Chapter 12 Chapter 12 Consciousness and Experience

Throughout the year 1918 my views on psychic phenomena underwent a great change.I had previously accepted Brentano's view that in sensation there are three components: action, content, and object.Later I thought that the distinction between content and object was unnecessary, but I still believed that sensation is basically a relational thing in which a subject is "conscious" of an object.I have used the concept "consciousness" or "knowledge" for this relation of subject and object, and have regarded it as fundamental in the doctrine of empirical knowledge.But the relational nature of psychological phenomena gradually became doubtful.I expressed this skepticism in my lectures on logical atomism.But shortly after I gave these lectures I became convinced that William James was right in denying the relational nature of sensation.In the long article "On the Nature of Knowing," published in the Monist in 1914, I criticized and rejected James's views.The argument of this article is again in Robert C.Reprinted in Logic and Knowledge, ed. Marsh, pp. 139ff.The contrary opinion which I later adopted was first published in 1919 in a paper read at the Aristotle Society entitled "On Propositions: What Propositions Are and How They Have Significance".This article is also reprinted in selected anthologies of Marsh.The relevant paragraph is on page 305 and below.James' comments were originally published in a paper titled "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" in which he asserts that the conceived subject is "the name of a fiction".He went on: "Those who still cling to it cling only to an echo, a faint rumor left in the air of philosophy by vanished 'souls'".This article was published in 1904.But I did not believe it to be true until fourteen years later.

This question is more important than it appears on the surface.Obviously we learn by experience.And it is clear, at least to me, that learning does not merely acquire some means of action, but also produces something which may be called "knowledge."As long as I firmly believe in the relational theory of sensations, no difficulty arises. On this point of view, every sensation is itself a kind of knowledge, which constitutes awareness of what I call "sense-data."In The Analysis of the Mind (1921) I unequivocally abandoned "sense data".I said: "Sensation is clearly the source of our knowledge of the world (including our bodies). It also seems natural to think of feeling as a kind of knowledge in itself. Until recently I did. For example, when I saw a person I knew walking toward me on the street, it seemed that just seeing was knowledge. Of course, it is undeniable that knowledge comes through seeing. But now I think that the mere seeing It is wrong to regard it as knowledge in itself. If we think so, we have to distinguish seeing from what we see: we must say that when we see a piece of color of a certain shape, this color is once thing, we see it is another matter. But this view requires recognition of the subject or action in the sense discussed in the first lecture. If there is a subject, it can have a relation to the color, It is the kind of relationship that we can call "feeling". If so, this psychological phenomenon of feeling will become conscious of the color, and the color itself is still completely physical. To distinguish it from the feeling, we can It is called "sense data". But this subject is a logical fiction, just like mathematical points and instants. It is not introduced because it is seen through observation, but because of the convenience of language. , and apparently also due to grammatical requirements. Such nominal entities may or may not exist, but there is no good reason to assume such entities do exist. A class, series, or Other logical structures can always do what this nominal entity appears to do. If we are to avoid an entirely unnecessary assumption, we must take what is supposed to be an actually existing element in the world This subject cannot be removed. If we do this, there is no possibility of distinguishing sense from sense-data; Sensation is simply that patch of color, an actual constituent of the physical world, part of what physics says. A patch of color is of course not knowledge, so we cannot say that pure sensation is cognitive. Through its psychological utility, it It is the cause of cognition, partly because it is itself a sign of those things with which it is connected (for example, sight and touch are connected), and partly because it can give rise to images and memories after the sensation has passed away.

But pure sensation itself is not cognitive" (pp. 141-2). But by abandoning the sense-data new problems arose, of which I was not fully aware at first.Words such as "feel", "knowledge", and "experience" cannot but be redefined.But this is by no means an easy task.At the beginning of Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, I put it this way: "If you were to say to someone with no philosophical training, how do you know I have two eyes?" he or she would reply, 'What a muddled question! I can see you have two eyes'. Don't think that when our research is done we will get something quite different from this unphilosophical attitude. It will happen Matter: We shall see that what we thought to be simple is a complex structure, that circumstances which we perceive as undoubted are surrounded by shadows of uncertainty, that we shall encounter doubts which are often More legitimate than we thought.

