics and physics by Penrose; and in the field of neuroscience by Damasio. Remarkable advances in brain study have provided us with a very different perspective––an emotional revolution, claims Damasio––which positions emotion as the very basis of reason. As the first mechanism of rational processes, it seems that emotion is a primal and practical necessity.
It is becoming clear that there are a whole host of medical ills that can be illuminated by emotional studies. Indeed, understanding how the emotional system works is crucial for the effective treatment stroke and mood disorders. Emotional studies have important applications in the social space as well; for while it is clear that what goes on in a culture economically, politically, and legally involves decisions that emerge out of rational processes, it seems that these rational processes evolve out of, and work alongside, emotional processes that have their origin in the survival of the organism; it appears that the way we produce moral behaviour is very closely tied to the emotional system in an evolutionary sense. Clearly, emotion has an immense role to play in our decisions as individuals and as a society; but how are we to understand this relationship between emotion and reason? What is an emotion? What is a feeling? And why is reason so dependent on both of them?
Damasio redefines the concept of emotion by amplifying its description into three categories:
1. Basic emotions––fear, anger happiness, as studied by Darwin and others––appear to be universal; even without the same names they are represented by the same behaviour in different cultures and even across certain species.
2. Background emotions, which are the most prevalent emotions we have. We are always in an emotional state, ie.discouragement or enthusiasm. Consciousness is always an emotive state.
3. Secondary or social emotions include compassion, shame, contempt, pride, and jealousy. These are entirely tied to social concerns, to those with whom and towards whom we act, others.
Secondary or social emotions were initially thought of as purely cultural constructions, but this has been shown to be not quite the case. While culture and education––the social environment as a whole––clearly plays an enormous role in directing the specifics of how emotions are applied, animal research has shown that a number of these emotions are present in primates who have been observed behaving compassionately, even towards other animals of other species. It seems as though these secondary emotions permeate our genetics and are as much a part of our biological make up as the primary emotions are.
Using William James as starting point, Damasio outlines the distinction and relationship between feeling and emotion–James’ inversion of the traditional view of the physiology of the emotion/feeling cycle has been been borne out by later research. James writes:
Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.
By interposing the body between the causative stimulus and the emotive mindstate, James shows the inseparability of mind and body; he also shows that body is represented in the brain, either directly or indirectly, and that the brain can map the body. However, James leaves out the possibility of an appraisal of the the stimulus itself. Although there is often no stimulus appraisal––fear may cause a direct body state––it does happen, especially when we are confronted with more complex situations. According to Damsio, James conflated emotion and feeling: on one hand James gives the impression that emotion is a variety of reactive behaviours; but then, on the other hand, he says that the perception that we get from the reaction is the emotion. This was shown to be an inconsistent view by the physiologists in the early 20th century.
In Damasio’s terms, emotion and feeling can be understood separately. Feelings involve cognition and are composite perceptions of:
1. partcular states of the body that are real or simulted
2. states of altered cognitive resouces
3. the deployment of certain scripts (descriptions) which can be really in the body or generated in the brain––ie. a desctiption of happiness
4. different states of cognitve ability in different body states––ie. time perception, learning attentiveness etc.
And all of this is connected to a causative state which is intentionality––how we feel ‘about’ or ‘towards’ something.
And human emotions are understood as:
1. largely unlearned programs of automatic actions and cognitive strategies aimed at the management of life. Largely but not 100% automatic––we can have some measure of control over them.
2. programs aimed at the management of life; one cannot do without emotions; they play an evolutionary role for the self and/or for the group
3. triggered by objects or situations that act on the mind, whether they are real or in the mind as a recollection; defects in particular aspects of emotion can be traced to lesions in certain parts of the brain.
In Damasio’s view, emotion involves an appraisal of stimulus, a triggering of emotion, and an execution of emotion and/or emotional states. Feeling involves an emotional trigger which stimulates brain structures to initiate a set of internal chemical changes which create changes to the viscera in the central nervous system. Thus, the experience of an emotion and the feeling associated with it involves a variety of changes in cognitive resources. Emotions change how we recall past experiences and perceive time; and they alter the relationship between our bodies and the world––even way in which we reason changes profoundly with emotive states. In brief, emotions and feelings change the way in which we attend to the world.
This relationship between emotion and feeling developed out of complex mechanisms of reaction built out of many other processes that were tied to survival: reward and punishment, scaling of internal needs, pain and pleasure. And it is certain that early creatures relied on such mechanisms long before emotions appeared as we understand them. In terms of survival, emotions and their components can be understood as exercising homeostatic or bodily regulating goals–they have everything to do with how an organism manages it’s life cycle. In our life cycle there is a mandate in our genome which drives us to persist and prevail––the emotional system is the latest expression in this blind desire to stay alive. As Damasio points out, the multitudes of cells in the body have a drive to persist, prevail and stay alive; to homeostaically manage the process of energy acquisition and transformation. This is the genesis of emotions and the birth of feeling: pleasure and pain.
It seems that there really is no separating mind, brain and body. The mind exists because there is a body; the body is the context for the mind/brain. The mind’s principle task is to examine and manage the internal economy of the organism. Feelings are always tied to the body, directly or indirectly; information about the body is so selective that it goes into specialised channels in the brain. Indeed, the brain creates chemical markers that have to do with specific bodily states. These markers allow the brain to carry out somatic perception which is key in the appraisal of stimulus (decision making) and the ability of emotional response to vary with context. Somatic-marker associations are reinstated, or recalled, physiologically and bias cognitive processing. In cases where complex and uncertain decisions need to be made, the somatic markers recall all reward and punishment experiences associated with the relevant stimuli, which are then summed to produce a net somatic state––that gut feeling. This overall state is used to direct (or bias) the selection of the appropriate action. Utilising the somatosensory cortex, the brain can even run internal simulations of responses or transformations in bodily states as representations in the mind. This is what Damsio terms the “as if ” body loop: it is as if the body was actually sensing or undergoing this or that experience recreated internally. This allows us not only to predict possible bodily or emotive states for ourselves but also to project them onto others. This clearly has relevance with regards to the secondary emotions outlined above as well as to predictive mental behaviour that rationalise potential outcomes.
