Consciousness and Lesser States: the evolutionary foothills of the mind

Philosophy ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Brain Circuits ◽  
Mental Acts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Self Production ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Consciousness and its relation to the unconscious mind have long been debated in philosophy. I develop the thesis that consciousness and its contents reflect the highest elaboration of a set of abilities to respond to the environment realized in more primitive organisms and brain circuits. The contents of the states lesser than consciousness are, however, intrinsically dubious and indeterminate as it is the role of the discursive skills we use to construct conscious contents that lends articulation and clarity to the mental acts which cumulatively make up our mental lives. I lay out a tripartite structure for the formation of mind in which the ongoing interaction between brain and world, the formative effect of socio-cultural context and the self production of a relatively coherent narrative all play an important part in making a mind. The latter two influences clearly transcend biological science and suggest that human minds have features which broadly align with certain Freudian insights but do not support the reification of the causally structured unconscious that Freud envisaged.

Cartesian Fingerprints in Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243
Author(s):  
Irit Degani-Raz
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Limiting Case

The idea that Beckett investigates in his works the limits of the media he uses has been widely discussed. In this article I examine the fiction Imagination Dead Imagine as a limiting case in Beckett's exploration of limits at large and the limits of the media he uses in particular. Imagination Dead Imagine is shown to be the self-reflexive act of an artist who imaginatively explores the limits of that ultimate medium – the artist's imagination itself. My central aim is to show that various types of structural homologies (at several levels of abstraction) can be discerned between this poetic exploration of the limits of imagination and Cartesian thought. The homologies indicated here transcend what might be termed as ‘Cartesian typical topics’ (such as the mind-body dualism, the cogito, rationalism versus empiricism, etc.). The most important homologies that are indicated here are those existing between the role of imagination in Descartes' thought - an issue that until only a few decades ago was quite neglected, even by Cartesian scholars - and Beckett's perception of imagination. I suggest the use of these homologies as a tool for tracing possible sources of inspiration for Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine.

Social Constructionism and the Role of the Unconscious in Hypnotic Responding: A Single Case Experiment

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-163
Author(s):  
David P. Fourie
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Unconscious Mind

AbstractThere seems to be wide acceptance by both professionals and lay people that hypnotic and especially hypnotherapeutic responding is based on the long-standing but still hypothetical dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious minds. In this simplistic view, hypnotic suggestions are considered to bypass consciousness to reach the unconscious mind, there to have the intended effect. This article reports on a single-case experiment investigating the involvement of the unconscious in hypnotherapeutic responding. In this case the subject responded positively to suggestions that could not have reached the unconscious, indicating that the unconscious was not involved in such responding. An alternative view is proposed, namely that hypnotherapeutic responding involves a cognitive process in which a socially constructed new understanding of the problem behaviour and of hypnosis, based on the client's existing attribution of meaning, is followed by action considered appropriate to the new understanding and which then confirms this understanding, leading to behaviour change.

scholarly journals The Dream World of Wonderland

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Teska
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Salvador Dali ◽  
Original Illustrations ◽  
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
Unconscious Mind

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll creates a whimsical, alternative reality based on arbitrary rules and nonsense to express his ideas regarding the nature of dreams. While the original illustrations of the text were created by 19th-century English artist and satirist John Tenniel, famed surrealist Salvador Dalí provides a more expressionistic and psychological exploration of the mind through his own illustrations of Carroll’s work in the 1969 Maegenus Press edition of Alice. In order to understand Dalí’s interpretation of the text, it is important to trace his interests in dreams back to its origins in Sigmund Freud and Surrealism, which came to light during the early 20th-century and focused on new forms of expression that sought to unhinge the supposed creativity trapped in the unconscious mind. Although Carroll, Dalí, and Freud were all from different time periods, their individual beliefs about the nature of dreams allow for a better understanding of how to analyze Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a whole.

