Abstract
Max R. Bennett
Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997
ISBN 90 5702 203 6 pp.4176 $29.00
These books offer an interesting contrast in their approaches to the question of consciousness. One makes an attempt from outside-in as it were, the other from inside-out. Lohrey postulates a background of ‘cosmic consciousness’ and then embarks on an exposition of how this is related to, or manifest as, individual consciousness expressed through the interstices of language. Bennett starts from the brain and then progresses via a summary of some of the philosophical problems and distortions of consciousness to end with a consideration of consciousness and quantum mechanics.
The reader is warned that Lohrey's book is dense and difficult. Throughout, he is stressing holistic themes and the importance of repetition of form (iso-morphism). More specifically (from the Foreword by Katherine Hyles), the book returns ‘to the schism that took place in the 17th centrury when the alchemists were discredited by the emerging power of the Royal Society…the alchemists thought the universe was animate and made no clear distinction between spirit and matter…Andrew Lohrey wants to go back to this crossroads (he)…starts from the premise that the world is animate…he searches for a way to place consciousness within this living universe as an embedded phenomenon’. The movement of Lohrey's argument progresses from general notions of holism through an examination of subjectivity meaning and consciousness and the unity of body and mind to a consideration of discourse and the place of structural linguistics. The relevance of the argument and how well it holds together call for critical assessment. More will also be said about the ambition to resurrect animism (albeit in modernist garb) later in the review.
The author writes ‘…a science of consciousness should rely, not on reason or empiricism and their attendant conventions, which ask how consciousness arises from matter, but on a perspective paradigm, which reverses this question to ask how matter arises from consciousness’ (p.2).
Throughout, in developing the interplay of theme and form and of subject and object, Lohrey's study is eclectic, but he often relies only on secondary sources. ‘Consciousness’ is defined as ‘having three general layers or contexts: (1) a holistic, cosmic and divine context from which all material existence emerges; (2) individual subjectivity, which also emerges from the divine cosmic context; and (3) discourse, which is the manifestation of cultural consciousness and which emerges from the context of subjectivity’ (p.12). This parallels the major divisions of Kant's metaphysics: the transcendental aesthetic, the transcendental analytic, the transcendental dialectic, all brought together by the transcendental unity of apperception. Kant's influence is seen elsewhere in Lohrey's discourse but he makes no direct reference to Kant.
Lohrey borrows from David Bohm the idea that ‘material existence’ (the presence of natural form) arises from the interplay of an implicate enfolding order with an explicate unfolding order. Lohrey writes ‘…Bohm refers to a cosmic determinism that is very close to the present concept of a cosmic consciousness’. But Lohrey adds ‘I see consciousness as the primary phenomenon that primarily constructs order and disorder, reason and isomorphic connections, chaos, randomness, and predictability. In this isomorphic sense, the concept of order is subordinated to consciousness, not the other way around, as Bohm proposes’ (p.64). With this leap Lohrey begs the question between order in general and intentional order, that is the inanimate/animate distinction. He seems to place ‘cosmic consciousness’ in the place of ‘God’ in a parallel to a theistic scheme. (Bohm avoids this question, begging leap by carefully developing the idea of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon.) In contrast to Bohm's clear and tightly reasoned argument, Lohrey presents us with a loosely jointed discussion of the unity of ‘mind’ and body using (or misusing) insights derived from Pavlov, Merleau-Ponty and others. ‘Pavlov's view of subjectivity…employs an image of an ever-changing centre of excitability surrounded by outlying areas of lesser excitability…(it) forshadows the present emergent view of consciousness, one in which the whole of the nervous system is involved in the structure of subjectivity’ (p.207). Through not turning to primary sources, Lohrey sometimes gets quite off the beam, for example in writing this: ‘As Merleau-Ponty fails to give an account of meaning, he neglects to describe the subjective structure of incarnate intentionality’ (p.202). The fact of the matter is that Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception writes at length of the body and its subtleties of meaning with marvellous insight.