According to Damasio, emotions are action programs which preceed feelings (which are the perception of these programs.) Emotions operate in multistage cycles and cannot be understood as being about or in one area of the brain that is a centre for this or that. They are modified by context––socialisation plays an important role––and reflect the ongoing management of life inside the organism; feelings give us a window into this internal life. Internal needs cannot be repressed. In the case of food, for example, the body declares a state of hunger because it wants to reach homeostasis and therefore lets this situation come into consciousness so that the mind can decide on appropriate action.
Cognitively speaking, we have multiple routes open to us. We have a fast route of decision making, which is biologically entrenched, and governed by powerful emotional, intuitive or “gut” responses to a given object or situation; and we have reason, traditionally understood as a slow methodical “cost-benefit” analysis. But these routes are not necessarily opposed to each other. In a healthy individual they work together in order to expedite the decision making process. Emotions also allow us to make decisions with out consciously confronting every option available to us; they allows us to freely and purposefully rationalise by removing or highlighting certain key options. Indeed, emotion seems to be the seat of practical reason itself; or, at the very least, it is the means by which it can function effectively. As some of Damasio’s patient studies have shown, damage to certain parts of the brain that are associated with emotion can have drastic effects in the realm of reasoning, both in terms of practical decision making and socialisation. And there have been those that, due to a break down in the somatic apparatus, have lost the ability to feel emotions while they can still intellectually understand their significance.
Emotion also plays a role in social processes that lead to social homeostasis. Most of our social engagements involve, to some degree at least, the projections into the social space of our biological needs. But the effectiveness and health of this social homeostasis would necessarily reflect the state of the culture itself and its emotional health and intelligence. It seems impossible, however, that a definitive account of this could be provided here. In the end it seems that everything we say about emotion needs to be put into context …
DAMASIO LECTURE: “Emotion, Feeling, and Social Behavior: The Brain Perspective”
DAMASIO LECTURE: MEDICINE TO SOCIETY I & II
Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau-Ponty, Computers and the mind:
10. Thinking About Emotions: James & Sartre
April 1, 2008
For many critics James’ model of the emotions falls short as it does not explicitly demonstrate the role of emotion in higher cognition. Indeed, Sartre’s Esquisse d’une Theorie des Emotions attacks James’ conception of emotions as being too concerned with physiology. For Sartre, emotions are––whether we are willing to admit it or not––our own actions; they are ways in which we make prereflexive choices about how we deal with the world; they are acts which allow us to escape from the world or transform it according to our desires: spite, resentment, love, fear, joy and sorrow are kinds of “magical transformations of the world.”
Sartre was profoundly influenced by Hiedegger, and by Husserl, who influenced them both. For Heidegger, Husserl’s philosophy was incomplete because it did not take into account the historical being for whom such questions about existence and consciousness make philosophy possible in the first place. Heidegger views experience as necessarily situated in a world and in ways of being—Dasein is the being that cares about Being. Heidegger argues that Dasein, finding itself thrown into the world amidst things and with others, is thrown into its own possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of its own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities––the need for it to be responsible for its own existence––is the basis of Heidegger’s notion of authenticity.
Heidegger created the term “thrownness”––which is also used by Sartre––to describe the idea that human beings (Dasein) are “thrown” into existence without having chosen it. Existentialists consider being thrown into existence as prior to any other thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of themselves that they create (there are of course great differences here between Atheist and Christian points of view). In Kierkegaard’s words:
How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
Heidegger’s conception of authenticity, simply stated, revolves around the individual’s “throwness” into the world and the integrity and honesty with which the individual creates his own authentic subjectivity, only to reintegrate it back into the world. Sartre systematises Heidegger in his own way by positing that for humans, existence preceeds essence: thrown into the world, man makes himself because man asks ontological questions (Being for itself). Objects do not engage in ontological questioning, thus for objects essence preceeds existence (Being in-itself). But also Sartre believed that humans can also engage in Being for Others: A person who cannot embrace their freedom to confront existential absurdity and define their life seeks, in effect, to be “looked at”—to be made an object of another’s subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A’s being or sense of identity is controlled by––in the mind of A at least––person B’s thoughts about A.
