OUTLINE
The common understanding of cognition as focal cognition
Why some ‘thinkers’ deny experience
What is often regarded as ‘emotion’ is the strong emotion and, perhaps, other variation from an ever present ‘background’ or ‘base’ feeling state that is, perhaps, normally experienced as quiescent
§ This view has consequences for the concept of emotion and its role in the universe of psyche as something discrete, something distinct, separable and even separate from cognition
…and it has, perhaps, the consequence that motivation—conation—is another category, i.e., that motivation is distinct from feeling and cognition
However, the view of emotion as ever present and strong or recognized emotion as heightened ties into
§ The idea that cognition and emotion are bound at root
The idea that emotion is not not cognition—it is perhaps ‘cognition’ of an internal or body state (could it be otherwise for if otherwise are we not postulating something entirely idealist in the sense of an idea devoid of material being or connection)
…and, similarly, the idea that cognition is not not emotion—as expounded next
The thought that without the original binding, even identity, of cognition, there can be no—effective or effectual—thought
The idea that questions such as ‘How are emotion and cognition bound into a whole?’ are, at least in some sense, false questions predicated on an assumption of an essential distinction of emotion and cognition… and the idea that the proper question may be ‘How is original primitive and elemental psyche—whatever it is called, e.g., primitive feeling, elaborated into (in evolution) and as (in the organism and development) what are called the functions’
(That the ‘seats’ of the standard versions of cognition and emotion are not identical should nowise affect these points)
The implication that, in psyche, body and world are bound together
The common understanding of cognition is, similarly, that of, e.g., ‘focal processing’ and omits background processing, that is perhaps not so symbolic and definitely not so intense or focal but not entirely for these reasons—e.g., what are the symbols and unit icons of background cognition which includes, perhaps, and ‘body cognition’
The denial of feeling and of consciousness are the denial of experience which is at the heart of and entail the denial of mind
Of all the meanings of ‘experience,’ here we focus on a particular one—the one given in Journey in Being—essence
Following is a supplement to the discussion of experience in that document
Imagine being at a beach. You notice another person at the beach. It is sunset and you and the other person are both looking at the setting sun. You see the waves, hear them crashing; you see the brilliant sun; you feel a cool breeze upon your face. Even though it may be reasonable to think that the other person is seeing and hearing what you see and hear, you don't know that for an absolute fact because ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ are private—they appear to have at least a degree of privacy
Perhaps the other person is a robot and does not see or hear even though, perhaps, there is some internal wiring and information flow that enables behavioral responses to external stimuli that make it appear as though it—the robot—is hearing and seeing. However, the robot does not see and hear as you do. What you see and hear and so on and the robot does not counts as experience
The variant: the varieties of experience
The meaning of experience that we talked of is that of ‘conscious experience.’ Perhaps there is non-conscious experience—if so, the world ‘experience’ might not be appropriate because, at least in the case of the robot, it would have a different connotation and so using the same word might lead to confusion
Whether there is non-conscious experience will be taken up later (in Journey in Being—essence.) For the purpose of the present discussion, we take it that there is non-conscious experience
What might non-conscious experience be? It might be that certain inputs to the brain are laid down in memory but not associated with consciousness at the time of the stimulus. Later there may be conscious recall
There are various degrees of acceptance of experience—from the view that that is all there is, to the idea that experience is important but not everything, i.e., that there is an external world, to the thought that there is experience but it is insignificant and ineffectual, to the position (strange to me) that there is no such thing as experience. On the latter view ‘consciousness’ is an illusion or delusion—but what is a delusion if not consciousness—and therefore that view, the view that there is no such thing as consciousness, more reasonably reduces to the view that there is consciousness but that it is ineffectual, perhaps unrelated to reality, a private play—in the famous metaphor consciousness is the foam of the wave
The common view and part of my view (which does not imply that I subscribe to the described alternatives above but instead that there are further alternatives) is that experience is of an external world in which ‘external’ means sensed and known but not contained in experience
(Note that the other extreme positions including the ineffectuality of experience may be analyzed similarly)