Lohrey seems to rely centrally on the notion of iso-morphic links between symmetry and excitation and non-symmetry with inhibition, but the theme is not developed satisfactorily. One is often in the position of agreeing with a conclusion but feeling very unhappy with how it has been reached.
The same remarks apply to the intricate discussion of the isomorphic sign, signifiers and signified and discourse in the last part of the book. There is a long, somewhat confusing critique of Saussure, which is hard to connect with the march of the author's argument regarding consciousness. In referring to Merleau-Ponty, Saussure and Derrida, he writes ‘These three writers are not unique or special, for they have simply carried on the long tradition of distrusting the body or erasing it from any intellectual or philosophical discussion’ (p.222). The reliance here on secondary rather than primary sources has again led the author astray.
In discussing Jakobson's linguistic theory, the author at first seems more at home; however, he soon loses the reader, at least this reader, in a maze of argument. In the following quote he seems to be writing of his own approach ‘…mythical discourses have a rhetoric that attempts to persuade us of its inherent seriousness. Its deception is that rhetoric can never be serious, for it is not representation’ (p.271).
In conclusion, the author writes ‘…we have discussed some of the semantic and symbolic features of subjectivity when manifest as discourse and culture. This discursive area represents the third “layer” of consciousness, which emerges from the potentials of subjectivity, which in turn has emerged from the symmetry potentials of cosmic consciousness or God’ (p.272). And in the Coda: ‘As a basis for consciousness, symmetry is beyond the suchness and isness of the past. The meaning of symmetry is the meaning of Spirit and a panentheistic Spirit is the appropriate basis for this isomorphic theory of cosmic consciousness, subjectivity and discourse’ (p.274). In the Foreword, the author is described as wanting to revive animism, but his final words equate cosmic consciousness and God. It would be very helpful if a revision of the book contained some explanatory reference to the various philosophical positions, vitalism, animism, pantheism, panentheism and theism. His argument connecting cosmic consciousness, subjectivity, discourse and culture variously supports one or other of the last three rather than animism.
Bennett's study follows a different path. He takes up the evolution of consciousness in a biological fashion. Starting from Erwin Schrodinger's linking of quantum mechanics and the genetic coding of biological information, he moves quickly via the contributions of Watson and Crick to the organising question of the book: what is this phenomenon of consciousness? The problem of visual perception in humans and other primates is taken as a starting point and this is narrowed to questions about brain structure and function involved in the primary holistic experience of seeing an object which moves. ‘Phase-locked’ firing of different assemblies of neurones can be shown to be activated by the same visual object, specifically by the face which has special inbuilt value. Thus, it is shown that ‘sets of neurones sub-serving certain specific kinds of functions fire in a certain way’. In general, however, all that sets of neural networks can do…is to solve limited algorithmic problems…'. Fairly crude sources of evidence, such as brain injury or ablation or epilepsy lead to inconclusive suggestions about localisation of function or storage. More specific discoveries such as the purification of sympathetic nerve growth factor down to a single molecule lead to more detailed and accurate knowledge. Useful evidence regarding memory has followed experimental study of cell population excitatory postsynaptic potentials. A remarkable discovery has been that the introduction of embryonic neurones of the same class, or ones that have been suitably genetically modified, will make the correct synaptic connections and reconstitute normal function in a damaged brain.
Thus, the idea of consciousness from the molecular viewpoint has been strengthened by the success of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the molecular basis of the genetic process and the genetic code itself. But the evolutionary and developmental questions still remained unanswered.
Kant bypassed Descartes' dualism by exploring questions of sensibility and the categories of the understanding within the world of phenomena. This led eventually to the current view that the reception of sensory information and its early processing, although involving definitive physical processes, obey clear syntactical rules: ‘…our comprehension of the physical world requires an understanding of the meaning of signs and symbols, including things like sentences and words; this is the problem of semantics’ (p.29).
