Process and the Authentic Life: Toward a Psychology of Value 9783110328202, 9783110327946

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Jason W. Brown Process and the Authentic Life Toward a Psychology of Value

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume 2

Jason W. Brown

Process and the Authentic Life Toward a Psychology of Value

ontos verlag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ire Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected]

This book is published by support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation Bonn (Germany)

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2005 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-73-0 2005 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

Escher: Order and Chaos (lithograph, 1950)

Table of contents Foreword (Maria Pachalska)

15

Author’s Preface

21

Introduction

22

Value and Science Speciation and specification Categories Moral philosophy and psychology Value formation Self and other The Good Time and morality Conclusion Chapter 1. What is an object? Objects and events Toward an event-ontology Implications of an event-ontology What are relations? Identity and transition Properties and classes Events as foci-of-interest

23 26 28 31 33 36 39 43 44 47 47 52 55 59 65 67 69

Chapter 2. Self, subject and subjectivity

73

Introduction Subjectivity Self and subject Agency and recipience Subjective aim Subjectivity, being and freedom Micro-transition from self to world Brain correlates Subjectivity and nature A subjective naturalism

73 76 81 82 84 86 88 92 94 97

Chapter 3. Affect and idea Introduction What is an emotion? Feeling and intentionality The neurological basis of emotion Memory and feeling From the “drive representation” to the “real object” Chapter 4. Value in mind and nature Value and evolutionary gradualism Intrinsic value and existence Duration and existence Being and becoming Realness Transition to human valuation Perception and value Desire and worth Chapter 5. A world of value Introduction Distribution, locus and evolution of value Value and the brain Self and object worth On self-worth Love Love: for self and for others Love and art Chapter 6. From drive to desire Introduction From reflex to representation From instinct to proto-desire The evolution of proto-desire Drive and desire The growth of valuation Interest Chapter 7. Custom and evolutionary naturalism From animism to reflection

101 101 106 110 111 115 121 127 128 131 135 136 137 139 142 143 147 147 150 152 155 157 161 167 168 173 173 174 177 181 185 188 192 195 195

Custom, value and goodness Custom, law and moral conscience Biology, mind and culture Explanatory reduction Adaptation Nature and the objective good Chapter 8. Actualization and causality Introduction Causality and internal relations Potential and actual What is potential? The transition from potential to actual Character and value Creativity and responsibility Conflict Coherence and authenticity

198 200 204 207 210 214 219 219 222 224 226 228 229 232 234 237

Chapter 9. Autonomy and compassion

243

The relation of self to world The cure of solipsism The value of the other The value of others Acts of compassion The source of moral feeling The ground of shared feeling The birth of compassion Moral asymmetry Agent and victim

243 248 250 254 256 257 259 264 269 271

Chapter 10. The grounds of rational decision The path to decision Reason and choice What is reason? Rationality and conduct On the force of reason in decision-making Reason and causality A syntax of reason A rational morality

275 275 279 280 284 287 288 293 295

Chapter 11. What is a good act? Introduction The subjectivity of the good What to do? Choice and detachment Neural correlates Duty and goodness Good and right The language of pleasure Desire, desirability and what ought to be desired Approval The ideal good Desire and the ideal The ideal self Chapter 12. The ideal

301 301 302 305 307 310 312 316 319 320 324 325 331 334 335

Introduction The ideal Time and the categorical ideal The exemplification of the ideal What is a category? The ideal and the self Reality, existence and the ideal

335 335 341 344 347 349 351

Chapter 13. From intention to obligation

359

Introduction Promises Breaking an oath or promise The morality of requests Consistency and change Punishment Reward Implicit and explicit promises Chapter 14. Taste and manners Taste Relation to worth Instance and class Discrimination and bias

359 360 366 368 371 373 378 379 383 383 386 389 390

Taste and moral value Taste, personality and character Manners A note on fame and mediocrity Chapter 15. Moral conflict The nature of obligation Truth and obligation The feeling of obligation Quantity of obligation Obligation as personal valuation Subjectivity and relativism What is a loyalty? Chapter 16. Morality and suicide

392 395 397 403 407 407 411 413 416 421 424 426 431

Suicide and altruism: self and community Suicide for others Altruistic intent and objective value Suicide Death, early or late The disappearance of time Freedom, morality and suicide A word on dying

431 435 439 444 447 449 450 454

Chapter 17. Luck and the pursuit of happiness

457

Greater happiness How do objects give pleasure? Agents and victims Luck Moral luck in retrospect Regret and remorse Chapter 18. Efficacy and illusions Prediction and the open future Causation and potential The feeling of agency Causation, autonomy, and freedom Indeterminacy Free will and spontaneity

457 464 467 468 473 480 485 486 488 490 492 494 495

Freedom, contingency and choice Change and stability The pathology of agency Illusion, reality and will Chapter 19. Thought and action Immediate and deliberate action Deliberation Context and commitment Means/ends in moral and non-moral action Coherence of concept and act Responsibility Chapter 20. Thought and memory The continuity of the mental life Dream Recall, true and false Familiarity Intentionality and desire Deliberation and prospective memory Content The future Chapter 21. Moral dimensions of aesthetic experience From perceptual to aesthetic objects The artist and the aesthete From aesthetic to moral objects Beauty and the good Universal and particular Custom and tradition Moral aesthetics Conclusions

497 500 501 504 509 509 513 516 518 523 525 531 532 534 536 540 543 545 548 549 553 553 557 559 562 565 568 572 575

Chapter 22. The illusory and the real

579

The ubiquity of illusion Image and reality One world or two? A conspiracy of perceptions

579 582 583 585

The real and the true What is an illusion? The universality of illusion Denial and the grounds of false belief Living with illusion What matters The philosophy of as if Chapter 23. Wholeness and the creative life Belief, conviction and character Lying The irrational life Life as an aesthetic object Compromise Decline and renewal Conscience and authenticity Self /valuation One self or two? The origin of duality Wholeness and unity

586 590 591 592 595 597 599 603 604 610 612 614 615 617 623 625 628 631 633

Chapter 24. The nature of existence

635

Reality and existence Time and reality What is the real world? Truth and reality Sensation and perception Experience Organic and inorganic What exists Psychic nature? Reality

635 636 638 641 644 647 650 653 655 659

Chapter 25. Reflections on Immortality Introduction Concept of immortality Personal immortality Duration, replication, persistence Nirvana

663 663 665 668 669 673

Psychic continuity Time and eternity What do we want from immortality? Community and spirit Duality and perspective Divinity and grace References

675 677 680 682 684 685 691

Foreword This new book by Jason Brown, who over the last several decades has woven the somewhat unlikely strands of process metaphysics and clinical neurology into a magnificent theoretical tapestry, represents an attempt to include moral thinking within the framework of that theory. The importance of this move should not be overlooked. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, the great schools of Hellenistic philosophy – Academics, Skeptics, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans – organized their philosophical systems into three basic areas of inquiry: ontology, logic, and ethics. Although the terminology varied and there were quarrels and quibbles about the exact boundaries between them, there emerged a general consensus that the most important philosophical questions can be reduced to these three: 1. What is the nature of being? 2. How do we know that what we believe to be true is indeed true? 3. How should our beliefs shape our behavior? In rather obvious ways, of course, answers to any one of these questions usually have implications for the others. Primarily, however, it is the third question that is arguably the most important, and yet in most philosophical systems it is the object of the least – and often the least satisfactory – discussion. There is far more prestige to be gained in philosophical circles by constructing metaphysical and epistemological theories than by writing essays on moral and ethical values. The Roman philosophers, such as Cicero and Seneca, were far more interested in ethics than in metaphysics or logic, and for precisely that reason they are seldom given more than passing mention in histories of philosophy – even though Cicero’s moral essays had a major formative influence on moral thinking in Europe well into the 20th century. In the 21st century, however, the values expounded in Cicero’s On Duties, On Friendship, On Old Age, or Seneca’s On Mercy, seem to many readers to be mere platitudes, unconvincing and perhaps even vaguely suspect. We have come to dislike preaching, and do not like to be told what we should do – unless, that is, the advice pertains to maintaining a slim figure, in which case anyone’s advice will do. Indeed, it would perhaps be safe to say that as a society we have become highly cynical about morality, though perhaps without being fully

16 aware that cynicism is itself a specific philosophical stance, even a school, with a particular history. We defend our values, if at all, not because they are better (it has become very unfashionable to make such claims), but because they are ours, or rather, I defend my values because they are mine. The collapse of older prescriptive systems of moral value is welcome in some quarters and decried in others, but seems an unquestionable historical fact of our times, regardless of whether this is seen as the march of progress and liberation or as the triumph of Satan. It is worth reflecting, then, on the reasons why this is happening, and why we seem to be faced at the beginning of a new millennium with the equally unpalatable alternatives of cynicism and fundamentalism. At the risk of some simplification, we can identify three basic approaches in the history Western thought to the fundamental problem of values: • Values can be posited as being innate in the nature of things, necessary to good order, ordained by God or by Nature, and thus beyond the reach of our reasoning. In fundamentalism, all values take on this a priori character, and there remain only marginal problems of their application in certain troublesome situations; in other, more open systems, there are core values that lie beyond question, but leave a large area of interpretation and application. The revealed truths of Catholic faith for the Scholastics, or Kant’s categorical imperatives, provide a starting point, not the ending point, for moral discourse. Nevertheless, there is always a point where one can go no further without trangressing, and there are questions that cannot be asked without undermining the premises of the discourse itself. • Values can be reduced to a matter of personal taste, and by the same token removed from the scope of discourse just as fully as the religious values of a fundamentalist. Arguments reach a certain point and end abruptly when the conclusion is reached: “But that is a value judgment.” This is characteristic, indeed all but axiomatic, in modern scientific thinking. Advocacy of a given moral system or moral judgment is held to be antithetical to the objective search for empirical truth, based on the experimental method and the statistical interpretation of data. A value judgement will never be statistically significant, though the decision that a = 0.05 is essentially a value judgement, as is, for that matter, the largely unspoken assumption in empirical studies that only statistically significant differences are important.

17 • Values can be derived from an overarching system of thought, a metaphysics or (more recently) a body of psychological theory. Depending on the nature of that system, then, they can be proven or disproven by logical reasoning based on premises that can be demonstrated without relying on the value system itself, or they can be reduced to manifestations of the forces and tendencies thought to be operative in the human psyche. Epicurus reasoned from atomic theory to hedonism; Freud reasoned from the theory of the unconscious to the pleasure principle. The popular book market is flooded with works by psychologists who proclaim a new theory of the psyche in the first chapter, and then proceed in the following chapters to demonstrate how the apply the theory in order to be happy, or in other words, to have what is good and get rid of what is bad. The approach adopted by Jason Brown in this impressive new book is not easily reduced to any one of these three alternatives. That accounts for its particular power, derived from the nature of microgenetic theory itself, which cuts across and transcends so many divisions between intellectual disciplines that the expression “Copernican revolution” does not seem overstated. It is a “unified field theory,” rooted in the abstract metaphysics of process philosophy on the one hand, and the messy reality of the neurology clinic on the other, potentially transforming how we look at phenomena as apparently disparate as the nature of time, the origins of dreams and hallucinations, the way a speech act unfolds, and (now, with the present volume) how we make value judgments. The path taken by Jason Brown from clinical neurology to neuropsychology to process philosophy has not been an easy or simple one, and is perhaps best explained, consistent with microgenetic theory itself, as an evolutionary process, in which motion from-to is more a kind of conventional illusion than a concrete reality. Nothing has actually been left behind along the way, as each successive book re-actualizes its predecessors, adding another layer of process. Each has thus been a culmination and recapitulation of sorts, and at the same time a branching, a move in a somewhat different direction. In the present volume, the author has very explicitly re-traced almost the whole of his intellectual journey. The basics of the theory and some of its clinical grounding are first expounded, and then the theory of values can be seen to emerge directly from its roots and trunk, growing and branching ever upward and outward. For whom, then, has this book been written? Clinicians are likely to be baffled by the metaphysics; philosophers, by the clinical material;

18 psychologists and neuropsychologists, by the lack of empirical tests and statistical analysis. Almost all of us will find our resources of knowledge challenged, if not simply inadequate, at one point or another in the reading of Jason Brown’s work. Many faint-hearted readers are likely to say, “Well, this book seems to have been written for someone else, not for me!” For those who follow the arguments through to the end, however, an extraordinary vision begins to emerge. The data that have been amassed by the neurosciences in recent decades about the workings and inner structure of the brain can indeed be interpreted without having to accept on faith the reductionist, materialist conclusions usually drawn from these data. The philosophy of process, ostensibly remote and esoteric, can in fact be applied to the lived reality of thinking, feeling human beings without compromising its intellectual standards. Scientists and humanists are not living in parallel universes that cannot meet without annihilating everything at the point of intersection. All this should not be taken to mean, of course, that microgenetic theory as developed by Jason Brown is just another fundamentalism, reducing all arguments to a catechism whose conclusions are known before the premises are announced. Brown cannot be rightly accused of oversimplifying or pandering to the needs of a mass audience looking for simple solutions to complex problems. On the contrary, the theoretical edifice here is enormously complex, indeed incomprehensible for those with intellectual blinders firmly in place. There are no slogans here that can be used to stop arguments, but rather a series of insights that constrain our thinking in a different and more productive way than previously. This is of course sometimes a painful process. For those of us active in the neurosciences, there is the uncomfortable suspicion that we have been gathering mostly the wrong data, and misinterpreting most of the good data that has so far been collected. For those interested in the philosophy of mind, there is the growing awareness that neither detaching the mind from the brain for separate treatment nor reducing the mind to the brain is a tenable position. For all those engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, however, regardless of the field, the basic question always remains the same: So what? It is, of course, much easier to ignore the question and mock those who ask it of us. Knowledge, we say, is a value in itself, bonum in se, which requires no further justification. Those of us who work in the healing professions, especially medicine and psychology, are often excused from having to answer the nagging question, So what?, since it seems obvious that curing

19 a patient of a disease, whether physical or mental, is again bonum in se. Clinicians may even find it easier to hide behind that shield of presumed altruism, but those of us who actually work with patients (perhaps especially the brain-injured) on a daily basis know all too well that the insistent teleological question, so what? comes to us often, and with particular force. The importance and the uniqueness of what Jason Brown has done lies in the fact that he attempts to demonstrate how it is possible to steer a safe course between the Scylla of abstraction and the Charybdis of reduction. Moral thinking is not something detached from or added onto our thinking, just as thinking itself is not something detached from or added onto our feeling. All this in turn emerges from a distinctly counter-intuitive insight that has followed Brown’s work from its beginnings in clinical neurology: that perception and action are not inverse functions (the input and output of cybernetic modeling), but rather parallel processes that emerge from within the psyche and go out into the world. In this book, then, the process of valuation is shown to be yet another stream, or rather, an integral part of the same stream that produces perception and action. Thus an act, an object, and a value arise from the same core, and then undergo differentiation at successive stages in brain/mind evolution. The whole process is one of sculpting (one of Brown’s favorite metaphors), consisting in the elimination of what is unnecessary and irrelevant, like Michelangelo chipping away marble until David emerged from the block in which he had been waiting to be released. Most of us like to think that our moral decisions, and in fact all our important decisions, are made by weighing the available alternatives in the given situation and choosing the one that seems best. And most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, would have to admit that this is seldom the case. In most cases, we know what we want to do, and we know what we should do or must do, and the reasons come along later to justify a decision that in reality has already been made. In this book, Jason Brown endeavors to show us why this is, and why it could scarcely be otherwise, given the construction of our brains and the way our minds have been formed and are being formed at every moment by the same dynamics which produce the growth and evolution of our brains. Unlike many books that have been written in recent years by neurologists and neuropsychologists, this is not an easy book to read. It has been for me a pleasure and a privilege to help the author prepare it for publication, but even as an “editor” I have been many times astounded and

20 perplexed. In fact, the only real credit I can claim apart from simple proofreading is that from time to time my own perplexity has prompted the author to elaborate and clarify points that were hard for me to understand. Even so, what remains is challenging and difficult. It requires a high level of attention and no small degree of patience. It is the sort of book that one reads sentence by sentence, with frequent stops for wondering and pondering. In these times of rapid consumption, when stars (even scientific ones) rise and fall in a matter of weeks, it may take some time before it reaches those who can and must read it. I am convinced, however, that when microgenetic theory begins to make its presence felt in philosophy, the neurosciences, psychology, linguistics, and many other disciplines, the result will be a revolution of truly Copernican dimensions, compared to which the passing academic fashions of recent decades will quickly be forgotten. It has been a privilege to play even an ancillary role in helping Jason Brown write this manifesto for the microgenetic revolution. As Apuleius said to the readers of his Metamorphoses almost 2000 years ago: Lector, intende! Laetaberis. [Reader, pay heed! You will be glad]. Maria Pachalska Cracow, Poland October 2004

Author’s Preface Only when a philosophy is at full bloom do we appreciate the intuition that generated it. The early stage of a philosophy is one of groping, confusion, inarticulateness, and enthusiasm. George Adams, 1930 This book is perhaps the culmination of a theory of mind and brain that began in neurological studies, but has by now traveled quite far from its home in clinical data. As the citation above attests, the theory has taken me on a voyage of personal discovery. It is over 15 years since the theory turned from abnormal psychology to philosophy of mind, but insights derived from the clinic continue to inform a psychology of value and its relation to moral philosophy. The clinical and neurological data are the material of the philosophy, while the philosophy is the ground on which the seeds of the psychology can be planted. In my view, a philosophy not based on phenomenal experience is stranded in speculative argumentation, while a psychology not grounded in philosophy or biology will be mired in trivia or romantic fiction. Yet I would agree with the comment of William James that a scientific understanding of the mind/brain will necessarily be metaphysical. The central themes of this book are the evolution of feeling, the uniformity of process, the centrality of whole/part transitions, and the adaptive constraints on organism of the inner and outer world. The account is subjectivist and based on character. The effort is to undertake a process theory of value in relation to ethics. I consider it a strength of the theory that it begins outside ethics and moves into it, rather than starting with an analysis of ethical concepts and attempting to build a coherent system. The complexity is so great that no general rule or single principle can be singled out as an explanation or a guide for moral conduct. However, there is a universal application, or expression, of the “laws” or regularities of mind/brain process, as manifested in the microgenesis of feeling from self to world and patterns in the formation of ego- and exo-centric values. The initial sections of this book extend microgenetic theory to the concept of self, objects and events. These chapters can provide the reader with a sense of the theoretical foundations for the arguments that follow.

22 They also lay the groundwork for an account of the evolution of feeling from energic process to affect-ideas as an expansion of the actualization that deposits and is enclosed by event-categories. The ensuing section extends this account to a psychology of value from the standpoint of phasetransitions in microgenetic process and their relation to patterns in the evolution of the forebrain. The account then leads to an application of value-theory to some traditional problems of ethics. Finally, the metapsychological implications of a process monism are discussed for a theory of agency, self-realization, naturalism and immortality. This book is not a compilation of separate papers, but was conceived as a whole, though some of the chapters have been published in books or journals to profit from the comments of reviewers, as well as the advice of colleagues. Chapter 1 was published in Acta Neuropsychologica 1, 2003, 239-259. Portions of Chapter 4 were published in Riffert, F. & Weber, M. (Eds), Searching for New Contrasts. Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind, Vienna, Peter Lang. Chapter 8 is a contribution to Smith, G., Kragh, U. and Carlsson, I. (Eds) Constructing Personality: Actualization of the Personal World by Means of Perceptogenetic/Microgenetic Techniques, Psychological Issues, IUP, 2006. Portions of Chapter 9 were published as a commentary in Neuropsychoanalysis 10-16, 2001; and as the preface to Smith, G. (2001) The Process Approach to Personality. Plenum Press, New York. Chapter 21 was a review essay in Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 190, 573-582. Chapter 20 is a contribution to Glicksohn, J. and Myslobodsky, S. (Eds) Timing the Future: The Case for a Time-Based Prospective Memory. World Scientific Publishers, 2005. Chapter 21 was published in M. Pachalska & B.D. MacQueen (Eds), Root Metaphors: Selected Essays on Social Thinking (CONTINUO, Wroclaw). Chapter 22 was published in Mind and Matter, 2:37-60, 2004. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to those friends and colleagues who have kindly commented on various portions of this book, especially John Cobb, Mark Germine, Marcel Kinsbourne, Timothy Sprigge, Michael Trupp, Mohammad Valady and Michel Weber. I owe a special debt to Maria Pachalska, for taking on the task of editing this book, and especially for her advice and encouragement in the writing of it.

Introduction To each she appears in a unique form. She hides amid a thousand names and terms and is always the same. Goethe, On Nature

Value and science About 15 years ago I was invited to Woods Hole, to participate in a conference devoted to ethics and neuroscience (Harrington, 1992). I suppose the expectation was that I would speak on what neuroscience could contribute to moral theory, but frankly I was at a loss. Ethics may have a lot to say about science, its use and misuse, but is there a moral philosophy in neuro-scientific research? It seemed to me that scientific facts were already value-laden, and that when a science turns demonstration to valuation, it exploits its authority, not rooted in the findings of the science, but in the beliefs and values of the scientist. Scientific findings cannot be said to support a particular ethical position, but they can provide the data on which an informed ethical decision can be made. A fundamental difference with ethics is that in science, multiple points of view converge on a concept until it satisfies a majority of perspectives or is conceived as independent of any one of them. Scientific facts begin as values or beliefs, or so I would argue, and gradually become independent through verification and data. The data are objectified values, the verification is consensual judgment that allows fact to be distinguished from opinion, from value, from religious or other beliefs. Ethics can also achieve some independence from opinion by agreement, fairness, and force of argumentation. Philosophical ethics deals with religious beliefs largely by excluding them, but it cannot detach itself from value, since value is essentially what ethics is about. Ethics is not transparent to experimental testing or other sorts of validation, so there is no way to decide among competing beliefs other than by argument. However, argument alone is insufficient to carry a value to a fact. One can ask if rational argument is an appeal, whether it convinces by reason or persuades by preemption. The

24 limits of the method make it futile to answer skepticism with more arguments. That is why clinical, psychological or other grounds for ethical statements are important. What those grounds are is the topic of this book. From another standpoint, it is often claimed that scientific discourse is an example of that reasoned impartiality which constitutes the ideal of ethical judgment, where truth, not emotion or opinion, is the final arbiter. However, one can hardly overlook the hegemonic tendency in some fields of scientific thought - notably, in my experience, linguistics and computational psychology - to exclude contradictory beliefs or paradigms a priori, in the same way that strong religious faith may exclude alternative discourses. There is also a well-known bias toward the verification of a consensus rather than, as Popper proposed, attempts at its refutation. False beliefs can serve to motivate experiments and dominate arguments no less in science than in other domains of thought. We should be mindful of the warning by Dickinson (1937) that scientific thought has all the vices of theology without any of its virtues - the dogmatism, the “index expurgatorius,” and the whole machinery for suppressing speculation, without any of the capacity to impose upon the conscience a clear and well-defined scheme of life.

Such concerns were voiced by several of the speakers at the conference, among them my good friend Paul MacLean, a gifted scientist, evolutionary theorist and visionary, who endured withering criticism from many participants with a knee-jerk animosity to evolutionary thinking and a superficial understanding of his triune concept. The argument from evolution, which until recently has been severely attacked in psychology, has not developed to the point where it has a decisive influence on moral concepts, for it still tends to rely on a mix of animal research and personal credo. The challenge is to develop a concept of ethics in relation to an evolutionary brain model without falling into, as Tennyson put it, “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” But where is one to begin, lacking an account of the evolution of value, the neurology of moral concepts or universals in valueformation, given the obvious fact that conduct is so individual- and culturespecific? Since then, in a belated ésprit de balcon, I have come to better understand the inherent creativity of process and its continuum from mind to the minutest objects in physical nature. The concept of evolution as a gradual shift - with occasional quantum leaps - from the primitive to the developed or complex, is explained through pruning by competition for an

25 environmental niche. Evolution is the story of fitness in changing environments over millennia, with diversity attributed to both environmental pressure and novelty in growth. Environments shape organisms, but organisms create and adapt environments for their needs. A hive, a dam, a city, are inventions that both reflect and shape selection. The creative products of organisms become environments that shape their further development. In any event, the struggle of organisms to adapt to their Umwelt is thematic. The question I would ask is whether the main lines of the process of speciation are analogous to those in solitary organisms in the individuation of potential to intrinsic aim. Is speciation in the process of evolution analogous to specification in an act of cognition? Is the process through which species are formed related in some way to the struggle and adaptation that every entity goes through in order to become what it is at any given moment? The realization of an organism, or any object, is an intrinsic microtemporal process that is largely imperceptible. Does this process correspond with the putative extrinsic relations involved in the reproduction of organisms, viewed from the standpoint of populations and evolutionary time? If so, we could say that the evolutionary process of survival and diversification is the outer, large-scale or macroscopic expression of an inner, small-scale microscopic process of self-realization. This line of thinking suggests that an exposition of subjectivity and intrinsic relations should be the natural starting point for a theory of evolution, and more specifically, the evolution of value. Certainly there will be objections to the idea that there is such a thing as an evolutionary history of value. It is usually maintained that value appears for the first time in humans as a product of experience and culture, that it is not present in the material world, perhaps not even in sub-human organisms, except as something projected onto the world by the human mind, and even then, not as an innate disposition in the person, but as a result of learning. A subject assigns value to an object, or value is associated with a desire for the object, or the worth of the subject or his acts. The concept of value as an acquired taste, or as an external relation between a subject and an object, infects our interpretation of aesthetic and moral feeling. From this perspective, a judgment of beauty attached to an object endows it with aesthetic value, which it presumably does not possess in and of itself, and in a perfectly analogous way, a judgment of goodness endows the object with an ethical coloration. This is the ordinary concept of value, but it is a narrow one. It does not ask where value itself comes from, how it is

26 elaborated, whether it is present in sub-human organisms, and, if so, how far down the evolutionary scale it descends, even to its possible sources in non-cognitive material nature. Clearly, the human mind creates value, but value also deposits the human mind, and its antecedents. Speciation and specification The insight that led to a rethinking of the evolutionary sources of value came with the realization that energic processes in the becoming of physical entities are the origin, by way of an expansion from within, of will, desire and value in complex organisms. There is no Rubicon of cerebral complexity beyond which value (or consciousness) is possible, but rather a qualitative transformation of novelty and intrinsic value from inorganic process to the human brain. What this means is that the gradual evolution of value lies in the process of value creation itself, not in the diverse forms that it deposits, nor in the increasing ability to assign a different value to independent objects. This process can be traced from brain to particle. Darwin’s genius was to recognize patterns of speciation in diversity, and the forces that determine these patterns. But if the “struggle for existence” is interpreted as a becoming into being, Darwinian theory can be said to extend in two directions, outward to populations in the competitive trimming of abundance, and inward to particulars in the specification of possibility. In both instances, potentiality collapses to definiteness. The transformation of potential to actual is like that of a notyet-existent ground to a developing figure, in which the ground is the antecedent whole or a potential for realization and the figure is what is actually being realized out of that whole. Once the whole is realized, the being becomes an existent. This process is uniform in nature. The same pattern that creates a brain brings a particle into existence. We should not be surprised that what is most profound in nature is what is most universal, and thus imperceptible owing to its uniformity. But what could a brain and a particle have in common? One important feature is their existence over some minimal duration, i.e. their temporal thickness or extension. An entity exists over an epoch of time, the duration of which increases with greater complexity. The complexity does not result from an assemblage of more and more atomic parts, but amplifies the duration from within as it expands. To say that complexity results in mind or consciousness, or that consciousness or value emerges at a certain level of complexity, confuses complexity qua outcome with complexity qua

27 cause. One could say that the complexity fills the duration as it expands. This implies that the increasing complexity that eventuates in the human brain is not an explanation of value or consciousness, but is a product of the process leading to it. This process is a kind of growth. This is also true for the transformation of societies, in which change occurs less by revolution or coercion than by slow assimilation. This is also a form of growth, taking place through an increase in the intrinsic complexity of society, viewed as an organism rather than a collection or compilation of entities. The specification of an occasion in nature, in mind or in social life, is the product of constraints at the extreme of an explosive or chaotic creativity on one side, and a stagnant repetition on the other. In every recurrence there is a compromise of iteration and innovation. Novelty can be interpreted in a manner similar to value, as a ubiquitous feature of process that is concealed by constraints on object recurrence, not an intermittent deviation from causal determinism. We see novelty in temporal objects, such as music, not in spatial ones, such as trees. The novelty in a repeatable object like a tree is overlooked precisely because its recurrence is tightly constrained. Over time, we can see that something has happened, but we cannot see it happening. The relation of a duration to its contents is not that of a container to the things it contains, but rather that of a virtual whole to virtual parts. In a particle, whole and part are envelope and wave-form; in the mind, they are the mental state and its phase-transitions. A self, an idea, an object, are recurring sets of covert, sequential phases that unfold over a cycle of existence. For the hypothetical atom, this is one complete orbit of an electron. For the mind, it is a traversal of all its constituent phases. One complete cycle or epoch is a minimal state of existence. Process is not flux or flow, but is “chunked” into moments. A moment or a duration is a primitive category. “Instants” within the duration are the virtual constituents of that category. The persistence of an entity does not consist in its enduring in a static unchanging form, but in its recurrence as a near facsimile of its immediate prior state. Persistence is continuous replacement. The recurrence of a phase transition has a certain direction over its temporal thickness. The direction of this becoming, or forward momentum, is the urge to completion or satisfaction. Becoming imposes direction on replication. This is the forward thrust, the subjective aim, the advance in renewal, what Max Scherer in a description of Bergson and the élan vital

28 called the “joyous impulse in one’s existence.” The recurrence of the organism is personal survival, that of its progeny is bio-genetic survival. The recurrence or survival of organism and progeny are analogous to the individuation and replacement of acts or objects in thought. Adaptation in evolution or cognition is the reconciliation of abundance (potential) with limitation (constraint) against the backdrop of incessant creation and inexorable perishing. Categories A category generates its parts as a “timeless” frame of the instances it incorporates. Categories are timeless until their parts actualize, at which point the parts replace them. In this respect, a category is a potential for the becoming of temporal parts out of timeless wholes. Put differently, a becoming creates time (change) as serial parts individuate out of simultaneous wholes. The change over the thickness of an objectexistence, i.e. the process within the duration, is its becoming or intrinsic relationality. The category or duration of the object, once the becoming terminates, is its being or substantiality. Unlike the analogy to ground and figure, the whole does not exist prior to the becoming, it becomes. Nor is the whole built up by the becoming, which is atemporal until it terminates. The becoming constitutes but does not lead to the whole, for a becoming does not exist until it becomes what it is going to be. The relation of category and process or whole and part to being and becoming is the “deep structure” of the process of evolution. Exuberance and sculpting in evolutionary process magnify the microtemporal process through which categories generate instances that either perish or, as subordinate categories, undergo further transformation. This is a fundamental “law” of change. An entity becomes what it is and so defines itself as it occurs, whether a society in relation to all humanity, an individual in a society, or an atom against the void. Every motion is an orientation, every orientation a discrimination, every discrimination a valuation. Existence is the initial value. Meinong defined value as a judgment of the existence or nonexistence of an object. This turns value into a metapsychological attitude. The first value is the existence of the object. Realness and feeling appear later. What we perceive in the visual field, what we choose to look at, to notice, even unconsciously, is interest, thus valuation. What we think about or imagine is an implicit choice that occurs against a background of

29 thoughts not selected. Every act leaves every other possible act unborn. William James once reprimanded a student who referred to another professor as “absent-minded,” saying that he was “present-minded somewhere else.” A thought is what it is about, plus everything else unthought at the same time. Preference, i.e. choosing one thing and implicitly rejecting other possibilities, implies comparison among all the things that are possible at a given moment. Paul Ricoeur wrote that value (evaluation) is simply “the idea of something better than something else.” This may be true of diamonds, but it can hardly be true of daisies in a field. Everything real has value per se; interest merely isolates an object, it does not imply that the object of interest is actually better. There is a bias when the gaze settles on one daisy rather than another. What drives the focus of interest in a field of identical objects? When a person picks a daisy and gives it to a lover, we know that it is valued, but the value began with interest, and interest depends on existence. If the “fact” that a thing exists is a fact about that thing, both the existence of the thing and the fact that it exists are impersonal values. A fact is a true statement or a veridical observation that cannot be denied or refuted. It is an instance in a category that is coherent with like instances and opposed to those that are inconsistent. These same features are also characteristics of value. A daisy is an object, a factual observation of existence, its color is another such fact. These are discriminations, tributaries of value. Objects grow out of the self as extensions of desire. The duration of the mind/brain state is the body of an object. The boundaries of the state are its inception in the unconscious and its termination in the world. Feeling differs at different segments in this transition, from a subjective pole in desire to an objective pole in worth. The mind does not confer value on otherwise valueless things, but distributes its own intrinsic feeling into the objects it creates. The object is revived into perception along with an extract of feeling: minimally its realness and interest, then, as interest increases, its value or worth. Subjective value is the trickle of feeling that flows into the object as it exteriorizes. This value is independent of intrinsic feeling in the entity, i.e. the process that accounts for the existence of the thing in the first place. The intrinsic value of one daisy in a field is intrinsic to the perception of the field, not the daisy as such, which has its own intrinsic feeling independent of the observer. Relativity is conditioned on a realist perspective, since it relativizes claims to knowledge by taking the world as a neutral field to which

30 meaning is added. Similarly, truth determined by third-person criteria takes content to be autonomous and grounds it in scientific thought. The veracity of a belief depends on its verification or consistency with the knowledge base of the community. In contrast, first-person criteria evoke the antecedent process that surrounds and delivers content and the dependence of fact on context. Facts or values arise in a context of self-realization. Over time, a personal value or experience becomes an impersonal fact. The subjective or first-person love of John for Mary, or John’s profession of love for Mary, is a value ascribed to Mary as object by John as subject. The objective or third-person claim that John loves Mary is an experiential fact that has been (or at least claims to be) verified. The less bound a belief or value is to an individual perspective, the more factual it becomes. According to this way of thinking, the world is not just a container filled with facts waiting to be discovered, and then evaluated; facts do not exist prior to value, which pertains as much as to the atomic weight of helium or the cholinergic innervation of the heart as it does to John’s love for Mary. States of affairs begin as intuitions, then personal beliefs permeated by values, and grow into experiential or scientific facts. The intense value of a fact to the one who experiences or discovers it may be of only mild interest to someone else. The fact is still a value, though it is shorn of personal feeling. Gradually, the affective tonality of a fact becomes so distilled that it seems value-free. Scientific facts are like this. Science ignores value in the pursuit of present fact, but in so doing, it also ignores the past that forms much of present desire. We intuit the affective valence in the personal history of novel facts before they wither in habit and consensus, in the passionate intensity of those who argue for their truth. The ferocity of argumentation over seemingly neutral facts is often surprising in those we assume to be detached and reasonable, such as scientists or philosophers. The mode of valuation in this transition undergoes a fluid shift from self to world according to the dominant phase in the traversal. The self is carried into objects, so that the other individuates along with the self, not as an external relation but as a partition of the self's own valuations. Feeling, then, is derived with the other into the world. The transition from concept to image to object or particular is an outflow of nested categories. It is also a shift from subjective drive and desire to objective value or worth. Kant wrote that freedom is the inner value of the world. The evolution and momentary genesis of intrinsic value within the duration of things as they arise, from realness to will to desire to worth, makes

31 freedom a genuine possibility. Moral philosophy and psychology Moral philosophy engages psychology at the peril of being antirational, and ignores psychology at the risk of being irrelevant. The history of this topic is the effort to salvage reason at the expense of feeling, as the objective usurps more and more of the ground of moral thought. The objectification of concepts or propositions and the resultant separation of feeling and idea reifies mental contents as objects of thought. The inner life is diminished to the extent it is objectified, while the objectified surface of the mind is magnified as its subjective portion is reduced. This tendency to divide the world into an internal (mental) and external (physical) portion transfers object-like appearances to descriptions of internal constituents. Mental content becomes a causal unit of thought instead of a terminus of its antecedent phases. This leads to the antithesis of subject and object, appetite and reason, desire and duty, need and obligation, character and conduct, and so on. Indeed, the very act of reflection on values or desires turns them into objects of thought. The result is that the process of valueformation or desiring becomes a static content for analysis, its dynamic eliminated or replaced in the process of ratiocination. This was the argument of Russell, who claimed that ethics, as a branch of psychology, should study the objects of desire in the same way as desire itself, for the objects of desire are not desired by an act of reflection. In some accounts of value, such as that of Brentano and his colleagues (Eaton, 1930), concept and feeling were a unified construct. For Meinong, “an emotion without content is no less absurd than an idea without content,” but he could not resist giving priority to the concept (and, by implication, to reason). He wrote, “the idea is primary as against the emotion, (it is) the psychological presupposition of the emotion.” Conversely, Mandelbaum (1955) argued that emotions are concomitants of moral judgments, not their sources. In my view, the categorical primes that underlie cognition are infused from the very outset with drive energy. Idea and feeling, concept and process, are dual aspects at each phase. The efforts of the Austrian school came to naught because of their dependence on faculty psychology, the effort at quantification and, with some exceptions, e.g. Ehrenfels, the lack of genetic or process-based thinking. In such accounts the lack of an independent source of theory construction, such as neuroscience, evolution, or clinical studies, tends to invite thought-

32 experiments as illustrations of theory and at once arguments for its validity. Psychological faculties and their interaction with feeling or obligation are imputed from anecdotes that appeal to the very same intuitions that are driving the psychology. The present work, though also intuitive in this sense, relates to a model of the mind/brain developed in pathological case study involving patients with organic brain damage. Some details of this model are described in the initial chapters here, but the reader is advised to consult the earlier works for a full exposition. Phases in the transition from the subjective to the objective refer to different levels of explanation, according to the emphasis they receive. The core self and character, motivation, and the transition to choice are fully within the sphere of psychology (1). Choice and reasoned decision in action or moral judgment are the province of ethics (2), while the effects of conduct on others engages sociology and law (3). Yet these seemingly obvious boundaries are sometimes fluctuating and fuzzy. For some, the self is a social construct. Is value a magnet or an impulse? Are customs and obligations determinants of behavior, sources of instilled values, or bases for moral judgment? Conduct in accordance with the law can arise as a personal value, an obligation that is apprehended as partly external, or one that is fully coercive. This is illustrated in the following diagram.

Fig. 1.

Internal and external factors shaping conduct

The transition to conduct is a continuous series, reminiscent of

33 Dewey’s comment that, with respect to character and conduct, “we are dealing not with two different things but with two poles of the same thing.” The “same thing” here is a sequence of subjective phases, in which need distributes into personal and impersonal values (customs, obligations, duties, etc.). Acts and objects are parallel streams. If an action (conduct) is one pole of the subjective, so is an object, and not just the object but the world of which it is a part. This world enriches the self through experience and learning, not by filling a naive brain with “information,” but by fractionating innate categories into sub-sets of knowledge, belief and value. Value formation The process of value-formation begins with drive-representations, innate dispositions that discharge into those desires which are inherently self-preservative and egocentric. This discharge leads to actions that are by their very nature self-serving, though a self-serving act in this sense may be selfish, defensive or cooperative, as in aggression or flight, acquisition or sharing. The act is adaptive, whether it manifests as self-assertion or self-denial. The physical and social environment impel the driverepresentations to articulate the core self into ego-centric and otherdirected pursuits. Custom and nurture sculpt the innate tendencies to lay down the seeds of character, and the relative emphasis in each act is on the different value-streams. In this way, endogenous patterns of valuation, shaped by learning, individuate competing values in the potential of the self to the finality of conduct. The transition to conduct through implicit or explicit choice is intrapsychic. How then does the external world impact on this process? A subjectivist theory assumes the burden of explaining the assimilation of experience to an active cognition. Most of us feel we interact with events and in this way gather information from, and respond to, a changing environment. The mind receives, absorbs and evaluates events that gradually shape the personality. The do’s and don’ts of childhood, the responsibilities and duties taken on as we mature, the society that permits, encourages or dissuades, the law that judges and punishes - all this seems to be imposed on the mind “from outside.” Suppose, however, that what we perceive is as much a product of the brain’s activity as what we do. If the development from a concept to an object is like the transition from character to action, every encounter will be an outcome. Bergson wrote eloquently of perception as an active search.

34 If perception is like action, action must also be like perception. An action is perceived by way of recurrent collaterals of motor discharge. The awareness of an action going out into the world is no less perceptual than the awareness of an object in the world. The object formation deposits an image in the same way that an action deposits a movement, whether one perceives one’s own actions, a visual scene, a facial expression, a written text, an oral argument or a command. The mind is modeled to an image of the real by sensation - “feedback” or a fresh registration - that sculpts the perceptible array of object-like appearances. Specifically, endogenous process undergoes permutation through delimitation by sensory impressions at multiple phases. This concept is illustrated in the diagram below.

Fig. 2.

The parallel formation of conduct and perception

If one can set aside the traditional assumption that perception occurs through the passive reception and construction of sensory data that are generated outside the perceiver and become ingredient in the mind, many aspects of the theory expounded here will begin to make sense. But this approach will still present difficulties for the average reader. It is easy to

35 accept the principle that acts are outcomes, but action differs from perception in that it remains in the space of the body, while perceptions are vividly planted in the external world. Images and dreams are fleeting private phenomena that contrast with the persistent “solids” of public space. For this reason, the notion that objects are products of the imagination will seem puzzling and disquieting. It is difficult to believe that a gun put to one’s head is an endogenous image. Obligations that are felt with conviction seem to differ from those that are enforced by some outside authority, but in what way, other than the obvious role of punishment? Is someone who fights an oppressive government at war with phantoms in his imagination? A law or custom that assimilates to a personal value becomes intrapsychic or subjective. Yet one that has not assimilated is perceived through the same process and is no less subjective. An example in ethics might be the uncertain objectivity of duty. We often feel obligations to others as originating or consisting in a certain pressure, even if there is no one “out there” to enforce them. Promises are of this nature. The line between obligation and coercion is fluid. We feel coerced in the absence of an object. What determines the force of an impersonal obligation, a command, a threat, etc., is a complex matter that depends on how the perception is interpreted, and on the role of choice and agency. Otherwise, if one obligation is private and another public, with the latter conceived as physical and the former as mental, there will be an unbreachable gulf from mind to nature. We will never account for how commands, or for that matter any events, ever “get inside the head.” The main point here, and the starting point for almost everything that follows, is that fully objective experiences are also subjective, in that they too emanate from the subject’s own beliefs and values. It is not that coercion represents a personal value, but that an event, coercive or not, is perceived and responded to in the context of character and personality. Subjectivity applies not only to pains, after-images and other qualia, but to all perceptual experience. As Royce (1919) put it, “the mind sees itself in all it sees.” To claim that imagination maps to “reality” through the elimination of alternative “routes” is merely to say that perceptions objectify in the mind, not that a world is created without a template.

36 Self and other Another way to approach a subjective theory of ethics is to examine the growth of ordinary objects. Most of us can accept that a perceived tree is a mental image (there is no tree in my brain, only a neural configuration), and that it remains subjective when we perceive it in a painting. A solitary person looking at a tree or a picture does not interact with it, and can be said to have a private, intrapsychic experience, a sense of the object as an image, appreciated for itself and not just for the sake of the thoughts and feelings evoked by it. The boundary of mind and world can be viewed from either side in aesthetics. In the step to ethics, however, this boundary tends to solidify, as concessions to others come into play. But if we look closely at the objects of aesthetic and ethical judgment, we see a continuum from the one to the other. There is no point where an object leaves the mind and becomes part of an external, non-cognitive world, nor is there a point when the object leaves its “physical” location in the world and becomes a “purely” psychic fact. The continuity of mind and world does not suddenly come into question when another person intervenes. The perception of ordinary objects is transitional to aesthetic objects, as well as to the objects of moral feeling. To bring ethics into relation with the mind/brain requires a radical revision of both psychology and ethics. The naive realism or direct perception of scientific thought obscures the relation of want to ought. Interioricity and objectivity are at stake in every moral choice. The theory expounded in this book is a blend of idealism and naturalism that attempts to resolve the objectivity of ethical strictures in a monist theory of process. Underlying this attempt is an account of self and other as tributaries of feeling. The relation of self to other is not a mere juxtaposition of separate personalities in time and space. The more basic problem for a radical subjectivism concerns the status of the other as an object in the mind of the observer. One would not want to say that the existence of an object (or person) depends on its being thought of, even if its existence is inferred from its occurrence in thought. Others are presumably independent parts of reality that exist along with the world in which they appear. Yet the existence of the other is, ultimately, an hypothesis about the origins of a perception, just as a perception or a concept is an hypothesis about the entities it models or represents. It is my belief that the problems of subjectivism, far from being obstacles to a theory of subject-object relations, are the key to understanding the nature of value, compassion and the “place” of the other in the matrix of the self.

37 The subjectivity of experience raises questions about the nature of the real. Certainly, objects can be felt as real even when they are illusory, while the more object-like the image, the more real it tends to feel. The feeling of realness rests on the coherence within and across private and public objects rather than a correspondence of objects to concepts or inferred material entities. The reality of an object, however, or for that matter any entity, differs from the feeling of realness, since illusory objects can be felt as real, and “real” objects can be felt as illusory. When we compare images, dreams and illusions to perceptions, we judge the former to be unreal or less real than perceptions. This is usually a retrospective judgment, since the person is ordinarily not able to make this distinction during a dream, or in many instances of hallucination. One can infer from patterns in the arising of objects that the blquote real” is established in the same way, namely, over an epoch of feeling as the entity comes into being or existence. We tend to assume that objects are real, and reason from them backward to concepts, treating objects as public facts that can be cut off from their ancestry and verified by consensus. In this way, we extend the same factual status to concepts that we give to objects. A theory of truth based on the “correspondence” of a concept to an object takes the object as a real thing in the world, with the judgment of correspondence a measure of the reality of the concept. When objects are interpreted as creations of the mind, thus phenomenal or “non-real,” the measure of their reality depends on a comparison to hypothetical noumena which are assumed to be “more real,” indeed, ultimately real, though their existence is inferred rather than experienced. The unknowable is then the criterion of reality: a thing is real when its existence seems in no way dependent on my knowledge of it, and conversely, if the existence of a thing seems dependent on my knowing it, then by the same token the thing seems unreal, a “mental” rather than “physical” reality. We assume that we can rely on the correspondence of mental images to external objects because they are both contents of experience, but what can be said of the correspondence of perceptual objects to material entities? We believe that our objects are accurate “representations” of the entities they point to, but we cannot verify this belief other than by its adaptive value or utility, for example, through the actions and statements of others. Survival is the final test of the pragmatic truth of belief and its derivative concepts and objects. But if concepts anticipate objects but do not correspond to them, and objects cannot be mapped to noumena, how can

38 we determine if thoughts are veridical? To what do they refer? As images are related to objects, and objects to noumena, each world of experience is interpreted by way of a proximity to the real. The outward relation of an object to a hypothetical entity, or its inward relation to an origin in the absolute, is not dissimilar to the relation of a concept to a universal. In both, the temporal world of the mind comes into relation with the timeless world of the absolute. Process monism assumes a material world passing through stages in the evolution of value. The rudimentary feeling that creates an inorganic entity gives it existence. The entity has an “experience” of feeling that is a precursor of value. This is an experience without an “experiencer”. Brains are higher entities that create objects and subjects to experience them. There is no gap from the illusory to the real. We do not ask if a dog sees a physical or psychic bone, because dogs and bones, outside our perception, are assumed to exist as entities in physical nature. However, the problem of appearance and reality is the same for us as for the dog. A dog has a perceptual system that depends on sensory data to generate objects. The problem only becomes more acute when the architecture of the subjective is articulated into a phenomenal self that acts on a world of inner and outer contents. The sense of detachment is enhanced by concepts having no obvious correlates in the world. With its awareness of a no-longer-existing past and a not-yet-existing future, the mind seems fully distinct from physical nature. It is really a question of how immersed a mind is in natural process. A dog is one with nature, more so than a human or a chimpanzee, less so than a fish; its present is part of its physical passage, its brain is a source of behavior within a framework of world process. In human cognition, the enlarged duration of the present, the awareness of past and future, divides mind from nature, self from world. We can extrapolate from human experience and infer that each entity – a dog, a fish, a particle - has an “experience” limited to its own experiential field. For us, that field includes a self, concepts, and objects. The evolutionary continuity that supports this generalization lies in a progressive enrichment of feeling. Subjectivism, or the “view from inside,” claims we can only know our own ideas. This is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that each mind realizes a portion of the wholeness of universal mind or, put differently, actualizes some portion of natural process. In a monist theory of process, a mind is conceived as a duration within a wider category of feeling. Every entity, including a mind, is a local manifestation of the ground of nature or

39 physical reality. With regard to value and moral feeling, the present theory is naturalist, in that moral judgments have an empirical basis in evolutionary process. If value is intrinsic and runs all the way through, from bottom to top, there are no value-free facts. The old quandary that a value judgment (ought) cannot be derived from a fact (is) finds a new resolution when we realize that facts are derived from values. The principle that underlies the search for a neural theory of value is that the assumptions which guide our concepts of the mind and those which guide our concepts of moral feeling and judgment must be coherent and flow from an authentic psychology, which does not compartmentalize these concepts. The present study, then, is an attempt at a comprehensive rethinking of moral objects in relation to a process model of the mind/brain. My effort will be to show that a subtle emphasis on one or another aspect in the realization of acts and objects out of conceptual-feelings (“drive-representations”) can explain the dynamic nature of desire and obligation, choice and necessity, agency and recipience. The outcome of this inquiry has been for me, and I hope it will be for the reader as well, a deeper appreciation of the place of the other in the “structure” of the self’s own valuations. The Good The most challenging task for this or any account of value is the relation of value to goodness. Value is a subjective continuum of intrinsic feeling that culminates in the polarities of desire and worth across the transition from self to world. Goodness is a judgment that seems to have greater “objectivity,” since it is applied by others to the distribution of values in a subject and their expression in conduct. The designation of an act as good or bad involves a more or less impersonal determination of the moral quality of a personal valuation. The judgment is an approval or disapproval of the value expressed in the act, and is extrinsic to the act of valuing itself. But the judgment is also a value, a value placed on a value, in principle, a more objective, i.e. impersonal evaluation of a subjective value. For example, a desire to help or hurt another person involves a personal value. This value is morally neutral until it is approved or disapproved by others according to some customary standard. The impersonal judgment of the personal valuation as good or bad is then a metavaluation. When approval or disapproval hardens into custom or law, it becomes a moral rule or obligation. Of course, a primary value, such as

40 the desire to help others, is conditioned by one's upbringing, so there may be uncertainty whether it is a subjective desire or a felt obligation, while an obligation or moral judgment involves a subjective valuation that only seems objective because it depends on shared or culturally-determined criteria. From an external or objective standpoint, then, moral conduct tends to be judged in terms of what is reasonable or fair, or what conforms to social norms, not in terms of a paradigm of saintly or altruistic behavior, or what might be considered perfection. We admire saints, but we do not consider their actions to be reasonable standards by which to judge ourselves or others. The “heroic virtues” of a saint are aspirations, models, ideals, but not rules to which we are bound. What we really expect from ourselves, and each other, is social adaptation. Above all, one needs to fit in with family and community. Bad conduct is discouraged in various ways, and if very bad it is punished, but conduct at the altruistic pole is neither expected nor required, and in practice it is seldom rewarded. This has even been made into a popular joke: “No good deed goes unpunished.” Even charity and hospitality are values that are usually not obligatory, at least not in the West. An objective morality is a calculus of personal advantage in relation to the norms of the society, and the implicit goal is to keep the equation in balance. Economic and contractual theories and other forms of Utilitarianism are also based on a calculus model. To be sure there have been instances in history when there has been a general appeal to an ideal good, say, a maxim or Golden Rule, or when a theoretical ideal is imposed on a population, such as Marxism or Communism. Ordinarily, however, the calculus of law and custom lays down the limits of permissible conduct, which may or may not be conducive to the common good of the community, but it discourages acts that are harmful. The calculus cannot be indifferent to personal advantage or pleasure, even though there is a sense in which any advantage to one can be construed as a disadvantage to others. This calculus, viewed through a wide-scope lens, produces a moral “butterfly” effect, in which every act has consequences for the entire world, as the flap of a butterfly’s wing over Peking sets air currents in motion that produce a blizzard in Alaska. However, in everyday life this pertains largely to immediate effects, especially to malicious actions, since the ill effect on others of a personal benefit is often indirect, distributed and mitigated by an appreciation of differences in relative merit. For example, the inequity in salary between the CEO and the assembly-line workers in a

41 factory is attributed, even by the workers, to an asymmetry in talent. The problems of third world countries are often conceived as the effects of political ineptitude and corruption, about which the individual can do little. It may be that 100 starving children could be fed for the price of one meal in a fine restaurant, and I believe there is a moral imperative in this equation, but the link is tenuous and discontiguous, and the problems of equitable distribution so fraught with difficulty, that the remoter consequences of personal benefits are not a part of the calculus we live by. The calculus extends to human societies from animal communities (see the review in Ridley, 1997). As with all economic theories of conduct, altruism is not purely moral, for sacrifice or self-denial does not result from good character or compassion, but from a computation of relative advantage. The calculus no doubt accurately reflects human nature, and may be the best we can expect of each other on a daily basis. It is not a moral philosophy, however, but rather a practical compromise that is transitional from the brute selfishness of an extreme Darwinism to the disinterested self-denial of an extreme altruism. In a word, it is selfishness, moderated. I would guess, perhaps a bit too cynically, that 90% of the people on this earth behave in accordance with this calculus, with the remaining 10% divided between the two extremes of malevolence and altruism, between the Hitlers and the Mother Teresas. Certainly the calculus guides decisions of state. We do not usually hold states responsible for acts that are motivated by their self-interest, so long as they are not evil or hurtful; indeed, for a leader to act against the interests of the state, except in the most absolutist of regimes, would be political suicide. In the same way, the objective perspective - the calculus - does not hold individuals responsible for a lack of goodness, only for acts that are hurtful or wrong. An objective ethic applied to the subjectivity of individual choice considers action from the standpoint of what is just and fair, but both of these words come from the lexicon of the calculus. An objectivity derived from social norms can – and usually does – replace a subjectivity of individual character. A statesman who chooses the lesser of two evils could as well be said, if the choice is forced, to have chosen the greater good, since according to the calculus, good and bad are scalar relations: whatever is less evil is by the same token more good. One could also say of an individual that a choice of the greater good is a choice of the lesser of two evils. We say that a dictator is evil, but not that the state is evil. Yet if politics is the “science of power,” and a leader is someone who has been successful in this

42 science, one can judge whether that power is an end in itself or is used for beneficent or destructive purposes. By definition, only despots seek to accumulate power for no purpose other than their need to possess it (Plato was perhaps the first to see the “lust for power” as something fundamentally erotic), but even in democratic states there are leaders who acquire power merely to satisfy their need for deference. A comparison of the morality of individuals and states hinges on the role of subjectivity or the psychology of choice and action. Many moral terms are simply not applicable to states. For example, states can have a legal system that is just, but not altruistic. The law may show leniency or mercy, but not forgiveness or compassion. States do not show the selfdenial that is required of moral individuals. The policies of states and the morality of free individuals reconcile a spectrum of norms, but they cannot be held to the strict observance of a moral ideal. To be sure, ideals of morality do exist, for states and for individuals, but those who expect them to be realized are usually satirized as naive or simple-minded, even if simplicity is the heart of morality. For the state, the ideal requires a willingness to transcend national interests for the sake of a global or transnational perspective, according to which the state pursues the common good, not just that of its own citizens. A state that aggressively pursues an ideal, say, to extend communism or democracy, even by force if there is cultural or political resistance, is rightly suspect, because the pursuit requires, or is aligned with, an augmentation of power. The fact that communism has been superceded by capitalism points to the success of the calculus assumed by the latter, not the inherent moral superiority of one system over the other. The calculus will always dominate the truly moral, as the ideal entails a personal, not a social morality. The higher morality of the individual is centered in the community, not the self, but it is not the community that engages the ideal, it is the individual, or a collection of like-minded individuals. We can say that the claims of the other should be prior to those of the self, as the claims of humanity as a whole should be prior to those of the state, but it is the subjective character of the individual to which all claims of morality must be submitted for judgement. The moral calculus, then, is merely a guide for co-existence that allows those who can exploit its limits to flourish at the expense of those who are its victims. It will always veer in the direction of self-interest. Since it is an objective account of behavior centered on the adaptive side of conduct, it cannot progress to an ideal, for this is always centered in the

43 individual. The morality of states can be much less than, but no greater than, the sum of the moral sentiments of its citizens. To be sure, great leaders of unusual moral stature can serve as an example. The saint or great soul who exhibits exemplary moral character can be a model for others by appealing to what is noble in their character. Depending on the sphere of influence of the moral leader, a monk in his cell or a King in his palace, when ordinary people are inspired in sufficient numbers the state will change. There is a slow growth of moral conscience, leading outward from the subject to society, a renewal that has to be replicated for each new generation. In a word, a moral calculus is an extension of pre-moral behavior in communal animals to human social adaptation. It is a compromise between egoism and sacrifice, not a truly moral system. For the latter, an ideal is needed, but one of personal, and thus subjective virtue, not that of a state, except in so far as its leaders strive toward its realization.

Time and morality …the assumption that the intuition of a temporal interval takes place in a now, in a temporal point, appears to be self-evident and altogether inescapable. Brentano (1905) Time is a critical dimension in moral decision and judgment. This appears in the opposition between automatic or impulsive action and action that is reasoned and deliberate. One occurs in the immediate present, the other involves future considerations. The distinction between killing in self-defense and revenge is made along temporal lines. Subjective and objective morality often turns on the axis of time present and future. If explicit choice is essential for moral action, the present is occupied with thought, until it is replaced by action, whereas a morality based on character is assessed in relation to immediate action. The more immediate the action, the more it is judged a sign of character: for example, spontaneous altruism is a mark of virtue precisely because there was apparently no time to make a rational calculation of future benefit. The role of character that is central to individual acts or decisions is less pronounced

44 in the decisions of a state. The choices for individual action are judged in terms of immediate effects, those of states in terms of future consequences. Take the example of a surgeon who, in the light of the Hippocratic oath, operates to save the life of a killer who in all likelihood will kill again, or a person who deems it wrong to kill an infant Hitler. Such an individual may be excused for acting on good intentions in the present, and is not criticized for discounting the effects in the future of an action based on present intent. In contrast, a state that installs a leader who turns out to be evil, or a state that attempts to liberate another country by overthrowing a despotic leader, but only adds to its misfortune, is harshly judged for its lack of foresight, precisely in the light of the outcome, not the intention. Unlike individuals, states have policies, not intentions, and thus are subject to a retrospective judgment that individuals are spared. What is interpreted on the basis of a future outcome as the result of an immoral policy in a state is attributed to bad luck or poor judgment, not immorality, in an individual. Personal morality tends to rest in the present. One way of facilitating present action is to negate the force of contingencies that only increase retrospection and postpone decision. If we say it is inexcusable to kill a person or an animal, we take an absolute position that is not easily reconciled with contingencies such as killing in self-defense, the nature of the person or animal to be killed, the context in which the killing occurs (in hunger, passion, “cold blood,” etc.). To appeal to contingency is to mitigate the force of any one reason, and to incorporate a mix of possible options and outcomes in the making of a decision. This tends to weaken the force of resolve and conviction. A multiplicity of reasons and a branching of possible effects complicates – and thus dilutes – the prescriptions of a simple morality, such as the Decalogue. That is why we consider the good person to be someone who acts in a good way instinctively, while we consider a good leader or state to be one that acts with caution and deliberation. These issues will be discussed at greater length later on in this book. Here, the essential point is the importation of time into moral theory. Conclusion A final, personal note. There are, it seems to me, two paths to knowledge: • an accumulation of facts through a wide exposure, where the

45 wisdom that is achieved is in the coherence of the totality of what is understood, and • an expansion of interest from a single original focus of absorption, which provides in its development an organic unity to the knowledge that is acquired. The former gathers leaves from the book of knowledge to a synchronic unity of external relations. The latter, my own path, nourishes a tree of knowledge from a planted seed to a diachronic unity of internal relations. The entirety of my work is a single theory, different aspects of which, as they came into view, have been singled out for a systematic exploration. Continuity is a major theme. This is a deliberate contrast to the fragmentation and proliferation characteristic of modern studies, which make unity an ever more distant goal. The continuity of morphogenesis and microgenesis is one example, that of image and object, or intention and action, another. The search for continuity extends the theory to other, progressively wider domains of experience. Subjective time and change cut across these domains. The path from neuropsychology to moral philosophy has taken me from a profession to a life, from a narrow field of scholarly investigation to problems that go to the heart of my being, as a theory that began with clinical disorders now taps into the wellsprings of human belief and value. The theory by now has a life of its own, exerting pressure on its author, who often feels that he has become an instrument to its growth. The pressure is to excavate my own unconscious leanings in the widest possible way, rather than delimit the work to a contemporary discourse or engage in what I consider to be futile and interminable disputes (e.g. Searle, 2002). In all honesty, I would say that the attempt to uncover the deep sources of self and other in character and personality is not motivated by a desire to convey a theory to the reader, or to persuade or convince. It is rather a conceptual diary, an archeology of thought, a voyage of personal discovery to which the reader is cordially invited. Some time ago I confessed to a good friend that if god came to me in a vision and said my books would never be read until the end of time, they would still to me be worth the writing. He was amused at this remark, and his amusement made me a little self-conscious. But a short time later, I happened to see a filmed interview with one of my favorite writers, JorgeLuis Borges, in which he said he would continue to write even if his books should fall to the bottom of the ocean. When asked, appropriately enough, why then bother to publish them, he replied, wittily, that “the only reason

46 to publish is to avoid endless revision.” Endless revision is not only a writer’s dream (or nightmare), it is also a theory of mind. It invokes novelty, appearance and disappearance, and continuous replacement. I have not worked in isolation, and my science and studies in psychology are central to the theory. Yet, in the writing, I have worked on the example of Meister Eckart, who wrote “we must do our works as if no one existed, as if no one lived, and as if no human being had ever appeared upon the earth.” A book, for better or worse, devoured or dismissed, grasped or misunderstood, is a record of the sustained growth of an idea in the mind of the writer. It has been important for me personally to extend the microgenetic idea to the greatest possible extent, since I have little expectation that others will take up the task, certainly not with equal commitment and enthusiasm. “In the sphere of the mind,” Wittgenstein wrote, “someone’s project cannot usually be continued by anyone else, nor should it be.” In a more pessimistic forecast, George Tyrell wrote that “the only way to preserve the spirit of a founder from petrifaction is to let his work die with him.” For me, writing is an aesthetic that is grounded in a life-long reflection on the basis of phenomenal experience in brain process, beginning with observations of individuals with brain damage, and leading to the present analysis of moral concepts. Only one who has made the journey with the unique experience of a lifetime, and the times of that life, never to be repeated, can come through on the other side to see, en bloc as it were, the consistency of the whole. Len Goodman (1996) cited the Hagigah as saying, “whoever reflects on four things, it were a mercy had he never come into the world: what is above, what is beneath, what is before and what is after.” I trust the reader will be more charitable.

Chapter 1. What is an object? In the human spirit, as in the universe, nothing is higher or lower; everything has equal rights to a common center which manifests its hidden existence precisely through this harmonic relationship between every part and itself. Goethe

Objects and events An infant analyzes the world into objects, and this analysis, reinforced in each “pulse of consciousness,” gradually hardens into a theory of the mind and the world. The result is that the unconscious matrix of relations out of which objects develop is broken into a multiplicity of separate parts, an infinite number of elements in a world that seems a huge jigsaw puzzle of moving and stationary pieces. Perception carves the world into objects that conscious thought seeks to re-connect. External relations are then assumed to knit together the fictitious joints created by analytic intelligence. We sense the unity in the coherence of the self and the world, but when we try to reconstruct this unity from the elements of experience into which it has decomposed, we run into insurmountable problems. Since an object is a product of cognition, not a starting point of perception, the question of what an object is depends on where its spatial and temporal boundaries are drawn. The spatial boundary is central to the distinction of substance and property, the temporal boundary determines sameness or identity. Both boundaries are involved in the isolation of the object or event from its antecedent cognitive or perceptual (conceptual) phases. When a spatial boundary is established, the continuing analysis of the object delineates its properties, some adventitious, others more basic. The temporal boundary establishes the object or event to be compared with a subsequent event. We apprehend an identity of a substance over time, even though its properties may vary. Indeed, the force of belief in the existence of an immutable substance and its identity over occurrences is such that the concept of sameness that is threatened by a philosophy of flux is asserted in the continuance of an inert i essence, even if the object has

48 been all but transformed. These problems of space and time, identity and change, or object and process are critical to any philosophy that refuses to ignore its metaphysical roots. Wherever we begin, we are confronted by the same issues. Take the idea of a person, for example. The Lockean definition is “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places.” Here, one set of attributes includes different aspects of mentation - intelligence, reason, reflection, thought, and consciousness of sameness or identity over successive moments - while another includes different names for substance - being, itself, thing. The definition postulates an object or substance with intellectual faculties, one of which, consciousness, maintains identity across occasions. If an “intelligent” computer had a reflexive capacity, or could do a match-mismatch comparison across states, it would qualify as a person under this definition. What role does consciousness play in the experience of sameness? Is consciousness the thread that weaves successive instants together, or do successive pulses of consciousness pose the same problem as we confront in trying to understand their objects or contents? As for awareness of sameness, John may think he is the same or a different person than he was a year ago, others may disagree. Cases of altered consciousness may be unaware of a change in their mental state, though the change is evident to others. If one has to ask, am I the same person I was a moment ago, self-identity is already endangered. Some would say a “brain in a vat” is a person, but a person is a construct of mind, organs and body parts. The mind can be decomposed to constituent “functions,” such as feelings, memories and propositions, and its substrates to non-cognitive units such as cells, tissues and proteins. The mind of a person can undergo social and historical expansion to incorporate a tradition and a community of others. The eyes, the brain and the heart are separate objects, containers of smaller ones, i.e. cells, tissues, and at the same time parts of a larger one, e.g. a person, which is embedded in still larger, one could even say extra-personal, contexts. What a person or any object is depends on where it happens to fall in this upward/downward hierarchy. This in turn depends on what locus of time and space is of interest to the observer. Before identity, the temporal boundary distinguishes an object from an event. Some objects are more event-like than others. The more it is like an event, the less it is like an object. A bird in flight is more like an event than a bird on a branch. Lightning is still more of an event. A storm, and the

49 rainbow that follows, are events, but are they objects? The difference between objects and events is captured to some extent in the use of nouns and verbs or subjects and predicates. Russell pointed out that the mere fact of talking about terms and relations puts them on an equal footing and suggests that they are the same kind of thing. Emmet (1985) notes that events are often “verb nominalizations,” e.g. the flight of the bird, which is a grammatical maneuver used to turn events into static objects. If an object moves or is effected by another object, the change in the nature or position of the object is interpreted as an event. An event is usually thought of as something that happens to an object, though some objects, such as lightning, speech or music, are so transient or event-like that some people would hesitate to call them objects at all. This is also true for illusions like rainbows or mirages, and for ideas, dreams and other mental events. Most objects, however, are conceived as substances that encounter change rather than events in change, whether slow or rapid. A block of ice that slowly melts would be considered an object, the melting would be considered an event, but if the ice rapidly liquefied, there would be no object - the block to be labeled as such, only the event of the melting. One can say that the distinction of object and event, especially with respect to a solitary object, depends on its rapidity of change, or the degree to which the object is transformed. A person - indeed, every organic entity - acts, reacts, ages. These changes affect or express the activity of the person, but the person is not usually thought to change intrinsically in the course of the action, unless it is transformative, such as an injury, or aging over some period of time. When a bird flies from one branch to another, the flight is an event, but the bird does not change. When the bird dies, that is also an event, but the bird itself undergoes a change in form. When an object becomes an event, for example, when ice rapidly melts or a bird dies, the object disappears in the event. An event can occur in relation to an object, as an activity of the object - the bird in flight, a person speaking - or as an activity that affects but does not transform the object, e.g. when a person is thrown to the ground. In such cases, the event is like a property the object acquires. The property can be constitutive, such as flying for a bird, or accidental, e.g. the color of the bird. The constitutive properties are presumed to be those without which the event is inconceivable or those with causal efficacy, even if this is often not possible to determine with accuracy. Some properties are irrelevant or tangential to the event, e.g. the species of the bird, where it nests, etc. Such properties become essential if the event is

50 construed in relation to everything else that occurs in the universe “at the same time.” In this connection, Emmet discusses what have been called “Cambridge properties,” relations that are not real changes, such as the bird in flight becoming further away from a particular tree. These relations are properties of the event only from a certain perspective. Of course, if that is one's perspective, the increasing distance from the tree is the relevant event. The distinction of efficacious and non-efficacious properties requires that the event is what one takes it to be, since what is constitutive depends on what the event is. The distinction also entails that properties are attributes of substances, or substances are collections or congeries of properties, or in any event, that the properties determine what the substance is. Substances abstracted from their properties are indistinguishable. If a given “substance” is identical to its properties, then the concept of substance is superfluous, except that the notion of substance gives a stable entity, or essence, that persists over episodes of change, i.e. a substance remains the same though its properties vary. Kim (1993), like most philosophers, accepts the primacy of substances and defines events as “exemplifications by substances of properties at a time.” One way of thinking about events is as the set of changing properties of an object/slice at successive instants in the event/sequence. On this view, an event is a complex structure that consists of a constitutive substance, constitutive properties and a time. The constitutive properties are those lacking which the substance ceases to be what it is throughout the event. This may apply to categories that share the same properties, but not singularities, for example, basic entities that share atomic weight or charge, or complex ones that share properties such as four-legged, rational, feathered, and so on. When substances are conceived as bundles of properties, or constituted or defined by properties, one senses we are dealing more with logical relations than actual occurrences (see Wiggins, 2001). One has the impression that several discourses are involved. There is the sameness of the object independent of, or extracted from, its perception, the sameness of the object in perception or across perceptions, the perception of sameness from within or externally, and the analysis of what it means for an object to be the same across occasions. It is this latter sense that engages most philosophical discussion. To say that John is rational, intelligent and believes he persists over time is not to say anything very informative about John. To say John has long hair, smiles a lot and speaks Bengali says a bit more, but not much. A

51 laundry list of John’s attributes still does not tell us who John is. A fingerprint or DNA sample does not even tell us whether John is alive or recently dead, whether he is conscious or comatose. The search for John’s essence is futile, since even John has no clue where to look. What essence or essential properties or ultimate facts about John could establish what it is about John that is the same? There are average or mean expressions of personality, character, appearance and comportment, but none so stable that it would qualify as the essence of John, as opposed to, say, the essence of his twin, Tom. The notion of essence requires that we ignore change in the essence and consider the appearance unchanging, or ignore change in the appearance and consider the essence unchanging. An essence is a substance-like entity that is conceived as the unchanging ground of a thing, or alternatively, those properties which, were they to change, would cause the thing to no longer be what it is now. The supposition that a thing can exist without changing, or that change can occur in the manifestation of the thing but not its essence, would seem to apply only if substances or essences are conceived as categories. The essence of a person consists of certain traits of character, but those traits do not constitute a substance to which variable properties are added. They too are categories of behavior that cluster together over duration in such a way as to be defining attributes. This is not a mark of a substance, and essence is merely the relative invariance in some sub-set of the instantiations of a given category. The category of an individual, an object or a self, persists in spite of its continuous change. The category of a soldier persists in spite of a change in the uniqueness of each member. Soldiers die and are replaced, and each replacement is a soldier. The concept of essence seeks to hold fast to the individuality of appearances, but the persistence of the overarching category can only be sustained if individuality is sacrificed. The category does not change because it is conceived in such a way as to transcend its instantiations. McTaggart’s (1901) claim that change only becomes possible when the first anticipations of essence intrude themselves into being is comprehensible only if essence is the individuality of a thing, and being is the unchanging aspect of the absolute out of which that thing, or its essence, individuates. The point is that identity is conceptual or categorical. It involves an event-recurrence within a category. An object individuates a concept within an event-category. The smaller the category, the closer we get to the identity of individuals. The replication of the category of an atom is the

52 recurrence of its temporal extensibility. This is as close to sameness as the succession of a particular gets. But even with an atom, the individual as an object or substance can never be fully grasped. It can be described, categorically, but the specificity of its constitutive process is outside the description. Though we speak of objects for convenience, there are no objects, only events, and there is no exact description of an event. How could there be an absolute sameness across moments if the object or event at a given moment cannot be fully specified? Toward an event-ontology The distinction of a substance and its properties (including time) introduces a focus of interest or value to the concept of an event. For a bird in flight, the pertinent event might be flying, but it could also be the motion of the wings, the glistening of the feathers, the song or cry, the pattern of flight, the display in courtship, the relation to the flock, and so on. For example, to describe the flight of a bird in a V formation without describing its position or the timing of its wing flapping in relation to other birds ahead of it or behind, or to the lift of the wind and its force, is to ignore what some would insist are essential features of the flight. If x-ray studies of a bird in flight reveal a rippling of the muscle and bone, that becomes the event of interest. If there is no ineluctable quantum of value that determines for all observers what an object or event is, or what the constitutive properties of the event are, given the viewer-centered nature of constitutive properties, the causal role of those properties will depend on their valuation. The fact of a given property is a matter of personal interest, which is preliminary valuation. What the event of the bird’s flight is depends on the interest of the observer, e.g. photographer, ornithologist, hunter, artist, the experiential and spatio-temporal perspective each brings to its description. Interest (value) determines event description. A description of properties as outcomes of interest is not a metaphysical theory, though the fact that interest drives event-description is part of such a theory. If interest conditions what properties of an event are of causal relevance, a theory of value in relation to perception is at the heart of an event-ontology. Objects can either be absorbed into events, or they can be conceived as persisting with properties that change as the event transpires. In the latter instance, the change in the event is usually interpreted as an attribute or predicate “attached” to the object. Many instances are ambiguous.

