Selfhood and Consciousness: A
Non-Philosopher's Guide to Epistemology, Noemics, and
Semiotics (and Other Important Things Besides)
Copyright Notice: This material was
written and published in
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First instalment
[v1.0] published 13:00 GMT 28th February 2006; this version [3.0 - copyright]
published 09:00 BST 3rd July 2018
BUT UNDER
CONSTANT EXTENSION AND CORRECTION, SO CHECK AGAIN SOON
"SOCRATES: I can't get a proper
grasp of what on earth knowledge really is"
(Plato, Theaetetus, ¶146a; Levett translation,
p10).
How to Use this
Glossary
This glossary deals in educated layperson's terms with the three philosophies named in the title, that is to say, with the philosophies of knowledge, understanding, and the transmission of same from person to person. However, because we are effectively dealing with three overlapping vocabularies all rolled into one, we have prefaced the main body of the glossary (G.3 below) with a pre-briefing on some philosophical Greek (G.1 below) and some pump-priming pre-definitions (G.2 below). We have also provided a short, and hopefully enlightening, closing summary (G.4 below). All entries are cross-indexed thus, such that if loaded into a semantic network (human or otherwise) they would produce a navigable "data dictionary" on the chosen subject areas.
G.1 - Some Classical Vocabulary
Key: Beare = Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition (Beare, 1906); C.G.D. = Cassell's German Dictionary; C.L.D. = Cassell's Latin Dictionary; O.C.G.D. = Oxford
Classical Greek Dictionary; O.E.D. = Oxford
English Dictionary; Peters = Greek
Philosophical Terms (Peters, 1967); S.E.P. = Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online].
Notes - General: As far as possible we have referenced editors'
and translators' comments under their own names, to help distinguish secondary
from primary content. The emphasis within quotations is always original, unless
stated otherwise. Where it might facilitate web searches for the primary
classical texts, the Cyrillic Greek has been parenthesized <ουτως>
for readers to paste as keywords into their search engines [be warned, however,
that Greek is a case-inflected language, and has different noun endings as well
as the usual verb, adjectival, and adverbial variations]. Where a Greek word
(aesthesis, say) has been fully adopted into English with no substantial change
of meaning, we no longer show it italicised; where it
has acquired a different connotation in English (idea - idea, say), we have italicised the
ancestral item.
Notes - Referencing Classical and Semi-Classical Texts: It is
not possible meaningfully to operate strict Harvard referencing when dealing
with classical or semi-classical sources. Some of the oldest material, for
example, no longer exists in primary source form, having long since been lost
or destroyed, and we know of such material only from surviving secondary references
to it, themselves deeply ancient. Many ancient manuscripts were carefully
preserved by religious and other interest groups in their private archives, and
can therefore lack impartiality. All material prior to the invention of the
printing press was, to the extent that it was reproduced at all, reproduced by
manual transcription, and we follow the established practice of identifying by
the paragraph numbering of the museum text with the soundest provenance (e.g.
Plato, Theaetetus, ¶189e). The field is also beset by casual
inconsistencies of scholarly habit. For example, one of Aristotle's three major
works of mental philosophy - The
Categories - is still known by its original Greek title, another - De Anima - is known only by its later
Latin translation, and a third - The
Metaphysics - somehow came to be known by the mediaeval equivalent of its
library shelving code! Even when the
printed word did become commonplace, scholars often published their works as a
succession of relatively small individual volumes, delivered over a number of
years, so that many first edition philosophical works appear with a date range
(e.g. Hegel, 1812-1816). Feedback and critical comment would then prompt a
number of corrected volumes, and perhaps even posthumous collations (e.g.
Cassirer, 1995).
