A Theory of Consciousness

By Arnold Schultz

An examination of the underpinning of philosophical thought—consciousness—through a study of the physiology of the central nervous system.
 
Philosophy begins with an acknowledgment of consciousness as an internal experience. Many renowned thinkers—from Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”) to John Dewey and his theory of inquiry—assume without further ado that consciousness is necessary to experience.
 
Famous philosophies have been founded on the choice of a mode of thought and its consistent use. A Theory of Consciousness maintains that there are a number of different types of thinking which lead to a variety of logical results; that everyone is capable of following these differing schools of thought, though usually favoring by habit one more than another; and that everyone trusts the results of a particular coordination while employing it and often while following it in the expression of another thinker.
 
Author Arnold Schultz maintains that before these various modes of thought can be considered, it is necessary to explain the phenomenon of consciousness in terms of the energies of the central nervous system. In this work, Schultz covers such subjects as: direct versus reflective consciousness, bodily awareness, logic and mathematics, kinesthetic and ontic sensations, affectation, passive and active referral, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philosophical Library Open Road
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504078931

Book preview

A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

ARNOLD SCHULTZ

CONTEXTS

Acknowledgments

Preface

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Chapter I Images and Action

Chapter II Words in Reflective Consciousness

Chapter III Bodily Awareness

Chapter IV The Theory of Deposit

Chapter V Objections to the Theory of Deposit

Chapter VI Universals and Particulars

Chapter VII Logic and Mathematics

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Chapter I Charge and Kinesthesis

Chapter II Charge Concept Thinking

Chapter III Passive Referral

Chapter IV Active Referral

Chapter V Pure Operational Abstractions

Chapter VI Affection

Chapter VII Operations Simultaneous with the Self

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is grateful to the following copyright holders who have graciously given permission to quote from their works:

Aristotle ON DREAMS (The Short Physical Treatises) edited by Richard McKeon: Random House, New York, 1941;

Fulton, J. F., PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM: Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 1938;

Hebb, D. O., THE ORGANIZATION OF BEHAVIOR: John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York;

Morgan & Stellar, PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: McGraw Hill Book Co., New York, 1950.

PREFACE

The present study of the mysterious state which men call consciousness grew out of an earlier study of the physiological mechanics of piano technique, THE RIDDLE OF THE PIANIST’S FINGER.* Although the writer was satisfied that he had given an adequate mechanical and physiological account of the movements required for first-rate piano-playing, he found himself at the end confronting a great diversity of data in consciousness that could not be resolved into the relatively simple categories of physiological mechanics. He had never, of course, deluded himself that the art of piano-playing could be reduced to a mere set of motor skills, but even with respect to the movements as such, he found them appearing in consciousness with differences not possible to be explained solely by a choice of contracting muscles or of mechanical relations at various joints. It was to these variables in consciousness that his thought then naturally turned, both to explain and to control them. While he was struggling with these problems, and during the teaching of an actual piano lesson, the essence of the theory of consciousness as set forth in Part I of the present work arose spontaneously as an insight. A long period of analysis was required, however, to clear away a number of obvious logical objections. A much longer period (thirty years, in point of fact) was required to see how the variables might be controlled.

The interest in sheer bodily movement out of which the present study grew is mentioned for a reason. To certain readers it may seem to have supplied a personal bias to the theory of consciousness issuing from it, for the theory insists on the primacy and omnipresence of motor discharges in all our conscious experience. But if we share the century-old view that the brain and central nervous system are intimately bound up with perception, cognition, and thinking in general, it is to be noted that both neurophysiology and modern objective psychology have as their almost exclusive concern the motor responses which living organisms make to sensory stimuli. The first thing we come to know about the nervous system is that it serves to move various parts of the body, and in the end this is, at least scientifically, virtually all that we know. Neurophysiology, to be sure, takes account of sensations as internally felt experiences, but since these belong irremediably to a private world, its main focus has been on overt motor responses. Most of physiological psychology, however, has chosen to bypass the consciousness of sensations altogether and to limit itself to the analysis of overt forms of behavior. If, as the Scriptures tell us, man moves and has his Being, both neurology and objective psychology have taken the word move in earnest, so much in earnest, indeed, that they concern themselves not at all with Being, a neglect that the present study hopes to correct. Since both neurophysiology and objective psychology have their chief focus on motor responses, it can hardly be said that the author’s strong initial interest in physiological mechanics unduly prejudiced his interpretation of the mechanisms of consciousness—on the contrary, he found his first interest fitting in with and greatly enlarged by sciences established long before his own thought turned in their direction.