53 Objects may contain events, e.g. the heart is an object that contains circulatory events, and events may contain objects, e.g. the blood cells in the circulation. Often it is unclear whether an object is an event, or the reverse. The attempt to equate an object with a change in its properties throughout the event, or identify an object-slice at each moment with the sum of its properties, avoids the object/property entanglement by dissolving the object in its properties. But this account leaves us merely with a verbal description of what the observer perceives, not a theory of the actual event. In contrast to this mode of thought, process thinking entails an eventontology. For microgenetic theory, an object is always an event. It is not a slice in time but has a temporal history, minimally the change that actualizes the object, its momentary becoming-into-being. The event is the development of the object in a succession of phases over a duration of existence. An object is a theoretical construct in an extended duration that includes a no-longer-existing past. In persons, it can include a good part of the life span. The definition of a person, certainly that of a specific individual, includes a description of character, which is a measure or average of conduct over innumerable acts. We would not say a person is what he is at one split-second in his life, or in the 100 milliseconds or so of a single cognition. But what duration in the course of a life, or what circumstances affecting that life, would be required to establish a concept of the person, or any object? A long event can, in principle, be incremented into shorter segments. A flight can be divided into a preparation, a take-off, an ascent, a glide, a descent, landing, etc. A lecture can be divided into segments of ten minutes, into an introduction, exposition and conclusion, into a presentation and question-and-answer session, and so on. The event is then whatever combination of segments one wants it to be. On such a view, the event is distinguished from those leading up to it, as well as those that follow. The event is partitioned in the mind out of a succession of perceptual objects - or states of affairs - as a focus of personal interest. If the event can be divided into segments, or consists of the set of the divided segments, the event as a whole can be considered an arbitrary chunk of experience, segregated from other concurrent events and demarcated from the preceding and subsequent history of the world. This approach satisfies the need to define an event for discursive purposes. It also permits one to ignore past or present events or properties that are not germane to the target event. One can define events that are not

54 actual occurrences, e.g. conditionals, or events that do not happen, such as the flight of the bird occurring because the hunter decided not to shoot it. If a lecture occurs as a last-minute substitution for a speaker who canceled, is the cancellation a constitutive cause of the lecture? If the person who cancels does so because his child is ill, and that occurs because of exposure to a sick friend, are these events all causally related to the lecture? A theory of events as a sequence of changing properties of substances with a circumferential boundary and an anterior and posterior limit is sufficiently plastic to incorporate happenings of indirect relevance, even relations that are not events, for example, the person agreeing to give the lecture because another anticipated invitation did not materialize. To describe an event as not including every other event, e.g. the bird’s flight not including someone who sneezes in China, may be a true statement but, given its lack of pertinence to the event as a focus of interest, it is a trivial truth. Still, in principle the approach can include or exclude everything else that happens in the universe except for the event in question. But it does not get at the event as a perceptual experience or as a real occurrence. For these reasons, I think it is preferable to describe an event as a span over recurrent epochs, each of which deposits a novel object. This object is the entirety of what happens within a focus of interest, including causal and non-causal properties, i.e. whatever object is valued at that moment in a percipient cognition, in relation to the perceptual field, and in the context of a momentary consciousness. The event is not a succession of changing properties, or a sequence of event segments, or an object that persists throughout the event as its properties change. It is an epoch of change in which the object and all the properties that are experienced as part of the object, including the affective tonality that determines what event is selected, actualize as a totality in the moment created by the eventoccurrence. The epoch of the object is replaced by another object to create another epoch. For process theory the problem is not the event-occurrence, which results from the replacement of states of affairs, perceptual fields, worlds, but the stability of objects as vehicles of events, at least in visual experience. How do we perceive stable objects if they are actualizations of change perceived in “pulses of consciousness”? The pulse creates an epoch, the epoch provides a category to stabilize the object, the object is the stable center of a segment of passage that is chunked into an event. The properties of the object are, like the object itself, classes or categories of features that stabilize change from one moment to the next. The effect is so powerful that it maximizes the stability of temporal moments and even

55 modifies properties or absorbs their change within the boundaries of the class (like allophones within a phoneme), thus maintaining the stability of an object in an event-transition. In process theory, change results from novelty in recurrence, with stability achieved in perceptual epochs. In positivism or logical atomism, change tends to occur in the properties, the object itself remaining unchanged. Put differently, the epochs of process theory are irreducible changes through which objects and properties are generated, whereas the atoms of positivism are irreducible solids in which properties are ingredient, or to which they are attached. The solidity of an object like a tree owes to the repeatability of its recurrence. The fluidity of one like music owes to the novelty in each replacement. Objects are perceived as events according to how closely they replicate themselves in each new becoming. The difference between an object that undergoes change but does not itself change, e.g. a bird in flight, a speaking person, and a transient or changing object, e.g. music, is a function of the similarity or disparity of each cycle of becoming, i.e. the novelty in replication. From this perspective, all objects are events, though some appear more object- or event-like than others. An ostensibly stable object such as a rock or a tree, not to mention a particle or a person, is as much an event as a hurricane. Implications of an event-ontology The conjunction of objects and properties and their relation to perception continues to challenge philosophers, indeed, all of us in various ways. The distinction results from the analysis of the original whole of the person-and-everything-else or the organism and its Umwelt. Thought goes in the direction of increasing analysis, and analytic thought, like a virus, creeps into all aspects of ideation. Rorty (1967) has written of our “natural taxonomical instincts... to turn differences of degree into differences of kind whenever possible in order to facilitate inquiry.” But the “taxonomical instinct” also chops continua into classes, turns process into objects, and abandons quality for quantity. The progressive reductionism or materialism of science is an expression of this trend, while the surge of interest in holistic alternatives is equally an expression of what is felt to be lost. At any rate, the object field undergoes increasing articulation. The field solidifies into separate objects and then object-properties, which are also end-points of analysis. Some properties are held to be primary,

56 essential or intrinsic, others secondary, adventitious or accidental. Speech and flight are properties of human and avian objects in a generic, rather than individual sense: a flightless bird is still a bird, and a mute is still a person. The object/property distinction is embodied in (or. as Whitehead thought, descended from) the subject/predicate structure of Greek, where subject nouns are formally distinguished from those that belong to the predicate. Certainly, Greek philosophy gave priority to the relation of logical subject to predicate, while subsequent modern philosophy assigns priority to the relation of the epistemological subject to its objects (Mackay, 1930). However, relations of subject and predicate or topic and action are universal and underlie both grammar and epistemology. Language reflects this analytic trend. Once inner and outer worlds are dismembered, we try to reconstitute them from the parts given us in experience. Many philosophers, and most ordinary people, take objectpermanence as axiomatic. Even if it is a fiction, there is little cost in this assumption. The proverbial chair used by philosophers since the Middle Ages as an exemplary “object,” is not nearly so stable and permanent as it appears, though it is unlikely to change within the course of a lecture. The assumption of object-permanence within a “reasonable” span of experience is a useful coping strategy, an evolutionary hand-me-down on which survival depends. For all practical purposes, our life and much of our science reinforce a folk theory of middle-sized solids in a real, independent world. Still, the patterns of perceptual breakdown and image formation do not support the contention, true or false, that the objects we perceive, as we perceive them, are the cause of their perception. The well-worn illusions of Müller-Lyer and the bent-stick-in-water are usually interpreted as optical distortions. For some, they reinforce arguments for a purely phenomenal world. Such illusions give no hint as to their correlates in the perceptual process; they do not help us distinguish the “real” from the illusory, nor decide on what basis such a distinction should be made. But illusions do show, minimally in object constancies, that the act of perceiving creates a stable object. A loss of stable objects occurs in schizophrenia or dementia, when the world begins to degrade. Were the objects of perception independent of the mind, an affliction of the mind would leave the world untouched, while a deranged perception would leave the self unaffected. This does not occur. Self and world degrade as a unit. The world cannot exist without the self, nor can the self stand alone. McTaggart (1901) wrote, “if we withdraw from it [viz. the self] all its content – the objects of

57 cognition and volition – it would be a mere abstract nonentity.” Pathological phenomena can be dismissed as aberrations in the field of abnormal psychology, but they do expose the actual nature of the perceptible world, i.e. the world as it is perceived or experienced. For Bradley (1893), “experience is the same as reality,” or “being and reality are... one thing with sentience.” Whitehead wrote that, “Nature is that which we observe in perception through the senses.” However, a process theory of mind and nature is opposed to a static ontology of eternal truths. Hart (1949) wrote: Once we realized that the discharging and transition of energies are the only perceptible and apperceptive constituents of reality, physical as well as mental and social, the meanings of ideas and propositions stopped being attributes which we could add to, or subtract from the objects, arbitrarily. Experience became the sole arbitrator.

What exactly does “experience” mean? If the term sense data, or sense perception, applies to a stage of sensory registration, such experience is outside awareness, specific to modality and more or less fragmentary. A perception is the outcome of a process of object-formation. Perceptions are multi-modal objects of consciousness that are coherent with values and meanings in the mind of the observer. The clearer perceptions of vision and sound are set against the more diffuse and primitive, or less epicritic ones of postural or vestibular impressions. If experience is the world received in the senses, that world is not experienced at all, while if experience is the world of perception, it is a derivation, a model or mirror of the world of sense. For Whitehead, James and Bradley, nature is directly given, in contrast to Kant's noumenal world outside perception. The nature of perceptual experience is central to the experience of nature. The experience seems to be an immediacy of contact with the endpoint of the perceptual development. But to take the bare object as perceptual experience is like taking the snowcap for the mountain. The object does not rest on - but consists of - its infrastructure; what the individual brings to the perception is an inherent part of the perception, not something the individual adds to or takes away from an object. The space before my eyes, the field and the tree that stands within it, are a totality of mental space within which the tree is a focus of interest, while the entire visual scene, with the tree as its focus, individuates through a microgenetic transition of phases. The full set of these hidden phases, not just the field in its manifest form, is the perceptual experience.

58 If we begin with the experience given in perception, the process over which the perception develops and the pathology of its microstructure cannot be jettisoned while its endpoint is retained. This microstructure grounds the epistemology of all philosophical claims, especially those that purport to account for how things actually are. This is because the process that fractures the world into parts is the key to their connectivity. The appearance of the object world is “connected” to the reality of physical nature through an actualization of diverse objects and feelings. To understand how this works we must look behind the data of perception at their momentary ancestry. For one who begins with experience, whether a pragmatist like James or an idealist like Bradley, the philosophy of experience has to be based in the actual nature of experiential objects. This actual nature is not the bare object but the full process of its actualization. When we begin with the objects of perception, we can move outward to the noumenal world and inward to the psychic one. The object is a doorway to the physical world on one side and the mind on the other. For some, an object is nature directly apprehended, independent of the mind. For others, it is an appearance or image (eikon in the Platonic sense) that obscures or approximates the real. We attempt to penetrate this outer world by analyzing the object into its constituents, and we attempt to enter the inner world by decomposing the object to its antecedents. The materiality of an external world of noumenal entities that is screened by our perceptions corresponds to the physiology of a noumenal unconscious out of which those perceptions develop. The noumenal external is the presumptive substrate of physics, the nature of the noumenal unconscious is intimated in psychopathology. Yet the concept of the noumenal does not commit us to a theory of “bare particulars” on either side of the object. We can just as well claim that the phase-transition that gives a perceptual object corresponds with the actualization that gives a non-cognitive entity. On this view, the actualization of a perception is the model for the actualization of all entities in nature. Perhaps because we know so little about the nature of perception, and because the psychological process behind consciousness is cut off from its contents, which are then treated as mind-independent elements for philosophical speculation, the direct experience with objects in perception, facilitated by the analytic trend in thought, tends to condition our thinking about the nature of logical solids in the mind and solid entities in physical nature. Their unconsidered acceptance is the basis of a perceptual realism, which holds that the objects of perception are the real things they are

59 perceived to be and are such in physical nature. This way of thinking leads to a physical atomism that is exported to the material world, and a logical atomism that is imported to the mind. Finally, the assumption that an object is a collection of temporal slices and spatial parts transports the doctrine to an assembly model of the mind and a causal model of nature. The division of the world into objects, along with the consequent loss of the dynamic of their production, obligates a theory of external relations between objects to make sense of the multiplicity. The implicit goal is to re-assemble the spatio-temporal jigsaw but, more deeply, the mind seeks to reconstitute a semblance of its original wholeness. As the philosopher Levi wrote, “contemporary positivism has abandoned the solid anchorage of Nature (for)… the artificiality of a purely logical construction.” What are relations? How can we characterize the relations that go into this reconstruction? To begin with, the idea of objects as aggregates implies relations within and between them. Here, we refer to natural, not logical, relations, though to the extent the latter sample the human mind the problems are not dissimilar. The relations at issue concern the connectedness of things, not comparisons, which are judgments. The appropriate, i.e. fundamental or naturalist, sense of comparison is not a determination but a contrast or discrimination. Whitehead (1978) wrote, “What are ordinarily termed ‘relations’ are abstractions from contrasts.” Contrasts are perceptual relations, comparisons are abstractions of contrasts. In comparing two colors, the comparison is a judgment of the relation to the observer. The judgment is a metapsychological attitude, it is not the event of contrast among the colors, which is the ground they “occupy.” Since colors are sets of relations, and the contrasts or discriminations within colors are continuous with those across them, it is a question of the boundaries of clusters or momentary loci. Every object in the perceptual landscape is demarcated by a contrast of chromatic or achromatic color. We realize this most vividly when objects degrade, for example in hallucination, and their boundaries become fluid as color flows into surrounding space. External relations are either independent of objects or part of them. If they are independent, how do they bring the objects into relation? If they are part of them, where does the object end and the relation begin? Since Aristotle, these difficulties have led many writers to claim that relations do not exist, or that they are unreal. For such thinkers, the concept of relations

60 is incoherent without incorporating the related terms. Ewing (1933) wrote “in the first place a relation, if it is to be a relation at all, must unite some terms.” He went on to say that “let us call a relation internal… if it is such that both of the terms could not have been what they are without the relation holding between them.” A relation between two terms or objects requires that the segment of the relation “attached” to an object is part of it, i.e. that the relation includes a portion of the object. Conversely, the object includes a portion of the relation. If part of the relation is lost for being affixed to the object, one might as well say the relation is lost entirely. There is an infinite regress in the link of relations to terms or objects, in the relation between the relation and the term. This so-called “third man” problem occurs when it is argued that the relation must inhere in a substance in order to exist or be real. Bradley (1893) believed that all relations are internal, existing within an embracing unity, apart from which the relation and its terms “would be nothing”. The relation also must penetrate the “inner being of its terms.” If the relation changes, the thing also changes. Thus, while he referred to a relation without a term as “mere verbiage,” the terms were conceived as relational aspects of the totality in which they occur. A similar argument was advanced by Blanshard (1939). This view assumes that the “internality” of the relation is purchased by embedding it in a larger whole, though the relation could still be construed as external to the terms or objects it relates within that whole. Bradley went on to write that a thing is unreal, i.e. is an appearance, if it has identity as a relation of passage in its own history. The issue would seem to have more to do with the nature of terms than relations, since the very acceptance of a term as an existent distinct from a relation biases the argument from the start. The first question is whether terms are accents or clusters of relations, or are decontextualized physical or logical solids. This problem was discussed inter alia by McTaggart (1934), who wrote that it is impossible to express any relation without at least one of its terms. Even an “objectless” relation, such as the gradual lifting of darkness as night gives way to dawn, has the observer as one leg of the relation. A discernment of the transition does not go to the change through which it occurs. The visual field is a set of contrasts, shape, size, color, motion and value. Once a relation is singled out, such as “this tree is bigger than that one,” or “this shrub is next to that one,” relations within the object, i.e. the larger object “containing” the trees and shrubs, become less pertinent than those related to the observer. The attempt to anchor a relation in a value-

61 term or an observer objectifies the relation, like incrementing and thus losing time in order to grasp it. McTaggart was aware of this problem, and noted that relations cannot be understood without the concept of quality, which turns the relation into a property. The idea that relations are qualities has been criticized on other grounds (e.g. Bradley, 1893; Ewing, 1933). The distinction of internal and external relations is then equated with that between essential and accidental properties. However, for many writers, the concept of internal relations has been abandoned, while that of essence has been retained. But essences are merely internal relations that do not drop out when they become attributes of relata. Since there is infinite divisibility between relations adjoined to or independent of relata, this line of thought leads to a spatialization of relations, the “arrow in flight” problem, and a Zeno-like regress of relational segments. As Bergson pointed out, the critical step is dividing motion into segments and losing motion itself. The view advanced here is not situated in the contemporary philosophical discourse over internal and external relations, which equates relations with properties and assumes terms that have or do not have these properties. To identify a relation with a property petrifies it in language. Once this step is taken, and given the assumption that terms are not themselves bundles of relations, the conclusion is inevitable that relations are external to terms. The position taken here, on the other hand, arises in the context of a general monist theory (microgenesis) on the relation of thought to reality. On this view, natural relations within objects or within the mind/brain, and by implication within non-cognitive entities, are internal to the totality of nature or cognition, in which every particular is a momentary contrast. For an observer, internal relations objectify as secondary or metapsychological judgments. To say that A is greater than B, or that A loves B, is not just to propose a relation between A and B. It is to declare that A and B are distinct, that they are externally related, that the relation has a direction and that it can be formulated as a comparison or proposition. The relation of a subject to his perceptions is a form of predication, e.g. “John thinks that...”. The relation objectifies in the judgment. Propositions turn relations into objects. A description of a relation is a meta-perceptual judgment. Locatives and prepositions, for example, describe relations among objects from the perspective of the observer, they are statements about perceptions, not perceptual relations. A description one step removed from the perception can never seize the

62 actual event. Every A and B is a cluster of internal relations outlined by arbitrary contrasts. In brief, A’s and B’s are deposited by r’s, not related by them. An A or B is configured within an event, which itself is configured within its formative phases, thus within the expanse of the percept and its changing spatio-temporal array. A contrast appears external because it delimits an object or its constituents, but in fact it is internal to the momentary field within which all contrasts arise. A relation that objectifies in a proposition is a statement about the relation, or what the relation is perceived to be about. Were the relation itself to objectify, it would no longer be relational. The relations that constitute events are not themselves actualities, but rather potentialities or possibilities. Were the dynamic of a relation to actualize, it would freeze as an object and lose its relational quality. The relations between numbers or objects, such as “A is larger than B,” are relations between propositions that, in their assertion, also become propositions. The paradox is that actualities consist of relations that are not themselves actual unless actualized in statements about the objects they relate. Yet if relations are non-actual, though actualizable, and if all things are relations, then experience, however real, concrete and actual it feels, is still a mode of potential with no final actualities. Kicking a stone does not make it actual, it just reinforces the feeling of realness by combining one perceptual modality with another. Sprigge (1993) has argued, after Bradley, that relations are an unstable compromise between the one and the many, between holistic and piecemeal thinking. They are a bridge from the unity of the mind to the fragmentariness of the world, from objectless relations in the mind to nonrelational objects in nature. For psychic relations to extend into the world, as they do, is for the world to be an extension of the mind. The inner connectedness of the world is not its ostensible relatedness in the world, but its formative trajectory in the mind/brain. Moreover, if the individual mind exemplifies becoming in nature, this trajectory would correspond to the aim to closure of entities in physical becoming. The physical whole or existence of an entity, or other objects in the world, cannot be reconstructed from its spatial context, for this represents the endpoint of a parallel stream. Rather, the coherence of the whole in relation to the parts is in the temporal diachronic of the becoming of one actualization. An actualization is how parts individuate. Relations of individuation determine how parts come into existence. Once we apprehend an object (a thought, etc.), its relationality is finished. Wholeness is not reclaimed in the

63 agglutination of parts, but in their genesis and momentary articulation. Properties and values come together in the process of object-formation. The relation of antecedent whole to consequent part can then be embedded in an ever-widening field, ultimately, the absolute ground of all potential entities. The view that all genuine relations are diachronic may seem peculiar to many readers. Sprigge has written that it implies “a complete absence of any real connections between different things at all”, though he points out that such an account was central to the monadism of Leibniz. The relationality of an object is its resolution out of antecedents. These do not merely deliver the object but are ingredient in its being. That is why an understanding of the process of object-formation is essential to a theory of what objects are. We perceive parts, not the genuine wholes from which they arise, nor the process through which they actualize. A genuine whole is not a container of parts but a potential to give rise to them. Genuine relations are also imperceptible. The imperceptibility of genuine wholes and their transformation into parts, combined with the emphatic sense of object solidity, makes holistic and relational thinking unpalatable to many people. The relations that we do recognize, such as causal connections, though equally imperceptible, are inferred from the succession of diachronic events. We first identify a cause, then an effect, and impute a causal influence to the before/after sequence, though it is far from clear how the actual transition comes about. We perceive a shift from past to present. We feel the momentum of the present toward the future. We infer causation backward from effects, and forward from causes. Causal efficacy is imagined to be the primary locus of exchange of energy in the world, and is the principle theory of how mental objects and physical entities behave. From a microgenetic standpoint the momentary cognition of the cause is replaced by that of the effect, while change from one state to the next is imputed to the changeless “interval” between replacements. The causation inferred in consciousness is an illusory transition across successive actualities. Often enough, however, a cause and its immediate effect are perceived in the present, say a hammer striking a nail. We see the cause and its effect right before our eyes. How is this to be interpreted? One possibility is that the successive events in striking a nail are delivered out of potential and serialized in the seamless replacements of nows. On this view, the sequence is like a series of snapshots fused into a continuous transition by the “invisibility” of the timeless intervals between them. The genuine change that replaces each world – the hammer, the strike, the

64 penetration of the nail – is opaque to object-awareness. Another possibility is that events are delivered into succession in a now that is timeless. If the duration of the present is epochal, thus nontemporal, the serial order of events in the epoch is not an order in time. What we perceive is a spatial picture, like a frame on a movie reel, with illusory motion “filled-in” between frames. Change in a cause/effect sequence is imputed to the succession of one object after another. The difference between these two interpretations is that, in the former, the causal transition results from the seamless replacement of successive nows, while in the latter, the temporal shift from cause to effect is inferred in a non-temporal epoch. Both accounts hold that events are serially ordered out of unconscious simultaneity through a time-creating actualization or concrescence. We have some experience of this phenomenon in the serialization of dreams on awakening, when temporal order is realized out of a non-temporal unconscious (see [Brown 1991-2002] for my comments on the celebrated dream of Maury, and its interpretation by Freud). The present account also entails that real or genuine change occurs in the actualization of events into a timeless now, while illusory or apparent change is “projected” onto objects in conscious perception, a distinction that is paradoxical, since it implies that perceptible change is illusory while genuine change is imperceptible. Change is the other side of sameness or stability. If we understand how objects remain stable, we also understand how they change. In causal theory, an object changes if it, or its properties are caused to change, so that change in some sense is extrinsic to the object. The continuance of a stable object – a tree, a self – presumes sameness or identity over time, unless the object is caused to change. If the object is caused to change, the change is usually attributed to a change in the object’s properties rather than in the object itself, unless the object is conceived as the sum of its properties, in which case some but not all of the properties undergo change. The magnitude of change and its reversibility determine whether or not objects remain the same. This way of thinking, or some version of it, is the prevailing view in philosophy. It is an externalist theory that derives much of its force from an appeal to common sense. Process theory is to a greater extent counter-intuitive, and the concept of sameness and change are thus more problematic.

65 Identity and transition An object is a momentary cluster of relations that constitutes a portion of a field. The persistence of the object or its continuance over time owes to the immediate recurrence of a similar cluster. The continuance of an object such as a tree, the change in an object such as a tree uprooted by a storm, and the change in a changing object such as music or speech, reflects the novelty of clusters in the overlap of each epoch. Novelty in the recurrence of events determines whether objects remain the same, i.e. are stable, are “caused to change” or are intrinsically changing, i.e. dynamic. It is not that some objects are more stable than others, rather, the stability of the object depends on the novelty of its successive replacements. The sense of sameness is aided by treating objects as types. For example, the ship of Theseus remains the same though its planks are exchanged, the darned silk stocking of Sir John Cutler and the simple woolen sock of William James remain the same until they are completely replaced by a different silk or wool. A person is the same after losing an arm or having a kidney transplant. The ship, the sock and the person remain the “same” with respect to their defining attributes, or the objectcategory of which they are members, even if they are not exact replicas of just-prior instances. The particular is altered but the sortal or generic is the basis of identity. If identity depends on a replication of each particular down to the smallest detail, there are no precise identities across instances, or across two apparently identical objects at the same time. If there are no exact identities, any difference is novel, i.e. is a qualitatively novel instance. The novelty implies that a difference of degree is a difference of kind. But what is the meaning of “kind”? A difference of kind could refer to inexact replication, but that would engender an infinite number of kinds of the “same” object. More often, kind refers to a novel type or category. The distinction rests less on the extent of difference than the flexibility of the criteria and the boundaries of the category to which the particular belongs. A category of persons that is sufficiently wide includes fetuses and people in coma, one that is very narrow, e.g. rationality, self-awareness, would exclude the person when he is dreaming or in a state of emotional excitement. Some perceptual categories like color are independent of cultural influence, many others are not. Even the category of person is mutable. Contempt brings dehumanization. War creates such conditions. An individual becomes, or is perceived to be, less than human. A person who gradually becomes demented, confused or irrational at some point is no longer the person he was, but what point is

66 this? More deeply, if each instance of the person (or any object) is a novel occasion, what does it mean to say the novelty reaches a point where he (it) is no longer the same? It makes as much sense to say that at each moment he is a different person, yet still belongs to the category of persons, but at some point his membership is no longer justified. Many studies in normal and abnormal psychology show the force of such “categorical” perception or classificatory judgments, for example, in the shift from one phoneme to another, or in vision, from cup to bowl to saucer. Objects “persist” in spite of a change in their properties, and categories “persist” in spite of a change in their members. The concept of identity entails that an object belongs to a category even if it is the category of a sole object, one-element set. We see this vividly in music, where the identity of a score is realized in multiple ways and is subject to varied interpretations. At some point, the identity of the score may be violated; it will no longer be what it was perceived to be, or intended to be. But what is the identity of the score? Every musician has to choose between a fidelity to the score and its interpretation. This is not just an artistic choice. The musician may wish to achieve an exact representation of the composer's intent, but the score itself is a category of possible realizations. For that matter, a written text is a score for infinitely many possible interpretations. Similarly, the genome is the score of an organism in growth and maturity, yet novelty is ubiquitous at every moment in renewal. The score of a piece of music, a work of art, an object or an organism is a manifold of creative possibilities within the category of what it is, and within the category to which it belongs. Thus an object or person is a category of parts, instances or properties at the same time, as a sole object, or across occasions of that object, or in relation to other members of the category. The person without a limb or with a new kidney is not the same before and after the change, but he was not the same a moment ago. The person, the ship, the sock are concepts that span successive instances, just as their categories embrace multiple types. Everything is a category of something, indeed, a thing has to be a category to be known or perceived, since the constitutive relations that deposit the thing are imperceptible. This does not mean the world is, in Bradley’s words, “an unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.” Categories are grounded in “drive representations” (see chapter 4) and thus are affectively-charged, even if the affective tonality in its objects is distilled and largely non-apparent. If abstractions are achieved at the cost of some

67 part of the truth, what is lost in an abstract category is the value that belongs to those virtual instances the category encloses. Properties and classes To some extent, the persistence or change of an object is viewed by many as a persistence or change of its properties. On this view, identity is sameness of properties. If the person has the same properties of character, sincerity, authority, intelligence and so on, they would say he is the same person. We do not say a person has changed after a haircut, but we do say a person on drugs is “not the same person” or acts in a way that is “out of character.” The identity rests on a finesse of change by its absorption into the category. A mismatch that falls below the threshold of a just-noticeable difference is naturally ignored, but so are differences that spare essential characteristics. If different objects, such as twins or chemicals, share the same properties, they are presumed to be identical. In daily life, we are so accustomed to innumerable copies of the same object, whether toothbrushes or soup cans, that we do not question the identity of “identical” copies, This is not merely a verbal problem. It goes to the heart of change and transition, and the nature of appearance, category and the real. The identity of indiscernibles is not even demonstrable at the quantum level. Further, the problem of the identity of two objects at the same time is not so different from that of one object at two different times. If we cannot grasp the nature of an object at an instant, or over time, how can we claim that one object is identical to another? The river changes, so does the person. As the joke goes, one cannot love the same woman twice, sometimes not even once! The properties of an object do not constitute the object but are elements in its description. Tall, shady and firewood are attributes of a tree, but are these “parts” of the tree? Tall is a relative judgment, shady refers to the position of the sun with respect to the tree and an observer, firewood to one of its possible uses. Is the tree not getting mixed up with judgments of its properties and values? Which properties are most relevant? A prototypical shape is probably most important, even if it is not a scientific or taxonomic property. Even pigeons can distinguish trees on this basis. Yet the shape of the tree changes each moment, its color varies with the light, its constituents are living activities that age and die and are in continual motion. When does a sprout become a tree? How does a small tree differ from a bush, a shrub, a plant? Properties can support the notion of

68 sameness because they refer to classes, not individuals. To abandon the idea that some properties are more basic than others, or that some are essential and others accidental, is to consider all properties minddependent. This avoids the idea of a substance with properties and relations, some cognitive, others physical, and the corollary assumption that secondary qualities are psychic additions. A red ball is not a combination of redness with roundness and a flexible piece of rubber. The local set of relations that constitutes the ball repeats itself a moment later. It differs from the set a moment before, though slightly, perhaps in perspective, luminescence, velocity or location. It differs more noticeably from a green ball that is otherwise a replica of the red one. One moment, color characterizes the ball, the next, the ball moves or changes in shape or color. Regardless of the disparity in features across replications, every instance of the ball is novel. We do not expect the red ball to suddenly become green. We can see a red and green ball together and compare them. We assume they are different objects. And of course in a sense they are, but in a deeper sense they are local accents in a single object (world) in a single act of cognition. The same applies to looking at two identical red balls at the same time. We would be hard pressed to find an observable difference other than the fact that they occupy different loci in space at the same time, though the internal dynamic of their atomic structure could not be absolutely identical at each moment. Are there different types of relations? If so, do certain of them account for differences in substances? If relations differ, are there a limited number of differences, or are the types of relations as limitless as objects? Are relations like physical or covalent bonds? One wants to say, there are no or few qualitative differences among relations, and that the variety of objects reflects different patterns and contrasts in a uniform field. Microgenetic theory implies that the fundamental relation is a shift from whole to part. The diversity or multiplicity of the world and the mind is the individuation of clusters through a series of whole-part shifts in personal or extrapersonal space and time. In other words, a single process, a kind of traveling wave, lays down diversity, instead of a multiplicity that is unified in a pulse of consciousness or diverse processes acting on a manifold of parts.

69 Events as foci-of-interest An event is a span over momentary clusters of intrinsic relations determined by interest. Objects are categories of change, and thus events, while the object-properties that characterize events are classes that happen to be of interest. Properties are the face of clusters in the event-sequence. It is the intrinsic value of the entire complex that determines what properties are singled out as active in the event. The generic nature of the properties sustains the identity across changing realizations. The identity of an object over an event-sequence is owed to the novelty of its clusters and a sustained focus-of-interest. The cluster of relations that comprise an event includes the agent and the object-formation. The temporal thickness of an event bounds the actualization of a cluster, as well as successive clusters over the virtual duration of a conscious now. The shaping effect of interest or value on what properties are relevant to the event is due to the affectual tones that accompany the object in its transition from potential to actual. The value stream is intrinsic in this transition, at the mental pole as desire, at the object pole as worth and at an intermediate phase as interest. The notion of properties as foci of interest is central to ethical judgment. If evaluative terms refer to properties that are better or worse than others, the worth of the properties is not in the properties independent of their evaluation, but in the evaluation that flows into and selects them. To say that one bird flies faster, higher or more gracefully than another is an evaluative judgment. This judgment is similar to that in which an action is judged to be good or bad, in which we also select and evaluate certain properties. Evaluative determinations become prescriptive judgments of right and wrong when valuations of foci of interest become the oughts and obligations of ethical conduct. Put differently, interest is derived to worth, which takes on ethical valence (good, bad), then prescriptive emphasis (ought). The primary activity of mind is to “chunk” experience into private and public objects or events. The price of this chunking is a loss of relations and a delimitation and focality of the events of interest. An object or event is a local happening in the flux of other occurrences. The flight of a bird is a miniscule event in the life of the forest. The bird is isolated in the event of its flight. For the observer, the flight of a bird is the event. For the bird, the event might be capturing a grub. The bird's eye view is the grub, the observer's is the flight. Interest guides what the event is, where it begins, and where it ends. The emphasis on concept or feeling determines whether the event is laden with affect or meaning, for example, whether there is

70 emotional intensity, scientific curiosity or both. An ornithologist may see in a bird's flight technical data, a birdwatcher may experience rapture at the sight of a rare bird, a passerby may startle the bird and set it in flight yet give it little notice. Thoughts and feelings grow into the objects of experience. Wittgenstein compared the apprehension of an aspect of visual experience to an “echo of a thought in sight.” Strawson (1970) said of this remark that “the concept is alive in the perception.” We may hear or read about events, a marriage, a tornado, a plane crash, some of greater interest than others, but except for meaning, interest, value, they might as well be meteors landing on the moon. Aristotle wrote, “what affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire.” Desire and value trace to patterns of becoming in basic entities. They too have a sphere of interest. For an electron, that sphere might be attraction or repulsion to another charge. For a paramecium, it might be an encounter with an amoeba. For an amoeba, the paramecium is singled out as a meal. This is approach and avoidance at a basic level, not yet a manifestation of interest or value. Organisms carve out fields of interest, danger, opportunity. These fields are temporal windows on some minute portion of the world. Simple organisms are part of the event-complex. Higher organisms perceive the field outside the window but are still part of the event. Events and participants, large or small, depend on foci of interest. The world is the totality of such events. What the world is at a given moment depends on whether a flea looks to the left or right. It is the totality of all occurrences from all perspectives or, perhaps, from only One. An event actualizes through knowing or unknowing participants in a seamless transition from potential to actual. The actual is realized out of potential, but there is no point in the actualization where the actual breaks off. Some actuality is latent in potential, which is not a pure homogeneity. On the other hand, an actuality retains the potential for further analysis, even though its cycle is complete, and even if we cannot know what the further actuality would be. A concept is an actuality that retains the potential to become a word, an act or an object. But why should a word, an act or an object not also have the potential to undergo a further transformation? The statement the grass is green is an actual occasion, but it is generic and has the potential for further analysis. In an event-ontology, the perception of green grass is a category of momentary percepts. The categorical nature of objects, events, properties, is a mark of this potential (see Labov, 1972). Objects actualize to the limits of perception. The world

71 is as actual as it can be, but there are further grades of actuality to which our perceptions do not have access. The world consists of actual events with the potential for further specification. Along these lines, Hartshorne (1967) wrote, “there are no possible individuals, but only possible kinds of individuals, possibilities for further individuation.” Every description or definition of the world limits its totality (Buchler, 1978). That is why there is no settled world. The incomplete actuality of any object is not due solely to its categorical nature, or to the illusory quality of the real, but also to the perishing of the object while it still retains potential. We say that objects perish on becoming actual, but in fact they retain a potential for a further transition. What actualizes is the world for that moment, but that is not the limit of possibility. Process exhibits this hidden power of incompleteness. The world is in continuous becoming, actual enough, but a near-actuality that does not exhaust the potential for greater individuation. Potential is the font of ensuing actualizations. The closer an event to full actuality, the greater its featural detail, the more that value clarifies the character of the event. A fully actual world would be one of substance with no possibility of progression. We live on the edge of a world that is continuously becoming actual. The cluster of relations that constitutes an occasion of experience leaves in its wake a forward-going dynamic anticipating an advance in a category that is infinitely divisible. That is why we never quite grasp events other than as classes of properties or categories of object-appearances.

Chapter 2. Self, Subject and Subjectivity Even when the style of an absolute idealist seems most troubled by obscurity and confusion, I am often subject to an uneasy feeling that this is partly due to my own failure to see something well worth seeing which he sees dimly and so describes obscurely, but which his critics do not see at all Ewing (1933)

Introduction Of the many dualisms that bedevil philosophy, none are so fundamental and pervasive as that of subject and object. The objects of sensation (Kant’s intuition) are opposed to the objects of understanding, those of perception are opposed to concepts, the self is opposed to the world, and within the mind, the process of thinking or the path from self to concept is opposed to the content of thought. Some writers include subject and object in a unified field, others insist on a field beyond what is knowable, still others argue that the gap from self to world, or from appearance to reality is itself a manifestation of the real nature of being. Few distinguish the self from the subject or from the full scope of subjectivity. At one extreme the self is the kernel of the world, at the other, it is a phenomenal residue once the world is subtracted. The history of philosophy is a conversation on how the self and its objects are partitioned. A description of an object that alludes to the subject’s contribution to a determination of what counts as an event still does not go far enough in extending subjectivity into the world, nor does it mark off the boundaries of the subject for whom the object is decided. An object that is conceived as a presentation in consciousness is penetrated by subjectivity, indeed, it is part of a fully cognized world. But if objects are presentations or images, how does it come about that they are felt to exist in a world outside and independent of the observer? A world that is an extension of the self does not feel like a self-creation. Indeed, the self feels very much like a creation of the world in which it matures. So, if the world is a mental image or an

74 elaboration of the self, what explains the illusion of externality? The force of this illusion is precisely what process theory has to explain, and overcome. Inner and outer worlds differ as the polarities of a continuum, but they also have much in common. One thing they share is the relationality of subjective time and space. We can think of the world as an enormous whole, but the whole of the world consists of parts, as does the inner world of the subject. The world-parts are the multitude of objects and happenings that expand and articulate external space. The subject-parts are, minimally, the self and its dispositions, feelings and ideas. For both the inner and outer world, space and time expand by way of the parts they “contain.” A perceptual space without objects lacks depth. With a loss of objects in snow blindness there is scarcely a space at all. The extrapersonal space of dream has volume, but also a density and foreshortening consistent with the fluid character of its objects. Time and space are separately organized in the brain and sensitive to different local pathologies. Space does not remain untouched when objects degrade, it breaks down with its objects. The perception of an object includes its depth and locality. Space is not directly given in the infant; rather it develops with experience. For example, young cats carried in a harness that deprives them of limb motion have impaired depth perception in a visual cliff experiment. A perception of space without action in that space does not give a functional world. Time-awareness is also a subjective experience. Time arises in the now as a relation of past to present that hinges on the revival of past events. A duration lacks felt extension without the availability of (remembered) objects. The forgetting of events in amnesia leads to a shrinking of the duration of the past. Piaget showed that time awareness in young children is linked to spatial perception, and only gradually becomes independent. The contents of perception create the space around them, those of time create the duration in which they occur. Like waves in an ocean of space, or froth in a fountain of time, the objects of space and time are specular phenomena generated in the mind/brain, consisting of, and embedded in, categories of relations. We perceive space as an emptiness between things, each thing in space having its own separate history. External space is the home we build to live in, experiential time is the change and stability that give life to that home. The spatio-temporal world of experience has to be “re-built” in every perceptual act. The process is effortless. The activity of mind in generating the world is unfelt, invisible. We only feel that the world is self-

75 generated on such occasions as vertigo, dream or hallucination when the attachment or thread of mind that connects the self to its objects becomes noticeable. For example, at an intermediate phase in object-formation, when the pre-object is still felt to be part of mind, prior to its final detachment, space depends on the reach or use of the hand. Deficits in patients with brain damage often concern drawing or manual construction within the perimeter of the arm’s reach. Hallucinations tend to disappear when the subject reaches for the image. Observations such as these provide evidence for the occurrence of a phase in object and space formation where external space is still dependent on the observer. The spatial and temporal fields are conceived in science as quantifiable, measurable and infinitely divisible. But if the present is epochal, all things in its duration, though serially perceived, would be simultaneous. The process through which spatial and temporal objects are realized creates and articulates the extensibility of the fields, but once a field is specified, further division can only be applied to no-longer-existing contents. The division is an analysis in thought that constitutes a secondary or metapsychological revision of the ideational remnants of dying perceptions. These remnants may then generate objects of greater specificity, whether as concepts or concrete actualities, but the perception that furnished content for the analysis has already perished before the analysis begins. The momentum to a further division in thought is an extrapolation from the analytic trend of cognition. This trend becomes the endless division of scientific research, a pursuit of ever-finer elements through a hierarchy of categories. If, as suggested in the previous chapter, objects are sets of relations that, in turn, are enclosed in a field of relations, all objects or events are categories. If this is so, the division of a category can only result in a sub-category. In contrast, scientific reduction entails a breaking down into constituents, and a re-assembly of the constituents into compounds or collections. The former presumes that objects issue from categories of wider scope, the latter supposes that objects are constructions of contained elements.

76 Subjectivity

Mind is invisible nature, nature is invisible mind. Schelling (1800)

Before there is a self there is a subject, and with a subject there is an object, but for there to be an object, subjectivity has to be divided. Subjectivity is the intrinsic relatedness, the is-ness or “inside” of a thing. In higher cognition, the first awakening of an object splits the subjective into an inner and outer portion, with the “outside” an extension of the inside but still within it. The human mind is continuous with its objects in spite of the initial division. In the view of the German idealists, the subject-object is fully subjective. Hegel noted that while the subjective is subject-object, the objective is not, so that subject and object are not on an equal footing. However, subjectivity does not require mind or consciousness, except that mind as intuition is required to conceive the subjectivity of its own experience. Indeed, on the above description, that of intrinsic relations and feeling, the subjective is mind-independent, or rather, it is a primitive quality of mind, temporal extensibility and feeling, that extends into the most basic entities. The problem of an absolute objectivity, or a world distinct from the mind, does not occur for a non-cognitive entity such as a material tree. The object-nature of perception begins to be a problem for the perceiver when the intrinsic relations and subjective aim of the subject are “elongated” into (as) an object or an objective pole. The separation of subject and object creates an inner and outer pole, actually, in the human mind/brain, a center and a circumference, with an arising at the inner pole and a perishing at the outer one, and a qualitative difference between the initial arising and the final perishing phases. The difference in these phases forces a distinction of a subjective and an objective portion. But in non-cognitive nature there is no inner and outer, only categorical parts embraced by ever-enlarging wholes. Consider a tree in relation to the stages in its growth and the meadow around it. From the standpoint of intrinsic stages in growth, were the roots of the tree to gaze at the leafy crown, the tree too would have a subject-object problem. From the standpoint of its relation to the surround, the tree is a distinct object in nature, in the same relation to nature, i.e. one discrete object among many, as we perceive ourselves. Yet without this overlay of

77 interpretation and the carving out in perception of a stable object, there is no opposition of tree to meadow or to the world beyond. The growth and form of the tree are sensitive to unseen forces in the grove, as the grove is to the forest, or to the sky and rain. In the subtle choreography of nature, every object is an outline, a contrast of internal and external process, a bundle of relations in a wider relational field, each object having its share in the whole. A tree “decides” on the parameters of its neighbors and is influenced by them in return. Where is the line that separates an object from its surround? Where is the line within the object that separates its elements from their local environment and their place in a still larger object? The tree in perception is an event in the flux of the field. So is the brain and the mind it generates. One can accept the enormous difference between a tree and a brain, yet at the same time understand that at a deeper level the field in which the tree arises is analogous to the field in which the mind arises, and the continuum of a subject to an object is analogous to that of an entity in physical nature. The subject-object distinction becomes more entangled when we leave the higher animals and enter the sphere of human cognition. The infant in the womb is like a tree in a meadow, dependent on the ambient environment but not consciously perceiving it. The infant is one with the activity around it. At birth, the infantile drive and its sole object, the breast, are the seeds out of which the inner and outer limits of a subjective moment will individuate. The world contracts and expands like the attraction and repulsion of the magnetic charge of objects in an electromagnetic field, the laws of which are universal in nature. But subject and object do not dissociate and undergo a separate partition; rather, the subject-pole generates the object-pole by a thrust to autonomy that is an outcome of the continuous pulsation of drive. We see this in the first cry of the infant as it struggles out of dependency. That first cry has often been taken as the necessary and sufficient condition for the appearance of a new human being. The appearance of a subject announces a world, but the appearance of the world is necessary to individuate the subject. The objectivity of a world “outside” the mind, and the objects within the mind, result from a process of adaptation in which subjectivity is coerced by sensation to an increasing multiplicity of forms. The partition of original wholeness leaves its mark in a life-long tension of autonomy with community, independence with need, individuation with immersion. In the moral domain, the conflict of egoism and responsibility traces to this primal separation, what Schelling called

78 the “original divorce.” The initial separation into subject and object is the ground of further oppositions, yet the whole is found, not in their later synthesis, which is a coming-together of parts, but in uncovering the oppositions to disclose a more profound unity. Initially, the world is a global object, a gestalt that expands to a primitive space about the body. Gradually, like a plant that flowers, the objective pole comes to be filled with objects. The subjective pole also partitions. In the first step, an object grows like a bud, drawing the subjective outward. The division of the primordial subject into a subjective and an objective portion replicates the pattern of mitosis in a single cell, as an iterated fission or parcellation gives from within a proliferation of object-forms. As the object separates, a subject appears. The world of the breast is exchanged for that of the mother’s smile. Over time, a self arises within the subject as the inner world articulates. Kant wrote that as soon as the child says “I”, a new world appears. This is the inner world of the forming self-concept, that of beliefs, choices and intentions. The progression from a subjectivity (with no object other than itself) to a subject (with an object), then a self (with inner objects as well), owes to a recurrent individuation of the subjective pole. This is the source of all objects, and as the inner world individuates, so too do the objects of the objective pole. The growing multiplicity of inner and outer objects consolidates the division of self and world. The objects that confront a subject are those in its objectified portion, while a self is confronted as well by inner objects, e.g. ideas, values. A subject is the whole of the subjective pole, whereas a self is in relation to the internal objects it generates. The distribution of the self into objects is the basis of individuality, of personality as well as agency. The feeling of agency helps to overcome the isolation and detachment that are the by-products of objectification. The self wavers between disenfranchisement and empowerment in a growth toward autonomy in a world that is fully independent of the observer. The idea of the self as a substance has usually implied a continuant with qualities or properties that is not itself a quality. Substance is formal in that it enables us to think without having to specify that which is thought about (Loewenberg 1927). Freedom obtains in the opposition to objects, thus the attempt to control them, but only a self that feels itself in the object is genuinely free. Agency is first in thought, before it is in the world. A subject can, for others, show purposeful action on outer objects, as in the suckling infant, but the self needs inner objects for the experience of

79 agency. The self and its partitions, the concepts and feelings it gives rise to, are necessary for intentional action. The loss of wholeness in the rupture of subject and object, then the individuation of self, is the price of freedom, as freedom is the consolation of autonomy. Mind disowns its objects as it progresses to greater autonomy in a sequestration of the self from its own experiential products. Years later in withdrawal, in fusion or in embrace, the self will still be striving for the wholeness that was shattered when the subject first appeared. The self may seek to reclaim or drown in its objects. Mystical, meditative and trance states are paths to the whole. But wholeness is elusive, perhaps beyond life-experience. The conditions and limits of autonomy determine the boundaries of others and the world. A boundary takes shape once the world is perceived. Later, the self is bounded by internal objects that are felt to be a source (belief), a constraint (value) or an aim (concept) of thought. As the subjective comes to be populated with ideas, the inner realm replaces a world that is no longer one's own. Eventually, autonomy shrinks to the narrow straits of the thinker. Once the objects of the world belong to the world, the self becomes an island in a sea of its own humanity. Yet one is also free to act. Words and ideas are mental objects that become the instruments of agency. The feeling of agency for thoughts, speech and bodily motion is fully in the mind. The effectuation on objects is the secondary outcome of an internal impulse. Conversely, the objects of perception that grow out of the self are sculpted to the conditions of the material world. Objects are limits on selfexpression. It is only when the outer recedes to its conceptual or imaginal antecedents that the object is once again one’s own and the feeling of agency is regained. The more external the image, the greater its fit to the surround, the more it belongs to the world, the less agency is felt in its production. One would not, however, want to make agency the core of the system. Agency does not determine the object, rather, the objectdevelopment determines the feeling of agency. Will and the world it creates are prior to agency. The object of primordial will is its own becoming. The drive to discrete objects individuates the will to purposefulness, though not yet agency. Agency must await the appearance of internal objects, it is always in relation to an internal object that is distinct from the self. Without the separation of self and inner object, there is no basis for intention. An intention that is directed to an external object is mediated by the concept of the object, thus it is guided by an internal object in advance of the external one. The direction to an object is aligned

80 with the process of becoming. The feeling of will going toward an object is the inner experience of self-realization. As the self needs an object for the feeling of agency, so too the quality of intentional feeling depends on the degree of object-realization. The world is the outer half of the subject. Through the inner half the subject exists, through the outer half the subject is able to survive, not merely because the world is a source of nourishment. If the world should disappear, even for a second, as happens in cases of brain damage, the self would vanish with it. The continuity of the self requires a repeatable world, as the continuity of the world requires a repeatable self. In dream, the object world disappears, as does the self of waking experience. The “ego” of the dream is fluid like its objects, changeable and passively malleable to the image content. The self must continuously create an object world for its own survival, just as the existence of the self or any mode of subjectivity is conditioned on the existence of an objective world. The world is an endpoint of the will that, for us, passes through the self and objectifies like the crust of a lucid dream. Novalis wrote, “we are close to waking when we dream that we are dreaming.” The appearance of a self out of a subject, or a subject out of subjectivity, is the expression of an urge to autonomy. This urge is like an undulating wave that rises to individuality and relapses back to wholeness. The individual is a particular in nature, which subsumes an infinitude of parts. The pressure to individuation is the heart-beat of autonomy. This striving for autonomy is aligned with the natural goal of thought, while the dream of wholeness is the wish to arrest that striving, and return instead to the far-from-tranquil pool out of which individuality is derived. The creative spirit moves freely from one pole to another, from a lonely solitude at the peaks of conscious individuality to an absorption at the inward recesses of the unconscious where inspiration has its home. A settling-in at the inner or outer pole points to an habitual recurrence. A focus at either phase is a sign of an unhealthy completeness. A tension, a longing for the unrealized polarity, is a sign of creative imbalance. We are neither oceans nor islands. An excess of autonomy is the sickness of our times. It isolates the feeling of being from that of becoming, separates the public self from its own internal process, as well as from that of others, while an excess at the inward pole threatens oblivion and loss of contact.

81 Self and subject Who would study and describe the living starts By driving the spirit out of its parts. Goethe (Faust) The wholeness of a subjective world grounded in an immediacy of feeling is lost the moment one is aware of having a perception. This is the awareness of, not in, the perception, a secondary awareness that marks an act of reflection. An object that is a topic for reflection, or one that elicits a conscious choice or pursuit, is no longer a pure state of perception. Reflection differs from perception as a voluntary action differs from one that is automatic. To reflect is to step back from the act of perceiving. The subject in immediate perception becomes the self in reflection or deliberation. The felt continuity of mind and world is relinquished the moment this contrast sets in. The object of consciousness is other than the object of perception, even if it has a perceptual object as its content. This new object is no less a product of thought than is the perception. There is greater freedom in perceiving when the inner formative phases in the object fill awareness in asymmetric proportion to the outer ones that are more tightly constrained. The shift from perception to reflection is a shift from reproductive to productive thinking, the productivity relating to the potential for conceptual branching prior to a fixation in objects. The subject, as described, is no longer part of the perceptual state. The self is now one with the new state it generates. The loss of immediacy and wholeness in thought is heightened by a relaxation of the limitations on perceptual objects and the uncertainty in their incomplete development, but the subject-self is no less embedded in an act of reflection than in one of immediate perception. One could ask: What exactly is gained or lost when the self replaces a subject? Does the reflection that is the seed of choice and voluntary decision come at the cost of animal wholeness? Hölderlin wrote, “To be one with all that lives, to return in blessed self-forgetfulness into the All of Nature.” Is “self-forgetfulness” the loss of self we crave? Forgetting the self is having the self as process rather than as memory, with individuality not lost but nested in the whole. The birth of the self is attended by conflict and apartness, but only a self can love, reflect, enjoy, endure. What is left of personhood without a self? Is a state of self-forgetting a regression to a

82 sub-human consciousness? Do we want to say with Schelling that mere reflection is “a spiritual sickness, the more so where it imposes itself in domination over the whole man, and kills at the root what in germ is his highest being, his spiritual life, which issues only from Identity”? On this account, reflection limits the whole of intuition to a preoccupation with the parts of a piecemeal knowledge. The Identity that is blocked by an analytic attitude of the intellect, of reason, reflection or self-consciousness, is the holistic unity of man and nature in an all-embracing divinity. We have all had such moments when, in the compresence of self, subject and subjectivity, the self, infused with feeling, dissolves from the cares of life and an interest in discrete objects to a conscious awareness of the All in All, the momentary and the universal, the where and when of self in nature, a oneness in which the self is neither lost nor known but feels by intuition that it is the living center of all creation. Naturally, none of this is possible without the understanding and sensibility that is available to a mind that can realize an experiential self. As in the creative life, where one thoroughly absorbs the material, then abides while it transforms, and finally surrenders to the creative power as the work pours itself out, so too we wish to forget the self and feel one with the creative force of nature. But it is not the oneness of an animal consciousness that we desire, rather, that of the seeker who at last achieves the goal of self-forgetting, or denial in Buddhist thought, but retains the potential for enlightenment. The self is essential to knowing the goal and acquiring the means to its satisfaction, but it is also an obstruction, like a skill that has outlived its usefulness but cannot be forgotten. Agency and recipience The world detaches, so we can move about and act in it. The detachment of the world is necessary, inevitable. A world perceived as a cause of our states, not a product of them, gives the self free reign over its objects. Only in pathology is this process incomplete. Part of the feeling of freedom is that we do not believe that we are creators of the world. We could not be real agents if the objects we acted upon were felt to be the products of our imagination. In psychosis, freedom is lost when the world is apprehended as psychic. The self becomes a victim to its own imaginary objects. The normal condition, which is not to say the true state of affairs, is the belief that space and time are properties of the world, not psychic additions to it, and that mind, soaking them up, turns them into the

83 fundamental forms of its representations. The space of perception is felt to be the actual space out there. Clock time is thought to be the real time to which psychic time adapts. The illusion of a real world is too strong for the reality of an illusory one. It is astonishing, is it not, that the simple experience of vertigo, when the “real” world spins around, does not make one question what the real world is actually made of? The self's creation of objects and the illusion that they are independent is essential to autonomy. We believe that causation is the primary mode of transition in the world, even if its source, like time and space, is within an act of cognition. The feeling of effecting a change in the world first appears in infancy, in grasping or moving an object, when, as Hume recognized, the power or necessity in the bare intentionality of early agentcausation is transferred to a causal account of objects. When the feeling of agency degrades, for example in psychotics who believe they are controlled by invisible strings, the perception of object-causation also changes. Objects become like thoughts, those of the observer or of others. The change that objects undergo is believed to be a product of the mind of the perceiver or the trickery of a malicious demon. Normally, the inference of object-causation arising in the feeling of agency is projected into the world, then internalized for an introspective theory of the interaction of mental contents. We feel that we are thinking things up even if the effort of thinking does not help in their production. Beliefs oppose values, obligations block desires. We search for and actively generate images and concepts. Linguistic objects are the obvious tools of agency. For the feeling of self-generated activity, the self must be in opposition to objects, in the mind and in the world. Indeed, the voluntary action of a limb is a bridge to that world. The self that stops with the interior and takes its own ideas as the limits of its activity lacks an awareness that it is an engine for the totality of the world. Kant followed common sense in thinking that sensibility and intuition were passive, receptive, though he remarked, in a related context, that active and passive were two stems of the same root. The passivity of perception accentuates the subject-object distinction. We surmise that the world comes to us passively, for our sufferance or amusement, but the feeling of receptiveness is, in fact, an active part of the perceptual experience. The passivity to perception that is necessary to reinforce the adaptive belief that objects are outside us is also a mark of their psychic origin. The passivity to perception complements the agency for action (see Brown, 1996, for the microstructure of active and passive feeling). The self

84 feels agency in proportion to the detachment of its objects. With an attenuation of act or object, the feeling of activity or passivity is altered in relation to the antecedent form (image, idea, etc.). An incomplete object has a residue of volition in the sense of control over thoughts and images, a feeling lost when the object exteriorizes. A thought, image or concept is a preliminary or pre-object accompanied by a volitional feeling that is given up once it objectifies. The agency that is relinquished when the object exteriorizes persists for the action. Unlike objects, which deposit outside the body perimeter, action discharges in the body. A voluntary act directed to an object in the world is realized in bodily space. Thus, the space of agency has more the feeling of a mental space than that of perception. If the freedom of the will is illusory, so too is the separation of the world, since one is conditioned on the other. Receptivity and spontaneity are products of the object- and act-development. They have a common source but lead outward to a dichotomy that is more apparent than real. Subjective aim Kant was unable to resolve the mechanism or process of nature with its causality according to ends, i.e. physical and final causation. The end of natural process is not a lure for mechanism but its outcome. The purposeful in nature is confused with the adaptive. There is no organic teleology or final causation in nature. Whitehead argued for final causation in evolution, emphasizing the creative tendencies and questioning the eliminative ones. The elimination of the unfit, he wrote, “is like the liturgical refrain of a litany chanted over the fossils of vanished species.” Is it so certain that random variation, endorsed by most evolutionary thinkers, explains the upward advance that has occurred? Is it merely a retrospection from the most recent human perspective? Thought is always in pursuit of a goal. If we entertain a goal in advance of achieving it, that object, the goal as idea or concept, is the actuality of that state, it is not a bridge to a further object. If cognition inevitably proceeds to a goal, which is its subjective aim, and if cognition is a complex realization of natural process, then all entities proceed to an aim. The aim for the entity is the completion of what it is, the full realization of the becoming that constitutes the process of its creation. This process deposits in the being of a momentary existence. Being is the aim of becoming, the becoming of what one is, a non-cognitive entity in nature or an act of cognition. The question is whether the recurrent pulse of

85 becoming into being has the character of progress caused or drawn to a final goal. There is a tendency in the evolution of organic life toward an increasing temporal extensibility, such that the duration of existence and the internal complexity of an entity undergo a coupled progression. The greater the temporal extensibility, the more complex the becoming. The duration, though non-temporal, is not an empty stretch of time but incorporates the constituents of the entity even if those constituents do not exist until the becoming of the entity is complete. This transition is not a mere passage through complexity. The partition of the subjective into subject and object is repeated over the continua in the nesting of constituents or sub-categories. The complexity results from a compounding of this process, it is not its explanation. The pattern of nesting in growth is a vehicle of analysis or specification. This pattern gives an increasing mental capacity in the evolution of organism. However, a higher cognition is not pre-destined, nor does it fulfill an aim to a specific target, but the process does tend to unfold in this direction. Specifically, the nature of becoming, and the pattern of growth over the “deep” time of evolution, lead to “higher” states of existence, barring catastrophic alterations in nature herself. This mode of final causation could not be attributed to an initial plan guiding the process, nor a final goal toward which the process leads, but to the process itself, which exhibits a trend in this direction. Through its organic structure, nature conforms to a purpose, a plan or a design but not necessarily to one that is drawn up in advance, or to an outcome that is causally determined and unavoidable, established or pre-set by god. The design inheres in nature and is contingent. The outcome is not inevitable, though the general direction of evolutionary process is. Like growth, which can show a deviation even as it follows a common path, evolutionary process is uni-directional and towards increasing complexity. This way of framing the problem of final causation entails that mental phenomena and subjective experience exemplify natural process or are instances of the “laws” of nature revealed in the human mind. Mind is the outcome of nature’s implicit “purpose,” the laws of which materialize through the mind, just as the mind is a realization of nature's laws.

86 Subjectivity, being and freedom Every act of cognition is a whole state of being. Becoming actualizes in being, which is its natural termination. It points to being, posits it in a way, but being is the completion of becoming and does not point to anything, it just is. The asymmetry of subjective and objective, that the former includes the latter but, from a strictly objective standpoint, is not included in it, is also a manifestation of the asymmetry of becoming and being. The becoming that is the inner process through which the external comes into being is the living portion. Once being actualizes it achieves momentary existence, then it is past, lifeless. Once becoming ends in being, it too is non-existent, though becoming never had existence in the first place, since a thing does not exist until it becomes what it is, i.e. achieves being, at which point it actualizes as substance, through which it exists for a moment, and then it becomes past and perishes. As a birth entails a death, but not a re-birth, so an instance of being implies an antecedent becoming from whence it arises, but not recurrence in a subsequent becoming. To exist at all, being must culminate the becoming that gave it brevity of life, but once becoming deposits being and is completed by it, the existence of both is over. Becoming can be construed as the subjective portion, while being, though equally subjective, constitutes the objective portion. Thus, being is a unification of subject and object, if by subject we mean will, process or becoming, and if by object we mean the category that becoming realizes. Subjectivity, as the becoming of substance, does not arise from substance but is replaced by another wave of becoming. The self rides a wave of becoming into the world and becomes the world as it vanishes for an ensuing sequence. The self precipitates early in process and distributes into later phases to give the world. Thus the self determines to some extent what that world will be like or what world it “chooses” to live in. I say “to some extent” because the physical environment limits the freedom of the self to create whatever world it desires, though all of us perceive a psychic world that is inhabited by personal beliefs and values. The world is not exactly the same for all of us, not just in our interpretations of it but in our perceptions. Certainly, the young child sees a different world than the adult, as do animals, and there are hidden worlds of infra-red or ultra-sound that are experienced by animals in a way that is scarcely touched by human instrumentation. The “primitive” and the poet perceive a world animated by mind, which for them is not just a metaphor. Lévy-Bruhl (1935) writes that the Ba-ila of

87 Northern Rhodesia hear through the aid of little beings, bapuka, in their ears. Elkin (1943) notes that Aborigines are receptive to totemic animals or intimations from the dreamtime passing into the present. Inge (1924) writes that the maenads and corybants continue their raptures until they see what they desire. Religious ecstasy becomes hallucination. Nature for Wordworth, as for many other poets, was intensely alive. What did Coleridge see when he said, “The clock has gone mad, it has struck one four times,” or Whitman, when he wrote of a leaf of grass as “no less than the journey-work of the stars”? Poetry and philosophy escape from ordinary reality to elaborate an alternative world. Art and philosophical thought are not merely creative acts within the existing world, they create a world within which they can act and exist. They think up a world, but it is chiefly art that lives in a cognized world. That is why art, often the artist as well, are paradigms of freedom, in that they inhabit a zone between the abandon of lunacy and the straits of convention. This middle ground between the unexpected and the predictable, between originality and habit and the fluid movement over its range, is the basis for freedom, which involves an occasion of choice, or an incomplete thought, that is not just a deviation from the norm but an opening of novel possibilities. In extreme cases, such as psychotics, a dreamy world of private imagination replaces the object world of consensus. This may represent an actualization prior to phases bearing the main impact of adaptation, or it may be that sensory constraints are insufficient to offset the force of magical belief. At the other extreme are those who live resolutely in the objective, where behavior is driven less by fancy than by presumptive fact. One extreme is more adaptive than the other, but both are unhealthy. Still, the possibility of creating a world somewhere between sheer imagination and full objectivity reminds us of possibilities in self-realization that are ordinarily concealed beneath the dead surface of its representations. The realization of the world through the will and the self entails the freedom to create the world we want, and to act with agency in that world, even within the limits imposed on freedom by the accommodation of subjectivity to a social or physical niche. Genuine freedom lies not in the delusion of autonomy and control, which are ordinary enslavements to illusion and brute impulse, but in accepting the world as a mode of self-realization or representation. But if autonomy permits a sham agency in disowning the world, how does reclaiming the world endow it with greater freedom? First, by a sense of the ability to change the world, we can create or remake

88 the world as we want it to be. This insight is not sufficient, however. It can lead to unreflective servitude or willful corruption. A second insight is necessary to mitigate the egocentricity of primordial will in its drive to power and personal advantage. This is the recognition that others are dependent on the creativity we invest in them. If the other is my creation, I might treat him as my brother or do with him as I wish. The self that intuits that the world is a self-realization has a sense of ownership of that world, and might fancy itself a cruel or beneficent god. I believe that in this recognition we understand that we have the capacity to more readily extend compassion to those at the outer reaches of the mind than to those in whom we have no share. Compassion entails the understanding that the world is part of the self, that the self includes the other and that the other is to be accorded, indeed merits, the same kindness that is wished for by the self. Were the other an indifferent entity in a dumb mechanical nature, there would be no felt ground or theoretical legitimacy to an embrace of those beyond one's sphere of interest. Compassion is a feeling that the universe of one’s experience includes the value of the other, in fact, that the other is an extension of the self’s own egocentric values. The result of perceiving the world as an extension of self, instead of a populated vastness with which the self makes contact, is that the self acts for the other as it would for its own needs. Idealism need not ignore the other or take a solipsistic turn, it can encircle the other in its orbit. Selfrealization is a criterion of value in the world, for its own sake or for the sake of conscious beings (Chakravarti, 1966). The world has the nature of a self, an idea that is realized in human thought and action. Without insight, the urge to self-realization achieves a token insularity in its drive to autonomy. True self-expression is the realization through the individual of the will of nature as it moves outward in the actualization of human ideals. Micro-transition from self to world A world that grows out of the self must show a transition from the subjective to the objective, between the self and the world outside, yet we feel a sharp division between mind and nature. How does the illusion of a world that is distinct from the mind come about? A transition should be felt as a continuous series, and not, as is the usual experience, an individual mind peering at the world outside from a particular locus in private space. Of course, realism has a different obligation, to explain how subjectivity

89 appears in the physical universe. The conception of the mind as a mechanical continuation of nature, say, with increasing complexity of organization, is an impoverished account of the mind that can only be entertained at the cost of mind itself. Realism must confront the demise of the theory of direct (visual) perception. The proximate correlate of a perceptual object is not a physical object in the world from which light emanates or is reflected, but rather, the activity in the brain that generates that perception. How then does nature develop into phenomenal experience? This Cartesian problem is compounded by the fact that reflection on this difficulty comes at a time in the maturational history of an individual when self and world have hardened into opposing camps, not at a stage in childhood when the world is an imaginary playground. In order to recover the lost threads that link the mind to the world, one has to examine various states of pathology or perturbation in which the normal is set aside, so that its undersurface can be explored. The usual example is that of dream, but even with dream, the person tends to dismiss the dream content as unrelated to object perception. Those occasions when a transition is perceived, such as in states between waking and sleep, intoxications, or the transformation of environmental sounds (an alarm clock, speech etc.) into images that conform to the ongoing context, are less impressive than the distortion of time, meaning and causal sequence in dream that are far removed from the waking experience. A better if less common model is that of waking hallucination. It is known since the papers of Lhermitte (1951), Morsier (1969) and Morel (1933) that hallucinations tend to replace perceptions, fully when in the auditory modality, and partly in the visual modality, since in vision, veridical perceptions and hallucinatory objects can occur side-by-side in the visual field. Transient hallucination often occurs with a loss of sight or hearing due to lesions of the cortex. We do not hallucinate and perceive at the same time in the same locus of auditory or visual space, because the process that delivers an hallucination is the same process that gives a perception and employs the same neural mechanisms. Contemporary studies of imagery tend to show that the image behaves like a perception or employs common mechanisms. In clinical studies, vertigo is induced in the hallucinations of delirious patients by introducing hot or cold water in the ear (caloric stimulation), just as occurs in an object. Indeed, there are patients with brain damage (Luria, 1972) who, like psychotics, cannot tell if they are waking or dreaming.

