50% Water, 40% Light

May 2nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

An analysis of metaphors used to describe the mind drawn from the writing of certain key psychology texts reveals that the contemporary mind is composed of the following ingredients:

Water (or similar liquid) 50%
Light 40%
Machine Parts (cogs etc.) 4%
Gas (or luminiferous ether) 2%
Faeces 2%
Electromagnetic Vacuum1%
Trace Elements 1%

(Please Note: in compiling this table, all references to homunculi have been excluded from the study.)

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Intuition: a definition

May 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

A definition of intuition

The capacity of the human mind to process more variables during cognition than can be held simultaneously in conscious awareness. The feeling of ‘aura’ which accompanies the use of this capacity.

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Flying through the Space of Thought

June 23rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The kind of processes we refer to when we arrange out thoughts, and the type of psychological gestures we make in order to move through our thoughts, suggests that cognitive organisation makes heavy use of a metaphor of space. The metaphor of the mind as a kind of spatially extended domain is one of the most important and robust mental structures. This space of thought roughly corresponds to Cartesian or Newtonian space, a fact which is evidenced in the language we use to talk about the contents and processes of our minds (streams of consciousness etc) and also in techniques for cognitive enhancement such as mnemonic systems like the method of loci, which uses the construction of elaborate storage spaces, so-called ‘memory palaces’, to enable easy retrieval of facts and ideas.

A significant departure from this schema is our ability to make intuitive leaps, or simply to allow our thoughts to hop from one topic to another without apparently crossing any intervening space. A number of subsidiary metaphors attempt to explain this phenomenon; William James, in addition to referring to the ’stream of consciousness’ also describes consciousness rather as a bird in flight. He says, ‘Our psychic life has rhythm: it is a series of transitions and resting-places, of “flights and perchings”‘ (PP 236). Also, a common feature of Buddhist meditation teaching is an attempt to tame the ‘monkey mind’, the tendency of consciousness to jump uncontrollably from one branch of knowledge to another. Both these metaphors invoke an image of space which, whilst still Cartesian, is not empty and unstructured but is somewhat like a forest. A space in which knowledge forms grow, interpenetrate, and spread, allowing a smooth linear passage from one to the next, but also a space through which it is possible to swing and swoop, catching knowledge on the fly.

Baby swifts leave their nests at a few weeks old, launching themselves on their first flight without any tuition or preparation. They then spend the next two years of their lives on the wing. It may be interesting to speculate on the possibilities of maintaining extended periods of flight in cognitive space. Staying airborne, like the swift, in the spaces between one idea and another.

Posted in Buddhism, James, William, Knowledge, Meditation, Metaphor, Mind, Space | No Comments »

Poetic Dualism

July 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Despite the best attempts by philosophy and science to deny the dualism which is such a part of folk science, a tendency unfairly attributed to Descartes, but actually deeply entrenched in the human psyche, such dualism still dominates much debate. As Paul Bloom suggests, we may be ‘natural born dualists’. Efforts to collapse this duality, whether it be termed as a duality of mind and body, or brain and mind, or matter and spirit, have tended not to provide an integrated model, but simply to deny the existence of one or other of the terms.

Part of the distinction between these terms, and which is used in the suppression of supporters of the one by supporters of the other, is the language which is used to talk about the concepts which form each part of the dualism. There is a perceived difference in the type of discourse which represents the brain, for example, and that which represents the mind. The former is objective, noumenal, scientific, whereas the latter is subjective, phenomenal, poetic.

Recent developments in the study of cognition, however, suggests that this distinction is largely unsupportable.Work carried out by Lakoff, Johnson, etc indicates that the only epistemological distinction to be made is between concepts which are concrete and those which are abstract, not between those concepts which are objective and those which are subjective. Concrete concepts are those which are directly available to the senses, which have tangible and physical attributes. Abstract concepts, which make up most of our thoughts and language, are not available to the senses and can therefore only be represented in cognition through a process of metaphorical mapping.Given that most conceptualisation about both the brain and the mind is necessarily abstract, the mind not being directly available to the senses, then all discourses on the subject of the mind are necessarily structured through metaphor.