Notes - Foreign Texts: The
situation for non-English works was even more tortuous, as it took time for a
foreign author's renown to command the expense of an English translation, and
then further time to execute the translation itself. Thus Hegel (1807) was not
available in English until 1910, and is shown as Hegel (1807/1910), whilst the
by-then-already-famous Piaget (1970) was translated immediately and is shown as
Piaget (1970/1970). As far as possible, we show the original publication date
(in order to retain some measure of academic precedence), and the most readily available translation date. Readers should also understand that
translation is a far from precise science, due in large part to the fact that
there are more things to be explained in the world than words to do the
explaining. Martin Heidegger's translators summarise
the problem this way: "Anyone who has struggled with a philosophical work
in translation [finds] himself asking how the author himself would have
expressed the ideas which the translator has ascribed to him. In this respect,
the 'ideal' translation would perhaps be one so constructed that a reader with
reasonable linguistic competence [.....] should be able to retranslate the new
version into the very words of the original" (Macquarrie
and Robinson, 1962, p13). Ominously, retranslation has often been attempted but
has always failed (often humorously) on material of any complexity [as to why
this should be, see Bar-Hillel (1960)].
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A
significant proportion of the modern vocabulary of mental philosophy [not
least the very word philosophy]
derives directly from the classical Greek, that is to say, from the three
centuries or thereabouts of pioneering analysis and criticism which began with
the work of Thales <Θαλης> of Miletus (floruit ca. 560BCE) and which ended
with the gradual collapse of Greek influence after Alexander the Great's
death in 323BCE. We are interested here with the legacy of perhaps a dozen
truly adventurous minds, whose work can be summed up in about the same number
of equally adventurous notions, and in the lexicon of newly minted words by
which those notions came to be more generally known. Unfortunately, that
legacy is not always clearly visible, for today we regularly recognize the
words but have little confidence that we really understand what their author
had in mind. There are two distinct reasons for this uncertainty, namely (1)
that the ideas themselves were grounded in a comparatively rudimentary
understanding of the workings of the physical world, and (2) that the words
which were invented to convey those ideas have evolved - sometimes markedly -
over time. The most important of the new words are now previewed [many are
then explored in greater detail in G.3]. To see the corresponding ideas
(insofar as we ourselves understand them) either follow
the onward pointers below, or else look the word up in G.3 and work from
there. aesthesis ["sensation, perception, etc."] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2. aesthesis koine ["common sense"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. aestheta ["things sensed, perceived, etc."] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. aestheterion ["organ of sense"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. aletheia ["disclosure, unconcealment",
hence "truth"] - see consciousness,
Heidegger's theory of in G.3. arachnion ["spider's web"] - see semantic network in G.3. daemones ["spirits within" (as in the modern
"demons")] - see soul in
G.3. dianoia ["reason"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation
in G.2, and reasoning in G.3. doxa ["opinion"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. eidolon ["image"] - see image
in G.3. eidos / eide / idea
[various meanings] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2. episteme ["knowledge"] - see epistemology
in G.2. epoche ["cessation, stoppage"] - see the
dedicated entry in G.3. gnwme ["mind, understanding, reason"] - see noemics, noesis, etc.
in G.2. historia ["inquiry, knowledge, inform"] - see the
dedicated entry in G.3. hyle ["that out of which something is made,
material, matter"] - see substance
in G.3. kategoriew ["I accuse"] - see category in G.3. kinesis ["movement, motion"] - see consciousness, Heidegger's theory of in G.3. kubernetes ["steersman, pilot"] - see noemics, noesis, etc.
in G.2. kubernetikos ["skilled in steering"] - see noemics, noesis, etc.
in G.2. logismos ["computation, arithmetic; reasoning "] -
see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation
in G.2. logistikon ["rationality"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. logos
["word, explanation"] - see experience
and logos in G.3. morphe ["form, shape"] - see the dedicated entry
in G.3. noema / noemata / noein / nous [various meanings] - see noemics, noesis, etc. in G.2. noeta ["things known"] - see noemics, noesis, etc.