90 More convincing is a survey of the different forms of imagery. The transition of image-types and their changing contexts have been documented in considerable detail in prior papers (Brown, 1985; 1988). The transition from a perception through intermediate forms to dream and memory imagery occurs over stages in brain evolution that mediate the object-development. This implies that an image or hallucination is an incomplete perception. Conversely, we “remember” objects into perception, i.e. perception is memory plus the constraints of sensation. A lifting of these constraints, as in sensory deprivation, leads to a rapid descent into memory imagery and hallucination. Anticipation can give an image with a perceptual quality. Schizophrenic hallucination repeats this process from “inside-out” when it begins with a memory image, or from “outside-in” when it starts with a distortion (illusion) of an object. Russell (1921) described how one “hears” an imaginary train in the distance that one is waiting for at the station. The common perception of a stationary train as moving when another passes by shows that perceptions are not mirrors of real world events. In the sequence of normal imagery, an eidetic image, which is close to a perception, loses detail when it is revived over time and passes to a memory image, which is still further removed from the object. This passes to the forgetting of the perception in unconscious cognition, for later revival with distortion of form and meaning in dream or hallucination. The fading of the eidetic to the memory image has been documented (Klüver, 1933). The sequence can be interpreted as an unpeeling of an object through its formative sequence, from its vivid reality and location in the world, to its near-pictorial quality in a gifted eidetic, where there may be uncertainty as to whether it is a perception or an image, to a state of greater vagueness as the image recedes to the private space of memory. The retreat over time from a perception to a dream is really an uncovering of the original process in which buried primary process cognition is shaped to reality, as unconscious memories become conscious perceptions. Incidentally, there is experimental evidence that primary process thought is not bypassed in the growth of rational thinking, but is entrained (early) in every act of cognition (Deglin and Kinsbourne, 1996). A similar sequence occurs in audition. Consider the difference between an auditory object and an image. Take Beethoven as an example. How does the music that Beethoven composed and, presumably, heard “in his head,” after the early onset of deafness, differ from hearing the same music in a concert hall? For Beethoven, the music was spontaneously

91 generated, perhaps with near-perceptual clarity. Brahms also wrote of his ability to read a score and hear the music in his mind. For the listener, the music is an image, but one that sensation shapes to model a world-object. It could be said that the fully internal nature of Beethoven’s musical imagery allowed greater freedom of expression and agency, and a closeness to soul, that help to explain the power of his genius. Indeed, the Eroica, arguably the greatest assertion of freedom in art, was the first major composition after a period of despair over deafness and contemplation of suicide. Bradley wrote that whatever becomes an object is not essential to the self. I have written that what is perceived, and recalled, is in a less essential relation to the personality than what is forgotten and irretrievable. For Whitehead (1932), it is not absolute that facts are given and thoughts are free, yet freedom infects objects that are “largely the supposition of our imagination.” Once an image externalizes, the image assumes a life of its own as an object in the world and the freedom in its production is lost. The attenuation of this process prior to detachment leaves a residue of agency that would be lost if the image actualized in perception. We have the experience of this shift at times on falling asleep, when inner speech transforms from an active verbal image to a passive auditory image, with uncertainty at times if the image is hallucinatory or perceptual. The verbal image is one moment an active product, the next a passive content. Regarding the transition from mind to world over different types of imagery, consider the difference between hallucination and illusion. An illusion affects an object after selection but prior to separation. That is why it appears as a distortion of a real object. In contrast, hallucination affects the object-concept at an earlier phase, closer to memory, meaning and symbol. The resultant image does not correspond with the surrounding context, or with other perceptual modalities, and is assumed at the onset to be a false or unreal object. The illusion is closer to the “physical” object, the hallucination is closer to the concept, before it specifies to a discrete object. The difference is that of the substitution of perceptual form or conceptual meaning, a distinction similar to that in aphasia between phonological and semantic disorders, i.e. the substitution of one speech sound for another as opposed to one word for another. These differences are less fundamental than they often seem, pointing to different moments in a continuous process, not distinct mechanisms. The only difference between hallucination and illusion that matters – because it determines whether the image will be illusory or hallucinatory - is the phase in object-

92 or space-realization where the disruption occurs. While illusion and hallucination are the subject’s perception of an incomplete object, deficiencies on tasks of object perception, e.g. agnosia, are viewed from the standpoint of another observer as providing more scientific data for study. However, hallucination and agnosia are two sides of the same coin, one the subjective, first-person account, the other, the objective, thirdperson one. Brain correlates Whatever is thought, perceived, felt, apprehended, whether vague or clear, its conscious appearance and unconscious antecedents are identical with brain process, though it has to be conceded that some phenomena, such as the span of the present, may be non-reducible. What is perceived or thought, the self and its experience, is ultimately brain process, a world elaborated inside the skull. The physical world beyond the brain is interpreted indirectly through the mediation of the brain. There is no escape from some form of idealism or monism. The self cannot go beyond the world it elaborates to a “real” world outside its perceptions, nor delve beneath them to incipient phases in the unconscious. However, there is an asymmetry of the self and its objects in relation to their physical or noumenal precursors. The other is an object in the self’s field of perception, and as an object it has a dual relation to nature and the self. The other is an independent entity for the self, but it also extends the self to which it is psychically “conjoined.” The self is in a different relation to nature than the objects of experience. We would probably not want to say that a physical or noumenal self relates to an individual self as a physical entity relates to an object. In the progression from the self and its correlated activity in the brain to a perceptual object and its brain activity, both the self and its objects are sculpted to the physical surround, but only the object has a basis in the physical world. In this progression, the self is derived to a model of the real by elaborating a copy of a shared nature. The immediate physical correlates of the self and its objects are segments in brain process. For the object, its physical correlates are assumed to arise by way of sensory data that come to the brain from things-in-themselves that impact on the receptor surface. A chair in perception corresponds to a pattern of brain activity. This pattern, though endogenous, is shaped to a model of a chair by sensory data coming from the inferred physical chair. In effect, there are three chairs. There is the

93 phenomenal or mental chair in perception, the chair we actually see. There is the pattern of brain activity that corresponds to that perception, about which we have some knowledge but lack experiential contact. And there is the unknowable physical chair that is inferred to register on the brain to induce patterns of neuronal activity. The self also corresponds with a pattern of brain activity. But would we say this pattern - like that in the perception of the chair - is influenced by sense data from the physical world that induce the brain to lay down the phenomenal self? Is there a “real” self in the physical world that constrains a pattern of brain activity to give the individual self? Surely, it is more reasonable to assume a non-cognitive chair in the material world than a physical self in that world. Were there a physical self to which the phenomenal self refers, the latter would be modeled after a self that is independent of the thinker. In other words, the self would relate to an unknowable and external physical self as a chair relates to a physical entity in the material world. This might imply multiple physical selves in the world, all shaping individual personalities, much like chairs shape our perceptions of them. However, unless we accept that god provides the physical basis for the phenomenal self, the mind recoils at the idea of an outer physical self that induces the brain to generate a model of that self in the material world. Thus, we look for the origins of the self not in the perceptible world but in unconscious process, in a ground out of which the individual self and perhaps all selves individuate. If we assume the absence of a physical correlate of the self, the self would not arise as a model but as an autochthonous construct of unconscious brain activity. The origin of the self is in neuronal configurations that develop out of animal feelings at the inception of the brain state. These configurations are continuous with patterns of reflex and the vegetative life, conceivably extending to the generality of noncognitive process in nature. Thus we presume that an object points outward to a real entity in the material world, while the self points inward, to an origin in physiology, archetypes or the absolute. The depth of selforigination leads to the intuition of a world in which all selves are potentialities. In sum, an object has subjective and objective phases. The objective phase points to an external entity that is conceived as synchronic with its appearance. The self, lacking an outer reference, has only a subjective phase and points diachronically to the limits of unconscious mind.

94 Subjectivity and nature The question is not the growth of nature outside us, but how it develops inside us, how we become aware of nature, how mind realizes natural process, and how nature expresses and realizes the laws of the mind. The first step is to move nature inward in relation to other mental phenomena. We do this by accepting that the limits of understanding are those of mind itself, or that ultimately what mind comprehends is some portion of its own subjectivity. We can give no account of “real” nature beyond human experience, for mind is engaged in every observation or measurement, direct or mediated. If we seek to understand nature beyond its realization in mind, or brain process, it is not the perception but its ancestry that is the locus of scientific interest. Perhaps for this reason, Novalis wrote that “nature is living antiquity,” an epigram that captures and endorses the impossibility of personal access to, much less intersubjective agreement on, the thing-in-itself, though from a theoretical standpoint we can scarcely do this with the objects of ordinary science. The claim that events in perception refer to non-cognitive entities, i.e. that the object in perception is, or is an exact replica of, the thing-in-itself, has the consequence of a reduction from an object to the entity it refers to. Measurements that collectively give an object tacitly assume that the object of a scientific consensus is the thing-in-itself, and that the knowledge of physical entities is direct and verifiable or, less strongly, that knowledge of an entity can be gleaned from its conceptual representatives. More precisely, the features or properties of an object are identified with those of the thing-in-itself, so that the latter drop out and are replaced by accurate perceptions. This follows on the common view that instrumentation does not merely supplement perception but replaces it with objective, i.e. nonsubject-centered, observations. However, the identification or reduction of a perceptual object to a physical entity is vacuous. An equivalence is not an identity, no more than a painting of a tree is a tree. There is an inferential regress, as Plato argued, from a perceptual object, itself an appearance, and an hypothesis about the world, to an hypothesis about a world beyond that of appearance. We merely assume pragmatically that the perception is equivalent to the thingin-itself, since we only know our perceptions, while things-in-themselves are hypothetical. There is no way to decide whether a perception maps to the “real” other than through its coherence with other perceptions or its verification by others, which amounts to almost the same thing. The assumption that the objects we perceive are real physical things in the

95 world “works” in daily life, but it gives a false theory of the mind. This is not to debate the existence or non-existence of the unobservable, but to emphasize that the thing-in-itself is in the same category as events in a parallel universe. If the nature most proximate to mind is the brain, a reduction of mind to brain that does not impoverish psychology is unlikely, except in theory. What, then, is the basis of the dichotomy of mind and brain (nature) if the brain is conceived as a complex node in a nature that is ultimately unknowable? This is a comparison of immediate data in consciousness with an hypothesis about the real entities the data point to, namely a comparison of the purely phenomenal with the non-experiential. For those who deny things-in-themselves, and reduce mind to brain, the distinction between objects and entities evaporates. For those who believe in them, it widens. In either case, we see the plausible pass to the improbable, and then to the non-demonstrable. It is inarguable that any attempt to reduce the mind to physical nature must begin with the brain events that underlie behavior, and only secondarily with the entities in nature to which those events refer. For mind to truly “know” nature, it would first have to know the brain, which is the most immediate instance of physical nature to which mind relates. The path from mind to nature leads through the brain to the rest of the physical world. Sensory registration in the brain, itself outside cognition, traces to a distant entity as its putative source and correlate. The more speculative path attempts to map the perception directly to the entity by finessing the above steps. However, there can be no actual correspondence of object and entity, for the latter is on the other side of this traversal. The impression that mind-internal, the self and its dispositions, corresponds with brain process, while mind-external, i.e. perception, corresponds with external entities, is a byproduct of the manner in which objects develop. The strength of the belief in an independent world is conditioned on a variety of factors, chief among them the predominance of sensory constraints on developing perceptions at late phases in their actualization. The world impacts on the mind at a point where the mind becomes the world, i.e. as a forming pre-object is analyzed to an independent thing, while the relative suspension of sensation at early phases leaves mind (self) untouched by the external. For example, in the course of a visual perception, there are modest constraints at early conceptual phases that correspond with the arousal of the self, its values and beliefs. The endogenous construct – self, feeling and object-concept – individuates

96 through fields of experiential meaning and memory prior to analytic perception. This construct is oriented by sub-cortical sensation towards the object-to-be, but the early phases are relatively free of sensory influence. For this reason, they are felt to be private, interior and independent of world events. At later phases, the forming object is guided to a model of the “real” by the massive geniculo-striate radiations. These later phases, though equally endogenous, are constrained by sensory “input” at the visual cortex to adapt an emerging gestalt to the outer world. The later phases have few degrees of freedom. They deposit a world that is felt to be public, external and independent of mental events. Another factor that drives the illusion of a world distinct from the mind is the transition from a dreamlike space close to the body to a threedimensional space independent of the body. The impression of a sudden jump from dream to waking perception is refuted by the described transitional cases. Such data confirm that the external space of perception is not simply there as we perceive it but develops with its objects through phases in space (object) formation. At each phase in this transition, there is a progressive transformation of affect and a shift in the feeling of agency. What begins “inside” as a conceptual feeling of intense, immediate and felt experience dissipates as it travels outward to de-conceptualized objects in which feelings and beliefs have to be inferred. What begins as a disposition charged with personal belief and value terminates in a concrete actuality to which values and beliefs seem to be applied. All mental “contents” undergo a translation from mind internal to mind external. Personal values and beliefs become impersonal customs or obligations (and the reverse). Desires that arise in the individual become external lures to feeling, or the fulfillment of the needs of others. Various factors conspire to reinforce the boundary of self and world. However, the qualitative transition that is uncovered in pathological states is the strongest evidence for a continuum from self to world, or the realization of the world out of the self. But this continuum can only be understood after careful philosophical reflection and it can only be felt during states of altered awareness.

97 A subjective naturalism Not even the least and most commonplace of things must be without spirit and the gods. Schelling The unknowable thing-in-itself is of like kind but one step removed from the “brain-in itself.” We assume that the brain is part of organic nature, albeit a highly complex part, and in this sense one with nature. If mind reduces to brain, it also reduces to nature, since the brain is part of nature. The consequences of this naturalism, that mind is brain, brain is nature, and mind is a manifestation of nature, do not entail a materialist view of mind. Subjectivity is the primary datum. The material is a theory on the origins of subjective experience. Bradley wrote, “at bottom the Real is what we feel, and there is no reality outside of feeling.” Whitehead had a similar view. He wrote that “to be an actual occasion is to have selfinterest. This self-interest is a feeling of self-valuation; it is an emotional tone.” But if value, the feeling of reality and the immediacy of the subjective present are phenomenal, we are faced with a choice between accepting an illusion as the real, or pursuing a theory about a reality beyond this illusion, which may also be illusory. Thus did Novalis write, insightfully, that for the ordinary person even “the fact of this moment is an article of faith.” Kant argued that naturalism operates in the sphere of appearances, not things-in-themselves. For Kant, the objective arises out of the subjective, for Whitehead the reverse. This seems to be a function of the perspective one starts with. From the standpoint of the subject, which is the only standpoint one has, the world unfolds in the mind as a becoming into objectivity. If we begin with subjective experience, which is mind as thingin-itself, we can extend subjectivity, or “in-itselfness,” all the way down to the living process in nature, to the becoming that brings the thing-in-itself into existence. While a subjective account of nature can be attributed to a relic of religious or animistic thinking, the animistic sources of nature alive tap into a reality that is obscured once it develops to a rational cognition. The poet intuits this world and transports us to an ideal realm of “spirit and the gods,” at which moment the “real” world disappears before our eyes. Is the world of poetry a fantasy, or is it a higher truth to which philosophy can only aspire?

98 The study of mental pathology reveals the creative process that lays down an act of cognition. The alignment of the pattern of this process with that of brain activity is such that one can speak of a common mind/brain process. The mirroring of process in mind and brain is the cutting edge, at least since the Paleolithic, in a continuous evolutionary development. Thus a correct understanding of phase-transitions in an act of cognition reveals the root process of physical nature. Mind can then be viewed, not as an emergent of material nature, but as the logical outcome of a process that traces to inorganic matter. An account that preserves the subjective by deepening yet relaxing its definition, i.e. by not equating subjectivity with consciousness, leads to an idealism that is a species of naturalism (process monism), not merely a solipsistic dream. Admittedly, this way of thinking rests on a series of inferences. It begins with the argument that subjective experience is the legitimate starting point for metaphysics, while rejecting solipsism on a pragmatic basis. The inference that patterns of breakdown in cognition illustrate patterns in its realization gives license to the claim that patterns in mind correspond with those in brain process. This permits an extension of the theory to processual life in lower organisms and, finally, to the ultimate basis of all process in the becoming-to-being that generates existence and feeling in physical matter. Idealism supposes the real, without which there is no appearance, and it presumes a reality to which the phenomenal world conforms, whereas realism needs the ideal to explain how physical entities become purposeful objects in consciousness. The ideal in absolute idealism is conceived as the underlying purposefulness and rationality of nature, which the higher forms of subjectivity exemplify. All organisms behave in a purposeful way, they struggle to live, to feed and reproduce. It is their purpose to do this. The question is whether this concept of purpose implies something other than an impulse to sustain and continue life. I believe that a tendency toward complex form is “built-in” to the nature of process. Becoming tends to amplify the duration of the entity that growth seeks to fill. This could be a quirk of evolutionary design, a byproduct of the means by which the lesser purposes of arising and perishing, recurrence and adaptation, are achieved. This way of thinking does not imply final causation as a goal toward which evolutionary growth is directed, but in this weaker sense, a purposeful nature can hardly be denied. However, it is the step from purpose to aim that is the battleground of freedom. Freedom is the essence of human subjectivity. Intention entails final causation in that the aim is

99 ordinarily given in advance. A subjective naturalism must seek to explain the transmutation of will into intention and desire. Thought and reason seem to transcend natural process to establish aims by which action is guided. This is the decisive issue.

Chapter 3. Affect and idea It waketh the power of feelings obscure That in the heart wondrously slumbered. Goethe

Introduction A psychology of value cannot avoid a discussion of the different forms of feeling, such as drive, will, desire and worth, since value is essentially an adaptation of feeling to the needs of self and other shaped like the will by the economics - the calculus - of social interaction. A mode or category of feeling has a conceptual framework, for which a context or name determines the content, orientation and locus. The context, which comprises the dominant segment and its antecedent forms in the phasetransition, determines the qualitative category of value and whether it is felt to be located in the observer or the object. With the exception of mood disorders such as anxiety or depression, i.e. states of generalized affect in which the individual may not know what he is anxious or depressed about, most emotions need a name or context to be identifiable. The usual association of an object with a feeling explains why people with diffuse anxiety or an endogenous depression look for causes of the mood in their life-situation. In this respect, feelings are intentional, in that they are about someone or something; they are felt to have causes or aims. We do not feel pleasure, sorrow, affection or irritation unless there is an idea or object that permits a definition and direction in feeling. However, the intentional is not the conceptual in the object of desire or value. Rather, the desire or value gives the context its intentionality, the idea providing an object for the direction of the feeling (see below). This way of thinking about intentionality, which is a mark of conscious thought, is at odds with the common view of emotion - whether conscious desire or unconscious motivation - as the irrational element in the mind: conative, appetitive, impulsive. “The heart has its reasons that reason does not know,” goes Pascal’s oft-quoted saying, implying that the

102 language of the heart is unintelligible to conscious mind. This bias is deeply embedded in philosophy and is a more or less universal experience in everyday life. Detlef Linke (2004) has wittily drawn attention to the struggle of reason with instinct on a “metaphoric” isle of Crete, in the comparison of the intricate liar’s paradox in logic with the raw libidinal energy on display in the rape of Europa. In a review of the psychology of emotion, Zajonc (1980) noted the common distinction of emotion and idea, in that emotion is the transformation of chemical or physical energy, while thought involves the transformation of information. There are circumstances in which we expect thought to be suspended so that emotion can decide. Freud told a young man who asked whether or not he should get married that such decisions come from the heart, not the head. We suspect that uncertainty in matters of the heart points to a lack of authenticity. If one even asks the question, do I really love this person, the answer is probably no. The distinction of idea and emotion is reinforced by the knowledge that concepts exteriorize to objects while emotions remain behind as purely subjective and resistant to analysis. Still, in spite of the disregard for emotion in philosophy since Plato, and its neglect in computational or cognitive psychology, which is unable to assimilate the varied modes of feeling to a mental software, such emotions as love or compassion have been idealized by many thinkers as the very aim of the rational life, even as the ultimate truth of some philosophies. Most often, though, emotion is the “beast in the belly,” the fire in the furnace, or at least a flame on the other side of reason driving the higher cognition. Certainly, we commonly think of emotion as a force, an impulse or an energy that impels a person to do that which reason may be unable to justify. If emotion is the antithesis of conceptual thinking, feeling and concept must come together in some way to give context to feelings and impetus to ideas, though just how this might occur is uncertain. If one argues that feelings and ideas are separate phenomena, there is an obligation to explain how they interact. One can think of several possibilities, none appealing. One might be an inventory of affects, each with an “address,” so that it can be pre-selected by the corresponding idea. The problem with this is that the ideas would also have to be pre-packaged to match up with - and thus arouse or attract - the corresponding affects. Another is that emotions are physiological events that permeate, or are cognized by, the intellect. This account has the chicken-or-egg problem that the situation must be cognized for the emotion to occur, yet the occurrence of the emotion is antecedent to

103 cognition. A person or animal must perceive a situation as threatening to experience fear, not have the experience of fear and then determine by perceiving the bodily reaction that the situation is threatening. The deeper problem is the failure to explain just what is asked for, namely, what exactly is the relation of thought to emotion. Still another theory - I think incorrect but more plausible - postulates a general pool of affect that is shaped by the idea it comes into contact with. This was close to Freud’s thinking that emotion has its origin in libidinal drive, which activates the memory traces to affectively-charged ideas or drive-representations. In the metapsychology, the traces are inert and the dynamic is in the energy, which is equated with drive. The lack of a coherent account of the relation of affect to idea is the primary flaw in the cathexis theory, since an undifferentiated pool of libidinal energy is assumed to spread among the memory traces, one or more of which is selectively activated. But how the energy “knows” which trace to cathect, or how the trace “lures” its cathectic charge, was left unexplained. For the most part, many experimental studies have led neurology to the view (see Lindsley, 1951; MacLean; 1990, Gainotti, 1991) that emotion is a function of the limbic system, with discharge downward for display and upward for experience. The association of hypothalamic and limbic structures with instinct, drive or emotion is well-established in behavioral research. But on this model, the ascending “discharge” of the limbic innervation infuses or informs consciousness of the emotion by conveying it to the “higher centers” of thought. The James-Lange theory (James, 1890) is an earlier version of this model. In the James-Lange (or Hegelian) notion of feeling as the result of external stimuli, feelings are likened to sensations. As perceptions are held to develop from sensations, so do feelings. Hegel argued that certain feelings arise from the organs of external sensation. Anger and courage are sensed in the breast and blood, flushing of the face in shame, trembling and pallor in fear (DeVries, 1988). Hegel also considered the sense of something being right or wrong as an affect, a form of pure sensation, not a sign of the coherence or dissonance of moral concepts. The argument is that without the peripheral signs - the trembling, flushing of the face and palpitations of anxiety or fear - there is no inner experience. The emotion is the collection of its bodily manifestations that are merely “read-off” the peripheral alterations, recalling Spinoza, for whom the human mind was the idea of the human body. James wrote, “the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the

104 exciting fact, and ... our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.” By bodily is not meant the brain, for then the theory would claim only that emotion corresponds to brain activity, which is trivially true for all mental events, and goes no great distance to understanding them. In the shift from the James-Lange to the limbic theory, the physiology of emotion was moved inward from the periphery to neural firings in limbic cortex. In the former, neocortex interprets the peripheral physiology, in the latter, the neocortex becomes aware of the emotion by ascending projections. The substitution of an upward discharge of limbic emotion for peripheral bodily change is a shift from display before feeling to feeling before display, but in both accounts (peripheral, limbic) the affect-experience is outside thought: feeling and idea are still independent. The dissociation of feeling and display is well-known. As James noted, but finessed, an actor can simulate the outward expression of an emotion, such as sorrow, without a coincident feeling, indicating that a display can appear genuine without the corresponding affect. Often, the actor attempts to generate the feeling by recalling a personal experience, or by putting himself in the place of someone who has. The feeling first arises by sympathetic identification, then discharges into its manifestations. There are also cases with brain damage (Brown, 1967) in which emotional display - laughing, crying - occurs without inner feeling. Many such cases have been reported. A disruption of “feedback” cannot be claimed in these cases since the individual is aware of the display yet denies having the emotion. Similarly, surgical procedures in animals can produce “sham” emotions (rage), in which there is display without evidence of inner emotion. I have also seen cases with small brainstem lesions in which the person admitted to having an inner experience of joy or sadness but was unable to express it outwardly. One woman related to me how distressing it was to be deeply upset but unable to cry. So, the display can occur without the inner feeling and the inner feeling can occur without the display. Indeed, the dissociation of feeling and display is so commonplace it seems hardly worth mentioning. But the emphasis on the outer over the inner, i.e. the relation of feeling to outward behavior or display, whether arising in the body or the brain, and whether before or after the feeling, treats feeling as a non-conceptual discharge that requires a coupling to thought. These theories at best might account for the coarser emotions of the animal inheritance, such as fear, anger and the sexual drive, but not the evolutionary continuity (or, to follow their logic, the discontinuity) of animal feeling with the partial and refined emotions. It is the failure to

105 address the partial affects, in which the ideational content is in the foreground, that exposes the limitations of a limbic discharge between the inner idea and the outer display. Indeed, James thought his theory was most applicable to the coarser emotions, but that a continuum could be shown with the subtler emotions. Since emotion was an interpretation of peripheral changes, for James no special brain area was required. This conclusion has been thoroughly refuted in subsequent research. The delimitation of emotion, and the extrinsic relation to cognition and behavior, weaken the explanatory power of all these theories (peripheral, cathexis and limbic), raising more questions than answers. What are the correlates of the subtle affects - the affect-ideas - that are the inner experience of everyday life, such as annoyance, envy, pride, chagrin, affection, grief, disappointment, and so on? To what extent can a limbic emotion be described in terms of its thought content? What is its relation to a derived affect? Is a derived affect a thought or an emotion? Is there a conjoint development of affect and idea in phylo-ontogeny and microgenesis from states of drive associated with a few conceptual primitives to states of subtle feeling and conceptual diversity? Do we see this pattern in reverse, say, in the progression (regression) from romantic interest to sexual desire to copulation? Experiments that suggest a dissociation between affect and idea, or the existence of separate cognitive systems for feelings and concepts, depend heavily on the assumption that concepts involve conscious, linguistic material. Concepts tend to be defined narrowly in terms of linguistic content, while emotions tend to be treated as energy without ideational content. In part, this stems from the observation that animals seem to have feelings but not ideas, and they are not conscious in the human sense, so it is reasonable to suppose that in cognition as, presumably, in evolution, feeling is antecedent to ideas and distinct from them. But the difference between human and animal feeling corresponds to that between human and animal ideation. The sense of a continuity in feeling from animals to humans, at least in the province of the drives, leads us to read human feeling into animals. Few dog or horse owners would say their love or loyalty to their animals is not reciprocated. Indeed, they often talk of the animals as if they understood what was said, call them “baby” or “sweetheart,” and in some instances give them more love and feel greater reciprocity than what is given to, or felt to be received from, their own children. Human concepts are highly language-dependent, and sensible people

106 do not attribute human-like ideation to animals. Yet animals have ideas, concepts or categories, just nonverbal ones. Even pigeons have been shown to form novel perceptual categories, for example, for pictures of trees. Such categories, especially innate ones such as the subject/object divide, the conceptual apparatus for instincts of survival, parenting and so on, as well as the foundational activity of category-formation, are continuous with the pattern of basic categories and category-formation in human cognition. The similarity of cognitive development in infant human and chimpanzee over the first year of life until language appears (Kellogg and Kellogg, 1933) suggests that categories in the generation of action and perception are similar. These categories are the conceptual primitives that become the core beliefs and presuppositions that underlie thought in a mature cognition. It would seem that any theory of emotion must respond to several questions: what is the fundamental nature and neurological basis of the emotions, how are emotions related to ideas, and how are the diverse emotions inter-related, i.e. what explains their origin and diversity? What is an emotion? Energic, anatomical and physiological theories in humans or animals all have the defect of dividing emotion or its substrate from thought. The concept of emotion as energy or impulse traces to its motive-like power as a force that impels thought and action, as well as its variation in strength. The power of the emotion is felt as an external influence linked to its intensity. A person might say, I was compelled to do such and such, or I lost control of myself, or my better nature was overcome by desire. Like the will, which is felt to instigate or empower behavior, not inhere in it, as in the argument about display, emotion is apprehended as either prior to ideas, as an excitation, or subsequent to them, as a reaction, whether the effect is to incite or mitigate. The energic theory is reinforced by studies of the pharmacological basis of emotion, the role of neuro-transmitters, and the “mood altering” medications that are used to treat emotional “disorders.” The intensity of an idea is a sign of its affective strength. We speak of one idea as stronger than another, but we mean by this the rational force of the idea, its density, depth of belief or influence on others. Ideas alone do not have intensities. In contrast, one speaks of the strength of a feeling, even as its objects remain stable, as in the continuum from interest, to affection, to love, to passion, to ecstasy. According to Plato, in the

107 transition from passion to ecstasy the object shifts from the particular (the beloved) to the universal, i.e. the category of things worthy of being loved (beauty, goodness), a continuum beyond that of intensity. The energic theory of emotion has survived not only because it appeals to common sense, but because it is grounded in evolution. Energy in inorganic matter is the basis of emotion in higher organisms (see chapter 4). My thesis here is that emotion begins as energy, e.g. the wave-form of a basic entity, where it is “contained” in packets or particles. At this stage, energy has a momentum but not a stable direction, certainly not an aim. The energy and its boundedness are the existence and nature of the entity. Put differently, the entity consists of a packet of temporal extensibility over the duration of its existence, a duration that is, at least conceptually, isotropic or time-reversible. In the evolution of organic life, energy takes on an aim or direction over its duration and becomes anisotropic or timeirreversible. The phase-transition has a before and after. With directionality, energy is transformed to feeling. The shift from bidirectional energy to uni-directional feeling, as with all natural advances in organic systems, occurs within the duration of the entity, i.e. within the temporal extension of each recurrence. Once there is feeling, an “idea” goes to satisfaction. This “idea” is the category (duration) over which the feeling develops. As energy is the seed of emotion, duration is the seed of idea. Energy becomes feeling, duration becomes category. Or, put differently, becoming (process) is feeling, being (state) is idea. The category that encloses a feeling is also its aim, since the category does not exist until an epoch of feeling terminates. A complete cycle of feeling establishes the boundaries of the duration, and thus fulfills the aim or idea of the category that up until then has been virtual but, through the cycle of feeling, becomes actual just as it perishes. In primitive organisms, the idea or aim is the recurrence of cycles of feeling that insure the survival of the organism. In complex organisms, recurrence becomes appetitive in self-preservation and the drives. Gradually, as more complex organisms evolve, the feeling that completes the duration, i.e. the momentary existence of the entity, is segmented such that the earlier portion differs from the later portion. The earlier portion is felt as will, the later portion is felt as aim or satisfaction. Again, all of this occurs within the minimal duration of the organism’s existence. The direction to an aim is no less subjective than the will from which it arises. Will expressed in feeling directed to an aim is the foundation of drive and the partial affects of organisms of still greater

108 complexity. One can say that feeling is felt process in simpler organisms it is the dynamic of their unreflective lives - while emotion is the experience of process in higher ones. A simple organism is its feeling, but complex (human, but perhaps lower) organisms have emotions. In emotion, we experience the life-animating process that actualizes the person that we are. Will instigates drive and other emotions. The unconscious will is not often felt in its raw state, because its power dissipates as it is transformed to desire and the partial affects. The will is the “material” out of which the drives and desires are fashioned. It is the dominating form of emotion, the precursor of all other affects and desires. It cannot be fully experienced unless its tributaries are blocked and its full power unleashed. This occurs, for example, when an organism is threatened with extinction. There is no desire, no affection, no hunger, no partial affects, just a primal fear and need to survive. When the will goes into action without reflection, we are aware, retrospectively, that we were alive in a way that is not given to us by perception or the attenuated objects of deliberation. The inner and outer world that are created in perception are created for those who, themselves, are created by feeling. Action and emotion discharge in the body. The cry of the newborn is sheer affective display. Is this a pure emotion, a feeling without thought? In my view, the cry is surrounded by or discharges an idea, a primitive concept or category. This category may be the body itself as a whole, or on separation from the mother. The cry is the immediacy in discharge of the subjectivity of organism. The body that initiates and receives this discharge is its ideational content. The “idea” is that of separation, appetite, the frame of the body and its full exhibition in subjective bodily space. The cry actualizes the organism. The history of this actualization is the categorical object realized in the cry. Whether the aim is food or a caress, the cry discharges a need that is satisfied in the object. Categorical primes of unconscious organism are the ideas that frame affective display. Schopenhauer wrote, “the teeth, throat and bowels are objectified hunger.” When feeling goes immediately into action, the body receives all the feeling that might otherwise have been allocated to objects, and the self and its body are then more intensely alive. We experience the full force of the will in sudden life-threatening situations when the will discharges directly into protective action. But we also have moments of intense inner feeling in rapture, or the experience of the sublime, when the particular and the universal, in time and in space, are

109 felt in a single rush of emotion (Brown, 1999). When we gaze at the face of someone we love, the world disappears or, rather, the perception is concentrated in one object of consuming interest. When this happens (see below), we are overcome by feelings that would otherwise go into action or dissipate in a multiplicity of objects. Feeling is the process-life of organism, but organisms have substantive lives as well. They are objects that seek and perceive other objects. In human thought, the impact of a world of substance is such as to extract the dynamic of feeling from the object and move it outside. The object then becomes a solid block drained of process. Once external to the object, feeling itself is frozen and chopped into parts - the different affects - that seem to adhere to the object surface, i.e. ideas, objects of value. The separate feelings of affection, fear or desire are conceived as for the object, not inside it. Thus, we construe feeling as a type of energy applied to ideas, and relate it to separate brain mechanisms or bodily manifestations. The impression is strong that ideas are free of affect, and feelings are free of ideational content, with the awareness of an emotion being the result of a judgment. However, nothing could be further from the truth. A more intimate and profound relation of feeling to object is needed if we are to avoid the mistaken view, especially in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, that feeling is mere energy in an adventitious contact with objects. This is achieved by interpreting feeling as the dynamic within the object, and the object as the category or duration over which the feeling occurs. Feeling and idea are different aspects of the same event that only appear to diverge according to the segment in the actualization process. The event is the actualization history of the object, not the event-category, in which the object is an arbitrary slice, or the category of related objects out of which one object individuates. Thus, for aggression or defense in animals, the elaboration of the aggressive or defensive behavior is the object or event-category, while the drive or affect is the process through which the behavior is laid down. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that emotion or feeling is the process-experience of becoming, while the feeling or emotion that is experienced, the designation of that experience, or its fixation in an object or idea, is the object-experience of being. As being gives existence to becoming, so without becoming, being would not exist. Objects are created by feeling as enclosures, but feeling is what makes objects real existents.

110 Feeling and intentionality The object is implicit in the emotion. The object is an idea created and infiltrated by feeling. The infant’s cry is proto-intentional. The protointentional object is the breast. The ideational object is the organism. We see the interaction of two objects, baby and mother (breast), but for the infant the breast does not exist until it is available. The cry is for the unknown other, the need for the complementary object or the satisfaction of the segmentation of the subject into its objective portion. Once acquired, the object helps to define the subjective limits in the discharge of the organism. The later-developing conceptual feelings have a greater claim to intentionality as self-to-other bridges. Intentions are feelings that arise in the relation of self to object. Intentionality is a direction of feeling in relation to thought. The intentional feelings are central to the unity of emotion and idea. A thought cannot be both affect-free and intentional. Feeling becomes intentional when its ideational content clarifies. For example, when the object of a non-intentional mood such as anxiety resolves, it becomes an intentional feeling such as fear. The person then knows what he is anxious about. Thought as a process, not the thought that results from thinking, is necessarily intentional, in that it takes on direction or aboutness from its feeling-tone. If one thinks about an object, say, the interpretation of a passage in Hume, or whether or not to go to the movies, one could say the thought is intentional. It is about a certain object - Hume, movies. The aboutness is a sign of interest or value. A “pure” thought, as in logic, is only superficially about objects. It is actually about A’s and B’s. The interest or value is not in the A or B, but in the assertion or negation of the statement about A’s and B’s. Similarly, the intensity of an assertion or negation is not a function of the force of the argument but of the feeling invested in its conviction or outcome. Propositions are intentional only in respect to the feeling behind them. The subject forms a proposition and in this sense is in relation to it, but the proposition is not directed to anything. If there is a direction or aboutness in the proposition, it is a sign of the value within it. Thought expresses feelings, minimally in what a person chooses to think about, so just thinking about something entails an affective (evaluative) quality. A proposition or statement is a product of thinking. It is a verbal act or object that may declare an intention but is not itself intentional, since the intentional relation lies in the process leading to the proposition. The intentional relation is the vector from self to proposition, i.e. the transition

111 through which the proposition actualizes. This process, the arc from will or self to object or proposition, is one of increasing objectification. Intentionality depends on having an object as an aim. The non-intentional does not have an aim, or the aim is beneath the threshold of a subjectobject division. At the other extreme, intentionality dissolves in a fully objectified concept. This is an ordinary perception. More precisely, the intentional is not the having an object, or the not-having an object, but a feeling aligned with agency that is generated in the trajectory from self to object or idea. The neurological basis of emotion The study of the neurological bases of emotion in humans, like that of ideation, is in its earliest stages. There are reports of anterior/posterior differences or hemispheric asymmetries in the incidence of depression or euphoria, or frustration or indifference to a disability. Some researchers allocate feeling to the right hemisphere and concepts to the left. This approach avoids serious thinking on the problem and is of marginal value to the model proposed in this chapter. The neural correlates are too stringently isolated in experimental studies, and usually too globally involved in clinical observation to be certain of the relation of affect to idea. In animals and probably humans, there is an association of drive-like behavior with hypothalamus (Hess, 1954; Macchi, 1991), as well as planes of limbic growth (MacLean, 1990). In rats, and some cases of human pathology, specific regions of hippocampus or amygdala have been implicated (Penfield and Jasper, 1954; Le Doux, 1996). Indeed, the amygdala has been implicated in so many behaviors that one might think it the seat of the soul. However, human cases of bilateral amygdalectomy I have seen and those studied by others (Corkin et al, 1979) show mild memory deficits and a flat affect. In this respect, they are not so different from other surgical cases, such as thalamotomy, frontal lobotomy or bilateral cingulotomy. It is unlikely that emotions are selectively lost in such cases. Ablation, stimulation and recording methods confirm that limbic and sub-cortical regions are vital for the drives. Panksepp’s (1998) argument that drive-like emotions feed into upper brain stem is reminiscent of Nauta’s (1972) idea of a “limbic brainstem.” This account is consistent with the idea of a construct in upper brainstem that transitions over evolutionary growth planes, through limbic formation to neocortex, into

112 the diverse contents of conscious mental life. Those who argue that an emotion such as fear is an unconscious affect that is interpreted by consciousness, a view that is based largely on animal research in which fear reactions are elicited on stimulation of sub-cortical structures, ignore the human (and animal) experience that fear has an object. In panic attacks, the unconscious pre-object has not resolved. We see the same phenomenon in depression when objects dissolve and the patient slips into a morbid state. These phases are retraced in recovery. There are neocortical syndromes in which the responsiveness to physical and psychic pain, including noise and fear, is altered. The monkey with a bi-temporal dissection has a loss of normal fear responses, perhaps secondary to a recognition defect (Klüver and Bucy, 1937). The animal does not seem to know a formerly threatening object, e.g. a snake, and is no longer afraid of it. Whether the problem is with the feeling of fear or the concept of the object, the disorder illustrates the intimate bond between the two. The partial affects cannot be disambiguated from their ideational context. There is no convincing evidence that brain damage in humans results in the loss of specific emotions, though disorders of language or ideation may be accompanied by an inability to experience emotions that the individual cannot identify. A patient with a severe language or cognitive disorder who performs poorly on a task may show frustration, but to what extent can he feel shame, disappointment, embarrassment, humiliation, foolishness, and so on? If he cannot sort out the subtle distinctions in the ideational content of these feelings, can the feelings exist without the ideas that define them? To my knowledge, this has not been studied. Certainly, the more basic emotions occur, presumably enveloped by basic ideas. One sees sexual, aggressive and other behaviors that are said to be “dis-inhibited,” “released” or “unlocked” by severe brain injury. The account of emotions “held in check” by a higher cognition, going back to Hughlings Jackson and Freud, embodies the notion of sub-cortical loci for emotion and neocortical areas for thinking, and is still very much with us in contemporary thought. It is likely that a pathological locus, or truncated individuation, that gives a drive-like behavior is accompanied by a lack of refinement in the corresponding ideation. The less fractionated the drives, or the more drive-like the emotion, the less articulated the ideas from which the emotion receives its character. We know little of the inner emotional life of patients with language or cognitive disorders. Some patients are depressed, others frustrated and aware of their deficiencies. Still others, less aware of their disorder, or

113 bound to stimuli in the immediate surround, and inattentive to past or future events, tend to be indifferent to their condition and/or euphoric. A rough model of affect-development was proposed from alterations that occur in the different forms of aphasia (Brown, 1972). It was demonstrated that a change in affect is related to the momentary error type. Semantic and phonological errors are accompanied by different affects that change moment to moment according to the error. The mood may be pervasive, but the emotion depends on the transient performance. Disorders of word and object meaning tend to be associated with decreased awareness of errors, often with euphoria, whereas patients who are aware of and try to correct errors of speech sounds and object-form have frustration and/or depression. This translates to depth and surface in microgenetic process. We learn from such cases that the awareness of a mental content, and the affect associated with it, are specific to the segment that is momentarily dominant in an act of cognition, i.e. they depend on the content of the momentary state. But beyond these observations, we have still much to learn on this topic. At the same time, prevailing neuro-scientific models of emotion block such progress. Depending on the locus and extent of brain damage, patients may have something like genuine mourning for the loss of past happiness. This may represent a desire to regain the normal state, less a memory of prior mentality than a nostalgia for lost work, an absent partner or physical health. It could also reflect a comparison of the self to others rather than to a past self. In conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, ideas drop out and the range and depth of emotional expression become limited and shallow as the illness progresses. One would suppose, as in the K-B monkey, that the individual would not desire, fear, enjoy, etc., an object, the concept of which has been lost. There are rare agnosic cases of K-B syndrome in humans, usually with a severe dementia and excessive oral behavior, but the general question of the relation of concept to affect remains untested. We would not expect a person to first lose, say, the desire for a particular object, and then in consequence lose the object-concept, though the reverse scenario seems plausible. Focal cases provide limited information on this problem, while the diffuse nature of dementia or traumatic brain injury does not allow for the anatomical correlation that is pertinent to a process model. Stimulation in the so-called “pleasure centers” of hypothalamus may induce pleasurable feelings, but not specific affects. The effect is more like a pleasurable mood that is not focused on a distinct idea. Stimulation in

114 portions of the temporal lobe, which is the substrate of ideation and the ensuing phase in the microgenetic tree, gives rise to feelings and memories. These phenomena survive extirpation of the stimulated area, so that the arousal of an experience on stimulation does not imply that the experience is stored in the area stimulated. Cases with an epileptic aura may revive the aural experience during stimulation of an “epileptogenic” region, usually in the temporal lobe, and then forget it until the next seizure. The aura may remain unconscious before and after its arousal during natural or experimental excitation of the temporal lobe. It is not that the aura rises into consciousness, rather awareness becomes “trance-like” so as to incorporate the aura as part of its context. Hughlings Jackson wrote of “dreamy” states in temporal epileptics. This has been confirmed in cases of temporal lobe stimulation by Horowitz and Adams (1970). Often, the aura has an affective quality, such as a feeling of fear, anxiety or impending misfortune, and it may be associated with a specific memory or object. Subclinical seizure activity, such as kindling, has been postulated to give mood disorders and, for these symptoms, anti-convulsant medications are thought by some to be helpful. Does an unconscious aura that is only conscious during excitation of the epileptic area have an ongoing effect on behavior similar to that of “repressed” or unconscious feelings and memories, as postulated by psychoanalytic theory? One such example in clinical neuropsychology is the case of HM, the bi-temporal amnesic, who was operated on for temporal lobe seizures. In spite of being told many times that his father had died, he was unable to consciously recall the fact of his father’s death, yet he became sad when his father was discussed. This suggests to some the possibility of an affectmemory that can be specific to discrete events (concepts, ideas), a memory that can remain intact even if its revival in consciousness, in so-called declarative or representational memory, is lost. Clearly in this case the “association” of the father’s death with sadness on mentioning his name indicates that the feeling is bound up with a concept, but that the full complex of feeling and idea, the conceptual feeling, is not derived to consciousness. That a feeling can be felt while its ideational content is not yet known does not indicate a separation of feeling and memory. It only shows that feeling is present experience - it is the present affective state regardless of whether its idea is a thought or a memory - while a memory, to become conscious, must be a content in that state. Thus the sadness occurs when the father is mentioned, but there was apparently no sign of a depressed mood after he was first informed of his father’s death. This

115 indicates that the unconscious “affect-memory,” unlike a “repressed idea,” does not continue to exert an effect on cognition, except in the moment it is revived. In sum, while there is preliminary data on the neural bases of the drives, those of desire, wish, hope, affection, anxiety and so on are completely unknown. “Where is fancy bred, or in the heart or in the head?” is as much a question today as it was for Shakespeare. Without reviewing the massive, yet still inconclusive literature on this topic (Panksepp, 1998; Schore, 1994), the evidence seems clear that drive or motivation is related to hypothalamus and limbic formation, while the “substrates” of the derivative affects are unknown. For this, we would also have to know the substrates of ideas, for the experience of envy, affection or mourning is meaningless without the idea of who or what the envy, affection or mourning is about. Memory and feeling One observes that, inter alia, an odor can arouse memories and feelings similar to those experienced when the event occurred. There may be uncertainty as to whether the feeling or memory recurs first. Some have speculated that feeling can precede memory or that in ongoing experience, feeling can be an “early warning” of an impending event. Wündt (1907) wrote, “It is the affective elements which, as soon as they are strong enough, first become noticeable.” This does not imply a separation of the two, only that affect is the first to be noticed, i.e. it is consciously felt before the idea is consciously known. It is not uncommon that we like or dislike a person before we get to know him, but not before we know anything about him. The something we know, no matter how little, is a property that feeds the concept that generates the like or dislike. Feelings that appear to lack concepts can be compared to intuitions or ineffable concepts in thinking, especially in creative thought. From studies in social psychology, Zajonc (1980) argued that the first stages in an organism’s action, and in retrieval, are affective. This presumes that feeling is “underneath” knowledge, as an unconscious force, and that the affective charge initiating action or memory is not part of a pre-object category, which I would dispute. But if feeling evokes memory, it would be a present feeling that calls to mind a past event, similar to a déja vu phenomenon. A person feels sad, and this reminds him of a sad experience in the past. Does the sadness serve as a common predicate to

116 link the shared topics of the current and prior state? Is sadness itself a category that incorporates both states? Sadness can also be a mood that comes over a person without a conscious object and colors all experience, past and present, as well as future expectations. A mood does not seem to have an object, rather, it affects all objects and it poses difficulty to a theory of affect as the inner dynamic of ideation. Yet we occasionally have ideas that are also pervasive, and it may be that what such ideas and moods have in common is their relation to pre-object categories, where neither the concept nor the feeling has individuated with sufficient clarity. The degree of individuation parallels the availability in consciousness. Unconscious “ideas” are more general and closer to potential, unconscious affects are more diffuse and closer to drive. Someone with a pervasive sadness can be helped by medication, but therapy can also elicit reasons for the depression of which the person is unaware. One must assume that those unconscious reasons (experiences, ideas) were the “containers” of the mood or configured the mental state, when it seemed to have no clear object or focus. If a memory can be evoked by a present feeling, can a prior feeling be evoked by a present feeling or experience? Is there such a thing as a past feeling that is felt, or is the feeling delivered into the present by a memory that conforms to the occurrent affect-state? The memory of a past feeling is the memory of having felt such and such a way, not the feeling itself as a memory. To recall a past feeling is largely to recall the events associated with that feeling, or to recall the feeling as itself an event. What is it to recall a past unhappiness if one cannot recall the events that made one unhappy? When we are reminded of sad or happy events by present feelings or events, the evocation of the memory does not so much bring the emotion along with it as reconcile the event with the present affect. On this view, first the memory, then the feeling. As Wordsworth wrote, he “gazed - and gazed - but little thought,” as he surveyed a field of daffodils, yet he reminisced later, in repose: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

The fact that feeling differs for perception and memory shows the importance of the temporal aspect of these phenomena. There are

117 important differences in feeling for a present idea and a past memory, owing partly to the pastness of memory and the immediacy of feeling, even for memorial objects. It is of some theoretical interest that many people claim that when they recall an event, the emotions associated with that event may be revived to a similar degree. Remembering a happy event makes one happy, as in the above poem, whereas remembering a sad event makes one sad. In the usual case, as argued, memory recurs first and feeling seems to follow. At such times, we may try to hold the event constant and savor the feeling allied to it, which may grow in awareness more than the memory that is its source. A walk with my young son takes me back to an outing in childhood and calls up another world of feeling and experience. The memory tinges the day with a bright, melancholy hue. My little boy shines more than the sun. It is no longer an ordinary walk, the day is awash in light, in innocence and renewal, transience, recurrence, the repetition of life-cycles, all this and more are part of what is recalled, but not explicitly, rather as a kind of dark and lovely shadow. It is impossible to say whether the feeling evoked by the memory helps to navigate the experiential context that the initial memory evokes, or whether the feeling elicits a richness of other feelings and the memories aroused by them. When we tap into the potential of an underlying concept to explore its context, we elicit those contents along with the unique emotional resonance that each memory calls up. Proust is the great example. However, it seem to me, in opposition to Wündt, that at least in those with a more calibrated emotionality, the ability to re-experience an event in memory exceeds the ability to revive its affective tonality. Certainly there appears to be greater fixity or stability of the memory, and less predictability for the affective tone. Apart from individual variation in emotional response to the same event, an individual may recollect with pleasure events that were indifferent or unpleasant at the time. One can joke about a past unhappiness, or recall trivial events and observe them gradually take on deeper emotion. The same recollection is felt differently according to the current state of mind. The memory of a loved one who has recently died evokes sadness, but after a time the memory no longer carries the same affective weight. The same event that brought tears of loss early in mourning may later bring smiles of joy at the thought of a vital, selfauthored life. A specific affect may not be linked to a specific memory, but to the category of which the memory is a part. Wordsworth’s daffodils are not

118 themselves the source of happiness, nor were they at the time they were perceived, for he wandered “lonely as a cloud.” The daffodils are a window into a period in his life. The later “bliss of solitude” evokes - and perhaps transforms - the pain of a past loneliness. Thus, when we remember a past love and recall moments spent together, we can, perhaps, revive the feeling of loving along with the event, but the event recalled may not have been the one that originally accompanied the feeling. We recall the person’s face, an anecdote, a trivial happenstance, something that was scarcely noticed at the time, a walk in the park, a passing glance. The “snapshot” of the person triggers the affective response. The reminiscence does not carry with it the original affect, which can be revived by tapping into the event-category. Unrelated events evoke affect-memories by similarity. An overlap in the properties of disparate categories can link widely different events. This is an important feature of all fields of creative endeavor. Tom Nagel began a philosophical essay with observations on a spider in a urinal. Moreover, the ability to tap into, not the event, but its category or neighboring categories, provides a justification for a shift in feeling, should it wither or propagate. For example, in mourning, when we cease to focus on the loss and attend to other qualities of the person, we may lessen the impact of the loss by acceptance, resignation, thoughts of an after-life, or by assimilating an individual death to the knowledge of universal, and our own, mortality. In ongoing perception, feeling intensifies when interest collapses on a single object, for example, when we perceive an object with fear or love. It is not surprising that this also occurs in memory, which is attenuated perception. Feeling is heightened with absorption in the memory. In creative writing, one attempts to reclaim a certain mood and recapture the idea or inspiration of the work, not just any mood, but one that is specific to the generative idea. The mood corresponds to the idea even if the idea cannot be articulated. At such moments, one wants to be saturated with the idea, to get into the mood and stay there, to bring its latent content to awareness. The artist carries with him the work, the idea and its mood, so it will penetrate his being, become part of him, so that when composition begins the state of mind is there, just waiting to be revived. In artistic work the artist gives himself to the mood, to be lost in concentration, a state that is part mood, part thought, part recollection. The creative mood with its inchoate idea suggests that ordinary moods like depression are also associated with an unconscious ideation. In reminiscence more than perception, feeling increases with the

119 “associations” called up. First, there is the category of the event, then, by metaphoric or part-whole extension, still deeper or wider categories are aroused. There may be a concentration of affect on a single event-category, then a spread through the experiential context that is its underpinning. Depending on the context, feeling grows or fades. These observations indicate that feeling and idea are part of the same complex, but their unity is fluid, not quantal. The apparent liberation of affect from idea that occurs in the derivation of drive to conceptual feeling is equally a liberation of the idea from its affective tone. Affect and idea are not fixed for all subsequent revivals. Even in drive, a given idea (construct, category) is not inextricably woven with a given affect. The shifting relations between feeling and memory, or feeling and idea (object, event), depend on the current mood, the passage of time, depth and context and the momentary focus of attention. In sum, memory is the revival of an event “from the past,” feeling is “in the present.” Unlike the past event, except perhaps for nostalgia, where the feeling is for the pastness of the memory more than the memory itself, feeling is in the now. It is associated with an event that is felt to be past, but the feeling itself, to the extent it can be apprehended independent of the event, does not evoke a quality of pastness. The feeling associated with a past event is still felt in the present, though the event is felt as past. One can perceive the world and at the same time have a memory or think of the past, but one cannot feel the world and at the same time feel a memory. Put differently, one can have two objects simultaneously, a past and present one, but only one feeling. Those instances when a person says he is divided in feeling, or cannot choose between two desires, do not mark the simultaneous presence of two desires but a single feeling of conflict, a feeling that is the tension of two others in opposition. Affect is part of the process-life of the present. The past-quality of feeling is derived secondarily from reminiscence. Whatever there is of pastness in feeling comes from the memorial-quality of the idea. In contrast, a memory that is experienced as a present event would be an hallucination. The emotional response to a past event, more than the memory of the event, depends on the current state of mind. This is also true for perception. The same event that one day elicits sympathy, on another evokes revulsion. The affective tone of the moment colors the feeling of the event. The affective tonality of a memory is determined by the current state, which includes the embedded memory. The memory may alter over time, but its content is less dependent on the present than its affective charge, though

120 which memory is selected, whether in an act of spontaneous or voluntary thought, is contingent on occurrent events. The affect-experience of memory is that of a receptacle that both shapes and receives the feeling. That a perception may not evoke the same feeling when it is revived as a memory reflects, partly, the fact that perception is not fully contextualized to personal experience, i.e. in “long-term” memory. The complement to this poverty of context is greater objectivity, which obviates the depth and subjectivity of a faded object, i.e. a memory. Incomplete recurrence in repeated volleys beneath awareness integrates the configuration in the past experiential life. The perception is not conveyed to a long-term “store” for consolidation. Rather, in each successive revival, the event becomes interwoven with, and according to its impact reconfigures, the personal history. An event is constantly replaced by other events as moments arise and perish, whereas feelings seem to endure beyond the events they refer to. A bad experience can induce a sour mood that lasts after the experience is forgotten. But unconscious revival is probably required for the feeling to be sustained. This may be why the deepest feelings are those in reverie or reflection. Wordsworth wrote of emotions “recollected in tranquility” as the key to creative work. Lévy-Bruhl (1935/1983) referred to the “affective category of the supernatural,” to emphasize the felt quality of primitive experience. This union of feeling and object (concept), closer to memory than perception, closer to archaic structures of the limbic formation than to the recency of neocortex, closer to the past than the present, allied to magical and creative thinking, abides just beneath the surface of everyday thought. Thus the role of memory is most apparent in conceptual feeling, when the individual draws back from objects and allows anticipatory concepts to surface. To be aware of a feeling is to have its ideational content in a state of object-awareness. Those who live resolutely in a world of objects, when the object, not its antecedent context, is the focus of interest, may have a shallow emotional life. Those who are vulnerable to the feelings within those objects, the feeling that is in the background out of which the objects individuate, have a more vivid and nuanced affective life. The tinge of affect that illuminates a perception owes to a prominence of memory within the process-history of the object. This prominence evokes the contextual, conceptual and experiential background of the object, inviting affects of greater subtlety, intensity and richness of ideation.

121 From the “drive representation” to the “real object” Feeling by itself gives no “unique or special revelation of the self, in distinction from any other element of the universe”, Bradley wrote (1893), yet feeling is the glue of the universe, not on a par with other elements. All things are pervaded by feeling, which changes with the growth of the subjectivity of the organism. Feeling is the life of the most primitive organisms as the realness of their existence, and the unity that binds all organisms together, and them to nature. Without feeling, an organism is a hypothetical (non-existent) collection of equally hypothetical parts, all part of a still larger speculative system. Such systems are not organic, they are not even physical existents, since every rock is alive with energy. What separates living from non-living systems is the inner dynamic of feeling, but what brings the organic and inorganic together is the transformation of energy into feeling and, of course, back again in the final perishing into physical matter. The unity in feeling is prior to, yet continues after, the distinction of subject and object. Though feeling seems to be broken in the division of subject and object, it inheres in the organism over the segmentation of drive and aim. As feeling becomes drive it seems to sequester in the organism, which goes out to an impersonal object. As desire, feeling aims beyond itself to objects that have a separate inner life. Yet feeling is continuous with its objects, and continuous with nature as it transmutes energy into living form for a determinate span of life. The specification of desire out of drive complements the translation of unconscious “representation” to ideas. In human thought, feeling and idea - the dynamic and static of cognition - are indivisible. Ideas are deposited as categories out of the incessant throb of feeling, both within the organism and in its world. This is not the view of most philosophers, nor of psychoanalysis. For many, affect is situated on a pendulum between pain and pleasure, a dichotomy that is a facile rendering of what is deep and complex. Bradley, for one, argued that feeling is not equivalent to the spectrum of affects between pleasure and pain. Pleasure is not a perception like pain, but one of innumerable affects that are pleasurable, each infiltrating or infiltrated by an object, idea or situation. This is true for “psychic” pain which, for its contrast with pleasure, includes many different forms of unhappiness, ranging from sullen boredom to unremitting grief. Physical pain, on the other hand, is a perception equivalent to touch, proprioception, vision etc., except that it is a primitive or nociceptive perception in comparison with the more recently

122 evolved epicritic perceptions. Pain located in or on the body calls up aggressive or defensive actions. The “representation” of pain is largely sub-cortical, without the extensive neocortical projections of the other perceptual modalities. Because it is more archaic, e.g. sub-cortical, transmitted by older, lightly myelinated fibers, etc., pain is not seized like an object, as with vision, hearing or touch; rather the body is seized (gripped, racked) by pain. Pain also has a closer contact with immediate bodily reactions, as is expected in the more primitive system. The argument that the bond between human feeling and idea is indissoluble is most persuasive when the emphasis in cognition is midway between will or drive at one extreme and objects at the other, namely, in states of need, wish, desire, anticipation, sympathy, and so on. The midway point is felt as fully intrapsychic, but it has an objective content. The subjectivity gives the feeling as belonging to the self, i.e. the feeling is mine, within me. The objectivity gives the object-concept or idea that shapes or defines the feeling. The objectivity also provides content for the intentionality of the subjective aim. The subjective pole at its origins is unconscious, or perhaps at the threshold of consciousness. It is best described, from the standpoint of feeling, in terms of will, drive or motivation. The objective pole, when close to the external, is best described in terms of concepts; when fully external, in terms of acts and objects. Emotion at its inception (drive) seems bereft of ideas, while its terminus (realness, worth) has a content that objectifies to the point that its object (concept, proposition) seems almost affect-free. The common sense impression is that will and drive are antecedent to ideas, that they are the engines of thought and action, while concepts and objects - the products of thought and perception - are subsequent to feelings, such that feelings are characterized as responses or motivations for judgments. It is natural to suppose that feelings and ideas come together mainly in states such as desire. In such states, will or drive distributes into conceptual feeling as its affective strength abates. As a result of this moderation, the conceptual aspect of the drive-derivation, the desire, which was embryonic at the phase of drive, takes on greater prominence. For example, in humans, drive begins as an appetite that individuates to a desire for a specific category, then to a particular item. When the object is perceived, the desire passes into it as worth, or objectvalue. The individual feels desire as internal, but perceives its aim as external. The object has the intrinsic value of satisfying the drive or desire. The initial stages are dominated by affect, the final ones by objects, the

123 progression being from the quiet “representation” around the drive to the implicit realness of the object (see below). This is because there is a reciprocal development in which the forming object is indefinite at its onset inside the individual, just when the developing affect is most intense, while the formed object is definite at its terminus outside the individual, just at the point when the affect has all but dissipated (see Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1. The representation of object, drive, world, and self

As illustrated in Fig. 3.1, feeling develops with the object, first as the affective-tonality of a drive-representation, then to the ideationallycomplex affects of conceptual-feeling (affect-ideas), finally externalizing with the object as worth or value. Initial drive-like feeling has for a category the configural pattern of the act- or object-to-be. With a mitigation of drive, its hidden conceptual primitives become apparent in their derivation to feeling. Conversely, feeling is the affective tonality of object-concepts. When the object is fully in the world, or the world has fully externalized, feeling, having externalized with the world, is experienced outside the affective life as object realness, value or worth. More precisely, an object individuates in the course of self-realization from an intrapersonal phase of dispositions, values and implicit beliefs through one of experiential memory, object-concepts and imagery, to a thing in the world. Coincident with this development, an emotion

124 individuates from unconscious drive through many possible realizations of conceptual-feeling, where we sense the indivisibility of feeling and concept, to a final quota of value in extrapersonal objects. The drives are subjective and “irrational,” if not non-conceptual. From them, concepts individuate to propositions or objects that seem affect-free. At an intermediate phase, the developing complex is felt to have an ideational content and an affective quality. Anterior to this phase, the object is unconscious potential. Subsequent, it is perceived as independent of cognition. Only midway in its development, as an introspective content, is it apprehended as conceptual. The conceptual portion of an external object is its object-category, its affective portion is realness and worth. Once an object is in the world, it appears fixed and determinate. Feeling takes the opposite path, beginning with the explicit or determinate pressures of the drives, leading through the potentiality of the desires (conceptual feelings) to the final trickle into the object. At the final point of development in the external object, feeling has the character of potential. While the object does not appear to change, the feeling invested in it can undergo dramatic mutations. Mild interest gives way to love or hate and all the while the object appears unchanged. We interpret this transformation as an internal shift in feeling as we get to know the object better. But we also describe the object as more loving or hateful. It is not just that we love or hate the person, but that he is a lovable or hateful person. Similarly, we can listen to music indifferently, or be deeply moved by what we hear. When music arouses emotion, it touches a sensitivity that owes to the awakening of experiential memories, at times conscious, at others, beneath awareness. We may sense the memorial quality of the feeling even if we cannot identify the particular content. As with an affective response to visual objects, we bring to music an emotional predisposition. For me, this is usually the sadness or melancholy in the music, the feeling of longing, of the evanescence of all things, all pleasures, like the transience of music itself. At such times we say we are deeply moved, but also that the music itself is moving. We are uncertain whether the feeling is located in ourselves, or is a quality of the object. Yet we would have to say that the object considered as a perception does not show a remarkable change. We see the “same” person and hear the “same” music whether or not we are moved by the perception. There is also the relation to present mood, for the emotional response to the same music or person may differ from one day to the next. Feeling marks a development within the realization of the object of a

125 dynamic that was not previously noted. This development is attributed to knowledge or experience, which is another way of saying there is a deeper exploration of the infrastructure of the perception, of an inner layer of memory and subjective feeling just beneath the outer rim of objects. When we withdraw from objects, we arouse these memorial antecedents. The withdrawal also awakens internal feelings that were given up as they accompanied the object outward. Unlike the initial phase in perception, which has a potential for a multiplicity of forms, the potential in affectdevelopment begins in a modest retreat from the object. The retreat to, or the heightening of, earlier more plastic or fluid phases is necessary, since the final object at one extreme, and the precursor drives at the other, are less alterable by circumstance. Finally, how do we explain the fluid relation of affect to idea, the fact the idea can be emptied of affect and, whether abstract or concrete, can appear quite impersonal, or there can be a fluctuation of affect while the idea remains stable, or that affect can be lost or generated in ideas that were initially affect-laden or neutral? The fixation of affect and idea is most pronounced at its polarities - in the world and in the unconscious. In a state of unconscious drive, or of conscious perception, the relation of affect to idea is relatively stable. There is a potential in drive for many possible objects, and there is a potential in objects for many possible feelings. These potentialities depend on the emergence of conceptual feeling within the object-formation. When we recede from objects to a state of inner feeling, we recover the potential in the object that was given up in the constraints on perception, or in the drive to definiteness. We also recover the inner life of feelings - the psychic precursors of the object - that were lost when the object and its affect objectified. Thus, we see ideation expand at the expense of feeling, or feeling expand as it distributes into the richness of the object-concept. In both instances, the intermediate phase recaptures the potential that was lost in full exteriorization. When we gaze at an object of interest, its value grows with an expansion of submerged residues in the underpinnings of the object. One line of expansion leads to a growth in object- and lexicalconcepts. These develop to objects and propositions that are relatively free of affect. The other line of expansion leads to a growth in experiential memory, which is relatively independent of lexical- and object-concepts. The former is governed by the regularities of rational thought, the latter by feeling and metaphoric thinking. The experiential is prior to the rational, but experiential thinking

126 dominates everyday discourse. Most people are transfixed by the daily events that impact on them and their own life story. Indeed, they rehearse their story on the slightest provocation. On the other hand, rational or logical thought requires concepts that wring out all personal reference and feeling. Such concepts tend to be equated with rational thought, but they are infrequent, more a method of argumentation than a feature of ordinary discourse. The more rational the belief, the more it may be in opposition to the drives. Propositions are derivatives of affective categories. The exact steps in this derivation remain to be determined. In this chapter, only some preliminary patterns of affect formation and the transition over states of feeling, perception and ideation have been suggested.

Chapter 4.

Value in Mind and Nature

Kill thy activities and still thy faculties if thou wouldst realize this birth in thee. Meister Eckart For process theory, the dynamic in a mental content lies in its immediate prehistory, not its causal surface. The change from one state of mind or world to the next is a novel becoming or near-replication of the immediately preceding state. Images, thoughts, feelings, objects in perception, do not cause something to occur; they appear, disappear and are replaced by a subsequent state. The present state may be conceived as the effect of its antecedent, but it is a novel actualization constrained by the state it replaces. In human mentation, the contents of awareness are actualities or finalities that perish, not solids with causal force. The process of actualization, not what actualizes, is the focus of change in mind and world. In this change, the progression is from potential to actual. Dewey wrote that the source of the duality of mind and body was the shift from explanations based on potential and actuality to those based on causality. The shift from causality back to potential and actualization reverses the trend to a “bifurcation of nature,” to which the concept of causal or external relations inevitably leads. A psychology of value coherent with a physics of nature requires, in my view, a theory of actualization and recurrence in which feeling and conceptuality inhere in the actualization process. The individuation of potential to actual is by way of internal relations, in physical entities and in the mind/brain state. In both, the transition incorporates a series of phases that leads from an arising to a perishing, in the momentary recurrence of a non-cognitive entity and, in human cognition, from the instigation of an act or object as a construct in the unconscious to its actualization in consciousness. Value develops in the transition from subject to object as an evolution of conceptual feeling at successive points in the materialization of non-cognitive entities, and in the objectification of the perceptual world. In the actualization process, mind and world are not parallel endpoints. The self is an intermediate phase in the object, which is an

128 objectification of subjective phases in the mind/brain state. Do entities independent of the mind also have subjective phases? Whitehead thought so, and wrote of the subjective aim of objective entities. The aim is realized in the transition to an actuality. The transition requires, and establishes, a duration. All entities have some duration, a thickness or a temporal extensibility. In Buddhist philosophy, the point-instant is said to be “durationless” but it has a temporal thickness that covers the arising and perishing of the point. The thickness or temporal extension consists of those phases through which the entity is deposited. In this respect, all entities are the same. Every atom or mind/brain state is a near-replicate of its set of internal relations that are iterated within its duration. Idealist philosophies regard the contents of the mind and the objects of perception as the phenomenal derivatives of a covert underlying reality. Concepts and objects, however, are not veils concealing formative process; they are the process that deposits them. Whether an object is conceived as real or phenomenal, there is still a development, a microgenesis or phasetransition concealed within its surface form. The pattern of the phasetransition within an object is its reality, whether the unconscious process of the mind or the microphysical process of non-cognitive nature. Fundamental to this line of thought is that a common process underlies the multiplicity of forms in nature and the diversity of contents in human cognition. Value and evolutionary gradualism A process theory of consciousness or value, no less than a causal theory, must decide between panpsychism and continuity on the one hand, or a sudden emergence, a mental Rubicon, on the other. Either consciousness is continuous from “top to bottom” or it emerges at some point in evolution. The same distinction applies to value, but the discontinuity is starker. Few would argue that a stone is conscious, but we would all agree that stones can have value, as gems, bricks, weapons, etc. Unlike consciousness, which apprehends objects but is not invested in them, and is evident in animals, value is generally conceded to be a uniquely human feeling that is projected onto external objects as a bridge from the subjectivity of the observer to the objectivity of the world. More than consciousness, value brings the objectivity of the physical world into relation with human emotion and conceptuality.

129 However, the idea that the value of a stone is a subjective addition to nature divides the physical from the mental and is an impediment to a naturalist theory of value. Either non-cognitive entities receive their value from human cognition or it is superimposed on an intrinsic value that is mind-independent. Yet the value created by human cognition owes to the physical entity, brain. The mind is a configured pattern of brain activity. Value is generated by the physical constituents of this activity. On the continuity hypothesis, the brain equivalent of value would be continuous with that of other non-cognitive entities, such as a rock. A rock is not a solid piece of matter; rather, as Whitehead said, it is a mass of raging particles. On this view, the dynamic of process creates intrinsic value independent of the presence of a mental state. The intrinsic, or foundational, value in a physical entity such as a brain would then not be different from that of any other physical entity. A rock is like a brain in that it replicates itself through a certain duration of process. If process in a non-cognitive entity is a distant precursor of human cognition, a continuum might exist from the inner life of the observer’s brain to the inner dynamic of the smallest particle. If value runs through all things great and small, it must be present, in some mode of occurrence, even in the most elementary entity. Some suggestions along these lines, e.g. an uncollapsed wavepacket, virtual photons (Romijn, 2002), microdurations, are critiqued by Hunt (2001). Dombrowski (2001) has written of the “microscopic sentiency found in cells, atoms, and particles.” To say that human valuation is continuous with value in simple physical entities is to claim that value is grounded in the cosmology of process metaphysics, even if the precursors of value in rocks or particles are far removed from their final manifestations in the human mind. In other words, there is a “bottom-up” continuum from the intrinsic value of physical entities to the subjective valuations of human cognition. Moreover, since objects are realizations of subjective process, the nature of value in human cognition would provide a basis for value in perceptual objects. The value attached to an external object would be an extension of the value experienced inwardly as feeling or desire. For most of us, however, it is difficult to understand how a precursor of value might exist in a rock or a particle. How could one support such a claim? To demonstrate that value is continuous from mind to nature, one would have to show that feeling and conceptuality do not arise spontaneously in human cognition as emergents of complexity or as effects of learning and culture, but have their roots planted deeply in the nature of

130 things and their evolutionary histories – in other words, that culture enhances or elaborates what is nascent in basic entities. When this nascent something that is the intrinsic value of the object becomes a value in the human mind, or the valuation and desirability of its objects, it has moved quite far from the primordial state, but even in this I believe there is an orderly progression. If we are looking for the antecedents of human valuation, it would be helpful at the start to bracket the notion of value as worth or desirability, and seek a formulation which would extract patterns from human cognition that are applicable to basic entities. Value is an intrinsic something ingredient in the mind/brain state, wholly within the subject. By intrinsic I mean that value is endogenous to the mind/brain state, or that it is wholly within a non-cognitive entity from the “perspective” of that entity. It is not ab origine an estimation of the worth of an object or its meaning or utility, nor the desire or need for an object, nor an essence, property or substance, nor is it an ethereal or spiritual quality. This intrinsic “something” in physical entities is the antecedent of what eventually becomes human valuation. The concept of intrinsic value traces to an ancient debate in metaphysics centering on the opposition of the qualitative and quantitative modes of analysis. The tension in these modes of thought is expressed in cognition in the distinction of the qualitative feel of inner experience and the quantitative science of objects. The feeling of a qualitative something in the mind that is lacking in physical objects is the basis of the dialectic between subject and object, or between inner experience and outer reality. This tension is at work in the opposition of a quantitative logic of reason and the qualitative experience of emotion, or between what a thing is and what it feels like. What a state is, is its objective existence. What a state feels like, is the dynamic within the state. This contrast at a more fundamental level is that of change and persistence, or the extremes of annihilation and eternalism that delimit the Buddhist middle way. A psychology of value that recognizes the centrality of conceptual feeling and subjectivity begins with the internal relations and qualitative change of basic entities. Such an approach can provide a coherent account of the evolution of value over the physical and mental series. The inner dynamic of an entity, its actualization or becoming, is the basis for the intrinsic relatedness of the entity over some duration of process. Intrinsic value can only be explained by a theory of intrinsic relations. One must start with internal relations, for the psychology cannot regain them at

131 advanced stages when the interioricity of feeling is at stake. The argument is as follows: The intrinsic value (existence) of all physical entities arises in a waveform of energy that establishes the entity over its temporal extension, i.e. the minimum duration of process needed for the entity to be what it is. In this bare epoch of existence, the waveform of the thing is reversible or isotropic. The vibratory or oscillatory structure of the entity is not determined by the direction of its formative process. Gradually, the internal relatedness of an expanded epoch becomes the nucleus of what eventually is a shift from energy to feeling. This occurs as process takes on a direction and becomes anisotropic or irreversible. The progressive expansion of the internal relations that are ingredient in the epoch and the enlargement of the duration of the process giving the intrinsic value or existence to a complex entity are the basis for an elaboration of simple feeling to the feeling of realness in the organism. This is the shift from vegetative forms of organic life to organisms that show purposeful activity. The shift to a direction is the seed of an aim. A further development carries the feeling of realness to value, as experiential constraints and learning induce instinctual and drive-based affects to develop into the conceptual feelings that accompany the object formation outward into (as) the perceptible world. In what follows, these stages in the evolution of process – energy, feeling and value – are described in greater detail. Intrinsic value and existence A particle is a fundamental entity, not an aggregate like a rock. Science represents such entities as self-identical over time and in different contexts. Yet a proton in a stellar mass is different from one in a hydrogen atom, as a brain cell in a tissue culture differs from one in an active brain (Birch, 1990). An elementary particle can be conceived as a waveform of energy that is epochal or, if quasi-epochal, developing out of a space-time continuum such as Bohm's implicate order. The epoch is the temporal extensibility of the particle. It comprises a duration sufficient for the particle to exist. The energy is the process that deposits the particle, the duration is the epoch or category that makes the particle the entity that it is. The minimal epoch of process that accounts for the existence of an object, a particle or a brain is its intrinsic value. Specifically, the existence of an entity is its intrinsic value.