Any integration between discourses, if such integration is desirable, must start with a recognition that both objective and subjective discourses around abstract concepts are ultimately poetic.

Posted in Bloom, Paul, Brain, Dualism, Johnson, Mark, Lakoff, George, Metaphor, Mind, Poetics | No Comments »

Consciousness - The Gap

July 20th, 2006 Fred McVittie

If our minds were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand them.

A system cannot instantiate an entity more complex than itself, (although it might be able to produce one).

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Mind, Performance, Creativity, Attention

July 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

There is a high level of correlation between the following phenomena and concepts:

• experienced states of mind
• brainwave patterns
• use of attentional resources (energy)
• phases in creative processes
• phases in the performance of a task (including theatrical or art tasks)

These correlations suggest the functioning of a common process which, in all likelihood, in partly material and partly metaphorical. A greater awareness of this process should allow for the development of techniques for greater control over the process, and a consequent enhancement or optimisation of the performance of a range of tasks (including theatrical tasks) and enhanced creativity.

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The Incredible Shrinking Man

July 31st, 2006 Fred McVittie

Descartes is known for most clearly articulating a distinction which later became known as the ‘mind/body problem’, that is the radical dualistic distinction between mind and body. Prior to Descartes (and his contemporaries and immediate predecessors), dualist was very much in place (being, apparently a human universal), but this was a dualism of matter and (individual) spirit or soul. In other words, the corporeal body was part of the material world and it was this entire materiality which was contrasted with the soul/mind. Today’s dualism, 400 years after Descartes, tends to be located around a brain/mind distinction, or even a part of the brain; those tissues and circuits holding the ‘correlates of consciousness’, which is held in opposition to phenomenal self of the mind. History, then, has preserved the longstanding dualist term of of mind/soul/spirit, but has radically reduced its corresponding term in the material world. Whereas once the mind/soul was balanced by, and the equal of, the entirety of physical creation, now it finds itself reflected in a few ounces of grey meat.

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Space Mind Metaphor

September 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Space is a key concept, perhaps the most important key concept, in Naive Physics. Remembering that Naive Physics is an extended field of knowledge that includes mental entities such as consciousness (Smith 1994) it is not surprising that our understanding of the mind itself in turn draws on spatial metaphors to structure that understanding. In other words, the Naive Physics of cognition imagines the mind as spatial. We talk of consciousness being ‘raised’, (following a general metaphor GOOD IS UP), and we may think of ourselves and other people as being ‘broadminded’ or ‘narrowminded’. Techniques, experiences, and chemicals for altering the state of one’s mind positively are routinely referred to as ‘mind expanding’. Generally these metaphors rely on two further assumptions about the mind, both of which are also features of naive science.

Dualism - that the mind is radically separate from the brain, possibly to the extent that it can have independent existence (as in the pre-psychological notion of the immortal soul).

Vitalism - that the mind is composed of a non-material, ‘ethereal’ substance which is often conceptualised as gaseous or liquid, (c.f. ‘flow’, the ‘oceanic’, ’streams of consciousness’ etc).
In this formulation when we talk about the mind we conceive it as a vital substance existing within Newtonian/Cartesian space, centred on the person.

With these two features in place, when we use spatial metaphors to talk and think of the mind we imagine this fluid mind-stuff, centred behind the eyes, as expanding and contracting; flowing from one part of the body to another and capable of extension outside of the body through processes we refer to as concentration, focus, attention, etc.

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Ectoplasmic Mind Stuff

September 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

In addition to the three metaphors for mind identified elsewhere which depend upon spatial extension and location; central point, focal point, and totality of space; there is one additional key metaphor which is frequently used. This fourth concept imagines mind as a gaseous/liquid extrusion, a kind of ectoplasm that extends into space from the body (usually the head) and may even leave the body entirely. This is the most literal and visualisable of the metaphors even though (because) it is also the least rationally valid. Whilst it has been cogently argued that mind and space may be connected (McGill 1995), the strength of that argument relies, ironically, on the deeply unscientific nature of its claim. McGill’s proposal that mind (consciousness) and space are linked via some pre-big-bang form of dimensionless spatial ordering is unverifiability defined. McGill’s hypothesis is non-viable because it is untestable. Any hypothesis which proposes the existence of an ‘ectoplasmic’ mind on the other hand, (and traces of this are found in Sheldrake, etc), are easily testable and inevitably found to be scientifically and objectively invalid. This does not prevent such models of the mind existing within folk science and as a pattern on the fabric of language.