in G.2. oida ["I know"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2. oiesis [in some usages only
"human mind"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. on[ta] ["being(s)"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2. orexis ["appetite, desire" (as in the modern
"anorexia")] - see conation
in G.3. ousia ["essence, existence"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2, and category in G.3. paschein ["to undergo, be burned"] - see category in G.3. pathos ["experience"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2 and experience in G.3. phainw ["I make visible"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. phantasia ["imagination"] - see imagination in G.3. phantasma ["mental image"] - see image in G.3. phenomenon ["appearing"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2, and subjectivity in G.3. phronesis ["thought"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2, and reasoning in G.3. phusica ["natural things" (as in the modern
"physics", "physiology", etc.)] - see metaphysics in G.3. pneuma ["air, breath, spirit"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2, and soul in
G.3. poiein ["to do, make"] - see category in G.3. poios / poiotes
["of what sort" / "what sort-ness" (Plato's term for
"qualities")] - see category
in G.3. poros ["channel, strait, seaway"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2. pragma ["deed, action"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2, and pragmatics in G.3. prassw ["I do, practise"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2, and pragmatics
in G.3. praxis ["deed, action"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2, and pragmatics in G.3. proairesis ["choice"] -
see the dedicated entry in G.3. pros ti ["with-respect-to-what"] - see category in G.3. psuche ["soul, spirit, life"] - see aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in G.2, and soul in
G.3. semainw ["I signify,
mark, etc.".] - see semiotics in G.2. sophia ["knowledge, wisdom"] - see philosophy in G.3. techne ["craft, skill"] - see aesthesis,
phenomenal awareness, and ideation in G.2, and knowledge types in G.3. thymos ["spirit"] - see soul in G.3. ti esti ["the
'what-it-is', essence"] - see category
in G.3. |
G.2 - Some Pump-Priming Definitions
Note: We shall be starting to see
some philosophical German soon, and readers unfamiliar with that language
should note that all nouns get a capital letter, not just proper names and
those at the beginning of sentences [see, for example, Inhalt and Gegenstand in the entry for act vs content debate]. And remember
that Greek words which can be readily guessed at in Cyrillic script have been
left in Cyrillic script.
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Aesthesis, Phenomenal Awareness, and Ideation: One of the oldest and most intractable problems of
mental philosophy arises from the fact that the information processing
activity we know in everyday English as "perception" seems to rely
on a number of modular sub-processes strung together sequentially. Here is an
initial inspection of the main building blocks of that system, in the order
they would naturally be encountered during a typical act of perception. (1) Forms and Ideas: [Eidos
<ειδος>
= "that which is seen", hence "shape", hence
"kind", etc. (plural eide <ειδε>); idea <ιδεα> = "appearance, form;
way, manner, nature; opinion, notion, idea" (O.C.G.D.). Since ειδος, ειδε,
and ιδεα are visually close to
the English, we shall continue to use them in their Cyrillic form.] Ειδος
and ιδεα both come from the classical
Greek verb idein,
"to see", and are accordingly amongst the first words needed in any
analysis of a sighted species' interaction with the natural world. Although
often used interchangeably (Novak, 2004), ειδος
seems to be the preferred word for something to be seen, that is to say, the
physical object, whilst ιδεα seems more to imply that which arises within us as a
result of that act of seeing. Originally, the word seems to have derived from
the ancient Proto-Indo-European root weid- [= "to see"], by dropping the initial
phoneme. Later derivations of weid- are (albeit heavily mutated) all around us. They
include the Latin videre
[= "to see"] (and thus modern derivatives such as "video"
and "vision"), and the Sanskrit veda [= "knowing,
wisdom"] (and thus modern derivatives such as "wit" and
"wisdom"). Plato <Πλατον>
(floruit ca. 380BCE) was the first
heavy user of ειδος