Like Heidegger, Sartre leans towards the view that consciousness and the world are a unified phenomenon and that there is no separating them; that even in attempting to ‘bracket’ conscious phenomena out of common notions of reality we cannot neglect the innate unity of what we have separated. However, Sartre also continues the tradition of the Cartesian dichotomy between the consciousness and the world. Creating what often seems to be an infuriating paradox, on one hand Sartre embraces Heidegger’s Dasein, on the other he extends the Cartesian/Husserlian distinction between Mind––or perhaps more acurately in Sartre’s case, the freedom of the will––and World. Despite the virtuosic and often confusing double talk Sartre employs to deal with this apparent contradiction, he is always clear about the ultimate point of his thought which rests firmly in his concepts freedom and responsibility. For Sartre consciousness is freedom and responsibility is the idea that we are the sole authors of our actions; we must accept the consequences of our actions—there are no excuses. In order to understand the apparent incoherence in Sartre’s position we must realise that he has no wish to justify his philosophy in terms of scientific or logical truths. For Sartre the only truth is action in “good faith.” Sartre is, above all else, concerned with individual and political honesty; the individual and the individual alone creates his own essence:
“If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”
Existentialist phenomenology, as put forward by Sartre, critiques and extends the Husserlian method by taking the position that a phenomenological examination of consciousness must take the world into account in terms of action, not simply passive intention. Like Husserl, Sartre’s concept of consciousness requires intentionality–-it is always about the things of the world. And again, like Husserl, Sartre is concerned with making the distinction between the phenomenal experience in the conscious mind and the immediate experiencing of material objects of the world. But, for Existential phenomenology, abstract consciousness is not a passive Husserlian realm like the transcendental ego, rather it is an active, dynamic engagement with or towards the things of the world. Thus Sartre views emotion as imposing itself on the world, transforming it according to a subjective scheme that works in accordance with the modified notions of being and authenticity that he took from Heidegger.
By postulating being as nothingness Sartre tries to separate it from the realm of worldly causality. In order to protect his conception of freedom, it is crucial for Sartre maintain consciousness as independent from the causal relations of the word, as distinct from the deterministic laws of physics. Introducing his own version of epoché, Sartre takes the position that, as we see ourselves as something distinct from the causal categories we impose on matter, we are obliged to make the distinction between the objective or scientific view, and the perspective of active, subjective, first person engagement. Therefore, from the point of view of Existentialist phenomenology, consciousness itself can be in no way considered as an object of itself––hence the break with Husserl––and, more importantly, it cannot be understood as being caused. For Sartre, consciousness is freedom itself.
Sartre’s conception of freedom allows him to hold the position that all action is chosen, and that the emotions are the pre-reflective choices which inform and permit action. Sartre removes causality from emotions, and––perhaps in an attempt to find a middle ground between physical determinism and the freedom of consciousness––describes them as “the terms by which” we make the choices that we do. An obvious argument emerges at this point: if emotions set the terms by which by which we make conscious choices, does that not imply––at least indirectly––causality? Sartre responds that emotions are not causes of behaviour but rather that they are “spontaneous out pourings of consciousness in which one takes the world in a certain way.” For Sartre, emotions are a way of structuring consciousness and he rejects any form of determinism with regards to the acts of the mind––the Freudian sub-conscious is impossible in Sartrian psychoanalysis; and the idea that emotions are fundamentally naturally selected responses to natural stimuli is rejected.
Sartre’s reading of James seems to reduce to James’ concept of emotions to naturally determined physiological responses that inform psychological states; and he criticises James for not giving enough weight to the free mental evaluations that cause emotions. Indeed, James’ essay on the emotions, taken alone, seems to describe only the essential mechanism of emotion and feeling; and while this explains ‘primal’ or early emotional responses that are completely concerned with survival, it does not explain emotional responses which are born out of more complicated mental processes. From this perspective James’ conception of emotion seems reductive and omissive when it fails to provide an alternative to the bodily means by which emotion can be generated in the organism and when it does not take the influence emotion on cognition and behaviour into account.
However, James’ views on emotions very complicated when viewed in the larger context of his work. James’ Principles of Psychology describes the relation of subjective consciousness in relation to the world and society and offers extensive examinations of how the phenomena of experience, including emotions, are interpreted by the individual and evolve with experience; The Will to Believe offers a view of the function of metaphysical mental states and their necessity in the creation of belief, which is in James’ view, of practical necessity to understanding the phenomena of experience spiritually. Emotion is seemingly always present, albeit sometimes tacitly, in the work of James. A broader reading of James indicates that, although emotions and feelings may be phylogenetic in origin and fundamentally physiological in nature, they are experienced, and enter the stream of consciousness where they are interpreted with regards to the highest interests of the individual. As James makes clear, experience is an unbroken stream that unifies the world, the body and the mind; it willfully looks backwards and projects forward in time and thereby constructs meaning, belief and truth out of existence.
Indeed, James’ view would seem to imply the following: the environmental context and physical manifestations of emotions, as they come to be represented as phenomena of experience, develop into mental states which are themselves recalled and reinterpreted; now not only with regards to the demands of the environment and the primal needs of the organism, but also in relation to each other. This creates the internal psychological states that create ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, personal belief and normative social values, and, indeed, subjectivity––the self in its various forms. Higher emotions––and this is not clearly stated by James––seem to emerge from conflicts between these mental states which may be only indirectly caused or influenced by events or stimuli considered external to the mind such as threats to the body and self, the extended self (ie. family, society, possessions etc), or belief and values. And, as Sartre also implies, these conflicts often seem imply choices which are driven pre-reflexively by the emotion that accompanies them. However, Sartre views any kind of implication of causal relations between biological/natural necessity and emotions as a negation of the soveringnty of the will; he rejects the existence of any kind of biological, psychological, historical or normative social determiner on the mind, asserting that this view ultimately leads to a deterioration of true conceptions of freedom and individual responsibility.
Sartre managed to instrumentally employ the structural and theoretical aspects of Husserl and Heidegger to critique the late 18th and early 19th century malaise and complacency brought on, in part, by Darwinian biological determinism, the historical determinism of Hegel, and later, the Psychological determinism of Freud. Sartre understood this condition to be a negation of human nature which is, above all, burdened with the responsibility of total freedom. Sarte’s “Existential Idealism” is born our his reaction to the action (and inaction) of his countrymen during the second world war; he accepts no excuses for collaboration with the Nazi’s, nor does he accept excuses for the absence of action against them. For Sartre freedom is transcendent; it cannot be repressed by science or logic and ultimately rests in the soverignty of the subjective will; emotions are the intentional assertions that the subjective will projects on to the world. But this unrelenting assertion that individual existence is the responsibility of freedom––which is rationalised by the seemingly unvalidated claim that consciousness is freedom precisely because it is not caused––raises problems.