Posted in Liquid, McGill, Mind, Sheldrake, Rupert, Substance | No Comments »

Mind and Space

September 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

“Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don’t. Usually I think about my condominium.” - Andy Warhol, In Perspective

The spatial model of the mind in which mind and space are coterminous is found is (primarily non-scientific) discourses such as the writings Genpo Roshi (Big Mind), a concept adopted by Ken Wilbur and others, and reflected in some of the writing of Alan Watts, ‘I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware’. Here other concepts of mind which utilise spatial metaphors, central point, focal point, ectoplasm, are ignored or suppressed in favour of the MIND IS SPACE metaphor, with its consequent entailments. The prioritisation of this metaphor is associated with the condition of enlightenment.

Posted in Enlightenment, Mind, Space, Warhol,Andy, Watts, Alan, Wilbur, Ken | No Comments »

Metaphors of Mind: Object, Substance, Space

September 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

• Because of the limitations of an embodied cognition, all abstract thought is inherently metaphorical in nature.
• Mind is a deeply abstract concept, as Claxton says, ‘ you can’t put it up against the wall and take a photo of it’, therefore mind can only be thought of (and spoken of) in metaphorical terms.
• There are a large number of metaphors for the mind and particular mental functions, and these can be grouped into three general categories (which sometimes co-exist, as for example the metaphor of mind as a cloud).

• Object metaphors (machine, body, book, computer etc),
• substance metaphors (solid, gas, liquid)
• spatial metaphors. This last set of metaphors variously imagines mind as existing as a point phenomenon at the centre of lived experience (core, essence etc), a focal point experience associated with the contents of consciousness, a ‘global’ phenomenon in which mind is synonymous with the totality of space.

Posted in Claxton, Guy, Cognition, Metaphor, Mind, Object, Space, Substance | No Comments »

Being in Three Minds

September 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

At any moment we are simultaneously in three mental ‘locations”

1. The entire contents of our awareness comprises our ‘field’ of consciousness. We occupy the whole of this field simultaneously. Much of this may be pre-conscious.
2. We occupy the contral point in this field. This point may be experienced as contentless; a place to stand; the axis around which experience moves; the core of the self.
3. We are the focal point of our consciousness. The moving, streaming individual momentary content of consciousness; the place on which the spotlight of consciousness is trained.

These three modes/elements of being can be enhanced using different exercises.

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Mind Metaphors and States of Consciousness

September 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The various metaphors which we use to describe mind can be broadly gathered in three key groups; objects, substances, and spaces. The application of metaphor from each of these groupings is largely dependent upon the particular mental function or mental state one is trying to conceptualise of describe, and some metaphors lend themselves particularly well to describing complex states of mind and forms of consciousness. An example of this, drawn from the Substance group of metaphors, is that of MIND IS A LIQUID. The entailments of this metaphor, drawn from the variable properties and qualities of the source, allows a wide range of mental states to be conceptualised and described, and for these concepts to be structured in an organised way in accordance with the organisation of the source metaphor. LIQUID, typically water, can undergo a range of transformations, from solid ice to vaporous gas. It is capable of flowing and making its own channel, but also of being contained. When heated in a sealed container it is known for increasing in pressure and possibly exploding, when cooled it solidifies and acquires the form of the container holding it. Water can both be absorbed and can dissolve; taking other material into itself, or entering into other material completely. All these entailments, drawing on the variable properties of liquids, particularly water, structure the particular ontology of mind which draws on the MIND IS A LIQUID metaphor.

Posted in Liquid, Metaphor, Mind, Transformation | No Comments »

McGinn’s Space of the Mind

September 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

McGinn’s (1997) problems with relating an unextended consciousness to an extended physical world; res cogitans to res extensa, stem from an inherent dualism of his position, a dualism not of matter and mind but of a distinction between mind and the contents of mind. This dualism is, in turn, derived ultimately from the space metaphor which McGinn draws on to frame the concepts he uses. He interestingly uses the example of the mental image of a ‘yellow flash’ (presumably of light) to indicate that such thoughts do not have extension, and that therefore mind is similarly non-extended.