and its variations in a philosophical sense, using it (or its plural ειδε)
to represent "any of those primary realities which have come to be known
as the Forms" (Novak, 2004,
p2). This, however, is an area where scholars have been guessing at what
Plato was actually proposing ever since he first proposed it, and even his
own student, Aristotle, is often far from clear what his mentor had been on
about. The conventional modern wisdom is that Plato saw forms as idealized
external entities, and things as the less-than-ideal instantiations thereof
which are actually out there on a given
occasion to be perceived, and ideas are one of the possible end results
of that process. The ειδε are thus objects of perception,
as well as specific inputs to the first sub-stage of that process,
namely transduction (see next); they are "the pure essence" of
things (Husserl, 1913/1931, p50). Fine (2003) adds ..... "In the Categories some
entities called 'eide' - substance species -
are allowed to be secondary substances and essences. When Aristotle, in the Metaphysics,
argues that eide - forms - are
primary substances, is he arguing that the Categories' secondary substances
(or their universal forms or essences) are primary substances after all
[.....]? So it is sometimes thought [example given]. But I believe that the eide that now count as primary substances are not
species, or universals of any sort, but individual forms; it is, for example,
Socrates' individual form or essence, his soul, that now counts as a primary
substance" (p400). All things considered, therefore, we
find it hard to disagree with Novak (2004) when he argues that "along
with its associated linguistic derivatives, the term 'eidos'
contains a nexus of concepts that are probably the most important to
philosophising as such" (p1). It may or may not prove one day to be
relevant that the distinction made by mental philosophers between form and
thing is much the same as that made by data
analysts between entity type
and entity occurrence. Heidegger
(clearly no mean data analyst himself) puts it this way: "..... any [aesthesis]
aims at its ιδεα (those
entities which are genuinely accessible only through it and for
it)" (1927/1962, p57). (2) Transduction: [poros =
"channel, strait, seaway"; rheo ="flow through".] The beauty of the senses
as we document them today is that they all have a common basic logic to them
- they detect something happening in the physical world, encode that
information in some way, and then pass that encoded information into the
nervous system so that decisions can be made as to what behavioural changes -
if any - are appropriate as a result. The process begins distally with an aestheterion [= "organ of sense"] (that is
to say, with what we would today term a "receptor apparatus"), in
which are located arrays of "receptor cells", specialized sensory
cells capable of generating an electrical potential when subjected to
external physical energy. A receptor apparatus is usually a specialized organ
such as an ear, an eyeball, a tongue, etc., and it exists to keep the
receptor cells proper protected and oriented towards the stimulus. Receptor
cells work by generating a "receptor potential" when stimulated.
This is an electrostatic voltage change, which in turn induces a
"generator potential" in the first neuron of the sensory pathway.
The process of transforming external physical stimuli into nerve impulses in
this way is known as "transduction"
(thus touch is "transduced" into neural activity in the pathway for
touch, retinal excitation into neural activity in the visual pathway, and so
on). It has to be presumed that transductive
encoding somehow reflects the discernible properties of the external
stimulus, that is to say, the intensity of a touch, the brightness of a light
source, the saltiness of a taste, the loudness of a noise, and so on. The
ancients lacked both microscopy and chemistry, of course, and so had no way
of investigating the physiology which underlies transduction, nevertheless
the physician-philosopher Alcmeon <Αλκμαιον> (floruit ca. 480BCE) was able to induce
(a) that sensory information was conducted along sensory nerves [he referred
to them as poroi,
or "channels"] to the brain, and (b) that the process of perception
then made sense of what arrived there on behalf of some higher mental faculty
which resided there. As to the nature of retinal transduction, he proposed
some sort of "fire in the eye". There is something close to an