And, even premises that seem plausible are later found to lead to unreasonable conclusions.The result is to replace unclear certainties with clear doubts.Whether this result has any value is a question that I do not consider" (p. 11). But when I wrote "The Analysis of the Mind," I was not fully aware of the need to reinterpret the common sense so-called "evidence of the senses." Part of this problem can be tackled with a behaviorist approach.One difference between dead matter and a living being is that the response of a living being to a stimulus which is often imposed varies with the repetition of the stimulus, whereas the response of dead matter is generally not visible. There is no such change.This is embodied in this proverb: "a child who has been scalded is afraid of fire".No matter how many times an automatic machine responds to the insertion of a penny, it never responds to the sight of a penny.Habit is one of the most fundamental characteristics of living matter (especially higher forms of life).Habits are mainly formed by "conditioned reflexes".

The main meaning of "conditioned reflex" is: assuming that an animal responds to a stimulus A with a certain action, and the A stimulus often appears before the animal with another B stimulus, the animal will react to A after a while. React to B in the same way as you react to B.Pavlov did many experiments with dogs, showing that the dogs learned to see one thing as a "sign" of another.The behavior they exhibit suggests that they are, in a sense, "knowledgeable."For example, there are two doors, one with an oval drawn on it, and one with a circle drawn on it.If the dog chooses the door with the circle painted on it, he gets a good meal.But if it chooses the oval-shaped door, it will be hit by electricity.After many tries, the dog always chooses the circle.But that dog was inferior to Kepler in the ability to distinguish an ellipse from a circle.Pavlov slowly made the ellipse closer and closer to a circle, until the dog couldn't tell the difference, and it went insane.A similar thing happened to elementary school students.If you ask them, "What is six times nine?" Choose one of them.Such experiments with dogs or schoolchildren can be done in a purely behaviorist fashion.That is, we study bodily responses to physical stimuli without asking ourselves whether dogs or schoolchildren are "thinking."

Responding to stimuli is not in itself a characteristic of living matter.An ammeter responds to electrical current and a thermometer responds to temperature.Animals, especially higher animals, are characterized by so-called "learning".Learning is changing the response to a stimulus.This is the result of acquiring a habit.There is a great difference between the higher and lower animals in their ability to acquire useful habits.The fly will continue to try blindly to get out of the glass window, and the cat or dog will soon learn that this is impossible.Man is superior to other animals largely because of his greater ability to acquire many very complex habits.

Does this principle include the full meaning of "knowledge from experience"?I never thought of it that way myself.But I think it is likely that it applies to a wider range than is generally believed.If you say "dog" when you see a dog and "cat" when you see a cat, it proves that you "know" the difference between a dog and a cat.But obviously, if you can build a machine that can do the same, if you say that the machine "knows" something, people will think you're speaking metaphorically.Everyone who isn't a behaviorist philosopher believes that machines don't have what's in us.If you have a toothache, you know you are feeling pain.You can make a machine that groans, and even says "This is unbearable," but you still won't believe that the machine will go through what you go through when you feel a toothache.

One of the most important issues affected by the question of whether sensations are fundamentally relational is a doctrine called "neutral monism."As long as the "subject" remains, there is a "mental" entity, which has absolutely no analogue in the material world.But if sensations are not fundamentally relational events, there is no need to regard mental and physical things as fundamentally different.It is quite possible to regard both the mind and a piece of matter as logical constructs formed of indistinguishable or virtually identical materials. It can be argued that what physiologists consider to be matter in the brain is actually made up of thoughts and feelings.

The difference between mind and matter is just a difference in arrangement.I illustrate this by using the analogy of a post office directory.The Post Office directory separates people in two ways: alphabetically and geographically.In the first arrangement, a person's immediate neighbors are those who are next to him in the alphabet; in the other arrangement, those next-door neighbors.Likewise, a sensation can be grouped with some other item by a chain of memory, then it becomes part of the mind, and with its causal antecedent, then it is the physical world. a part of.This view makes things very simple.When I realized that this simplification could be admitted by abandoning the "subject", I was very happy, thinking that the traditional problem of mind and matter was completely solved.