The syntactical structure of the information processing involves three levels: first, the basic information processing, what is abstracted and how it is coded; second, a formal set of steps or procedures comprising an algorithm which, third underpin the question of physical realisation. Although these three analytical levels can be demonstrated in the nervous system, it is obvious that the algorithmic properties are assigned and are not intrinsic in any way that is clearly isolable. ‘Syntax is observer relative’ (p.35). Directly or indirectly there must be an observer. It seems that Kant did spell out the limits of knowledge after all!
The following chapters of Bennett's book drive home the message that neuroscience at present has nothing to say about meaning, although it may have something to say about qualia in the sense that it may help to understand how unique sensory impressions, involving various parts of the brain are bound together to form a single virtual entity, the neurological background to a holistic experience. T h i s involves, for example, the dynamic coupling of appropriate neuronal groups and excitatory and inhibitory units and their connections and the synchronisation of oscillatory activity between layers of the cortex and between the hemispheres; all made possible and modulated by the intricate electrochemical operation of transmitter substances, such as acetylcholine and noradrenaline, at the myriad synaptic connections. All this underpins the possibility of the synthesis of experience and meaning.
Of the neuroscientists, Crick sees the neuronal grouping being governed by attentional mechanisms, while Edelman postulates a Darwinian type of selection. Pathological distortions may provide additional clues to some aspects of consciousness itself; for example, the study of schizophrenia has thrown some light on the place of transmitter substances in integrative functions. While consciousness appears to be a product of the working of neural networks in a necessary way, this activity is certainly not sufficient in itself; for interaction with other human beings has been shown to be necessary for the anatomical and communicative maturation of the nervous system. ‘There is an inextricable mix between the genetic and environmental factors’ (p.113).
In his discussion of quantum mechanics, Bennett suggests that ‘…quantum correlations over extensive distances may…be responsible for the coherence of conscious experience involving so many of the brain's parallel processing neuronal units which are spread throughout the neocortex’ (p.159). Here, Bennett seems to resonate with Lohrey's appeal to isomorphism. But it is worth noting also that the phrase ‘conscious experience’ has been smuggled into a description or hypothesis about physical processes. Processes which are perhaps not more remarkable than the ‘correlations over extensive distances’ which we now readily accept between radio (wireless) transmitters and receivers because we are ‘conscious’ of an acceptable explanation of how this happens.
The nature of consciousness constantly eludes attempts by consciousness to focus on itself subjectively or objectively, as Sherrington demonstrated in his classic study Man on his Nature. In the course of his interesting discussion of evolution and consciousness, Bennett quotes the philosopher Thomas Nagel: ‘Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. No doubt it occurs in countless forms unimaginable to us…’. This is contrasted with the more reductive view of Daniel Dennett, who has argued that toads (for example) do not have consciousness but are ‘rather an exquisitely complex living thing capable of a staggering variety of self-protective activities in the furtherance of its preordained task of making more generations of toads’ (p.133). Nagel is stressing the approach of subjectivity and Dennett that of objectivity. The question of the nature of consciousness is not answered by either (subjective) argument or (objective) observation. Bennett's reduction of the question to a physical molecular level and Lohrey's displacement of it to the idea of an animistic or the-istic cosmos are not convincing.
Paul Ricoeur (1970) offers the challenge of a different approach. ‘Consciousness (he writes) is a task…it is a task because it is not a given…’ [2], p.44]. ‘Consciousness ceases to be what is best known and becomes problematic. Henceforward there is a question of consciousness, of the process of becoming-conscious…in place of the so-called self evidence of being-conscious…’ [2], p.424].
Ricoeur's challenge makes us take a step back and ask, in the face of this problem, just what are we trying to talk about and why? Do we, as George Berkeley quipped in 1710, ‘first raise a dust and then complain we cannot see’ [1], p.6] through getting caught up in the inappropriate reification of abstract (or action) terms?
Perhaps we need to sort out more clearly boundary questions about the animate and inanimate? Then boundary questions about form and intentional form, movement and intentional movement, knowledge and the negation of knowledge? Then, perhaps we can phrase generative boundary questions about becoming-conscious and becoming-self-conscious? Long will man's fancy deal with the tie between body and mind by metaphor and often half forget the while that metaphor it is [3], p.292].