The author is grateful to a host of students over the years for the many experiments they have shared with him in nervous co-ordination. (His great regret is that a fundamental problem in the learning and memorizing of music was completely solved only towards the end of his teaching career.) He has an inexpressible indebtedness to Mr. Melvin Ahlert whose interest in the nervous co-ordinations of thought was quite as keen and unflagging as his own and who therefore, in regular weekly conferences over a long period of years, joined him in pursuing psychological clues as elusive as they were numerous. He has a similar indebtedness to his sister, Miss Gertrude Schultz. With such a friend and such a relative, he is quite powerless to distinguish between what he has contributed and what he has received.

A. S.

September, 1972

* Published in 1936 by the University of Chicago Press, since 1949 by Carl Fischer Inc., New York.

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CHAPTER I

IMAGES AND ACTION

In his essay on John Dewey in the volume devoted to Dewey in the Library of Living Philosophers, Bertrand Russell seems to have been speaking, by the time he has done, of a mind so deficient in ordinary common sense that one wonders that he went to the trouble of a critical scrutiny at all. Mr. Dewey in reply seems equally aghast at Lord Russell’s blindness to self-evident facts, and his tone takes on the patience of a teacher who instructs a dullard out of a sense of duty but not with a feeling of hope. The gentlemen are two of the most honored thinkers of our century and their argument is concerned, appropriately enough, with the nature of thinking. Each has written widely influential works on logic. Each has gained great eminence in the philosophy of science. Of course one man making another look the fool may not be amusing, but two men of great reputation for wisdom making each other look the fool is comedy of a good order. The comedy mounts still higher when the spectator himself begins to feel the fool, for it must be a rare reader who does not find himself completely persuaded by either of the disputants as long as he holds the floor. Thus there comes about the dazzling spectacle of a quarrel without an issue, a dilemma without alternatives, a smile—no, in this case, a frown—without the Cheshire cat. The gentlemen themselves seem aware that something is escaping them. Lord Russell begins his criticism by saying that every man has an unconscious metaphysics and that his own thought doubtlessly has a source outside its expressed logic. This would seem to postpone truth indefinitely until all logicians have been psychoanalyzed and the results averaged out. Mr. Dewey says something about leading a horse to water but not being able to make it drink. This would seem to make the establishment of truth depend at least as much on the moral amiability of those who receive it as on the logical cogency of those who express it.

In the present study it will be maintained that there are a number of different kinds of thinking which come out to different logical results; that everyone is capable of the different kinds, though usually favoring by habit one kind more than another; and that everyone trusts the results of a particular co-ordination while he is employing it and often while he is following it in the expression of another thinker. Famous philosophies have been founded on the choice of a mode of thought and its consistent use. They woo their readers into the mode and remain entirely credible as long as they remain consistently within the mode. As they are brought into conflict with other modes, however, the real difference is unperceived, and they are defended or attacked not out of an unconscious metaphysics (at least, so it will be maintained here), but out of loyalty or the inertia of habit.

Before these various modes of thought can be considered, we shall be engaged in the lengthy enterprise of explaining the phenomenon of consciousness in terms of the energies of the central nervous system. It is impossible to consider all the modes during this undertaking, yet one of them must be chosen to get the investigation under way. The one chosen here (it is implied rather than explicitly defined) is so generally employed that the reader can easily be wooed into believing that it is the type of all our thinking. He is forewarned that this is not the case. An occasional reader, on the other hand, may refuse the example as the universal type, just as Lord Russell has refused the example of pragmatism, and like him be ready to state and prefer other possibilities. He is promised that other possibilities will eventually be set forth. Even so he is virtually certain to have thought in the mode used as the example throughout the opening chapters, and he will find the principles there developed relevant to the alternative co-ordinations discussed later on.