Translators of the Soul: Bingham Dai, Pow-Meng Yap, and the Making of Transcultural Psychoanalysis in the Asia Pacific

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Howard Chiang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unconscious Mind

This essay argues that Asian psychoanalysts developed a new style of science, what I call transcultural reasoning, in the twentieth century. This conceptual innovation drew on the power of cultural narratives to elucidate the unconscious mind across different historical and geographical contexts. Focusing on the life and work of two experts in particular, Bingham Dai (1899–1996) and Pow-Meng Yap (1921–71), this article reconsiders the role of biography in the history of psychoanalysis and elucidates the importance of the Asia Pacific region to the transformation of mental health science in the twentieth century.

Psycho-analysis and its Developments

1926 ◽  
Vol 72 (299) ◽  
pp. 542-573
Author(s):  
W. A. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Free Association ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
Personal Consciousness ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Unconscious Mind

There is in the mind a mass of past experiences which cannot be readily remembered. We also know that while the individual is aware of some of the processes of elaboration going on in his mind, there are other mental processes which elude his observation. Both forgotten experiences and unrealized mental processes constitute material of which the individual was said to be “not personally conscious.” The modern psychologist says the forgotten memories and the hidden mental processes are in the unconscious or subconscious mind, a stratum of the mind below the threshold of personal consciousness. He bases this statement on the conception that while the mind is a complete entity, it is so disposed that while the contents of one portion can be at once investigated by the individual, the rest is not so easily explored. The accessible portion is called the conscious mind, the rest the unconscious. Dr. G. Stanley Hall compared the mind to an iceberg, floating in the ocean with one-ninth visible above the water and eight-ninths below, the visible ninth corresponding to the conscious mind, and the larger submerged portion to the unconscious mind. Before the time of Freud there was no satisfactory method of exploring the unconscious. Freud, when dealing with neurotic and mental patients, was dissatisfied with the results obtained by hypnotism. But he noticed that some experienced relief, and also improved, when encouraged to talk frankly about their anxieties and difficulties. He worked out a method of exploring the unconscious mind, called psycho-analysis, founded on the theory that dreams are not accidental or meaningless; interpreted by the method of free association, they constitute the royal road to the unconscious mind. Free association means that when the analysand is asked of what a particular item in the dream makes him think, he gives the idea that first occurs to him, however far-fetched or absurd it may seem, and then allows one idea to call up others without let or hindrance.

scholarly journals DREAM AND REALITY IN THE POETRY OF DAVID GASCOIGNE (LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE POEM AND THE SEVENTH DREAM IS THE DREAM OF ISIS)

2018 ◽  
pp. 32-38
Author(s):  
Liudmyla Pradivlianna
Keyword(s):  
Visual Images ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
French Version ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Unconscious Mind ◽  
Century Literature

Surrealism, the XX century literature and art movement, inspired an impressive number of scientific research regarding different aspects of the phenomenon. This paper studies surrealism as a type of artistic thinking which raised the role of the unconscious in poetry. It focuses on the core of surrealist aesthetics – an automatic image, which allowed the poets to study human irrational states, such as dreams. Focusing on the themes of dreams and dream-like narrations, surrealists created poetry which was formed by specific images. An automatic image coming directly from one’s unconscious mind was expected to reveal new knowledge about the world and people. But as the poet ’functions’ only as a conductor of the unconscious images, it is the reader who has to create meanings in this kind of poetry.The paper regards surrealism in terms of a lingvo-poetic experiment and analyzes the linguistic characteristics of the automatic texts in the early poetic collection of David Gascoyne (1916–2001). It outlines the peculiarities of the British poet’s techniques which are built upon French surrealist concepts and theories and examines phonetic, semantic and syntactic aspects of his poetry. David Gascoyne’s lyrics demonstrates the poet’s commitment to the French version of surrealism, his interest in the unconscious and dream-like narration. The streams of arbitrary visual images, deep emotionality, the artistic use of the word, semantic increments of meaning make Gascoigne’s texts open to interpretation. And though the poet actually refers visual effects (we rather see dreams), specific dream-like patterns are created not only by lexical, but also by phonetic repetitions, via intonation in which lexemes acquire a new semantic load.