The question that looms largest concerns meaning. Because Sartre’s conception of consciousness appears to move psychically in one direction––the emotions assert themselves pre-reflectively and intentionally towards the passive matter of the world, “magically transforming” it according to subjective choice, and thereby allowing the will to act––it is difficult to to know how or in what context the Sartrian notion of conscious freedom is to exert itself. Indeed, context would imply a causal influence, as a goal would imply a need or a desire. And what about ethics and cultural differences?
Whereas James describes consciousness as caused by an evolutionary process akin to natural selection that favours conscious traits in the survival of an organism—as a complex system of mind, body and world which informs and feeds back upon itself, thus creating understandings and beliefs out of the phenomena of experience which function in the highest interests of the organism—Sartre offers his concept of “bon foi”, which represents the universal spirit of existential responsibility. Where James’ pluralistic view gives play to individual, environmental, and social factors with regard to the interpretation and cause of emotion, Sartre’s philosophy seems to put all its faith in the subject…
TBC
What is an Emotion? William James (1884)
Jean Paul Sartre: The Emotions (fragment)
This is 1 out of 7 in a BBC series on Sartre
9. Our Highest Interests: Phenomenology and Belief
March 27, 2008
On James and Husserl:
In philosophical terms, the term phenomenology has had several interpretations, each of which has involved a study of the relationship between phenomena and consciousness via different methodologies and perspectives. Kant introduced the phenomenal view of experience, positing that the world cannot be understood in any way other than how we experience it––any understanding of world is necessarily phenomenal because all knowledge begins with experience which forms the fundamental intuitions of the mind. Hegel’s phenomenology continues and attempts to complete the work of Kant. Abandoning the hierarchichal notion of inner and outer experience, observer and object, Hegel views experience itself as being in the world as a phenomena of the Mind or Geist; for Hegel, it makes no sense to draw the distinction of things in themselves because in order for the phenomenon of experience to occur there can be no separation between the mind and the world; it is all ‘Spirit.’ As Merleau-Ponty points out, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Freud can all be seen, in one way or another, as early disciples of phenomenology. He writes:
[Phenomenology] is a transcendental philosophy that suspends affirmations of the natural attitude in order to understand them, but it is also a philosophy for which the world is always “already there”, before reflection, like an inalienable presence… it is the attempt at a direct description of our experience such as it is, and without regard to its psychological genesis, or to the causal explications that the savant, the historian, or the sociologist can furnish of it… it is in our selves that we will find the unity of phenomenology and its true sense.
Thus we can see a strong connection between phenomenology and existentialism; there is indeed a strong subjective position in phenomenology even as it strives to understand experience in terms which transcend psychological causes.
Edmund Husserl, the Moravian mathematician and logician, developed phenomenology into a highly influential discipline which began as a critical study of the psychological aspects of mathematical and logical truths. Husserl criticised logicians of his time for not focusing on the relations between subjective processes that lay at the root of pure logic; and offered a series of three strata on which logical thought could be understood. From a practical level of syntax and grammar, through a level of judgement which created laws to prevent contradiction and formal laws of possible truths, Husserl arrives at a ‘meta’ or ‘transcendental’ logic which frees the logician to work in the realm of universal logic wherein, theoretically at least, the psychological problems of formal categories (logic and mathematics) could be surpassed and all possible valid deductions could be potentially attained.
Extending his study to experience itself, Husserl’s Phenomenological method strives to understand the essential structures of experience by placing an emphasis on subjectivity and the examination of consciousness through the phenomena that appear to it. Husserl seeks out the structures that make experience possible by examining the relationship between the acts of our consciousness and the objects our consciousness, ultimately questioning how these acts and objects are made possible. Like Descartes, Husserl looks for a kind of certainty with regards to understanding consciousness; and, he does not believe that this certainty can be found solely in our immediate experience of the world. But where Descartes had to doubt the truth of all empirical observations until he could prove them solely on the basis of his subjectivity, Husserl views subjective consciousness as intentional with regards to the things of the world––it is always conscious of or about something. Thus, for Husserl, the things of our conscious experience begin with the things of the world––the Cartesian scepticism with regards to the world exterior to the self goes to far.
However, Husserl does want to attempt to examine the objects of experience as separate from any preconceived judgement of reality––he wants to discover them as conscious phenomena, not simply as entities existing in the world. He creates a distinction between phenomenology and ontology: we can see an object before us and understand it to be existing in reality; but we can also imagine the same object, dream of it or possibly hallucinate it. Simply taking an ontological account of how an object immediately appears to us does not describe the complete phenomenology of the possible ways in which we might experience an object in our minds. Using a technique he calls epoché, he ‘brackets’ reality out of experience; this allows him to go beyond the simple and immediate perception of objects and examine the essence of experience as a phenomena. Husserl came to understand experience as relying on a set of basic intuitions which are centred in what he calls the ‘transcendental ego.’ For Husserl, the transcendental ego and the intuitions make the various types of conscious experience possible and are fundamentally responsible for perception, mathematical truth, logic, and all the ways in which we engage meaningfully with the world.