In other respects, however, this new view turned out to be less convenient.There is an indispensable duality in any form of knowledge except that which is manifested only in bodily conduct.We feel something, we remember something, and, in general, there is a difference between knowing and being known.This duality, removed from sensation, has to be brought back in some way. The first form in which the problem occurs is with regard to "perception".The various sensations are not the same in this respect. Smell, taste, and bodily sensations, such as a headache or stomachache, are not as powerful in suggesting this duality as sight, touch, and hearing.Before we start thinking, we think that what we see, hear or touch is outside our body.It is only with some effort that we can turn our attention to "seeing" as opposed to seeing.When the dog sees the rabbit, I cannot think that the dog is saying to itself: "I am having a vision, and there must be an external cause for this vision." But if James and March are right, when the dog " "Seeing a rabbit," the dog's perception of the rabbit has only an indirect, causal relationship.This view strikes one as strange.Precisely because it's weird, I've been slow to adopt this view.I think, however, that the whole doctrine of causes of sensations (partly physical, partly physiological) must inevitably lead us to regard "perception" as something far less immediate than it appears to be.

From an epistemological point of view, this raises very difficult questions about "empirical evidence." "Inquiry into Meaning and Truth" mainly discusses this issue.In this book, I use "notice" instead of "know". "Notice" is used as an undefined noun.A quote from this book will illustrate the point: "Suppose you are out for a walk on a wet day, and you see a puddle, and you avoid it. You probably don't say to yourself, 'There's a puddle, it's best to Don't step in.' But suppose someone said, 'Why did you step aside all of a sudden?' and you would reply, 'Because I didn't want to step into that little puddle'. Introspectively you know you have A vision, to which you reacted appropriately. In that hypothetical event, you expressed that realization in words. But if the person asking you does not draw your attention to the event, you know What? In what sense do you 'know'?" "When people ask you, that matter is already in the past. You answer by memory. Can people remember things they didn't know? It depends on what the word 'know' means." "The meaning of the word 'know' is very ambiguous. In most senses of the word, 'knowing' a thing is a different thing from being known; but 'knowing' has another meaning. When you have an experience, the experience is no different from when you know you have the experience. It may be argued that we always know the experience we have now. But if 'knowing' is a different thing from the experience, this is not the case .For, if an experience is one thing, and knowing the experience is another, and we always know an experience when it happens, such an assumption implies an infinite multiplication of everything. I feel hot; It's one thing. I know I feel hot; it's a second thing. I know I know I feel hot; it's a third thing, and so on, to infinity. It's absurd. So we have to say , or there is no difference between my present experience and my knowledge of it when it existed, or, in general, we do not know our present experience. In general, I would like to use the word 'know' to imply This means: to know something different from being known. And therefore to think that, in general, we do not know our present experience." "So we have to say that it is one thing to see a puddle, and quite another to know that I see a puddle. 'Knowing' can be said to be 'acting properly'; we say the dog knows its name Or the carrier pigeon knows its way home, that's what it means. In this sense, I know that the puddle is my stepping aside. But the meaning is not clear, one is because other things may make me stepping aside, Also because 'proper' can only be explained by my desire. Maybe I was going to get wet because I just took out a large sum of life insurance and thought it would be convenient to die from pneumonia; if so, I stepped aside to prove I didn't? didn't see puddles. Not only that, but scientific instruments can show proper responses to certain stimuli if desire is not spoken of, but no one can say that a thermometer 'knows' it's cold." "What should we do with an experience in order for us to know it? Many things are possible. We can describe it with words, we can recall it with words or mental shadows, or we can just 'notice' it But 'noticing' is a matter of degree, it is difficult to give a definition; it seems to be mainly separated from the sensory environment. When listening to music, you can deliberately only pay attention to the cello part, and you listen to the rest 'unconsciously'. But it is impossible to add a definite meaning to this question.In a sense, if a present experience arouses any emotion in you, no matter how slight, if it pleases or displeases you, interests or bores you, surprises