Here it is.

Finished after seven years, more of a poem if you are of the compassionate poet.

Minds emerge to learn

Here layeth the relations that draw mine and your faces
To be loved in a world that subjectively equates to physical matrices
That time and space
Can be a phenomenal place

By James Peter Granger, Egdon, 2009

Lol! What am I like

Just finishing off my essay on time (hey that's irony!), but until I post it I will feel seemingly perpetually indebted to the masses and masses of readers who surely visit my blog. So to keep you all entertained until then here's a picture, and click the post title for another, of Paro Taktshang Buddist Monastery in Bhutan, literal translation: The Tigers' Nest.

Time to Bid Its Farewell

7th September 2009

will write something maybe this evening?

13th September 2009

To kind readers who have checked back, please be patient, as only a few more days will pass before this post has been completed.

This psychological essay necessarily needs to commence 'from the ground up' by way of looking at levels of analysis of the concept of 'Time', culminating in a new way of perception that will aid understanding of subsequent posts. The essay on time was going to be a later addition to the blog, but as it happens, the fundamentals, I feel, should be thrashed out earlier rather than later.

Watch this spacetime :-)

A Brainstorm on Psychological Metaphysics

Psychological metaphysics is a slippery subject, after all you can't see the metaphysics… Or can you?

Metaphysical theories are essentially and necessarily, completely abstract and complex, inferences, which if you are lucky are drawn from empiricism. But what psychological metaphysics offer up to us, beyond the theories themselves, is veridical structure to the very subjective undeniable experience that we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. An accurate understanding of psychological metaphysics is in my opinion an understanding of our psychological reality. The issues pertaining to idealism, materialism, functionalism, and all the other argumentative philosophical 'isms' will be explored in good time (along with an exploration of time), but for now, lets ponder the assertions of two special psychologists, and see if we can find a way forward in terms of synthesising what we see.
Now, I'm not going to suggest that we should start juxtaposing Clark Hull's work with that of William James's with the aim of certain enlightenment, but juxtapose I will, for a different reason; an exercise in the meeting of academic minds, minds who seek the same breadth of understanding of psychology, but from very different standpoints. Sit with this for a moment, while we briefly read for the umpteenth time, a famous excerpt from William James:

“I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this [migration from Descartian Dualism to Kantian Transcendentalism] estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether. It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy. During the past year, I have read a number of articles whose authors seemed just on the point of abandoning the notion of consciousness, and substituting for it that of an absolute experience not due to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not quite daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have mistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity; for seven or eight years past I have suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried to give them its pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience. It seems to me that the hour is ripe for it to be openly and universally discarded.”

James, W. (1904). Does 'Consciousness' Exist?, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1, 477-491. italics added

William James was totally progressive; - to discard ‘consciousness’ as a useable concept, is tantamount to discarding our understanding of the mind, or discarding the role of thought, or discarding the very fabric of our universe, depending on which philosophical approach you subscribe to. Either way, it’s a scary leap to take in order to find out what really allows us our life experience.

Thankfully, people listened to James, and concurred, and many years later, a Functionalist School of Thought grew to explore a connectionist process of the mind, without fixating too much on resultant conscious phenomena of these processes. To what extent conscious phenomena arise out of neurological processes is very arguable, but to think of things in this causal direction allows us to move beyond an aimless studying of visual illusions, and thinking about thinking – introspection - or perhaps, just as ignorant, the isolated study of our behaviour.

Who needs vinyl records, when we can have smaller, more functional compact discs? Compact discs pretty much outscore Vinyl on every aspect of functionality, but with anything obsolete, the precedent often allows for the development and succession of the new. All well and good, lets throw the obsolete ‘consciousness’ away. But wait! Some people like vinyl! It sounds like no other musical medium, it looks cool, and some people have no need for compact discs. Fine, but in order to understand what make vinyl records so special, perhaps one might need to listen to the atmospheric void contained on every digitally recorded compact disc in the world.

Clarke Hull will finish us off here, he to pondered the role of metaphysics in psychological understanding:

"Scientific theory in its best sense consists of the strict logical deduction from definite postulates of what should be observed under specified conditions. If the deductions are lacking or are logically invalid, there is no theory; if the deductions involve conditions of observation which are impossible of attainment, the theory is metaphysical rather than scientific; and if the deduced phenomenon is not observed when the conditions are fulfilled, the theory is false. Classifications of the phenomena of a science may have distinct expository and pedagogical convenience, but convenience cannot be said to be true or false. Points of view in science may possess the virtue of fertility by suggesting new directions of investigations, but neither can fertility be said to be true or false. On the other hand, truly scientific theory, from its very nature, must permit the observational determination of its truth or falsity.”

Hull, C. L. (1935). The Conflicting Psychologies of Learning -- A Way Out. Psychological Review, 42, 491-516.

Interesting stuff, for the most rigid of academics is effectively giving us free reign with theory whenever matters point toward a need for a psychological metaphysical understanding. Metaphysical theory cuts to the core of psychological science; we know little about what is really going on from a metaphysical point of view, but metaphysics is the primary tool for understanding the ‘hard to understand’.

I guess that’s where this ‘blog’ is going to go, we are going to look at the latest findings in the scientific study of the mind, to see what makes our subjective conscious experience such a special entity.