132 It is a long way from a particle to a brain, yet the pattern of process is comparable. The brain is a complex physical entity. Like a particle, it exists as a duration of its constituent phases. A brain state requires a certain pattern of neuronal activity. This pattern develops over rhythmic phases. The phases of a brain state are oscillatory and cyclical, analogous to the vibrations of a particle [see Gunter, 1999]. These phases constitute a hierarchic series of vibratory patterns that pulse each moment into existence. The temporal extension of a mind/brain state is the complete set of phases that actualize in a momentary act of cognition. The complete set of phases is the intrinsic value (existence) of the mind/brain state. What distinguishes the activity of a neuron or a collection of neurons in the brain state from the coherent transformations that generate an act of cognition is unknown. A neuron exists as the momentary envelope of its activity pattern. We have no knowledge of psychic experience associated with a neuron nor, for that matter, with the discharge of innumerable neurons in a normal brain, nor the presumably quiescent neurons in a sleeping brain. A complex pattern of activity is essential if the brain state is to generate a cognition. This requires not only a spatial configuration of neuronal activity, but also a temporal sequence of activity in large populations of neurons over distributed phases in forebrain evolution. The configuration transforms in a direction from archaic to recent, or past to present (potential to actual), over an evolutionary stratification, such that the completeness of the sequence determines what psychic experience, if any, will occur. A particle exists as the epoch of its waveform. A perception exists as a transition from inception to termination in a single epoch of brain process. On the completion of its phase-transition, the mind/brain state becomes a physical existent that perishes for the next cycle of actualization. The discharge of a cell, the field effects of cell populations, the coherence of brain activity in an act of cognition, are all physical entities irrespective of whether they are accompanied by psychic experience. In the evolution of particles to brains, the duration enclosing a vibratory cycle enlarges from within to accommodate a progressive expansion of its constituent phases.

133

Fig. 4.1.

The transition from energy to feeling

The vibrations of a particle are isotropic; there is no repeatable temporal direction; even temporal order is indefinite (Fig. 4.1A). Presentness or actuality is achieved when the epoch of energy is realized.

134 Entities evolve. The vibrations of inorganic entities become phase transitions (Fig. 4.1B). The transition becomes directional; eventually, anisotropic (Fig. 4.1C). The direction marks a gradual development from the dynamic of the waveform. Intrinsic value as existence transforms to value as feeling, or from existence as a packet of energy to life as a vector of feeling. At the stage of intrinsic value (existence), the dynamic is a nondirectional becoming of process within the being of entity. The temporality of the process within the entity, and the spatiality of the category that constitutes the entity, are different perspectives on the becoming and being that are the entity. At the stage of feeling, the becoming into being is a process from earlier to later. The reversibility of the process is antecedent to its directionality and anisotropy. The energy of both elementary and complex entities is quantal. For the entity, there is no “gap” between quanta. Existence pertains to the duration of quanta, or epochs, not the interstices of their renewals. For the entity, these interstices are durationless, thus non-existent. The mind/brain state is also epochal, or modular. Experience is limited to the epochs of states, not the “intervals” between them. Process is relational, temporal. The change that occurs over a process is stabilized by the duration it fills. A duration of process, i.e. an epoch bounding a series of relations, is the kernel of a category. Categories are static, timeless (cf. Chapter 12). The relation of duration to phase is like that of category to member, the latter being a category for a further partition. For example, the item dog in the category animals is itself a category for various kinds of dogs. Within a given breed, say a collie, a specific dog is also a category of its perspectives, states of existence, self-identical moments, etc. Categories are wholes to their parts, as the duration of an entity is a whole to its phases. The parts or phases “contained” in the whole are also categories for a further decomposition. The apparent substantiality of objects and the continuity of the psychic life are illusions of permanence and identity, or repeatability, that arise in the overlap of momentary epochs (Brown 1996; 2000). Human valuation is derived from the intrinsic existence of elementary objects. The duration of process or temporal extensibility that establishes the existence of elementary entities is foundational to the development of feeling and valuation in complex ones. At some point, feeling becomes realness. The entity not only exists but is real, or has a feeling of realness. As with existence, the feeling of realness is not predicated of an object as a quality or property. Croce, Urban and others have taken this approach. Nor is valuation in the sense I have used it a judgment. Meinong argued that

135 every valuation entails an implicit judgment that affirms or denies the existence of an object, in other words, that judgment is prior to value. On this view existence is, rightly, prior to judgment since judgment affirms existence, but for Meinong, judgment is essential for valuation, so that value is consequent to judgment. I would give the priority to existence and realness as manifestations of value early in evolutionary process, with judgment a metapsychological attitude consequent to the valuation that arises in character. Otherwise, value or desire would be an outcome of reason, which is clearly not the case; in process theory, reason (judgment) serves to justify valuations. An object evokes the desire latent in its antecedents or the choice implicit in action. Were an act of judgment itself a valuation, we should have to explain how any object stimulates (cathects, etc.) a feeling. In brief, a judgment that affirms or denies is a proposition (i.e. a linguistic object) that is itself a valuation. The dynamic of intrinsic value transforms by degrees to feeling, realness, then instinct, drive and desire. The shift from intrinsic value (existence) to the feeling of realness to the feeling of desire seems to be a shift to drive or emotion in which feeling appears to be a kind of energy attached to an object. Affect theories postulate drive energy as a dynamic extrinsic to ideas or representations. An example of this would be Freud’s postulate of a (qualitative) drive energy that circulates among the inert (quantitative) traces, activating them by way of external relations. If, however, the existence of an object is its process or, put differently, the existence of the mind/brain state is the process it actualizes, an object would not be activated or energized by feeling, but rather, would be an epoch that feeling creates. The internal dynamic of the transition and the stability of its duration are the nucleus of what will become feeling in object-concepts. Duration and existence The generality of value is a direct inference from temporal extensibility. Some duration of process is necessary for the existence of any entity, a physical object like a rock or a mind/brain state. The minimal duration encloses earlier and later phases of its coming-into-existence. Prior to the completion of its process, it is uncertain exactly what entity will materialize. In cognition, an incomplete sequence can result in sleep, dream, psychosis, aphasia. In an atom, orbital direction and spin cannot be determined until after they have occurred. An entity is the category of its

136 phases. The transition from earlier to later gives it direction or aim. More precisely, the duration establishes the entity as an existent, while the process over which the duration extends is a kind of vector. In elementary entities, this is an aim to actuality. In the human mind it is, in addition, a direction from self to world. In taking the mind/brain state as a model for non-cognitive entities, we can say that, like the mind/brain state, the latter do not persist over time, but create their own time as they replace themselves. Once an entity actualizes, the actualization recurs to deposit another entity to replace the prior one. There is a cyclical coming-into-existence and a passing-intononexistence for the momentary life of every entity. The birth and death of each particle, or act of cognition, recalls once more the arising and perishing of the point-instants in the Buddhist theory of momentariness. Existents are not created out of nothing. Non-existence refers to the cessation of change on the completion of a cycle or phase-transition and the establishment of an epoch, with overlap by the ensuing cycle. The conclusion of one cycle coincides with an epoch of existence as the succession or time-order of the entity actualizes. Duration is a virtual arch over phases that exist by virtue of the epoch in which they are “retroactively” subsumed. The phases, being relational, are unlike instants with definite boundaries. Being and becoming Categories, durations and their constituents have indistinct boundaries, but one difference is that duration has a posterior and anterior limit. Another is that the temporal succession within a duration has a direction from earlier to later, or takes on a direction once the transition is complete, while a category and its members are spatial and timeless. Phases have direction, collies do not. In its spatiality and atemporality, the categorical nature of duration, or the durational category of an entity, takes the entity out of time and makes it thing-like or substantive. Conversely, the directionality or transition over phases takes the entity back into time in the form of process or change. There is a dual aspect to every entity. Being and substantiality reflect the epochal nature of duration. Becoming and change refer to intrinsic process. Becoming does not exist unless it is encapsulated by being, as being is the compresence of becoming in duration. The evolution of intrinsic value from basic to complex entities is the evolution of the temporal extensibility of elementary particles to object categories

137 which subtend their internal process as a direction or an aim. In brief, value is the being of an entity, or the being (substantiality) of an object, over the becoming of a momentary category of phases [see Brown 2000]. This way of thinking allows us to unify the temporality of change with the timelessness of category. Quantity arises in the existence of an entity as its duration actualizes. Quality arises in the process through which the entity actualizes. Similarly, objectivity, as an external perspective on an object, derives from the solidification of its category. Subjectivity, as the internal “perspective” of the object or entity, derives from the change through which category is laid down. Yet all entities are fundamentally the same, so the distinction turns on the emphasis of either the categorical (substantial) or transitive (processual) aspect of the same entity. Concepts and intentions refer to objects and actions, or to the substantial and processual aspects of the mind/brain state. The categorical nature of duration is the origin of conceptuality, as the processual nature of actualization is the origin of intentionality. If an object is the objective segment of a subjective process, and the subjectivity of the process is, so to say, buried in the object, which for this reason is not barren of subjective content, all objects or entities have subjective and objective phases. From the standpoint of human perception and, I would venture, from a mindindependent perspective as well, conceptuality extends all the way down to the most basic entities. The conceptuality and categorical nature of the minutest particle derive from the duration of its existence. In the enfolding of cycles within epochs, or transitions within durations, the entity exhibits, in statu nascendi, the conceptuality of the whole. The actualization of the entity has an aim that is satisfied when its momentary cycle is completed. This aim is realized in the duration of phases necessary for its accomplishment. All objects share this pattern, an aim toward definiteness, that is the seed of purpose. Whitehead put it nicely: “The lowest stage of effective mentality, controlled by the inheritance of physical pattern, involves the faint direction of emphasis by unconscious ideal aim.” Realness The relationality of the process of inorganic entities is perhaps not yet their subjectivity, but it is the ground on which subjectivity develops. The subjective appears when intrinsic process takes on direction, and especially when there is a goal or aim. At some point in evolution, the energics of inorganic matter generate subjective process. The distinction is somewhat

138 arbitrary. I would locate the subjective at that point where process is no longer isotropic, i.e. when directionality is crucial to a particular existent. At that point, one could say, energy shifts to feeling as the reversibility of intrinsic process becomes untenable. The presence of feeling imports realness to the phase-sequence. Feeling arises in the succession of process from earlier to later. The forward actualization of organism is the basis of aims, instincts. Organism feels realness in existence, it struggles to survive. Organism is real for itself, the flower that “enjoys the air it breathes.” Even the most primitive organism does not merely exist, it exemplifies tacit realness, in tropism, adaptation, survival. A discrimination is an aim. The feeling in objects, Whitehead said, is their reality. Feeling is the difference between a rock and a flower. The rock exists but does not yet have feeling. Without feeling, it cannot have realness for itself. When the rock is penetrated by perceptual feeling it has realness for others. A flower is real for its own sake. There is growth, death, competition. Near the beginnings of organism, as the energic feelings of physical process give rise to the organic feelings of life, the intrinsic value of existence transforms to the value of realness. Realness is not a judgment of whether something is real or not – the entity already exists and is part of reality. The feeling of realness is not a criterion of reality. Unreal images can feel real, and vice versa. It is, rather, the feeling of vitality and movement in organism and in the world that determines the feeling of realness. The organism and its world count for something. Dewey wrote, feeling is “a name for the coming to existence of those ultimate differences in affairs which mark them off from one another and give them discreteness.” The shift from existence to realness in the evolution of valuation is marked by a motion that is an aim and a discrimination. Every contrast is not a value, but every distinction that arises in organism is a primitive signification. Perry said, value develops as conation, tendency, a striving in physical nature. Realness is felt before it is known. Knowing comes later. The act of knowing arises out of felt realness, and is directed by interest to a determination of signification or object-meaning (worth). In human cognition, feeling takes on specificity, not from its objects, but from their anticipatory concepts. When an object actualizes, specificity increases as the object becomes real. A specification of feeling accompanies the individuation of object-concepts. The realness that inhabits organism and

139 its objects transforms to feeling in object-concepts, then to the part-objects they give rise to. An intenser expression of intrinsic value does not increase the existence of the entity; the entity exists or does not exist. Similarly, the feeling of realness is not a quantity that admits of degrees. As with existence, an intenser manifestation of realness does not make the organism or its objects more real, though their import or signification may differ. The feeling of realness is undifferentiated from the organism to its environment. The realness is for the organism and its objects equally. This feeling is evenly present over the actualization sequence with no segment of process felt as more or less real than any other. When feeling is withdrawn, in pathological states, the realness of all objects is in danger. In human cognition, knowing a thing is real implies an awareness of its unreality. The psychotic for whom people are unreal feels this unreality in the foreground of an unreal world. The feeling of realness (or unrealness) pervades the observer and his objects. It is not distinct for a given object or a portion of the field of perception. The unreal is a marker for a disturbance that is generalized. The loss of this feeling does not penetrate the ground of existence. In normal circumstances we know that horses are “more real” than unicorns but a horse is not felt as more real than a unicorn. Similarly, one can question whether the self or world exists, but the question is conditioned on their existence. Thinking about the state of an object is not part of the object's state, it constitutes another state of thinking that incorporates the other state as an object of thought. Transition to human valuation Feeling as realness is the vitality of lower forms that exist in a mode of sensory experience as it makes contact with the environment. Feeling reaches into the sensory organs and promotes movement in a reflex arc. The poverty of individuation of organism mirrors its rudimentary individuation in space. The organism is part of a community of other more or less identical organisms, e.g. insects, fish. As feeling transforms to instinct, the circularity of the sensori-motor contact of organism with environment – the Gestaltkreis of von Weizsacker (1939) – shifts to a unified act-object. The closed circuit of reflex shifts to a simultaneous construct that is the core of a mental representation. For example, when the frog's tongue captures a fly, perception and action occur as a unit.

140 Gradually, the response bias of instinct gives way to the potential of drive. The enhancement of antecedent phases of possibility at the expense of the rigid interlocking sensori-motor dependencies of instinct helps to individuate organism and enlarge its affective repertoire. With the drives – aggression, fear, appetite – there are many routes to satisfaction. The fractionation of drive is the threshold of individuality. The subjectivity of the actualizing organism is more emphatic as its objective segment, the perceptual world, is articulated by feelings in objects of interest. Inner and outer worlds are the subjective and objective phases of a single perception. These phases take on meaning, signification or value as a unit. The organism values itself and its objects. Drive energy invests the objectformation and flows outward with objects as they actualize. Feeling in the form of drive distributes into objects as an immediacy of signification, or meaning, which is the satisfaction of the drive. An equilibrium is established between feeling in a subjective mode, and feeling in the objective mode of the organism's perceptual space. This stage of object and activity awareness in animals or human infants was described by Piaget. The next stage transforms this pattern to a mature human cognition. This occurs through an accentuation at a phase previously bypassed in the immediacy of object actualization where conceptual primitives invested with drive energy allocate feeling to the emerging object-concepts that give rise to perceptual objects. In this phase of conceptual feeling, the affective tonality of object-concepts replaces the object-bound drives with the concept-bound desires. The feeling in a concept replaces the feeling in or for an object. The individual feels desire (fear, etc.) for absent or not yet realized objects. Desire is feeling in pre-objects, i.e. object-concepts, whether or not objects are present. When present, the object serves as a receptacle for desire. The outflow of feeling deposits valuation or worth in the object, i.e. in the objective segment of the mind/brain state (cf. Fig. 7.2).

141

Fig. 4.2.

From intrinsic value to valuation

Feeling that is midway between subject and object, that is, partly subjective, partly objective, is felt as interest, not having the full subjective intensity of desire, nor the full objective value of worth. Perry wrote, “That which is an object of interest is eo ipso invested with value.” Interest is a form of value. It is the form which feeling takes at an intermediate stage in conceptual objectification, a tentative desire, a threshold object valuation. When feeling invests object-concepts lacking the potential to be objects of intentional feeling, e.g. the self, or abstract concepts such as loyalty, these object-concepts are felt as worthy or unworthy – in the case of the self as esteem or, from the standpoint of others, as virtue or wickedness. Feeling is like a river that recurs from a source in the mind to a destination in the world, one moment surging up at a proximal phase, another, cascading downstream, yet all the while, an interior dynamic of a larger object, the mind/brain state, that is constantly pouring out objects.

142 Perception and value As Heraclitus said, the road up and the road down are the same. Having taken the upward path, deriving realness and cognitive valuation from the progression of energy to feeling and realness as intrinsic value, we turn to human perception and attempt to show how the pattern of object formation is related to that in elementary entities. We might as well begin with perception, since we are captive to our own mind/brain states, and have no choice but to describe them in every description of nature. An account of human perception is critical to the so-called observer error in physics, but it is also necessary to bring novel insights to physical theory. The pattern of process that gives a perception, or the pattern of actualization of the mind/brain state, provides a model for intrinsic value in physical objects. The process that underlies a perception consists of a succession of (probably) rhythmic phases ordered from earlier to later, unfolding in a fraction of a second. The cycle of a human mind/brain state is about 0.1 second. Every object has its own cycle of existence. Dividing the length of an electron by the speed of light, Whitrow (1972) defined a chronon as the shortest interval of time, 10-24 seconds. A mind/brain state, as with all entities, exists in duration, even though the duration varies from one entity to another. Case studies of brain-damaged subjects have indicated the presence of an orderly sequence of phases over the duration of a perception (Brown 1989; 2001). Early phases, mediated by older brain formations, deposit a primitive concept that is a kind of implicit belief. The neural configuration that corresponds to this belief is the deep structure of a perceptual object. It is both conceptual and drive-based. This fusion of pre-object and drive in conceptual feeling is comparable to the drive-representations of psychoanalytic theory, except that ideas “contain” feeling-tone, they are not cathected from “outside” by libidinal energy. The construct has an ideational or conceptual and an energic or processual aspect. One does not infect the other, they are different aspects (quality, quantity) of the same configuration. Intermediate phases support the self and inner experience (Brown 1999b; 2000). The unconscious or core self is equivalent to character; the conscious self, or self-concept, to its momentary expression. Conceptual feeling derives from the self-concept and its affective charge, and transforms to a phase of personal experience and dream-like space, where relations of meaning and experiential memory are primary. Dream and

143 some forms of hallucination represent the expression of this phase as an incomplete perception. The configuration is then sculpted to a phase of three-dimensional object relations and, finally, by way of sculpting effects at the primary cortices, the features of the object individuate – colors, tones, fine discrimination – in a space that is perceived as independent of the body. Action and language undergo a parallel derivation. The transition is guided at successive points by physical sensation, which constrains a fully subjective, i.e. endogenous, sequence to an externalized image of the world. On this view, the objective segment of a perception is not the output of its prior subjective phases, but carries with it, as meaning, feeling, recognition, all of the antecedent phases in its production. Antecedent phases are not causal precursors that give their effects and disappear, but are embedded in the final outcomes. An object actualizes the complete process and incorporates all of the phases in its “structure.” This structure is a dynamic sheet of mind from the physical unconscious, through the self to the external world. The objective segment of a perception is the world we perceive. The subjective segment is the route through which it gets there and the self that perceives it. The self and experiential memories are laid down in the wake of the object as “deep structures” in its actualization. The mind/brain state is a wave of process that stretches from the core of the mind to the rim of the world. Desire and worth As the object individuates from its inception in conceptual feeling to a position in the external world, the drive aspect undergoes an affective transformation that continues into the object as its affective residue. Specifically, object-concepts differentiate out of conceptual feeling with their affective tonalities, the fears, hopes, preferences and opinions that are part of human valuation. This phase is tapped in percept-genetic studies that show unconscious affect and meaning engaged at formative stages in object development (Smith and Hentschel, 1993). When the object exteriorizes as a thing in the world it retains a portion of this feeling in the sense of realness, which is the least quota of feeling that accompanies the object outward from its conceptual core to a locus in space. This feeling is a tributary of subjectivity that binds the object to the mind of the perceiver. It can be interpreted as a piece of mentality that extends the conceptual feeling of intrapsychic space outward as a space around the observer. This

144 final trickle of affect into object space can be withdrawn, as in the derealization of psychotics. When this occurs, objects, including other people, may, for the observer, become mechanical automata devoid of feeling and realness.

Fig. 4.3.

Specification of worth out of value

Intrinsic value in a mind-independent entity corresponds to intrinsic value in the mind/brain state, conceived as a physical entity in both its subjective and objective segments. The intrinsic value (existence) of an object in perception is not “located” in the perceptual object but is distributed over the mind/brain state as a whole. Intrinsic value grounds the feeling of realness in those objects realized in the state regardless of whether they are objective or subjective. The intrinsic value of an hallucination or a perceptual object is the value generated in the phasetransition of the mind/brain state. Intrinsic value is augmented at both its subjective or objective pole into the feeling of realness (of the mind and its objects). Not only must the object exist, the self must also exist. Self and object exist as the internal and external segments of the wholeness of the state. The feeling of realness cannot be altered at one pole and leave the other pole untouched. When the object no longer seems real, the realness of the self is imperiled, while a change in the realness of the self is accompanied by an alteration of its objects (Brown 1999b). The intrinsic value (existence) of the mind/brain state extends throughout the state in the same manner that existence applies to every

145 phase in the duration of non-cognitive entities. The mind/brain state exists as a physical entity in primitive cognitive systems, or in sleep, or apart from what the observer perceives. The realness accentuates the ground of intrinsic value over its full temporal extent. The subjective pole is as real as the objective pole. Realness is the heightening by feeling of the dynamic of the entire state. The ground of existence is augmented in the feeling of realness, which is then allocated to the proximal or distal polarity of the mind/brain state so as to enhance intrinsic value and realness to desire or worth. Desire is an accentuation of the subjective polarity, worth of the objective polarity. Yet, intrinsic value is the basis on which realness and desire develop as the first stage in the conceptual valuation of the object. The perceiver brings interest to the object. Interest is the accentuation of that object's share in the objective segment of the mental state. Experiential memory in the self-concept provides emphasis to objectconcepts developing out of attentional and motivational biases, of which interest is a superficial mark. Interest is the qualitative shift in value from realness to worth. The conceptual feeling that is channeled into the object heightens its affective content. The object stands out, signifies something beyond itself. An object of desire that has interest or worth can also be a concept or an idea distinct from the desire for it by the self. The value of a diamond, a vacation, the face or the thought of one’s lover, can shift from one feeling to another, from worth and desire to disinterest and avoidance, and we realize that feeling is continuous over its subjective and objective segments. Yet its objects remain as real as ever. Interest can be momentary. For that moment, however long, i.e. the frequency of its recurrence, the object usurps a greater portion of the perceptual field. One can say, the object inherits a disproportionate share of the affective “load” that normally would be more equitably distributed over the entire field. Put differently, with the emphasis on a pre-object phase in perception, the object retreats to a segment where its subjective valence is evident. It is no longer a neutral entity. Interest accentuates worth when it distributes into the object. Conceptual feeling individuates the intrapsychic phase of the mind/brain state and settles on the objective segment of the object-development. The object itself becomes valuable or desirable (threatening, disgusting, etc.). The valuation is extrapsychic or object-centered. When interest accentuates the intrapsychic phase of the object formation, the valuation is felt as desire. The feeling is subject-centered, it belongs to the observer. The self wants (loves, desires) the object. The feeling of valuation is closer to the

146 self-concept because the accentuation affects the object-concept as it individuates the self-concept. Often it is difficult to decide if the valuation is intra or extrapsychic. Is an object beautiful because I desire it, or do I desire it because it is beautiful? The relative emphasis on a proximalsubjective or distal-objective segment in the mental state determines whether valuation will be felt in the perceiver as desire, or in the object as worth. To sum up: a perception is a transition over phases leading from self to world. A single transition, an act of cognition, is a mind/brain state. An object includes all of the phases in its development. Basic entities also exist as durations. Intrinsic value is the existence of a physical entity over its phases. The intrinsic value of an entity, or a mind/brain state, is its noncognitive existence. This is the foundation of its initial subjective valuation as realness. Physical entities exist before they are felt as real. They cannot have the feeling of realness without being existents, even if those existents are hallucinatory or virtual. Realness is the accentuation of existence in organism. The object not only exists but feels real. As intrinsic value grounds realness, so realness grounds a more developed valuation. The affect stream can be allocated to its objective or subjective portion. When the objective portion is accentuated, the feeling of realness in the object is the foundation of its valuation as worth. When the subjective portion is accentuated, i.e. with emphasis on antecedent phases in the perceptual process, valuation is the feeling of desire. An allocation of affect to the self-concept independent of its objects, or prior to the individuation of object-concepts, gives the feeling of worth centered in the subject, i.e. selfesteem. The transition is from the intrinsic value (existence) of inorganic entities, as the envelope of their waveform, through the realness of organic life, in which process becomes directional, to the conceptual feeling of human cognition, in which desire and worth precipitate as the affective content of object-concepts at their subjective and objective polarities.

Chapter 5.

A World of Value

To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the highway, I gave a moral life: I saw them feel Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass Lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired with inward meaning Wordsworth, Prelude III

Introduction Several modes of object valuation merge in a general psychology of value, e.g. personal, social, historical, economic and so on, all of which, at first glance, appear as the value or worth of an object that is situated in the object or in the context around the object. Though one can argue that the value of an object is independent of a desire for it, such as a saintly person or a work of art, on further reflection we see that the worth of objects arises in the mind of the observer in relation to personal beliefs and values. This is the more common opinion, and generally that of the psychologists and philosophers. For example, Ehrenfels wrote that we desire things not because we comprehend some ineffable quale of value in them, but that we ascribe value to them because we desire them. On this view, value lies in the relation of a subject to an object. This relation is usually understood as an interaction between the mind that values things, and the things that are objectively valueless. The context of the desire for a thing is usually considered as part of the desire or its justification, while the context of the thing should be conceived as part of its value, say, as the category of valuable objects of that type. On this basis, the worth of the object is still viewed by most people as a psychic addition to a “bare” perception. Value is thought to be projected from the mind onto objects. We give and withdraw value, we love objects and people, and then hate or discard them, we attach worth to things in the world and then decide they are worthless after all. Like beauty, value is assumed to be a subjective response to value-free things in the world. This insight is about as far as people go in their understanding of

148 value. The first interpretation is that objects have value independent of their observation. The idea of the intrinsic value of objects is an immediate common sense view. One assumes that the worth of a diamond is established by others, or by supply and demand, but that in any event it is independent of the subject’s desire for it. The notion of intrinsic value is also characteristic of magical thinking, in which the individual is not the source of value but its recipient, for example, when a totemic object is filled with signification. The second interpretation, beyond which few people progress, is that the mind projects value onto objects. This insight develops with an appreciation of cultural and individual variations in taste. What is valuable or beautiful to one person is worthless or indifferent to another. Beauty (worth, value), one says, is in the eye of the beholder. We may know this to be true, yet still we believe that our lover is perceived as beautiful by others. An extension of this way of thinking holds that values are judgments, i.e. that a valuation is an evaluation. A judgment is a personal belief, a determination or an assertion. It can also be a reason or a justification, or an explanation, that relates to object-value as much as to choice and will. The step from value in the object to value added to the object presumes that without this addition objects are value-neutral. Most people would say that non-cognitive nature is devoid of value, and that value, like consciousness, appears with complex thought. Regardless of whether this is true or not, it leaves unexplained the nature of value, its “projection” and attachments. Process theory takes a different approach. Value is drawn into the object as it individuates. The stream of value that is derived from conceptual feeling carries an affective tonality into the external segment of the object formation. Worth deposits with the object as an expressive feature of the conceptual and affective life. The human mind/brain generates worth through the distribution of affective tonality into the object-field. This distribution can be diffuse over the field, or concentrated in one object of consuming value. However, all entities generate some quale of value independent of their being perceived, though the form that value takes begins with existence, and undergoes a qualitative transformation depending on the evolutionary complexity of the entity in question. This chapter explores the realization of object-value out of conceptual feelings, such as desire, fear or love. No matter how essential an object is, such as food, or how exotic or idiosyncratic its value to the person, worth is not assigned or projected into the object but flows out as an affective valence that has a different quality and intensity at successive

149 phases in its derivation. Ultimately, value is drawn into the endpoint of the object-development. In this development, the worth of an object is not easily disentangled from the self that values the object. The intra- and extra-psychic poles of self- and object-realization are in a kind of equilibrium. What we fear, envy, prize, reject, hold dear, says a great deal about who we are. Objects of desire may appear remote from the personality, but the value a subject gives to an object is bound up with his self-valuations. This raises the problem of self-worth. If the flux and the balance of value in its journey from self to world underlies object-worth, what is selfworth? Is the self an object of value in the same way as an external object? There are two main classes of valued objects, ordinary inanimate objects such as diamonds, and living things such as family, friends, pets and so on. The love for animate and inanimate objects can be inverted, for example, someone who loves things more than people. Since self-worth is for a living person, one would expect a similarity to the worth of animate objects. The love we have for others should bear some relation to the love for ourselves, in contrast to the “love” for inanimate objects. The self is not thing-like, so the similarity must be between self-love or esteem and the love or esteem for others, not the love of ordinary objects. This similarity is captured in the common, if untrue, remark that one must first love oneself before one can love others. Bradley made the interesting suggestion that the sympathy or attachment one feels for one’s former self, as in a loving nostalgia for the self of childhood, is a measure of the attachment one feels for others, since the childhood self is almost as alien to the adult as are other people. But the self of childhood is less a living person than the long-dead ghost of one’s ancestral imagination. We tend to think that self- and object-worth are reciprocal, that a person who loves or acquires things is “compensating” for what is lacking in the self, that the greater one’s needs the less adequate the self, or that true self-knowledge occurs in the triumph of asceticism, when the distracting need for things and others is diminished. Is there a genuine relation of self-worth and object-worth, or is this apparent relationship an artifact of a common vocabulary? The self is a dynamic of beliefs and values, and a source of needs and interests that are not necessarily ingredient in a self-assessment. There is often a dissociation between what one desires and what one thinks one should desire, between the empirical and ideal self. Nor is it obvious that values can deposit, reflexively, in the very construct, the self, out of which they arise. Does the affective

150 valuation that charges a concept, and accompanies the object outward, actualize in the self as an object? Does the inner pole generate self-worth as the outer pole generates object-worth? Unlike objects or concepts, volition is felt to be instigated in the self. It is the source, not the target of an intentional aim. Value in the self follows process in a forward-going direction to settle in objects. It is unclear how a self that infuses value in objects could itself become an object for the discharge of values. Distribution, locus and evolution of value The value of self and object depends on the momentary distribution of intrapsychic feeling over the mind/brain state. It has been argued that, from the onset, the entire system of valuation is founded on the intrinsic value that actualizes in a duration of existence, as an epoch of time-reversible energy evolves to the realness of time-directional feeling. The origin of value in energy and feeling is consistent with the view of those writers who have associated value with self-realization and the manifestation of will. The feeling-process within a duration-category that creates intrinsic value eventually transforms to the habit-driven instincts of lower forms, then to the diversity of human valuations. The feeling that fills an entity expands with its duration, so that an increase in duration accompanies an enlargement of feeling over the existence of the entity. Duration and feeling expand from within. The evolution of cognition is the history of the growth of intrinsic value and realness to conceptual feeling through an expansion of the minimal duration of an entity from simpler to more complex organisms. A subject is continuous with its objects. Mind does not have a junction at the senses but, in the bubble of its perimeter, extends into, and forms, the objects it perceives to be its sources. The world does not begin outside the skull. If there is a boundary, it is with brain process, not physical entities screened by perceptual images. The duration of the mind/brain state includes its objective portion. This duration, established when the state actualizes, is not a period over which the state persists, but spans its intraand extra-psychic portions. Self and object are part of the being of the subject, value and feeling are the becoming of the subject. Being is the momentary category of self and object. Becoming is the process of selfand object-creation on which the category of being depends. A concept transforms to an object. The self within a subject actualizes objects in a world. This world is a realization of conceptual feeling, the

151 object being the final phase in the objectification of a cycle of process. The intrapsychic portion of the objectification transports value from formative phases of desire to final ones of realness, interest and worth. Every object has some quota of valuation, as it objectifies a value-stream emanating from the core of the perceiver. The object constitutes a greater or lesser portion of the subject’s existence (see Fig. 5.1.).

Fig. 5.1.

Self and object in the mind/brain state

If a lesser portion, as in a detached awareness of the world, for that moment the object is one of innumerable other objects in perceptual space (A). If a greater portion, as in a passionate embrace, space collapses in the object and the subject’s very existence seems to depend on it (B). Similarly, the self fulfills a greater or lesser portion of the subject’s existence. If a lesser portion, as in routine or habit, or activity dedicated to objects, the objective portion is magnified and the self is lost in activity. If

152 a greater portion, as in introspection or states of intense inward feeling, objects recede in awareness and the self rises to prominence. Ordinarily, the self is the most valued of objects, though ideas and loved objects can be perceived as still more valuable. All objects in perception, and the derivation that carries them there, constitute the one enormous object that is the world. In relation to its objects, a subject is a complementary world of comparable value. The self is a valued locus in a human subject, as an object of interest is a valued locus in perceptual space. The self and an object of value, such as a loved object, are polar foci of feeling in a single wave of process extending from the unconscious to the object world. In this transition, the self is the posterior, the world the anterior, segment. The loci of self, objects and mental contents can be compared to “strange attractors” in a chaos model, which lure feelings to a particular segment of intra or extrapsychic space. A given segment attracts affective interest. There is a similarity with the hypothesis of a “dominant focus” proposed by Kinsbourne (1998). The distribution of feeling in mind and world, or where the value-stream settles in a given state, determines the relative intensity of value-interest for that state and, thus, the nature of self and world for that moment. Value and the brain The idea of a dominant focus in the brain is a spatial analogue of the concept of a segmental accentuation in the process of perception and the value stream. The continuum through planes of limbic to neocortical growth in the process of objectification corresponds with an intensity of feeling at early, intrapersonal phases close to the self, and a weaker intensity of feeling at later extrapersonal phases that distribute into objects. Feeling is felt primarily in the intrapsychic segment. But, with intense object-value, as in love, the extrapsychic portion, e.g. the beloved, is so suffused with feeling that one hardly knows where the feeling arises, in the self or the other. This is similar to the experience of beauty, which also can be felt to reside in the object or to arise in the observer. The brain is an occasion of process that enlarges feelings of simpler occasions. These feelings, ingredient in the state, evolve to personal value and desire. The same basic plan obtains for all entities in nature. The intrinsic value of a non-cognitive entity can remain as energic process or physical feeling, or evolve to personal valuations, in the human mind/brain. The intrinsic value of the brain state enlarges as personal

153 valuation is created. There are two categories of non-cognitive entity, one outside the scope of mind on the other side of perception, and another, a subset of the former, that corresponds to the brain activity underlying human perception. An object such as a self or a tree, like the object, brain, is a perception. The inferred entity of a tree, like the entity, brain, is part of physical nature. The mental stream of objects rides the same process as that of the physical stream of entities. The intrinsic value of the former is inaccessible to observation. Feeling is only felt in the subject. Yet, the conceptual feeling in the mind/brain of an observer may “build upon” the physical feeling of the entity corresponding with the object that is perceived. The entity, brain, consists of phases in process that extend value into objects, but the brain is continuous with other entities in nature. The common physical ground of brain and tree enables the conceptual feeling to inherit, and thus enhance, the physical feelings of the entities themselves, i.e. brain and tree (Fig. 5.2).

Fig. 5.2.

Entities and objects

The brain and its objects are a process of value-creation, as are all entities to a varying degree. In human cognition, intrinsic value is attributed to a valued object or to the valuing of an object, but in effect, brain process expands intrinsic value into the neural correlates of self and object. This expansion, and its relative distribution in objects, is “read off”

154 in consciousness as an attribution of value to perceptions. We think we apply value to objects or, perhaps, that objects are independently valuable, and thus we value them, but it is the process of value-creation that generates its own value through an enlargement of conceptual feeling. To ask what is the origin of value in a non-cognitive entity not conceived as a projection of the human mind is to presume a “life” within the entity, and a history independent of human cognition. The feelings of self- or objectworth owe to the qualitative transformations – magnified many times over – of the physical feelings in simpler entities, some of which are minds, others primitive organisms, still others inorganic systems. The problem of how value “attaches” to an object or how value crosses the divide from mind to world is a substitute for the real question of how the continuum of the mind is cleaved into self and world. And this problem is secondary to one that is still more fundamental, namely, how the brain or any physical process creates value, or its precursors. Mind is bounded on either side by the physics of nature; the physiology of the unconscious at one end, the physiology of consciousness and its objects at the other. Instead of an abrupt interface with the physical, the material world constrains successive phases in object formation. The intrinsic value of an entity mirrored in perception might be incorporated into the intrinsic value of the brain state through their common origin in nature, since all entities, including the brain state, actualize as momentary occurrences. Whether an object is a process of modeling, an assembly of elements, a direct perception, a projection, or, as in microgenetic theory, a set of contrasts that sculpt endogenous form, an excitation emanating from a physical entity other than the perceiver’s brain, e.g. a physical rock or another person, can only import intrinsic value into its perception by the inheritance in that perception of the physical feelings of entities aroused in an act of cognition. The intrinsic value of entities is not conveyed from the entity by a physical impression, e.g. light or sound, but arises, if it does, in the arising of the entity out of the same ground as brain process. An entity such as a tree activates bodily receptors (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) to enable brain process to reproduce it as an object in perception, but the ordinary physical impressions coming from the entity “stop” at the receptor surfaces. The entity does not transfer feeling to the brain, rather brain and entity inherit feeling from antecedent modes of process.

155 Self and object worth The worth of an object owes to feeling allocated to the distal segment of mind. Worth is an intensification and narrowing of the signification (meaning, value) that ordinarily distributes into all objects in the field. When we gaze at the world without attending to a specific object, intrinsic value is more or less equitably distributed in the visual array. The world exists. It feels real. When we look at a particular object, say when a tree “catches” our attention, the value-stream is drawn into the object in the form of interest. An increase of interest in the object, i.e. the transition from interest to worth, occurs at the expense of other objects in the field. Affect is “diverted” from other objects in the perceptual manifold and concentrated in a specific object, event or focus of interest. The value in the object increases as antecedent phases orient the actualization to sequester the affect-flow. The object that receives this valuation is extracted from biases – desires, tastes, preferences – that arise out of experiential memory. Such influences are many and diverse. The feelings of worth in a watch, a wine, a lover, trace to memories, often unconscious and forgotten. The person might be able to justify the worth assigned to an object, i.e. make a value-judgment, for example why a particular face is attractive, but the valuation depositing the word-objects of the language act is motivated by the same unconscious dispositions that guide the perceptual valuation. To say, “I love that woman because…”, is not to give a cause of one’s love, or even a reason, but to discharge the disposition of loving into the language of affection. The valuation of inanimate objects depends on experience, but to a greater extent than organic objects there is a need to reinforce the worth given to them. We feel that diamonds are valuable, but we rely on the authority of experts or a consensus of others. A diamond is valued for its beauty or economic worth. The worth of the diamond is an accentuation of its realness fortified by knowledge and personal need. Vetting increases the value-flow into an object that would at best arouse interest, as with any pretty or shiny stone. When a dog is valued, others cannot provide justifications. One may appreciate the comments of others that the animal is beautiful or intelligent, but even without approval, or in the face of criticism, we rely on the affection of the dog to reinforce the value we give to it. When we love a living thing, a pet or a person, this reinforcement or reassurance is a surrogate for the cultural, social or economic support that we receive for inanimate objects. To love someone, or to continue loving someone, it is usually necessary to be loved or valued in return.

156 Reciprocity is essential to sustain an inessential need, as well as to insure that the loved object is worthy of the love given it. The need for affirmation from others to affirm a love, or the reverse, in fear or hate, is no different than the need for physical entities to sculpt objects of less emotional valence. The specification of an object in perception results from a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic constraints on developing form. Similarly, a loved-object requires constraints on the affect-flow to sustain the feeling of love and object worth. In ordinary perception, extrinsic constraints predominate. With a greater investment of feeling in the object, intrinsic constraints become more important. The stability of a perception and the constancy of its worth, i.e. the object and its value, a diamond or a beloved, depend on their recurrence. We are fearful when this stability is endangered. A lover scrutinizes the face of his beloved for proof of affection or signs of a change in heart. Animate objects return love; inanimate ones have surrogates. One way or another, the value instilled in an object must be validated if it is to be successfully revived, i.e. if the object is to remain desirable, beautiful, worthy. In contrast to the apparent stability of visual objects, language and other auditory phenomena are fleeting. Because they are transient, they are important affirmations of valuation in living things. Acts of loving, what one says or does not say to a lover, and their coherence with gesture, are clues to the authenticity of feeling. These are often more important than the lover’s appearance, which will inevitably decline. Love letters turn words of love into visual objects that can be revived, and read over and over, as a validation that the love given to a person is, or was, reciprocated. The purr of a cat in one’s lap, the yelp of a dog excited to greet its master are affirmations that the feeling for the animal is reciprocated. The constancy of appearance and the consistency of speech and writing with action and gesture may not alone provide grounds for sustained loving, unless reinforced by some act. So often one is asked to “show me that you love me,uote or to make a “sacrifice for love.” The person needs visible, palpable signs that his or her love is reciprocated, thus justified. But reciprocity is not the whole story of sustained worth or persistent loving, since people often value an object or another person out of all proportion to what others would judge to be its proper worth, or to the degree of reciprocation offered. I have wondered at the affection some people show for a canary, or the grief when it dies, or the affection they imagine they receive from an organism without a forebrain. To mourn a dead bird, cat or horse, that is, to grieve for animals that are incapable of

157 reciprocating affection, in spite of what is read into their behavior, is not so different from a person who sacrifices all for someone who shows indifference or disdain. The wife of an alcoholic, abusive and promiscuous poet, who treated her in a shabby and loveless way for 30 years, wasting her considerable fortune and leaving her bereft and penniless, insisted that she loved the man without regret just for the excitement he brought to her humdrum life. Perhaps she had the fear of boredom that Russell (1930) wrote about as one source of unhappiness. We understand the child who mourns a dead turtle, for he does not have a developed self-concept, nor a concept of the other that requires reciprocity. The pet is a possession that is mourned like a lost toy. But the adult who mourns a dead animal, or loves in spite of abuse and humiliation, is another matter. In the extreme case we recognize that the quality of self-esteem is in relation to the worth bestowed on others. We love what we need even when the other is undeserving, and we need what we love even when we think we are unselfish. The flux of self- and object-worth is wholly subjective, i.e. within the reach of mind from self to object, but can be experienced as internal, external or both. We see this in the interioricity of the relation of belief to ego- and exo-centric values, the internal-external interdependency of desire and worth, and the external gradations in object-value from the inanimate to the animate. We see it in the shift from the abstract and conceptual to the concrete and personal as reciprocity decreases the need for consensus. We see it in the fluid exchange from mind to world, the asymmetry in feeling for animals or people, the worth they have for the perceiver, and the relation of object- to self-worth. On self-worth The feeling of self-worth might appear to be a distant relation of the instinct for self-preservation, since an organism must feel itself as valuable to have an incentive to survive. Conversely, the instinctual struggle to survive, the Schopenhauerean Will, might underlie the feeling of selfimportance. However, there are many instances in which it is clear that self-valuation is not a residue of instinctual drive energy. A person who feels worthless still struggles to survive. Suicide is more likely to occur with a hopelessness for the future and a loss of object-value, not a diminution of self-worth. Low self-esteem probably reflects the disparity of self-realization with aims, desires and capacities. Self-worth is inwardly

158 directed object-valuation, it is not the precipitation in the self of the values that compose it, for these are not self-valuations but are directed to survival and self-advancement or, with education, to the valuation or betterment of others. The self is a category of its own valuations, malleable, intangible, less stable than a diamond or a dog, but still an object with which we are fairly well acquainted, even if we have as little access to our own self as we have to the selves of others whom we profess to know quite well. Do we not often believe we know a person better than he knows himself? Would we grant to others what we deny to our own self? Kant thought it was impossible for the self to know itself as an object. The self of another is inferred from its actions, the personal self is intuited directly, reconstructed from intentions and the pattern of past acts. We depend on the actions of others, protestations, declarations, excuses, to infer character and personality, yet we tend to dismiss our own failings as incidental to the inner, true or genuine self. If conduct is a surer judge of self than introspection, it is possible to know others better from observation than to know ourselves from intention. This is the advantage of the therapist, and it is the condition that psychoanalysis seeks to cure. Self-worth is unlike the feeling of object worth in that it is the judgment that personality makes of character. The judgment is based on the interpretation of conduct in a variety of circumstances. One also has to consider accounts of defense reactions, repression and denial. These socalled “psychic mechanisms” are postulated as explanations of the very behaviors in need of explanation. Yet such behaviors need to be integrated in a comprehensive theory of the self. If we are honest, that is, if honesty is an attribute or virtue of character, we examine as impersonally as possible how we thought, felt and behaved in a variety of circumstances. The average of these instances gives some sense of the cumulative self-concept. This is how we usually value or judge another person, i.e. as a mean over time, though extremes of action are often employed as truer marks of character. In this respect, the judgment of self-worth is, ideally, a conclusion based on self-knowledge rather than immediate feeling. The search for the self that is so much an expression of the anxiety of our times owes partly to the machine culture in which we live, the problem of identity and, consequently, of authenticity that so dominates life, art and science. But it also derives from the conflict of duty and freedom, especially the realization that behavior is adaptive, constrained and delimited by obligations, responsibilities and lack of opportunity. For the

159 subject, actual conduct is often held to be inconclusive, since one feels limited by lack of money or opportunity, poor health, and so on. For this reason, the self as a potential for a range of possible actions, and the source of expectation, desire and best intention, is thought to more fully express our capabilities and resources. When we are young we tend to value ourselves more for our potential than our accomplishments. Later in life, it is the accomplishments we assess and the misspent or untapped potential we lament. When conduct and character come together in a coherent manner, consistent with the sense of self-worth, that person is authentic to himself and in the eyes of others. However, it is rare that people are accurate in their self-assessments. That 90% of the population believe they have above-average intelligence is a good illustration of this fact. The denial or lack of awareness of one’s deficiencies is deeply etched in the human psyche, and returns in force in cases of brain pathology. Recall the lines of Robert Burns, in 1786: O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us.

Some attitudes such as pride, shyness, confidence or timidity serve as behavioral markers for the attribution of self-worth in others, even if they mask the subject’s own self-appraisals. We wonder about dissimulation, lack of sincerity or other dissociations of character and conduct. Why is an exceptional person of great modesty not more assertive of his gifts? Why does a person behave in so confident a manner given his low level of competence or intellect? Philip Roth wrote of a person who had “all the arrogance of someone who has succeeded at nothing.” We say, pejoratively, that confidence may compensate for a feeling of inadequacy, or that arrogance is out of proportion to merit. A voluble and pretentious academic of my acquaintance was ridiculed as having been educated beyond his intelligence. The reverse is all too common, when a taciturn mien is taken as a sign of deep intelligence. As the saying goes, “silent fools are often counted amongst the wise men.” We tend to be more tolerant when extreme shyness is unjustified by extraordinary talents. Conversely, we often turn a weakness into a virtue, as when arrogance is perceived as pride or self-assurance, or when diffidence is perceived as humility. Just as objects or other people may be undeserving of the value given them, character may not justify the worth it takes on for the subject. One can over- or under-estimate self-worth, just as the value given to objects or

160 other people may be incommensurate with their merit. Some over-reach, others settle, many never leave the starting gate. But given the subjectivity of self-esteem and object-worth, it is unclear, except in extreme cases, what an objective determination of personal merit would be like. A criminal judged to be without merit may show flashes of goodness. There is kindness, as Paul Fayerabend has written, even in the heart of evil. Is a life filled with malicious acts canceled by an act of altruism? An object can take on worth out of all reasonable proportion to its consensual valuation. Any object can become a marvel of contemplation. As Whitman wrote, “a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” If a person were emotionally involved with a frog, as in a fairly tale, or listened to voices from a stone, as in some legends, we would think that person crazy. Yet there is considerable tolerance for eccentricity. We think that values are conventions, but we also acknowledge that valuation is subjective and variable, and at some point veers into taste and preference, for which there is often no accounting. The judgment (acceptance, justification) by a person of his character influences what he values and what he expects in return. A person with a strong feeling of self-worth may feel that a thing or a person is not worthy of his affection, while someone with low self-esteem may be grateful for attention, or happy to love someone who merely tolerates his presence. Such love is pathological when it perpetuates an undeservedly negative self-image. Such people will love those who mistreat them, They feel unworthy to be loved or to receive a gift of modest value. The relation of self and other is that of a proximal to a distal segment in the mind. The self creates the object that is loved, the object receives and becomes valuable as it discharges the self’s desire. In sum, in lieu of a catalog of the many forms of valuing or loving, the gradations of feeling in the self and its objects, or the varieties of objects one can value, I have tried to illustrate the continuity of feeling from subjective to objective phases. A dynamic equilibrium between self and other establishes object-categories and feeling-tones that are revived and re-asserted each moment. The self generates values and extends them into the other. Those values generate self and other, which the other, to be regenerated, must reinforce. We speak of love as if it were an isolable emotion, but even in the throes of passion there is a tinge of sadness, of fragility and loss. Love too must be renewed, like a flower that must be nourished not to wither and die. It is for the moment that love is felt as it passes away, to recur, perhaps, a moment or a day later, displaced perhaps

161 by caring, by aggression, in companionship, boredom or obligation. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired: Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. Then die – That she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee; How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and fair. Edmund Waller, (ca 1650)

Love Love is a universal on which no two people agree. They differ on what love is, how and why we fall in love, why it fades or what keeps it going. Like Augustine’s account of time, they know what love is but are at a loss to describe it. For some, a comparison of the love of a pet to the love of a person is nonsensical; others say they hope to find a mate they love as much as their cat. What sort of love is this? Probably not love, though some would so assert, but a confusion of the valuations of persons and things. Yet it points to the continuity of love and valuation, with love the ne plus ultra of object worth and desire. Many are confused as to what part of love is erotic and what part friendship, or the blending of sympathy into affection, or the relation of parental and filial love to romantic love. Given the diversity of opinion, it is improbable that two people would fall in love for the same reason and with the same expectations. Everyone wants to be in love yet few have any idea of what they are looking for, nor can they be certain of a state of love in another, or in themselves should they be in that state. When I asked a young woman how she knew her boyfriend loved her, she said, “It’s the little things he does for me, like having my dinner on the table when I come home late at night.” Times have certainly changed! Another woman said, “it’s when he does something for me without expecting anything in return.” A negotiation in every coupling! There are women who give it all for a few drops of tenderness in a sea of male egoism and men who give it all for

162 sacrifice and support. Selfless devotion is the signature of love, so an unselfish act is grasped as a sign of genuine feeling, but what do we look for in ourselves when we say we are in love? If we are uncertain of the love of another, can we be sure of our own affections? Should we examine our own conduct for acts of unselfishness, or do we more likely rely on the intensity of our feeling? In my far from scientific inquiry, I found that those who say they are in love and profess to be happy are no more or less reliable as to what love is than those who are searching for it and describe what they are looking for. The knowledge of love is no greater in those who have it than in those who seek it. Some are transfixed by the novelty of each new occasion, others who are partnered for a longer spell are content with a symbiotic attachment. The former are euphoric, without exception they are founts of ecstatic trivia. The latter plead deeper feelings, when what they mean is that the peaks are flatter, the valleys wider, or that boredom and resignation conspire in a stable domesticity. Some, dulled with drink, gaming with friends, escape into adultery. They prove that familiarity does not so much deepen as dilute love beyond all recognition of those seeking it. The one thing that is clear is that love is a stew of politics, age, gender, social status, hopes, strategies, wiles, seduction, tears, loneliness, the fantastic, the impersonal, the impractical and the necessary. It is grist for literature and floss for psychology, but a fitful subject for philosophy, given that love is appetitive and irrational. Probably, one should throw up one’s hands in despair and turn to concepts less firmly planted in human variation, wish fulfillment and popular thought. Yet one hopes to find some path into this topic. Love cannot be ignored. It is the paradigm of value from the standpoint of a subjective psychology. The natural starting point is with the extreme case, and that would be, from the subject’s point of view, the love that begins with the other and gradually penetrates the self, i.e. the self as an object of desire, with attraction all on the part of the other. It is extreme because a feeling that begins in the other is felt as an invitation or provocation, whether to flight, outrage or interest. A love that is provoked by love coming from the other is not unusual, often leading to a mutuality that might not have been possible in a more benign encounter. I have been told by some that being loved is a kind of aphrodisiac, that given a passable level of acceptability, they would fall in love with anyone who passionately loved them. Someone lacking alternatives often succumbs to a loving pursuit. We do think of love as a spell, a possession, a magic potion devised by a sorcerer,

163 the metaphoric awakening of a sleeping princess by the kiss of her redoubtable prince, a “love goddess” who “sweeps a man off his feet.” We “fall” in love, we succumb, we are consumed by feelings we cannot resist. The popular ideal is “love at first sight,” as if one is “struck by lightning.” What are the odds this will be simultaneous? We idealize love of this type, though we confuse it with lust and distrust its sincerity and durability. Of love’s beginnings, passive or responsive loving has the hollow ring of an artificial sensitivity. It shatters the romantic idea that lovers are meant for each other, that the Beschert or soul mate is waiting for an encounter. Responsive love seems arbitrary, perhaps flourishing with low self-esteem, though any love fulfills a need as a mark of incompleteness. A person who so values himself that he is unaware of the least psychic dependency may be incapable of loving. To love is to accept an invasion of the ego, as the other comes to fill or satisfy a greater portion of the self-concept. The contrast is with the love that begins with friendship, and grows in intensity. The lure of blind romance has been eroded in our times by selfishness, divorce and a fear of disease. In many countries, the idea of romantic love seems foolish. One looks for a partner, a woman seeks a man who doesn’t beat her, a man seeks a good cook and hard worker. Still, most of us thirst for romantic excitement, the chemistry of sexual attraction, without which, at least in the beginning, we are wary of a slow growth of affection. Too much deliberation is toxic to feeling. On the other hand, passionate immediacy raises questions of motive and character. A love conditioned by the love of the other, where the choice of whom to love is preempted by the need to be loved, is felt to arise in the other and move into the self. The feelings we imagine in the other justify the worth of that person, who is perceived as someone to be loved or desired. Receptive love starts with feelings perceived in the other and arrives at feelings attributed to the self. The progression from other to self is a shift within the self, a growth in the value of the other who receives feeling allocated from the self, and the reverse, the growth of feeling in the self as the other becomes more valuable. Specifically, the worth of the other increases as the love for the other grows, while love increases in the self as feeling received from the other augments the self’s sense of personal worth. Love and worth, in self and other, are in fragile equilibrium, tilting this way and that with each passing mood. Love in the self or other, and the other’s worth in relation to self-worth, grow or subside in subtle shifts of self- and object-realization. A love that begins with being loved is from the perspective of the

164 other as common as one that begins with loving. A person adores someone and hopes for reciprocity. Initially, they are polar opposites, the one who initiates, the one who responds. Perhaps it is common that couples fall in and out of love together, but for most of us the inequalities and ambiguities of predator and prey, submission and domination, the inter-dependencies and neurotics of love, make for a delicious, precarious imbalance. Whether love begins with a loving self or the love from another, for each to love, feeling must follow a similar path. In receptive loving, the person who is loved may gradually develop an affection or compassion for the other. This growth absorbs feeling in the other as a validation of self-worth. The love of the other may become the worth of the person loved, like a diamond that increases in value the more it is desired. If the person needs this validation, or enhanced self-worth, the other will assume a greater share in the values of the self. The thought of losing the lover is frightening, for it is a loss of self and an affirmation of dependency, inadequacy or low self-esteem. The other has become part of the self, and the love for the other is “attached” to that portion of the self that the other represents. Thus, one struggles to hold on to a lover who was initially ignored. There is no intimacy that cannot be used as a weapon. Such is the tyranny of the weak over the strong, of dependency over autonomy. What is the fate of the donor who must convince the other of sincerity? When the donor loves without reward, as with Yeats and Maud Gonne, we speak of a selfless love or an absolute devotion. This is the sacrificial love of poetry and song, the storied love of myth and romance, the love that gives all and receives nothing in return. For many, this is the ideal of what “true love” should be like – the “highest,” “purest,” “noblest” – against which every expression of feeling is judged. This ideal is comparable to the ideal of the good, of beauty or pure reason. For Plato, there was a necessary connection between love and the ideal of the good, in that Eros was the driving force that drove men to seek beauty, whether in women or in young boys, who offered physical beauty combined with masculine virtues. Then, this love severs its ties to mortals, who invariably prove to be imperfect and transient objects of erotic longing, and becomes transfigured into a love of the good, which was the beauty or perfection of reason (Singer, 1985). Ideal love is the analogue in emotion of pure reason in the sphere of cognition, while the beautiful and the good have features of the two. Beauty as an object of desire inclines to aesthetics and value. Good is the object of a desire for rationality and a perfection of the spirit. The love of truth, of god or of humanity, or god’s love for man, are the

165 supreme examples. In the psychology of sacrificial love, the other becomes ingredient in the self’s valuations. Sacrificial love absorbs the other from the beginning to the point where self-interest is identified with the other’s valuation. The greater the valuation of the other, the less the need for reciprocity. The other fills and replaces the self. The individual becomes so much the other that a loss of the other is a loss of the self. Grief and mourning are like this. The death of one who is loved is an excision of a greater or lesser portion of the self. The value of the other must slowly dissipate or play a less important role in the active personality. Those who are grieving or abandoned may need to redefine themselves. They ask, what am I without him or her? If the answer is, not much, or if the value in the other has usurped the value of other objects, there is truly nothing left of the individual and nothing to live for. Thus, to ardently love someone who fails to reciprocate is comparable to losing someone deeply loved where feelings once were shared. The loved object is irretrievably lost. The suicides of those who grieve a loss, or are spurned by those they love, are lessons in sincerity. They are also an admonition not to be cruel or insensitive or to fail to recognize the gift that a great love is. Unlike the ordinary love of two people, the love of god is unrequited, though many “true believers” might claim otherwise. God has ultimate value and perfection. One does not love god in the hope of reciprocation. One is filled with god, or one believes that he is an extension of god’s love, or is suffused or replaced by the divine spirit. In the suicides of those who have lost or failed to win a loved object, where a solitary life is without value, death is a release from longing, not a reunification with the beloved in the after-life. Of course, there are still those who expect to be reunited in heaven with their loved ones. In contrast, the love of god, in death, brings absorption and unification. The object of a love of god, i.e. god, is, so to say, on the other side of life, so death is not a parting but a reunion. The love of god is like any other love but its object is intangible. Perhaps it is closer to the love of an idea such as freedom or loyalty. And like an idea, or abstract category, god does not have the imperfections of a concrete actuality that lovers often overlook or conceal. Those who love god are prone to confess their own imperfections, not god’s, and for an act of contrition, god’s love will be even greater. So too for the saintly love of humankind, a love that grows stronger for the reason of those imperfections, the “unworthiness” of the saint, the sufferings and needs of the peoples who are served, which for individual love, exacting reciprocity,

166 can be fatal to unselfish giving. We learn from the asymmetry of passion and sacrifice that an equality of feeling is not necessarily as firm a basis for love as are interlocking needs and dependencies, which reflect the balance or the mutual fit of self- and object-worth. As with the idea of the good, the purity of ideal love is vulnerable to the corrosive effects of self-interest. It is endangered by a cynicism that sneers at the ideal. As with all ideals, love is an abstract object of thought that guides the development of values. We have some inchoate sense of ideal beauty and goodness, and the many forms they take in everyday life, but when we try to define or specify them we transform, and corrupt, in a temporal object, a category that, in principle, is timeless. The ideal is presumptive, the instance provisional. Instance and illustration are necessary to develop and pump the ideal, but the vagueness of the category will have an appeal that endures beyond its defilement by the ephemera of concrete examples. In sum, love is conceptual feeling at a depth of personality that engages the self in an exceptional degree of wholeness. The beliefs, experiential memories and values that constitute the self – its dispositions, configurations or neuronal biases – determine the nature of self- and object-worth and account for the equilibrium of commitment and sacrifice that is achieved in the feelings that are exchanged between lovers. An object, such as a diamond, can be valued but not loved. It can be valued and loved in a certain way, such as a pet, or it can be loved and so valued that the self’s own valuations are at stake in the value allocated to the other and the reciprocity it requires. Whether love is given or received, the feelings of the other, not to mention the apprehension of beauty, intelligence, charm, and so on, are inventions of the perceiver whose values provide creative power for the beloved’s idealization. A lover seems to come into one’s life as an independent object to which one gradually becomes attached or fused, two personalities becoming one, so to say. However, from a psychological point of view, that is, from the standpoint of the subject, the other is created in the concentration of valuation that was previously distributed more or less evenly over the object field. Loving and being loved, self and other, are segments in the mind of either partner, as if the self were to project a portion of its own existence into perceptual space. The self of the perceiver and the self of the beloved are one self, part of which accompanies the perception into a world that is an extension of the perceiver’s mind. In this extension, love is an expansion of feeling into the valuation of another who is created as a source and

167 receptacle of desire. Love for self and others Butler compared benevolence to self-love as a parallel principle. To love one person is to value and care for that person above all others. As the beloved becomes part of one’s self and usurps other-directed feeling, he or she replaces the many who were partly loved with the one who is loved completely. Since the beloved is ingredient in the self, the love one has for another is a form of narcissism in reverse. The reflection that Narcissus loved is the mirror image of those qualities that seek satisfaction. One finds a lover to bring one’s own self to completion. We love what complements our needs, what fulfills and supplements our values. The other is a piece of the self, a satisfaction of its wants, a fragment of its emptiness, split off and embodied in another person. To give birth to and love a child is a literal expression of this division of feeling, a process replicated covertly in the love of one adult for another. Butler had in mind that giving to others increases one’s happiness, or that the sources of personal happiness lie in the pleasure given to others. If the love of others redounds to the self, benevolence presumes a kind of enlightened self-love. The very possibility of loving another person suggests a biological predisposition. Perhaps the love that Pascal wrote of, the logique du coeur, is innate empathy on the way to selfless love. Benevolence is a dilute form of loving, splashing drops of kindness on the many, but love is a flood of emotion to the one. It repays the subject with a pale shadow of the richness of loving and being loved. Surely, we are most happy when we are in love. What greater happiness can there be? The one we love fills us with happiness, so it is reasonable to think that if we give our love to many, we shall accrue some multiple of that measure of happiness to ourselves. Perhaps we do, but the feeling of love for others, beneficence, charity, which is for some the ideal in relation to which romantic love is an exemplar, seems far removed from that state of rapture in which the soul is most alive when it is giving love and receiving. Love entails empathy, trust and caring among other feelings, but it is not reducible to any of them, nor explicable by an enlargement of one ingredient at the expense of others. Those who claim that self-love is mandatory before the love for another is possible make narcissism the basis of sacrifice. They presume that love is the outcome of reason or self-knowledge, yet these capacities

168 can be impediments as well as incentives. Those who want to cleanse the soul of narcissism by transposing it to a healthy sense of self-worth fail to understand the dynamic of value that is distributed across self and other. Deference to the other requires a compromise of egoism. The weak and the strong have the same claim on love, which is grounded in need and desire, whether we need what we value or value what we need. Though love, ideally, is unselfish, romantic love does have a quota of egoism. Possessiveness and jealousy cannot be dismissed as neurotic byproducts. They point to the need to protect that portion of the selfconcept the beloved represents. We cannot extract one attribute of love, say, that is it unselfish, and define love in terms of it. A particular constellation of concepts and feelings are unique to each lover. For this reason, romantic love does not generalize, say, to a love of humanity, for it is tied to specific needs and values in the self that cannot be appeased by anonymous others. Love and art Many would say they “love” their work, or cannot live without the work they do, but unlike love, ordinary work channels feelings into actions without necessarily fulfilling them. In this respect, the artist is closer to the lover in that the personality is more fully engaged. Moreover, art as much as love is a product of the subject’s imagination. As a writer, I wonder if it is disingenuous to say that a love of writing, or a consuming desire to write, is an attempt to convey feeling to the other or a solipsistic exercise oblivious to the reader’s interests. We are grateful to our readers, but would many of us not sacrifice the uncomprehending many for the understanding one? Jorge Luis Borges, before he was struck with celebrity, wanted to thank personally the few dozen people who bought one of his books. I am convinced that most creative people write, paint, compose and so on, for themselves, not the approval of others, even if they seek a larger audience. Art is for the one and, like love, depends upon seduction. Nietzsche touched on this sentiment when he described inspiration as taking without asking who gives. An admiring aesthete is seduced as easily by the art as a lover is by the artist. The feeling in the art work is comparable to the love that is given to the beloved, and the love that is given by the other is aligned with the sensibilities that are sought after in the one who unselfishly loves. The artist hopes for success, but the best do not cater to the public nor allow the desire for approval to influence their

169 aesthetic choices, much as one loves unselfishly, wanting to be loved and asking nothing in return. The self is given totally in art, as in love. The dedication and commitment of artistic feeling parallels the sacrifice of absolute loving. Is love a form of art? Dan Hofstadter (1996) thought so and titled his book, The Love Affair as a Work of Art. Lee Siegel (1999) did much the same with his remarkable book, Love in a Dead Language. Love is not changed into art, rather its object is transformed, as aesthetic feeling shifts an ordinary object to an art work. Love and art are self-realizations into personal objects or concepts. They differ from other realizations in that an intensity of feeling accompanies an image of great personal value. Love pours aesthetic feeling into an available object like “found art,” imagining an ordinary object in an aesthetic way. The beauty of the beloved is as much an aesthetic creation of the lover as the artwork is a loving creation of the artist. Indeed, the artist creates a poem, a painting, as a substitute for the beloved. Yeats is but one example, Dante another, and the list is long. The Muse is unobtainable, evoking art as a tribute or a surrogate. The self is fully invested in the image of the beloved or the art work. In love, as in art, the outcome – artistic or romantic feeling – is authentic when it reveals the “whole person” at a depth and fullness of personality. The desire in love, as in art, is to give, or to possess so that giving may continue. In both, the desire is less to communicate than to express or feel. Through expression, the self is liberated. Love involves self-denial, as does art, for the artist and the lover feel passive, even helpless, to their own passionate feelings. Love and art are all worth living for, art because it is a mode of therapeutic recovery, love because it is a cure for life. They replace the banality of a mechanical universe with the primacy of desire and creativity. Though desire and inspiration are ephemeral, the lover pledges to love forever, the artist hopes to create a timeless work. The total commitment of the soul to love or to art fractures the rigid boundaries of the objective and lays bare the pervasive subjectivity of existence. Art is a concrete representation of feeling in the imagination, as romantic love “makes real” the felt intensities of loving. Plato thought art twice removed from the real, and since then, love has been conceived as a dream or illusion. Menander said, “Oh life, oh art, which of you is the plagiarist?” Is a feeling less real than an object? The objectivist view is that love is the illusion that makes life livable. This was vividly captured in Mathew Arnold’s Dover Beach:

170 Ah, love, let us be true To one another! For the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

But for the subjectivist, feeling is primary. Value enhances existence, and love is a flowering of this intensity that brings us into contact with what is ultimately most real. For McTaggart, philosophy dissolves finally into love. Oscar Wilde remarked, glibly, that life is unreal, and love the only reality. This was more delicately expressed by Emily Dickinson: The truer the love, the less the illusion.

In the generation of a loved object or an artwork, the content is subordinate to the process. Loving keeps the lover alive, as the artist lives for his art. Like oral poetry or music, love exists in renewal. The mystery and unpredictability of love, as with art, their inexplicability and depth of origination, point to an unconscious origin. The state of possession in love, the inspiration of art, amount to the same thing. What is derived from the unconscious is no less important than that the exploration take place. In this exploration, a privacy of thought and feeling accommodates to the needs of others, to the object of a love or the audience of an artwork. The lunacy and rapture of unconscious thought, the dream that is art or love adapts in submission, to the needs of the other in love, in subjugation to the form in art. Love is not art – there is less of the creative and the conceptual – but it can be transformed to art when discharge into activity is deferred and thought captures an aesthetic feeling that materializes, not in the beloved, but in a novel object. The freshness and uniqueness of love are duplicated in art. The conceptual feeling that seems, in love, to bond with the object, remains internal in art, while the object toward which love is directed is not provided in art by a physical template, as with the beloved, but is created from within. Still, in art there is a physical medium that serves as a starting point and a constraint on originality. The other that is known in love is scarcely imagined in art. Love is an immediacy of feeling that seeks perpetuity and continuance. So, too, is art a feeling directed to the future. The artist discloses in his work the unconscious potential of future objects. In some ways, loving a person resembles the aesthetic experience of perceiving an art work, for in both the given has to be reinvented. The

171 person who is perceived by a lover, like an art object perceived by an aesthete, is a construct in the imagination. A love letter is a step inward from object to thought, from the concrete limitations of the beloved to the freedom of romantic imagination. An “emotion recollected in tranquillity” replaces a perception enlivened by desire. The artist imagines the object as he wishes it to be with no restrictions other than those of his talent, experience and the tradition of the art form. Art explores imaginative content that convention and habit ignore. It embodies feelings the other intuits as the lover’s ideal. In that an artwork is inanimate, it does not return love to its creator. The pleasure is in the creation, which is a reward for the love that is given, rather more like the joy in a romance than the satisfaction in a conquest. Indeed, the conception and creation of a work of art are analogous to the phase of courtship in a romance, which is the process through which the loved object develops into what it will become prior to enjoying the deserts of mutual feeling. The artist gives love and devotion to the art, expecting nothing but the pleasure, even the ecstasy, of creation and the hopes for success for the work. As in sacrificial or divine love, there is no wish to possess, only to give. Parental love rather than romantic love might be the example. It is not surprising, then, that the artist feels more a parent than a partner to his work.

Chapter 6. From Drive to Desire To see the organism in nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt philosophy, and when thus seen they will be seen to be ... as events are in history, in a moving, growing never finished process. John Dewey (1925)

Introduction An act of cognition arises with a rhythmic pacemaker in the upper pontine and/or midbrain reticular formation, which activates a population of neurons to form a configured pattern of neuronal activity. The pacemaker, or the state of arousal to which it gives rise, is assumed to oscillate at a frequency of around 50-100 milliseconds, similar to that of the alpha rhythm on the EEG. The core construct of the state is the base of a series of phase-transformations that “ascend” over distributed formations in evolutionary brain structure. The anatomical and psychological details of this system, and the case material that provides evidence in support of the theory, have already been discussed (Brown, 1988). A single series of derivations over some or all of these phases constitutes a minimal mind/brain state. The series begins with an act/object that distributes around the midline of the body. This construct is derived to instinctual drive and categorical primes underlying the implicit beliefs, dispositions and values of the largely unconscious core self. The core self is transitional to the experiential or conscious self and its conceptual feelings, which transform ideas, emotions and images outward into acts, objects and utterances, and the intrinsic valuations that accompany them. Drive or will is the conative factor of instinct. Pre-object concepts, or the categorical primitives of drive, undergo further individuation and satisfaction through a variety of behavioral repertoires. Process and form refer to the dynamic and static aspects of every entity, including the mind/brain state. The dynamic and static, the phasic

174 and tonic, are unified in the relation of quality and quantity, or becoming and being. We see this in the relation of drive “energy” to comportment, feeling to idea or affective tonality to lexical and object-concepts. Ultimately, the term “static” is a misnomer, for there are no persistent or changeless entities. The static recurs as a category that stabilizes the dynamic of event occurrence. Brain morphology is not a collection of anatomical parts that discharge functions or house them, but the specious stability of frozen process. The wave-like spread of configurations laying down the mind/brain state is what the brain is, myriad patterns of configurations over distributed areas that sweep from archaic to recent formations laying down behavior or cognition. Behavior is fourdimensional structure, it is the changing face of structure as process actualizes into form. From reflex to representation The construct that initiates the mind/brain state develops out of reflex systems, but the construct is more than a complex reflex. The transition from reflex to “representation” does not involve a compounding of reflex arcs, such as proposed by Herrick (1924), among others, nor an increasing complexity based on a reflex design, such as contemporary box and arrow flow charts, which are ultimately derived from neuron theory (Cajal, 1954 ed.) and the model of the synapse. The evolution of “representation” out of reflex entails a profound shift in organization. Reflex is serial but circular (von Weizsacker, 1939/1958). A sensation (S) leads to a movement (M) which, with “feedback,” serves as a stimulus for another S-M sequence. The simplest reflexes are “closed loops” of this type (Fig. 6.1-a). The S-M arc is not yet a relation of perception to action. Sensation is non-cognitive registration extrinsic to perception. Movement is physical realization independent of, or extrinsic to, action.