… it takes up no particular volume of space; it has no shape; it is not made up of spatially distributed parts; it has no spatial dimensionality; it is not solid.

However, this image, like all images of light, only makes sense within the context of a larger unspoken metaphor of space. In order for us to understand his reference to a yellow flash at all we have to conceive it as a spark of light, and like all such phenomena, real or imagined, light requires a source, a point in space from which to be emitted. It also usually requires an object on which to fall and most definately an empty space through which to radiate. Without the latter there simply is no light, the concept is incomplete and incoherent. In claiming that the image is unextended he is artificially limiting the parts of the metaphor which he claims as ‘mind’ to the yellow flash, ignoring the fact that the metaphor demands that the spatial entailments also must be considered as similarly constituting the mind. Not only the object at the centre of McGinn’s image, the yellow flash, is mind, but also the objects illuminated (the ‘contents of consciousness’) and the space within which light and objects exist.

McGinn, Colin.
1995. Consciousness and Space. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2: 220-30. Reprinted in Shear (1997).

Shear, Jonathan, ed.
1997. Explaining Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.1

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Central Source of Mind

September 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The concept of mind structures consciousness in such a way as to allow us to experience it in a number of spatially extended ways, particulary as a point of source, a point of focus, and a space. A very common entailment of the point of source metaphor is one in which this source is taken to exist at the centre of the body or head. This imaginary location for the source of self (and the self as source) allows for a correspondence with related concepts such a Damasio’s ‘core self’ and essentialist intuitions about the ‘real self’ which is typically recorded as lying ‘deep inside’. The phenomenological fact that this association of source with centrality represents normal waking consciousness is evidenced through its variants, in which the source is felt to be located elsewhere other that the centre, away from the centre of the body or even outside of the body completely. Such experiences typically constitute unusual states of consciousness. We find this spatial relocating of the source of self and consciousness in a wide variety of contexts, from ‘astral travelling’ in which the sense of self is felt to roam away from the body to other ‘dimensions’, and more prosaically in video games, which often place the location/source of self and agency above and behind the avatar body (e.g. the Grand Theft Auto series). It is also felt in the everyday procedures of image management and the self-conscious sensations which accompany these procedures. This in no way supports the notion that such located consciousness has any physical reality, either inside the head or body, or outside it, but the consistency with which such spatial concepts appear suggests that they are part of the universal phenomenological condition of embodied embedded consciousness.

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Object metaphors of Mind - Mind is a Book

September 24th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Within the range of metaphors for mind there are a significant number which are sourced from conrete experiences with objects. (As noted elsewhere, the other key metaphor groups are substances and spaces.) Of the object metaphors, one which a lengthy history and considerable contemporary application and significance is the MIND IS A BOOK metaphor. This usage is found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and, also in the modern theoretical concept of the ‘Narrative Self’. The power of the book metaphor is that it allows for the generation of numerous entailments which organise the complex, and in many ways inconceivable, abstraction that we refer to as mind. These entailments include such elements as narrative, character, author, ending, closure, etc.

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Where I’m Looking From

October 29th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Hold a mirror in front of your face. See the face in the mirror. See the eyes in the mirror. Imagine the eyes are your eyes. Imagine the eyes looking out of the mirror. See through the eyes in the mirror. Close your eyes. Imagine seeing through the eyes in the mirror. Move the mirror behind your head. Imagine the eyes that look out of the mirror are now the eyes that look out of your head. Open your eyes. See through the eyes in your head, and through the eyes in the mirror. Imagine your mind is a mirror.

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Space is Everywhere

October 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Space, like mind, does not stop on the inside of objects, or on the outside of objects, but permeates everything and everybody.