Thus, the reality of the material world––and the objects that constitute it–– is not rejected by Husserl, but rather it is bracketed out in order to enable the clear identification of the structures of perception. The notion that conscious perception of phenomena is driven by properties that we see as emanating from objects themselves is rejected and replaced with the idea that perception is constituted by our intentionality directed towards objects. From the phenomenological standpoint, the object of perception is not understood simply as an external entity, nor is it seen as offering indications about what it is. It is a set aspects and attributes that imply one another under the overall idea or essence of a particular object. Thus we can see, dream, hallucinate and imagine an object, and each one of these functions is an experience of the attributes which constitute our general idea of that object. Later in his career Husserl uses this position to launch a critique of western science, challenging what he views as its dogmatic empirical and naturalistic orientation. He goes as far as to say that mental/spiritual functions exist in their own reality independent of any physical basis and that any science that cannot take this into account is not complete. While his conception of the transcendental ego and pure experience, as well as his discourse on intuitions, places Husserl in the tradition of German idealism epitomised by Hegel and Kant; and although his ‘bracketing’ of reality is clearly a development of Cartesian thought, there is also an element in Husserl’s phenomenology which resonates with work of the American psychologist and philosopher William James.
James recognises, as Husserl did, that the common notion of scientific empiricism was problematic; and while he is, in a sense, in line with the romantic critique of science, James does not wish to promote an antiscientific agenda; rather, he wants to ensure that science is realistic about its claims. James noticed that there was a very strong tendency for science to reduce the natural world into some thing artificial; and that there was a troubling connection between the kinds of claims science makes about a phenomenon and the way in which it is examined. James’ radical empiricism can be understood as concerning itself with an examination of the basis of knowledge, the nature of experience, and how the idea of ‘truth’ is to be properly understood in terms of verification, vindication, and belief. For James, experience cannot be laid out into a hierarchy and it is certainly under no obligation to justify itself to science and philosophy. But, while James takes the position that experience must be examined on its own terms, he rejects the idea that it can be properly understood when it is separated, bracketed, or otherwise removed from the visceral environment that spawns it.
Associationalist thought in its various guises––most famously in Aristotle and the classic empiricism of Locke, Hume, J.S. Mill––tends to take the position that understanding comes about by the continual association of unrelated and independent elemental entities. For James, the objects of the world are only known to the mind as phenomena, as experiences evolving in relation to each other with wilful and meaningful purpose. Thus he views the associationalist position as being mistaken when it claims that the fundamental feelings and observations of the world which construe understanding, the ego, and indeed consciousness itself are unaware of each other. James insists that for consciousness to occur at all there must be what calls a ‘supernumerary intelligence’, a wilful intelligent being, to bind these feelings and perceptions together. For James, the mind is a process of experience which creates the means by which anything can be understood to be existing at all––a non-subjective explanation involving association of constantly conjoined entities, analogies of ‘blank pages’ or ‘vessels’ being filled will not do. James’ “stream of consciousness” describes the ego as the subjective point of awareness that joins experience, permitting the ideas, emotions and feelings that went before to stand in conscious relation to those that are being experienced now and those that we might expect to experience in the future. For James, this explains the continuity of consciousness that is lacking in the associationalist model, but which is clearly a fundamental aspect of experience.
James’ radical empiricism seems to allow for subjectivity in a way that is consistent with experience; and, like Husserl, James understands consciousness as requiring selectivity and intentionality on the part of the individual. But where the exact nature of Husserl’s view on intentionality and its meaning for the human organism is the subject of ongoing debate, James is clear and, above all, pragmatic. The individual becomes conscious of phenomena which are of “highest interest” for him or her to pick out from the immense wash of background stimuli. These highest interests become the intentional focus of subjective consciousness; they give meaning to the objects of experience whose attributes move in relation to each other and traverse the realms of experience––from simple observation, to dreams and hallucinations. Thus the individual or the ego is the result, and in a sense the creator or perpetuator of, a conscious process in which selectivity and intentionality are of fundamental importance to survival. Survival depends on consciousness, not only in a practical sense of identifying and interpreting phenomena, but also in the abstract conditions of its own meaning and necessity: consciousness creates the conditions by which survival ceases to be an hypothesis and becomes an imperative.
For James, experience shows that consciousness, intentionality, and the will are fundamental; and he claims that when scientific theories exclude such fundamental elements they receive only the results that are representative of the narrow methods of inquiry that they employ, creating a warped or incomplete understanding of the subject of investigation. For example, it may well be that part of the way in which we understand the relations between phenomena does indeed have something to do with association, and that experiments involving the association of phenomena and consciousness could tell us something about the nature of the mind. James would claim, however, that this is not necessarily a complete picture of what is going on, and that in fact, most of our experiences do not work in this way at all. The practical, functionalist psychology put in place by James rejects the classic view of consciousness as a Cartesian substance. Rather, it is understood as a process of mental operations which manage a network of systems by way of the will, attention, and selection. It serves a practical purpose in terms of survial by allowing for the formation of coherent experiential interpretations of the world. James’ ideomotor theory of the will describes the functionality of the volitional element of consciousness: initally a collection of reflex responses to the phenomena of experience, basic behaivour becomes more and more adaptive until volition––which informs selectivity and later intentionality––is brought to bear on these initial reflexes; the will expresses itself on behalf of its highest interests; it is not separated from the body, but rather becomes the volitional version of bodily reflexes. Thus intentionality can be understood as a conscious, wilful engagement with the world that develops out of increasingly selective primordial responses to environmental stimuli which are in the higest interests of the organism.
