Abstract
I observed at the beginning of this discussion of the ‘marginalisers of consciousness’ that consciousness seems resistant to scientific treatment and is consequently an embarrassment to any discipline that is in the process of establishing itself as a science. So long as the procedures and, indeed, the results of the physical sciences are seen to be the paradigm of science itself, then a science of consciousness is going to start at some disadvantage. For, at the very least, ignoring the subjective viewpoint, overriding the testimony of the objects of study, seem to be the sine qua non of any systematic enquiry that pretends to the status of science. A genuinely scientific political economy will dismiss the reasons individuals give for their beliefs and ideas and focus instead on the objective conditions of production — which will explain everything from the most abstract ideas those individuals have about society as a whole to the actual behaviour they exhibit. Thus Marx. A truly scientific sociology will look not to the reported experiences of individuals when trying to understand either individual actions or mass social phenomena but to objectively observable social forces. Even apparently deeply personal sentiments and actions — such as suicide, religion, the formation of concepts, etc. — are to be explained by reference to these things and not in terms of intra-psychic events.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
This aping is prevalent even in ethics. Mary Midgely (Beast and Man, London: Methuen, 1979) has pointed out that the title of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica echoes Newton and symptomatises an explicitly Newtonian ambition amongst moral philosophers, which goes back at least as far as Hume.
See also Karl Lashley, ‘The Problem of Serial Order in Behaviour’, in L.P. Jeffress, ed., Cerebral Mechanisms in Behaviour: The Hixon Symposium, 1951: pp. 112–36, where the common aim of the sciences is seen to be to explain all phenomena in terms of the differential equations that capture the properties of the physical world.
J.B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (Philadelphia, 1919) advanced the view that ‘consciousness’ was a fruitless object of study — especially as the only means of access to it was via the unreliable method of introspection — and that it could be safely ignored.
N. Chomsky’s review of B.F. Skinner, ‘Verbal Behavior’, Language 35 (1959): 26–58.
G.A. Miller, E. Galanter and K. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).
I have throughout relied on the translations by R.M. and R.P. Warren in their Helmholtz on Perception: Its Physiology and Development (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1968).
P.N. Johnson-Laird, The Computer and the Mind (London: Fontana, 1988), p. 60. I have examined this claim in more detail in The Explicit Animal — see chapter 4, ‘Computerising Consciousness’, and Psycho-Electronics (op. cit.), see especially the entries on ‘Caleculations’ and ‘Logic’.
David Marr, Vision, a Computational Invstigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980).
My critique of Marr is heavily indebted to Peter Hacker’s article, ‘Seeing, Representing and Describing’, in J. Hyman, ed., Investigating Psychology: Sciences of the Mind after Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1991).
P.M.S. Hacker, ‘Experimental Methods and Conceptual Confusion: An Investigation into R.L. Gregory’s Theory of Perception’, Iyyun, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 40 (July 1991): 289–314.
R.L. Gregory, Eye and Brain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966). A similar argument can be applied to unconscious mechanisms in action. It is obvious that we have little or no direct control over, say, the spinal mechanisms necessary for our voluntary (and so moral or immoral) behaviour. Deliberate action is clearly predicated on more or less intact physiological mechanisms of movement. (Just as, to take the argument deeper into the springs of action, the formulation of goals and intentions depends upon being possessed of a certain level of consciousness, upon not being in coma or in a confusional state, requires an orientation in space and time that lies beyond our will, etc.). At a higher level, conscious doing is rooted in unconscious mechanisms; for example, we can perform learned actions when other aspects of memory have been lost. We can still remember how to do a certain action even when the memory of learning it, and the circumstances under which one learnt it, have been forgotten. One can ‘know how’, even when one has forgotten all the relevant ‘knowing that’; one can retain procedural or habit memory when one has lost the relevant occurrent memories. Automatism seems to penetrate to the very heart of even the most clearly voluntary action.
There is an interesting discussion of ‘unconscious inference’ by S.G. Shanker (‘Computer Vision or Mechanist Myopia?’) in S.G. Shanker, ed., Philosophy in Britain Today (London: Croom Helm, 1986).
Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 253–4.
Daniel C. Dennett The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books, 1987), p. 5.
Copyright information
© 1997 Raymond Tallis
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tallis, R. (1997). Unconscious Consciousness: From Behaviourism to Cognitive Psychology. In: Enemies of Hope. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371569_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371569_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-76318-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37156-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)