account of transduction in Theaetetus <Θεαιτητος>,
as follows (Socrates <Σωκρατης> speaking): "Thus the eye and
some other thing [.....] which has come into its
neighbourhood generate both whiteness and the perception which is by nature
united with it [.....]. In this event, motions arise in the intervening space
[.....], and then it is that there comes into being, not indeed sight, but a
seeing eye [.....]. This account of course may be generally applied [to] all
that we perceive, hard or hot or anything else [.....]. None of them is
anything in itself; all things, of all kinds whatsoever, are coming to be through association
with one another, as the result of motion" (Plato, Theaetetus, ¶156d; Levett translation,
pp30-31). There are further hints in Timaeus <Τιμαιος>, thus:
"And the first organs [the gods] fashioned were those that gave us light
[.....]. The pure fire within us that is akin to this they caused to flow
through the eyes, making the whole eyeball, and particularly its central
part, smooth and close-textured so that it would keep in anything of coarser
nature, and filter through only this pure fire. So when there is daylight
round the visual stream, it falls on its like and coalesces with it, forming
a single uniform body in the line of sight, along which the stream from
within strikes the external object. Because the stream and daylight are
similar, the whole so formed is homogenous, and the motions caused by the
stream coming into contact with an object [or vice versa] produce in the soul
the sensation which we call sight" (Plato, Timaeus, ¶45; Lee translation,
pp61-62). There are limits to what philosophical conjecture can achieve, of
course, and it fell to Herophilus and Erasistratus,
working out of Alexandria, to carry out the first empirical investigations (Solmsen, 1961). Their ideas were then brought down into
modern anatomy via the works of Hippocrates. (3) Aesthesis: [Aesthesis <αισθησις>
= "sensation, perception, feeling; sense; knowledge; consciousness"
(O.C.G.D.).] Aesthesis is the Greek
word not just for the end-to-end
process of turning sensations received from the ειδε
into perceptions of those ειδε
[it survives in this respect in the modern terms "somaesthesis",
"kinaesthesis", and
"anaesthesia"], but also,
more specifically, for the state of conscious awareness which arises from
that process. Alcmaeon seems to have started this
particular theoretical ball rolling (see above), and Plato says a little on
the subject in the Theaetetus
(whence the quotation above), but for the detail we have to look to
Aristotle's De Anima, and one
recent translation of this (Lawson-Tancred, 1986) renders aesthesis as consciousness,
perception, and sensation rolled into one, because it is a word of wide
meaning in Greek. By definition, the momentary end product of
aesthesis-as-process is "phenomenal awareness" (although we shall
have to reserve judgment on whether that itself is content, process, or a
little bit of both), and by implication the early stages of the
end-to-end process have not therefore reached that level of experience (and
probably never can reach it). On another occasion, he uses oiesis <οιησις>,
a derivative of oida,
"I know", and a close relative of ειδος. The O.C.G.D. gives oiesis as
meaning "opinion", but a recent translation has rendered it as
"human mind" (Plato, Phaedrus,
244c; Waterfield translation, p26). The term pathos <παθος> is also occasionally used to
indicate the ability to have an experience. (4) Phenomenal Awareness: [Phenomenon <φαινομενον>
= "appearing"; "that which shows itself, the manifest"
(Heidegger, 1927, p51).] As conventionally considered, the process of
aesthesis culminates in a fleeting moment of phenomenal awareness, that is to
say, in our becoming aware in some way of the forms - the external ειδε
- which have somehow commanded an act of perception on our part. The ειδε,
in other words, become aestheta,
things "aesthetized", or felt. This is
the phenomenon of which we are all individually aware, but which nobody has
ever been able to explain and for which a number of alternative terms are
used more or less synonymously, including "appreciation",
"apprehension", "awareness", and
"comprehension" [compare properties (1) and (2) of Smyth's (2005)
hypothetical smart thing]. The word "phenomenon" derives
from phainw,
"I bring to light, make visible" (O.C.G.D.), and refers to the
external thing now made internally visible as the thing experienced.