175

Fig. 6.1.

Reflex is replaced by “representation” as a unitary act-object is derived through a successive layering of intrinsic (psychic) A-P cores surrounded by extrinsic (physical) S-M tiers.

The next step, in the spinal cord, involves the interposition of an internuncial or short-axon neuron between the S-M limbs of the reflex arc (Fig. 6.1-b). This pattern is typical of the knee jerk reflex. The internuncial neuron allows for some modulation of the S-M sequence by descending fibers; a suspension of this modulation results in hyperactive reflexes or spasticity. Though the descending fibers modulate the reflex by influencing the internuncial neuron, a reflex of this type is not under voluntary control. It is not felt inwardly and is perceived as an external event. At the level of brainstem, this pattern is expanded by an increase in the number of small internuncial cells, which makes it possible to initiate or delay the onset of the reflex. An example of this is swallowing, which seems like a voluntary

176 action, though the movement itself is still a reflex: once it is initiated, it cannot be altered or arrested. My supposition is that a proliferation of small internuncial cells in the upper brainstem eventually reaches a critical stage, where it can serve as a neuronal pool for the initiation of a unified action-perception (A-P). Specifically, the succession and circularity of the S-M loop gives way to the simultaneity and cyclicity of an AP construct (Fig. 6.1-c). Initially, there is a preliminary act-object (AP) that develops, in parallel, over action and perception streams. These streams lay down the conscious self and conceptual feeling, and as they individuate, they diverge to seemingly independent endpoints, in acts, objects and utterances. However, the pattern of a simultaneous, endogenous development of an A-P construct surrounded by tiers of physical S-M (Fig. 6.1-d) is iterated at successive phases to become the essential pattern of the mind/brain state. Unlike the seriality of reflex, the simultaneity of the A-P components develops out of an instinctual drive representation as a unit, e.g. the sucking of the infant on the maternal breast. A good example is the “visual grasp” of the frog’s tongue as it darts out to capture a fly. The perception does not precede the action, the action does not follow the perception; rather, they develop together as a unified act/object. The observer assumes that the stimulus (fly) triggers the response (capture), and naturally assumes that the perception must precede the action, just as sensation precedes movement in reflex. But even at the earliest stages in act/object development, such as the tectal region of a frog’s brain, the stimulus does not lead to a movement – it would be too late by then – but rather arouses the A-P construct, so the organism perceives the object coincident with an action on it. We have known at least since the visual cliff studies in infant kittens that action simultaneous with perception is necessary for normal perceptual development. The unified development of action and perception in human cognition explains the delay in both modalities prior to consciousness. There is a temporal lag in the momentary development of both a conscious perception and a volitional action. The temporal lag in the awareness of an object is the “time it takes” for a retinal impression to elicit an object in consciousness. This minimal perceptual duration is complemented by the duration preceding an action, especially a voluntary decision to act. This duration includes the interval from the unconscious initiation of a purposeful act, to the decision to act, to the conscious act itself. The lag prior to the awareness of acts and objects supports the idea that they

177 develop into consciousness in parallel from a common source. Initially, the nascent act and object are fused, inseparable, but the increasing specification of the subjective aim takes the developing configuration through widely separated brain regions, giving the impression of functional systems discrete from their inception. The shift from an extrinsic series to a simultaneous arising, from an exogenous to an endogenous development, and the nesting of this pattern in a multi-tiered lamination of phasetransitions, forms the essential “structure” of an act of cognition, i.e. the mind/brain state. From instinct to proto-desire The first value is survival, which depends on drives that promote selfpreservation. These drives, mediated by upper brainstem, hypothalamus and older limbic formations, are parsed to human desires by way of more recent limbic strata. The postulate that regions of the limbic formation, e.g. orbito-frontal cortex, control or inhibit affect development (see review in Schore, 1994) is a misinterpretation based on older excitation/inhibition schemas, which in turn are derived from synaptic theory. Rather than topdown inhibition, there is progressive sculpting or refinement. The more automatic, innate and generalized patterns of drive individuate to the more specific, intentional patterns of desire by way of inhibitory constraints. Drive is neither blocked nor suppressed, nor replaced by subtler affects generated by other structures. Rather, it undergoes a qualitative shift in expression. The desires, the part-affects, and the affect-ideas are tributaries of parent drives which, like a river that both shapes and is shaped by its banks, transforms through a continuous derivation. In this respect, the emphasis in much of the neuro-biological literature on the relative contribution of specific brain regions, or right and left brain structures, tends to focus too much on which region or side of the brain correlates with a given behavior, at the expense of psychological and brain process. Problems with this approach have been discussed at length in other publications. In my view, the laterality of affect-development, as with so many other functional asymmetries, is an artifact of language dominance. It is also, in spite of the enormous energy devoted to the pursuit of such correlations, a trivial observation. Knowing the locus of a correlation isolates region and function from the stream of before and after, and adds little to an understanding of the function itself. In microgenetic theory, cognition is wholly endogenous, the role of experience (social,

178 environmental) being to “fine-tune” the specification. Innate dispositions are carved by learning to knowledge, which is derived to concepts of greater specificity. Concepts are formulated with greater precision. The specification by constraints on the cognitive process corresponds to the specification of anatomical and functional connectivity, in maturation, by elimination or inhibition. Learning influences anatomy and physiology by enhancing or impeding endogenous trends, not by an addition to an existing repertoire. Thus, in the post-natal period, visual sensation accentuates anatomical sculpting in the morphogenesis of the visual cortex, while conversely, the trimming of diffuse or redundant innervation to focal innervation is aborted when the organism is deprived of visual stimulation. Desires are derivations of drive-categories, but one does not find elements of the parent drive copied in every desire. Drive-representations inherited from ancestral patterns are derived to desires by a qualitative transform of conceptual feeling. A desire displays a thread of continuity with the ancestral drive, as the leaf of a tree does with a root, but it does not repeat the same contents. The phase-transition resembles a fractal hierarchy, but the transforms differ qualitatively from their antecedents; they are not duplicates in miniature. Moreover, as action and perception are unitary ab origine, a drive-representation is a unified construct of affect and idea. This interpretation differs from that in psychoanalysis, in which, on the synaptic model, a memory trace is cathected to an idea by libidinal drive energy. In neuropsychology, emotional systems innervate memories through external relations. For microgenesis, affect and idea are dependent phenomena. Feeling (quality, becoming) creates and is enfolded by representation or category (quantity, being). In the forward derivation of the state, ancestral phases are not conveyed to subsequent ones but are qualitatively transformed through a cascade of whole/part shifts. For example, a speech sound is informed by, but is qualitatively distinct from, the prefigurative lexical concept, which in turn is derived from presuppositions, experiential memories and motivations that are largely unconscious, though all phases – belief, feeling, concept, word, phoneme – are ingredient in the same utterance. From a diachronic standpoint, that is, with regard to the distribution of early phases into later ones, it is the process, not the behavior, that is parsed to an ensuing phase. Put differently, the transition from concept to word-frame, or from word-frame to constituent sounds, is a continuous whole/part or context/item shift, which deposits a qualitatively different form wherever it actualizes, though earlier phases inhere in distal ones. At

179 each phase, there is individuation of a wave-like configuration, not conveyance from earlier to later. Yet distal phases often do show evidence of this transition, however indirect. Values that reflect self-interest arise out of drives that insure survival. Every drop of self-interest can be traced to an unconscious pool of self-preservation. Every occasion of genuine empathy can be traced to – but not reduced to – innate constructs relating to patterns of infant care, social hierarchy and deference to others. The evolution of drive to desire occurs through the proto-desires when instinctual satisfactions are delayed. For example, in the pursuit of prey, drive-hunger is focused not on the final object but on a lure to its attainment. When a beaver builds a dam, or an animal tracks a prey, it is guided by immediate perceptions, not by an idea or image of the object it is tracking (building, etc.), nor by the knowledge or intuition that its activity is leading to a particular outcome. The action moves from one stimulus to the next. For an animal, every step in the pursuit of an object is an end. The animal is bound to the immediate stimulus. It may be conditioned to act in ways that suggest avoidance of subsequent injury, or it may employ a means to a future goal, but it is hard to believe that an animal can imagine the antecedents or consequences of its behavior. A twig is not, for the animal, a means to the construction of a nest, a scent is not a means to the capture of a prey. A lion does not imagine a gazelle before it has hunger, or before it sights or smells the animal that instigates the hunt. We assume a migrating bird or buffalo does not “know” its destination, nor does it remember migrations of seasons past, other than as a reinforcement of the directional bias of the present journey. These activities appear to us to be purposeful, and we interpret each stage in the pursuit of a goal as a means to that end. However, the appearance of purposeful behavior in animals cannot be “projected” into the animal by a human observer as though it were the pursuit of a goal. All entities have the aim of becoming what they are, and all organisms seek what they need to survive, but it is a long way to go from subjective aim and incipient purposefulness to full-fledged human intention. Nor can we reduce human intention, as some philosophers have attempted to do, to an objective assessment of outward purposefulness. We see the goals of animals as accomplishments, as points of rest or stoppage in a behavioral sequence, but for the animal there is - presumably - merely an exchange of one stimulus-bound behavior for another. We would probably agree, though we have no way of being certain, that animals, even the higher primates, are not conscious of an absent

180 object. The dog that finds the hidden bone does not have an image or an idea of the bone it is looking for, though perhaps the chimpanzee that uses a stick to catch ants can be said to have an ulterior aim. Such instances of proto-desire are transitional to human intentions. Unlike a mature desire, in which the target can be imagined or intended prior to its perception, an object is not targeted before it or its sensory marker is perceived. Otherwise, we would be forced to admit that the purposeful behaviors of animals are intentional states, which is highly unlikely. But the goaldirection and the steps to its satisfaction are precursors to intention. Since human intention does not develop out of thin air but evolves, the protodesires in their purposefulness and delay of satisfaction can be thought of as intermediate forms, thus proto-intentions. In the evolution of drive to desire, the tightly interlocked character of instinct, for example in the releasers of Lorenz and Tinbergen, gives way to postponement and restriction of discharge. Along with the delay, there is a greater selectivity of objects. Satisfaction may not require the acquisition of the object, but can be achieved through surrogates in images and feelings. The drive-category permits a wider diversity of objects than instinct, fewer than in desire, which is accompanied by still greater choice and selectivity. The progressive accentuation of subjective phases in drive and the increasing prominence given to the drive aspect of instinct signal a trend to further inwardness, i.e. the heightened emphasis on preliminary (“pre-processing”) phases. Inwardness retards action in the prominence of feeling, and retards object development in the prominence of images and ideas. Feeling is the dynamic in ideation. Ideas are embodiments of feeling-tones. What appears as an interaction or association of disparate mental objects is the outcome of drive-representations distributing into conceptual feelings in the evolution of proto-desire or proto-intention. The lack of immediate discharge in instinctual drive, and the retardation in the contact with drive-objects, is a neotenous effect (Brown, 1996) that permits greater diversity and individuation of cognitive targets, and the elaboration of a more complex interior life. In sum, the machine-like nature of instinct in lower forms, i.e. its automation, iteration and predictability, evolves by degrees to the drivebased instincts of more advanced organisms. In the evolution of human desire, there is an increasing emphasis on the subjective phases of drive and motivation rather than the objective phases of objects and their implementations. The enhancement of drive at the expense of the more rigid conditions of instinct permits the eventual substitution of lures for

181 aims or targets. A drive-satisfaction that is accomplished over time in a series of partial actions announces a proto-desire. Eventually, this leads to the greater subjectivity, selectivity and choice of human desire. The evolution of proto-desire As mentioned above, evolution transforms drive objects to lures for the satisfaction of desires. A proto-desire that is satisfied incrementally is a precursor to human desire, in which a lure alone, a hope or a longing, may be sufficient. For example, scent as a lure in mammalian drive, as in tracking a prey, sustains the drive until it discharges in capture. In human desire, the lure of scent and other objects may serve to sustain a sexual drive until discharge in copulation. In desire, however, the lure can replace the drive-object as a partial satisfaction that does not require consummation. The enjoyment of perfume is not necessarily a prelude to sexual activity. The delay, and the expansion of subjective phases, uncouples the lure from the drive that was its origin. More precisely, the image that constitutes the lure does not proceed to an object, but actualizes as a final aim. Similarly, the breast as an instinctual object of infantile nutrition is a lure or instrument for the satisfaction of mature male sexual drive. Yet the breast is a source of desire and pleasure that is, to some extent, independent of drive-satisfaction. The part gives pleasure in place of the whole, and a multitude of “parts” gives detached pleasures (desires, ideas) that replace the one pleasure to which drive-consummation is dedicated. When a lure – or drive-derivative – gives a sustained pleasure that replaces its appetitive and consummatory tendencies, and when the lure becomes an object that is enjoyed and sought after for its own sake, the drive-derivative shifts from a precursor or proto-desire to a true desire. Through the lure of targets and the delay in drive satisfaction, the mind comes to be filled with intrapsychic images, as well as extra-personal ones. The image of a desire, the object that is the hope or aim of the desire, appears when phases that mediate submerged pre-object concepts are attenuated, i.e. they do not undergo transformation to external objects. Such phases, which are normally traversed in object perception, actualize as final contents. The recurrence of the drive over incremental pursuits, or successive attempts at satisfaction, along with the lure to the drive-object, evolves to the anticipation of an object in the future of the drive. The anticipation of the object that is the goal of the drive becomes, with increasing inwardness, the idea of the object that is pursued. This is the

182 basis of an intentional act. Both drive and desire aim to the future. The difference is that drive needs its objects without knowing them, while desire knows its objects without having them. In the shift from objective satisfaction to subjective anticipation, the concrete but objectless potential of drive is replayed in the abstract but unrealized objects of desire. The objects of a drive are more generic than the objects of desire. The objects of desire specify or individualize the category of drive representations. Hunger can be satisfied by various foods, or by different prey within an acceptable category. Desire tends to have a specific object for a goal. The objects of desire have specificity within an individual, and variability across individuals. The psychic structure of desire is uniform; its objects vary from one individual to another, but for a given individual they tend to emanate from a limited repertoire of object categories. There is also a shift in the subject-object relation. In instinct, subject and object are part of the same construct. In drive, a subject is in opposition to the object that is pursued. The subject does not yet have an interior life, the object does not have a unique objective ground, but the drive and its object are distinct. The objectification of a drive is facilitated by the need-satisfying object. With a proto-desire, the subject is in greater opposition to objects. An absent object is pursued but the final satisfaction is not in the perceptual field, nor in awareness, nor has it yet individuated and detached in extrapersonal space. The transition from a proto-desire to a desire accompanies the individuation of a self within its own subjective ground. In proto-desire, a subject apprehends extra-personal objects. The objects are not merely extra-personal, but are increasingly apprehended as such. In desire, a self apprehends intra-personal objects. The self is demarcated within the subject as a psychic content distinct from other mental contents and opposed to intra- and extra-personal objects. The first individuation is for subject and object, then a subject aware of, or in opposition to, an object, then a self in relation to other psychic contents within a subjective field. The progression is not by an addition of psychic components, but through an elaboration of antecedents within the subjectivity of drive and its intrapsychic derivatives. For example, the maternal breast is initially an extension of the infant, or the infant of the mother, and only later becomes a distinct object. The abrupt separation of infant and mother at birth continues as a drive to autonomy in post-natal life. As an extension of the infant’s subjective world, the breast is imbued with instinctual valuation. Mother, breast and world are one object continuous with the infant. Instinctual hunger or

183 feeding is invested in this complex, enacted in rhythmic motions about the body mid-line. As the individuation proceeds, the inner and outer polarities are further parsed or articulated, eventually giving rise to a multiplicity of intra- and extra-psychic objects. Concurrently, the self consolidates in relation to its inner and outer derivations. As mind issues from, and creates, the manifold of the world, the self distributes an array of psychic contents. Drive fractionates to proto-desire, which then partitions to desire. The urge to survive distributes into the partial values that implement selfinterest, adaptation and pleasure. In the transition of the breast from instinctual satisfaction to an object of attention and valuation, feeling is allocated to interest or desire on the subjective side, and value and worth on the objective side. The self desires the breast as an object of value, while to its possessor, the breast retains its value as an object of interest for others, and worth to the self. In human cognition, instinctual drive develops through planes of limbic growth to activate the core or unconscious self as its first derivation. Conceptual feelings grow out of implicit beliefs. Values and experiential memories assimilate to innate dispositions. This is the foundation of character. The patterns of neuronal activity that correspond to the self incorporate presuppositions, implicit beliefs, exo- and ego-centric values, and the forgotten or irretrievable, i.e. structural, memories of early experience that underlie thoughts, acts and percepts. The irretrievable becomes the unforgettable as experience in early life shapes and solidifies character. An advance into more recent planes of limbic growth coincides with a shift to explicit beliefs, intentional desires, the conscious self (ego), and ideas, images and memories that are accessible to, i.e. achieve, conscious thought. This shift has been described in philosophical writings in terms of distinct forms of the self, one conscious, one unconscious, or two modes of self-nature, i.e. the empirical and core self (Brown, 1991).

184

Fig. 6.2.

The bias of exocentric and egocentric values into perception and action

In Fig. 6.2, the individuation of psychic unity is shown to follow the axis of act- and object-realization. The drive-representations lay down the self-construct which actualizes into the self-centered (egocentric) and other-centered (exocentric) values. The exocentric values are more emphatic in percept-development, the egocentric values in actdevelopment. Act development can lead to actions that assist as well as coerce, while object development can lead to victims as well as beneficiaries. Value is realized in the action-stream as self-realization, but the will can also be channeled into the perception-stream as an outward derivation of feeling into objects. Generally, action is the manifestation of will, which is primarily egoistic, while perception is the vehicle by which the other is realized. Desire develops out of the conceptual-feelings deposited by drive-representations, which are conceptual primitives invested with instinctual drive. Desire actualizes at successive points in the realization of acts, percepts and their linguistic derivations. Object development carries desire outward, as worth, into other objects, whereas act development realizes desire in either selfish or unselfish pursuits. When we evaluate the conduct of others, their beliefs and values are

185 inferred from the effects of their actions. In evaluating our own conduct, we give priority to intentions over outcomes. The emphasis is on conduct in others and intention for the self. This follows because the observer has access to his choices, though rarely to their unconscious motivations, while actions perceived in others do not reveal the choices out of which they develop. The final act, object, idea, consists of a trajectory, as well as what actualizes. In this trajectory, every phase save the last is a potential for a further transition. At multiple points in the arising and perishing of the state, there are exogenous constraints from the physical surround, and endogenous constraints of experiential and personal memory, temperament, habit, etc. Drive-based conceptual primitives distribute into conceptual feelings - affects, pre-object concepts, meanings - then into words and images, finally to lexical morphology, object form and motility. Drive and desire Drives and desires are modes of feeling. The drives are generic, their objects usually immediate and their implementations non-intentional, though they may appear purposeful to an observer. A drive aims to a discharge in the future, or toward a future object, but it is regulated by the immediate sensory field. The drive of hunger activates the organism to search for food, and this drive, combined with the perception of a potential food source, eventuates in finding a meal. But this does not make the meal the object of the drive, no more than a nest is the object of a bird’s labor or sunshine the object of a flower’s orientation. The object or object-category that is the aim of a drive is carved by an observer out of an event sequence that involves the organism and its environment, the goal coming into existence as a final consummation when the drive is abated. The object individuates what is possible within the category of the drive and constraints on the individuation process. To identify performances that are structurally unrelated based on a shared property, such as the attraction of scent in a hunting spider with that of a lion stalking a gazelle, is a mode of pre-logical thought elevated to a scientific analogy. This kind of thinking is endemic in behavioral psychology and eliminative materialism. The attempt to reduce intentionality from a psychic phenomenon to a robotic mechanism collapses a qualitative distinction to a difference in quantity. Objects of desire – conceptual, intentional – have greater specificity and diversity than those of drive-satisfaction. Desire is directed to a future object, and sustained over intervals of distraction. One could say that

186 desire contemplates the object which drive seeks to acquire. The difference is that desire actualizes in an idea, not an object. The aim in both drive and desire is to possess the object, but desire is motivated not by the object but the idea of the object or the idea of its possession. Desire objectifies in a thought or image – one thinks about one’s desires – while the thought or idea of the object tends to evaporate once it is concretely realized, at least for a time. In subhuman primates that seek an absent object, as in tool use, the proto-desire is not distinct from its attainment. Does a chimpanzee look for a stick, find it, and save it, and only then seek an anthill? If so, we would have to admit that chimps have human-like desires and intentional states. The transformation of hunger and nourishment to desire and fulfillment is a shift from instinctual objects, e.g. maternal milk and satiation in hunger, to those of desire, e.g. the breast as a lure, dinner as a seduction. The objects of a desire can become still more removed, e.g. the breast as an aesthetic object, or food independent of hunger, seduction or dependency, as a medium of friendship and conversation. When an aim becomes an idea, the seeking of it becomes an intention. Intention is a bridge from self to object or idea. It retains a residue of the personal value that initiates the act, and the extrapersonal worth to which it is directed. As the object of a desire clarifies out of a drive, and satisfaction is delayed, the conditions of fulfillment change from exhaustion to pleasure. A drive once satisfied recurs for another round of satiation. The delay is between drivemanifestations. The transient pleasure in a drive satisfaction such as copulation can evolve to the rapture of romantic love. This progression reflects the expansion of ideational content when the act is postponed. The realization of the act is attenuated, allowing “sub-surface content” to proliferate. A desire once satisfied may recur after fulfillment, though often without the predictability and force of a drive. Here, the delay is between the desire and the possession (avoidance, etc.) of the object. Ethological studies have shown that the satisfaction or impedance of one drive tends to elicit another. Drives are whole categories of behaviors. A drive in conflict with other drives may be succeeded or replaced by them, e.g. fight by flight, sexual drive by sleep. When I was in the Army during the conflict in Vietnam, I would occasionally see a soldier who fell asleep in the midst of a battle. Here, the drives of flight and fight were displaced to that of sleep; alternatively, the drive of flight led to sleep as total avoidance. The objects of drive are gestalt-like releasers that discharge a global action centered in the axial musculature of the body midline.

187 Desires are partial expressions within a drive category. A desire tends not to be in conflict with a drive, but with other desires within the drive category, or across categories when more than one drive contributes to the desire, for example, hunger and sexual drive in relation to the breast, oral behavior, etc. If I desire to visit the Congo, to sky-dive, to invest in a business, to pursue a woman, my fears of the risks involved (the potential threat to my survival) may overcome my desire for adventure. In such a conflict, the drive-based concern for self-preservation looms in the background of the desire. The calculus that determines whether the pursuit of the desire will be harmful or beneficial is implicit, though not causal, in every considered action. A desire aims at intrapsychic objects within a drive category. The aim or object of a desire is its lure. When the desire for a highly individuated lure spills into action, there are two paths it can follow. It can retrace its origin in the aim, such as a fetish that relapses to sexual predation, or it can remain so individuated that the final act becomes incidental. Here, the ideational content of the desire assumes primary importance, e.g. beholding, touching an object of a recurrent desire. The sight or acquisition of a lure may intensify the antecedent drive which then presses to satiation, or the fractionation of the desire and the partiality of its objects leave the desire a distant echo and the drive unsatisfied. In such instances, the self is appeased by desired objects but not satisfied by them. A drive that individuates to a desire loses some of its force, though the desire will continue to draw from the drive much of its affective tone. When the discharge of a drive is delayed, its perceptual releaser is attenuated or internalizes as a pre-object. The impulse to action that is emphatic in drive is then replaced by the feeling of intention that is emphatic in desire. The suspension of action and the infiltration of drivederivations (desires) with ideational content are signs of this inward migration. Desire is not superimposed on drive as a “higher” level that holds its undersurface in check. Rather, a desire arises as a prolongation of intermediate phases in drive-satisfaction, in agreement with the general rule that evolutionary (physiological, psychic) advance is subterranean growth. The pattern of individuation in evolution and ontogeny carries desire beyond all recognition to its link with the underlying drive category. The relative freedom of desire from drive-based needs is the distinctive pattern in human desire, in contrast to states of desire in other primates that are closer to the drives. A desire for a diamond, a stamp or an art work is a cultural valuation. The assimilation of learned to innate values continues a

188 process that begins with primitive drive, evolves to proto-desire, proceeds to “naïve,” i.e. culturally unconditioned, desire, then arborizes to a multiplicity of idiosyncratic tastes and interests (Fig. 6.3)

The growth of valuation

Fig. 6.3.

Patterns in the evolution and microgenesis of drive

The growth of valuation The value in a physical entity, or a perceptual object in the world, arises spontaneously with feeling, as existence, expanding desire to object worth. In this expansion, the innate inheritance is continuous with instilled values. The branching of acquired values accentuates a growth trend obscured by the uniqueness of the human mode of valuation and its obvious cultural determinants. We are the source of feeling and object value because we are entities of value-creation. We create objects of value, but we are also products of a value-stream that carries value outward, first into the self, then its desires, finally into its objects. The value of objects is forecast in the worth we give to private images, such as dreams and thoughts. Images or ideas are valued like objects but not desired like them. This is partly because we do not ordinarily desire the products of our own imagination, unless they are pointed at objects in the world. This is especially true for creative objects, since we do not know what they are

189 until they are realized, nor even how to produce them. We may wish to have a creative idea, but we cannot know what this idea will be until we have it, so the intention is for having the idea, not the idea itself. We can hardly desire what we create, apart from desiring that the process of creation should continue to produce objects or ideas that are valuable. One can wish to have a creative idea or to re-experience a dream, but there is not much one can do to bring about these phenomena, so desiring or intending an intrapsychic event is more like waiting for it to happen than seeking or causing it. Moreover, images and ideas arise in proximity to the self and are felt as part of it, unlike objects that are “out there” in the world. An idea is the focus of an intention only when it is a surrogate for an object. A psychological distance and a relation of contrast are necessary across segments in the mind/brain for desire to be directed to a target of worth. The self is the source of desire. Its concepts, especially in choice, are the repository of agency, its objects, the principle locus of value. Feeling is distributed on an axis of desire and worth from a subjective to an objective pole. In this continuum, feeling can be intensely local, depositing in the self as an obsessive desire, or in an object as a magical talisman, or it can wane and dissipate its force in a multitude of objects, including the self, in apathy and akrasia. In everyday life, feeling that is equitably distributed over all perceptual objects is not noticeably invested in any one of them. Yet there are moments when the self is consumed with passion or its objects overflow with value, when love or hate usurps the subjective pole or value fills the objective pole, when objects disappear as the self is overcome with feeling, or objects become so wonderful or detestable that, for the moment at least, nothing else matters. Feeling can enliven a primitive object such as the breast or the mother’s face or voice, or a “primitivized” object such as the face of one’s beloved, where archaic feelings are reinstated in objects that are first perceived in maturity. In gazing at a loved (hated, feared etc.) object with an intensity of feeling, the object takes up the greater part of the perceptual field, as the feeling that flowed into many objects is now concentrated in one. Unattended objects fall into disregard. The object changes with the feeling invested in it. A fearsome face is yet more frightening, the face of one’s beloved still more lovely. Every perception, in retracing a path from intra- to extra-psychic value, fractionates drive into a plenitude of personal and extrapersonal actualities. At different moments, our lives are centered at different phases of this process, but there is a tendency for one segment to predominate. For

190 some, the interior life has a greater priority than a life in the world, for others it is the reverse. For some, self-interest is paramount, for others, a life of unselfish giving. A life is shaped in part by the accentuation of its intra- or extra-psychic portion. However, the interior life can be one of self-absorption, unselfish compassion or introspective egoism, while the exterior life can be devoted to service or acquisition. In a healthy maturity, the individuation of self and world apportions value fairly to the needs of self and other. Ideally, worth distributes into others in cultures far removed from settings where the obligations of loyalty and self-interest prevail. With sincerity, the apportionment is not between self and other, but within a self that apprehends the needs of others as its own. Thought tends to increasing analysis. The more analytic one’s objects, the less feeling in any one of them. Science analyzes objects to the limit, draining them of inherent feeling. The objects of those for whom interest settles at the outer reaches of perception have so individuated that the tributaries of feeling may be unfelt at their objective pole. This is equivalent to saying that feeling is attenuated by diffusion into too many objects, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s description of a good conversation as touching on everything and concentrating on nothing. Thus, we are more deeply moved by the fate of an injured child than by the death of thousands. The one receives the full weight of the feeling that is dispersed in the many. At the subjective pole in a self so individuated, the wholeness or integrity of the personality may be at risk. A proliferation of values in the self, no less than the world, can weaken the force of any one of them. A person driven by a single desire is saturated with a passionate intensity. Wittgenstein wrote, “each of the sentences I write is trying to say the whole thing, i.e. the same thing over and over again; it is as though they were all simply views of one object seen from different angles.” On the other hand, with too many values or beliefs none are deeply felt. The diffusion of value leads to opinions that count for little. A strong intelligence is especially susceptible. The integrity of self may disintegrate into such a jumble of opinions that the adherence of ideas and core values is obscure. A person may argue persuasively, but are his beliefs integrated, do his values cohere, and do they correspond to his opinions? In other words, is the person authentic? The disappearance of feeling in the partition of the world reflects its dilution in the partition of the self. With a splitting of objects at the outer or objective pole, one object is no more valuable than another. All objects

191 may become worthless or the worth of the individual may be inundated by the flood of human need. Frivolous objects carry a weight beyond their merit, a pet counts for more than a spouse, a crowd urges a suicide to jump. That some people grieve for a pet more than the death of a human companion shows that the worth of a loved object depends on its conceptual valuation. People distinguish the pet from others of its kind by imputing to the animal a unique personality, loyalty, affection. Such grief is pure self-interest. One pet counts as little as any other, indeed, any other animal, except for the instinctual devotion it gives to its master. With a splitting of concepts at the inner or subjective pole, ideas may become so remote from their emotional root that they are valued purely for their rationality. The analysis of conceptual feeling is carried to such an extreme that barely a trickle of personal feeling invades the endpoints of conceptualization. The idea is a mental object comparable to an object in perception. Such ideas, like objects, seem to have a life of their own, independent of feeling, though the intensity of belief and passion of argument betray a covert subjectivity latent in the idea. With an excessive discrimination of self or world, feeling withers in its objects, which are emptied of affect to become mechanical, even worthless. We describe such people as depressed, shallow, detached or overly intellectual, according to whether the withdrawal of feeling to an intra-psychic locus, and the resultant loss of interest, leads to anhedonia or self-absorption, or whether the shift in feeling or valuation is manifest in belief or desire. In belief, the conceptual predominates; in value, feeling. Surface concepts are generated as mere adornments. The person who argues too passionately for a belief he takes to be rational reveals that his concepts are not logical instruments which persuade by their truth, but derivatives of unconscious presuppositions imbued with feeling. There are also times when the unconscious pool of magical thought surfaces to a pre-analytic endpoint, and the whole of perception is blanketed with an intense emotion. Then, a certain balance of inner and outer prevails and everything shines with a deep radiance, the rocks, the flowers, the wind and rain, the farmer and his sheep, all pulsate with a kind of power. At such times we sense the life of feeling in a world of creation and we wonder if we have given this feeling to the world or if the world, including ourselves, is animated by a single feeling that flows from nature through us all.

192 Interest Valuations in the self lay down force lines or habits that determine consecutive states. When beliefs and values are habitual or unquestioned, the thoughts and actions of an individual have a limited scope. H. G. Wells once said that a man should keep an open mind until he makes it up and then close it, but receptiveness and openness to novelty are bridges to interest and precursors of valuation. Perry (1926) conceived interest as deviating from habit at one end and merging with desire at the other. Of course, interests and valuations can be habitual, but often objects (responsibilities, etc.) that usurp valuations become stale over time and the desire for them wanes. We say someone is “burned out” when the things he values no longer incite his interest, but the things also seem less valuable than before. Desire and worth fade together. As one grows older, the same concepts tend to recur, patterns of thought and action harden, we say they grow more rigid, and the ideas and objects they give rise to are perceived with ennui and little surprise. Custom may be the lord of ethics, but it can also be an antidote to desire, just as spontaneous or authentic moral feeling can be dulled by a sense of duty. One problem for a moral theory in which desire is central to valuation is to resolve the novelty that is essential to interest with the steadiness that is essential to character. In habit, configural biases shape the developing act along conventional lines. The potential at the base of the object formation is not exploited in the ensuing development, emerging context is not fully sampled at each subsequent phase. Ideally, the flux of inner to outer should revive the potential and inclusiveness that initiate every act of thought or perception so as to generate opportunities for deviation at preliminary phases, by metaphor, “lateral thinking,” etc., which explore a fuller range of conceptual feelings, and import novelty into objects of interest. An object takes on interest when novelty is incited at early phases in its formation. Perry asks, as have few others, “in what consists value in the generic sense”? The question concerns the qualitative nature of value, not a scale on which values are compared. Self-interest, desire and worth are developed values. Perry believed such values were based on interest. He wondered if interest was like an arrow or a magnet; i.e. related to purpose or desirability, the inner or the outer, the want or the ought. He did not give to feeling an important role in value, but what else could interest be but a pulse of feeling injected into an occasion of thought? Interest is driven by endogenous process, not desirability, which depends on the subject’s needs

193 and values. The composer Janacek put it nicely, extolling the spontaneous impulse of feeling that, as he put it, “makes me pick this flower from a flower bed.” What is it to show interest in one flower in a field, one face in a crowd? The isolation of the face or the flower is a focus of attention, a brief moment of interest that quickly fades and shifts, jumps in saccades. At times, interest may grow into an intense feeling of the worth or beauty of the object. But, minimally, it is an affirmation of the existence of the object, a discrimination of the one from the many. And, at the least, such a discrimination is a step in a perceptual valuation. Notice or interest may last a second or two, with attention constantly moving from one object to another. Or it may expand to a reflection on god, nature, and an experience of the sublime. It may begin as a benign glance and grow to an ecstatic vision. This spectrum is taken to be a measure of the subject’s personality, which illumines an object like a searchlight. Surely, it seems, this response is the contribution of meaning and signification to an object that would otherwise be ignored. But what is lost in the idea of a contribution or a response is the fact that the psychic complement grows within the object, which is the tip of the very subjectivity it seems to confront. In some respects, interest is a mark of the intentional nature of attention, as a perception shifts from what feels like a passive encounter to an active search or observing. The physicist Richard Feynman (1998) wrote, “what looks still to our crude eyes is a wild and dynamic dance.” He was referring to non-cognitive entities, but the dance also occurs in perceptual objects in the mind of the observer, for the apparent stability and independence of the object conceals the mind’s activity within it. The difference between the active and the passive is sharper in awareness than it is in fact. We are attracted to objects because they arouse unconscious interest, but then, when they become conscious, they invite the belief that we prefer them because they are desirable. But if perception were not active in the first place, we would be hostage to the pull of every accidental perception. The distinction can be explored in an experimental setting. If one asks a person with damage to the frontal lobes, who is easily distracted by stimuli in the immediate environment, to rate a series of pictures of artworks on a scale from 1-10 according to preference, we find that preference is relatively stable over successive exposures. This is also true of recognition when it is tested a few days later. Having given a preference on an initial viewing, it is more likely that the object will be recognized a

194 second time. Recognition is poorer when a rating is not requested. However, even when a previously seen picture fails to be recognized, the aesthetic rating is similar across trials. Thus, one arrives at the following conclusions: (1) the distractibility of frontal brain damage is not random to any object but reflects interest or preference as a sign of personality; (2) expressing a preference heightens the recall of the picture that was seen before; and (3) preferences tend to be stable even when the prior exposure is forgotten. Though this study is inconclusive, it suggests that interest is guiding attention. The pathological brings the normal into focus. A person with frontal brain damage is not distracted by any immediate stimulus, rather his interest determines which objects distract him (see related studies in monkeys by Pribram, 1998). Interest, before it expands internally to desire, or externally to worth, is an equivalence or a “lowered efficiency” of feeling over its subjective and objective segments. Feeling in the subject-object is uniform over its extent. Many objects may be of interest, or at least the value in one has not interiorized to the subjectivity of desire, or exteriorized to the objectivity of worth. Need is not emphatic. The object is not valuable. Yet if a person reflects on an object it may soon become desirable (significant, fearful, etc.). The mild interest or curiosity one has in a person on a first meeting can rapidly grow to passion as one’s needs are recruited by sustained access to pre-object phases. An object of marginal interest becomes the target of a consuming desire as unconscious phases in the perception are activated. The unconscious source that first inclines the focus of interest in the direction of the object is the basis of a growth in its value. Worth is not a judgment in the sense of a conscious decision, as something is judged to be true or false, but an unconscious feeling that urges the subject to a conscious explanation. When someone is desirable, we give reasons why this occurs. She is beautiful, kind, generous, but these reasons alone do not suffice to make her desirable, for they could be applied to another person for whom one has no particular interest.

Chapter 7. Custom and Evolutionary Naturalism the unborn is hidden as yet from the light, and the womb is secret, and the presage doubtful; and the morning of the child’s naming is divided by many days from the darkness of begetting and the night of travail. F. H. Bradley (1874)

From animism to reflection In early societies, where there is no distinction between custom and morality, custom regulates conduct. Such societies are deontological, with rigid rules derived from custom or totems. Radcliffe-Brown (1952) wrote that in such peoples the universe, as a whole of animate and inanimate forms, has a moral or social order governed by ritual. The system of relations between humans and nature is similar to that among humans. The ought applies equally to nature and man. This reflects the subjective continuity of mind and nature (animism), or, conversely, the absence of a clear line of demarcation in the elaboration of the world out of the mind. It may be the case, as some have claimed, that the peoples of early societies show little or no capacity for reflection. If so, this may reflect the lack of a boundary between the intrapsychic and the extrapersonal. The extreme thesis that the mental life of prehistoric man was largely that of an hallucinatory consciousness (Jaynes, 1976) interprets animism too concretely. Animism or magical thinking and paralogic are characteristic of dream cognition. In wakefulness, they are adaptive mechanisms in a world that is not fully rational. But this does not mean the person is a waking dreamer. Someone with hallucinosis would not survive in a world of “real” objects. For animism, the mental is not necessarily the intrapsychic. The world is an extension of a psychic field. The first step in the development of consciousness is for the subject to perceive a separate world. The mitosis

196 of psychic unity into the bi-polarity of mind and world proceeds to the next phase, that of a self within a subject, distinguished from other psychic objects. The self is a mental construct apart from its images and ideas, and distinct as well from external objects. The progressive individuation of intra- and extra-personal space that partitions the objects of introspection also concentrates the deep self and “detaches” objects from the mind, such that they are no longer psychic events, like dreams, floating in a “mental soup.” The mental life is populated by images, dreams, inner speech, feeling. With the appearance of a self, there is a progressive shift from the uniform necessity of ritual to customs that tolerate a greater individuality of character. The generalized subjectivity of early societies infuses perception with mystical import. Agency and belief are not just in the observer’s mind, but deposit in his perceptions. Objects that we now take to be non-cognitive are conceived in archaic societies as having beliefs and volitions. A totem is such an object, a focus of psychic interest in the totality of animistic nature. Most if not all early societies have some form of totemic belief. The totem is a doorway to the eternal dreamtime of the myth – the medium between past and present, history and perception – in which, as Elkin (1952) writes, “man and natural species are brought into one social and ceremonial whole, and are believed to share a common life.” Totems are not just crocodiles and kangaroos; rather, any occurrent or enduring entity can become a totem, including adolescence, the tides-that-take-the-crab-tosea, copulation, vomiting. In the animistic world, names for things are of the same essence as the things they name. Conviction in the reality of magical belief erodes as totemic objects become independent of the observer. An intermediate stage in the transition from the animistic to the logical occurs when the individual does not say he is an animal but that the animal is his ancestor. The totem recedes from a present object to a past image, where it becomes a symbol or metaphor. As the psychic content of objects recedes to an intrapsychic locus, the psychic investment in any one object dissipates, and for all objects there is a loss of intrinsic power. The history, meaning and signification that were formerly the inside of the object remain as realness and worth, a bare shadow of their former intensity. This residual of the former psychic investment is recaptured in mystical experience, creative intuition, dream and psychosis. With increasing analysis, values are felt to be projected onto objects, rather than being qualities inherent within them. As feeling withdraws, the agency displaced into objects is felt in the observer. Spirit

197 no longer is continuous from self to world, the self is no longer part of a magical nature. The intrapsychic is buried in the unconscious. Symbols and metaphors provide the underpinnings of rational thinking, as well as of artistic creation. In contemporary society, as Lévi-Strauss (1966/1962) wrote, it is as though “every individual’s own personality were his totem: it is the signifier of his signified being.” According to Lévy-Bruhl (1985/1926), the connecting links of prelogical representations are given with the representation. Object relations are felt as internal in a psychic space that also includes perceptual objects. With the contraction of conceptual feeling to the intrapersonal and the cleavage of the psychic from the physical, there is a shift from animism to rational thought. The changed objectivity of the world changes one’s relation to it. In the shift to reason from animism or paralogic, the relations intrinsic in an object become relations external to them. Perception is conceived in terms of its impact on the observer. The internal relations that generate mind and world are interpreted as external relations between objects, or between them and the human mind or the mind of god. The primacy of intrinsic relations, exemplified in animism and lost in the evolution of consciousness and the pragmatics of common sense, recurs in mental illness, as in the creative intuition of artistic experience. Religious concepts partake of and dilute magical thinking in the attribution of psychic power to a deity who exists “out-of-time.” They accompany a transition from the non-causal dreamtime of myth and magical thinking to an objective world of serial time and causal relations. The agency within the local objects or totems of animism spreads to nature as a whole, setting in motion or guiding objects that have their own causal histories. Mind withdrawn from nature sequesters in deity. A monotheistic deity is a residue of animism liberated from objects and distributed throughout nature, in Spinoza’s panpsychism, or localized in a personal god, modeled after the human mind, in which the agentive relation to world resembles that of self to object. As human mind confronts its inner and outer objects, the mind of god is outside and distinct from nature, which is conceived as a vast theater or spectacle of god’s creation. In scientific thinking, mind (god) is extracted completely from nature, leaving behind a mechanical universe of naked facts, emptied of psychic content. The observer is then the last bastion of mind, an island of mentality, with objects no longer part of his psychic life. Objects are mechanical parts that interact. These objects and external relations then move from the world back into the mind as functional units and connections. In a reductio ad

198 absurdum of this trend, concepts and propositions become self-sufficient entities, like objects, independent of and prior to the mind that thinks or utters them. The extinction of mind from nature results in an indifferent world of physical entities. The mind, rather like nature in this respect, is conceived as a collection of interacting parts. Finally, the replacement by mechanism eliminates the observer, who is the last remnant of subjectivity. The apotheosis of materialism occurs when the self – Ryle’s ghost in the machine – evaporates into thin air, and one is left with a zombie, or a “central processor,” which labors under the delusion that it is conscious and has free will. From the standpoint of moral feeling, the spirit that is pervasive in nature, and the dependence on community as a basis for moral conduct, contract to the self and its inner circle, a loyal band of family and friends. Deity does the psychic work that was extracted from the objects of prior animism. In the shift from animism to objectivity, objects drained of value are reattached to the observer by artificial contacts. The continuity of mind and world that underlies this fragmentation is regained in love or compassion, in rapture, meditation, mental illness, or in the experience of the sublime. In all such states, there is a feeling of oneness with the surround, an intuition of a unified field in which self and other are foci of signification. The ability to periodically recapture this mode of thought is a powerful reminder that it has not been discarded as an evolutionary relic. There is an iteration of ancestral patterns in every act of cognition. Dewey (1938) wrote, “Every movement of experience in completing itself recurs to its beginning, since it is a satisfaction of the prompting initial need.” Custom, value and goodness Generally, the customs of early societies tend to promote positive values, such as the prohibition of theft or homicide and the encouragement of generosity. This is true not only for humans, but even among gorillas and chimps, especially bonomos, where positive values outweigh occasional acts of cruelty, e.g. murder or cannibalism. When a custom is isolated in a tradition as a formal requirement, with penalties for its violation, it approximates a law. The custom persists, but loses its magical power and a law is required to enforce it, though for both custom and law, as in social animals, whether the grimace of an ape, the feeling of shame, or the fear of the gallows, deterrence is the goal, not punishment per se. In early societies, punishment tends to be based on a principle of restitution

199 (Hobhouse, 1915; Black, 2000). This custom survives in modern societies, where crimes of state, such as war crimes, are settled by financial compensation. This occurs with individual crimes as well, when restitution is awarded by the malefactor to the victim or his family. Tradition is the collective embodiment of the personal valuations of individuals extracted from conduct over many generations and distilled into the separate rules, customs and observances of the community. Law stabilizes, objectifies or codifies, and so validates a custom, and prescribes a more detailed inventory of punishments for its infraction. Eventually, the law individuates from the tradition in which it originated, supported by its own system of relations, context and coherence. The response of custom to the question “why?” is that “it has always been so”, or that “it was ordained by the gods,” or a myth is given as an explanation, whereas the law provides, ideally, a reasoned argument. The analysis of custom into law is accompanied by a similar analysis of punishment, and these changes accompany a further fractionation of the personal concepts that conform to them. The advent of the law, in its explication of custom and varied methods of enforcement, instills a personal sense of duty. Specifically, the individuation of custom to law is the beginning of a reasoned sense of personal responsibility or obligation. The positive valuations that result from adaptive pressures on higher social animals are the nucleus of moral concepts. The matching dependencies of behavior and evolutionary niche are superseded by a psychic adaptation, in which mind adapts to nature. Mind assimilates the object world by fitting to it a complex tapestry of beliefs, magical and rational. The adaptation of magical or paralogical mechanisms, such as metaphor, is as intricate and interlocking as the behavioral adaptations of animals. Every organism seeks coherence with the environment at successive stages in its growth. The animal survives in the world of objective nature; primitive cognition adapts to a psychic nature of its own invention. Customs in early societies are adaptive constraints on populations with unique cultural histories, physical environments and climatic conditions. Adaptive pressures lead to values such as food sharing and subordination of individual to community, which, were they to be judged by moral criteria, would on balance be considered positive and good. Customs as adaptations are the foundation of abstract moral concepts. In modern societies, the adaptation to a social niche of education, marriage, career etc., is far removed from animal nature or the psychic world of totemic belief, but these ancestral patterns are an unconscious

200 leitmotif derived into every pulse of conscious thought. In sum, biological adaptation to the natural environment passes to psychic adaptation to a supernatural environment, finally to rational adaptation to a social environment. The one is nature as it is, the other mind invested in nature, the last, culture, a pure creation of thought. While these three levels of adaptation, the drive-based or instinctual, the paralogical and the rational, occur in three different environments – biological nature, psychic nature, and the conventions of reason – all three intervene in everyday life. Drive and paralogic are preliminary phases that prefigure conscious concepts and conduct. Every action and thought traverses and conveys the residue of these phases. Custom, law and moral conscience What is the difference between the customs of a peaceful early society and the moral concepts guiding the laws of a developed one? In the former, there may be no notion of good, or even fairness, other than whether behavior is appropriate to a given context. There is no standard of goodness other than what custom dictates, i.e. the good is conduct according to custom. Yet given the atrocities of modern states and the immorality of cultivated individuals, one wonders if a “primitive” tribe might have a moral standard, or at least a code of conduct, equivalent to that of a modern society, even if its customs are guided by false (magical) beliefs, rather than regulated by reason and law. Though some actions of early societies are reprehensible, such as acts of butchery or cannibalism, overall their moral conduct and values, even in the absence of introspection and self-examination, may well be comparable to those of an enlightened society. The comparison of custom to law, the similar obligations and enforcements, the comparable effects on action, challenge a moral philosophy based largely on conduct or duty at the expense of character: tribal customs can be as beneficent, or as brutal, as those of a modern state. Russell argued that the consequences of the false beliefs of “primitives,” such as eating one's parents when they are old and useless, are related to the effects of action, rather than the aims toward which the actions are directed. He argued that there may be a greater common assent on aims than means, which differ according to belief. But such phenomena not only reflect beliefs, they point to the absence of certain values common to developed societies. Clearly, a calculus is at work in the valuequantification, for example, in a justification of the sacrifice of the useless

201 few for the benefit of the needy many. This distinction is not restricted to “primitive” societies. Most of us share the aim of peace, for example, but many would argue against war as a means to achieve it. Conversely, Russell noted that many liberal thinkers justified the extermination of millions in Stalinist camps on the same grounds, i.e. the greater good. Values good and bad arise from beliefs, true or false, that are supported by arguments, logical or irrational. Values are corrupted by false beliefs or ignorance and corrected by reason, but goodness is ultimately a matter of positive values, however they may be instilled, not the reasons that justify them. Malicious ends need persuasive arguments to support the means to their realization, but so do beneficent goals. The appeal to a higher good is the surest path of the demagogue to evil. The rhetoric of the holy man that inspires the masses to goodness can also inspire them to terror, and sweep a dictator to power. Rhetoric can alter beliefs that instill new values or distort old ones. Rhetoric has its effect, I would claim, less by verbal persuasion than through a kind of hypnotic identification that is parasitic on innate empathy. The more idealized the aim and the more entranced its devotees, the less they need to be convinced of the means. The reverse is also true, one has to be persuaded that the means are appropriate if one is unconvinced of the aim. The idealism of the young points to the innate striving to an ideal. When the bias to the good is not corrupted by misfortune, it serves as a beacon toward which youthful energies are directed. The ideal is needed, not as a guiding principle, but a category that surrounds, motivates and justifies the actions of daily life. Perhaps the whole self can commit only to holistic pursuits. The totality of the ideal and its grip on the self are essential for sustained commitment, for the drive to future goals wanes once incremented in the exigencies of present needs. Actions arise from values that establish the desired effects of those acts. If the values are good, the system of enforcement is irrelevant. We no longer confuse the evolution of moral concepts with the idea of progress in moral development. The more rational the society, the better reasons it can give for acts of brutality. The shift from paralogic to reason brings a greater sophistication in the justification of desires and outcomes, and allows for a detachment that is necessary for a mature sense of moral judgment, but it does not necessarily lead to a positive growth in values. From the standpoint of conduct, does it matter if goodness is a result of moral training, philosophical insight, the appeasement of ghosts, duty to god? The problem is that good and bad acts can be justified on all of these

202 grounds. The question arises whether a goodness that is exemplified by deity and motivated by religious mythology is superior to that which is sustained by magical thinking and enforced by superstitious fear. If conduct is beneficent, what is the relevance of the rationale that supports it? Is an act of goodness for which there are rational grounds necessarily better than one that stems from the kindness of a simple man who acts without thinking, or the generosity of a native who acts on a magical belief? In the first instance, there is deliberation and choice, in the second, unreflective goodness, in the third, a custom of charity that may depend on appeasing a parrot. The same act of goodness occurs in each case, say, hospitality to a stranger. The first is a considered act, the second a gesture that reflects a custom, the third, an act based on a false belief. The latter differ from the first, in that the will of the individual is subordinate to custom or indoctrination. Yet the psychic structure of the last (paralogic) is the ground of the others, to which they revert, or regress, when conditions are ripe. When an otherwise peaceful tribe in Ecuador goes on a murderous rampage of a nearby village, or in the slaughters of the Crusades, or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, or the bloody massacres in Rwanda, it is rare indeed that an individual of that native, religious or secular community protests the actions of its own members on humanitarian grounds. The September 11 terrorist attack on New York had over 90% support in many Muslim countries, including that of many educated people who were otherwise no more or less moral or immoral than people of any other society. The reversion to the mentality of the mob that is fulminated by paralogical or metaphoric thinking and faith-based argument is attractive to many because it satisfies preconceptions regardless of whether or not they are true. When the organic wholeness of an act is not apparent or does not tap deeply into the emotional life, an appeal is made to particulars of time, place and culture, inciting and idealizing to a global aim something that began as a local passion. To take a recent example, the American invasion of Iraq was based, in my opinion, on a reasonable geo-political strategy, but was sold domestically on the grounds of the dangers posed by biological and chemical weapons allegedly in the possession of the Iraqi dictator. Here, a reasoned justification of a strategic ideal was thought to be an insufficient motivation to consolidate domestic support, probably because the president underestimated the public intelligence, or lacked

203 confidence in his limited rhetorical skills, so the government cynically promoted the war on issues exploiting fear. Others who did not share this fear or insecurity, or distrusted the justifications, were not susceptible to the strategy, while the ideals were not argued with sufficient vigor and eloquence. In retrospect, one’s advocacy of war or peace did not depend on ideals, say, freedom of the Iraqi people for one camp, the avoidance of bloodshed and peace for the other. Within these categories, arguments based on individual morality, for example, accusations of greed, lust for kingdom, for oil, or concern over the killing of innocents, were set against a state morality entrusted with security and political order. In other words, a morality of subjective motives for or against the war, based on character, was opposed to one based on an objective calculus, e.g. hegemony, national interest. Given that decisions of states are based on policy and judged on outcomes, not motives, the moral judgment of the war depends on how things turn out. What is the lesson in the fact that a war which was arguably just and reasonable was opposed by the vast majority of the world’s population? Surely, there is a relation to the incessant verbal and criminal attacks on Israel and America, Muslim solidarity, as well as a certain blindness to internecine conflict, which has, in fact, been far more destructive than Israeli strikes on Palestine. Many such states were pro-Nazi during World War II, and closely associated afterwards with the Soviets (Lewis, 2003). The point, however, is that the concepts driving one or another view do not arise from dispassionate analysis or impersonal moral principles based on fact, but rather from an emotional bias that recruits arguments in its support. We see how an intense commitment to a religious text can motivate and justify an irrational, often cruel, policy, and how powerful is a truth “revealed” by faith compared to one that is a product of reason. Indeed, ostensibly rational argument driven by an emotive imagery and metaphor provides a varnish of respectability for affective bias, political orientation and religious faith. This is no less true for the intellectual class, and includes the influence of presupposition, loyalty, political correctness and other pre-existing biases. It is not an exaggeration to claim that the same biases, constraints and inducements, would have shaped the decisions of tribal chieftains. For a custom to be an ethic, the valuation invested in the action must shift from the societal or institutional mentality of tradition or religious belief to character and conscious decision. The custom has to be

204 understood and willingly accepted. Personal values in addition to those of community, whether tribal, religious or legal, and the awareness of good and bad or right and wrong, are essential for actions to be truly moral. Awareness and choice are most evident in solitary moral decision, when the individual is willing to put conscience before clan and stand against the community for what he believes is right. Concern for nameless others may have to take precedence over loyalties to family or friends. The ability to resist the pressures of an unjust law or custom is more a mark of character than is the duty to obey a law that is just. Moral enlightenment requires the individual to say “yes” to the needs of a wider humanity, but it also requires the individual to say “no” to the oppressive din of a brutal or insensitive majority. All things considered, reason is preferable to irrationality and true beliefs are preferable to false ones, but goodness is an outcome of actions that are guided by values irrespective of the beliefs and reasons that surround them. The transition from instinctual nature, to a psychic universe of the supernatural, to a rational world of social interaction, involves a progressive detachment or a retreat from an immediacy of contact, as levels in thought-development create a succession of social environments. Yet all three worlds - nature, magic, reason - are serially engaged in every act of cognition. Biology, mind and culture What do we learn about human value and social life from the study of animals, genes or brain function? If patterns of animal behavior such as parenting and food sharing are precursors of human conduct, this would support the idea that even a highly developed moral conduct can be interpreted from an adaptive standpoint. The drive to self-preservation is not pure egoism but requires cooperative action, since an organism cannot survive independent of the group. In evolution, gene transmission and the promotion of the species are at stake, not the individual. The individual is often sacrificed for the group. If the survival of the individual were primary, females would not procreate, nor would they tend their young, since this reduces their ability to survive as individuals. Genes are transmitted by submission as well as conquest. Well before the current debate on the topic, Hobhouse (1915) wrote that “biology does not lead us to assume an original egoism or self-regard, out of which altruism is evolved as a secondary result.” Parenting, empathy and deference to others

205 are the likely seeds out of which human altruism developed. Ridley (1996) has written a popular review of animal behavior in relation to an economical theory of the precursors of human moral conduct. However, we should be cautious in interpreting patterns of animal behavior as archaic levels in human cognition. The concept of the triune brain advanced by Paul MacLean had the unhappy fate of implying that reptilian or early mammalian behaviors were stacked in the social repertoire of human action. This is clearly too simple an hypothesis. It recalls older speculations on the brain-damaged, in which the symptoms of language and other disorders were viewed as markers of a regression to early stages in the sequence of acquisition. This idea has been repeatedly disconfirmed. We learn from phylogenetic or ontogenetic growth patterns that behaviors are not laid down as nested complexes that reappear in pathological states; rather, the behavior is a signpost of the process that deposits it. Thus, the paralogic that leads the native to believe a man is a tiger, or a schizophrenic to believe he is Christ, recurs in ordinary cognition in conventional metaphor, in novel concepts and artistic creation. For example, the paralogical syllogism in the native, “a tiger is strong, Akiba is strong, Akiba is a tiger”, becomes “Christ has a beard, I have a beard, I am Christ” in the schizophrenic. The simile, “the brain is like a computer” becomes “the brain is a computer” in ordinary thinking, while in poetry we have, “she is beautiful, a rose is beautiful, she is (like) a rose.” The part (property/attribute/predicate) serves to unite two otherwise disparate wholes (nouns, topics, etc.). This linkage or fusion of wholes could occur by way of a shared part, or it may well access an antecedent whole in which the shared parts are imminent. To see how the part/whole relation figures in moral thought, take the example cited above of the arguments for or against a war. Either the goal, e.g. freedom, is an ideal (whole) that embraces and justifies the part-acts as means, or the part-acts, e.g. finding weapons, are bridges to good or bad aims, or the ideals within which they are embedded. The idea that ontogeny retraces embryonic stages in evolution implies a collapse of deep phyletic time in developmental or life span process. Evolution is a reconstruction or an extrapolation of the ontogenies of a given line. Growth is cyclical, not linear. A minimal duration of growth of the organism is replicated, with ontogeny the sum of these replications. With each replication the organism changes. The sequence of change seems to be the effect of an open-ended life span process, when actually the sequence is the pattern of change laid down as the process recurs. The

206 more primitive the organism, the more specific tropisms or behaviors are replicated. In the process of speciation, ancestral behaviors are not embedded in novel ones. The recapitulation is for the process, not its actualized elements. Similar behaviors are deposited in a species, but it is the configural pattern that generates the behaviors that is iterated, not stored repertoires. This is a subtle but important distinction, essential to an understanding of the evolution of mind. Ontogenesis is a translation of the genome by way of epigenetic patterns into morphology and behavior. Learning is parasitic on this process and is itself a form of growth. The individuation of species in evolution is played out in the morphogenesis (epigenesis) of organisms, and this pattern continues in the microgenetic individuation of an act of cognition. The epigenetic process is sustained in post-natal life through “force lines” that establish the patterns of cognitive processing. Other writers have suggested that learning involves adaptive strategies related to epigenetic mechanisms, but have not shown how this might occur (Pribram, 1991; Malsburg and Singer, 1988; Wilson, 1998). In an earlier work (Brown 1994), I detailed a model of this process and its relation to adaptive and maladaptive growth patterns, as well as pathological errors. Consider the relation of genome to culture. Suppose one takes a general capacity, such as intelligence, or a specific ability, such as a grammatical rule, and then isolates the gene or polygenes and regulatory mechanisms that correlate with the rule or capacity. What exactly has been accomplished? Is the correspondence of gene to rule or behavior not analogous to the correlation of behavior (error, deficit) with a normal or damaged region in the brain, or with a neurotransmitter? In each instance, a complex performance is explained by reducing it to a lower-level structure that is its cause or substrate (gene, chemical, neuron, area, network) without specifying the inner structure of the performance, nor its linkage to the substrate, nor how the lower mechanism accounts for the higher one (see Fig. 7.1). The correlation is attributed to (1) translation mechanisms or algorithms, (2) reduction, identity and/or supervenience (emergence), or (3) causal effectuation. An account of the physical substrates that underlie a behavior, especially substrates localized and isolated from the “flow” of cognitive process, conceals the intrinsic nature of the phenomena to be explained. The postulate of a physical ground, a chemical mediator, a rule or a directive that operates on epigenetic process, leaves the process itself untouched. This process is the growth or morphogenesis of organic form, and its replication in the derivation of an act of cognition (microgenesis).

207

Fig. 7.1.

Factors assumed to cause behavior in reductive explanatory models

Explanatory reduction Levels of explanation, though hierarchically ranked, are coordinate, but if a system of levels is to be more than a mere organizing principle it requires an explication of the transformation – the collapse or emergence – of one level into the next. The explication is required not only for the transition from the physical to the psychic, but across physical and psychic levels or components. In the transition from intra-cellular elements to cells, to tissues and organs, a systems account (Bertalanffy, 1968) does not give the relation of one level to another apart from the incorporation of the “lower” in the “higher.” The knowledge of the structure and properties of a molecule of H2O does not convey the property of liquidity. Quantum theory does not predict DNA, nor the reverse. Neuron theory or cellsynapse models do not predict the field effects of neuronal networks or populations. Even within a purely biological series, the systems approach entails a discontinuity across levels. This difficulty is never so pronounced as in the transition from a non-cognitive to a cognitive series. In fact, the approach offers a correlation of levels, not a translation, reduction or emergence of one level to another, nor an identity across levels, nor an account of the progression over the (physical or mental) hierarchy. This difficulty is endemic in theory of mind. In normal cognition, the finding that cells respond to visual lines, angles, faces, bananas, suggests

208 that the cells are responsible for the recognition of the stimuli. Yet the data indicate, minimally, that the cells are merely activated. What role they play is undecided. An object is recognized by a person, not a cell. In this respect, one can ask if the cells operate uniquely or as part of a network for the identification of the stimulus that excites them. The currently fashionable technique isolates the cell, as well as the behavior, from its spatio-temporal context. To conclude that cells are specific to stimuli requires the examination of a multitude of stimuli of various sorts and in different modalities. Neurons in visual cortex can be activated by auditory and vestibular stimuli. The fact that neurons respond to stimuli with a visual or semantic similarity to the target stimulus suggests that the specificity is an artifact of the experimental design. The leap from cell excitation to behavior is much too facile. We see this in the importance given to cells in the temporal lobe that are claimed to respond selectively to faces and are inferred to mediate face recognition. When the cells are damaged, their loss is argued to result in prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces. However, this condition involves not just faces, but other objects in a similar class of over-learned objects of which faces are an instance. For example, farmers with prosopagnosia no longer recognize their cows, collectors do not recognize stamps, birds, etc. I reported a pilot with prosopagnosia who could describe from memory, but not visually recognize, pictures of different planes. What is lost is not face recognition, but the elicitation of a familiar item from a class of similar items, especially in a class that is highly familiar. There are other observations that question the functional specificity of cell response, and whether the cells may be sacrificed with impunity. Penfield described regions in the temporal lobe which, when stimulated, elicited repeatable memories, but the memories survived after those areas were surgically ablated. It has been argued that the recurrence of a specific memory on stimulation of the temporal lobe occurs as part of a dream-like cognition. Specifically, the stimulation does not activate the memory but induces an altered state of consciousness within which the memory occurs (Horowitz and Adams, 1970). The preservation of a memory as a state-specific ingredient, rather than its loss as an isolated element, resembles the account of face recognition, in which the performance, or its difficulty, concerns the individuation of a content in a category, not a discrete object. In psychopathology, this problem is framed in the inability to go to the phenomenon from the substrate, or the reverse. If we discovered the gene or the neurochemistry responsible for schizophrenia, or found a cure,

209 would we then be able to explain hallucination, paranoia, delusion? The finding of abnormal fetal cells in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenics deficient in the production of a certain neurotransmitter tends to confirm that schizophrenia has biological correlates; it may even specify one of them. But this finding does not explain the symptoms that make the condition so perplexing. To say the prefrontal cortex is related to hallucination, or to moral logic, or to the sense of reality, just restates the very symptoms or behaviors that need to be explained. What is the neural or psychological basis of irrationality? Is it an absence or distortion of reason, or a stage transitional to it? Surely, it seems to be a distinct mode of thought. How do genetic or chemical arguments explicate magical thinking? What is hallucination and how does it relate to other forms of imagery and perception? What do we mean by illusion, reality? The problem of image and object bears on the relation of mind to world. Is the image continuous with the object? Are objects externalized images, or different kinds of things? If schizophrenia is related to abnormal frontal lobe chemistry, why are its symptoms ameliorated by prefrontal lobotomy (Stuss et al. 1981)? Why do bilateral frontal tumors often give no demonstrable impairment (Hebb and Penfield, 1940)? Why is psychosis intermittent while biological deficits persist? Why do acquired prefrontal lesions not give psychosis? And on and on. The facility with which the qualitative is eliminated in the rush to explanatory reduction is astonishing, in light of what is left unexplained. We might keep in mind Hartshorne’s remark that “our ignorance is not to be turned into negative knowledge of the things ignored.” The explanatory power of the reductive agenda is illusory. The account of material correlates of the psyche tends to lose what is essential in psychology. Once local elements thought to underlie a psychological function are elucidated, they cannot be inflated back to the psychology that was their starting point. The philosopher Antti Revonsuo (2001) has noted the shortcomings of the shift to a lower level of explanation. The method of analysis into components depends on proximate causality, not the ultimate causality of evolutionary explanation. Locality and decomposition are “sound bites” for the Science Times, not for a coherent psychology. Elements proliferate beyond their relatedness. Additional mechanisms are needed for reunification, even at the biological level, not to mention the attempt to reconstruct the functions they purport to explain. The assumptions of cognitive neuroscience, Revonsuo has written, may well “be a sign of a fatal flaw in the assumptions of the mechanistic research strategy

210 employed (and if so)… will sooner or later become permanently unproductive when applied to the study of the brain.” Arguments over nature and nurture are similarly vacuous. The inability to explain the correspondence of nature to psychological function, i.e. how the latter is orchestrated by physiology, is matched by an ignorance of the neuropsychological correlates of learning, i.e. how nurture becomes ingredient in brain function. The thesis that all behavior, art and culture are reducible to brain function must, in some sense, be correct. Even Franz Gall, in 1825, announced, “Dieu et cerveau, rien que Dieu et cerveau”. But this platitude, like the “astonishing” hypothesis of Francis Crick, that mind is identical to brain process, deflects the basic question as to how biology explains any subjective experience, having a thought, saying a word, seeing an object. After many years of research on the relation of brain to language, thought, perception, feeling, we still cannot say with any certainty – though I have advanced some ideas on the topic – what actually happens when we say the word “chair” How, in what form, “where” in the brain, is that word available, evoked, articulated? Adaptation These observations help us to re-think the role of adaptation as “best fit” or utility in the evolution of conduct. The indoctrination that parses the psychological needs of the individual to those of community might be compared to the sculpting of biological form by the environmental niche. Conduct is as tightly and reciprocally conditioned by the cultural landscape as morphology is by the physical one. The difficulty for adaptation theory is that an accommodation for the benefit of the community does not distinguish moral from non-moral behavior. A person who acts solely in accordance with custom does not act according to what is good or bad, or right or wrong, or what he thinks is preferable, but rather, what the community prescribes. The rigid fit of behavior to the environment seems to progressively loosen in the “ascent” from animal to primitive to developed societies, but nature continues to pre-empt culture in the immediacy of sensory contact, in perception, psychic continuity or social adaptation. Cicero wrote that virtue is nature developed to the highest degree. The affirmation of positive valuations is built on intrinsic value, but while the positive tendencies, e.g. sharing, parenting, may outweigh the negative ones, e.g. egoism, aggression, there is no continuity with a naturalism of

211 virtue. Some tendencies in social animals prefigure a development from early societies to those more “advanced.” The problem with an adaptation theory of moral concepts, if it is too simplistic, is that it can justify the murder of a tribe that infringes on the food supply as easily as sharing what food is available. One can pick and choose examples from animal behavior to illustrate selfish and unselfish trends. In some respects, adaptation is the polar opposite of morality, which requires an act that is often not adaptive, such as endangering oneself for another person’s health or safety, or protesting a custom that may be cruel or unjust. Whereas the insect or animal, in its adaptation to community, is in tacit agreement with its customs, to resist the dictat of society, as Camus wrote, is what makes us human. The relation of the good to fitness was inherent in Greek ethics. The Platonic ideas were originally values, i.e. forms of the good, with the good defined as fitness to fulfill a natural function. Eventually, the idea of the good was distinguished from value in order for the idea to be causal. Charles Taylor asked whether good or bad, right or wrong, are grounded in nature or in convention. He argued that good and bad arise in relation to pleasure and displeasure, which are natural to man, whereas right and wrong arise in the rules of social exchange. The distinction of the good and the right owes to the good as pleasure or happiness, not as virtue, for virtue leads to right action. This distinction seems to hinge on the idea of good and bad as attributes of character, with right and wrong pertaining to instances of conduct that arise from character. On this view, good and bad are descriptions of character, whereas right and wrong are descriptions of instances of action, from which an assessment of character can be inferred. Dewey wrote of character and conduct that “we are dealing not with two different things but with two poles of the same thing,” one closer to the subjective core of the personality, the other to its objective surface. A naturalist theory of moral evolution is at odds with the concept of the good as an ultimate category toward which conduct should aim. Moral conduct is a path of growth, not a destination. The imperative, “X is good,” is a positive accommodation to a situation, but natural law cannot decide the character of this X. There is a general consensus on what acts or attributes are good, but not on how they are grounded. From the evolutionary perspective a moral act seems outside the natural order, by its very nature unexpected, even unnatural, especially when compared to the ethic of “tooth and claw” (see Farber, 1994). In this respect, I agree with the critics of an evolutionary theory of moral development. On the other

212 hand, the appeal of such a theory is its promise of a biological framework that unites the evolution of mind with a subjective theory of value. The “missing link” in the transition from adaptation to moral conduct, or from evolution to cognition, can be found in a psychology of intrapsychic process. Social behavior in animals that share their food and protect those too young or old or weak to fight or reproduce, in gorillas and chimps, especially bonomos, may arise as conflict resolutions that become the nuclei of primitive valuations, e.g., high levels of tolerance, sensitivity to other’s needs, reciprocity (Flack and De Waal, 2000; Boehm, 2000). The evolution and increasing complexity of the brain accentuate the intrapsychic pole of this conflict, shifting the resolution inward and creating the conditions, e.g. dialectic, choice, for actions that eventually involve moral concepts. Conflict in evolution is sensed at the boundaries of the organism with its environment, while conflict in human cognition is largely interior. The difference is that 1) the process of self-realization is a momentary becoming, 2) the process of maturation is an individual history, while 3) the process of evolution is a population dynamic in which the subjective states of the individual are subsidiary to the prosperity of the group. The inward turn from the population to the individual is a shift from a transgenerational perspective to that of a life span, increasing the focus on antecedents of action and the subjectivity of conflict. The morphogenetic mechanisms that mediate brain maturation are also the basis of learning or, rather, learning employs these processes in determining novel biases. Culture, learning and experience do not insert content in the brain but accentuate growth trends (Brown, 1994). Psychic adaptation occurs as post-natal brain process refines growth patterns in fetal development, e.g. sculpting. The pruning of cells, then synapses, in early fetal life, continues after birth with a sustained attrition of connections. This process, facilitated by learning, is the means by which specificity is achieved in the connectivity, and thus the configural patterns that the connectivity generates. Along with the elimination of connections there is an inhibition of connections that have already been established. This furthers specification by physiological suppression of alternative pathways or routes of actualization. The specificity achieved by the trimming of anatomic form passes to a specificity achieved by the inhibition of physiological function, which is a model or template for the specification of actualities through whole-to-part shifts in the microgenetic phase-transition.