Direct vs. Reflective Consciousness

In the ordinary use of language, a distinction is drawn between direct consciousness and indirect or reflective consciousness. The reader may be directly conscious of this book as he holds it in his hands and so also of the room in which he now is sitting. Dropping these immediate reactions, he may remember in reflective consciousness some scene from the past (his reading of a book yesterday, a school he attended as a child) or he may plan with respect to some scene in the future (attendance at the theater tomorrow, a journey to a foreign country next year). In direct consciousness there is a physical stimulus to sense organs from objects in the environment—light rays from objects impinging on the eye, sound waves from vibrating objects impinging on the ear, forces from resistant objects impinging on touch endings, etc.; this, at any rate, is the common-sense view. In reflective consciousness, sensations are experienced in the absence of these external stimulating objects—we see the book when it is no longer there, hear the orchestra when it has ceased to play, feel the softness of velvet when our fingers actually touch nothing at all. The sensations in direct consciousness are believed to be aroused by the material world; the sensations in reflective consciousness are widely believed to be mental copies preserved in our minds. Mind and matter are believed to be essentially different and opposed realms of Being, yet obviously with connections between them. How such connections are possible is the perennial problem of all theories of knowledge.

We shall begin with reflective consciousness, calling attention to certain features that have usually passed unnoticed. Direct consciousness will be considered in later chapters. The noun consciousness, as a matter of fact, is usually used to mean the reflective form—the generalized mental scene; for the direct form we incline to use the adjective, saying I am conscious of the book in my hand. rather than I have consciousness of the book in my hand.

Images as Mediators of Non-Visual Sensations

The word thinking has been given many specialized meanings, but conventionally it refers to an activity going on in reflective consciousness. This in general will be its meaning here.

We do not and cannot think except with words or images. We may think with words alone, or with images alone, or with both together, but one or the other must always be present in any mode of thought to make reflective consciousness possible at all. This may not seem a self-evident fact, but it can easily be put to the test. Let the reader halt all imaginative speech (something easily done) and note the state that follows. He may not have images of objects, but at the very least he will have an image of his body. The images of the object or of the body may be extremely faint, but with no images at all he will either have blacked out into unconsciousness or have begun to think in words.

If we abolish words from consciousness (and the rest of this chapter will be concerned with the state in which they are abolished), we may think of many things besides mere appearances, but the presence of an image is necessary in order for us to think them. We can imagine the appearance of an orange or of an apple quite simply, but we cannot imagine the taste of an orange or of an apple unless at the same time we see it in our imaginations. We cannot mentally feel the cold wetness of melting snow or the softness of cotton unless at the same time we see the snow or cotton mentally. We cannot hear the sound of a violin or of rustling leaves unless we see the violin or the leaves. We cannot imagine the smell of a rose or of frying bacon unless we see the rose or the bacon. We cannot imagine a movement without an image of the body. (If it is argued that sometimes we think of odors or tastes that we cannot identify and therefore, ipso facto, cannot associate with the images of the objects that produce them, it is replied that the smell and taste feelings enter consciousness in association with the image of our bodies.) It is true that all of these sensations of taste, feeling, sound, kinesthesis, and odor tend to be weaker than the visual sensation, but nevertheless they are there in consciousness. Why do they require an image to present them? Why cannot the taste of an orange just as a taste and nothing else besides be felt in consciousness? Why cannot the rustling of leaves as a sound and nothing else besides be heard in consciousness? The image, after all, can appear without associated sensations from the other genres—why not the other way around? Apparently we are here confronting a sheer fact about the way in which consciousness works.

Stances and Images

In our usual way of thinking, every image as it appears in consciousness is associated with a felt activity of the body, the apparent purpose of the activity being a position of the body, or a stance, from which to see the image. This activity is felt in conjunction with the image of an object, but it is distinct and separate from the image itself. For while the kinesthetic feelings of the stance are mediated to consciousness by an image of the body, neither this image nor the feelings are usually an end in themselves, but rather they are an adjunct to the erupted image of the object. There are variations in the feelings of the stance that cannot be considered here, and there are variations in the manner of our knowing it that can only be suggested here, but the stance as a sheer mechanism can still be unmistakably isolated.