Clearly, the criteria applied in process of choosing the objects of experience we pick out, or otherwise become aware of against the backdrop of the world at large, are central to the phenomenology of Husserl; but, for James, a fundamental part of the selective response to experience is based in reflex and instinct. The practical judgements we make about the objects of experience must necessarily reflect––in essence at least––the process of instinct/intentionality and the conscious stream of experienced phenomena. James’ view is pragmatic; it is not a logical or philosophical exercise; it is functional; ideas about ‘bracketing’ do not apply. In Jamesian terms, we accept as true those ways of understanding experiences that resonate with our highest interests. And this resonance sounds from our most mundane, primitive and banal needs and desires to our loftiest and most sublime aspirations; it rumbles ominously in our deepest fears and sings triumphantly of our greatest achievements. It traverses the empirical, the social, and the transcendental and forms the foundation for belief, insight, and the way in which we come to understand our experience of the world.
Husserl and James seem to part where phenomenology offers a formal representation of experience and psychology offers a material description of it. While the thought of James and Husserl share the basic same purpose––to reveal the purity of experience such as it is given––they interpret experience in very different ways. In its search for the essence, phenomenology treats experience as being, above all, intentional; experience is always subject to the formal structure of intentionality. James’ Radical empiricism employs a continuous conception of experience that is causal of psychological states like intentionality and belief; and this plays a crucial practical role in directing our selectivity and integrating our bodies and minds with the world in a way that quite literally keeps our highest interests in mind.
6. The Existential Truth of Blaise Pascal
February 15, 2008
Pascal: mathmatician, philosopher, writer, Christian apologist, natural scientist. Is there a unity of thought between the inventor of the calculus of probability, and the christian convert? between the defender of the Jansenites of Port–Royal and the moralist who saw glory only in human misery? Apparently many types of truth exist for Pascal: scientific, political, historic and metaphysical. These ‘truths’ do not reveal themselves in the same way and demand different approaches and languages for their interpretation. Is mankind capable of developing a science which could interpret these truths into a universal understanding? or are we forced to admit that reason alone cannot lead us to fundamental truths, which only faith allows us to approach?
The diversity is disturbing. The first temptation is to try to organise the thought of Pascal into some sort of system, to unify it so that we might understand it in its totality. But might this not be at odds with Pascal’s project itself? For it is the very diversity of his thought which allows his critique of reason to extend itself. If Pascal claims that mankind has made an idol of truth it is because, for him, truth without faith is not properly truth at all but rather a kind of diversion or psychological artifice. Scholars have shown that across the various texts there are certain similitudes and analogies which link the mathematical, physical, anthropological and theological thought of Pascal; there is a certain constant search for equilibrium in the face of the chaos of an infinite universe and a disenchanted world. Pascal sees a relationship between the book of nature and the Bible which manifests itself as a coherent centralising force; his thought can be seen as a sort of palimpsest of these two literatures (physical and theological). This perspective allows Pascal to examine the world though mutiple lenses and does not bind his thought in history, science, politics or common notions of morality; it allows him to critique the assumptions and behaviour of mankind from a unique position between these perspectives.
Pascal’s philosophical reflections are dominated by a theological interpretation of the human condition inspired by Saint Augustine’s interpretation of Adam’s Fall from grace. Pascal views human nature as essentially corrupt, and without the possibility of recovery by natural means or human effort. This theological perspective determined Pascal’s views about human freedom, ethics and politics; and it also set extra-philosophical limits to his theory of knowledge, resulting in a critique of reason. Additionally, Pascal cannot be seen as being apologetic for religion in the way the term ‘Christian Apologist’ is usually understood. Unlike the 19th century apologist movement which sought to reconcile reason and faith or reduce religion to reason alone, Pascal saw reason as completely inadequate to the task of connecting with a transcendent divinity–– the only way to God was by ‘faith’. For Pascal, true belief in God’s revelation is not based on rational calculation nor, as with Descartes, does it presuppose a philosophical argument in favour of God’s existence. For Pascal faith provides appropriately ‘disposed’ Christians with a means to transcend the limits of what is intelligible and to accept as true even matters that we cannot understand. To claim otherwise would be to set boundaries to the reality of God by reducing faith to the limits of human understanding.
“if one submits everything to reason, our religion will contain nothing that is mysterious or supernatural.”
Thus those who are given the gift of genuine religious faith are expected not only to accept things that are uncertain but also to embrace realities that transcend reason itself–– priority is given to intuitition, faith and belief.
However, for those not in posession of the gift of faith Pascal posits The Wager: it is a better “bet” to believe that God exists than not to believe. As the potential value of believing––which is assessed as infinite––is always greater than the value of not believing, in Pascal’s view it is inexcusable not to investigate this issue.
“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”
There is a schematic quality to Pascal’s thought which pre-figures Kant, both epistemically and theologically. Like Kant, Pascal’s epistemology begins with an intuition of space and time, as well as a critique of the limits of reason and its relation to morality and theology. Additionally, there is an existential element which drives Pascal to vanquish the fear brought on by the self-awareness of an existence between infinity and nothingness––his project is to find man’s place of equilibrium. In Pascal’s view, the role of science is to serve epistemology; reflection on science permits man to know himself better and to more effectively meditate on his position in nature and the universe. For Pascal, science is merely operative, allowing us to fabricate ideas about the universe; mathematics is a métier; there is no scientific truth in the world, or if there is it is of a superficial order––physics is at best a contingent and necissarily human biased description of nature. Science is a method, or a group of methods which allow us to organise perception. Nature itself is not encoded; it is we who encode it with meaning. Contrary to the position put forward by Francis Bacon, Pascal does not view physical science as being an interpretation of nature but rather of man’s place in it: Science and Reason are, properly understood, tools which allow man to approach existential balance. And this goes to the heart of Pascal’s project which strives to understand the place of man in the world; but this place, existing in an infinite universe, is also, in a sense, a non-place. For Pascal it is the process of becoming: a hermeneutic quest for existential and spiritual equilibrium.