The Self in Meditation: The Art of Self-Transformation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Frazier
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Weather System ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
The Mind

This chapter outlines a theory of meditation as an art of self-shaping, by emphasizing meditation’s efficacy as a tool for sculpting the “plastic” structures of the mind. First, it considers modern views of meditation as a form of healing that brings the mind “back” to its natural functioning. This stands in contrast with most traditional views of meditation as a way to change the self in permanent—and sometimes radical—ways. Second, it sketches a model of the mind’s “architecture of attention”—exploring the role of selective attention in cognitive processing and the cumulative structures of the self. Third, given this model of the mind, it considers some examples of how absorptive, deconstructive, and narrative forms of meditation shape the inner world of the practitioner. From this examination of meditative functions, there emerges an ontology of the self that recognizes its self-creative malleability. Less an atomic individual or an outward-shining power of perception, the self appears as a kind of dynamic weather system that is constantly transformed as it takes up the raw materials of sensory stimulus. On this model, meditation functions as the selective factor that allows different elements of that system to predominate and thereby shape the others. Finally, the chapter reminds that, far from the modern world’s concern with individual autonomy, classical meditation’s subtle artistry aimed to bring the self into alignment with broader realities.

The unconscious and the social in Saussure

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 307-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Social ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Summary Saussure stood between two figures, Whitney and Meillet, each of whom was relentlessly opposed to the dominant psychological establishment of his time. Saussure himself was much more ambivalent about psychology, never portraying it as standing in clear opposition to the interests of linguistics or sociology as the others did. Yet among the many changes that took place in his general linguistics courses between the First in 1907 and the Second in 1908–1909 was a withdrawal from the topic that was at the heart of the Neogrammarian psychology of language, analogy. With it came withdrawal from all but a few psychological considerations, and a proportionate increase in the number of sociological ones. In particular, the role of the unconscious mind in insulating language from deliberate change was taken over by the force of the social group. The timing of this shift coincides with that of the publication of Sechehaye (1908), inspired by Saussure and dedicated to him by his colleague and former student, and the abrupt dismissal of the book by Saussure’s friend and confidante Meillet as being entirely psychological with no interest in or for sociology. Saussure shared many of Meillet’s concerns about the autonomy of linguistic science, and his shift from the psychological to the social may have been more directly motivated by Meillet’s reactions than has been generally recognised – not least because Meillet would later portray the direction of influence as flowing unilaterally from Saussure to himself, as a way of securing Saussure’s posthumous authority for his ongoing programmatic calls for a sociologically-based linguistics.

scholarly journals Ritual Artifacts as Symbolic Habits

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The concepts of manipulative abduction and of extending, disembodying, and distributing the mind can help delineate important aspects of the role of habits, rituals, and symbols in human cognition, including when new concepts are created. Taking advantage of some psychoanalytical and anthropological issues, I will show how symbolic habits in rituals can function as memory mediators which are able to play significant roles in human cognition and action. They can maximize abducibility and so recoverability of knowledge contents, including at the unconscious level.

scholarly journals Phrenology, heredity and progress in George Combe'sConstitution of Man

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
BILL JENKINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The Mind

AbstractTheConstitution of Manby George Combe (1828) was probably the most influential phrenological work of the nineteenth century. It not only offered an exposition of the phrenological theory of the mind, but also presented Combe's vision of universal human progress through the inheritance of acquired mental attributes. In the decades before the publication of Darwin'sOrigin of Species, theConstitutionwas probably the single most important vehicle for the dissemination of naturalistic progressivism in the English-speaking world. Although there is a significant literature on the social and cultural context of phrenology, the role of heredity in Combe's thought has been less thoroughly explored, although both John van Wyhe and Victor L. Hilts have linked Combe's views on heredity with the transformist theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In this paper I examine the origin, nature and significance of his ideas and argue that Combe's hereditarianism was not directly related to Lamarckian transformism but formed part of a wider discourse on heredity in the early nineteenth century.

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