If the reader thinks a bright and clear image of the exterior of his house, he will find that he has taken up some sort of position before it. This position will probably be in the vicinity of the house: on the walk or in the street, to the north or to the south, etc.—he cannot, after all, see the house from all angles simultaneously. At the moment in which the image appears, he may have no awareness at all of his stance, but if in the moment after the image has appeared he reflects on his total experience during the first moment, he will note that he had been in some sort of position when the picture first arose. In the second moment, therefore, he perceives something that he did not perceive in the first, and this something—the felt activity of his body in a position—is quite clearly in this case distinct and separate from the image of the object. It is possible for the reader consciously to feel his position in the same moment that he is conscious of the image of the object; he will then feel himself inside the image of his body as he looks at the image of his house. It is also possible for him to project an image of his body so that it shares the same objective status as the image of the house, but then he will not feel himself inside the body image; indeed, if he reflects in a second moment on this process, he will find that he had taken up a position from which to see the projected images of both his house and of his body.

There may be a tendency to dismiss the fact of the stance on the basis of some such reasoning as this: Yes, of course, a stance for seeing is involved in all our direct consciousness of objects, and it is only natural that we should repeat the direct experience in our imaginations. The reply to this might very well be that what is natural is not necessarily without significance. A far more important answer is that it is by no means clear that the stance does repeat an actual physiological experience. If the reader examines the stance which accompanies the image of his house, he will note that his body feels, at the moment of the eruption, absolutely still and motionless. On a common-sense view, it is extremely doubtful—indeed, it is virtually impossible—that in all his actual experience of his house he has ever seen it when his body was in a state of such death-like immobility. He may check this matter more closely by bringing to mind an image of a building which he is sure he never has seen except his body was in motion—a bank, perhaps, a school, or a store. Even with such images he will be able to feel the utter stillness of his body always at the moment the image appears.

Apparently stances represent another sheer fact about how consciousness works, and an especially inexplicable one since they do not repeat states we have ever actually experienced.

The Fading of Images

In the usual operations of reflective consciousness, an image begins to fade immediately after it appears. This is something that can be easily verified by direct observation. It has led writers to speak loosely of the constant flux of consciousness, as if the image of one object by an ineluctable fate were succeeded by the image of still another object. This is not quite the truth. An image which has begun to fade, or which has faded, may be lighted up again, so that the image of one object may be followed by an image of the same object.

If after the image of the object begins to fade, we become conscious of the stance activity under the image of the body, there can easily be an illusion that the image of the object is sustained in its first sensuous force when actually it is in the process of disappearing. We may, moreover, renew the body image mediating the feeling of the stance and thus not only strengthen the illusion that the image of the object remains in force, but also occasion the further illusion that this image can endure throughout the time of a whole series of renewals. That the body image is being renewed at all easily escapes attention because it is not the image of the body that interests us, but rather the activity that it mediates of looking out to objects that do interest us. And the feeling of continuing to look gives us the mistaken notion that the object of the looking is still there. It is necessary, accordingly, to be critical in the introspective scene as to just which image is appearing, that of the body or that of the object.

Once a careful attention is placed upon the image of the object as such, once there is no substitution of the body image covering the stance feelings, fading will easily be understood as a process that characterizes all the images that appear in the normal course of our reflective consciousness. The fact is brought into still stronger relief by a contrast with an abnormal kind of image. Psychologists speak of the eidetic image, a presentation often occurring among children (sometimes by great exception carrying over into adult life) that has the remarkable characteristic of remaining in consciousness in its full force and brilliance for a number of moments before it suddenly disappears. The reader may remember such an image from his childhood as he lay in bed waiting for sleep—some face or thing sailing across his field of vision in such exact form and undiminishing color that it seemed almost real rather than imagined. The hallucinations of waking life must belong, of course, to the same family of appearances, but the general reader can hardly be expected to supply the instance out of his own experience. One form of hallucination, however, is common to all human beings, though not in their waking state. The dream image is distinguished also from the image of normal reflective consciousness in that it does not fade but remains lighted up in strength until it is succeeded by another unfading image. There are other differences besides which will be discussed in Chapter IV.