This notion is straightforward enough, but only until you ask to whom did the thing in question
appear and by whom was it
experienced, whereupon all the problems associated with subjectivity [much
more on which later] suddenly burst forth. (5) Ideation: The
slightly less fleeting end products of the process of aesthesis are what we
today variously call the "aestheta",
"percepts", "concepts",
"ideas of", or "images of", something [compare property
(3) of Smyth's (2005) hypothetical smart thing]. However named, they
constitute what the mind makes of the raw content of each moment of
awareness, duly submitted for further analysis. They are our understanding
of what is "out there", rather than our immediate awareness
of it. The Greek word ιδεα survives into modern English as "idea", but
even in everyday usage, ideas are more than just "things seen" -
rather they are what the mind does with its things seen. Thus an idea can be
"an intention or plan" or a "mental image, conception,
notion" or "a picture or notion of anything conceived by the
mind" (O.E.D.). The word can also be used to indicate the novel
end-product of reasoning, as in the phrase "I've got a good idea",
making it "the formation of ideas or mental images of things not present
to the senses" (O.E.D.). For ideation as the having of thoughts, the
earliest Greek coining was phronesis <φρονησις>
(Peters, 1967). Phronesis
is thinking in the sense of an ongoing contemplation of the ειδε
once it has been perceived. For ideation as logical sequential reasoning,
however, one would more properly use logismos [= "arithmetic, etc."]. As in modern
English, this was not the only way of referring to the various nuances of
mentation. Peters also mentions aesthesis
koine [= "common sense"], noesis [=
"thinking")], dianoia [=
"understanding"], nous [=
"intelligence, mind"], and logistikon [= "rationality"] for the qualities
of the intellect, and ιδεα [=
"thoughts"], phantasma
[= "images"], onta [=
"realities"], and doxa [= "beliefs"] for the contents of those
processes. Rohde (1893/1925) summarizes Empedocles' <Εμπεδοκλης>
(floruit ca. 450BCE) view of thought
as "a capacity of bringing together and unifying the individual
sense-activities" (p380), and Plato has his character Socrates express
it like this when discussing why knowledge was different to perception:
"We shall not now look for knowledge in sense-perception at all, but in
whatever we call that activity of the soul when it is busy by itself about
the things which are" (Plato, Theaetetus,
¶187a; Levett translation, p86). Plato then
identifies a major component within ideation as the power to judge true or
false, and describes thinking as "a talk which the soul has with itself
about the objects under its consideration" (Op. cit., ¶189e, p92). Plato refers to the process of predictive
deduction as giving "the human mind [oiesis]
insight [nous] and information [historia]
in a rational way" (Plato, Phaedrus, ¶244c; Waterfield
translation, p26). (6) Praxis: In that
it is ultimately responsible for overt willed behaviour, ideation is where
the afferent and efferent domains of cognition meet in the middle. We
perceive, we understand, and we respond, and the key words on the response
side of things are pragma <πραγμα>
and praxis <πραξις>,
both of which derive from the root prassw <πρασσω> [= "I do,
practise"], and refer to activities initiated as acts of will. However,
being motor concepts rather than perceptual, they have no real place in this
section on sensory aesthesis, and we therefore defer their discussion for the
body of the glossary. (7) Mind and Soul: This
brings us to the problem of what might be doing the becoming aware (or the
"appreciating", "apprehending", or whatever you choose to
call it), and here we shall adopt (if only for the time being) the
conventional view that it is (a) "the mind" of the individual concerned
which becomes aware as the result of aesthesis, on behalf of (b) "the
soul" of said individual. Empedocles was one of the formative writers on
the nature of the soul, and his basic scheme of things was that perception
and thought were between them the essence of a mortal soul, whose role in
life was "bringing together and unifying the individual sense
activities" (Rohde, 1893/1925, p380). It is, however, important to
distinguish carefully between the driving force of bodily life itself, namely
pneuma
<πνευμα>
[= "air, breath, spirit"], and the driving force of the soul within
the body, namely psuche
<ψυχη>
[= "soul, spirit, life"]. (8) Knowledge: To
complete this initial inspection, it is conventionally argued that the
adaptive value of perceptual experience (which, when all is said and done, is
in evolutionary terms a very expensive system to have on board, and thus
needs to earn its keep) may be magnified many times when its products can be