Posted in Mind, Space | No Comments »

Drive Shafts of the Mind

November 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The relationship between mind and world; res cogitans and res extensa, is articulated through the use of metaphors which allow this connectivity. The most common of these is probably the machine metaphor in which the physical structures of a machine are mapped onto the apparent functioning of the mind. For example, mechanical components link an energy resource (coal, gas, etc) to the use of this energy within a specific application (the wheels of a car, the conveyor belt of a factory, etc). This organisation of physical components and concepts, composed entirely of res extensa, are mapped wholesale onto a wide range of psychological models of mental processing, resulting in metaphorical entities, forces and processes including the notion of the drive or motivation. The fact that these terms are used as if they referred to actual physical structures demonstrates the covert nature of such metaphorical mapping.

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Computational Mind

December 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The mind is (partly) a computer, programmed by the body, which is, in turn, designed through evolutionary interactions with the environment. Or, ‘the mind is embodied, and the body is embedded’. But this may not be saying very much.

A few years ago the only objects capable of performing computations were brains and room-sized mainframes. Now computing is relatively ubiquitous, taking place routinely in our phones, toys, kitchen appliances, clocks, cars etc. This increasing distribution of computation is likely to continue, and will, at some point become routine, part of the fabric of our experience. We will soon refer to the computational abilities of material with the matter-of-factness that we currently use when talking about a materials strength, or weight, or colour. At that point, (and we are already seeing the signs of this), the concept of the brain as kind of computer will cease to be interesting. Of course the brain is a computer, and of course part of its functioning is the wielding and manipulation of symbols. But when computation is commonplace and everything computes we will feel obliged to ask ‘what else does the brain do?’.

Posted in Cognition, Computation, Mind | No Comments »

Mind at Large

May 29th, 2007 Fred McVittie

To paraphrase Einstein, the strange thing about the mind is that we can understand it. Here we are, with mental capacities forged by evolution to solve the basic problems of hunting and gathering, and yet we claim to be able to have an understanding of the most ineffable concept imaginable, the font of all perception and conception, the metaprogrammer, Nasrudin’s Donkey. Perhaps, in this context, ‘understanding’ should be interpreted not as an act of uncovering and revealing, but as an act of construction or creation. Our understanding of Mind is inevitably organised and limited by our access to it, an access provided by the senses and the sensory processing systems. To this extent, if the term ‘Mind’ means anything at all, it might as well stand for some single general principle, the ‘mind-at-large’, and what we think of as our individual minds and viewpoints is the product of limited access by the creative senses. Just as there is only one space and our bodies are the constructions of material processes which articulate a particular region of that space.

Posted in Evolution, Mind, Space | No Comments »

Listen with you Eyes

July 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

Achieving mindfulness through an attention to the visual or the tactile sense can be difficult. Both of these senses rely o difference to operate, the saccading of the eye picks up difference (the difference that makes a difference) and without finding any such differences the eyes would effectively cease to see anything at all. In order for the fingertips to feel anything they must be constantly on the move. Neither sense provided the stillness and quietude which mindfulness desires. Also, both of these senses require active content in order for them to come into being. If we close our eyes it is impossible to imagine a kind of contentless ’seeing’, a visual attentiveness without anything to be attentive to. Similarly, it is hard to imagine what it might mean to ‘feel’ something when there is nothing to feel. Non-specific, contentless feeling seems to be an incoherent concept. As with seeing, it seems that our intuitions tell us that feeling and the thing felt arise mutually and the feeling sense cannot exist as a free-floating independent sense.

It is, however, comparatively easy to use the sense of hearing without having any specific aural stimulus to listen to. We seem to be able to allocate attentional resources to the act of listening even when there is little or nothing audible to capture that attention. We can, as Krishnamurti put it, ‘listen to the silence’. Listen, in this sense, connotes a kind of mental state; an attentiveness and readiness in which we might listen for something or may simple remain poised and empty, waiting for nothing.

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Origins of Spatial Mind

August 18th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The metaphor of MIND IS SPACE may lie in our ability to construct imaginary ‘representations’, or three dimensional maps of the space we occupy. An ability which is probably assisted by the consilient simultaneous mapping produced by the different senses, particularly hearing and proprioception. Many animals seem to be able to carry some kind of map of their local environment in their minds and which gives them information about their location, and an ability to plan and predict actions within that space. It seems a short step from this memory of real space to the subjunctive spaces of prediction and planning, and then to those in which imagination may play a part. Once a space contains imagination there seems no reason to prevent the imaginary from overrunning the space and thereby transforming it from a map of the real to a realm of purely conceptual thought.