“Nobility–L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser; une vapeur, une goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait qu’il meurt et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui; l’univers n’en sait rien.”
1. Truth, Belief and Insight: Kant, Plato and Lucretius
January 30, 2008
“…are we not at liberty, where we cannot make assertions, at least to invent theories and to have opinions?”––Kant
Kant was posing this question in 1781 as he moved God, morality, freedom and the fallen science of metaphysics out of the sphere of a priori thought and into the domain of practical reason. While he was able to vindicate the scientific status of mathematics and physics by demonstrating their capability of pure synthetic judgement within his a priori forms of intuition––space and time (mathematics)––and by way of the principles of pure understanding which were derived from his twelve categories of the understanding (physics)––, Kant could find no such vindication for metaphysics. He came to the conclusion that pure reason was incapable of making the kinds of absolute a priori judgements required by metaphysics as they extended beyond the realm of experience and therefore beyond the limits of human understanding. For Kant, a priori synthetic judgements are only possible in so far as experience necessarily presupposes them; experience itself is made possible by a framework (the principles of pure understanding) which presupposes the very nature of it’s reception into consciousness (ie. causation). Thus, in Kantian terms, pure reason errs when it claims to prove (or disprove) the existence of God and the freedom of the will or to present the nature of the soul and morality in ultimate terms. Of course Kant does not simply do away with God, freedom, and morality but rather places them in the context of practical reason. Here they are not presented as objets of knowledge––as they were in metaphysics––but rather as modes feeling and contemplation which give us practical insight into our moral and spiritual nature as well as our idea of freedom. As he reintroduces into the practical sphere what was lost in the denunciation of metaphysics as a science, Kant offers a categorical imperative which structures moral vales rationally; he allows for, and makes the distinction between pure understanding and a rational method of belief.
In 4th century B.C.E. Athens, Plato was wrestling with epistemic and moral problems that were very similar to those which confronted Kant late in the 18th century. Like Kant, he offered his own distinction between the faculties of reason: whereas Kant divided the faculties of reason in to three basic categories––pure reason and practical reason are mediated by judgement––, Plato’s model consisted of two, true knowledge and true opinion. For Plato true knowledge can only be derived from mathematical certainty; the closest approximation to this is true opinion which involves a set of judgements and speculation based in true knowledge. This allowed Plato to distinguish between the knowable and the speculative––there is a general similarity between the Kantian faculties of pure and practical reason and the Platonic categories of true knowledge and true opinion. Plato, however, views true knowledge as having nothing to do with experience and does not distinguish between the theological and the scientific as belonging to different faculties of understanding; indeed the term scientific as we understand it to day does not apply to Plato. He sees true knowledge as being attainable only by pure mathematical thought; there is a distinct hierarchical separation between physical experience and the perfect reality whence true knowledge comes via mathematics.
In this way the Platonic conception of mathematics does not––as it does with Kant––necissarily presuppose fundamental forms of experiential intuition (spacial extension and time); it comes to us instead from the stars to teach us divine order (geometry). Thus while Plato and Kant would certainly agree on the ability of mathematics to render synthetic a priori judgements, they would likely disagree on the nature and providence of mathematical thought. And they would certainly disagree on where the ultimate value of mathematical understanding was to rest––Kant on the side of science and Plato on the side of morality. Additionally, as the loci of their thought leads them in such different directions, Plato and Kant would be hard pressed to agree on the epistemological value of a physics based in empirical observation of nature: Kant recognises the epistemological value of physics as natural science; Plato can find no moral weight in natural science and rejects it as essentially useless to mankind.
Thus Plato rejects the Ionian thought of his day as morally corrupting when its physics reduce existence to the meaningless movements of atoms in space and when it founds it’s knowledge on empirical observations and intuitive insights that lack moral and ideological substance. He also rejects sophistic rhetorical argument as being devoid of the kind of teleological locus that gives Socratic dialogue the ability to achieve true opinion. We find in his Timaeus an account of nature that is as teleological as it is theological; Plato is less concerned with making an account of nature as we find it and is more interested in explaining God’s ways to man. He offers a “likely account” (true opinion) of the nature and meaning of the universe to his interlocutors which is meant to give spiritual a spiritual dimension to the moral and political themes raised in Plato’s Republic. Plato can lay claim to true opinion with regards to the claims made in the Timaeus because he bases his account of the universe in true knowledge (geometry). He builds up a mythical argument founded on the immutable celestial movement provided by the heavenly spheres and the perfection of the triangle as the divine form on which all matter is based (true knowledge). The Timaeus is Plato’s grand hymn to the universe.
The Platonic universe is created by a divine Craftsman (Demiurge) who is rational and beneficent and who bases his creation on a perfect eternal model. By imposing mathematical order onto chaos for the good of all, the Craftsman constructs the world to be as perfect as nature permits; the beauty of the universe is the model for rational souls to emulate. Plato posits a distinction between what always is and never becomes and what becomes and never is: the former is grasped by understanding and the latter by opinion––true knowledge and true opinion at work. The metaphysical being/becoming distinction establishes the framework for the entire Platonic cosmology, including the persuasive effects of Intellect on Necessity. Intellect pushes Necessity to approach perfection but resistance by Necessity limits the degree of perfection the created world can attain. Interestingly, it seems as though the Platonic Intellect itself cannot be placed either on the side of being or on that of becoming––on the side of knowledge or opinion. For Plato Intellect is a substance that transcends the metaphysical dichotomy of being and becoming, possibly not unlike the Judaeo-Christian conception of God. The conclusion is that the universe is a work of craft, produced by a beneficent Craftsman in imitation of a perfect eternal model; it is through realigning the motions of our souls with those of the universe at large that we achieve our goal of living virtuously and happily.