213 In sum, the implications of this account for an adaptive theory of moral development are as follows: In a population-centered macro-evolution of recurrent life-cycles, goodness is irrelevant; the sole propelling force is insistent speciation. In a subject-centered micro-evolution of self and world, goodness depends on character and values. The inter-personal dynamic of evolutionary process is transposed to an intra-psychic dynamic of actualization. The difference is that of group individuation and survival in the pre-history of the organism as opposed to thought and action in the temporal window of the present. The conflict between organism and world that is endlessly repeated over innumerable life cycles internalizes in the pattern of early growth, then, in cognition, in the individuation of form by environmental pressures (constraints) at successive phases. The specification of an unconscious potential to a final actuality is a micro-adaptation that successively narrows down an implicit range of options. Evolutionary theory and conduct-based ethics interpret actions (conduct) as contacts with the environment (society). This interface is the axis of moral concern. From the microgenetic perspective, a self/other contrast is resolved at each point in the phase-transition. The contrast of inner and outer, self and other, is a dialogue of competing possibilities at sequential phases in a journey from belief to fact. The actual occurrence of a word or an act is the final adaptation, but adaptation takes place at each phase in the actualization. What one says or does in a given circumstance from an objective or third person perspective is a reconciliation of conduct with obligation or propriety, while from a subjective standpoint, i.e. the process behind the conduct, it is a compromise at many points in endogenous process. After many such acts of many individuals over many generations, categories of conduct precipitate like species in evolutionary change. Conduct is the externalization of this dialogue. Collectively, it is the tradition of the community, individually, it is an accommodation to custom. The organism’s evolutionary history translates to patterns that deposit its social history, as human memory and language (memes) replace instinct and genes as the vehicles that transmit the past into the present. An anthropology of ethics can be found in the transformations of parental love and care for infants to love for others, and the reciprocation of that love by children as they mature. Russell, among others, wrote of the natural love of parents for their children. We see concentrated in the parent-child bond the biological roots of moral conduct, which generalizes to acts of loyalty and cohesion. Adaptation limits individuality for the sake

214 of this cohesion. Unrestrained individualism is anarchy, forced accommodation is subjugation. The reconciliation of social pressure with individual freedom is a “work in progress,” not a settled fact. The surge to novelty, the adaptive nature of action, the positive dispositions that guide its formation, are a search for creative solutions to the changing world of each new perception. Dickinson wrote that in the process of seeking we affirm what we find to be good, but since the good must exist in some sense before we seek it, perhaps “it is the law of our seeking, the creative and urging principle of the world, striving through us to realize itself, and recognized by us in that effort and strain.” This “law of our seeking” is the striving to actuality. In ethics, it is the value that flows into a particular to enliven a portion of the temporal extent of the whole. Shelley wrote, “The One remains, the Many change and pass.” The pattern by which the wholeness of the one individuates to a multiplicity of parts is the arising of particulars out of the totality of nature. This oneness dissipates in the surge to individuation, and is regained in the next cycle of activation. Adaptation is the mediating process in the transition from wholes to parts, as from the totality of the inner self to the multiplicity of nature. William James (1962 ed.) wrote that “the only possible philosophy must be a compromise between an abstract monotony and a concrete heterogeneity.” He argued that classifications or categories were the first stage in the mediation of unity and diversity, but all objects are categories, the process of adaptation transporting categorical wholes to categorical parts. All entities, from the simple to the complex, individuate a universe of timeless possibility into durations of inner and outer dependencies. The more complex the whole, the more distributed its value. We are, with all entities, contrasts with the other, individuality and adaptation, nature and community. The merit, as Dickinson implied, is in the striving. The extremes of self and other, isolation and immersion, come together in acts of creation when the unconscious is sampled for a piece of novel individuality. Nature and the objective good Does adaptation introduce an element of objectivity or impersonality into subjectivist doctrine? How does the need to adapt to the external world take subjective content into that world and objectify it? It would seem that whatever content does objectify, feeling trails behind. The idea of an intrapsychic arrest of feeling as the act objectifies leads to the view that

215 subjectivism is equivalent to emotivism, in which desires are the determinants of actions and their justifications. The reduction of subjectivity to emotivism is an attempt to detach concepts from feelings, leaving the latter in the pre-conscious segment of the mind, while concepts are displaced to a public space of dialogue outside an individual consciousness. There is a tendency to think of desire as an energic impulse when, in fact, it is the affective tonality of concepts. Concepts are not affect-free assemblages of words but categories of ideas and feelings. Every concept has a feeling, minimally in its incentive, conviction and value, while the concept establishes what the object of the desire will be. The universality of feeling, and of desire and value in particular, make it possible to communicate with each other, even in the absence of a common language. The generality does not imply an exchange of concepts that is independent of the individuals in whom they arise. Concepts are fluid and changing, spontaneous in relation to the situation, culture and the means to which they are put. Concepts and propositions are subjective constructs. Reason is a set of coherent propositions derived from pre-logical and metaphoric structures. The “objectivity” of a concept is not in its correspondence to fact, which is a mapping from core to shell, but in its adaptation or utility, as in the coherence of personal knowledge with the exigencies of nature and social life. The fit or coherence of individual and community is, from an objective standpoint, an extra-personal version of the coherence (authenticity) of concepts with the contextual structure of the human mind. Neither coherence nor adaptation alone is sufficient. One can begin with an assumption and develop a whole system of thought that is coherent yet false. Both coherence (authenticity) and conformance (adaptation) are necessary. Bradley (1927) combined obligations with authenticity when he wrote that to live morally is to live within one's station, e.g. as a son, citizen etc., but also for self-realization, toward greater perfection. The impersonal values of “station” are resolved with the personal ones of selfrealization. Verbal concepts or propositions are, intuitively, more obvious products of the mind than perceptions, which for most people appear to be mind-independent. But how can the objectivity of concepts or propositions be decided if the objectivity of perceptions is in doubt? The objectivity of propositions and perceptions has to be inferred in some sense from their adaptive success, which is ascertained in the complementarity of the conceptual structure of the mind in respect to physical and mental objects.

216 A concept objectifies as an adaptive outcome. It is a kind of Rorschach of the world, a negative image of the reality into which it actualizes. The objectivity of the concept is its conformance to physical nature. This may not be the objectivity we crave, but it is the best we’ve got. The concepts that give rise to propositions and the categories from which they develop are intuited from their surface content, not reconstructed from their constituents. Correspondence theory assumes that units of belief correspond to elements of propositions. The truth in the proposition corresponds to an objective fact independent of the subject’s beliefs. Conversely, a statement such as “John is good” may not correspond to a set of objective facts, but does cohere with the belief system of the speaker. According to process theory, belief, concept and fact are successive phases. The belief is the context behind the proposition, which actualizes a portion of the context from which it is derived. Facts are perceptual actualities, propositions are linguistic ones. A proposition is a linguistic object. The correspondence of a proposition to a fact or object is, more precisely, the coherence of linguistic and perceptual objects in the mind of an observer. Imagine a situation where the speaker says, correctly, “The ball is green,” yet he perceives a red ball or a green plate, or he correctly perceives the green ball and says, “The plate is green,” or “The ball is red.” We would say that the proposition does or does not correspond to the facts, but could we not also say that there is or is not a coherence between proposition and perception? The coherence is across actualities in the linguistic and perceptual streams of an act of cognition, i.e. parallel outflows of a common belief system. If the contextual background of a linguistic or perceptual act is engaged in the interpretation of the act, the process through which the act is realized will be a vital part of the act itself. A conscious proposition or fact is not severed from its unconscious antecedents, for these include the presuppositions generating the implicit and explicit beliefs that guide the contents into consciousness. Russell wrote that psychological accounts confuse the act of discovery with the proposition discovered, but the alternative is a psychology that, in its search for truth, ignores the context on which truth depends. The content of an incomplete objectification is not adapted to the world. Percepts that do not objectify are closer to hallucinations, wishes or memories. The analysis of dream is based on this principle. An action that does not fully objectify is closer to an intention. Desires, goals, options, are prominent. The sense of self is more pronounced in agency and

217 decision. These pre-objects are emphatic in a partial objectification. This also occurs for the concepts that precede them, which actualize as categories. The category of good acts, like that of patriotism or freedom, is an example of a subjective category that objectifies as an external standard. Because the category is time-independent, it is interpreted as an eternal object. The category of the good is not the sum of all good acts, nor a recipe for choosing one act over another. Rather, it is a mean or average of its examples. Its features include temperance, fairness, prudence, etc. The indefiniteness of its content is a sign of its incompleteness. We know what the good represents but, like the concept of beauty or time, we are unable to define it. Take a mundane example, such as a route that has been traveled many times. Here, separate occasions of experience are forgotten (averaged) in the overall concept of the route (beauty, good). The occasions perish. The concept remains as a ghost of past concreteness. We perceive the good in ourselves and others, and from these perceptions generate a category distinct from its examples. In contrast, the ought has a more active sense than the good. That a thing is good is a perceptual judgment, while the ought is a call to action. If one is uncertain as to whether one ought to do this or that, the action has not objectified and a state of indecision reigns. When the ought is clear and felt as an obligation, choice is constrained and the action assumes an aim. Action according to an ought adapts to the environment. An act in defiance of the ought still objectifies but is not adaptive, or it is an adaptation to another ought that is perceived as better than that which was obligated.

Chapter 8.

Actualization and Causality

I writhe in doubt over every line. I ask myself is it right? - is it true? - do I feel it so? - do I express all my feeling? And I ask it at every sentence - I perspire in incertitude over every word. Joseph Conrad

Introduction Cognitivism is but one expression of a mode of thought that over the latter half of this past century has had a profound impact on contemporary life (Brown, 2001). The assumption of timeless, repeatable or self-identical objects – exemplified by the concept of “representations” – has had a powerful influence on the way we think about the significance of intrinsic relationality and the subjectivity of mental states. What is the nature of a thing that makes it what it is, or what is the quality of difference that is decisive for the individuation of things that are ostensibly identical? We see this influence in the tension in Western culture between a relative homogeneity of thought and a striking diversity of lifestyle, as if tattoos and nose-rings could authenticate an individuality that has been threatened with absorption and loss. We see it in the triumph of immediate pleasure over sustained engagement, or in the cult of celebrities who blend into a din of uniformity, with exaggerated importance given to the superficial marks of distinctiveness. We see it, too, in aesthetics, in the debate as to what counts as an artwork, or the boundaries that divide Real Art from popular or commercial art, or found art. The emphasis on the formal properties of an artwork sacrifices the latent (if any) content of the work to the drama of a momentary impression. Or, the artwork is a melange of elements that does not exist aesthetically unless it is vetted and disambiguated by experts. The puzzled observer may be asked to contribute more to the interpretation of the work than the artist, who may profess to not having any idea as to what the work is about, its meaning or reference, and claim that it is an expression of feeling, even if he is oblivious to what feeling is being

220 expressed. In such instances, even the “feeling” of the artwork has an external or objective character. The problem of identity also appears in the distinction between a copy and an original, or in the comparison of autographic and allographic art. rIn an age of cloning, when human embryos can be implanted in the uterus of a cow and grandmothers can deliver the babies of their sons and daughters, we wonder what, after all, is a mother. Just as there is a rethinking of what it means to be an artwork, we ask, what does it mean to be a person. The question spills into the debates on human rights, and the rights of animals, fetuses, the aged and the ill. What does it mean to be human? Where does humanity begin, where does it end? The nature of identity bedevils neuroscience and philosophy of mind. The so-called “identity theory” reduces mind to brain by finessing the mind, discarding what is essential to personality. We have disputes over zombies and humans, computers and brains, silicon chips and carbon molecules, which for many are debates over whether consciousness and qualia are to be given privileged status in the description of mental states. These examples of uncertainty as to what a thing is, apart from its appearance and external relations, arise from the fact that objects have been drained of their intrinsic quality, their history and context. A person, an artwork, is stripped of temporality in order to isolate it as a scientific object, that is, as an objective fact. Diverse entities are conflated on the basis of similar content or output. For example, two minds having the same momentary propositional content are said to be in identical states. Or, equally incomprehensible to me, it is claimed that different mental states can accompany the same physical state (Burge, 1993). The result is an indifference to what is unique or telling about the mind/brain state: namely, the potential behind the semblance of surface form and its transition to actuality. In the field of value, this translates to the centrality of character in relation to its expression in conduct. This lost background, the real existence and the historical individuality of the object, tends to be lost in the enchantment with the external relations of an artificially isolated object, its causal role and evanescent contacts. At the same time that analytic and computational philosophy and molecular biology have led to the conceptualization of man as a repertoire of mental contents and outward behaviors, deconstructionism has had the reverse effect, diluting the autonomy of objects by nesting them in context. Objects are, finally, replaced, or defined not by their intrinsic quality, but by their contextual surround. The object itself is not conceived as relational, but rather as something embedded in a matrix of relations, still a

221 substantive dependent on the relations around it, a point of view, an opinion. The result is that an object or a person is either a causal implementation of a set of natural or formal rules, or a virtual construction of a manifold of perspectives. On the one hand, individuals are products that can be replicated like carburetors with no value other than their utility; on the other, the individual is what others take him to be, the sum of his acts and the impressions they provoke. The upshot is that the importance and the reality of the internal relations of an object are ignored, eliminated or displaced, thus annihilating the very process that is, ultimately, the existence and reality of the object. For science, the real is what can be measured. For contextualism, the real is perspectival. We are even getting used to the idea that belief in the real is naïve and outmoded, or that there are equivalent levels or perspectives, each of which is objectively real. Causal theory saps purpose from behavior and displaces signification from individuals to actions in the world. Perspectival theory turns the self into an image for others. We are left with a nexus of causal relations or a phantom that eludes description. And we ask, still, what is an individual? All of these trends impact on the concept of the self and the nature of value and moral responsibility. The disinterest in the interior or temporal dynamic of objects and mental states has as its main symptom the loss of self. The search for the true self is, as it was for romantic idealism beginning with Fichte, the anxiety of our times. The frantic nature of this search is a reflection of the depth of the loss, which is also a loss of personal meaning in everyday life, a death of subjectivity, and an impoverished concept of man, one that is reinforced by a science that elevates objectivity to a kind of religious faith. For its adherents we are the products of mental software or the encodings of a fixed genome. An algorithm translates a program or genetic script to a behavioral phenotype. Individuality is the collection of entities in a functional system or network. Operations on representations in this system are conceived as actions on solid entities in the mind. The entire system is supported by a metaphysic of objects (or selves) as aggregates, with a regress to atomic units that, in the case of minds, are viewed as conceptual primitives assembled by rules into complex structures. Hartshorne (1987) noted the contrast of a Western metaphysic of atomic entities and the individualism of selves that are identical over their existence with a Buddhist metaphysic of incessant change. The result is that entities, including minds and mental objects, are little more than links in a causal chain, the effects of prior causes or the

222 causes of future effects. What they are in and for themselves is left unanswered. The byproduct of this “progress” is a crisis of the spirit that I see as a longing for a sense of the quality and uniqueness of each individual human mind. This uniqueness is the inner soul-life of the individual, intrinsic feeling, value and satisfaction, not only for the self but for others, and for all the objects of nature. Objectivity is a disease of excessive rationality. The cure would be a psychology, not of surface contacts, but of subjectivity and interioricity, not only for the human mind, but for noncognitive entities as well. I am not advocating a return to animism, rather, a process monism that aligns the patterns elaborating the human mind with those underlying the objects of nature [Brown, 1996]. Process monism is an antidote to the uncoupling of mind and brain, and the pluralities of current psychology. It is also a way of thinking that redirects speculation on physical and psychic causation to potentiality and actuality, a shift from causes to constraints, from outcomes to histories, from prediction to retrospection, from publicity to privacy, and from fact to feeling. This fundamental shift in thinking is essential for a theory of intrinsic value, and the redemption of authenticity as the signal mark of character. Causality and actualization Causation is a theory that governs object interaction. Cognitive psychology seeks to be scientific, and thus postulates interaction among logical solids in the mind, or in the brain. The concept of mental representations as stable entities acted on by processes is central to this postulate. It motivates the demarcations of mental objects and the methodology that reinforces these demarcations. Cognitivists look for the relations between representations and assume that lesions are interruptions between representations, the so-called dissociability hypothesis, or the encapsulation of modular theory. Since the interactions between representations are studied independent of their physical substrates, the theory assumes psychic causation (on or between representations), with physical causation dragged in secondarily. The assumption in cognitive psychology of psychic causation from one mental object to another, e.g. the inputs and outputs of components in flow diagrams, supposes physical causation. Philosophers tend to have more confidence in the causal efficacy of neural properties than in the efficacy of intentional or other psychic properties, but if the mental is eliminated, identified with or reduced to the

223 physical, as is generally assumed, psychic causation is non-problematic; it is identical with physical causation. If, on the other hand, the mental is caused by the physical or is distinct from the physical, it tends to be treated as an epiphenomenal dangler. Dewey wrote that the source of the duality of mind and body was the shift to explanations based on causality from those of potential and actuality. In process theory, the mind/brain state is a single complex object. Representations or symptoms are the fleeting actualities of process, not mental things that interact. Mental contents are finalities that “contain” their momentary histories, not causal objects that project on future effects. The continuum from potential to actual within a single mind/brain state is the direction of its internal relatedness. Change involves relations constituting the object, not its interaction with other objects. The c and e of causal theory are not demarcated in relational theory. Further, a causal transaction occurs over time – the time to go from c to e – while an actualization creates a whole unit of the object’s temporal existence. There is no chain of cause and effect, but a continuous wave-like transition. Mental events or contents in the mental state deposit and are replaced, they do not cause other events to occur. Objects are reinstated by change, in a transition from potential to actual that recurs. Whitehead’s metaphysic is constructed on this basis. The replaced state is the ground (?cause) over which the replacing state is deposited (?effect). Each state unfolds over the immediately preceding one. Is the replacement causal if the constraints of the just-prior state delimit the immediately ensuing one? Are constraints causes? Hume was uncertain. Does a chair or a particle cause itself to recur each moment? The causal persistence of objects has been largely ignored, since objects are considered to be self-identical over time. Russell [1948] noted this fact, and made a distinction between causal persistence and causal interaction. He wrote, “Owing to the fact that the persistence of things is taken for granted and regarded as involving identity of substance, this form of causation has not been recognized as what it is.” In the relational change of process theory, all change is a kind of “object persistence,” i.e. the outcome of constraints on the iterated specification of novel form. In contrast, the mental objects of cognitive psychology change by way of an interaction that conforms to the model of ordinary “billiardball” causation. A transition from potential to actual traverses subjective phases in the process leading to a perceptual object and its infrastructure in the personality. The variety of methods that have been used to probe this

224 hidden undersurface demonstrate that the experiential content of a perceptual object is, in the ordinary sense, pre-perceptual. That is, the feeling, meaning and recognition of an object are not attached to things out there in the world after they are perceived, in a second-pass process that follows perception, but are phases ingredient in the same process through which the perception occurs. To most psychologists, this statement would appear so radical and wrong-headed as to be hardly worth refuting. Moreover, the approach undermines the realism, consensual validation and objectivity of a descriptive science of the mind. It is much simpler to interpret the “psychic contribution” to object perception as an addition to physical nature. Yet the traditional model of objects as assemblies of sensory bits linked to feeling and meaning, associated to memories for recognition and interpretation and then projected back into the world where we see them, though at first blush appealing to common sense, is so implausible that one is mystified by its universal acceptance. What is more astonishing is the prevailing indifference to anatomical and psychological evidence that runs counter to what has been standard theory for over a century. This evidence not only includes percept-genetic and subliminal perception research [Smith, 2001], but cytoarchitectonic findings, blindsight, masking, priming, some studies on commissurotomy cases, gestalt psychology and clinical work on microgenesis. That these studies have had a limited impact on theory and experimentation in psychology reflects the latter’s intolerance of alternative modes of explanation and the hegemonic influence of mass presuppositions in the search for scientific truth. Potential and actual These studies indicate a transition in the process of perception from a phase of potential to a final actuality. What more precisely is meant by these terms? Actualities are the concrete particulars that populate consciousness and the perceptual field. Everything we are aware of is already a particular, even those concepts that are vague and still-forming in our consciousness. A mood, a feeling, an inclination, are perhaps not yet particulars, but once the content is settled, even if it is unresolved, its actualization is complete. With full consciousness of, say, a disposition, the vagueness of the content points to an incompletely realized object. The potential behind this object has not fully individuated, but the fact that one is conscious of the object indicates that other domains of cognition,

225 linguistic or perceptual, have fully specified as conveyers of that conscious state. A disparity between a fully articulated perception that generates an object world and an incompletely specified mental content is necessary for one to have awareness of the unspecified content. If that content represents or is coherent with the terminus of the entire state, there is an indefinite content but not consciousness of the indefiniteness, as in sleep, dream, psychosis and other altered states. An actuality is but one of many possible realizations of an antecedent potential. The actuality is also but one among innumerable other actualities that articulate the same perception. Even though it actualizes an object space, a potential can give rise to other worlds that never actualize or are never conceived, for lack of “imagination” or an absence of external constraints. Yet a potentiality does not have the potential to become anything one can conceive of, even if every conception is itself an actuality, for all possible actualities are not latent in every potential. The human mind does not have the potential to become the mind of a dog, and a given human mind can only become what character and personality permit. From the earliest stages of life, endowment and experience limit opportunity. I may think of killing someone or composing a quartet, but having those conceptions is not enough to realize the state they refer to. Whether or not there is a potential murderer lurking inside me, there is certainly no Beethoven. A potential is the immediate past of a particular that, once actualized, becomes a past actuality. I do not believe that a prior actuality constitutes a portion of the potential for an ensuing actualization, though the prior actualization – the entire process from potential to actual – serves as a ground or constraint for the next one. Actualities perish forever; they do not reappear hidden in another potential. Put differently, the actuality perishes and is not absorbed as, say, an eternal object, for the next round of actualization. The only past that matters causally is that of the just-prior state. This does not mean each state is restricted to the content of the justprior state plus novelty in its change. The potential in the just prior state can call up other categories for actualization, whether freely created or invented, say, through metaphoric extension, or categories of knowledge or memories of distant events that are evoked by their relation to deeper unconscious constructs in the state. Nor is the “deep structure” of a potential emptied in a multiplicity of actualities, even if the routes of renewed actualization become habitual. Actualities are what they are not by by virtue of having depleted their potential, nor are they unconscious

226 copies in miniature. They arise through the shaping effects of constraints on their own actualization. The constraints are provided by intrinsic patterns of derivation, i.e. sculpting effects on endogenous process, along with the effects on this process of sensory information coming from a world in constant change. The point is, actualities are not resultants or ingredients, but segments that objectify a continuum of becoming, which extends from a core of potential to the objects of reality. We describe actualities at the expense of their becoming, even as they perish in our description, and we describe potential as what is left over after what can be specified is exhausted, but potential, because it is devoid of content, is more difficult to grasp. Potential cannot be described in terms of the definiteness that is its aim, nor the indefiniteness that is its warrant, yet because there are limits on what issues from a potential, it is neither homogeneous nor undifferentiated. What is potential Consider the problem of potentiality from the standpoint of the arousal of a word or object in the mind. There is great difficulty in describing the meaning of a word prior to the attainment of a phonological shape, or in describing an object-concept prior to its individuation as an image in the mind or an object in the world. A word is specified out of a background field. What is the nature of the meaning of a word, say “chair”, before the word is conscious, that is, before the phonological structure of the word is available to specify its antecedent meaning? What is the nature of an object concept before it objectifies in a perception? Theories based on computer analogies hold that copies of the object or word are stored in memory and retrieved to consciousness. Such theories assume that the word is a compound of elements, and itself is an element in a network of related words and objects, all copies of whatever surfaces into awareness. The theory is easy to work with, because it treats the fundamental units of thought as atomic units that are identical in conscious and unconscious mentation. The shift from unconscious to conscious thought involves a reassembly or a reconstitution of self-identical elements. These elements survive as individuals, or they are combined into representations. In psychoanalytic theory, perceptual traces are presumed to be identical to memory images. An unconscious idea or “drive-representation” is not altered in its journey to consciousness. The difference between conscious

227 and unconscious cognition owes to drive-based mechanisms such as displacement, sublimation or repression. In my opinion, the final word or object is deposited through a qualitative transformation from depth to surface. In this transform, the anticipatory lexical- or object-concept is not identical to the final word or object. The pre-object fails to achieve the same degree of referential or denotational specificity. It arises out of syncretic, magical and metaphorical thought, and develops toward referential adequacy. We can infer the occurrence of preliminary or “pre-processing” phases of magical thinking from a variety of sources. However, if we examine the lexical or perceptual meaning that comes up just prior to the realization of the word or object “chair”, we find that this meaning includes other possible derivations, say other pieces of furniture, or experientially-related objects that are called up in the act of perceiving. The preliminary meaning casts a wider semantic or conceptual net. How, then, is the meaning of a preobject to be characterized? What language can be used to describe this meaning other than by way of its phonological or perceptual features, even if, at the phase of the pre-lexical or pre-object concept, these features are not yet available? We know that antecedent configurations occur because they deposit prematurely as the symptoms of brain damage. Once the final object materializes – whatever it is, a symptom-fragment, a normal or pathological mental content or behavior – we are more or less conscious of its meaning. The objectification specifies this meaning. Without this specification, we have an object-category or an experiential field of meaning-relations without a final object. The anticipatory category or field, which in ordinary cognition is an earlier phase in the specification process, would then, even in its diffusion or overlap of categories, be the actuality that deposits. If the object category is close to the object, what is prior to the object category? What is prior to that? At least with the object or lexical category we have some idea of what the meaning is. The meaning is whatever is virtual or possible in that category once it has been delimited from still wider fields of antecedent meaning. The concept of potential refers to this fuzzy background out of which all particulars individuate. Phases in individuation can be identified by reconstructing the sequence and pattern of actualization from its pathological moments. These buried phases are not the deep representations on which operations are presumed to act. Rather, they are normally transformed to a subsequent phase. They are transitions, not

228 states, unless they deposit as the symptoms of pathology, at which moment they become actualities. There are no actual representations. Symptoms (“representations”) are not elements ingredient in the final object, but fleeting signposts that indicate the direction and the pattern of the phasetransition through which the final object has passed. What deposits are eddies in a stream, mental froth, brief existents that never again recur. If the actualization is a continuous wave, as I believe it to be, an infinitude of possible “representations”, i.e. symptoms, could actualize. The nature of those “representations” would depend on the moment in the becoming that incurs the major impact of the pathology, as well as the constraints that are applied to the process over the spectrum of its change, and especially at the precise moment of pathological disruption (Brown & Pachalska 2003). The background of any particular is not to be conceived as a field from which one element is selected. The field is prior to the element, and the element does not exist until it individuates or specifies the field. The relation of figure to field is not that of a portion to a larger ground. The figure individuates the field as it resolves. In the transition from potential to actual, the past is imported to the present and made real. A central feature of the process is the re-enactment of the past as it delivers objects into the present. Every object is grounded in the actual present, which it deposits, and the immediate past, which it inherits. If the transition from potential to actual were viewed as an outcome of operations on multiple representations, the outcome would be the final construction of its antecedents, deprived of pastness, conceptuality, feeling and belongingness. This immediate legacy of potential is what makes an object authentic. The path that leads from potential to actual is not a trail of abandoned stages. The entire trajectory is ingredient in the final object as the experiential memory and conceptual feeling out of which the object materializes. The process of fact-creation from felt-meaning is the source of value, in the artist or the individual, in an artwork or in conduct. This is an agenda for a legitimate psychology of the future, one that is sensitive to the complexity and the dynamic of evolutionary brain process, and can provide an account of the temporal structure of inner and outer objects, conceptual feeling, value and the iterated becoming of the human mind. The transition from potential to actual The object in perception, as well as the final action, utterance and idea, are endpoints of a phase-transition that “contains” all of the potential

229 “choices” and their resolutions en route to that endpoint. The persistence of preliminary phases in the final object owes to the temporal unity of the traversal. By this I mean that antecedent phases in an act of cognition are not historical events in relation to occurrent ones, but are imminent in the present content. This “presentness” of the immediate past in the final actuality gives the richness of experience, the meaning and feeling to passing events at each moment. The final object in a transition of phases does not just survive a sequence of alternative paths to become what it is: at each phase, a pre-object configuration moves closer to possibility. The transition from potential to actual is continuous. Every phase except the final one, and perhaps even that, has a potential for another transformation. In this process, drive-based conceptual primitives distribute into conceptual feelings – affects, object-concepts and meaning content – which then deliver the images, acts and words of conscious experience as the process actualizes into object form, motility and lexical morphology. Acts and percepts consist of this complex layering. Sensation limits the object-development to produce a conceptual model of the physical world. Actions lack the external constraints of sensation, and therefore depend inter alia on perceptual monitoring by recurrent collaterals and configural biases at each phase to drive the action forward. These biases determine the distribution of the action in the axial and distal musculature, whether conduct will be restrained or impulsive, emotive or rational, selfish or compassionate, pragmatic or reflective. Every perception, every thought and action incorporates the world of its occasion. The individual creates an object world for his enjoyment, as the outer world of sensation and the inner world of habit limit what actions and objects are to be enjoyed. It may seem odd to say that perception is creative, in view of its repetition and stability. After all, we perceive “what is out there.” A person might vividly imagine that he is living on Mars, but unless he is psychotic or hallucinating he perceives the Earth as it is. Yet imagination is the foundation out of which the perception of “reality” develops. Within every perception there is a buried system of dreamwork and magical and paralogical modes of thought. Character and value We perceive a world that seems indifferent to our perceptions. But the outer world of perception, like the inner world of imagination, is an endogenous, intrinsic creation. The individual creates the world he

230 perceives. Thus, every person has some responsibility for the world he creates, as for his actions in that world, I mean the psychic content of his objects, not their surface form, which is sculpted by sensation to model what is physically “out there” and shared among observers. A portion of this content deposits in the subject, a portion in the object, though subject and object are continuous in the mind/brain state. We feel this continuity, for example, as a thread of valuation linking the object to the mind. The perceptual world is infused with signification, categories, realness. There are no non-cognitive perceptual objects, as there are no value-free facts. Process theory attempts to describe the becoming of the world, which is the world of value. Cognitive neuroscience, as with all branches of science, concerns the world that has become, which is the world of fact. One can dismiss values as social conventions or attempt to reduce them to facts, or one can argue, as Dewey and others have, that facts are irreducible values, but the challenge to anyone who wishes to unify science and psychology is to bridge the gap between fact and value. Royce (1901) wrote that “our acknowledgement of facts is a conscious submission to an Ought”, in that facts are other than what is consciously presented to us, and they appear foreign to our will. This links facts as exteriorized values to values that have exteriorized as oughts. The exteriorized fact is an objectified value that has been verified by consensus, has detached and become independent of the self, and seems to force itself on the person. This is the same path that is followed by the ought. The valuation in the fact is less apparent than in the ought because the fact is less prescriptive, serving as a reason or justification for a decision, not a motivation. The fact is more fully conscious and external, the ought has one limb in the unconscious, one in the world. The objects of thought, like the thoughts they are, also think up the self as their subjective phase. In this process of thinking and perceiving, the self and its private space are antecedent to the mind’s creation of the world. Since the world sets limits on the actualization process, the self is as much a creation of the world, i.e. the constraints of sensation, as the latter is a creation of the self, i.e. a perceptual realization. To have a self is to have objects to perceive. From pathological cases we know that the world does not survive an erosion of the self, nor does the self survive a loss of its objects. The preliminary locus of the self, and the intermediate locus of ideas and images in the course of the actualization, implies that the character and personality of the subject are at stake in every thought, gesture and object. We all see the same objects, but we see them

231 differently; some we notice and care about, others we ignore or dislike. These are not the responses of the subject to a neutral object, but are subjective precursors in a transition from character to fact in the striving of the mind toward objectification. Every forming object conveys its subjective phase into the perception even as it exteriorizes a space that is independent of the viewer. This background of subjectivity – emphatic at antecedent phases, inapparent in the object – provides coherence and continuity to the mental life. The constructs out of which objects, thoughts and actions develop – conceptual primitives, along with “animal” beliefs and experiential memories – are what we mean by the core self, or character, which is the thematic in personality or the mean of its fluctuations. We cannot see a man’s character, but we judge it by his pattern of behavior. An examined life may determine which of the values that went into one’s character are least deserving of credit or blame, but the sum, the average or the limits of their expression, constitutes a kind of dispositional matrix of the self that reflects its value distribution. Core values are biases in the self that are the precursors of preobject-concepts and conscious valuations. Admittedly, it is far from clear how we are to describe an unconscious value in the self-concept other than as a configural bias arising in a generative set of neurons that specifies the “drive-representations” or presuppositions that will guide ensuing concepts and feelings. The actions that flow from the core self, as well as conscious valuations, are always in flux according to the conditions of life and the needs of the actor, but the values that drive those actions are constitutional and slow to change. Consider the dictator of Togo, who originally threw his enemies to the crocodiles, but later, in a concession to modernity, tossed them out of helicopters! Same character, common purpose, different actions. Character is the source of the conscious contents of our mind, but not their cause. The relation of character to action is that of potential to actual, not cause and effect. The action individuates through a qualitative sequence that is constrained by the elimination of maladaptive possibilities. Character does not cause or produce a behavior, no more than the root of a flower causes the petals, but it is ingredient as an anticipatory phase in a dynamic structure. An action is a sign of character, not its product, as a thought is not the output of a thinker but a kind of signature of his feelings and intelligence.

232 Creativity and responsibility When interpreted from the standpoint of potential and actual, which is the path of self-realization, the transition from character to conduct, from the core self to its acts and objects, can be seen to correspond with the transition from the creative unconscious to an artwork, and a life can be viewed as an aesthetic object. The generation of an artwork over many attempts is a concentrated sampling in the recurrence of behavior out of personality. In behavior, as in art, the fragmentary or piecemeal does not convey authenticity and power. When an act is partial or deficient, it barely taps the potential of what might have been a greater life or a greater work. This is the difference between an ordinary and a creative personality, or a mediocre and an inspired work of art. As in morality, the creative arises as a reconciliation of self and other, as the conventions of tradition are molded by what is distinctive in personality. Over the lifespan, there is, to a varying degree, a satisfaction of the wholeness that, ideally, should have energized every act. The self-measure of a strong character is its completeness of actualization, as ideas give rise to performance. This is a passage from depth to surface, not a comparison across multiple actualities, i.e. between two existing acts or objects, say, a comparison of two different opinions or works of art, which is a comparison between two dead fish on a plate. If behavior is the outcome of a one-way actualization from the unconscious, should the unconscious rather than the conscious self be the subject of praise and blame? Who or what agent is responsible for an action? How this question is resolved depends on a theory of (psychic) causation. Dewey wrote that “…the ordinary conception of causation as a trait belonging to some one thing is the idea of responsibility read backward.” For Dewey, the theory of object causation was reinserted in the mind as the idea of moral responsibility. A causal role is assigned to some entity – the self, reason, the imagination – and this entity is then deemed to be responsible for the ensuing effect. I have a thought and write it down; I want a sandwich, and go to the delicatessen; I imagine my sweetheart, and pick up the telephone. In such cases, the thought, the desire, the image – or the self that purportedly causes them – is presumed to cause the behavior that follows. This concept of causation presumes a number of psychic entities that interact, including the self and its mental or physical effects. The idea that some one thing is the cause of an occurrence is an extension to cognition of a theory of physical causation, and an application to the self of the idea of credit and blame.

233 The sense of agency for many of our thoughts, and the feeling that one deliberates as one thinks, or “manipulates” an idea or thought image, makes the self feel an instigator of its own acts and mental objects. However, in the production of an artwork, the artist is viewed more as creator than agent. We say, Beethoven composed the Eroica, not that he caused it to be composed. The progression is from possibility to fact, or potential to actual, rather than from cause to effect. Creative people often feel that they are passive vehicles to their art, which seems to pass through them to the world. Creativity is not an exceptional mode of thinking but a model for everyday thought. Gudmund Smith (2001) has demonstrated that creative thinking involves an emphasis, perhaps a prolongation or a neoteny, of preliminary phases in ordinary cognition. The sense of agency is less pronounced because the creative idea calls on meaning-laden or dream-like images that retain features of preliminary cognition. One could say, the feeling of passivity for a creative idea is a mark of its imaginative depth. The feeling that thoughts are unsolicited, especially those with creative force, recalls the passivity of the self to the content of a dream or hallucination. Again, the sense of agency is linked to the phase of actualization of the thought, which differs for waking and dreaming, or habitual and creative thinking. The strength of the feeling of agency is a symptom of the depth of the thought, not a result of the effort applied by the subject to the thought-content, and should not be taken as psychological evidence for agent-causation. The sense of agency for thoughts and actions differs from the feeling of passivity to perceptual objects, including many forms of mental imagery. Some perceptual images have a volitional quality, such as imagination and eidetic images. The incidental quality of agentive and passive feeling, i.e. the observation that the feeling of agency which accompanies the thought points to the dominant phase in its development, is demonstrated by instances in which the subject is uncertain as to whether he is an agent or recipient of his own thought content, e.g. in trance, psychosis and other states of “altered consciousness.” In process theory, acts and agents are realized and revived. The antecedent does not cause the consequent, but is transformed into it in a qualitative series of whole-part shifts. The seed becomes the flower, it does not cause it. The child does not cause an adult but becomes one. An early segment of process becomes a later segment, not by intrinsic causal links, but through the gradual change in replications and the constraints on

234 emergent form. The feeling of “agent causation” that underwrites responsibility is a powerful but necessary deception, explicable in terms of the microstructure of the mind/brain state. The feeling of agency probably develops when a child reaches for something. My son, Ilya, at five months old, mimicked his mother as he rotated his arms and hands during a French nursery song. In the evening, alone in bed, he would look intently at each arm and hand as he separately rotated them; then, he did the same with his feet, which were not part of learning the song. I mentioned this observation to Jerry Bruner one evening at our home and asked, had I witnessed the birth of a volition? Jerry was skeptical. Perhaps he was not conversant with, or sympathetic to, the works of Guyau, who said that the reach of a child for an object is the nucleus of the idea of the future, and of causation. I think the sense of agency is more closely related to causal persistence and replacement than object causation. The experience of object causation is not internalized as psychic causation but, rather, the process is the reverse. The feeling that the self is the present cause of bodily and other effects in the immediate future arises in the continuity over replications of successive mind/brain states. This feeling of psychic causation is then referred outward as a theory of object causation. As in the example above, the feeling of the child that he can move his limbs “at will”, or touch or seize an external object or compute the position and grasp an object in motion is the basis on which object causation and serial time develop out of the acausality and timelessness of magical thinking. Conflict A variety of approaches have documented the conflictual bases of ordinary cognition. Conflict is inevitable since every entity is a contrast. The critical importance of conflict is probably the major contribution to psychology of psychoanalytic theory, but the description of conflict in terms of cathexis misses the point that conflict is not a matter of energy flow, or the interaction of ideas and feelings; rather, in the form of contrast, dialectic or individuation, it is a pervasive and intrinsic feature at all phases in the cognitive process, whether in the evolutionary struggle of pre-human organisms or in the specification of phonological features and object form in language and perception. In ordinary discourse, conflict is most prominent as guilt, stress or uncertainty when a path taken or denied is inauthentic and the self is divided. One way of interpreting such conflict is that other-centered values,

235 which lack a proper share in the self, are rejected in favor of self-interest, with conflict arising from that unrealized sector of the self representing the rejected other. Or, other-centered values may predominate, and self-interest will be compromised. The self feels cowardly, ashamed, suppressed, the other becomes a target of anger. However, the source of the conflict is not in the actions of the other, but in the self’s own object-concepts, the affective tonality of which is below the threshold of consciousness. We assume that in every choice the unconscious self allocates conceptual feeling so as to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, but decisions are often made that are self-destructive, or lead to personal anguish, even death, as in altruistic sacrifice. It is not simply a matter of pleasure and pain, but the disproportionate strength of opposing valuations. Once an object surfaces, in acts or in statements, unconscious conflict transforms to conscious choice, leaving behind an intrapsychic residue of stress. What exactly is conflict? Do two separate ideas collide with each other? Is stress a result of this collision, like friction? A build-up of energy? Stress and anxiety have generally been interpreted in terms of energy, cathexis and conflict. There is perhaps some truth in this idea, but it needs a more precise formulation. I think conflict involves a disparity in the degree of realization by the complex value derivations of action and object formation. All mental contents – ideas, acts, perceptual objects – individuate the self-concept, i.e. specify antecedent conceptual feelings (values). Other-centered values originate in the process of perceptual realization as conceptual feeling accompanies the object-development outward into external space. The perceptual realization generates a feeling of passivity and receptiveness that is essential to a deference to others. In contrast, self-centered values originate in the action-development and discharge in bodily space. The action development is the implementation of will, and generates a feeling of agency that is essential to selfpreservation and egoistic action. In sum, perception is linked to the realization of the other, action is the mode of self-realization. Of course, these are not sharply demarcated, rather they are biases established early in life and derived from evolutionary trends in animal cognition. Yet they determine the relative locus and emphasis of other and self-directed feeling, as the self-concept is articulated by value. Feeling that flows into objects deposits the other; feeling that flows into action remains within the body. Perception is bound up with object meaning and signification, action with flight, fight and survival. As to the phenomenon of stress itself, if we think of affect as the

236 processual aspect of an object-concept, and if we think of the conceptual aspect of the object as a category that encloses the affect – as process and thing, or the quality and quantity of the same entity – conflict can be interpreted as a reflection of the degree to which a given object-concept actualizes its prefigurative potential, or as a sign of the feeling that is residual in undischarged object-concepts. The contrast of an anxious life with one that is integrated reflects the completeness with which conceptual feeling is realized, in objects and in the part-acts of behavior. Frustration, stress, guilt, are affective residues of conceptual feelings that fail to achieve adequate realization over repeated trials; they are symptoms of an incomplete resolution of the dialectic of self and other, in other words, signs of moral distress. These stresses are not necessarily undesirable. Conflict is the engine of adaptation, and to many theorists an essential factor in moral decision. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a life free of guilt or regret, though in retrospect, painful choices are often forgotten, and reason serves to justify errors of judgment, whether honest or inconsiderate, and to excuse foolish decisions, the outcomes of which could not have been foreseen. The cultural influences on this process are not insignificant. For an egocentric and forward-looking society, such as present-day America, guilt tends to be perceived as a tether on freedom and self-expression, i.e. a trauma to be overcome, not a sign of moral decay or an incitement to growth and salvation. For conflict to play a constructive role in the psychic life, it must be a topic for reflection and re-enactment, in other words, decisions need to be recalled and replayed in the imagination. If, as has been claimed, conduct is 90% of life, and morality is the life of deeds, not thoughts, the 10% that is unexposed, the world of privacy, imagination, doubt, misgivings, the world that I inhabit, is often the intenser part of many lives. The act is less alive in the world, where it dies, than in the mind, where it is rehearsed, anticipated, and then re-lived in memory after it has perished. We may admire the man of action, but contemplation, expectation and revival are often the most vivid, lived experiences of the act. Bradley wrote, “The breadth of my life is not measured by the multitudes of my pursuits, nor the space I take up amongst other men, but by the fullness of the whole life which I know as mine.” The fullness is not just the subjective complement of an act, it is an interior vision of wholeness, a unity of will and conduct, a “vigilant passivity to the call of the other,” a resolution of desire and obligation, of thought and its realization, and the continuation of the will of

237 the individual into family, community and nation. Coherence and authenticity Authenticity is bound up with coherence and a unity of feeling and purpose. We can say that coherence is anterior to and dependent on unity, but not identical to it. Coherence is related to synchronic timing or phase coupling. Individuals are not unified by an assembly or concretion of parts, but in the relation of the parts to the deeper ground from which they coherently arise. The whole is not in the parts, nor the parts in the whole. Rather, the whole is antecedent to the parts, which are not individuals until they objectify. The parts realize some portion of the whole, but they are not copies of its contents. There is a similarity to items in a category, which are mere possibilities until their individuation makes the content and direction explicit. The perfect coherence of two individualities marks their access to a common stem. Unity is not in the synchrony of one thing with another, but diachronic in the things specified. Individuality and unity are compatible, if we concede that individuality is not pure autonomy, and unity is not pure homogeneity. On this view, unity is not external to the things unified. But if the unity is strictly internal, how do separate things come into union? The difficulty is in the question, which arises from the notion of separate things, and the idea of an external unifying relation. Instead, the unity exists prior to the things unified, the things arising through qualitative transitions. A synchronic binding is a form of coherence but not a true unity, which lies in the diachronic becoming of things out of a common epicenter. Ultimately, the unity of the world is the binding of objects in consciousness, the coherence of concurrent lines of development, and the growth of the world out of the self in the momentary history of all individualities. In the relation of whole to part, the partaking of the whole is the source of its unity, while the recognition that all particulars issue from the same core overcomes the appearance of their separateness. The relation of potential to actual in a single mind is imported into the transition from character to conduct. Authenticity is the measure of this relation. It refers to the fullness of character that individuates a given thought or action, the consistency in the realization of one’s core beliefs and values, and the coherence of potential paths of actualization at each phase in the process. The fullness must also tap a depth of origination of the part-acts

238 constituting the behavior, as they are expressed in each actuality, and over successive occasions, since some facet of character is revealed in every momentary act, as well as in the collective experience of an individual life. Authenticity is not an extrinsic judgment, as with right and wrong, where there is adherence to some convention, or deviance from a standard or rule. It is, for better or worse, self-realization in conduct. The coherence on which authenticity depends mirrors the sufficiency of resolution of competing tendencies at successive points in the phase transition. This begins with implicit beliefs and core values and is repeated at each phase as the action develops. A conflicted self may be inauthentic if there is a reluctant compromise, or when behavior is driven by one of a set of competing values. A failure in self-expression, or an unwillingness to defer to the needs of others, may give embarrassment, guilt, shame or the feeling of self-betrayal. These feelings are induced by an action that is not “true to oneself,” whatever the “true” self is apprehended to be. In such instances, character is incompletely realized in conduct, or conduct is dominated by a lesser (less acceptable to the subject) value. Such occasions are common and unavoidable, for example, whether to please oneself or a companion, to choose a path of safety or risk, and all the little acts of a life. There are choices where values of equal goodness come into conflict, for example, the ability to aid only one of several people, the choice of saving the life of a mother or a child, acts of apparent altruism that can be decomposed to unconscious motivations. It could be argued that every act of cognition, regardless of the degree of conflict or coherence, is authentic in that it discharges the self such as it is, “warts and all,” given the conditions that prevail, i.e. that conflict is no less authentic a depiction of character than coherence. Indeed, conflict may even be essential to moral decision, for the individual unaware of the possibility of conflict is hardly in a position to make a moral judgment. Yet the impulse in life, and the mark of an authentic person is, or should be, a concordance in the mix of values that drive his behavior. Such a person, we say, is “at peace” with himself. The coherence is a felt experience of comfort in decision; its danger is complacency. Conflict is the felt experience of choice; its danger is anxiety or stress. In either case, selfesteem is at stake. Self-esteem is value as worth emphatic in the self rather than in an object. The value that deposits in the self does not leave the self and then, reflexively, return to fill the self as it fills other objects; rather, the self is filled with its own value prior to the derivation of this value into ideas and

239 external objects. Self-esteem is a state of the self, not the infusion of value into the self as a secondary phenomenon. The self is not like other objects, even in reflection. The self in reflection is superficial to the core self that drives the content of the introspective state. The generative self is unconscious. The other side of self-esteem is the denial of one’s shortcomings. Denial is so common in normal and, especially, pathological states, that it has to be considered an essential feature of the self’s own derivations, with those values retained that promote self-esteem, and those subdued that threaten the sense of integrity. As objects become worthless when their valuation is diminished, the self lacks esteem when it does not receive an adequate share of its own self-valuation, i.e. when self- and other-centered values are discordant. Unlike the self, however, objects are not the locus of conflict. Objects realize potential, or specify options. They are endpoints in the mind/brain state, not occasions of intrinsic choice in the subject, where possibility is still alive. The manifold of potential selves within a person contrasts with the finality of his objects. We are looking at the subjective and objective segments of the mind/brain state that correspond to phases closer to potential or actuality. A weakness of will (akrasia) is not a sign of a weakness of character or fragility of will, but of a conflict in values that implodes on the will that seeks to mobilize them. The weakness is the inertia resulting from the opposition of equal and contradictory forces. When values concur, the will is forceful. A weakness of self-valuation, like a diminution of object worth, may lead the individual to feel unworthy, or to feel his objects are worthless. This reflects a prominence of values that do not serve selfinterest, and depends on the bias to other-directed or egocentric values. What matters, finally, is the self’s own self-assessment. One asks, have I been faithful to my principles, which could mean, have I been immoral to my limits or do my values reflect a basic decency; that is, have I fulfilled my own expectations? In each act, and in all acts over a lifetime, the self attempts to exhaust its potential in such a way as to reveal its full nature. Hopefully, the self will undergo growth in valuation so as to progress to greater comprehensiveness, charity and goodness of character. Completeness and coherence may not be exhibited in every, or any act of cognition, but they are the goals toward which one should strive, and authentic goodness is their desired outcome. Goodness is desirable, and genuine goodness is a mark of authenticity, but authenticity is not a matter of good or bad; both can be equally

240 authentic. Paton (1927) argued that coherence is a sign of wholeness or unity, that “to be good is to be coherently willed … (and that).. that self or will is coherent and good which wills the momentary action as part of an all-inclusive whole of coherent willing, and in willing the part, wills the whole.” I could hardly agree more with the spirit of this statement. The whole self should be announced in every part-act, which in turn partakes of the whole from which it devolved. Yet I would not want, as Paton is prone to do, to conflate drive and volition in will, nor separate will (as drive) from feeling, and I would qualify the identification of coherence with goodness. Coherence is desirable because the whole self is expressed in conduct. This avoids conflict and so increases pleasure. Yet coherence establishes, or is a sign of, the wholeness or the authenticity of the act independent of whether it is good or bad, for the act can be pleasurable even if, as in a person who fully enjoys sadistic torture, it is authentically evil. To take up these points in further detail, microgenetic theory claims that will (as drive) develops to desire, i.e. drive is derived from the primal will, and the desires are derived from the drives, so that pleasure is ultimately derived from the satisfaction of urges that are drive-based. The satiation of instinct, the satisfaction of drive, the enjoyment of pleasure, reflect a continuum in the specification of conceptual feeling and the objects into which it distributes. From the standpoint of the individual, pleasure is a self-indulgent good. More often than not, the pleasure of one person entails pain or deprivation for another. If the good is more than mere enjoyment, it must be a good that is good for others. The fusion of good with pleasure substitutes a moral judgment for a drive satisfaction. When good and bad are conceived as judgments applied to conduct, either by others or by a rational self, they stand in relation to drive as truth does to reason. A coherence theory of value entails a coherence theory of truth, just as a correspondence theory of truth entails a good that appeals to an abstract standard or ideal. Paton seems to accept this distinction when he writes that reflection or critical judgment follows on the activity which creates the value. With regard to the interpretation of will as volition or agency, clinical studies have shown that the volitional feeling in an act depends on that phase in its structure which is the focus of emphasis in the normal fluctuation of consciousness, or it points to that phase in an act of cognition that receives the major brunt of a pathology. Barring coercion, and from an endogenous or subjective standpoint, whether an act appears or feels

241 voluntary, purposeful, automatic or passive, or whether the self feels an agent or a victim, is a function of the microstructure of the act. Volition does not reflect a stronger or weaker will that is imposed on an action, or an impulse of the self that propels that action; the self does not cause a volition which then causes an action. Agency is not an output of a self that stands behind an action and urges it forward; rather, the feeling of volition is created as a kind of byproduct of act- and object- realization.

Chapter 9. Autonomy and Compassion …the unreflective citizen will believe in his own absolute independence and self-existence, as merely limited by that of others through a few external contacts. Bosanquet

The relation of self to world A coherent theory of value and its impact on moral conduct can only develop on the intrinsic relationality of all objects in the observer's mind. All “contents” given in an act of cognition, the self and the external world, have intrinsic relations to the whole of the given. The “elements” that inhere in that whole are embedded, not isolated in relation to the remainder. The self may feel a relation to an object, but object and self are inseparable in the same state (on the observer-observed relation of cognition to quantum theory, see Atmanspacher, 1998; Gernert, 2000) Others who are part of my present have a greater or lesser immediacy according to whether they are objects, images, remembrances or thoughts. The degree of immediacy depends on the segment in a relational stream and the extent of the present taken up by attention to it. The clarity, givenness and objectivity of a content depend on its perceptual completion, e.g. whether it achieves the status of a mental image or a perceptual object. The manner, conduct and conversation of another person are images in my present. No matter how immediate an object, for example, a chair before my eyes, it is an inference based on knowledge, experience and the context in which it is perceived. This has special relevance in the case of other minds. A person in my visual field is an image correlated with brain activity, and an inference based on belief. That is not to say the person does not deserve to be treated as an independent, parallel instance of consciousness. Subjectivism does not imply the non-existence of an external world, only the lack of direct or immediate knowledge of that world. How could the richness of the world be conjured up in my experience were the world itself not its inspiration? This argument, by the way, is as close to a “proof” of an external world as

244 one can get. For example, Ewing (1933) wrote, “our experience is made infinitely more intelligible if we ascribe certain very considerable parts of it to purposive minds outside us (other human beings).” There is also the reluctance, as Blanchard (1939) points out, to be “confined in the iron ring of our own ideas.” We presume that material entities can be inferred from objects in perception, which normally creates models of the middle-sized world that are reasonably trustworthy, i.e. adaptive. Any attempt at a proof of an external world (e.g. Moore, 1922) is bound to make certain assumptions, take them as axiomatic and then use them to attack idealism and its consequences. A typical example is the distinction between the act of experiencing and the object experienced. The act of seeing a chair is argued to be mental, while the chair that is perceived is claimed to be a public fact. The experiencing is located in psychology, the experience, i.e. the content of the perception, is a thing in the world. This applies to acts, percepts and propositions. The feeling, meaning and recognition brought to bear on the perception are construed as the psychic portion, the chair in perception as the public portion. The distinction rests on the assumption of direct perception, which is, frankly, impossible, merely a latchkey to realism, less a product of reason than an article of faith. What is the psychological experience of seeing a chair apart from seeing the chair? The chair, as Blanshard might have put it, is the paradigm of a true thought. If one sees en passant a chair, a rock or any object, giving it little thought or feeling, what is the psychic portion? The chair in perception, like a proposition in thought, does not detach from the mind and float into public space as soon as it actualizes. It is a mental content with an immediate pre-history that cannot be split off as if it were attached to a naked object. Arguments of this type abound in philosophy of mind. They are not merely implausible, they are fictions inconsistent with our knowledge of brain and cognition. In some respects, they are a subterfuge from a “solipsism of the present moment” (Santayana, 1929). Brown, 1996), in which a theatre of the present – the self and its world - is played out inside one's skull, in one’s brain. The founder of phrenology, Franz Gall, who was wrong in most respects, was right about one thing when he wrote, “God and brain, only God and brain!” Unless the other is a brain-damaged patient with agnosia, a psychotic, blind or under the spell of mescaline, the idea that a chair in perception is the same chair (on the meaning of “same,” see Chapter 1) perceived by others is a relatively safe assumption. It creates a reality from a consensus,

245 and supposes that the relation between objects in my consciousness with those in the conscious states of other people is not only knowable but selfevident. However, it is far from clear how the perceived chair, much less a noumenal chair, relates to each separate consciousness other than as an inferred source of sensory impressions in two different brains. The chair I see is a mental image, I have no immediate knowledge of the material chair nor access to the image of the chair in another mind. Even if one agrees that the external object is an inference, or that the existence of the object depends on a theory of the world, one can still function quite well on the assumption that the chair is a solid object in a common space. The problem concerns the nature of the mind, not coping in everyday behavior. If I say my friend is an image in my mind/brain, he is as much a part of me as I of him, but he is my creation. I have no immediate awareness of his inner states, nor what he has created of me. I remain the source of my perceptible world, as he of his world. A perceptual object such as a chair is sufficiently stable to hold the two of us relatively constant in relation to it, even if variations in the conceptual antecedents of the object reveal the differing contributions of each to the shared perception. The problem of two brains perceiving the “same” object (verification, other minds) is similar to that of two brains sharing the same topic in a dialogue. In the latter instance, the concept underlying the exchange provides the stability enclosing two streams of discourse, and is analogous to a visual object, such as a chair, about which different observers can agree or disagree. If interlocutors are engaged in separate discourses, or are speaking languages unintelligible to each other, there is no thematic coherence or conceptual stability. The discourse of a speaker would then show, from the standpoint of the listener, little essential difference from a verbal hallucination. Indeed, if a “dialogue” between two people speaking languages that are unintelligible to each other should continue, as occurs in clinics among jargonaphasics, it might resemble that between a psychotic and an hallucinatory voice, where an observer is privy to only one half of a “conversation.” The “interaction” of two people over a shared object or concept, a chair or a topic, is not unlike that of a single person perceiving an object, or himself, on two separate occasions. To ask how you and I come into relation is to ask how separate brains or experiential selves come into relation, and this is similar to asking how the self and its brain at one moment relate to the self and its brain at another moment. The problem of other minds in a common present resembles that of successive states or

246 pulses of consciousness in a single mind over an interval of time. This interval can be brief, as in a succession of nows, or prolonged, as in comparing the mind of an adolescent to that of the same person as an adult. In one instance, when subject A comes into contact with subject B, the other is perceived. On another occasion, when subject A recalls his childhood self, or when the self of the preceding moment is revived in the present, the other (the former self) is explicitly or implicitly remembered in the present. The difference between seeing another person and recalling or reviving one’s prior self is a distinction that turns on the difference between perception and memory. If perception is vivid objectified memory and memory is vague incomplete perception, the two states have more in common than one might at first suppose. With a perception of the other, visual or auditory constraints emanating from the other induce the mental state of the subject to sculpt and externalize what is largely a memory into a perception. In the remembrance of a former self, i.e. in a state of reminiscence or nostalgia, the relative absence of sensory constraints permits a configuration in “long-term memory” to represent some experience or aspects of the prior self. This configuration develops to the phase of an image. The degree to which the configuration is revived determines whether it is vague, like a memory image, or pictorial like a perception. Hallucination is somewhere in-between. If a memory of the self achieves hallucinatory clarity, it becomes a kind of perception of the self. This occurs in the phenomenon of autoscopy, or a Doppelgänger experience. In dream, as in hallucination, what is submerged in waking life achieves greater immediacy and clarity of detail, and undergoes an adaptive transformation to the external situation. The difference between a memory that is a hallucinatory perception and one that develops to a veridical perception is the degree to which sensory constraints are applied on developing memorial content. How do successive brain states in the same person or concurrent brain states in different persons relate to the present brain state in a given person? The difficulty is usually resolved by assuming extrinsic or causal relations that connect the brain of subject A to that of subject B at the same time, and connections within a subject’s brain at one time that associate, retrieve or copy the memory of the self at a former time. The microgenetic interpretation is that an image of the prior self, as with any memory, is an attenuated content within the present, such that the disparity between the finality of an actual object and the embedded content transpose to a feeling of pastness. The pastness is generated by the disparity, but the felt duration

247 of the interval between past and present is extracted from interposed memories “stacked” in episodic sequence. The relation between states of the “same” brain at different times, like that between different brains at the same time, is presumed to occur in the gap between mental states in the same or different brains. But the present state is the theatre of all experience. The gaps are between overlapping presents. They are nontemporal and non-experiential, thus non-existent. What exists for a self outside of its present is inference. Even the self is largely unconscious and unknowable, inferred or intuited. All knowledge, what is given in immediate awareness and what can be thought of, imagined or inferred, is ultimately a manifestation of brain process, indeed, a self-creation. We are brains encased in helmets that generate a virtual reality which, by the sole fact of our survival, must conform to what is out there. Yet Bradley writes, “if the world is my brain-state, then what is my own brain? That is nothing but the state of some brain. I need not proceed to ask whose. It is, in any case, not real as a physical thing, unless you reduce it to the adjective of a physical thing. And this illusive quest goes on for ever.” A description of the brain-state is not the brain-state but its description. We do not experience the reality of the brain directly, but are confined to its descriptions and manifestations. The real is imputed from the relation to appearance, and appearance is related to some term in addition to the subject. The philosophical argument against solipsism hinges on objections to treating the world as an adjunct to the self, or to giving too much to an awareness of the non-self, or to indirect knowledge of the world, or to something existing outside of the present moment. Bradley is correct when he says, “The whole movement of the individual mind implies disengagement from the mere ‘this’, in the sole reality of the ‘now-felt’.” If feeling is not real, reality is beyond our grasp, since feeling is the experience of process, process is reality and feeling as process is common ground with the process-life of all existents. Once more, Bradley: “To find reality, we must betake ourselves to feeling.” All that exists for the observer, and all that can be described with assurance, is given in the present. Again Bradley: “The one Reality is what comes directly to my feeling through this window of a moment; and this, also and again, is the only Reality.” But he points out that the first is, is not is nothing at all but, and the second is, is not is all of. My experience rests on the veracity of memory, the existence of an immediately prior self and other minds. These are all indirect forms of knowing. An inference about

248 an occurrence outside the present, or about the world from the perspective of another person, is still an inference, whether it concerns a past, future or occurrent object, or is based on knowledge, memory, belief or hope. The noumenal world, to the extent one attempts to describe it, is a creationmyth to account for the origins of the present. A “rock-bottom” belief in the reality of objects and other minds is not a truth but an evolutionary coping strategy, a pragmatic acceptance of the inferential status of the world. We might as well accept this condition. It is the first step in neutralizing the anxiety for a felt solipsism of the present moment The cure of solipsism To believe in solipsism is one thing, to feel it is another. A felt solipsism, like the feeling of conviction in many true beliefs, is a sign of mental illness. Yet it can be treated, and compassion is a cure. The compassion can be given or received, so long as it follows the same course. The proper cure, however, is not to engage the other as an opposing segment in the psychic field, for the reality of the other in perception is precisely what is at stake. Moreover, the intrinsic other cannot be meaningfully encountered in this way. A purely conscious relation is a surface contact. What is required, paradoxically, is a further disengagement that leads not to self-absorption, denial or monkish retreat, but inward, beneath the self and other to a ground that encloses both entities. This way of thinking has been a common response to solipsism, for example, in the argument that individual minds are ideas or appearances that individuate and perish in the mind of god, nature or the absolute. The outcome of an introspective journey is an awareness of the self as froth in a spring, a portion of a total field. The outward percolation of objects into an individual perception is the model for the individuation of all selves and objects in a larger totality. This applies to the “selfactualization” of particles and chairs no less than to minds. We are images or ideas in a whole that is greater than all of us. The superficial (perceptual) bonds we share at the surface of the mental life are ripples in the same pond. In genuine compassion, these relations are replaced by the deeper currents of instinct or inherited memory shared with ancestral sources of existence. This is the significance of the relation of perception to memory, or the relation between two minds at the same time or a single mind at different times. The other begins as a perception, but must become a memory to be revived without a stimulus. The other is comparable to a

249 former self, which is also revived as a memory in a present state of consciousness. Other and self, in their common journey of discovery, devolve to indistinct potentialities, antecedent to memory, in which they are part of the unconscious origin of mind. Solipsism is the outgrowth of a subjectivist doctrine that, in the form of a vulgar egoism, reinforces a pattern of pathological autonomy. For an absolute idealism, solipsism does seem to be theoretically inevitable. But its adherents are forced by human need to escape from the very conclusions to which their arguments lead. The escape from solipsism is the postulation of a reality independent of the mind. This does not negate the possibility that this reality exhibits or is a manifestation of another mind, just not the mind of the observer. A world independent of the observer that still has mental qualities is subjectively real, though inaccessible to the subject, just as the subject can be influenced but not penetrated by the externally real. Solipsism is the insight that we cannot break out of the field of our perceptions. Egoism accepts the world as it is but takes the attitude that only the self matters. Autonomy is excessive individuation of the self, often aligned with egoism. Unlike solipsism, autonomy is not a philosophical position. It does not deny the other but is antagonistic to the sense of community. In a sense, solipsism is autonomy introverted and hyper-intellectualized. But the way back to the other, for solipsism and egoism, lies in a surrender of autonomy to adaptation, community and wholeness. One can avoid the horror of living in the absolute isolation of a cognitive bubble chamber through a monism in which a particular mind emerges out of the generality of mind in nature. The relapse of egoism and individuality to holism is the beginning of genuine compassion and a mode of therapeutic recovery. The shift from the schism of synchronic relatedness to the wholeness of diachronic continuity marks the recognition that self and other, ab origine, are individuations of an organic whole. Having said that the other is part of the self, the contrary is equally true, the self is part of the other, certainly from the other’s perspective but perhaps from the perspective of the self. The self that realizes itself in the other already has a home. The self-realization of the will can be directed toward any object, an idea, a meal, an illness, but when the will is directed toward another person, given that the other is part of the self, the self is most fully realized. The other and the world in which the other is apprehended are a Siamese twin joined at the heart. Compassion is an expression of empathy,

250 but empathy is its superficial mark. Compassion does not require assuming the perspective of the other, which implies a conscious identification or projection. Nor is it a realization of “there but for the grace of god go I”, which is guilt at one’s good fortune and pity for the misery of others. These responses are salutary habits, but genuine compassion is a true feeling of community that arises with a reclamation of other in the relinquishing and renewal of self. The value of the other If we accept, after Hume, that compassion has innate determinants, then it must have a basis in instinct, drive or the proto-desires. In the maternal instinct, there is a heightening of defensive, loving or protective attitudes without the overt sexual and aggressive components of other drive-categories. In love, the mix of drives – fear of loss, aggression as the need to possess, dependency as the need to be possessed – are concentrated in one object of consuming interest, often combined with elements of sexual drive. In compassion, the love-wish to possess or belong to a person is replaced by empathic caring for near and distant others. The fusion with the other in maternal or sexual love, i.e. the other’s place in the selfconcept, is less prominent in compassion, yet there is empathic identification. The instinctual basis of genuine compassion suggests an origin antecedent to conscious empathy. This runs deep in the psychic life, even to the subtle pattern in organic nature, a quiet orchestration in which elements in a field are subordinate to the whole, bee hives, termitaries. We see this tacit choreography at work in a flight of birds, a school of fish, even in a grove of palms. Compassion derives from an unconscious sense of community prior to conscious autonomy. It is to this felt sense of unity that the conscious self makes an appeal. In ordinary life, compassion is a form of loving or caring, but it differs from love in the greater preservation of boundaries. The other does not have so great a share of the self, the self does not dissolve in the other. The person is not usually prepared for major sacrifice, such as to die for the other. This occurs in parental or romantic love, where the other is part of the self. Unlike love, where the individuality of the other is critical, an altruistic suicide is for an unknown other. A parent, a lover, may risk drowning to save someone they love. The altruist does this for someone he does not know. The argument for the innateness of compassion and its origin in parenting is discussed below. For now I wish to examine the

251 relation of compassion to desire at one pole and worth at the other. Compassion has been defined (OED) as “the feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it.” Pity differs from compassion in that it implies a patronizing attitude or contempt for a moral or intellectual inferiority. Pity also differs from compassion in that it does not obligate conduct. Compassion is a feeling, a perception and an action. It is a desire to give aid, comfort or support based on a perception of the value or worth of others, a sensitivity to their perspective or what it is like to be them, and to act in a way that realizes empathic feeling (Einfühlung). In maternal care, this is a response to the infant's helplessness. A baby, a person who is wounded or hungry have in common a need and a dependency. But in parenting, there is no sympathetic identification, and compassion takes the form of loving care. In the case of an adult in need, the feeling is closer to sympathy or empathy. For many writers, including Hume, compassion entails an imaginative fusion with the other or an assumption of the other's perspective, especially in the case of strangers, where it is not confounded by loyalties. The fusion is not just for the other’s point of view, but for his (its, in the case of animals) emotional state as well. The compassion felt for animals is, at times, out of proportion to that felt for people. This tendency, far from being a naïve trait or an eccentric disposition, is a sign of unconscious fusion for others that can neither show nor reciprocate human mentality. Compassion for animals also suggests that the more conscious the feeling of compassion, especially the more articulate its rationale, the less genuine the feeling may be. This is not to say that people who are compassionate to animals are compassionate people. Indeed, the opposite may be the case, the animal receiving feeling as a surrogate for human others. Compassion as empathy combines affection with “imaginative projection onto another person.” We can imagine that we are starving, thus, we have sympathy for the condition of someone who is, but this feeling is not the same as that for a dependent infant. Sympathy refers to the perception of a likeness in qualities or affinities, which can be a source of empathic feeling. We are able to recognize our own attributes in those for whom we feel compassion because we invest those attributes in them. More precisely, the similarity in properties serves as a basis for fusion or identification, even if one set of properties is imaginary. Imaginative fusion is an illustration of a part-whole relation, where the part (attribute, predicate) serves to unite disparate wholes (persons). In this way,

252 conceptual feeling is drawn into the perception of the other or, rather, the other arises out of shared feeling. That the fusion is deep in the psyche is consistent with the fact that it involves a primitive mode of logic (paralogic, see Chapter 7), that takes the form: She suffers. I (imagine what it is like to) suffer. Therefore, She and I are One (in this respect).

Put differently: A has the property C. B has the (imaginary) property C. Thus, A = B in respect of C.