• The real forest becomes a forest in the mind.
• Traces and fears of monsters in the real forest become traces and fears of monsters in the forest in the mind.
• The forest in the mind has imaginary monsters behind each branch.
• The imaginary monsters breed and produce strange and beautiful mutants.
• The mutants clear part of the forest and build a city.
• The city contains a library with all the works lost at Alexandria.

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Substance Metaphors

August 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One of the most extensive groups of conceptual metaphors that we use to structure and organise our thoughts about phenomena which would otherwise be incomprehensible and inexpressible is that set of metaphors which use SUBSTANCE as their source. Sometimes the substance used is quite specific, as for example when we talk about the abstract concept of genetic inheritance by using the metaphor of blood. In other instances we use more generic substances to stand for abstract concepts and exploit the general properties of substances to think and talk about concepts about which we would otherwise have to remain mentally and actually silent. A clear example of this latter type of generic substance metaphor is that of the type MIND IS A LIQUID which is explored in detail elsewhere and which shows itself in our use of such terms as flow, absorb, stream of consciousness, oceanic awareness, etc, all of which describe mental states or processes through the application of the one substance metaphor. It is inevitable that our use of such metaphors is based on our vernacular embodied understanding of substances, and not on an understanding of substance which requires specialist, non-embodiable knowledge. There is unlikely to be a metaphor group relating particularly to the halide elements for example, or to substances which form salts in the presence of acids. In other words, the ways in which substances are used as sources for metaphor is not dependent upon technical knowledge, of chemistry for example, but on the experiential knowledge of handling different substances and encountering different substances directly with the sensorimotor system. At this level of analysis, the body is the template for categorisation, not the chromatograph or the tunneling electron microscope. Unsurprising, the primary categories that the body forms are those familiar to all of us from Primary School science class, the categories of solids, liquids, and gases, and it is from this threesome that most of our substance metaphors are drawn. (Please note the inclusion of the caveat ‘most’ in the preceding sentence. I will be arguing that on special occasions we do invent, postulate, or imagine, a fourth state of matter outside of the big three.)

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Window metaphors of Visual Consciousness

October 9th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One of the most enduring and intuitively satisfying images for perception (and by metaphorical inference for ‘knowing’) is that of the window. However much we may construct alternatives, or work to disabuse ourselves of this image, it is nevertheless extremely persistent. The window metaphor conceives of perceptual consciousness as formed around this image, and with one’s understanding of ’self’ depending on where one is located, and with which parts of the image one identifies. This image has six (or possibly seven) components, three of which are standard components of all images, both mental and actual. These are:

? The space in which the image appears, usually a three dimensional space replicating the Cartesian space of lived experience.
? A viewing position within that space from which one observes the image, usually from outside of the image itself but sometimes contained within it.
? The direction of the imaginary gaze from the mental viewing position, probably toward a particular point on the image or scene.

All mental images have these elements as standard; the ‘window’ image also contains three (or maybe four) other elements or entailments, the conceptualisation of which determines the state of one’s perceptual consciousness within the limits of the metaphor. These additional components are:

? The space ‘outside’ the window, which in terms of perceptual consciousness is usually conceived of as the objective world.
? The space ‘inside’ the window, which is understood to be the mental space of thought, mind, memory, imagination, and subjective existence.
? The frame of the window, which in visual terms has the incorporated form of the dark border to our vision formed by the eye-sockets, the nose, and the top of the cheeks. Conceptually this frame is the edge of the visual field.
? (Possibly) the surface of the window itself corresponding to the pane of glass which separates outside from inside. I say ‘possibly’ because I personally find no evidence for the appearance of this part of the image in my mind when I look at my mental image of the window and apply it to my cognition.

The default setting for this image as a conceptual metaphor for consciousness places our ’self’ within the internal space, looking through the ‘frame’ of our eye-sockets into the other space of objective interpersonal reality. Support for the ubiquity of this experience presumably comes partly from the very real and tangible existence of the ‘frame’ component, but also from the intuitive, if not innate tendency that we have to locate our identity, and indeed that of others, within an interior space. Experiments with the naïve knowledge of children suggests that we acquire this sense at a very young age indeed, and that this essentialist idea of (self) identity as existing inside the body, and certainly behind the eyes, is not something that is learned through formal or informal cultural practices, but is implicit in the structure of a universal human engagement with the world. The window metaphor then, whilst having no real basis in psychology or neuroscience, corresponds sufficiently well with some elements of naïve knowing and with some facts of embodiment for it to feel ‘right’ as an image of perceptual consciousness.