Movements Among Images

So far we have been considering a single image contemplated in consciousness as it fades. In our usual visual thought, however, we are not merely static beings passively viewing one picture after another, but we are involved with them as acting, moving creatures. It is not the case of one picture following another as if by the pure mechanism of a film unwinding on a motion-picture projector, but rather of our having a determining role in the making of the sequences.

Instead of having a single image of the exterior of his house, let the reader see successively the images of what is on the right-hand side of the door as he enters, what is directly in front, and what is on the left-hand side. The thinking will begin with a stance probably before the door itself (though the previous analysis has indicated other possibilities). The reader then will feel himself entering the door and making a turn to the right, after which the image of what is at the right of the door will appear in consciousness; he will then make a turn to the front, after which he sees what is directly before the door; finally he will make a turn to the left, after which he sees what is to the left of the door. There may be variations in the extent of the bodily movement, there may be variations in the way that the movement is noticed, but there is no variation in the fact that a movement always precedes the eruption of the image. Thus instead of imagining his stance immediately before the door, the reader may feel himself looking at the imagined house from his present actual position in a chair; it will then be movements of his eyes alone which precede the eruption of the series of images. Or he may see what is to the right of the door first and only then notice by a backward glance that he had moved to the right before the image appeared; but though he may notice the movement in a second thought after he has seen the image of the object, he will still understand that it preceded the eruption of the image. Or the reader may be conscious of the movement and the image together, but always the movement will be there at least an infinitesimal moment under the image of the body before the image of the object is added to make the total presentation of the image of the body and the image of the object. The rule is without exception in all the co-ordinations of thought that a bodily action precedes and thus appears to prompt the appearance of the image of the object.

The role of movement in our thinking is so little understood that it will be profitable to multiply examples. If the reader becomes conscious of his house in great detail, he will find his actions correspondingly more complex and differentiated. He may walk through the rooms, open and close doors, turn on lights, pull open drawers, and look out of windows. He may recall the shape of a door-knob by putting his hand on it, the appearance of the foot of his bed by lying in the bed, the color of a chair by sitting in it, the darkness of the space under the sofa by kneeling on the floor, the color of the ceiling by throwing back his head. The more items he sees, the more he moves; the greater the detail of his seeing, the finer and more variegated his movements.

If by good chance the reader is a pianist, even of slight attainment, he can observe these finer movements to especially good advantage. If he is asked to think the appearance of a C-chord, the finger adjustments necessary to play the chord are practically certain to precede the image (he may use eye-movements alone, but this is much more difficult). If he is asked to tell the number of keys, black and white, between C and the B-flat above, he will probably play or touch all the intervening keys imaginatively, having each erupt as an image as he goes along, and counting them one by one. If he is skillful enough to think piano music away from the instrument, he will find that he thinks with his fingers, that the images of the keys which produce the music appear only after he has made appropriate imaginative movements towards them. If he is skillful enough to think in terms of printed note-imagery, he will find that he is putting his fingers on the printed characters (a procedure not easily explained to the non-pianist) and that the appropriate notes erupt only after the appropriate movements have been stimulated in the imagination.

Or a number of experiments are at hand if the reader is a typist who knows his machine by the touch-system. He will be able, of course, to have an idea of the general appearance of the machine by means of a simple stance-image, but if he is asked to locate a particular letter, say an m, telling its bank and its distance in keys from the right, it is doubtful that he can answer at all without the use of many imagined movements of the fingers. He may think of typing a word beginning with m and find the second finger of his right hand on the bottom bank automatically; he will then have to number keys to the right, identifying each of them more or less laboriously, counting as he goes, until he reaches the shift-key. Or if he is asked to picture a succession of letters, say t-h-e, again he will find that he erupts the images of the keys on the keyboard by means of finger-movements. Finally, if he is a skilled operator, he may be able to do to letters he is copying something of what a skilled pianist does to printed notes: he may seem to put his fingers on the printed characters rather than on the keys themselves. He may be able to do this, in fact, to words which he imagines rather than actually sees in print.

Or if the reader drives an automobile, he can notice the movements he makes in order to recall the objects in its interior. The gear lever, the light switches, the brake pedal, the parking brake, the windshield wiper control, the door handles, the horn, the ash receiver—all these arise in consciousness probably in response to various movements of his arms, legs, hands, feet, head, and eyes. They may arise in response to movements of the eyes alone, or virtually alone, but ordinarily the thought spreads to the entire body.

