An integrative view on consciousness and introspection

The principle of transcendence, implicit in any consciousness, sets the stage for a variety of psychological experiences indispensable to being human. Can we fully claim the knowledge of all forms of psychological self-transcendence? I will present the findings concerning the robust introspective self-experience in Christian prayer, whereby transcendence is internal, and is realized as an embodied stratified self-constitution engaging the internal I-Thou. Two different forms of experience, egological and non-egological, contribute to shaping the important religious concepts of the Ladder and of the Ascent of the Soul. This experience leads to self-knowledge, and to positive characterological transformation, which in turn heals the traces of prior traumas and integrate the " shadow ". Using the example of this experience, I will show how the psychology of transcendence pushes the boundaries of neuroscience by challenging the latter to expand its old theories and generate new ones, such as non-linear dynamics or neuroquantology. I will begin with reflection on the foundational role of transcendence in human experience. Experience equals consciousness, and consciousness amounts to self-transcendence. In fact, empirical consciousness is self-transcendence: while the contents of consciousness consists of one's self and the world, consciousness is implicitly subjective. Insofar as this subjective consciousness is intertwined the world, the subject matter of psychology is the self's responses to the world. These responses were researched to a great extent, both by psychology and natural science; by contrast, the responses of consciousness to itself, which is its introspective self-knowledge, are much less researched; next to nothing has been done in terms of thematization of introspection necessary to conduct such research.

2009

Carruthers considers and rejects a mixed position according to which we have interpretative access to unconscious thoughts, but introspective access to conscious ones. I argue that this is too hasty. Given a two-level view of the mind, we can, and should, accept the mixed position, and we can do so without positing additional introspective mechanisms beyond those Carruthers already recognizes.

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2012

2004

Introspection is paftdoxical in that it is simultaneously so compclling yet so elusive, This paradox emerges because ahhough expeicnce itselfis indisputablc, our ability to explicitly characterize etpe ence is ofren inadequate. Ultimately, the accurucy of introspectiw rcports d?pends on indiyi(lu.lls' imper .fect ahility to takc stock (i.e., to become tfieta-conscious) (t theb expcrience. Although there is no ideal yerdstickfor assessing introspection, examinatioh of the degrce to which seu-rcports syrtethatically .ovaty with thc cnvironmental, behal)ioural, andphrsioloeiel concoftitants ofetperience can help to establish the correspondcnce between meta"consciousness and experience, We illu:trute the viability (t,tuch an approach in three domains, imagery, mind-yunderihg, and hcdonic apprcisaL idefining both the situations in which intrcsnections appear to be accurdte and those in which they seem to diverye.from underlying experience. We conclude with a aliscussion of thc various.factors (including issues of detection, trunsformation, and substitution) that may cause met1-consciousnes! to misreprerent experience.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1991

This paper replies to the first 36 commentaries on my target article on “Is human information processing conscious?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1991, pp. 651-669). The target article focused largely on experimental studies of how consciousness relates to human information processing, tracing their relation from input through to output, while discussion of the implications of the findings both for cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind was relatively brief. The commentaries reversed this emphasis, and so, correspondingly, did the reply. The sequence of topics in the reply roughly follows that of the target article. The discussion begins with a reconsideration of the details of the empirical findings, whether they can be extrapolated to non-laboratory settings, and the extent to which one can rely on their use of subjective reports. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of what is meant by “conscious processing” and of how phenomenal consciousness relates to attentional processing. We then turn to broader philosophical and theoretical issues. I point out some of the reasons why I do not support epiphenomenalism, dualist-interactionism, or reductionism, and elaborate on how first- and third-person views of the mind can be regarded as complementary and mutually irreducible. I suggest how the relation of conscious experiences to their neural correlates can be understood in terms of a dual-aspect theory of information, and how this might be used to resolve some of the paradoxes surrounding the causal interactions of consciousness and brain. I also suggest that, viewed from a first-person perspective, consciousness gives purpose to existence, which allows a different way of viewing its role in evolution.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985

Recent criticisms of the place and function of "consciousness" in "cognitive science" are considered and rejected. Contrary to current orthodoxy subjective experience during abstract cognitive activity, especially when placed in its natural series with phenomenal accounts of so-called "altered states of consciousness," can provide unique and crucial evidence concerning just that core of "semantics" which eludes the automatized "syntax" of computer simulation. The "noetic" aspect of extreme altered states can be placed in relation to introspective descriptions of "insight." Various altered state fearuressynaesthesias, geometric/mandala imagery, reorganizations of "perceptual" dimcnsions and enhanced "self-referenceu-can be taken as direct "exteriorizations" of abstract symbolic processes as discussed by Neisser, Geschwind,

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant firstorder perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops to V1 are most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided.

2008

Abstract: A number of recent publications have argued that a scien- tific approach to consciousness needs a rigorous approach to first-person data collection. As mainstream experimental psychology has long abandoned such introspective or phenomenological method, there is at present ...