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The Brain as a Consciousness Collector

November 24th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One understanding of the panpsychist viewpoint is that all phenomena of the world incorporate the property of consciousness, in the same way that they incorporate space and time. So, for example, a rock, in addition to having its incontrovertible extension into the three dimensions of space: height, width, and breadth, and in addition to its irrefutable persistence over time, also has a quality of consciousness as an aspect of its being. In fact, without this consciousness it could not be said to be engaged in the act of being at all. Alternatively, one might say that the dimensions of space and time, (which may not correspond with human understandings of three-dimensional spacetime,) are also dimensions of consciousness.

A possible product of this way of regarding the world is a redefinition of the brain not as the seat of consciousness as it is currently described, but rather as a kind of ‘collector’ of consciousness. Instead of mind emerging from the behaviour of neuronal networks as an entirely unique phenomenon, disconnected from the contents of that consciousness, as the emergentist viewpoint inevitably indicates, the brain concentrates and organises the consciousness of the universe like a vortex in water.

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Complex Brain (and why is there more than one?)

December 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It has been noted that the human brain is the most complex entity in the known universe, and is certainly more complex than either the parts from which it is composed (atoms, molecules, neurons, networks) and the greater whole of which it is a part (society, material world, galaxy, universe in totality). The complexity of the brain, which complexity surely gives rise to the strange phenomenon of mind, is not isolated from those greater and lesser entities. Rather there is a necessary dependency of brain on the processes which operate at a smaller scale that it contains and those large-scale cosmic processes in which it is contained. It also seems quite likely, if not inevitable, that the complexity of the brain greatly outstrips that of the mind supervenient on that brain. My brain seems to embody processes which my mind can scarcely conceive of, and then only through metaphor and symbol; quantum theory, complexity, etc.

One of the odd things about the mind is that there appears to be more than one of them.

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Mind Brain Physics

February 16th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The account provided by neuroscience for how the brain performs the many functions it does are complex to an incredible degree. What’s more, many of the processes and mechanisms that are cited in these explanations are not only difficult to understand but are effectively impossible to understand in a literal embodied way. For example, it is distinctly possible that quantum mechanical processes are involved, if Penrose and Hammeroff are to be believed, in which case this part of the cognitive process is beyond our intuitive grasp.

The likelihood of the brain’s functioning being non-comprehensible in this literal way is not routinely regarded as a problem for science, as we have strategies for gaining knowledge about even the most non-intuitive systems. Confirmation of this can be found in the success of quantum physics more generally, which provides enormous explanatory power despite its reliance on mathematics for the conveyance of these explanations, rather than the flesh and blood language of intuitive common sense. Investigation of the brain therefore uses all of the tools of modern science, and is not restricted by the limitations of our embodied understanding.

Explanations of the mind, however, seem unable to transcend this limitation. All models of the mind seem locked into a requirement that explanations for mental function (as opposed to brain function) be intuitively evident and available to routine comprehension. This is perhaps inevitable since, given that the (conscious) mind is a product of evolutionary forces aimed at maximising the survival potential of medium-sized social mammals moving at medium speed (to paraphrase Dawkins), the ability of that mind to represent the world, including itself, would only need to address those concerns. Since our ability to intuitively apprehend anything is constrained by this precondition, any model of mind we feel intuitively satisfied with would be similarly constrained. We should expect that models of mind be easily visualisable, and probably follow laws of physics which correspond to Naive or Folk Physics or some version of the Newtonian. What’s more, it is likely that the mind itself, again for good evolutionary reasons, functions in a way which corresponds to this embodied paradigm. If the mind is an organ (or set of organs) produced by evolution which represents and allows for an effective engagement with a largely Newtonian world, then that mind, as part of the world, would need to be similarly Newtonian in structure.

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