The reader may now fashion his own experiments by which to test this general law: that every train of visual thought, regardless of the nature of the images in themselves, is associated with a felt series of body-movements which precede the appearance of the images. The movements may represent complex co-ordinations of the whole body or they may be the simplest of eye-movements, but some sort of action, simple or complex, is the inevitable accompaniment of every series of images.

Stances vs. Movement

We have examined thus far two strongly contrasted activities of the body in connection with the thought images of objects. In the moment of the stance, the body is fixed or set in a state of absolute stillness; between the stances, the body, or some part of the body, is in a state of pure movement. Both conditions occur and recur in the usual manner of our thought. William James’s famous phrase, the stream of consciousness, is not, therefore, if we labor the meaning of the word stream, strictly accurate. Stream signifies an unbroken continuity of movement, and while such movement is a part of our conscious experience, it is by no means all of it. For the progress of our thought is always punctuated at very short intervals of time by points of complete stoppage which represent the operation of the stance mechanism. We do not feel that our consciousness progresses in an even flow like the motion of a ball falling endlessly in infinite space, but rather that it progresses by fits and starts, hopping like a bird from one perch to another.

If we ask more precisely what is the relation between the stance and the movement, there are two possible answers. First, the movement may lead us on to a new stance that makes it possible for us to see a new image. Second, the movement may lead us on to a new image before which we take a new stance. The prima facie evidence appears to make the second answer true. If the reader examines the movements that he makes when calling to mind the details of the interior of his house, he will notice that his action is taking him on always to an object, never to a mere body position. It is after the image has been decided upon, so to speak, that the set of the stance is activated. What this image would look like without the stance, and what difference would be made to the logical sense of the thought, we are not yet prepared to consider.

But the more general statement that man is first of all a punctuating creature in the typical phases of his thought deserves a more prominent place in our philosophies than it has yet received, and asks for explanation.

Possibilities of Nervous Interpretation

The analysis has emphasized the separateness of the stance and movement from the erupted image. That there is a bipolarity of consciousness with the image of the object on the object pole and the activities of stance and movement on the subject pole seems a natural division of facts on even first glance. Indeed, division between subject and object is a fact taken for granted or noted as directly given in all epistemological theories. Yet in the present context the first thing to be noted about the two poles is that each of them manifests itself visually: there is an image of an object and an image of the body. As sheer images, and without further clue, they must be assigned an equality of status: neither of them, qua image, is subject or object—they are simply images. Consciousness could then be taken as a procession of reproduced pictures, sometimes of objects, sometimes of the body, sometimes of both together, but all of them having the same value—and nothing more—of simply being pictures.

But the analysis has shown two differences between the image of the object and the image of the body. In the first place, when the image of the object appears without the image of the body, we find in a backward glance that the activity of the body has inevitably preceded the image of the object. The image of the body, in other words, had no intrinsic interest for us except to mediate to consciousness the action necessary for the eruption of the image of the object. Moreover, since the image of the object cannot be entertained unless there has been an activity of the body, the image of the body is in a functional relation, or at least mediates a functional activity, with respect to the image of the object. We can entertain an image of the body covering an activity, say, the raising of an arm, without the slightest implication of the image of an object; but the converse is not true: we cannot entertain the image of an object without the implication of an image of the body mediating bodily activity. The image of the object and the image of the body do not, accordingly, enjoy equal status.

In the second place, the image of the object in the material thus far considered is a sheer visual phantasm of a certain color and shape unmixed with feelings of movement. By contrast the image of the body is shot through with feelings of activity either of the stance or of movement. It is true that one may project an image of his body on the object pole as sheer form and color, but to do so there will have had to be the activity of a stance on the subject pole discoverable by a backward glance. What we mean, thinking visually, by consciousness of ourselves as subject, what we mean by the pronoun I when we translate the word into visual consciousness, is not a mere image of the form and color of our bodies, but rather such an image mediating at the very least the activity of a stance and often bodily movements as well.

On this statement, the difference between subject pole and object pole