Consciousness and …, 2006

Mind and Language, 2001

This paper argues that higher-order thought (HOT) models of consciousness face serious logical problems. The precise form these problems take varies depending on whether HOT models are understood as attempts to explicate the concept of (intransitive state) consciousness or as attempts to identify the property in virtue of which mental states are (intransitively) conscious. Understood in the former way, HOT models face a problem of circularity. Understood in the latter way, such models face a problem of regress. Higher-order thought (HOT) models of consciousness have been developed

British Journal of Psychology, 1999

The growth of research on consciousness creates an opportunity to enrich psychological practice. This paper suggests that a more even balance between thirdand ®rst-person perspectives may now be sought, and that this will make possible more informed interaction between psychological science and pre-scienti®c traditions for investigating the mind. This paper concludes by discussing how such developments might enhance the image of psychological science.

Qualia and Introspection, 2009

The claim that behaviourally undetectable inverted spectra are possible has beenendorsed by many physicalists. I explain why this starting point rules out standard forms of scientific explanation for qualia. The modern ‘phenomenal concept strategy’is an updated way of defending problematic intuitions like these, but I show that it cannot help to recover standard scientific explanation. I argue that Chalmers is right:we should accept the falsity of physicalism if we accept this problematic starting point. I further argue that accepting this starting point amounts to at least implicitlyendorsing certain theoretical claims about the nature of introspection. I thereforesuggest that we allow ourselves to be guided, in our quest to understand qualia, bywhatever independently plausible theories of introspection we have. I propose that weadopt a more moderate definition of qualia, as those introspectible properties whichcannot be fully specified simply by specifying the non-controversially introspectible‘propositional attitude’ mental states (including seeing x, experiencing x, and so on,where x is a specification of a potentially public state of affairs). Qualia thus defined may well fit plausible, naturalisable accounts of introspection. If so, such accountshave the potential to explain, rather than explain away, the problematic intuitionsdiscussed earlier; an approach that should allow integration of our understanding of qualia with the rest of science.

Consciousness and Cognition, 2000

Psychology was originally formulated as the science of the psyche, i.e. the subjective side of the mind / brain barrier. However time and again it has been diverted from this objective in the supposed interest of scientific rigor. The Behaviorists proposed to transform psychology to a science of behavior, and today the Neuroreductionists propose to transform it to a science of neurophysiology. In the process they attempt to deny the very existence of conscious experience as valid object of scientific scrutiny. However the subjective conscious experience is a primary source of evidence for the nature of the representation in the brain. I propose a quantitative phenomenolgy to express the dimensions of conscious experience in information theoretic terms. This approach leads to interesting observations of the properties of phenomenal perspective, that clearly reveal the phenomenal world as an internal rather than external entity.

Constructivist Foundations, 2011

> Context • There is a growing recognition in consciousness science of the need for rigorous methods for obtaining accurate and detailed phenomenological reports of lived experience, i.e., descriptions of experience provided by the subject living them in the “first-person.” > Problem • At the moment although introspection and debriefing interviews are sometimes used to guide the design of scientific studies of the mind, explicit description and evaluation of these methods and their results rarely appear in formal scientific discourse. > Method • The recent publication of an edited book of papers dedicated to the exploration of first-and second-person methods, Ten Years of Viewing from Within: The Legacy of Francisco Varela, serves as a starting point for a discussion of how these methods could be integrated into the growing discipline of consciousness science. We complement a brief review of the book with a critical analysis of the major pilot studies in Varela’s neurophenomenology, a research program that was explicitly devised to integrate disciplined experiential methods with the latest advances in neuroscience. > Results • The book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in impressive recent advances in first- and second person methods, as applied to the phenomenology of lived experience. However, our review of the neurophenomenology literature concludes that there is as yet no convincing example of these specialized techniques being used in combination with standard behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in consciousness science to produce results that could not have also been achieved by simpler methods of introspective reporting. > Implications • The end of behaviorism and the acceptance of verbal reports of conscious experience have already enabled the beginning of a science of consciousness. It can only be of benefit if new first- and second-person methods become well-known across disciplines. > Constructivist content • Constructivism has long been interested in the role of the observer in the constitution of our sense of reality, so these developments in the science of consciousness may open new avenues of constructivist research. More specifically, one of the ways in which the insights from first- and second person methods are being validated is by recursively applying the methods to themselves; a practical application of an epistemological move that will be familiar to constructivists from the second-order cybernetics tradition.

Philosophical Psychology, 2005

An interactive process model of the nature of representation intrinsically accounts for multiple emergent properties of consciousness, such as being a contentful experiential flow, from a situated and embodied point of view. A crucial characteristic of this model is that content is an internally related property of interactive process, rather than an externally related property as in all other contemporary models. Externally related content requires an interpreter, yielding the familiar regress of interpreters, along with a host of additional fatal problems. Further properties of consciousness, such as differentiated qualities of experience, including qualia, emerge with conscious reflection. In particular, qualia are not constituents or direct properties of consciousness per se. Assuming that they are so is a common and ultimately disastrous misconstrual of the problems of consciousness.