turned into knowledge of a more permanent sort. Here the Greeks would have us
distinguish carefully between techne <τεχνη> [= "craft,
skill" (i.e. know-how as opposed to know-that)] and episteme <επιστημη> [= factual
knowledge (i.e. know-that as opposed to know-how)], whilst modern cognitive
scientists would have us choose between propositional memory and procedural,
episodic memory and semantic, and implicit memory and explicit. OPENING
SUMMARY: The
classical view of cognition proposes a number of structures and recognises a
number of processes, but offers only a loose and sometimes circular or contradictory
set of definitions to go with them. A reasonably safe working synthesis seems
to be ..... (1) Something (perhaps God) invented forms,
that is to say, the idealized entities which populate the outside world and
which are the ultimate reality,
(2) instances of the forms appear before us as things, organised into
perceptual scenes, (3) the process
of aesthesis begins with the organs of sense, and progressively
detects, encodes, and then conducts information through channels rostrally towards the intellect, culminating in an
act of aesthesis, by which a
state of simple phenomenal awareness is created, (4) this state of
awareness is of the external things made mental things, that is to say, ideas,
(5) ideas can subsequently be used in propositional reasoning (phronesis and logismos) as
part of problem solving, (6) ideas may or may not result in voluntary
physical activity, (7) the mind is assisted in its propositional
reasoning by knowledge of various types, such as know-how and know-that, and (8) the mind carries out its
various duties on behalf of a more rarified individual essence known as the psyche,
or soul. OPENING PROBLEMS: Without wishing to pre-empt the often quite
detailed discussions yet to come, it is already possible to identify three
major problems of consciousness within the classical view of cognition. The
first of these is that the moment of phenomenal awareness comes quite late in
the process of aesthesis [see in due course Husserl's complaint that he sees
the thing but not the sensations which produced that seeing], the second has
to do with the very essence of the act of aesthesis itself, and challenges us
to explain who or what is doing the experiencing, and the third has to do
with the placing of self, soul, individuality, will, etc. in whatever comes
next. WHERE
TO NEXT: Where
you go next largely depends on which of entries (1) to (8) above most
interests you. If following up on the ειδε then see start with forms and ideas in G.3 below, if following up on transduction then the main glossary has little to add to the
material above, if following up on aesthesis
then start with perception, qualia, and subjectivity in
G.3, if following up on phenomenal
awareness and subjectivity then
start with experience, phenomenal
consciousness and the hard problem
in G.3, if following up on mind and
soul then start with noemics, noesis, etc. immediately below, if following up on ideation then start with intellect or reasoning in G.3, if following up on praxis then start with pragmatics
in G.3, and if following up on knowledge
then start with epistemology
immediately below. Alternatively, readers may cut straight to the chase and
turn to the closing summary in
G.4. |
|
Epistemology: [Episteme
= "knowledge".] [See firstly knowledge
immediately above.] Epistemology is "the branch of philosophy that
studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its
extent and validity" (The Free Dictionary). In common with most other
"-ologies", an epistemology is therefore also the product of that study, that
is to say, an organized and internally coherent body of proposition and
explanation which presents a particular theoretical framework, and which may
be distinguished from competing theoretical frameworks by differences in one
or more core proposition. To find out more about epistemology and
epistemologies, browse the glossary proper. Begin with the entry on knowledge types and gradually follow
the onward links provided. Note, however, that anything approaching an
exhaustive search may take some time and will eventually start to cross over
into one or other of the two overlapping philosophies. |
|
Noemics, Noesis,
etc.: [See firstly mind, soul, and ideation immediately
above.] This is a very important word group in both classical and modern
mental philosophy, and derives from the root verb noew <νοεω>,
"I perceive, think, intend". The Greek word noema <νοεμα> corresponds to the modern
English "thought", so that "noematical"
becomes "originating, or existing, in thought, or in the mind
alone" (O.E.D.), and "noematics"
indicates the study thereof. The term noein is the related verbal form, that is to say, "to
have mental perception or intelligence" (O.E.D.), and the noeta <νοετα> are the things thus