you, or is exactly what you expected, that is It can be said that you are 'knowing' this present experience. " "There is an important sense in which you can know anything that is in your present field of perception. If someone said to you: 'Do you see yellow now? ' or 'Do you hear a sound? ' You can answer with confidence even though you didn't notice the yellow color or the sound before you were asked, and often you fully believed it was there before your attention was turned to it. " "So it seems that the most immediate 'knowing' we experience consists of sensual presence, plus something else. But to give a precise definition of that other thing that is required, precisely because of the , is easy to misunderstand. Because this matter is inherently ambiguous, it is a matter of degree. What is needed can be called 'attention'; An emotional response. A sudden, loud voice always gets attention, but a soft, emotional voice can do the same." "Every empirical proposition is based on one or more sensory events that occurred or were noticed immediately afterwards, and which still form part of the 'now'. We may say that these events It is time to be 'known'. The word 'know' has many meanings, and this is only one of them; but for our study, it is fundamental" (pp. 49-51). "Perception" which is different from "feeling" involves habits based on past experience.We can distinguish in this way: sensation is a part of our whole experience, this part is only caused by stimulation, and has nothing to do with previous history.In the occurrence of events, this is the core of the doctrine.The whole event is always nothing more than an explanation in which there are additions to the sensory core which are habitual.When you see a dog, the core of your perception is a patch of color, completely stripped of all that goes with knowing it's a dog.You expect the patch of color to move in a dog-specific way.You expect that if it makes a sound, it will be a dog barking or a barking, not like a rooster crowing.You firmly believe that it can be touched, it will not be turned into a stock, but has its future and past.I'm not saying that all of this is "conscious," but you'd be surprised if it wasn't the case.This proves that these exist.It is these additions that turn sensation into perception, and it is these additions that make perception possible for misinterpretation.Walter Diziny might make you think you're seeing a "real" dog, and it might startle you by crowing like a rooster or disappearing into nothingness.But since your expectations are the result of experience, it is evident that your expectations must represent the general state of things,—always assuming that the laws of nature are immutable. Another form of duality occurs in imagination and memory.If I recall something that happened on a past occasion, it is obvious that what is happening to me now is not the same as what I remember, because one is in the present and the other is in the past. So there is something in memory, which may be called a relation of subject and object.This needs to be carefully explained.I think explanation is impossible without bringing in "belief."When I recall, I believe that something happened in the past.What happened to me was in a sense "represented" by what happened to me now.The main issue here is the relation of an image to its sensory archetypes.I can see my house in my mind, then go to my house and find that it "matches" with my mind image.Experiences of this kind lead us to believe in the mental images of memory, but not in the absolute confidence of noticing sensations, since memories are sometimes found to be error-provoking. Two words that philosophers use frequently are "consciousness" and "experience."Both words need to be redefined—or rather, to be defined.Because, when these two words are generally used, they just think that their meaning is obvious. What do we mean when we say that a person or an animal is "conscious" but a stone is not?This can refer to two things, the first of which is observable from the outside, the second of which is not.The first is the future of man or animal.Behavior must be different from what would be done if the thing had not happened.It's best to think of this as the definition of "experience". The second definition of "consciousness" comes from the relationship of "attention".When something happens to me, I may or may not notice it.If I notice it, I'm "aware" of it, so to speak.By this definition, "consciousness" consists in knowing that I have something or have something. The meaning of "know" in this definition remains to be studied. Under the influence of idealist philosophers, I feel that the importance of "experience" has been greatly exaggerated.Some people even think that there is nothing that cannot be experienced, and that there is nothing that is not experience.I see no ground for such an opinion, nor any ground for even thinking that we cannot know that there is something we do not know. I do not think that the opinion I object to will flourish if people take the trouble to find out what the word "experience" may mean.