Lucretian materialism presented in On the Nature of the Universe offers a very different view on the meaning and requrirement of the happy, good or tranquil life. Writing in the first century B.C.E, Lucretius bases his understanding of the physical world––which includes the human soul, freewill, desire and all other aspects of human life––on insight arrived at through the analysis of analogous structures derived from obsevations of natural phenomena (horses out of the gate: atomic swerve; sheep on a hillside:distance/perspective). He dismisses religious and mythical modes of thought that characterise the work of Plato as misleading and proposes a universe founded on the concept of the atom and void. As his thought is based on the Ionian tradition––his physics and ontology is derived from Epicurus––he has no need of God or Gods as they pertain to the life of mankind. For Lucretius, all phenomena are results of atomic action/combination; nothing is born or disappears in to nothing, void and material (body) are fundamental – all else is a product of this and inseparable from it – time and historical facts, are argued to be in fact existentially parasitic on the presently existing world, and thus not independently existing. He postulates a minimal indeterminacy in the activity of atoms to account for free will (swerve, clinamen)––this is antecedent to quantum uncertainty––and describes the universe as infinite: great numbers of other worlds exist and worlds come and go like ours has and will. This, of course, is a damaging view for religion. Lucretius does offer an account of a mortal soul which exists in two parts: spirit (anima) exists throughout the body, mind (animus) is located in the chest. Both are corporeal and are created by a special blend of atoms including a special fine atom unique to soul which allows it’s movement and sensitivity––brain, nervous system and vital spirit. For Lucretius, our conscious selves cannot transcend death and once the body dies, the atoms of the body and soul disperse. To fear a future state of death, is to make the conceptual blunder of supposing yourself present to regret your own non-existence. The reality is that being dead will be no worse (just as it will be no better) than it was, long ago, not yet to have been born.
Lucretius works through a range of the phenomena that physical theorists were standardly called upon to account for: storms, waterspouts, earthquakes, plagues and the like. Exclusion of divine causation undoubtedly motivates the his account, the phenomena in question being nearly all ones popularly regarded as manifestations of divine intervention. Lucretius not only explains them naturalistically, but is ready to mock the rival, theological explanations. For example: if thunderbolts are weapons hurled by Zeus at human miscreants, why does he waste so much of his ammunition on uninhabited regions or sometimes strike his own temple. He also discusses the emergence of life and precedes Darwin and others in postulating natural selection to offer a non teleological account of natural design. He goes on to discuss language, love, civilisation and cultural constructions such as friendship and justice, religion– civilisation has advanced because of man’s desire to better his lot, but to no avail, because every advance eliminates one source of grief only to replace it with another.
Although Lucretius presents the mythical characters of Venus and Mars locked in an eternal dialectic struggle between creative (pleasure) and destructive (pain)––this, the poetic form of his discourse is the “honey on the rim of the cup”, is to help the medicine go down––in all other respects he is consistent with the maxims of the Epicurean tetrapharmakos: ‘God holds no fears, death no worries; good is easily attainable, evil easily endurable.’ In contrast with the moral and scientific concerns of Kant and Plato, the locus of Lucretian reasoning lies in the understanding of desire: identification of the irrational fears which create and are maintained by religion and discerning real needs and pleasures from those created out of neurosis and greed––one leads to pleasure and tranquility (Venus) the other to pain (Mars). Thus Lucretius advocates the Epicurean life of detached tranquillity, portrayed as maintaining modest and easily satisfied appetites while shunning lofty ambitions; the implication being perhaps––and this is not explicitly stated––, that if everyone adopted this mode of being mankind could avoid many of the discontents that plague him.
We have three very different views on the nature and limits of understanding, morality and what it means to lead a good life. Kant draws the distinction between knowledge and belief (moral obligation). On one hand he presents the faculty of pure reason which allows for synthetic a priori judgements, such as experience presupposes them. On the other hand, he offers the faculty of practical reason which allows us to engage morally in the world of experience: what is right to do cannot be determined with reference to anything empirical or sensuous; rather, it can only be determined by pure practical reason which inevitably leads to the necessity of God and freewill. Kant presents the faculties of pure reason and practical reason as serving distinct functions in terms of human epistemology and in doing so he offers us two distinct categories of truth on which to found our understanding of science, morality, God and freewill. Kant’s faculties of reason––pure reason and practical reason are clearly defined and serve distinct functions with regards to understanding of a scientific nature on one hand; and the rational structuring of practical, moral and spiritual belief (the moral imperative as derived from rational insight) on the other. Plato offers us his two categories––true knowledge and true opinion––but here the second is dependent on the first. There is no real experiencial foundation needed in Platonic thought because of his assertion that mathematics transcends experience; it exists in and is representative of the world of being––it is the basis for forming true opinion or a “likely account” of the world of becoming. For Plato, reason––although arranged in hierarchically in two parts––has a single, unified, teleological directive and therefore a clear moral and theological locus and providence. Lucretius, to the contrary, bases his entire materialistic interpretation of nature and being on emperical conclusions; and as a result, his reason functions as a part of the natural material world which constitutes it.
For Kant, Plato and Lucretius, some kind of evolving faculty of aesthetic judgement is crucial in order to consruct meaning––albeit contingently––out of existence. Although it seems that reason and insight can lead to the creation of a practical belief system which can serve human needs for a time, any such system must necessarily be founded as part of history and therefore be subject to development or replacement as needs change and understanding evolves. Universal truth remains elusive.