perceived. The term gnwme
<γνωμη>
is shown as "mind, understanding, reason" etc. in O.C.G.D., but in
Lightfoot as the "judgment" which results from due application of
the nous <νους>
[= "mind/intellect"; νους
is another word which is visually close enough to English to be used in its
Cyrillic form]. Because it is invariably impossible to separate a thought from the more general capacity for thought, the focus then shifts from noema, the
individual thought, to the νους, the power which begot the
individual thought in the first place. As to what νους might
consist of, Gomperz (1901) regards the word as so
complex a derivation that he refuses to translate it. Instead he quotes
Anaxagoras <Αναξαγορας> (floruit ca. 450BCE), one of the word's
early proponents, to the effect that νους was many fine and pure things all
rolled into one, including "all knowledge about everything, past,
present, and future" (pp215-216), on a par, almost, with the notion of
"supreme power", or "godhead". Plato accordingly had no
difficulty incorporating νους into his notion of man as the
perfect living creature, seeing it along the lines of what we glossarize today as the "the mind in all its
richness", and describing it at one point as "the pilot of the
soul" (Plato, Phaedrus <Φάιδρος>, ¶247c, Jowett translation), and
at another as "insight" (Plato, Phaedrus,
244c; Waterfield translation, p26). On behalf of Aristotle <Αριστοτελης>
(who wrote a generation or so after Plato), Lawson-Tancred translates the νους
of De Anima as
"intellect", because in his judgment Aristotle saw νους not as "a general abode for the
entire content of experience", but rather more narrowly as "the
intellective capacity" (Lawson-Tancred, 1986, p120) [and it is in this
sense, indeed, that the word has been modernized into everyday UK English slang
as "nouse" = common sense]. Nevertheless,
there are occasions when he suspects that "'intuition', the capacity for
unreasoned grasp of the first principles of science" might actually be
closer to what Aristotle intended (Lawson-Tancred, 1986, p120). Be that as it
may, "noemics" is [but arguably should
not be] now "the science of the understanding" (O.E.D.), "noesis" is "the sum total of the mental action
of a rational animal" (O.E.D.), and "noetic" is the
corresponding adjectival form. To find out more about noemics
and the psyche, browse the glossary proper. Begin with the entries on "charioteer of the soul"
and "pilot of the soul"
and gradually follow the onward links provided. Note, however, that anything
approaching an exhaustive search may take some time and will eventually start
to cross over into one or other of the two overlapping philosophies. |
|
Semiotics: [Sema <σεμα> = "mark" or
"sign"; semainw
<σεμαινω> =
"I signify, mark, etc.".] Semiotics is the
science of meaning (whatever that eventually
turns out to be) in transit between minds [or, to put some of our new
vocabulary immediately to work, it is the -ology of one person's νους, at the behest of that person's psuche,
transmitting a fragment of its episteme
into the νους,
and thence the psuche
and episteme of another person].
Alternatively, it is "the scientific study of the properties of signalling systems, whether natural or artificial"
(Crystal, 2003, p412), or "the study of signs and sign systems"
(Wikipedia). The word was coined by John Locke (1690) as "semiotica", in his Chapter XXI discussion of
"the division of the sciences". Locke identified three sorts of
understanding, namely (1) "physica", the
knowledge of things as they are" (p607), (2) "practica",
"the skill of right applying our own powers and actions for the
attainment of things good and useful" (p608), and (3) "semiotica", "the 'doctrine of signs'"
(p608). By this last term Locke recognized what was to him the fundamental
truth that the mind contains only a mental model of the world, and that when
we wanted to act upon that mental model in any way we were acting upon
internal symbols. The word then fell into disuse until revived by the
Pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce (floruit
1879-1905) and the philologists Ferdinand de Saussure (e.g. Saussure, 1916)
and Charles W. Morris (e.g. Morris, 1927a,b, 1932).
It was then brought into modern psycholinguistic theory by Thomas A. Sebeok (e.g. Sebeok and Ramsay,
1969; Sebeok (1976, 1979), and into everyday
language thanks to the writer Umberto Eco, who based his plot for his 1980
novel (1986 movie) "The Name of the Rose" upon it. To find out more
about semiotics, browse the glossary
proper. Begin with the entry on sememe and gradually follow the onward links provided.
Note, however, that anything approaching an exhaustive search may take some
time and will eventually start to cross over into one or other of the two
overlapping subject areas. |
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