There seem to be a number of reasons to deny experience but it is significant that it is mostly academics and intellectuals who take the extreme positions ‘experience is all’ and ‘there's no such thing as experience’
It is not being claimed that only academics take such positions or that all academics do but there is a natural tendency for these positions to be found in academia. The following factors are possible. (1) It is the philosopher's business to question views of reality. This questioning is not mere sophistry or contentiousness for both common and considered views may be in error and questioning is one way to improvement. (2) There may, however, be a tendency to take such critiques ‘too seriously.’ This too may be natural for once criticized, it may require care and time to see the truth in a given view. Of course to think that the existence of criticism makes criticism valid is reactionary which may be a polite word for stupid. (3) The desire for intellectual purity e.g. as in ‘idealism’ and ‘materialism.’ If the academic is truly insightful it may be due to a sensitivity that makes him or her inclined to and capable of ‘purity.’ It is not that all ‘purity’ is invalid but that the motive to purity may be a source of (self) deception. Thus it may be the very intellectual power of the academic that inclines to the persuasions of ‘purism’ over realism
Purism or monism contrast with ‘dualism’ and here again there may be a tendency to turning an early encounter with a neat thought into a paradigm of the real. However, neither the purism of monism nor the practical aspect of dualism have any essential purchase on the real. A response to the dualism-monism spectrum may be ‘zeroism’
Here are some further reasons or factors to deny experience
The ascent of materialism and the alleged difficulty of explaining mental phenomena—perhaps experienced, perhaps alleged as categorially different from the material—on a materialist account of the world
The ego of the academic—the phenomenon is of course not at all restricted to the academic but it is in academia that the concerns under discussion are often contemplated and argued—that finds a difficulty, that prematurely makes the difficulty absolute, that therefore finds a premature solution—to a non-problem, that makes the solution absolute—ego. It further feeds the ego of the individual to ‘inform’ experts and laypersons alike that ‘your cherished view, your whole basis of reality is wrong and I will tell you why and tell you how you may correct your error.’ There are many examples from academia and perhaps the chief egghead in this regard is Daniel Dennett followed in a rear guard by Patricia Churchland and Ned Block—an example of sense is John Searle
The zombie effect. Recall the occasional story of an individual who doesn't feel pain, who keeps on going even though they have broken a limb! Perhaps there is a range to the strength of the experiential side of experience among individuals with some feeling none at all or, more likely, feeling only the strong feelings—pain, joy and so on—but not the moment to moment feelings. (Perhaps the feeling associated with cognition—discussed at length in Journey in Being-New World-essence—is not counted as feeling since it is labeled ‘cognition.’) Such persons may be inclined to deny or minimize experience. The writer Bryan Magee believes that he has encountered many such persons among the academic philosophers—persons who entered academic philosophy because they read classics in Britain but not because of any philosophical commitment or sensitivity. Magee has offered this observation as an explanation of the disconnect of much of academic analytic philosophy from real concerns—I depart with Magee in his assessment that academic analytic philosophy has little of enduring value which, I believe, remains to be seen
One value to academic analytic philosophy is its exemplary method—the careful analysis of elementary ideas. When this method interacts with a more expansive style of thought than the piece-meal analysis of elementary ideas, a number of outcomes are possible. One is the limitation of the possibilities of thought which, in my opinion, is due to a lack of imagination in seeing where careful thought might go. Under the burden of the influence of Wittgenstein and other leading analytic philosophers, and the paradigm of piece-meal analysis—the neurotic avoidance of the concept of similarity—analytic philosophy simply does not seek expansive thought and therefore cannot know the true limits of analysis. If you start with a limited concept of emotion, and you are not imaginative with regard to what emotion may be, you may be ever denied real insights into the nature of emotion, cognition and their relation. I bring up emotion because there is an exemplary analysis of it in Journey in Being—essence. Another ‘example’ is the analysis of the universe. However, the typical result of interaction of analysis and expansive thought is ‘lose-lose:’ the analysts refuse to see and the holists refuse to think. This is the result of the professionalization of philosophy. The alternate requires both the analyst and the allegedly expansive holist to see beyond their self imposed dungeons of thought
Group thinking, e.g., the ascent of materialism