The Grammar of Consciousness: An Exploration of Tacit Knowing

175 Pages·1995·12.123 MB·English

by  Edward Moss

THE GRAMMAR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Also by Edward Moss
DAILY READINGS WITH WILLIAM LAW {co-editor)
GROWING INTO FREEDOM
A Way to Make Sense of Ourselves
SEEING MAN WHOLE: A New Model for Psychology
The Grammar of
Consciousness
An Exploration of Tacit Knowing
Edward Moss
M
St. Martin's Press
© Edward Moss 1995
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First published in Great Britain 1995 by
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and London
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ISBN 0-333-62533-1
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Printed in Great Britain by
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First published in the United States of America 1995 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
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New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-12222-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moss, Edward.
The grammar of consciousness : an exploration of tacit knowing /
Edward Moss.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-312-12222-5
I. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Consciousness. I. Title.
II. Title: Tacit knowing.
BD161.M849 1995
121—dc20 94-18454
CIP
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgemen ts xi
List of Abbreviations xii
1 Some Aspects of Tacit Knowing
The Theory of Tacit Knowing 1
Meaning 2
Universals 4
Articulation 5
Language 9
Truth and Reality 12
2 Conceptual Forms
The Shaping of Conceptions 14
Forms 15
Generalization 19
Similarity 21
Stored Ideas 22
Evoked Ideas 23
3 Tacit Integration as a Grammatical Process
Integration and Grammar 25
The Walking Motion of Consciousness 26
Subjects and Predicates 27
Complexity and Plurality 28
Designation 30
Relationships between Ideas 33
Some Interim Conclusions 35
A Theory of the Unconscious 36
Predication and Language 38
VI Contents
4 Purpose, Meaning and the Categories of Knowing
The Purposive Cycle 43
Purpose and Meaning 45
Forms and the Other Categories of Knowing 46
Primary and Secondary Qualities 49
Rorty on Predication 54
5 A Reductionist Theory of Consciousness
The Reductionist Approach 59
Eliminating the 'Cartesian Theatre' 61
The Mind as a 'Virtual Machine' in the Brain 63
Language and the Presentations of Consciousness 64
A Comment on Language 66
Qualia 68
Selves 70
Another View of Selves 72
6 Ghosts in the Virtual Machine
A Summary 77
The Theorist's Fiction 79
Levels of Being 81
The Unity of Consciousness 84
Probes and Purposes 86
7 An Evolutionist's Theory of Consciousness
The Biological Approach 88
Selection and Recognition 89
Brain Maps 90
Perceptual Categorization 90
Memory 92
Concepts 93
Learning and Primary Consciousness 94
Qualia 95
Higher-Order Consciousness 96
Attention and Repression 97
Language 98
Intentionality and Meaning 100
Thinking 100
Objectivism 101
Contents vn
8 Reflections on Edelman
Top-Down and Bottom-up 104
Recognition 105
The Process of Matching (1) 107
The Process of Matching (2) 108
Memory 110
The Scene 114
Teleonomic Systems 117
Information and Regulation 119
The Arena of Consciousness 121
9 Knowing and Reality
Irreducibles 123
Polanyi and 'Resonance Realism' 125
Rom Harre and 'Referential Realism' 129
An Approach to Truth and Reality 131
Relativism 133
10 The Here and Now
The Grammar of Reality (1) 139
The Grammar of Reality (2) 141
The Grammar of Reality (3) 144
Appendix: A Note on Grammar 148
Notes 150
Index
Preface
The purpose of this book is to present a set of ideas about the
nature of mind and consciousness. This is much trampled ground,
and ground moreover on which the various approaches of the psy
chologist, the philosopher, the cognitive scientist and the neurosci-
entist converge. I am in no position to survey all the relevant
literature. My aim has been rather to relate my ideas to those of a
few representative thinkers, and to consider three or four of them
in detail as a background to the presentation of my own thesis.
The first chapter of the essay gives an account of relevant aspects
of Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing. I have come to know
Polanyi's work in some depth only comparatively recently; but I
am much impressed with its importance. I propose to take his
theory as providing not only an effective way into the subject, but
also a broad framework of understanding within which many other
ideas can appropriately find their place. In the second chapter I
relate this account to some ideas of my own about the nature of
conceptual forms and the way in which they are stored and evoked
in the mind. The third chapter develops on this basis an under
standing of Polanyi's theory of tacit integration as a grammatical
process, and of grammar itself as the rules of the structuring of con
sciousness. The fourth deals with purposive thinking and the cate
gories of knowledge; and it also includes a discussion of Richard
Rorty's views on predication. Throughout this discussion I am not
trying to alter the general frame of Polanyi's thought; I am trying
rather to bring a new psychological detail and precision to certain
areas where Polanyi's treatment remains at a relatively high level of
generalization.
The resulting account of the nature, function and processes of
consciousness remains at some distance from the models emerging
from the work of modern cognitive scientists and neuroscientists.
These are areas in which a great deal of work is currently in
progress and many striking advances have been made. Accordingly
in my fifth chapter I consider in some detail the model, based on
the analogy of the digital computer, which is developed in Daniel
Dennett's book Consciousness Explained. Inevitably there are differ
ences of view among the many scientists and philosophers working
Vlll
Preface IX
in cognitive science, but Dennett's accomplished and comprehen
sive book seems to me to bring out in a helpful way the main issues
that have to be faced.
In the sixth chapter I carry the debate further and suggest reasons
why in my view the reductionist approach of Dennett and many
others is radically insufficient to account for consciousness. In the
process I continue the elaboration in certain respects of my own
theory. In the seventh chapter I turn to the ideas of the neuroscien-
tist Gerald Edelman, as expressed in his book Bright Air, Brilliant
Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. Edelman, a very distinguished ex
perimental scientist, is much less of a reductionist than Dennett,
and firmly rejects the computer analogy. In the eighth chapter,
'Reflections on Edelman', I consider in some detail the possibility of
bringing together my own top-down psychological theory of the
grammar of consciousness with Edelman's bottom-up neurological
theory of neuronal group selection, to build a coherent whole.
Inevitably any debate about the nature and processes of con
sciousness brings up fundamental issues of epistemology; and in
the ninth chapter I turn to these issues directly. I consider briefly
John C. Puddefoot's exegesis of Polanyi's view on realism and Rom
Harre's account of 'referential realism', related to the views of Niels
Bohr, indicating that there are important affinities here between
Harre and Polanyi. This discussion of realism is linked to a consid
eration of the inescapability of some element of relativism as the
most characteristic feature of the postmodern view of the world.
Finally in the tenth chapter, I draw some further conclusions of my
own about our apprehension of reality, bringing out the central im
portance in all knowing of personal experience in the present
moment.
For Polanyi's views I have drawn primarily on his book Personal
Knowledge and on some of the later essays collected in Knowing and
Being. For Dennett's views I have relied on his book Consciousness
Explained) for Edelman's on his Bright Air, Brilliant Fire; and for
Harre's on his Varieties of Realism. In addition, where psychological
theory is concerned, I have drawn on ideas more fully elaborated in
my own book Seeing Man Whole: A New Model for Psychology.
I use the word 'grammar' in a precise and somewhat traditional
way. My understanding of the nature of grammar is explained
briefly in the Appendix on p. 148.
I should like to express my warm thanks for their help and en
couragement to my friends and colleagues of Convivium, the United