Often a person's feeling of empathy is for others who resemble him in some respect, or it is mediated by a category they both share. Though every object is a set of contrasts, and psychological tests show the mind to be quicker to recognize differences than similarities, people seek out others that resemble them, members of a common class, with the bonds of membership expressed as loyalties, to family, clan, religion or station. The identification will be stronger the greater the weight given to a particular attribute, or the greater the number of shared attributes. Suffering is the primary attribute, but fusion is magnified by an overlap in other properties. There are many levels of class membership. These include cultural (clan, nation, religion, language etc.), territorial (district, village, continent, etc.), economic (occupation, class, etc.,) social (club, team, etc.) and so on (Huntington, 2004). Categories of membership are multiple, overlapping, fluid and often spontaneous, depending on the circumstance. Two soldiers suddenly thrown together will fight and die for each other. The category to which the individual belongs is defined by a contrast with others. Patriotism, no more than tribal loyalty, requires an opposition to the category of an antagonistic other (Nazi, terrorist, competitor, etc.) that congeals the national (or local) identity. It has often been claimed that Jewish cohesion depends on anti-semitism. At each of many levels there are contrasts or conflicts that reinforce the feeling of membership, e.g. one family against another, white against black, Haitian versus Afro-American, Cuban-American versus other Hispanics. The primordial Oedipal conflict of father and son is a metaphor of individuation. The other defines the self and is in turn defined as a rival. Biases rooted in the biology of evolutionary conflict are played out at multiple levels in social life. In

253 compassion, where the autonomy of an individual or class and that of an opposing class must be overcome, where a distant or unrelated other is embraced as a brother, the deeper “instinct” for wholeness and community must prevail over the incessant impulse to self-interest and individuality. While categories of membership are determinants of compassion, the feeling arises in the individual, not the group, and tends to have individuals as companions. In general, communities do not show compassionate action, only individuals, while the objects of compassion are also individuals. The individual other is the alter of the compassionate self, and one does for the other as one would do for the self. Identification engages individuals, not groups. In the response to widespread suffering, the need will overwhelm the resources of the individual, vitiate action and turn compassion into generalized pity. The theory of identification applies only at the individual level. However, the tendency for one individual to identify with another goes against the moral demand for generalization. The exportation of concrete feeling into the perception of the other must be resolved with the abstract categories out of which the feeling is generated. Categorization tends in the direction of greater wholes, and moral feeling should be as inclusive as possible, but feeling is most often directed to individuals. We see this in the empathy given to the fate of a single person in harrowing circumstances – a child that has been kidnapped, or fallen into a well, or a captive about to be beheaded by terrorists – while passing over the suffering and death of thousands of unknown others. One consequence of this argument applicable to moral education is the evident need to expand categories of membership so that people identify, first of all, as members of the human race or the class of living things on planet Earth. Asked, who am I, the person should reply with sincerity, a human being like you. That is the primary identification to which all others – family, origins, religion, state, etc. – are or should be subordinate. Loyalties within family, clan, and so on, may be the kernel of humane feeling for others, or they may merely be points of concentration for a dormant sense of community, but they restrict value to objects that do not extend beyond a limited sphere of interest. Only when such awareness is palpably entrenched in the psyche, or when we revive the positive in an “enlightened” animism, will a dedication to the greater good of humanity arise out of the sense of being one with living nature. Compassion as moral feeling is antecedent to, and more generic than, pity, antecedent also to sympathy and empathy. Moral feeling appears as

254 compassion for those who are perceived to be in need, though a prospective compassion is needed for those who will suffer if one does not intervene. Feeling is immediate, now. Caring involves future concerns. We want to act in such a way not only to not harm others but to prevent needless suffering. Even if the other is not in distress, we do not want to be an agent of suffering or indifference and we should act, in the ideal circumstance, with the present and future interests of nameless others in mind. The value of others While the conceptual feeling for the other has its origin in the mind of the observer, its allocation to the other is not apprehended as a projection but an inference of the other's emotional and cognitive state. This inference, as mentioned, is largely unconscious, though we become aware of the feeling as it surges into consciousness. Physical pain is the most obvious case. It tends to evoke compassion in others even more than despair. We know that animals in pain suffer, while “psychic pain,” grief, sadness, hopelessness, in animals perhaps, but chiefly in people, are complex past-or future-directed states. Psychic pain, in contrast to physical pain, is not perceived as bound to present stimuli. Since animals appear to live without an awareness of past or future, we tend to respond to psychic pain largely in humans. Compassion is reminiscent of the feeling evoked by music, which is in the listener but apprehended in the music, e.g. music that evokes joy or sadness is sad or joyful music. Perceived suffering or the compassion it evokes is, on the one hand, an affect-flow into the other from the observer, and on the other, an arousal of a common affective base that flows equally into the subject and into the object as it objectifies. This is not to say feeling does not exist independent of its observation, but that we perceive feeling by exporting it into objects. The compassion one feels for suffering, the suffering one perceives in others, are both experienced in the percipient subject. One could assert that suffering is interpreted from physiognomy and behavior, and that compassion follows on this interpretation, but this does not adequately describe the event-sequence. The inference of suffering is not simply a judgment based on an interpretation. One does not say, such and such a person shows the behavioral features of suffering, then empathy appears as a consequence of the judgment. The judgment is used to support or justify the feeling. In regarding its object as an external

255 relation, a judgment cleaves the object from the self. This is precisely what compassion has to overcome. Genuine compassion is not a result of the described paralogical fusion, rather it is the affective tonality of the attributive category upon which the fusion depends. Because it arises anterior to the individuation of the other, it is a form of vicarious personal suffering in which feeling, occasioned by suffering in another person or animal, leaves its mark in the subject as it flows into the sufferer. In susceptible individuals, the perception of suffering elicits personal unhappiness as an empathic residue. In sum, the exportation of subjective feeling into an objective state of suffering accentuates a subjective residue of value that leaves behind a trail of affect in the form of pity or compassion. The identification with the other can be attributed to an early phase in the individuation of the affect stream that accompanies a primitive (animistic) mentality. What we see and feel in the world passes through the mind to get there. In this transition, the affective content of the object is extracted, part of it remaining behind as compassion, part exteriorizing with the object as felt suffering. The fact that perceived suffering is affect transported into perception accounts for anomalies in its derivation according to the experiential history of the person, such as pleasure in the suffering of other people or animals. The inference of pain or suffering, or the compassion for it in others, exports feeling for and into the other in a transit through the mind of the observer. In compassion, the other’s pain is in fact one’s own. With the assumption of another perspective, or with empathic fusion, especially as an intuition of the commonalty of separate individuals, values flow into objects as fluid extensions of the self. One could say that self and other do not achieve full separation and autonomy. An object of compassion is not a piece of flotsam in a sea of indifferent humanity, it is an object of value and signification. The isolation of the object and the signification it takes on are signs of its incorporation in the self, its retention or lack of full analysis and exteriorization. The psychic content that infuses the signified object is the same as that which animates the observer. The I and Thou of Buber (1958) are the subjective and objective polarities of a single act of cognition nested in a pool of endogenous will. The sense of worth is fundamental to this experience. Worth is the foundation of love, which is the ultimate investment of value in an object, and one modality of compassion. As with compassion, when love begins to give reasons it is already on the decline. As reason is the antidote to love, lust can be the illness for which love becomes the cure. The attractions of

256 romantic love are imaginative in longing, bodily in lust (Blackburn, 2004). In compassion, the other must, in some non-judgmental sense, be deemed worthy of the subject’s attention. One does not feel love or compassion for a person who is not valued, and the more valued the greater the share of feeling; conversely, the greater the love, the more value the object assumes. Worth becomes compassion when suffering threatens to injure an expression of the subject’s own valuations. Worth, as a basis for compassion, is accentuated in relation to evolutionary stage, level of consciousness and the mental capacity of its objects, a dog more than a snail, a child more than a dog. There is hierarchy of empathy. A baby is literally and figuratively a piece of oneself, a friend or lover is a part of the self-concept, others of one’s own class or station tend to evoke greater sympathy than those removed in culture and mentality, and then on down the animate scale, through the range of living forms and the perplexities the scale creates (does a vegetarian eat an egg but not a chicken?), then down through the plants into the inorganic forms as an ecological or planetary consciousness, then back up the scale from nature into art, as compassion and moral feeling merge into aesthetic sensibility. Acts of compassion Compassion is the feeling that accompanies action when moral character is aligned with conduct. Moral conduct can dissociate from character, for example, when one reluctantly does good out of duty or compulsion. Conversely, moral feeling may stop at the portals of action and remain inefficacious, as mere empathy. Compassion without action is empty sentiment, it is the luxury of moral feeling that carries no sacrifice or risk. Once action begins, feeling goes with it. Feeling is the dynamic in action, as it is in language and perception, but the inner dynamic of action is not necessarily emotive. One can feel one way and act another. But in compassionate acts, feeling and action follow the same course. When this occurs, feeling is realized through bodily action, action is realized through bodily feelings. The body is essential to feeling only when it is coherent with action. There are many reasons not to act when one feels compassion, but the only reason to act is to ease or eliminate physical or psychic pain. In genuine compassion, action is not allayed. The pain attendant to subjective identification is resolved only when the subject’s pain is also alleviated. Healing the other heals the self. The homily that one must first

257 love oneself before one can love others is a narcissistic perversion of the teaching to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The teaching shows that fusion with the other underlies all self-feeling. In contrast, the homily would divert or arrest the outward flow of feeling so that it discharges in the self. Moreover, it rests on the false assumption that love for others depends on self-love, for which there is no compelling argument, and that self-love is projected onto others, when in fact, love for self is as much a consequence of compassion as a cause. Whether or not the self feels worthy of love, the other is a subjective aim that secondarily leaves its mark in the subject. As the feeling of love or compassion passes into the other, it arouses, for the other, by unconscious fusion, a need or potential to love that becomes part of the self. Action legitimizes the sentiment and fortifies the feeling. Only in the act of loving does the self love, only in active caring is the self compassionate. The source of moral feeling Compassion is related to worth as a rational judgment and as an objectified value. A genuine compassion assumes, but does not require, a judgment of the worthiness of its objects. Were judgment prior to feeling, one could withhold compassion if a person were felt to be undeserving. While this often occurs, the question: should one have compassion for the suffering of a serial killer, or should compassion for a killer be equivalent to that for a good person in similar straits, asks reason to justify (a lack of) empathy that should be a spontaneous outpouring. One wonders in such individuals about the authenticity of compassion for those who are considered worthy, not just those who are suffering but those who merit aid and evoke pity. The point is, reasoned justifications for or against compassion can dispel feeling, just as they can weaken resolve. Deliberation can result in a watering-down of feeling that, unlike the immediacy of genuine compassion, is far from its affective source. Feeling motivated by reason often dissipates in indirection. The saint, not the judge, is the better example. Those who shed tears of mercy for sinners teach us that one does not decide to be compassionate. The worth of a person, his intrinsic value, is foundational to compassion even if the amount of worth, his moral value, is not correlated with its felt intensity. Genuine compassion is not withheld even for someone who is worthless. This is evident in compassion for animal suffering, where we do not apportion feeling on an estimation of the

258 animal’s worth in comparison to other animals within the same class, though we do think that whales and chimps have greater value than rats and cockroaches. Still, innate empathy built on animal feeling ought not to distinguish one life from another. One can feel compassion for the helpless fluttering of an etherized butterfly as it awakens from torpor on a pin that pierces its thorax, when we have no idea what it is like for an insect to suffer. This can be dismissed as anthropomorphism, but what is the basis of that? And could it not just as well point to a realization of the oneness of living things, and the universality of feeling in organic nature? The fact that compassion occurs for animals where responsibility is not at issue confirms that it is independent of moral judgment. Moreover, while the quantity of value, as worth, is not relevant to genuine compassion, the amount of suffering is, which further confirms that empathy is prior to judgment, since a good person with a mild toothache does not offset the empathy felt for a bad person with severe pain. Object value or worth does not obligate compassion, but it does underlie whatever compassion is felt. In cases where one recognizes a person as worthy but has no interest in his fate, or when a person considers life to be sacred and gives value to the life of others but still does not show compassion when life is endangered, autonomy has proceeded so far that action and feeling are no longer informed by innate empathy. But if one does feel compassion, this feeling can only arise for a person or object felt to have value. All objects have intrinsic value, though some are assigned more worth than others. From the subjective standpoint, compassion arises when the outgoing stream of object-feeling evokes emotions in the self that are congruent with those of the other even before it objectifies. Superimposed on the intrinsic value of every perceptual object is the unequal distribution of worth according to conceptual feeling. When this concerns inorganic objects, it appears as preference or aesthetic taste. When it concerns other people, it appears as love or affection. When there is a judgment in relation to character, worth takes on a moral valence. When a subject responds to the moral worth of another person, judgment precedes empathy. When intrinsic value prevails, empathy is blind to judgment. To deny value in objects or to declare a person unworthy or valueless is to prioritize a metapsychological judgment, while to follow the path of intrinsic value is to feel and cherish the unconscious unity of self and other. Some philosophers have tried to establish a scale of objective value (see discussion in Eaton, 1930). Certainly, there is an evolutionary or

259 cognitive scale on which the determination of value is based, but within each level of the scale, for example, for all humans, an evil person in pain can, or should, be as much or more an object of compassion as a holy man with the same amount of suffering; first, for the equality of intrinsic value; second, for the redemptive quality of compassionate acts; third, for the reason that immorality is ignorance, in the Greek sense of a lack of knowledge of the good. Of course, this is easier to write about than practice. However, as the saint pities the sinner, so should we emulate his acts of mercy and forgiveness. The spark of hope in the agent and the touch of humanity in the recipient are the bases of a compassion for individuals who are unworthy of empathic love. Writing these words during a stay in Mumbai, India, and reflecting on my travels in this vibrant country, the enormity of suffering, the sense there is so little one can do in the face of such misfortune, the feeling that any undertaking is doomed to failure, often leads to defeatism and indifference. Indeed, on some visits, stunned by a sudden approach for rupees by a disfigured child half-devoured by leprosy, a spasm of anger for a violation of my privacy, perhaps a fear of contagion, preceded an act of token generosity. Surely, one can be moved by those who make a beginning even when one hardly knows where to begin. A dear friend opened a school for handicapped children in Bandra that now has 17 branches over India, many in the slums. The amount of suffering is limitless, but one life saved, one act of goodness, is a beacon of hope in a world of savage neglect. More than empathy, which is a felt experience that is not necessarily efficacious, the wish to aid the other is crucial. The need to translate empathy into conduct has priority over the moral credit or blame of its objects. Empathy without action gives the agent a feeling of moral generosity without inconvenience. To feel pity and do nothing is only slightly better than to feel nothing at all. The former is a moral indulgence that is only mildly offensive, while indifference is a severe pathology of character. The ground of shared feeling If compassion is grounded in value, and correlated with degree of suffering, but not worthiness, we should nurture the other even as we acknowledge his uselessness, depravity, desperation or stupidity. Such traits, after all, in their very ubiquity are part of the human condition. And even when a person is unworthy, he may be valued as a member of another class, a kinship, a veteran, and so on. Recently, in the American Midwest,

260 a young man for no apparent reason butchered an innocent child. For his parents, the love of their son transcended all other considerations; it was, one could say, even for such a horrific crime, unconditional. For us he is a murderer, to his father he is a son, a category that sanitizes his character through parental loyalty, forgiveness or responsibility. An unworthy particular dissolves to a less-objectionable class. As an individual, I might hesitate to save the life of a known murderer so that he may face execution, but as a doctor, duty should override a reluctance to heal. Self and other can both assume membership in a different class. From the perspective of a parent or a saint, the murderer may appear less an aberration to be eliminated than a fallible human being who merits compassion. Value can take many paths, as worth distributes into objects. Compassion involves a positive valuation. But the agent’s interest in an object can have a “negative” value, such as envy, fear, hate and so on. Envy may lead us to wish misfortune on others, often those we know or to whom we are not indifferent. We are usually envious of those to whom we are closest, even those to whom we are most loyal, or loving. A successful sibling may engender greater envy than a king. Envy is inverse empathy, an identification in which one person wants or feels he deserves what goods or traits the other possesses. Such phenomena show, once more, that judgment is secondary to the psychological locus of the other, or the proximate category that self and other share. As the individual cleaves to the universal, the progression is from categories of kinship, similarity or familiarity, to those of a wider humanity. Another contrast with compassion is Schadenfreude or pleasure in the downfall or suffering of others. This is a psychic equivalent of sadism, where the individual has pleasure in observed suffering but does not have the responsibility for causing it. In Schadenfreude, the pleasure does not appear to conform to the same rule of psychological distance as in empathy, for we do not envy the ruler his power or a famous person his celebrity so much as we may enjoy their downfall. Schadenfreude is closer to the converse of sympathy than compassion, because unlike the latter, the feeling (aggression) for the person does not spill into overt conduct but leaves misfortune to chance. When a person acts to induce suffering in others, especially if it involves physical pain, which is the most common measure of suffering, and if the event is eroticised to bring pleasure to a boiling point, the enjoyment of suffering shifts to sadism. Here, the opposition with compassion is clear. Like the sociopath, the sadist, to carry out the sadistic act, must be lacking in compassion, or translate the self-

261 denial, or dissolution of self, that occurs with genuine compassion to an egoism of pleasure. When moral feeling penetrates aesthetic sensibility, one feels a variant of compassion for inanimate objects, a beautiful tree that is to be cut down, an historic building that is to be razed, a character in a play or novel. It is not unusual to feel a surge of pity for a dying heroine in an opera, yet ignore the cries of those starving in the streets. Recall the woman described by William James, who cried at the suffering of the heroine in an opera, indifferent to her coachman freezing outside. The response is to objects in the imagination and the context in which they occur. We want to protect such objects, pity them, love them, and we feel a personal injury when they are hurt or destroyed. In empathy, there is a transition from real to imaginary suffering and, in many people, a greater intensity of feeling for the imaginary than for the real. This phenomenon, especially in literary or dramatic art, illustrates the subjectivity of imaginative fusion, lack of separation or incomplete autonomy. The transition from an empathy for simulated suffering in art to empathic sensitivity for non-cognitive objects such as trees or historic sites requires the agent to identify with abstract values more than concrete ones, i.e. with concepts more than objects. The role of historical or societal values in replacing personal suffering with an “injury” to one's taste or sensibilities points to the fact that, underlying compassion for others, there is a deeper feeling of belonging in nature and community. This sense of belonging is most apparent in early societies where animistic thinking prevails. People vary in their affective life but we have all experienced physical pain, so that pain is the great unifier or denominator. We all know what pain is like, with the exception of children born with a congenital insensitivity to pain, a case of which I once described (Brown and Podosin, 1966), or other cases, equally rare, with damage to a region of the brain in which the individual reports pain but is not distressed by it. We see this in pain asymbolia and after a frontal lobotomy. We can imagine the suffering of animals in pain. But even for pain, empathy has its limits. While some people feel compassion for a fish dangling on a hook, few will recoil in horror at the worm that has been severed in two. Except for the shared experience of pain, we have no comprehension of what the inner life of animals is like, particularly the lower ones, though we impute anthropic experience to animals, especially pets. Many people would say that a dog shows loyalty or grieves for an absent or dead master. But the equivalents of loyalty and grief in dogs are subordination to, and

262 separation from, the pack. Infant monkeys emit cries when they are separated that are the kernel of vocal initiation. Perhaps in a comparable way, instinctual behaviors are the Anlagen of loyalty and grief reinforced through centuries of selective breeding. However, these behaviors are not apparent in animals with more developed brains, so it is likely they are “read into” pets by owners seeking reciprocity. It is not possible to comprehend the private states of animals (Nagel, 1974), nearly impossible to know the mental states of other people, and there are limits to what we can know of our own private states. Apart from the cries of animals in pain, what does it mean to identify, imaginatively, with the mental life of animals? I have known people, otherwise sane and intelligent, who have mourned a dead canary. There is a Malaysian Kelantan court dance to console a Patani queen grieving the loss of a pet bird. Such tragedies are the stuff of children’s stories. It would be far-fetched to say the self identifies with a bird, but perhaps in this instance, the death of the bird taps into the innate bond with nature, or arouses the melancholy of a shared mortality. Such people would probably not expect the canary to grieve for them were they to die, but then, reciprocity is inimical to genuine compassion. The person might imagine that a pet so invested with affect shares the intrinsic feeling that flows into it. This is also true for non-emotive states or capacities such as cleverness, intelligence, anticipation or loneliness. Above all, the sense of shared vulnerability evokes an image of a continuum from one mind to another, thus, the primordial unity of subject-object, self and other. On this view, others are conceptual valuations that objectify with the observer. The other derives from concepts and feelings in the observer, as both self and other derive from a birth in nature or the ground of all things. This is close in spirit to the argument of Berkeley, and especially Schopenhauer, for whom compassion was an expression of the unity or oneness that underlies all particulars. From the standpoint of an individual cognition, empathy and the sense of community are fragmentary glimpses into an unconscious core that makes its way into conscious life. So also, one could say, is the madness of crowds, mob violence and submission to authority. Other signs of sub-surface unity appear in unconscious communication. It is well known that people who are sleeping, especially when anxious, such as pilots in a barracks on the eve of a dangerous mission, may engage in sleep-talking “conversations” (Arkin and Brown 1971). Learning goes on under anesthesia. What is intimacy if not the

263 silent exchange of thoughts? Are these examples independent of “body language” and non-linguistic cues? Jung wrote of archetypes of a collective unconscious. Freud wrote, “The Ucs of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the Cs.” Does unconscious mind embrace other potential consciousnesses that have not yet differentiated into waking life? Only gradually does the maternal breast individuate out of the relative homogeneity of the body-centered space of the newborn. Compassion reasserts stages in development prior to the fission of self and other. Innate empathy – because it is innate – points to a stage when the personality has not yet detached from the community or, from an evolutionary standpoint, when social adaptation still has priority over individuation and separation. The identification or fusion of compassion relinquishes the autonomy that has been achieved through a long evolutionary and maturational struggle. The explosion of parts out of wholes in the analytic trend of thought gives way to a lapsing of parts back into primordial wholes. The person dissolves in the other and reclaims a wholeness of engagement prior to partition. The worth of others is firmly planted in the self. The growth of moral feeling entails the infiltration of the self-concept by other-centered values that stream into the object field, values that achieve fulfillment in helping others. For the mitigation of self-interest, the feeling for others must become its own satisfaction. “I am the other” is the mantra of compassion. To be compassionate, and authentically so, is for self-realization to actively engage the realization of the other, to merge self and other as best one can in this world. The mark of the superior soul is the resolution of self and other in conduct sensitive to the potential out of which we all, each moment, arise, undivided by arbitrary boundaries created in the inevitable loss of potential and the continuous vanishing of concrete actualities.

264 The birth of compassion To the one who knows how to live a single moment with the whole spirit, That one moment represents eternity. Leopold Staff Every act begins with a decision for the self, or rather, with a precursor of self in the instinctual core before a self as such exists. The fundamental drive is to affirm and sustain life. This does not mean the act is inevitably selfish. The other is part of one’s needs, and a constituent of the self-representation, i.e. the core and conscious self. Personality individuates in a contrast with others as we emerge from family and neighbors. The initial stage of unselfish valuation in the partition of the self, i.e. the retention of others in the self-concept even as the self individuates, comes about through exposure – assimilation followed by separation – to exemplars or models of self-realization: parents, teachers, friends. Royce (1892) wrote that “even head hunting implies dependence upon one’s neighbor who is good enough to furnish one more head for the hunter.” Though destructive, it is still an element of mutuality. Indeed, in some instances, the flesh is eaten as a sign of love, respect or admiration. The self declares its autonomy by killing other selves, whose heads reinforce the individuality of the hunter. Enslavement does the same, but the other is kept alive for exploitation. Considered as individuals, the master, like the head hunter, enjoys a fuller life and greater freedom at the expense of his victims. But considered as members of a limited category, both dominant and sub-dominant members are required. With respect to the category, individuals are symbiotic, inter-dependent constituents. In humans, the similarity of individuals contrasts with the asymmetry of relations. In other organisms, the dependency involves individuals of widely different types. The bacteria that digest cellulose in the gut of termites are more primitive organisms with fewer degrees of freedom, but the category of termites entails the presence of the bacteria. In any symbiosis, the distinction between constituents, and the rivalry of autonomies, is as much delineated as blurred by mutual need. Is the slave (bacteria) less close to selfhood than the master (termite)? One is defined by service, the other by need. To the extent the master grows dependent on

265 the slave, he abandons positive selfhood. To the extent the slave resists – or accepts – the conditions of service, to that extent does he find positive selfhood. In humans, selfhood is denied only to those oblivious to circumstance. Dependency is the need that underlies compassion from the standpoint of the other. Deference to power or wisdom is essential. Those in need must accept the aid (and implicit dominance) of others. The subject who feels compassion may not be aware of this dominance, but that is not true for the person who accepts assistance from another. For the juvenile, deference is an expression of the tacit knowledge that an object is dangerous or nurturing. Fear and necessity are the handmaids of empathy. The fear of isolation or abandonment is the affective tension of autonomy struggling out of togetherness. As mentioned, the “isolation cry” in primate infants separated from their mothers involves neural substrates correlated with early phases in act and language-generation (Brown, 1986). An action both bridges and divides the organism and the world. What begins as need moves outward as worth. The dependency of the infant mutates over many years to compassion as the need for the other becomes the other’s need, as the parent’s devotion or obligation becomes the self’s response to the dependency of others. The attributes of a powerful or loving object of infancy are the seed of the adult’s sense of responsibility. Some of the many studies that show the relevance of parental care to the development of empathic feeling are discussed in Hornstein (1976). Compassion may well develop out of submission, which defuses aggression to prevent the weak from being “devoured.” Since the weak can be exploited or killed as well as assisted, fear and submission may serve to neutralize aggression. Submission to the strong is transferred to the weak by empathic identification. The urge to fight or dominate is not conducive to compassion, which requires a shared sense of vulnerability. In societies where suffering is indigenous or pandemic one may see the reverse, selfishness and brutality justified by the need to survive, or indifference to others justified by fatalism, hopelessness and acceptance. If empathy has a biological function, it must arise in the wish to protect the other, as we would wish to be protected, from violence and harshness. This may well be an extension to others of a self-serving principle, the residue of selfprotective drives after they have achieved a modicum of personal security. Love walks a tightrope between acquisition and dependency, conquest and submission, derivatives of fight and flight in relation to the sexual drive. These positive and negative impulses in the form of seeking and

266 avoidance have been traced by Schneirla (1966) down to orientation biases at the earliest stage of life, deriving perhaps from inorganic matter in the arising and perishing, the forward surge and the cessation it replaces. Compassion realizes the unity underlying oppositions. It flourishes not in a desert of neglect but in gardens tended by a loving heart. Gray’s flower, destined “to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air” is the unhappy fate of any individual consigned to isolation or neglect. The forming self-concept is parasitic, symbiotic, seeking models for its own development, constrained by the social environment to mirror those values to which it is forced to adapt. The infant evokes protective feelings in the mother. The affection evoked in a caretaker is empathy for a child that is vulnerable. The empathy of the adult is linked to the same concerns that enabled him to survive his own infancy, the feeling that passes from the infant that is cared for to the adult that cares. The fusion and separation that occur during infancy re-appear when empathic feeling revives, in the imagination, the concrete oneness out of which self and other individuate. The tendency to mirroring may be a sign of this underlying fusion, perhaps related to the finding of “sympathetic neurons” in the motor (and other) areas of quiescent monkeys that discharge when they observe other monkeys acting. We often mirror behaviors unconsciously in gesture and manner of speech. Mimicry is common in the wild. Might empathy be an elaboration of mimicry, and mimicry a sign of aboriginal fusion? Cases with severe brain damage and pathological regression may have “echo” phenomena in language and action, in which the speech and movements of others are imitated, usually without evidence of a voluntary, even purposeful, attitude. However, the echo is not pure mimicry. Grammatical errors in the sample are corrected in the echo. The imitation does not occur to ambient speech or gesture, but requires that the person is addressed. Normally, gesture is modified by imitation, usually of a parent. Imitation may tap an unconscious self/other bond but does not account for the extension of value to others, as worth, and the perspectival shift in empathic fusion. The bond of infant and mother that is so prominent a feature of mammalian behavior has been associated with nursing and the strengthening of this bond as the infant suckles at the maternal breast, though maternal caring appears in barren females. If compassion is related to the maternal instinct, it should be more pronounced in women. This is not a novel proposal. Russell, Huxley and many others have pointed to the mother-child relation as the nucleus of moral sentiment. Mary Moore has

267 written of the prevalence of co-dependence in women, noting that “women are more often associated with the ideals of self-giving than men.” The higher threshold for aggression in women and reduced assertiveness are consistent with the self-negating tendencies of empathy. The “maternal instinct” is pronounced in the female but may be present to a varying degree in men. How deeply the desire to nurture an infant goes in men is uncertain. One recalls Bacon's remark, that “he that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.” While the wish among men for a child, especially a son, is widespread, its justification – to help on the farm, carry the name, etc. – does not support an instinctual basis. Some Aboriginal tribes do not recognize a link between insemination and conception because of the lag until the pregnancy is obvious. Husbands do not consider themselves “biological” fathers. The paternal “instinct” is not as natural as the desire to acquire and protect females and, by extension, a family. This tendency could serve as well as a maternal instinct for the nucleus of feelings of compassion or self-sacrifice. However, whether caring is instinctual or acquired, a parental model of love and generosity can provide a basis for the development of empathic feeling by instilling values of concern for others. The concern and support that adults give to children extends in maturity to victims no matter what their age or despair. It seems logical that the more love and attention given to a child, the more likely it is to repay affection to others as an adult. However, a child who is merely the recipient of parental devotion may become addicted and expect more of the same in maturity. In addition to parental love, the child needs to be actively taught to value others. Conversely, caring for others may develop in those who, as children, suffered from neglect. In giving to others they augment weak self-esteem. Self-esteem is worth that accrues to the self. It is in equilibrium with the worth assigned to others. A person of low esteem may seek out others who are worthier in order to reinforce his sense of inadequacy, while a healthy self-esteem has less need for “imaginative identification” with the other. We might suppose that compassion or generosity in the former is based on need, in the latter on authentic caring, but this “psycho-dynamic” distinction has egoism, not fusion, at its core, and does not explicate the fluid movement of value over its subjective and objective poles. Some animals devour or abandon their young, but this is less common in the higher mammals where the protective impulses are emphatic,

268 especially in the female. Thus, male lions and bears will sometimes kill and eat their own offspring, which the females try to prevent by taking the young to a distant place. The presence of maternal instinct in animals lacking empathy does not preclude it as a precursor in humans. The tacit recognition of another mind capable of suffering requires at least a rudimentary self-concept as well as the capacity for desire, the recognition of object worth, and the generalization of value to objects other than those of drive satisfaction. The maternal instinct would seem to provide a sufficient basis for this generalization. The complexity of behavior that flows from the care of infants is comparable to the derivation of sexual drive into an intricate array of secondary affects and strategies. In the fusion of the infant with the maternal breast we find the origins of compassion in dependency, as we see in its reciprocal – the care of the infant by its mother – an expression of compassion or empathy in love. Young children have little concern for the pain of others, but gradually a concept of other minds appears as their own sense of self develops. We see this in the ability to share, to avoid injuring a playmate, or to feel sad when others are unhappy. Whether this reflects a natural outgrowth of innate dispositions and their facilitation by learning, or an inhibition of egoism by scolding and punishment is uncertain. The ability to infer the intentions of others develops, I believe, around the age of three, but this inference is not necessarily the basis of empathy. There may be no empathy at all in a child, or adult, who infers mind in others and recognizes suffering. Conversely, a child of three, with little or no capacity for an extrinsic perspective, exhibits deference, which is perhaps a rudimentary form of empathy, even pity, which for Kant was a natural inclination. A child that teases has an implicit theory of mind. Compassion in a mature cognition is complex. The drives and primitive feelings have ramified to such a diversity and with so many competing interests that a single factor is almost impossible to identify. Concern for others may be genuine and flow from innate dispositions, but it can serve a need for approbation, self-affirmation, reflect a lack of selfworth or a conformity to peers. A cult-like mentality plays a role in military heroism or the twisted altruism of the murder-suicide. There may be covert motivations, a tax deduction, appeasement, a “guilty conscience.” Moreover, as parental caring can become refractory when it becomes a daily chore, so it is a challenge to maintain a feeling of charity and avoid apathy or cynicism in the midst of poverty, or sustain pity for the ill when surrounded by suffering on a daily basis.

269 Moral asymmetry In emotive theories of moral feeling, such as this one or that of Hume, empathy has traditionally been based on an external relation that is asymmetric and non-reciprocal. The other who is the object of moral feeling does not sympathize with the agent who, according to Hume, assumes the perspective or imagines the pain of the other. The asymmetry is the direction of moral feeling, thus, the emphasis on the person who gives compassion, not the one who receives it. The construct of the other as an object of compassion is someone who requires love, as well as someone who wishes to give it. Just as the compassionate impulse finds objects for its realization, the need for compassion goes out to the other as a form of loving, and is recompensed by the need for love from others. Compassion given is moral conduct for the giver, but not from the standpoint of the recipient, who profits from the transaction. Giving and receiving are expressions of love and need that point to the common basis of caring and being cared for in the self’s system of values. The oneness of genuine compassion is the intimacy of the bond of love, between parent and child, agent and recipient, therapist and patient, and so on. The value that flows into others can as readily flow from them to the self. Whether one is subject or object depends on the distribution of conceptual feeling to self or other in the same psyche. The asymmetry of moral feeling bears some resemblance to the claim that aesthetic perception demands an asymmetric reproduction in the aesthete of the feelings of the artist at the moment of conception or composition (see Chapter 21). The observer must intuit the meaning or feeling in the artwork through an imaginative identification that is not so different from that of empathic caring. That is, just as compassion requires that we assume the perspective of the other, so aesthetic perception requires that we assume the perspective of the artist, or the artwork. The question asked by compassion is, what does he (it, for animals) need? The question asked by art is, what does he (it) mean, or what is he (it) trying to tell us? We also speak of empathy in a love for art, or becoming one with art or its creation, or giving one’s life to art. The legendary struggles of the artist evoke the pain of artistic creation, and this too enhances the link with moral feeling. However, it is improbable that an observer can reproduce an artist’s mood or his feeling in the production or enjoyment of the work, not to mention the thought, knowledge and technique implicit in artistic creation. One can appreciate a painting or music of quality by an anonymous artist, even one that is drawn or composed by a computer.

270 Again, it is the self’s own constructs that infuse subjectivity in the work. Empathy requires an internal image of the other to feel vicarious pain. This is not the other as an objective entity but a construct of the other in the observer’s imagination. Empathy may be evoked by a particular instance, say the sight of a suffering child, but the category of concern for that child, not the child, is the construct that empathic feeling comes to fill. Empathy requires a concept of the other to receive its own conceptual feeling. In this respect, the concept is more essential than the individual it instantiates. For some philosophers, particulars are less real than the classes they embody. The inexhaustibility of the wholes (concepts) that endure (recur) are the ground of compassion, while the impermanence of the parts (people, animals) that perish evokes it. Empathy is the revisiting of parts in antecedent wholes, the regression of objects to concepts, individuals to social organisms, a withdrawal to what is deep and abiding from what is transient and accidental. We see the primacy of the class when the idea of the other motivates the observer, not the particular to which the feeling is directed. This idea is part of a wider category of like parts. A person will not feel compassion for someone who is suffering unless the concept of suffering, the knowledge of physical or emotional pain, is rooted in his psyche. Do we not feel greater compassion for someone who has always been poor than someone who has lost all his money? Yet, the reverse may occur in physical disability. We generally feel more compassion for someone confined to a wheelchair after an accident than for someone who has never walked: the loss of an ability seems to count for more than never having had the ability. There is a trade-off in moral credit and blame, the struggle of the one to survive, the ignorance of one who never knew, or the foolishness of one who had his chances. Compassion is incited when the self and other are of like kinds as members of a class. Can we feel compassion for someone undergoing a unique experience, say a person who is terrified that Martians are racing through his brain? We cannot conceptualize what this would be like, though we recognize the suffering of a person who is mentally ill. The empathy is for a member of that class. The Christian concept of charity as love, the celibacy of a priest, the marriage of the sisters to the church, implies that compassion is a surrogate of sensual love that is diverted to non-sexual objects. Sexual love begins with the particular, the one who is loved. We think of the beloved as unique and irreplaceable, unlike any other person we have met before. Sexual love is for the actual, the sole particular, while the love in charity is

271 for the category of the good, good as encompassing, the flock, the sufferings of the many, those who fall into a category of need. Compassion for the sick or poor is for a class that is exemplified by an instance, but the instance – the one who is sick or poor – receives compassion by virtue of being a member of the category. Agent and victim Desire, interest and worth depend on which segment dominates a momentary cognition, which in turn determines the subjective or objective locus and degree of intentionality. Worth seems to emanate from the object, desire from the subject, interest is felt as partly self-generated, partly as an attraction to the object, i.e. the object draws attention to itself. Desire feels intrapsychic; it issues in the self; it is intentional in its direction to an object. Worth feels extrapsychic, located in the object. Desire is related to becoming, worth to what has become (see Chapters 4 to 6). The momentum of desire is its subjective aim, the finality of worth owes to the objects it permeates. A critical difference between desire and worth is that desire feels processual and subjective, worth feels objective and substantial. We think objects are valued for themselves. A lovely face, a beautiful vase, an expensive gem, a politician worth voting for, seem to merit their own valuations. We sense value in the object and feel that our desire is due to the object’s worth. This is because objects seem detached from the mind that perceives them, and their value accompanies this detachment. It is also because worth is so often consensual that estimations of value tend to be reinforced by others. The consensus in validating the worth of an object tends to cancel the differing contexts of its individual valuations. This also leads to a further objectification of object-value. As with the objects it inhabits, the greater the worth of an object, the more independent of the observer that worth seems to be. This gives the impression in many valued objects that worth is distinct from personal valuation. The misfortunes of others can be occasions for profit or generosity. A person who is poor can be helped or exploited. There are many forms of exploitation, but there is only one path in compassion, that of love. As in sexual love, compassion does not go out to another person. Compassion given or bestowed is tokenism or patronization. It has its simulacrum in the patronage of the poor, where money is a bridge to otherness when imaginative fusion is hindered by the disparity in goods. It is easier to feel

272 genuine compassion when one is close to the conditions of those in need. Those who have good fortune may not feel the vulnerability essential for imaginative fusion. The wealthy who give to the poor are too distant from the conditions they seek to ameliorate to suffer imaginatively the unhappiness of their beneficiaries. The saint leaves his worldly goods to live among those he wishes to help. Recall Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men - and of angels… bestow all my goods to feed the poor… and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” The tears of compassion should flow for the love of the other and, thus, for one’s own suffering. Bill Clinton well knew the sources of compassion when he said to others, “I feel your pain,” so he could, himself, become an object of their love and compassion. When the other becomes part of the self, the self becomes, for the other, a need-satisfying object. When loved objects are unavailable, or when the self has been victimized, negative valuations flow into the aberrant products of the forming character. The absence of love may induce a need for it, not a violent disregard of others. If Schadenfreude is the opposite of compassion in the affective sphere, sociopathic behavior is its opposite in the sphere of conduct (sadism is eroticized sociopathy). This seems to require active abuse in childhood. From one perspective, the sociopathic personality would be the evolutionary ideal, pure self-interest. Yet even in the sociopath, the self undergoes individuation. Others are perceived as threats or opportunities. Strength and weakness are the arbiters of action. Such individuals who become powerful and carry this to an extreme, a Stalin, a Hitler, are nightmares of Darwinism. The flow of value from self to other and the transition from desire to worth are accompanied by a transformation of intentional feeling. Desire is intentional, but the feeling of agency changes when desire shrinks and worth expands, or in the transfer of need to the other. The desire and will of the other assert a primacy over selfish desire. The belief that an imaginative other has needs to which the self must respond is prominent in psychotics, who have the delusion they are instruments to satisfy the desires of other people or gods. These hallucinatory others may demand that the subject carry out an order or hurt someone. The instruction to do harm occurs in chronic paranoia. It is not simply an effect of the belief in an external controlling agency. The saint, the “primitive,” the mystic, have similar visions – or auditions – in which the mood is one of fear, debt or kindness, not anger.

273 The attribution of agency to hallucinatory objects is a retrospective shift in voluntary feeling to a dreamy state where the subject is passive to his own developing perceptions. Paranoia requires a breaking-through into wakefulness of fragments of dream mentation, with a failure to gain ascendancy over the products of one’s thought process and the resultant feeling of victimization by one’s own images. In dream, we are irresistibly drawn into the events we perceive. The feeling of agency is passive or receptive. The psychotic, for whom this passivity is more vivid, responds to an agency “located” in the products of his own imagination. His verbal or visual images threaten to harm him, or to force him to harm others. For the normal person, a dream, on awakening, is no more than a premonition, but for the waking dreamer – the psychotic – hallucinations do not forecast, they command, they instruct, they compel. In hallucinatory psychosis, the will of the subject is subordinate to the needs of an imaginary other. In compassion, there is a concession to the needs of a real person. Genuine compassion is an expression of love, not duty, and certainly not anger at feeling an obligation to help. The person still feels an agent in the wish to help and the action that ensues. He may even look for objects to satisfy his need for compassion. The fact that one may travel to a poor country to search for people to care for reveals the conceptual underpinnings of empathy. Once one finds them, given the disposition to help, compassion may feel involuntary. When confronted by suffering, what else can one do? Because there is an isolated nucleus of feeling within a larger unaffected sphere of cognition, not a vortex into which, as in psychosis, all cognition is drawn, feeling and action seem deliberate. Yet a common mechanism is at play. Phenomena such as command hallucinations, where there is a receptivity to the demands of imaginary voices, help to explain the psychology of empathy and selfdenial. If the psychotic attributes the instructions of his inner speech to another person or a god, how does Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, inspired by a vision of an angel, and justified by duty, or love of god, differ from an attempted murder due to a command hallucination? Did Abraham have a psychotic hallucination instructing him to kill his son? The sacrifices of Jeanne d’Arc or St. Therese d’Avila began with hallucinations. Many missions of charity have been instigated by visions of divine intent. Compassion requires that the worth of the other has precedence over selfish desire, or that personal needs are displaced by those of others. How does feeling in the subject objectify its intentional content in the other so the subject feels the needs of others as his own? Abraham surrendered his

274 will to god. In Royce’s (1892) theory, the divine will is realized through us in the “selective attention” of the individual will, as an urge to determinateness that is directed to others. This can assume an active or passive character. In its passive realization, one can throw oneself on the mercy of rulers, lovers or other powerful forces. A life can be devoted in servitude to the sick and poor. Ultimately, a person must identify so strongly with another individual, an idea or an agency, that his personal value (self-esteem) is defined in terms of service or sacrifice. The strength of the identification, like the passion of love or religious ecstasy, could not develop in a merger of two complementary entities. The multitudes of points would not blend in so perfect a union if they did not arise in the mind of a single individual. If compassion does not readily flow from someone who is not in need, those who feel compassion are at least blessed by their own acts of charity. The subject receives a kind of grace from the other. A beggar in India does not give thanks for charity; it is the donor who is blessed in giving it. The blessing of the donor is the gift of the recipient, as Abraham’s unconditional love for god is the origin of god’s love and compassion for Abraham. Of course, if the blessing is an objective, the action is not truly compassionate. When the needs or demands of the other replace those of the self, the self can become the servant, and the other is perceived to bestow a kindness. The relation of self and other, like that of servant and master, or in some forms of sexual dependency such as the sadist and the masochist, is an undulation of power and dependency. One can help the other to such an extent that one becomes dependent on the other as a reason for living. If agency is attributed to the other, the self that begins with compassion may become a means to the happiness of the other, to the point that the self is also in need of compassion. The object of compassion then becomes a source of power in relation to the self. When the oneness with others is regained, there is no guarantee that individuation will return the parties to their original equilibrium. The fluid shift of subject and object can settle at one or another extreme of the subjective continuum. The subjective pole is utter dependence on the love, support or pity of the other, who becomes a surrogate for the self’s dependency. The objective pole is sacrifice for the other, in which the self disappears in the other. In both, whether as donor or recipient, the self is replaced by the other in need or in sacrifice. The extreme of self-denial for the sake of the other is altruistic suicide, when a life is given for another person or an idea.

Chapter 10. The Grounds of Rational Decision Hard task to analyse a soul, in which, Not only general habits and desires, But each most obvious and particular thought, Not in a mystical and idle sense, But in the words of Reason deeply weighed, Hath no beginning. Wordsworth, Prelude II:232

The path to decision The psychology of value, the transition of drive to desire and its distribution to worth, the relation of desire to conduct, and the conceptual derivation of feeling are the determinants, however complex and elusive, of whether the object one desires is good or bad or whether the conduct that stems from desire is right or wrong. A naturalist ethics is a process monism that holds that moral concepts can be derived from non-moral ones, and that this derivation rests on an axis of the intrinsic value that flows into perceptual objects. The desire for a warm fire is intrinsic and non-moral, as is the value of the fire to the one who enjoys it, while setting the neighbor’s house on fire is an act that expands intrinsic value to conduct with moral consequences. Moral acts develop out of value – indeed, they make values explicit – and they are judgments, and objects of judgment, as to the social acceptability of what is valued or acted upon. When personal value impacts through conduct on the well-being of others, it takes on a moral dimension. The presence of the other and the concordance or clash of perspectives turns the action into a moral fact. Any act that impacts on another person can be given a moral interpretation. Value is foundational not only to moral conduct but to psychology in general, determining the direction and content of acts, ideas and objects, as well as motivation and choice, while moral judgments are

276 metapsychological attitudes about psychological states of character or conduct. Acts and desires are the outgrowth of intersubjective conflict or accord, but even in solitude an act arises as a resolution of competing tendencies prior to consciousness. The solitary act is non-moral, but it is still the survivor of alternative possibilities. In the individuation of acts and objects, particulars are elicited as other options are foreclosed. The process of specification is both a source of, and a model for, the resolution of social conflict. An act is an outcome of a succession of contrasts: if not of conflicts, then of implicit choices. When two people are in conflict, or each has a choice that will affect the other, a largely unconscious process of resolution within each person, i.e. finding the best act, is displaced to a logical space between them, i.e. judging the best act. The unconscious roots of conflict and resolution give way to a conscious trial and error of reasonable solutions. The former involves the privacy of an act of cognition, the latter, a public space of tradition, compromise and law. The generation of an act is a process of adaptation in which character accommodates to past experience and occurrent context, including the needs and expectations of others. The do’s and don’ts of moral training assimilate with instinctual valuations, e.g. the drives, the infant’s bonding with the mother, to become intrinsic determinants that articulate the psyche to an adaptive choice. The process is selectional, in that one object, act, utterance, etc., is selected over others. However, the selection is ordinarily not the conscious choosing of an object from an array, rather, the discovery of an object over a continuous series of implicit choices, each governed not by decisions or rules but by the pattern and regularity of the process. There are two ways to achieve adaptive success, one by organic sculpting, in which constraints specify acts out of concepts, the other by compulsion or coercion, which is a more emphatic instance of sculpting, in which constraints on the specification are imposed. The distinction of inner and outer is fuzzy. Belief, law and custom infiltrate the mind as personal values, reason depends on presuppositions and shared beliefs, and coercion sharpens the focus of the self-preservative drives. The opposition of the internal, in the form of values and character, with the external, in the form of social obligation and law, reinforces the unnatural boundary of subject and object, and is the source of insurmountable paradox in psychology as in everyday life. In modern times the external source of value in the mystery of deity has migrated

277 inward to an internal source in an equally mysterious unconscious, while conflicts in the oughts and wants that were previously resolved by appeal to religious authority are now the province of the psychoanalysts. The receptivity of religious feeling threatens the autonomy and intentionality of nature or authentic moral feeling, as does psychoanalytic treatment, which is a surrogate religion to those for whom moral struggle is a neurotic conflict. In this, psychoanalysis is closer than philosophy to a psychological account of value, but as a morality, it is little more than a secular antidote for hedonists suffering from self-doubt. Unconscious conflicts that rise into consciousness may be acknowledged as competing impulses within the individual but tend to be apprehended as contradictory voices. The conflict is portrayed as between an individual and a parent, or between a person and society, a trend that objectifies values as arguments between individuals or with the community, when the conflict is primarily among competing tendencies that are fully intrapsychic. Indeed, an option that is conscious has already become a kind of fact; one could say it is post-cognitive, past the point where it is active in shaping a decision. If I have a choice between two courses of action, say, to keep money I have found (or stolen) or to return it, the ancestry of each choice, i.e. the experience that accounts for the state of uncertainty, seems irrelevant to a conscious analysis of the choice, or to an external judgment of one’s choices. The conscious choice is, say, that of avarice or risk, selfishness or generosity, autonomy or conformity, and so on. The unconscious trends of character that prefigure these choices are configured sets of ego- and exocentric values. Being unconscious, their nature, other than physiological, is uncertain. Once there is action, value becomes a fact, or the action turns the value into a fact. For some, reason is the instrument through which this transformation occurs. Whitehead (1929) wrote that reason “provides the judgment by which realization in idea obtains the emphasis by which it passes into realization in purpose, and thence its realization in fact.” Whether or not reason provides an “emphasis upon novelty” or is a novel emphasis, or whether novelty depends on reason rather than its precursors, there is a progression from value to fact, which, like the transition from concept to object, points to the origin of facts in value. Specifically, the conceptual antecedents of facts are evoked as values that actualize in choice. If I decide to keep the money, a fact is created out of my values, which serves as an object for moral judgment. The theft of the money is a

278 fact that appears to have a locus at the interface of my values on one side and those of society on the other, or between values that are antecedent to the fact and those consequent to its becoming factual, i.e. those determining the act and those judging it. One could also say that in the tension of ego- and other-centered values the former have priority. To attribute the theft to the effects of an abused childhood, a frustrated search for employment, a need to help one's family, and so on, introduces a history of how the fact came into being. This history is an anthropology of conduct. It is comparable to the momentary derivation or microgenesis of the action, in that, for both, the act includes a dimension of past time; i.e. a personal history or a momentary becoming. Whether or not a history is ingredient in an action, it provides a “folk” explanation of its causal ancestry. This historical context can be intuited by the subject, inferred by a psychoanalyst or argued by a lawyer, but the antecedent content is unknowable since acts of cognition are instigated by unconscious neural configurations, not events in consciousness. The history is taken into account when punishment is meted out and may serve to heighten or lessen culpability. But who can say whether or not this history or some part of it is a genuine determinant? One person who is hungry will steal, another will beg, still another will look for work. In an act of revenge, the historical context seems clear, yet the guiding role in behavior is less the injury that incited the anger than the dispositions and values it evokes. A microgenetic analysis seeks an account of the action in terms of its immediate conceptual antecedents. In contrast, a moral theory that is a folk theory of everyday life tends to treat conduct and its causes at “face value,” judging them in relation to character on one side, obligation on the other and choice midway between. A coherent philosophy must resolve value and character with reason and obligation, regardless of whether reason is conceived as an internal argument for or against a given action or an objective, semi-external “agency” that compels or enforces it. On the one hand, reason is isolated from other domains of mental life, especially emotion, which is treated as undifferentiated energy or the effects of neuro-transmitters. On the other, reason is its own explanation as a model for rational thinking, i.e. rational thinking is a mode of thought, or the application to thought of reason. This approach has mental process backwards, for it takes objectivity as a given, as well as the autonomy of reason and emotion, avoiding the problem of how they are combined. Instead, rational thoughts and propositions are a terminal derivation of lexical and syntactic objects that objectify

279 unconscious presuppositions, conceptual feelings and personal valuations. Reason and choice When we take character and prior experience to be the predominant cause of an action, we treat the options that prefigure it as causal objects. When I ask, should I keep the money or return it, and weigh arguments for the choice I make, I fancy that reason is guiding my decision. A running monologue of inner speech suggests that thought is going on. But does thought exemplify thinking as a product, or does it motivate action as a cause? Ideas in consciousness are weighted like objects in the world, though decisions postponed in thought may be forced by events. All choices are among values, whether they concern ideas or facts, yet reason is presumed to decide among ideas as if they were external objects. The “objective” laws of interaction among objects are internalized by psychology as operations on mental contents that are the antecedents of those objects (acts). These operations then become the psychic laws, or the rules that guide discourse, mitigating or competing with emotion to decide the best course of action. But the laws of rational thought applied to facts are not equivalent to the process through which the facts materialize. Rules, laws, customs, are not in-themselves determinants. For example, the “fact” that it is the custom and the law to pay my taxes does not explain why I do so. The custom and the law may be the reasons I give for my conduct, but they are not its cause. Rather, in a still poorly understood way, as dispositions, value-trends, symbolic images, obligations, i.e. the neural correlates of belief and valuation instilled in the mind/brain shape conduct into modes of behavior that are consistent with those beliefs. The reason – “it is the law!” – is a surface account of underlying attitudes that bias cognition in their direction. The confusion of a conscious fact with its unconscious precursor leads to an evaluation of the choices leading to the action as if the products of cognition were facts on which the rules of thought operate. Specifically, the fiction is that rules operate on objects (linguistic, perceptual, mathematical) to determine the selection of a settled particular. But there are no settled particulars, only patterns of psychic transformation in the realization of the particulars. What then do the rules point to or represent? I think the so-called rules are regularities extracted from the process of fact-realization. When the process eventuates in a fact, or the sought-after particular becomes factual, those facts, and the rules that supposedly operate on them, are

280 psychologically inert. A similar assumption guided transformational grammar, which postulated rules that operated on unconscious representations conceived as precursors of the same kind as the surface elements. The notion of deep and surface structures has psychological interest if the transformation is conceived as a qualitative shift from one sphere of mentation to another. However, the theory postulated rules guiding the insertion of atomic units in a transition from kernels to statements, extrapolating the actualization of objects by a process to the selection among objects by a rule. The transition from one phase (of language, perception, etc.) to the next is a whole-part or context-item shift. This transition entails the individuation of figural elements within background formations. The elements then serve as a background for an ensuing transform. This process resembles that of embedding in grammar, which was one of the earliest arguments against Markovian theory. However, there is no need to postulate a grammatical rule to govern linguistic transformations, for comparable shifts occur within and across phase-transitions from one level to the next in other domains of cognition. The rule is an artificial isolate in grammar of what is a fundamental pattern of mind/brain process. These patterns of actualization are unconscious, organic and universal. In contrast, those of custom, jurisprudence or dictate are inventions that are often conscious and culture-specific. The formal rule-based theory of syntax that has governed explanation in psychology is not relevant to the process involved in generating a statement, or any cognition. This process is uniform across different languages. Thus, it is no wonder that an extensive cross-linguistic analysis of cases of grammatical defects in aphasia revealed only language-specific features (Menn and Obler, 1990). The underlying universals of brain process, such as the whole-part shifts, were not investigated because of the preoccupation with a formal theory of their phenomenal derivatives. What is reason? Moral conduct presumes rational decision, but what is reason and how does it influence action? In some respects, reason is like an intermittent beam in consciousness that illuminates a shadowy world of unconscious dispositions. Every act, rational or irrational, develops out of these dispositions, which are manifestations of conceptual feeling that reason discharges and modulates to appease the self's own appetites. Reason can

281 justify a failure to act as well as an action, it can weaken the will, divert the passions, dissipate resolve, and often, sadly, turn the heart from its true course. At the least, the more rational a person is, the better his reasons for an action. Hume denied that reason determines or prevents conduct. At best, he thought, it provides the goals and means for an action that is impelled by the desires. He wrote, “Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition, I infer that the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion. This consequence is necessary” (cited in Ferré, 1996). Moreover, as Hume famously noted, reason can justify almost any action. Aristotle wrote that the intellect by itself moves nothing. Schopenhauer argued that reason is morally ambivalent, secondary and phenomenal, without causal force, while “the real kernel in man” is the will. Hölderlin wrote, “Man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he reflects.” Russell wrote, “When great changes occur, the theories which justify them are always a camouflage for passion.” William James wrote that philosophy was more a matter of passionate vision than logic, the logic coming afterwards to justify the vision. Ludwig Klages (1929-32) went so far as to denounce “human rationality as a parasite that had worked across history to asphyxiate the originally intuitive and prophetic soul of primeval humanity.” What these comments have in common is the idea that reflection strives for wholeness, but wholeness, or an original unity of self and object, is sundered in the act of reflection. In general, feeling tends to impel bodily action, while speech, which is a form of action, tends to delay or abort it. If action develops on emotion, not reason, might reason divert action into paths that emotion might not otherwise have followed? Even Kant, who thought that reason had causal efficacy over the will, wrote that “the more a cultivated reason applies with deliberate purpose to the enjoyment of life and happiness, so much the more does the man fail of true satisfaction.” Reason is a mark of the linguistic coherence of a fully realized concept. The more rational the realization, the more it articulates the richness of the underlying concept, even if it does not fully satisfy what the concept is aiming at. Rational thought is defined by a particular structure that is assumed by concepts as they become acts or words. This structure aims at a satisfaction, or explication, of its own content. A rational statement, a logical argument, is like a perceptual object, in that its goal is its own actualization. Reason – in the form of propositions or inner speech – may aim to convince, criticize, dissuade or motivate, but primarily it

282 satisfies a concept by a discourse that has a speech act for an outcome. A reasoned argument may seem to compel in the agent an action that is forthcoming, but the ensuing action merely revives and further discharges the same concept that generated the argument. The agent’s argument may provoke an action in the listener, but did it cause the agent to act? It may provide a template over which the action unfolds, but there can be a considerable delay subsequent to the rationale before the action occurs. Indeed, though we assume a causal linkage of argument to action, the argument could as well follow the action as precede it. If I took a cigarette and then said, “I wanted a cigarette,” we might say the desire for a cigarette caused me to take one, but not that taking the cigarette caused the wanting, or that the statement is the reason for the prior desire. A statement before or after an action that reflects a difference in present or past tense does not reflect a difference in causal power. What is common to both statements is the affect-verb, want. Consider the person who wants a cigarette and at some point thinks or says, “I want a cigarette”, or “smoking is harmful, beneficial, impolite.” The person might employ the statement to forecast, describe or justify taking or refusing a cigarette. The statement is a trial or surrogate action that expresses the concept the action discharges. What occurs is that the taking or refusing replaces the statement. An argument on the rational grounds of an action that concludes with reasons why one should act may still not lead to action, but rather, to an avoidance or postponement of the action that was decided upon. Reason may delay an ill-considered response and allow a more thoughtful one to arise, but it may also derail a course of action that is necessary and desirable, and it may do this not by persuasion, but by exhausting the potential that would lead the concept into action. This is to say that the subjective aim of a concept actualizes in reason as a type of verbal or preverbal action. It discharges into an overt or mental statement in the same way that an object discharges an object-concept. They are both actualities that perish and are replaced. Like an action, it has an effect on other people, but also like an action, or a perception, it does not cause something further in the agent other than an awareness of his thought content, though it may deplete or facilitate the concepts behind it. Reason describes or fulfills a conceptual aim. Thus, to say, “I want a cigarette,” or to argue that smoking is good, is to declare or justify a want. Statements are outcomes of wants. The wanting combined with the concept of what is wanted is conceptual feeling. The conceptual portion distributes into objects and words, the affective portion into the feelings that

283 accompany them. The concept appears more emphatic in words, the feeling in their affective tonalities, but every word, act and object has an affective tone and every feeling has a conceptual framework. Each mode of thought, e.g. magical, paralogical, rational, is accompanied by a conceptual feeling unique to that mode. Paralogic is a form of metaphoric reasoning in which external objects have psychic powers, including that of agency. Metaphoric relations are the basis of dream, animism and creative thinking. Spencer attributed animism to the literal interpretation of metaphor. Mind reaches into animistic objects and invests them with subjective feeling. Thoughts objectify as bearers of intrapsychic properties. Subject and object are indistinctly separated. The irrational is present in the statement or behavior just beneath its surface rationality. The value and worth in the objects of rational thought are a residue of the affective content of the extrapersonal objects of animism. In rational thought, the conceptual elaboration of the intrapsychic respects the boundary of the self. This limits the exteriorization of the subjective with its objects. Unlike animism, in which subject and object inhabit a common space, rational thought divides the other from the self and, as reason develops and matures, depletes nature of psychic feeling. The magical in the external reappears when otherwise rational people revert to superstitious belief. A separation of mind and world is essential for intentional feeling. The aim of a statement or a desire must be distinct from the self to convey purpose and direction. This is the basis for the inference that desires and propositions have causal efficacy. “I want a cigarette” expresses or declares an intention. The intention does not make the statement causal, no more than does an equally intentional “inactive” statement such as “(I think that) cigarettes are harmful.” A desire, on the other hand, has a subjective aim that marks an impulse to an action. The subject does not require an agentive relation with the objects specified in the intentional state for the intentional to be a vector of feeling. Even if it is hidden in the statement, the feeling gives intentionality a direction to the aboutness that is the signal property of intentionality. Without this vector leading outward, a statement such as “cigarettes are harmful” or “there is no life on Mars” is merely a verbal gesture. Instead of merely denoting, the implicit ote I think” or “I believe” gives life to the utterance. A statement develops over time but it constitutes a unified whole. In this respect, it is a verbal object, static, like a noun, whereas the intention or feeling behind it is like a verb. One has the quality of a substance or object, the other, a transition from self to object. Action

284 begins with unconscious conceptual feeling that gets the action going, which continues as a marker for change at successive phases in the actdevelopment. Parenthetically, the verb/noun distinction goes to the difference between transitive and substantive states of mind. James noted this difference, and Dewey (1925) related it to the mind/brain problem, writing that “almost everybody is still a materialist as to matter, to which he merely adds a second rigid structure which he calls mind.” He goes on to say that some progress in the field might occur if we were forced to use only adjectives and adverbs rather than nouns for mind, matter and consciousness. Rationality and conduct How does a rational argument infiltrate mentation to influence action? Take the example of a person who is driven to an act of revenge. At first, he is irreconcilable, then he may listen to argument and, little by little, his resolve may weaken until he is persuaded that the intended act of vengeance is foolish, irrational or risky, and that a better course of action, or inaction, is available. What has reason accomplished in such a case, and how? One possibility is that rational thinking, his own and that of others, caused him to change his mind, or that he considered various options and came to a rational decision. Another is that reason installed choices which were recognized as preferable. Another is that the delay in action brought on by reflection and conversation served to mitigate anger and replace it with thought. Yet another – and I think the correct – interpretation is that reasoned arguments provided by others appealed to pre-existing values that were formerly overshadowed by a drive-like affect, i.e. anger, energizing them to the point where they could overcome the usurpation. One model for the efficacy of reason is the benefit that is held to accrue in the course of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Many therapists would argue that benefit comes about through insight, but others hold that improvement, or at least a greater ability to cope, occurs by suggestion in people who are impressionable. There is an association between improvement in therapy and how hypnotizable the person is. If this is so, the implication is that the therapist brings about a beneficial change, not by providing insights, or by reasoning with the patient, nor by describing what she or he should do, which is ordinarily ineffective. Indeed, its lack of efficacy illustrates the impotence of reason to effect meaningful change.

285 Rather, the therapist allows the client's own realizations to “sink in.” The failure of insight to alter conduct the client acknowledges as inappropriate or self-destructive indicates that reason, to the extent it influences conduct, does so indirectly. A covert metamorphosis occurs in which positive and life-enhancing values are, ideally, reinforced at the expense of maladaptive ones. The therapist nudges the client forward in the surrogate environment of therapy, which is then transferred to, or tested in, the activities of daily life. The encouragement of one set of values over another can occur merely by the questions asked or the choice of dialogue. This is associated with reduced tension and better fitness or adaptation to the conditions of life, even if a common result is an “empowerment” for decisions of greater selfinterest and a diminution of guilt for withholding actions that defer to the needs of others. More often, the power of rhetoric to persuade lies not in its logic but its form or beauty, or in the seduction or intimidation of the listener, or in the articulation and clarification of concepts that were previously inchoate. When one falls in love, a portion of the self-concept is gradually infiltrated by the beloved. When one is persuaded by reason, one’s own verbal concepts are articulated and replaced by those of the other. Perhaps the “donor” concepts are stronger, perhaps the recipient lacks confidence, possibly there is a sympathetic fusion. The persuasive rhetorician uses his voice and gestures to heighten an appeal to the emotions of an audience, while a detached argument obtains its force mainly for those already converted. If it is the case that reason does not cause an action in the agent, and does induce an action by assimilation in the listener, the strength of one's reasons for an action, whether spontaneous or indirect through persuasion, should not give them greater volitional force. The perceived strength of an argument merely points to the poverty or insufficiency of alternative concepts in the speaker or the listener or, alternatively, is mitigated by the affective strength of, or emotional commitment to, a contradictory point of view. Hume believed that “self-love” must be replaced with reasons for the sense of right to prevail (Toulman, 1953). But the reasons must either appeal to a set of non-egoist values, or demonstrate that fairness is in the self-interest. Probably, it is less the replacement of egoism by reason than the facilitation of latent exo-centric values linked to compassion that permits the self-denial necessary to impartiality. Generally, we assume that the effect of reason on moral conduct, apart from testing the truth of the facts to be decided on, is to encourage benevolence by an impersonal

286 perspective. Yet openness to reason and persuasion is accompanied by a delay in the discharge of drive and desire, which alone may tend to mitigate the egoist impulse. There must be a possibility of hesitation, doubt or conflict to make room for reason. In the example of revenge, there must be time to exhaust or abate the sense of outrage or damp the need for vindication. The promotion of unselfish attitudes occurs through a process of value-enhancement, the efficacy of which depends on the existing valuedistribution. One has to be reasonable for reason to work. Reason comes to fill the interval that hesitation provides [neoteny]. This is also the ground of choice. The absence of choice entails direct action, whether for good or bad. When values and beliefs are refractory, say in a political opinion or a religious faith, there is no “room” between beliefs/values and action for reason to expand. The psychotic cannot be persuaded his visions are unreal. The egoism of the sociopath is resistant to empathy because the other is weakly represented in the self. To say to a derelict child, “be reasonable,” is an expression of parental futility. Without the possibility of an impersonal perspective, an absence of dogmatic belief and a concern for others, reason is powerless to induce change. The essential difference is that of an unconscious process in which generic values shape the actualization of particulars, as opposed to conscious reasons, in which values derived from argument are applied to the judgment of the particulars. The specification of unconscious values into conscious particulars, in which the particulars are then evaluated by certain of the values that were assumed to guide their specification, is a shift from the process through which the particulars are realized to their logical relations in the mind and the world. There is no reason why this shift, which ruptures the continuity of non-moral and moral acts, should occur. Learned values become ingredient in the self by assimilation to a category of instinctual drive. Once an extrinsic standard, such as a custom, a law or a religious teaching, is learned, it affects behavior as an intrinsic (endogeous) value. In the agent, a proposition, a reasoned argument, realizes a concept in verbal action that may also discharge in conduct. The influence of the proposition is by a process of replacement, not induction, i.e. as a surrogate action. For desire to be authentic, moral naturalism requires an assimilation of obligation to value and, in consequence, a coherence of conduct with character. Authenticity requires a resolution of egoism with other-centered values in the adjustment of character to social responsibility. The tension of the subjective values that lead to conduct

287 mirrors the tension of conduct with the social environment in which it occurs. On the force of reason in decision-making The distinction of subject and object as different kinds of things is problematic for moral naturalism, which is grounded in a monism that rejects a simple dichotomy of the inner and the outer, or self and other, or its expression in the conflict of character with duty or the personal with the impersonal. Naturalism is consistent with the idea that a logical analysis of ethical concepts can reveal the right course to follow, but not that instruction causes the individual to follow that course. Naturalism entails a transition from non-moral to moral concepts. In contrast, the assumptions of logic reinforce their distinction in the autonomy of logical propositions, severing concepts from the psychological processes behind them. Moreover, it is well known that a moral term absent in the premiss cannot be invoked in the conclusion, so that logic is restricted to either moral or non-moral statements, leading to a further division of moral from nonmoral acts. This distinction is an outgrowth of an anti-naturalist bias, in which subjectivity refers to private feelings or dispositions, and concepts to shared mind-independent tools of thought. The identification of subjectivity with feeling entails that the psychological antecedents of propositions cannot be reconciled with the presumed objectivity of their content. The psyche is disposable if concepts are logical solids verifiable across subjects and decomposable to atomic elements. A rational argument, such as a legal opinion that is detached from the subjectivity that went into it, as well as the character that comes into play when the opinion is applied, and without the compulsion attached to a law, may be persuasive in that it encourages a course of conduct previously acceptable as an option. But without a predisposition to act in a way that is sanctioned by law, conduct and the values that support it will be resistant to argument and must be instilled by force; compulsion for conduct, intimidation or brainwashing for values. It is assumed that one weakness of subjectivism is that reasons are not used to determine the truth of an action. Joseph Conrad wrote, the artist attempts to find in all things what “is fundamental, what is enduring and essential - their one illuminating and convincing quality - the very truth of their existence.” The truth of art, or that of a subjective theory of moral

288 conduct, lies in its aesthetic value, its authenticity, not its proof or validity. How is the truth of an action determined? What is its relation to moral decision? How does one get an ethical position from the truth or falsity of a statement? Even a statement regarding conduct that is unethical on the surface, such as “John beats his wife,” can only be said to be true or false. If it is false, it does not lead to an evaluative statement, such as “John is good.” Similarly, if it is true it does not lead to the statement that “John is bad,” or even that “beating one’s wife is bad.” This opinion may be correct, but it does not follow from the truth of the statement. Evaluative truth is culture-specific. Recall the Arab saying: “Beat your wife every day. If you don't know why, she does!” If the distinction of good and bad or right and wrong were to depend on a logical judgment that is independent of intuition or the subjectivity of moral decision, statements that are so common in ethical writings, such as “most men would agree that…”, would be impermissible. Because goodness is often conceived, at least since Moore (1903), as a simple ostensive property like color, that is known immediately but cannot be demonstrated or discovered, there is an appeal to consensus, common sense and shared values in a like community. The appeal to common assent affirms that a judgment of moral conduct is subjective to its core. It also reveals the limits of logic, which is incisive when an argument is to be tested, but not decisive when a decision is to be made. Reason and causality The fundamental question is how actions or any mental contents arise. What gets a thought going, what impels it in its course, what shapes its final content? A “pacemaker” rhythm in the brain stem may initiate the state, activating a core of character embedded in drive-representations. Beliefs and values come into play. Without feeling and its interests, e.g. preferences, loyalties, reason is directionless. Without belief, reason is circular or redundant. Is reason an incitement to action, an accompaniment, a resultant or a veto? The incitement theory treats action as a kind of motion, like a vehicle that requires ignition. The problem with the theory is that rational thought would have to “get underneath” the conscious surface of the act before the directional bias is established, but preconscious thought is pre-rational, in fact irrational. The unconscious precursors of a conscious thought are not copies of the same thought when it is conscious. The antecedents of reason are characterized by paralogical, symbolic,

289 dreamwork mechanisms. Rational and irrational refer to different phases in the derivation of conceptual feeling. Reason may be the process engaged in deciding whether a belief is true or false, but we cannot say this process is the motive for an action, which is deeper, in fact a bottomless regress. I give a reason. What is my reason for giving that reason? Even doubts have a basis in unconscious presuppositions. Wittgenstein wrote, “Philosophical doubts have a foundation in instinct.” In the accompaniment theory, the act develops in parallel with thought. Acts, thoughts, percepts, all undergo a similar process of realization. The action-development does not always achieve a movement, but gesture, posture, even inaction, are forms of action-realization. For the resultant theory, thought is an output of a chain of mental events. The veto theory entails that conscious reason provides a “last minute” inhibition or a filter on acts that are initiated unconsciously. The appeal of the veto theory is that it is a last ditch effort to preserve the power of reason to effect change. Hume denied the possibility of a veto on action, though studies in brain physiology by Libet and others (see Chapter 19) lend some support to it. In microgenetic theory, the sculpting of endogenous form occurs at all phases in the derivation of the mental state. In a sculpting model, an implicit choice at every phase cancels competing options. The final actuality, the act, the thought, the object, individuates through a veto-like process that inhibits alternative routes of development over its entire trajectory. We are just conscious of the final ones, and those final ones usually involve conscious, rational thought. In deliberation or introspection, implicit selection in the process of sculpting at an early segment of cognition becomes explicit as choice. In ordinary action, this phase is similar to what William James called a “skipped intermediary,” though the phase is not skipped but transformed, and James was referring to linear thought, not the transition from potential to actual. Moreover, reasons are not simultaneous with actions, so the veto is not during the period of reasoning, which has ordinarily passed by the time the action occurs. The reasons would have to be revived to influence the act. We assume that the memory of a thought, like the memory of a perceived argument, has an effect on a subsequent thought. I think I should go to the doctor, and shortly after, or some days later, I make an appointment. How does this work? To remember a prior thought is to revive a configural sequence in relation to congruent concepts in the present state. A causal effect requires the revival, not of the original train

290 of conscious thought but of its anticipatory concepts. The thought that I should see a doctor would have to sink to a phase corresponding with that of the initiation of the act to instigate the desired action. If conscious thought is not, as such, the cause of an ensuing action, the causal influence, if any, must occur at preliminary phases of actgeneration. This means that for reason to effect an action, the effective contents are formations in the unconscious, not logical expositions at the conscious surface. Moreover, it is not so much reason itself but inner speech that is the vehicle of agency. The dynamic quality of inner speech is accentuated by its predicative quality (Vygotsky, 1962). The topic is already known. But inner speech is an actuality that perishes, not a node in a causal chain. From a microgenetic standpoint, as odd as it may seem, a convincing argument, a brilliant exposition, the agent’s rationale for a future course of action, are to be taken as aesthetic, not causal, objects, like artworks, products of the speaker's imagination that have their impact on the listener’s mind. There, in the unconscious of the listener, and if constraints are causes, they may have a causal role, but not in the mind of the speaker. Yet most people believe that reasons are causes, as well as justifications, because they are conscious, unlike drives or motivations that are beneath awareness. Those who are restrained from a course of action by reason tend to use its arguments as a justification for not doing what they probably would have preferred not to do. The reasons occur in lieu of actions. If they are persuasive to the agent, or to those to whom the reasons are directed, it is because the person has sufficient equanimity to avoid irrational conduct. No matter how detached and impartial, a rational statement is derived from unconscious, symbolic and magical thinking. Reasons are linked to personal beliefs and valuations. Collingwood thought that philosophical arguments traced to unconscious presuppositions. So do everyday acts of judgment. Wittgenstein wrote that what gave his thoughts lustre is “a light shining on them from behind...(the thoughts) do not themselves glow.” The argument for the causality of reason depends on a lack of awareness for the precursors of thought, or an unwillingness to ascribe thought to unconscious motivation. We experience our reasons as causal. We find it difficult to believe that rational thought is the inert outcome of an unconscious process that delivers propositions into awareness, that ideas, reflections, statements, intentions, have no causal power. Yet the unconscious origin of conscious content is essential if it is to conform with

291 the temporal lag in perception, or the initiation of voluntary actions prior to the awareness of a decision to act. Acts and percepts must be jointly instigated and unfold in parallel to be synchronized. The coordination is not a conscious function. If action followed immediately on perception, i.e. first one perceives the object, then one initiates an action in response to it, by the time the action is mobilized the object is at another point in spacetime. In microgenetic theory, the initial construct is a combined act-object. This construct diverges into the separate but conjoined paths of act- and object-development, with language an offshoot of both branches. The process from unconscious depth to conscious surface is a qualitative sequence that reiterates like a fountain. Consciousness and reason are near the spray at the surface; they neither cause nor initiate, nor induce other reasons, all of which instead are ways of analyzing underlying concepts. For example, the thought or statement, “I will move my finger”, that precedes a finger movement, and the movement it seems to cause, represent the discharge of a single concept, first into the thought, then into the action, not the effects on a movement of a prior thought. Either the thought or the action may predominate, and the sequence can be reversed first the action, then the thought - since the same concept discharges into both (Fig. 1).

Fig. 10.1 The decision to act and the action are generated out of the same concept.

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Thought can also discharge into painting, dance, music, etc. As writing is a literary art, speech is a vocal one. Discourse or conversation can aim at beauty of expression in poetry, persuasion in rhetoric or clarity in logic. These are all manifestations of the language art. To say a statement is rational is comparable to saying an artwork is beautiful. The rational has features of art in harmony, balance and proportion. Reason formalizes and refines language in the same way that an artwork may formalize a musical or spatial cognition. A rational argument, like a logical or mathematical proof, is a work of beauty that is to be admired, illustrative but not instigatory. Like beauty, reason may inspire action in others, but does not impel it in the subject. In fact, folly has a stronger influence on action than reason, partly because it arises at phases closer to the unconscious sources of action in drive, but also because feeling is concentrated in a personal belief, not distributed into impersonal knowledge. Reasoned arguments do, of course, become a part of social discourse and exert their effects insidiously in the habits of social exchange and the education of values. Ideally, this effect limits self-indulgence by solidifying what is rational into a cultural tradition. There is a gradual assimilation or inculcation of reason into character in the form of values that are reasonable. In this way, reason partitions the force of the will that otherwise goes directly to action. In sum, the process that leads to a rational thought or utterance passes from configurations in the unconscious to contents in consciousness. By the time the content reaches consciousness, most of the work has been done. Once conscious, the content perishes to be replaced by the next in the series. The rules of logic and syntax are accounts of constraints on the phase-transition that supports this process. The “bottom-up” transition implies that rational thought does not propagate “top-top” at the conscious surface, but is deposited with consciousness in repeated salvoes. A proposition does not impel the next content. Rather, each salvo samples that much more the potential of the underlying concept. The logical form of the content is achieved in the transition to consciousness, not in the manipulation of contents already in awareness. From this perspective, reason serves as a format for attitudes or dispositions that are analyzed as they surface out of pre-lexical phases and then become known to the subject. Though it is notoriously difficult to do so, the subject can then critique the conscious products of his own imagination.

293 A syntax of reason Sprigge (1993) has written that the realization that reason “breaks up the essential wholeness of reality by discrete concepts” has lead some philosophers, e.g. Bergson, to search for a deeper understanding through intuition, or others to search for a higher form of rationality. In its purest form, as logic, reason does not add to our knowledge but certifies and fortifies what is already known. Logic concerns the relations or correlations between simple or complex propositions, instances, symbols or classes. The laws of logic, like those of chess, are formal descriptions of the way the chess or language game is played. However, they do not necessarily govern what goes on in the mind of a thinker when he makes a move on the chessboard, or produces a proposition. Bertrand Russell said, “Even in the most logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at something new.” Intuition, inference, are antecedent to linguistic analysis, persisting even in people with a massive stroke and profound loss of language. Some years ago I gave cases with total aphasia a choice of two pictures, such as a closed and an open door, and told them to point to the picture corresponding to “John forgot to close the door.” They were usually able to point to the correct picture, though they exhibited no comprehension of the individual words in the sentence. This observation shows that the meaning in pre-lexical constructs can be extracted before subjects are conscious of the individual words. Propositions arise out of these pre-lexical concepts and are shaped into rational form by unconscious patterns of thought. Some non-linguistic concepts also exhibit a logical structure, e.g. music, mathematics, though it is difficult to characterize concepts without using a language-based terminology. Poincaré wrote that mathematical truths came to him as intuitions, but their proofs had to be worked out arduously over time. Bach’s inventions were often improvisations that presumably arose spontaneously from unconscious sources. Syntax is a system of rules that govern combinations of basic elements. These rules are regularities in language use that are learned by children as they retain language productions approved by others and discard those that are rejected. Children generate utterances spontaneously, but grammatical speech and rational thought are learned by imitation, or more precisely, by adaptation or a process of progressive linguistic “fitness,” as non-grammatical or irrational statements are misunderstood and/or corrected. Gradually, they apprehend the coherence of words and statements, what is a reasonable utterance, and what constitutes a rational

294 sequence of propositions and actions. These “rules” become linguistic and conceptual habits that compose the grammar of a language. A grammar evolves over time, tolerating alterations precisely because it is not a fixed system of rules but a pattern of regularities that conforms to adaptive principles. In thought, habits of conceptual or sentential relations constitute a kind of vocabulary of rational forms or a formal system of logic. Reason is that form of propositional content communicated in rational discourse; grammar is what makes this communication possible. The rules of syntax determine the structural relations of words in sentences as a kind of filter through which the words individuate. The rules of logic specify relations of meaning within and between sentences. Since a statement embodies only part of the meaning it points to, reason is a search for more precise reference and stability. This is accomplished by eliminating ambiguity and narrowing interpretive possibility, precisely the opposite of what art seeks to accomplish. The usual approach to reason involves an extreme atomic logic that resolves propositions “into externally-related atoms-terms” (Uchenko, 1929). Frege argued that logic is “a formal science with no special concern with thinking as a human activity.” Lévi-Strauss attempted to do the same for primitive thought, in which formal contrasts were taken to involve entirely abstract entities (Leach, 1970). In the supposed autonomy of logic, logical truths, like mathematical ones, are shared perceptual objects that, in principle, are independent of experience. Uchenko notes (but disagrees with) this common philosophical bias when he writes, “A proposition is presented apart from and independently of the concrete and existential source of its birth, if there is any.” The proposition is no more independent of the mind than the “external” objects to which it refers. Facts and propositions issue from mental states and detach as independent contents, like objects in this regard. The truth of a statement depends on other contents in the same mind, or on consensus, which is merely a massed perception. The psychic infrastructure of a proposition is the system of beliefs and values out of which it arises. This infrastructure is evident in the assertion of the proposition, its defense or negation, and the conviction in its truth. The proposition is closer in this respect to a judgment. Uchenko also writes that the relation of the unity and meaning of a proposition to its content is like the relation of Plato’s forms (Ideas) to the content of life and nature, a relation comparable to that of potential to actual.

295 I am mindful of McTaggart’s comment that “no one ever went about to break logic, but in the end logic broke him,” and still earlier, the remark of Plotinus that “he who tries to rise above reason falls outside it.” Nor am I a logician. However, the point to be made here is that the rules of logic, like those of syntax, are extracted from patterns of grammatical usage and logical thought. They are regularities that respond to the conditions under which language is employed, not controlling functions. The whole/part individuation of one phase to the next provides a model for the grammatical derivation of words out of kernels. Recursiveness and embedding reflect patterns that are linked to context/item shifts in other modalities. What is produced within the limits of an acceptable syntax is determined by the implicit beliefs and conceptual feelings of the agent. Logic or reason has to do with the form of the product. What do we learn from a syllogism that we didn’t know in the first place, except that it is true? And even then it is tricky. In an age of brain maps and cloning, is it the case that all men are mortal? In sum, reason is adaptive thinking, whether demonstrative or discursive, while logic is reason in a formal mode. Reason is the agent's interpretation of why a choice has been made, logic is the formal validation of a rational line of inquiry. Logic is to productive thought as a formal theory of syntax is to an utterance. If the source of adaptive thinking is replenished from below, all productive thinking is a type of intuition or insight in which unconscious potential is displayed in the elements it gives rise to. This implies that mystical thought or inspiration is not a rare event in opposition to logic and beyond the pale of scientific study; rather, it is the very model of everyday thinking. In the spectrum from potential to actual, reason reflects the analysis of contextual phases at the inception of a thought as they pass into the final parts. Intuition generates, reason parses, providing coherence and knowability to sources deemed mystical precisely because they are unconscious. The coherence of thought stems from the unity of its source beneath the multiplicity of its products. Thomas Hughes has written that the deepest insight comes only when the mind operates in it entirely as a “self-knit whole” at its highest (one could add, deepest) point of intensity. A rational morality A morality is rational when the reasons for an action elicit a judgment of equity according to an external standard or ideal of fairness or law. The

296 standard is a kind of social organism, external, yet internalized, normatively, in the form of personal valuations, and enforced by their constraints on self-expression in addition to the strictures of law. In developed thought, morality is related to rationality. The objectivity of reason and its consensual validation combine to externalize the rational argument so that it becomes an object independent of the thinker, something the subject contributes to as a shared enterprise. Eventually, these objectivized consensual products of the imagination, parsed into rational form – just or unjust – become the laws and censures of the society. The objectivity – internally as reason, externally as law – provides the foundations of a moral code, as well as of praise and of punishment. Kant associated an appeal to reason with a retributive theory of punishment. Reason is judgmental, thus providing the grounds of punitive action. Reasons are the inner justifications of an agent’s conduct, whether they compel or excuse, but they also serve as external justifications by others to praise conduct if it conforms to a set of rules, or punish it if it is deviant. This is not to say that reason inevitably supports a just decision. What is rational for one individual may not be for another. A reasoned justification may differ from one culture to another. Reasonable people argue about the law, what constitutes an infraction, what is to be done about it. It is often held that every basis for moral action other than reason prioritizes the dominance of man’s lower nature, placing the vices and virtues in the same class. The problem stems from the lingering distinction of reason and appetite and the difficulty to resolve them in a unitary theory. Philosophy reifies, even deifies reason, with emotion the beast within, while psychology and neuroscience reinforce this distinction, assigning reason to the neocortex and emotion to the older limbic system. The notion still persists that limbic emotion discharges upward to cortex for subjective feeling, and downward for emotional display. The most enduring attempt to bring the two together was by Freud in the metapsychology. The theory had the merit of a linkage at successive stages in thought production, but failed because the distinction of affect and idea or emotion and thought was maintained throughout. This was inevitable given that the theory, based on a cathexis of perceptual and memory traces, postulated that libidinal drive activates ideas conceived as the fundamental units of thought. In moral philosophy, the emotional grounds of a decision are usually conceived as secondary to its rational grounds. If the emotional grounds

297 were primary, the decision would not be rational. If emotions are conceived as intrusions, distractions or distortions of reason, or as reactions called up by the reasons on which a decision is based, reason would be hostage to emotion, thus irrational, or it would prevail in the presence of unresolved conflicts. I may do the wrong thing because I am swayed by emotion, or I may do the right thing and pay a price. Some form of reason and emotion inheres in all acts of cognition. Rational or irrational choices are made every moment without a bearing on ethics. What, then, distinguishes a moral decision other than its content? Are there situations in which choice, conflict and the interplay of reason and emotion are unique to moral decisions, say, when self-interest is set against obligation, or do such decisions differ from other decisions only in their moral implications? Consider some examples. As a doctor I am asked to intervene to save the life of a child and an adult, but I can only help one of them. Should the potential of the child or the accomplishments of the adult play a part in my decision? Potential may not be realized, actualities may not recur. If the present has priority, I choose to help the adult. If the future is a priority, then I choose the child. If potential did not count, abortion would not be immoral at any stage in gestation, but euthanasia would be immoral for a person suffering with an incurable disease. The situation changes if expectations have equal weight. Suppose the child and adult differ in race, ethnic or family background, and so on. If these are deciding factors, the choice would seem to be odious, if not immoral, but not illogical, since the quality of the life saved, or the contribution of that child or adult to society is linked, statistically, to these various factors. Reason does not tell us that one life is worth the same as another, nor that all people should have equal opportunity, nor that a human life is worth more than that of a subhuman primate or dolphin, or that a Down’s child is worth as much as a normal child. What if the adult is a relative and the child is a stranger? If all other factors were equal and loyalties forced the decision, would that make the act immoral? Every loyalty is a bias. If the adult is a great poet in his prime and the child is retarded, the choice seems clearer, but one is rarely confronted with such oppositions. Who is to say all life is of equal worth, or that one life is worth more than another? What is my obligation in these situations? It does not seem that there is an obligation to choose a child over an adult, or the reverse, nor does logic provide me with the motivation to act in a just way, though it does provide a justification for whatever choice I make. My choice will be determined by my values, but in none of

298 the above instances is self-interest involved other than to avoid censure for an irresponsible decision. And if there is no one to observe my conduct, there is only self-censure. My life and self-interest are not at stake, yet moral choices are involved. If the choices are equally weighted, or I choose to avoid a decision and flip a coin, that seems to be the least moral, yet also the least self-interested, thing to do. The ingredients of choice become moral when unhealthy or selfish values enter into the choices, even if they are vetted by reason. Suppose a doctor must decide on whether to treat an elderly person’s heart condition with medication or surgery. The former is chosen and death follows a few months later. In such a decision, the statistics of medical outcomes are not always helpful, especially when there is evidence to support either form of therapy. For a given patient, the population studies are often inconclusive. Other factors come into play, such as discomfort, post-operative recovery, side-effects of medication, the will to live, the desire for a peaceful death, the quality of life that remains, and so on. Now, if among the varied feelings and ideas that go into such a decision, personal gain should become a factor, for example, the fee for a surgical procedure, no matter what decision is made it is tainted by a kind of ugliness. One is never quite sure what role the selfish value played in the decision-making. Even if the decision is rational, and correct, even if one’s conduct is unblemished, the awareness of self-interest suggests an immoral bias, even if the final decision was ethical. Doing one’s best and hoping for the worst is subjectively immoral, hoping for the best and not doing what it takes is objectively immoral. One is hypocrisy, the other cowardice. Feeding the poor while despising them, having empathy for the poor but doing nothing to help, are immoral in different ways, namely, in character and in conduct. Eliade wrote that the liberated man lives in a way that is objective or disinterested, i.e. selfless. The consciousness of “it acts”, not “I act” has the act going out through the mind with the self a product, not a cause. Thus the liberated man is beyond responsibility, has no limits, is a witness. The position of Kant was that the aim of practical morals, with detachment or impersonality, is to develop a will that is esteemed for itself. Yet even a decision made with the best of intentions that is the most logical path to take has to contend with the “what if” of an outcome that cannot be known in advance and can lead to a kind of retroactive guilt. What of the path not chosen? Did one act in an unselfish way? Was one's reasoning correct? What part did personal interests play in a decision that should have been

299 made (but never is) on purely objective grounds? The values of the agent are always in play, whether it is his fate or others that is at stake. One concludes that from a psychological standpoint, moral decision differs from other decisions only in its content, not its psychological structure. The point of this exercise is, partly, to demonstrate that obligations, even rational ones, are not decisive in moral decisions, and may lead to unjust or unfortunate outcomes, while personal values are necessary and decisive in moral conduct though they are based in feelings. Reason and emotion are not separate faculties that recombine. Drive-representations, i.e. conceptual primitives infused with drive energy, individuate affectladen pre-object concepts, which then specify the acts, objects and ideas that populate the mind and space. Reason is the pattern of propositions into which concepts unfold. Every decision in life is a rationalization of feeling.

Chapter 11. What is a Good Act? An ethical act returns one’s happiness to the universal. Irving Massey

Introduction Morality lies in the capacity to choose and the responsibility that comes with decision, but choice depends on values embedded in character. Desire and conflict are manifestations of such valuations, while the final moral act is an adaptation of the psychic to a social world of duty and commitment. The satisfaction of a desire depends on the mix of competing values, conditions, outcomes, as well as the effects of encouragement, censure, discretion, courage, brashness, reprisal, etc. This forbidding mix of influences cannot be readily decanted to a single rule or principle, since it is not possible for either the subject or the observer to ascertain motivation or character with a reasonable degree of assurance, given the lack of internal or external access to constructs in the agent’s unconscious. Thus, the tendency in moral philosophy has been to slice off psychology, eliminate the psychic precursors of action, and focus on conduct, its context and justification. Psychology is individual, covert, inferential, messy and complex, while action for the most part is clear and explicit. That such an account gives only the outer half or shell of a moral philosophy has been acknowledged by many philosophers. For example, Schlick wrote, “The central problem of ethics is a pure question of psychology.” For Ayer, “Ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychology or sociology.” And of course, Shakespeare: “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Certainly, for a moral subjectivism, the antecedents of an action are fundamental. A judgment of right and wrong applied to conduct eliminates the psychic and entails a moral calculus in which personal advantage sorts through options and outcomes in relation to the norms of a society, its laws and rules of social exchange. Such an account has nothing to do with the activity and evolutionary origin of intrinsic mind. The objective judgment

302 isolates conduct from values, from loyalties and experiential biases, achieving a pragmatic social balance at the expense of psychological complexity. The problem for moral objectivism is to distinguish human conduct from an improvisation or artifact. If a robot could be programmed to behave “ethically” in most circumstances, we would still not say the robot is worthy of moral praise. The mind behind the behavior counts for something. A moral judgment based on conduct is like the performance of a chess-playing computer, in which the brute strength of its computational program is unrelated to patterns of human thought. The goal of a moral philosophy is a human psychology that incorporates a personal judgment of one’s acts and aspirations, ideally, a self-realization of the better portion of one's character. The subjectivity of the good There are many reasons why a person may not act on a desire; lack of opportunity is one of them. Should the lack of opportunity to commit an immoral act absolve the individual of responsibility? The desire is not erased once its motor portion is eliminated. Even with the motor portion, there are degrees of agency and passivity, e.g. the person who does little or makes a token effort, or invites misfortune through distant or indirect effects. An example might be a well-meaning judge who releases a dangerous convict prematurely, or a caring psychiatrist who feels bound by confidentiality not to disclose that his client is a murderer. The ethical guidelines are reasonably clear, but doing nothing to actively prevent a crime or to assist in its prosecution makes the clinician a de facto coconspirator. The parent who aids – but does nothing to cure – a son who is a drug addict and prone to violence gives support to someone who will carry out a criminal act. What is the moral basis of a loyalty if it results in harm to others? What is the responsibility of doing nothing to prevent a crime? Inaction is not neutrality, it is a form of action. It is not a simple matter to decide on the agent’s responsibility for a crime, but it is especially difficult for those who aid the criminal either by omission or commission, for the nature of every event depends on how its direct and indirect causal relations are construed. More generally, how does intentional inaction differ from intentional action? Does a good and honest person who comes upon and keeps a satchel of money become a thief when otherwise he would never have thought to steal? Does a person for whom an opportunity stimulates a

303 desire differ from one for whom a desire seeks an opportunity? This alone exposes the inadequacy of a conduct-based model, as well as an account of the good, such as that of Ayer, as approbation added to action. Similarly, while the fact that I can imagine something terrible happening to a good person is not a stain on my character, the wish that it should happen reveals an unflattering aspect of my personhood. We would agree that acting on such a wish is immoral, and punishable, but also that someone who wishes harm on another person has an reprehensible character, even if character is not punishable unless it spills into conduct. More precisely, we praise or punish conduct that is right or wrong regardless of good or bad character. The problem of having the most vicious desires that fail to materialize for fear of reprisal, e.g. a secret Nazi, is similar to expressing the most unselfish conduct without awareness of choice, e.g. a benevolent moron or human automaton. In both, conduct is irreproachable, in one case from the concealment of wickedness, lack of opportunity or fear of reprisal, in the other, from training, habit or lack of imagination. Suppose I detest someone to the point of wanting to kill him, but treat him with deference and respect, perhaps even save his life to advance a career, or for more nefarious purposes. What of the actions of a Dr. Mengele, who prevents a death from starvation in order to use the person for some ghastly experiment? Is one action good, the other bad, do we praise the first and condemn the second? Intentions are primary to resolve or disambiguate values and choices. Most choices are not so dramatic, but they are the daily lot of the politician, the underling in a corporation who schemes revenge, the uxorious husband, and so on. What moral credit accrues to good conduct when it is uncoupled from good intent? A person could spend years planning a hideous crime and be prevented at the last moment from carrying it out by an accident, a traffic jam, bad weather. His life would otherwise be a succession of good acts, but would he be a good person? Choice is central to moral action, but there are desires without (explicit) choices, choices without acts, and acts without choice, though there is an implicit choice in every thought and act. Is right action that is automatic and consistent with character less moral for the lack of explicit choice or conscious intention? For the individual trained to “do the right thing” – the loyal husband, the faithful wife, the devoted parent, the good citizen, the honest worker – the morality of everyday life is rarely in doubt, even if a scrutiny of every act on the palette of possible interests could arouse a crisis of indecision. A child given moral training may exhibit ethical conduct as an adult without being aware of a serious moral choice.

304 Moral training will bias decision to what is assumed to be right. Does an individual merit praise for right conduct if values inculcated in childhood unconsciously steer decisions to morally justifiable aims? To say one is a good person in spite of hypocrisy or a sinister motive does not ring true. Such cases might be explained by Kant's distinction of means and ends, or an act-based calculus, but they do raise the question of how good acts performed for covert selfish reasons differ from those in which character is aligned with conduct. Mill thought in such cases a selfish motive did not deprive a good act of moral credit, for example, rescuing a child for money. Here, mercenary conduct is coherent with avaricious character, but for the moral praise that Mill would bestow, right conduct has to be assessed from a fully objective standpoint independent of character. In contrast, the Christian ethic that a wish can be as immoral as an act concedes that concepts are as real as objects. If, as is said, when the “heart is pure” good conduct will follow, the better portion of goodness owes to an elevated spirit, honesty, sincerity and compassion. But thoughts and words, ideas and acts, differ in kind as well as degree. A person may detest someone yet do him no harm, while another person may have a mild dislike for the individual or not even know him, and shoot him over a minor quarrel, or for money, and without reflection. Wishing someone dead is not a weak form of killing him, as wanting to help or hurt is a far cry from doing so. It is not clearly a matter of the intensity with which a wish builds up and forces an action. There is a qualitative difference in form between thinking a thing and saying or doing it. An act can be arrested, vetoed or evaded. The stoppage or veto of an action is an active doing, as much a sign of character as a desire, though its sources are more ambiguous. A desire is a more certain key to character, for there is clarity in the goal. Some argue that a veto is effected at the final conscious phase of act-development (see the previous chapter). But a veto is also an act, as value-driven as an affirmation, even if its roots are less transparent. There are many reasons to say no to an egoistic impulse, but only one, compassion (some would add, obligation), to say yes to unselfishness. A negative judgment does not always expose its reasons. A malicious desire vetoed out of fear of punishment lends no moral credit for restraint; indeed, it may add cowardice to malevolence. A person who wishes to kill someone yet acts toward him in a kindly manner would be termed servile and unworthy, as much for malevolence as for insincerity. If he acts on the wish, he is an authentically bad person, a murderer but not a

305 hypocrite. If a person is polite or accommodating to someone he wishes to harm, we say the conduct is ethical but not the person. The objective judgment separates the two. Values distill to an average or compromise in action. If one set of values does not predominate, there is indecision, inaction or “paralysis.” A person cannot act in a manner that denies his authentic nature unless there is coercion, but even a surrender to coercion reveals values. Since action or inaction originates in the person, it must reflect character, though an action not considered or aborted at one time may occur later under similar circumstances. However, it is not the “same” person who performs the “same” act on two comparable occasions. Indeed, failure to act on one occasion may itself be the deciding factor, should that occasion recur. Each moment, action resolves a mix of personal values, past experience, present conditions and future expectations, even if the person is revealed to be someone he himself does not admire. Are we not all in this situation? Do we not perceive ourselves to be better than our acts? Is it not the fate of our humanity to be crushed by our ideals? What to do? Those who do not feel conflict in moral choice and are convinced they are in the right, or less aware of alternatives, are more secure in their beliefs. Such people are probably more critical of values inconsistent with their own and more likely to impose them on others. This tendency is strong in religious belief, e.g. those who protest abortion tend to invoke religious ideology. A person who struggles with this choice could hardly fail to be sensitive to the pain of others in a similar situation. In contrast, those who accept the right to abortion are likely to accept the principle of freedom of choice and by virtue of this belief are unlikely to impose a libertarian ethic on others, since the essence of the ethic is a tolerance of other beliefs. The anti-abortion movement is euphemistically termed “prolife.” It tends to be self-righteous, even to the point that doctors who do abortions are murdered. In contrast, those who are tolerant of abortion prefer to say they are in favor of individual choice, not abortion, assuming the right of others to decide as they wish. Since the issue touches on so many concepts and values, it is not possible to say what is right in such instances, only what one believes to be right given a set of beliefs and values. Under these conditions, to assert what is right for others, other than the freedom to choose, in its intolerance of divergent opinion and closure

306 to unbiased debate, is itself a species of immorality. It has to be conceded that “free will” comes at a price; once confronted with indecision, one is already in trouble, the more so if choices have equal weight. The greater the menu of options, the multitude of perspectives, the detachment, the less a person is likely to commit to a single path of action. The openness obligated by reason becomes a sanctuary for moral retreat. Reason confronts options exposed in the suspension of action and a withdrawal from objects. The attenuation uncovers the choice implicit or buried in what appears to be a “singleminded” intention. The delay of action allows the individual to explore the conceptual under-surface of his objects. The intention toward a single act or object is replaced by the choice prior to its individuation, which actualizes not as an object in the world but as an idea, image or concept in the mind. Intention is replaced by uncertainty, purposefulness by indecision. This is the birth of moral thought. Do we not often have the feeling that choice saps purpose when decision is required? The uncertainty is the potential in options unchosen. A decision postponed waits for hidden options to reveal themselves, rather like suspending love for a partner in the hope that a greater love will come along. But we do not decide to fall in love. Socrates is reputed to have said to a young man who was undecided as to marriage, son, whatever you do you'll regret it. The regret may be even greater for having asking the question, “Should I get married?” for it may reveal uncertainty about the intensity of love for the other, no less than hesitation on entering the state of marriage. Such decisions, one says, are made in the heart, not the head. The more rational the lover, the less likely he is to marry. One who fails to commit to marriage, or to any action, may be commended for objectivity yet indicted for a lack of full engagement. The more dispassionate the choice, the harder it is to make. Should one decide on a career, or should that too be an act of love? If the great decisions come from the heart, what of the small ones? How do we decide to lift a finger? We can begin by putting reason aside, for it does not help us to act. Knowledge is essential in providing conceptual alternatives, but it must be implanted in values for the right act to arise. This is the Socratic paradox that knowledge does not lead to virtue. An emotional push is necessary for choice. The choice is not only for the action, but also for the reasons that go into its justification, since the action is probably biased in advance of the knowledge that went into its calculation. Put differently, when we think about a choice, we select or allow to surface those reasons which justify

307 the choice. Since we are not yet conscious of what the choice will be, we assume that reason will help us decide, whereas it is belief or value that determines the bias in action that becomes conscious only after its impact on thought or action. Hume famously wrote, “When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.” What are emotional preferences if not marks of character, those innate and unremembered pleasures, as Wordsworth wrote, “as have no slight or trivial influence on that best portion of a good man's life.” Choice and detachment Wittgenstein said that his discovery as a child that he could get more from lying than honesty started him off in philosophy. Why speak the truth if a lie is more effective? Lying is active deception. How does it relate to accepting a falsehood as a truth? This is the same distinction as that of moral action and inaction. Does the lack of conviction in the truth of one’s own argument point to a tolerance of error, self-deception, an embrace of falsehood? The force of an argument naturally tends to be dulled by too great an insistence on possible errors in its rationale, but does not excessive zeal in argumentation betray an insufficient sensitivity to the spirit of detachment in which truth is to be won? Absent dialectic, an argument is more often wrong than right. A half-truth is also half-false. Do we not all know people we would describe as “often in error but never in doubt”? Of course, the possibility of error is inherent in the search for truth, but the failure to search for error, a too hasty leap to a truth, or an easy acceptance of dogma – scientific, philosophical or religious – are marks of intellectual dishonesty and an attack on truth itself. Without choices there are no considered actions. Almost every action, even one in solitude, can be construed as a moral decision, even if we are unaware we have made a moral choice. Should every decision of moral consequence involve a dialectic of alternatives? Should every meal be accompanied by an awareness of hunger and famine in the world? Should every pleasure call up the sufferings and injustice that are the daily lot of others? Actually, I think they should. One cannot be oblivious to unhappiness other than one’s own, or think of the suffering of others only when confronted by it. The struggle of others to survive is not assuaged by a twinge now and then of cocktail party compassion that passes quickly with the next martini. The needs of others ought to be constantly before

308 one’s eyes. To act with an internalized social conscience is to be morally scrupulous. Darkness should remind us of light, the Buddhists say, and in the same sense the knowledge of life’s gifts ought to be tinged with a melancholy for their loss, for oneself and for others. The closer the psyche to conduct, the more the act is sculpted by the external, the more wish and meaning adapt to the environment, the more duty takes the place of desire. Values that approximate duties raise questions as to the legitimacy of choice. We expect the individual to obey the law but also to question its fairness. That was the basis for the Nuremberg trials. A choice may entail a conflict of two objectivities, such as a duty and a promise, or two subjectivities, such as two values, or desires in opposition, or between a desire and an obligation. The more objective and narrow the choice, the less the contribution of a desire or value, the more choice approaches taste or preference, the more the core character of the individual is needed for the choice to be moral. One can show ethical behavior without a moral point of view, as one can admire a symphony or a painting and not have an aesthetic experience. A lack of engagement in moral action can itself be immoral, while a lack of aesthetic appreciation is, at worst, boorish. The opposite of aesthetic is, I suppose, anaesthetic. As the opposite of a positive is a negative, the opposite of good is not evil but indifference. Good and evil are valuations of others in which the other is an object of compassion or brutality, of creation or destruction. The good act is the opposite of indifference and inaction, but the evil act can follow on indifference. Lack of conflict may be a sign of moral inertia and indifference to the plight of others. For those who show concern, conflict is unavoidable. And the conflict includes our own acts of immorality. In Blake's words, “Pity would be no more/ if we did not make somebody poor.” To assume a position of detached objectivity is one of the more difficult, I would say impossible, tasks of life, especially in the sphere of morals. The method of science is to suspend an individual perspective. However, this is not a true objectivity, for that would be non-perspectival, which is hard to conceptualize. We live in a landscape perceived through the narrow portals of our organs of perception and the knowledge, through belief, that they acquire. How rare to meet someone who does not approach life from the standpoint of his own limited experience! One soon learns that to converse with most people is to sample dispositions tainted by life's misadventures or native presuppositions, rather than to explore a topic with dispassionate curiosity. The philosopher is hardly immune to this bias, in

309 that he brings feelings, beliefs and predispositions to theoretical disputations that, like science, only appear to be objective by virtue of their abstraction from everyday life. Yet how is the balance to be established? A detachment that approaches indifference or an absolute objectivity, a god’s-eye or Darwinian view of man, is silent on moral issues, and for this reason is less desirable than one “contaminated” by feeling. Morality, for Kant, Levinas and others, requires disinterest or detachment, i.e. objectivity as impersonality, not indifference, which could reflect moral ignorance or an absence of empathy. The detachment is less the assumption of another perspective than the capacity to entertain multiple perspectives, as in dialectic, in which personal interest is neutralized by deference to alternative points of view. Ambiguity is the antidote to dogma and error. This entails a categorical perspective that does not capitulate to rival attitudes but surrounds them. Take again the example of abortion. Were one to approach the problem from the standpoint of a fixed opinion, that standpoint would provide a fortress from which other views could be assailed. These other views include a different concept of society, of mother, fetus, a definition of life, of murder, consciousness, the nature and maturation of self-identity, what it means to be a person, the role of future potential in the decision to abort, the family and social conditions into which the child would be born, and so on. However complicated it may be, once we accept a categorical perspective that embraces multiple opinions, we augment the moral worth – the credit or the blame – of whatever decision is made. One does not have to be an advocate to avoid indifference, what Shaw called the greatest sin. There is the indifference of apathy, and the indifference of moral depravity. It is one thing to be indifferent to others, as if humanity were a moonscape of rocks and craters; it is another to torture them without pity. The sadistic impulse involves valuation and pleasure seeking. Evil is a positive valuation of the suffering inflicted on others. The suffering evokes pleasure rather than compassion. Evil is parallel with good in the valuation given to others. In evil, it is the suffering of others that gives pleasure to the agent. Goodness takes pleasure in alleviating that suffering. Apathy or indifference is opposed to good and evil, in that it is not a lack of valuation but an active (de)valuation, a state in which objects are valueless. Apathy involves a withdrawal from the world or, more precisely, a failure of the affective life to fully penetrate objects. If apathy proceeds far enough, value is completely withdrawn and objects become unreal. Moral indifference is

310 the failure to act or feel when the fate of others is at stake. That is why to be free of blame is not to be blameless. One can justly be accused of the crime of lack of empathy. Conversely, a passionate engagement with life and the affairs of others may give the sense of a life lived intensely, but engagement only for self tends to immunize the person against the opinions of others and prevent a fair treatment of those who do not share the same intensities. Think of the ardor of the revolutionary who becomes entrenched in the ruthless dogma of his own rhetoric. Some things are easy to hate or love, it is all the others that cry out for attention. The ataraxia - disinterest or “undisturbedness” - of the gods who are immortal, thus changeless, is an unacceptable attitude for man. Perhaps an individual could be excused from moral condemnation if he were as indifferent to his own fate as to others. If he is without desire to live, he has left the world already even if he is still alive. The Arhat at the threshold of nirvana is, in this sense, close to the suicide on the edge of despair. One has given up desires, the other has given up satisfying them. The first is an agent of his choices, the second, a victim. Yet death, nirvana, relinquishment, transcendence, await them all like moths that circle the flame of an illusory agency. The suicide can hardly be blamed for lack of compassion if his life no longer matters. Usually, suicide is a private affair but now and then others are recruited involuntarily. What are we to make of the pilot of the Egypt Air flight who forced his plane into the sea, killing everyone aboard? This is similar to the moral depravity of the sadist, who is indifferent to the sufferings of his victims but enjoys inflicting pain. This man enacted violence on himself as well as others, perhaps under the delusion that he was hastening their entrance to paradise. Neural correlates The observation that damage to the frontal lobes can lead to antisocial behavior has, in the work of some writers, given rise to the absurd notion of a moral center in this area of the brain. It is argued that the rules of conduct are stored in a specific location which, when damaged, results in a person being unable to distinguish between right and wrong. To be charitable, if right and wrong are objective judgments of conduct, and conduct is driven by subjective need, anti-social or even criminal conduct could be explained as an exaggeration of self-interest to the point where adaptation to the social environment is overwhelmed by subjective bias.

311 However, frontal lobe damage does not create criminals; it disinhibits the sexuality, foolishness or aggression that lurks within all of us, and accounts for impulsiveness and lack of forethought. A patient who is disinhibited or easily distracted will not suddenly lack concern or compassion for others unless that was a part of his character prior to brain injury. A lesion does not destroy a center or a function, it reveals or accentuates trends of comportment or existing traits of character. The conscious or introspective knowledge of right and wrong does not motivate action. A person may not know the difference between right and wrong, or be unable to give evidence in language that such differences are known, yet he will not necessarily act in a wrongful manner. Knowing the distinction between right and wrong does not determine the correctness of conduct. That is the effect of its sources in value and belief. If the beliefs and values that underlie moral knowledge were erased in the brain, it would be as if the person landed in a strange or alien culture, where there were no norms of behavior. However, in frontal cases, the knowledge of right and wrong is not lost. Indeed, such cases know and can describe what right and wrong are, they can tell what is the right thing to do on a given occasion; they just do not use this knowledge to control their actions. But, do the rest of us make decisions based on what is right or wrong? We examine a path for its rightness as well as its risks, opportunities, etc., and hopefully steer a course based on other-centered values that guarantee a tacit sense of what is right. One can say, for example, that it is wrong to steal or hurt someone, but what part of that knowledge is effective in action? The value of the other that anticipates the statement that stealing is wrong, the need that motivates the theft, the fear of punishment that prevents it, and so on? The point is that conscious knowledge of right and wrong is not so much a prescription for action as a justification for actions motivated by the values through which knowledge was installed by experience. Bradley (1927) wrote, “That which tells us what in particular is right and wrong is not reflection but intuition.” The idea that the knowledge of right and wrong can tell one what to do is sheer casuistry. It is an example of the error noted by Bradley, who argued that many difficulties of moral reasoning “arise from reflection, which wants to act from explicit principles, and so begins to abstract and divide and, thus becoming one-sided, makes the relative absolute. A person with frontal lobe damage may commit a wrong and know that it is wrong, and also make proper judgments of right and wrong on the actions of others, yet there is a dissociation of knowledge and

312 action. They are aware their actions are improper but cannot inhibit them. Conduct may be inappropriate but rarely is it criminal. More commonly, there is a change of manners or propriety, rather than wrongful action. They are more likely to urinate in public than injure someone. A personal case with massive bifrontal lesions took his hand out of his underwear to shake hands, until he was taught to salute. The loss of a center for right and wrong should lead to right and wrong actions by chance, which does not occur. That a center for right and wrong is not destroyed is shown by the fact that patients describe the proper course of action even if they cannot inhibit their conduct, as they perform poorly on certain tests though they can explain the correct strategy to the examiner. The knowledge of the correct and incorrect strategy on a psychological test is preserved, though it does not regulate behavior. A patient once said to me, “The answer is 10 (correct) but I’ll say 1 just to mess up your statistics,” and he did. The Russian neurologist, A. R. Luria, described such cases as having a disruption in the “verbal regulation” of action. He thought that language could no longer control or modulate action. But this is precisely the problem that needs to be explained. The dissociation of knowledge and action suggests that anti-social cases could determine whether the action of others is right or wrong, which in my experience they can do, just as patients with jargon speech will reject jargon produced by other speakers but appear to be deaf to their own errors. What such cases show is that conduct is less restrained when the constraints of social adaptation are lifted, or when these constraints are insufficient to counter the pressures of drive-based needs, or when there is an excessive attraction to, or inability to detach from, stimuli in the here and now. This behavior in ordinary people is enhanced with frontal lobe damage. The person who steals from greed or hunger, the murderer who kills for money, the child molester, the terrorist who destroys from an aberrant or delusional belief system, the anti-abortionist who murders a doctor, do not have lesions in the frontal lobes, while on the other hand, people with lesions of the frontal lobe infrequently commit a crime. Duty and goodness Goodness may derive from a sense of duty or responsibility., but most people think it ought to flow naturally from character. A good soldier follows orders, a good person acts on benevolent impulses. Goodness as obligation uncouples feeling from action when the impulse to self-interest

313 is overcome. The good can dissociate from the right when there is a conflict of two exocentric values, for example, scolding a child one loves, or disliking a parent but treating him or her respectfully, or when there is an opposition of spiritual and social values, for example, deferring an act of charity to pray for one’s own salvation, or in the tension between mercy and retribution. When duty is defined in relation to what is right, the action may be objectively moral, e.g. joining the army to defend one’s country, but subjectively immoral if inconsistent with character, such as killing others or defecting if one is a conscientious objector. Obligations are then obstacles or inconveniences that blunt the expression of a subjectively good character by the fear of censure or punishment. Ross (1930) writes that Kantian ethics is dispositional. The Kantian requires duties concordant with values, but the subjective component is not indispensable. The moral person has values consistent with the imperatives of impartial reason. But the requirement moves in the other direction; reason must be consistent with values, since value, not reason, determines conduct. The notion that duty is an obligation to a just and impartial law requires that reason be objective. Reason so defined should compel that which one desires. Yet it is the law as “objective” value or coercion that compels. Since people are individuated by feelings, and reason is never fully objective, how can duty or reason be the foundation of a coherent moral theory? Further, duty refers to a specific obligation, for example, paying taxes, as well as the motivation to carry the duty out. Duty as motivation exacts a response by way of values; but duty as mere obligation is coercive and thus intrapsychically inert. A definition of the good as duty plus the right seeks an explanation of the subjectivity of goodness in the sum of two objectivities, and still does not give an answer to the question, “No matter that it is good and right, why should I do it?” It is good and right that one give up all selfish pursuits, including the ambition that drives one to write books on moral thought, and move to India to help the poor, but how many moral philosophers have actually done that, or something akin to it? The challenge is to explain subjective goodness in terms of objective fairness and retain a subjective account of duty that appeals to value. If I wish to hurt someone but restrain my conduct because I am timid, or because it would be unlawful and punishable, am I a good or bad person? From the objective standpoint, I am behaving in an ethical manner, but from the subjective standpoint, I am inhibiting an anti-social impulse. We assume that we cannot control what thoughts come into awareness, but that we can

314 control whether or not we act on them, so that action is the critical marker for agency. With the primacy of action, agency, thought and desire are subordinate to conduct. What then becomes of moral theory if the feeling of passivity to a thought, say in obsession, or that of agency in voluntary action, turn out to be phenomenal byproducts of act- and objectrealization, not measures of actual control? At times, we see evil in a person of specious goodness, for example, a priest who abuses children, or an individual who lives an exemplary life and one day murders someone who annoys him. Suppose the priest lusted for children, but was too timid and thus unsuccessful in his attempts to seduce them. Suppose the would-be murderer had a headache that day and stayed home, or died of a heart attack. Was he a better person for not satisfying or acting on the impulse, even if the action was prevented by procrastination or luck? Does one act of violence turn a person into a monster? Can the act be absolved by a life of repentance? Conversely, does an act of sacrificial goodness purge thought of evil? We believe that malicious acts can be forgiven, that there is grace in god’s compassion. Milosz wrote, “If only my work were of use to people and of more weight than is my evil.” Even in the best of people, the examined life cannot fail to discover traces of moral corruption. We must account for our acts, and injuries to others, but it is the inner life that calls us to judgment. The importance of conduct in moral theory is twofold: it specifies action in decision and commitment and impacts on other people. The first, considered in isolation as an outcome of decision rather than a cause of effects on others, is of lesser consequence, because a decision that is made but not acted upon, or one that is enacted in privacy, has only slightly greater weight than one still under consideration. What is the difference between considering an immoral act, such as stealing, and deciding to carry it out? This is like the difference between wishing and intending. With respect to conduct, the difference is trivial. What counts is the effect on others, whether in the form of a statement or a physical action. A statement made in isolation, an act of self-mutilation, do not have moral implications unless others are affected. The gravest moral acts are those that deliberately harm others with no remorse or justification. That is why random or deliberate murder is more horrifying than a crime of passion. The problem for subjectivism is to import greater significance to the psychic precursors of action, and to bring action back into the mind of the subject where it arises, rather than displace it into the world where it has its effects.

315 In the relation of feeling to conduct, or character to duty, one finds a persistent confusion of the subjective and objective that is thematic in the long and complex story of the search for a consistent moral philosophy. If, as Sartre said, we are the sum of our acts, conduct is the sole criterion. In an act-based ethics, character and motive have an influence on punishment, but are secondary to conduct. The act is the critical fact regardless of excuses or pleadings. Conduct is presumed to actualize values. Put differently, values are exemplified in the act, even if one tries to shift the cause outside. Desire and feeling become irrelevant to the objective judgment of the person’s conduct. The sum of those acts constitutes and comprises the self. One is or becomes what one does. On this view, with conduct primary, the non-moral attributes of personality are no less important than the moral ones. For example, diffidence or assertiveness are equivalent to moral values in determining actions. Inevitably, in an adaptive theory, conduct is a tightrope between selfinterest and obligation, or advantage and accommodation. The elimination of the maladaptive in evolution trims drive to a niche in the social environment. Evolution is the model for a mutuality of organism and environment. For human cognition, the environment is as much a part of the subject’s mind as the self-concept. Organism and environment merge in evolutionary adaptation. Since the interface of organism and environment is not the body surface, but extends to the genes and the action-core, the distinction of the intrinsic and extrinsic in cognition tends to be blurred and arbitrary. I think the ought of duty or obligation will continue to be a confound for a naturalist theory of value unless the necessity in virtue can be shown to be grounded in the is of natural process. Duties must be conceived as psychological constructs, values in one’s character, not motives or brakes on conduct. For Kant, a duty was an obligation to follow an imperative of practical reason (maxim) aligned with the will. Yet, even with action according to this principle, he wrote that “we cannot from this infer with certainty that it was really not some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will, (for) when the question is of moral worth, it is not with the actions which we see that we are concerned, but with those inward principles of them which we do not see.” Since the good will, to be consistently good, must reflect one’s character, the more consistent are the good values in character, the more the good will and the self will be realized in action. However, one can only follow Kant so far in this account. Though “inward

316 principles” are acknowledged, moral conduct is conceived with reference to the will, which is to say to action, rather than to objects or ideas (Chakravarti, 1966). This is not the will in the sense of drive, and the complexities of its derivation, but as a conflict-free agency that is aligned with reason in accordance with objective duty. The idealization of the categorical imperative, or the universality of the principle or maxim according to which duty applies, is yet another difficulty for process theory. Obligations will always be problematic in that they obscure motive with compulsion, as the right of equity is confounded with the good of character. This is true whether the compulsion is external, as in prescribed duties, or internal, as in obsession and delusion, or when internal compulsion seems to be lacking in a weakness (akrasia) of the will. The attempt to balance intrinsic desire with extrinsic obligation does not provide as stable a foundation for philosophy as that which internalizes all value in a configural web of influence on the actualization of thought and conduct. This requires that we see social constraints as values ingredient in the self, not as environmental filters. The tension of interioricity with duty is the lack of conformity of desire to the demands of society or law. We see this in the relation of a promise with an obligation, or self- realization with concessions to law or custom, or the right of the individual to choose with the rights of the community as a whole. We see this in contemporary life in the controversies over abortion, euthanasia, pornography, vagrancy, gun control, and so on, all having to do with the boundary of individual freedom and social responsibility. However, in all such cases, the tension is internal, a competition for priority of conflicting values in the person’s character. The individual tends to assign blame to external factors that prevent self-realization, but these are grounded in deeper values that are shared by others, e.g. in abortion, respect for life. Most people who believe in the right to abortion would not murder a newborn. The quarrel is over the timing, the definition of life, the rights of fetus versus mother, that is, particular instances that bring into focus core values of sanctity of life and empathy for others. Good and right Even if one were to be thrown into prison for no reason, as if by lottery, the situation can still be conceived as an intrinsic value of greater

317 or lesser influence on the actualization of endogenous form. In a totalitarian state or a concentration camp one can still struggle against evil. One can go down fighting or begging, frozen in fear or crying in panic, in courage or in terror. There is a continuum from random accident and brutal crime to the subtle persuasions of advertisement and peer pressure. Some reflect the values of the individual or his society, others are simply bad luck. When choice exists, even if options are limited, constraints on the mental state are still internal. A protest or appeal can still be made. “Even in the heart of evil,” Paul Feyerabend has written, “there is kindness.” The failure to struggle mirrors one’s values (fears). Even in a “Sophie’s choice”, action is guided by values but limited by fear, lack of power, grit or resourcefulness. Suicide, too, is an option, and the choice of suicide may be the noblest of all choices. Kant wrote, “I should endeavor to preserve my life only so far as I am worthy to live.” Goodness of character is to rightness of conduct as potential to actual, not universal to particular. The good actions of a life are instances of one’s individuality. Acts of goodness by different people may resemble one another, say, a donation to charity, but the motives – emotional, religious, etc. – the cost to the individual, i.e. the degree of sacrifice, the expectations of reward or praise, and so on, are never exactly the same in any two people, nor in the same person on different occasions. If we dispense with the token differences in action in order to type them as good, we arrive at multiple instances of the same class of good actions and, by the same method, we can arrive at a common good, but this good will not be the good from which those actions arise. In mathematics, the numerical concept of “one” has a formal identity across applications, as in one pencil or one apple. This is not true for a real entity, which does not remain unaltered when it is separated from its context in order to compare it to similar entities in other minds or the same mind at different times. Every actuality actualizes a unique qualitative ground. Virtue is an objective valuation of a person's goodness by others, an assessment of good character. Virtue applies to the good self, right to good acts. Thus virtue is to character as right is to conduct. Right and wrong are judgments of a person's goodness inferred from his comportment. Good and bad are evaluative terms that describe actions, or traits (value configurations) of character that motivate or constrain actions, while right and wrong – the prescriptive oughts and ought-nots of conduct – are the positive and negative critiques of actions falling within those valuations. The greater subjectivity of goodness actualizes to a judgment by others as

318 to right or wrong. The greater subjectivity of the good is affirmed by its similarity to beauty; a good person, we say, has inner beauty, a good act is beautiful. The right becomes the good when conduct recedes from the objective surface of the mind to its sources in subjectivity. Concretely, in relation to action, the good is a beneficence of character that rescues the rightness of duty from mere habit or automaticity. If character is what is thematic in thought and behavior, an act that is “out of character” is a deviation from regularity and expectation. If the act is not grotesque, or does not call upon hidden resources in the self that are indefensible, the act will tend to be absorbed in the mean. Yet every act, every thought, every dream, every whim, expresses some facet of the personality. When the individual does not have a major conflict in his core valuations, and acts according to them, the act is said to be authentic. The act seems whole, not disingenuous, hypocritical or a compromise of competing wishes. Compared to truth, which is a measure of the replicability of facts grounded in a coherence among propositions or their correspondence with objects, the authenticity of a person's character, like the creation of a work of art, is the configural unity of the realized to the ground. This is not a correspondence of inner to outer, but a judgment of the rendering of the deep interior into its surface forms. The authentic is the truly moral. The authentic entails a coherence among values, and a concordance of value with conduct, or the realization in conduct of psychic depth. An act is more often said to be authentic when those valuations and their resultant behaviors are judged as positive, though we speak of authentic acts of anger or evil. We say that when a person gives vent to repressed feelings, for example, an outburst of rage or a primal scream, he is acting authentically, however crudely. Here, as with “out of character” actions, the behavior is not in conformity with what is deemed acceptable. Yet there is a concordance of the good and the bad with the right and the wrong, or a correspondence of motivation with social behavior. Authenticity points to the unconscious moral tendencies of the individual that actualize valuations in the self-concept. Morality applies to the resolution of character and choice, the reconciliation of an authentic yet unconscious self with the decision and freedom to choose that are necessary to informed moral conduct.

319 The language of pleasure The inability to derive the good from pleasure, after so much discussion over so many years, would seem to be beyond argument. The logical fallacy in deriving a value-term such as good from factual statements of pleasure or desirability is less compelling when facts are conceived as objectified values. The principle of greatest happiness or pleasure translates the subjectivity of desire to the objectivity of pleasing others. That pleasure is desirable, even if pain is pleasure, is incontrovertible, but that the good is a pleasure which is desirable is a topic of controversy. Ideally, the good is desirable, and there may be a rarified form of pleasure in doing good, though a desire for the good is not like a desire for pleasure. What is pleasurable may be what is good for oneself, but rarely does the self find pleasure in the pleasure of others – pleasure in their misfortune, Schadenfreude, is probably more common – so that the desire for the good is generic and applies more to others than to oneself. The dictum truly is, let my neighbor desire the good, let all men desire the good, but let me desire pleasure, and if my pleasure does not disturb the general good, so much the better. Pleasure and the good, or the desire for pleasure and the desire for the good, are not equivalent even if they share desirability, and even if the shared desirability is unequal, i.e. pleasure is more desirable than good or the good is a weak form of pleasure. The elasticity with which desirability and pleasure extend from an association with non-moral objects to moral ones, or from the subjective to the objective, is matched by the extension of the good from a functional to an ethical meaning, as from its adjectival to its nominative form, e.g. a good person as opposed to the good. Geach argued that good is an attributive adjective, as in a good time or a good watch, though the adjectival account of the good from the standpoint of functional attributes goes back to Plato. Many argue that the adjective good in “good watch” is the same as in “good person” or “good conduct.” But the self desires a good watch in a way that is different from a desire to be good. Moreover, an object may be desirable from a functional point of view and not give pleasure, or the reverse. A good watch might be more desirable than one that malfunctions, but if the latter has greater aesthetic value it might give more pleasure. What gives a person pleasure or makes one happy is not necessarily good in a moral or aesthetic sense. The dissociation of pleasure, desirability and the good is such as to vitiate theories of pleasure, happiness and desirability on the basis of goodness. Nor can the principle of greatest pleasure or happiness bring ethics

320 into relation with aesthetics, for otherwise the sonatas of Beethoven would be eclipsed by “Happy Birthday.” The pleasure I experienced driving an Alfa Romeo can be distinguished from the desirability of my Volkswagen, which was used to push the Alfa each morning to get it started. A starving man might find putrid food desirable but would extract no pleasure in eating it. But even if we grant that what is desirable is good, and what is good is desirable, desire and desirability are not equivalent. Desirability is closer to the object, more like worth in this respect, while desire is closer to the subject, more like personal valuation. The subject desires an object that is desirable. Put differently, desirability has greater objectivity than desire, or is desire objectified. In sum, the pursuit of pleasure is universal and pre-moral, and alone does not account for the distinction of good and bad objects or desires. An act that satisfies an other-centered value is an expression of character and should give the agent pleasure, just as in the satisfaction of an egoist value. The pleasure in satisfying a desire should, ideally, extend from egocentric to other-centered values. Desire is conceptual feeling that arises in the “drive-representations” that lay down the self and its conceptual feelings or value-categories. Desirability is desire that moves value outward from self to object. Desire specifies value in the desirability of the object. Desirability is the desire for an object of worth, since not all objects of worth are desired. Desirability straddles the subject/object transition. Because of its greater proximity to the object, desirability relates more to preference or taste than to desire, which is closer to drive-based affects. The distinction of desire and desirability, or of what is desired and what is desirable, corresponds to a shift of feeling from an intra- to an extrapersonal locus. Finally, instead of subverting morals to fit psychology, or dispensing with psychology for an abstract theory of moral concepts, an evolutionary psychology should be enlarged to include moral and nonmoral objects, into which ethics can be made to fit comfortably. Psychology is anterior to moral theory, for otherwise, moral concepts have no firm basis in human thought and feeling. On the subjectivist account, character is primary.. Desire, desirability and what ought to be desired An object can have worth to a subject, often economic, without being desired, but an object that is desirable ordinarily possesses worth. A thing can be valued without wanting it, but if it is wanted, it must have some

321 value to the subject. The worth of a thing that is valued but not desired may be consensual, i.e. a custom, a talisman, etc., or a personal desire may have so fully objectified in the object that its worth seems independent of the desire. Desirability and worth exteriorize in an object that, if it is to be an object of moral aim, ought-to-be-desired. For some, this aim is social utility. The satisfaction of desire, or the pleasure in achieving this aim (the desirable object) takes on moral purpose. If the utility of an action satisfied a desire, it would give pleasure to the self as well as to others. But the concept of utility has the same defects for moral theory as pleasure, in that it requires that useful acts give pleasure to the agent. Why should selfpleasure be the goal of any moral act? Moreover, if desire were for the good, and pleasure were to follow on virtuous conduct, the elicitation of pleasure by utility, even if it is achieved in pleasing others, contradicts the notion of altruism as unselfish action. Kant denied that the moral worth of an action depended on the pleasure of the agent in performing the act, but as noted, he could not discount, even in such acts, the presence of a selfish motive. The desirability of a good act is its utility as much as any moral property. To be a good person is to function in society according to some norm of goodness. If functional adaptation is not trial and error pragmatism, but an attempt to approximate a model or standard, such as a rule or a social convention, the adjectival good is again in the domain of ought, and is a judgment based on an extrinsic principle of goodness. One can say the good is desirable, but not that people desire it, only that they ought to desire it. But whence comes this ought, and what is its justification? The confusion of moral and non-moral usage that transfers the meaning of good as functionally preferable to its meaning as moral correctness begins with a mutation of desire into a reasonable preference, and then substitutes an object that ought to be desired for the drive-object. This is Aristotle’s shift from the object of appetite to the object of rational wish. The passage of what is desired, to what is desirable, to what ought to be desired corresponds to a shift from the subjectivity of desire to an intermediate phase of desirability, and then to an objective valuation of the act or object. The ought begins in the extraction of desire from drive, and continues in a progression toward the object, in desirability, which is “halfway” from desire to worth, then concludes with its full objectification in the valuation of external objects. Put differently, desire seeks an object. The sought-after object is

322 desirable. The desirability is intermediate between the (intrapsychic) desire for the object and its (extrapersonal) worth. Finally, the transition from desire to desirability may so objectify that the worth of the object is independent of the desire for it. We see this especially in the case of art. Picasso’s Guernica or Bach’s Cello Suites have enormous value, not merely economic or for the pleasure they give, but for their intrinsic worth as works of genius. They give pleasure, and the pleasure they give is desirable, but these works of art are not objects of desire. Moral theory rationalizes this sequence so that desire is reasonable, not concupiscent, desirability is for rational ends, not the coveting of other’s goods, and object worth is not for profit, but moral value. With respect to value, an account of the good from the standpoint of pleasure confuses the perceived value of a thing with its desirability. Pleasure is felt to be a private experience, value (worth) is felt to be a property of the object. The desire to have an object and the pleasure in having it are intrapsychic, while the value of the object that is desired is felt or perceived as extrapersonal. To say that the good is pleasurable, or that what is pleasurable is good, or that what is desired is ipso facto valuable, or that what is valued is desirable, creates a muddle of terms that reinforces itself by the circularity of its argument. The reciprocity of this muddle gives no insight into the process by which desire and pleasure flow into object-value as affect is allocated to intra and extrapsychic segments of the mental state. The objectivity of object value, the feeling of obligation as (usually) external and the subjectivity of desire are interpreted as reversible and interactive, whereas subjectivity objectifies in a unidirectional becoming. The desirability of an act or object is interwoven with the concept of its rightness, and thus with what one ought to do under a given set of circumstances. Many philosophers have written that correctness or rationality is the true criterion of the desirability of the good. The object that gives pleasure can be an object of both desire and reason. When desirability is rationalized, the ought splits off from the want, solidifies into a system of rules, and the possibility and diversity in subjective wish becomes the judgment and invariance of objective law. The is and the ought usually refer to the worlds of science and of feeling, or objective fact and subjective value, even though facts are objectified values, and values are facts in-the-making. But the imposition of rationality on desire shifts the naturalism of the is as existence or becoming to the artifice of the ought, conceived not as subjective value but

323 as custom, social order or an ideal. The is of existence is not the objectivity of science but the subjectivity of value. The reverse applies to the ought. The reversal occurs when value is not imposed from outside but develops inside the object to generate its existence. The objectivity of the ought is a coercive must or an adaptive best fit. When survival is at stake, the boundary of adaptation and coercion blurs. Coercion is to moral feeling as incarceration is to free will. Freedom of thought and imagination are not arrested by imprisonment. Whether one fights or submits is decided by one’s character. The Golden Rule that is, loosely, the imperative of Kant’s ought, turns a rational obligation into a moral requirement, in which the will is obedient to reason. Kant believed the soul was fundamentally rational. Broad (1930) wrote in a discussion of Kantian ethics that “there is no explanation why a self which is in fact of mixed nature should always be able to act as if its nature were purely rational.” In fact, the self is anything but rational, reason being an endpoint in the passage from meanings to words. For most people, rationality is a rare achievement. To paraphrase Shaw, the rational soldier would never fight, the rational lover would never marry. Moreover, reason does not repress or subjugate. The wild horse of the Id is not held in check by the reins of a rational Ego. Reason does not subdue drive, but is its articulation into concepts and partial affects. The affective intensity of concepts dissipates in the expansion of their ideational content, just as the intensity of affect increases at the cost of conceptual diversity. The residual value in abstract and “affect-free” concepts must then be looked for in the value underlying the so-called pure reason. Historically, pleasure and desirability have provided one route to the natural good, from which judgments of right and wrong, justice etc. follow in accordance with social conventions. When desirability is “rationalized,” what is desirable can be what is good for others, for the state, for religious purposes, or what is useful or efficacious. The concept of moral utility implies that desire and pleasure are associated with doing what is useful to the general good. The pleasure associated with a desire, however, differs from the desirability that applies to utility. According to Meinong, the more value veers from pleasure to function, the more it relies on judgment and the ought of what should be valued or desired. Taylor argued that pleasure is a natural good, in that it exists as the satisfaction of needs prior to or independent of the adaptations of behavior to others. Certainly, the immediacy of desire and its objects is not found in a judgment of the rightness of conduct. The dissociation of what is good from what is

324 actually desired, and its re-association to what ought to be desired, is inconsistent with an ethical naturalism. Naturalism does not equate the good with hedonism, which is antithetical to morals, nor does it appeal to social ecology, or the behavior of subhuman primates, or the imperatives of “selfish genes.” Self-preservation does not translate to pleasure-seeking at the expense of others. The self goes out into the world and fills it with value; it does not accrue value for its own needs. Approval It is the case that the various meanings of the word good tend to share a positive affect or an attitude of approval, e.g. desirable, useful, adaptive, etc. The postulate that pleasurable or useful acts arouse a feeling of approval was fundamental to the ethics of Hume. Broad termed the innate disposition to feel emotions of approval and disapproval the moral sentiment. The ought and its sanctions, utility and pleasure, confuse the subjectivity of desire with the objectivity of adaptation and approval by others. A positive valuation may be coordinate with the good, but is not essential to it. Approval may warrant immoral acts in the present by the positive value of future outcomes, as in the acceptance of a lesser evil to justify a greater good, e.g. sacrificing a few soldiers to save the many, strangling an infant Hitler, and so on. Here, the greater quantity of positive valuation in an end cancels the negative valuation in the means, though the reverse is not the case, namely a good act as a means to a malevolent end is neither itself good, nor does it mitigate the immorality of the end. One can ask why the subjective definition of the good is linked to positive feelings and not the objective definition; indeed, moral prescriptions are largely prohibitive. The objective definition, e.g. that generosity, courtesy, kindness are good, treats the good action as a property of goodness, while subjective goodness is based in feeling, such as the desire to increase pleasure or happiness in the agent or recipient. On the objective side, we stop at the object – goodness – and take the property as a positive value, while on the subjective side, the action is justified by the positive association with feeling. Objectively, the person “knows” generosity is good, intuitively or by consensus; subjectively, he “feels” generosity is good by a “moral sentiment.” Because the subjective judgment is closer to a personal feeling than an objective fact, it cannot readily be contradicted. People commonly desire what is neither good nor harmless: drugs,

325 cigarettes, junk food, beautiful but heartless partners and so on Campaigns to promote the good often turn into crusades against pleasure]. The good can be associated with negative feelings or unpleasant experiences, e.g. guilt, mortification, hunger-strikes, and there are occasions, e.g. chemotherapy, when pain is a good as a means to a cure. Every act of goodness is not pleasant; there is a potential for hurt, minimally in the deprivation of those unchosen. When I give to those in need, those in greater need are neglected. My giving is an implicit injury to those not falling within the sphere of my interests. A generous person is not immune to such criticism even in the act of giving. Indeed, what is the merit in giving what one can afford, how much is enough, must one love those who are helped, and if not, is not the merit in giving proportional to its sacrifice or pain (Chapter 9)? Is there not less goodness in aiding one’s friends than one’s enemies, since there is less reciprocity with the latter? A kindness to those I love is loyalty. Loyalty is an affective bias; goodness is impartial. A preference based on kinship, affection, tribe, ethnicity, is rational from the standpoint of self-interest but counter to moral logic. The saying, charity begins at home, is inconsistent with a moral perspective. The impartiality of morality is proportional to the community of its interests. Thus, a father who refuses to help his child is not acting in a moral way, but if he is the principal of a school, to give preferential aid to his child would be improper and an instance of nepotism. The ideal good The ideal good has often been conceived as a product of pure reason. Plato thought the good was the highest metaphysical value and realized only by pure intellect. But value and desirability presume an affective quality. The good is a state of affairs that ought to be desired, and its desirability is part of its description. There is no meaning to a good that is not to be desired. Indeed, the good is defined as much by contrast with the bad as by its positive attributes. For the good to move from an adjective to an ideal (on the ideal, see the next chapter), or from a “hypothetical” to a “categorical” imperative, it must shift from an evaluative to a prescriptive term, that is, a path to be followed for its own sake. The ought of the ideal good must be wedded to the good will in self-realization. The relation of ideal good to truth and beauty tends to divest the good of this evaluative content, for beauty and truth are independent of desirability. A tree, a chess game, a spider's web, can be beautiful without being desirable. If one were

326 to be saturated with beauty, boredom would set in and the plain, the deviant or ugly might be desired and, as a matter of course, pleasure would ensue. Similarly, truth ought to be desired over error, but the desirability of truth is not essential to it. There are many truths we resist or deny, for example, that we are soulless patterns of electrochemical brain activity, that the world is hallucinatory, that the self, agency and other mental objects are illusions or in some sense fictions, that life is ultimately purposeless, that death is inevitable, and so on, everyday truths that we ignore, repress, rationalize, dismiss, so many forms of self-deception. Whether or not truth is desired or gives pleasure to those who seek it, it is independent of pleasure and desire. Indeed, if truth were not independent of desire, it would hardly qualify as rational. A statement that is true or false must be independent of the desire for it to be true or false for it to be accepted as a true or false statement, even if, psychologically, truth is rooted in feeling and presupposition. Is there such a thing as a truth divorced from feelings or value-free facts? Even mathematical truths are not true independently of the system in which they cohere. Whitehead wrote, “There is no unique small body of independent primitive unproved propositions which are necessary starting points of all mathematical reasoning…”. These three modes of belief (Plato’s three kinds of value), the ideal objects of truth, beauty and the good, have different sources and conditions. Truth has empirical and logical grounds. These grounds are thought to be the basis of conviction, but the certainty of a truth, i.e. a belief that the truth is true, requires the subjectivity of belief to impact on the presumed objectivity of fact. Yet there is no clear linkage between the truth of a belief and the conviction it is true. The conviction in the “truth” of magical belief is stronger than the dispassionate truth of a scientific belief, which is not strongly correlated with the force of its proof. Indeed, scientific truths are provisional and open to refutation. Conviction is sacrificed in proportion to the lack of subjectivity. People fight for political beliefs that are held with deep conviction. Such beliefs are more like faiths. Certainly, they are not facts or logically conclusive truths. Beauty differs from truth and goodness in that it may arouse neural configurations that respond to balance, averaging or whole/part relations. This may explain the immediacy of the perception of the beautiful. We may be able to articulate – though not easily – why one oak tree is more beautiful than another, but the beauty of the tree is apprehended before the

327 reason why it is beautiful is consciously understood, if at all. The beauty of a mathematical argument or a chess position is intuited prior to a proof or the analysis of elements. The beauty of objects varies over cultures, if not individuals, but there are sufficient commonalties, e.g. the beauty of a sunset, an infant or woman’s face, dance, music, to suggest innate determinants in brain activity. It is unlikely that the good correlates with innate patterns of brain activity, though phyletic trends in the development of the brain are probably instrumental in the arousal of patterns of social adaptation and best fit that go back to the pragmatics of Protagorean ethics. As to the association of the ideal good with reason, the good is reinforced by logic but not dependent on it. Whitehead wrote that “deductive logic is the science of certain relations, such as implication, etc., between general ideas.” and that “when logic begins, definite particular individual things have been banished.” In logic, thought retreats from the particular to the idea behind it, or the relations between ideas. Logic cannot instruct us how to act in a given circumstance. Logic does not usually tell us what we do not already know. A logical proposition may be a novel instance of a proposition, but it does not bring forth novel content. Reason can generate novelty, in ideas and particulars, more in the imagination than in fact, but logic is a limit on possibility. It is better at refutation than assertion. Sparshott (1958) wrote, “Those who hold that all philosophy is logical are prepared to admit that the philosopher must be silent until someone else has committed a fallacy.” On some accounts, the good is a coupling of individual survival – or ego at any price – with social adaptation, where the group counts for more than the individual. However, this association is insufficient to answer the question of why a given act is good. It must be supplemented by something else that is good. The relation of the individual to the society might correspond to the part/whole relation in beauty, but individual good is often achieved at the cost of much suffering, while the good of the many demands the sacrifice of the few. At least in this way, the part/whole relation of beauty differs from the one/many relation in society. Utility has two levels of adaptation that need to be reconciled, that of self and other as objects of values in character, and that of conduct in relation to others in the world, i.e. a psychological process of decision-making that leads to action, and a judgment by others of its effects. That beauty is truth, or that the good is beautiful, is a formula that aligns these categories within a still larger and more abstract category, that

328 of perfection, harmony or natural law. There is a tension between the good as a category or an ideal restricted to good acts, and as an instance in a category of perfection that includes other categories, such as truth and beauty. The particular cannot be abandoned without sacrificing the ideal, for the category is known by its particulars. The universal is imminent in every particular. An ideal that is distinct from its properties or instances of its realization, e.g. generosity as a property or as a generous act, is empty of meaning. Yet once we leave the categorical ideal for the particular, e.g. an instance of good conduct, the justification of the instance as an act of goodness depends on a return to the category. The act is good because it is an instance of goodness. The ideal obtains its warrant from the act, as the act does from the ideal. To escape this circularity, the ideal must transcend its temporal limitations and become eternal. Goodman (1996) argued that “without an overarching vision, an implicit or explicit appeal to transcendent and universal goodness, generosity has no intrinsic claim to superiority over cruelty.” By overarching and transcendent he means the nexus of the idea of god with the idea of the good, in which the idea of god sanctifies human value. Goodness as an ideal of perfection implies that evil or malevolence is an imperfection or incompleteness of the good. This is related to the substantialist doctrine of value as a quantity and evil as a diminished quantity of value or a negation of being. Aquinas attempted to eliminate the distinction of desirability and perfection on theological grounds. Perfection is the province of god, desire of man. Desirability as an attribute of goodness is aligned with perfection in the desirability of an ideal good. But there is a propagation of category errors in taking conduct from adaptation to perfection, or skipping from the natural to the rational, and from the rational to the divine. The concept of beauty seems to precede and give rise to its exemplars, but the idea of the good as an ideal category does not appear to be prior to instances of good and bad conduct. Instead, it seems more a construct of its manifestations or an attempt to add force to a moral judgment or principle by appealing to its universality. We admire the acts of saints and holy men, those of peace and those of deep spirit, as we condemn those who are indifferent, depraved or evil. These acts give us examples of goodness and evil that shape our lives and help to form the categories of good and bad, to which moral conduct has recourse. The instances also provide a framework for the ideal of good and evil. For example, the particular is universalized when a Ghandi becomes an ideal of moral goodness.

329 These observations show that the category of the good, whether or not it is conceived as an ideal, is subsequent to experience in a manner unlike that of beauty or truth. We are amazed at images of stunning beauty of the solar system, the microscopic world, computer-generated designs that are largely alien to prior experience. Yet we can say they are images of great beauty, independent of whether or not they are works of art. The aha experience, the sudden apprehension of a profound truth, the awareness of time and space in the perception of nature, the apprehension of deep order, symmetry and perfection that gives the experience of the sublime, for truth or for beauty, do not occur with a recognition of the good. Nor is there the same degree of cynicism. Because the good is a secondary construction, a good act raises questions of intent that do not occur for truth and beauty. In the derivation of the good, the category is defined by the exclusion of properties not shared by the greater number of instances more than by the properties the instances have in common. In other words, it is easier to say what is bad than what is good, because an ostensibly good act may arise out of malevolent intentions, while a bad act is usually an instance of genuinely bad character. Moreover, the same act can be good or bad according to the intentions of the agent. A theft to feed the poor is not the same as one for personal gain. This uncertainty is less problematic for beauty and still less for truth. Unconscious motivation is the dark side of goodness. It can be a criminal defense, an apology for evil, a justification for mercy, and so on. Good and bad acts cannot be separated from psychological context except in an ideal or transcendent good that is independent of personality. The ideal of the good transcends acts of goodness, but what exactly is the ideal apart from platitudes, homilies or models of divine perfection? Goodness is conceived as the whole of its relations. If objects are relational there is no demarcation of object and property. The bundle of properties that constitutes an act of goodness is a complex of relations. The idea of the good as an object with properties rests on the distinction of substance and quality, or subject and predicate, for the property has to be a property of some object (see Chapter 3). If the properties of the good are nonrelational, or are extrinsic to the object they modify, and if goodness itself is non-relational, to what object could the properties relate? If the good is a noun, to what object, other than god, could it refer? A property-based concept of the ideal presumes something having those properties, yet is distinct from it, i.e. the good is not a bundle of good properties. Hume thought that the ethical properties of actions were like the

330 secondary qualities. As a red boat is a boat that is red, a good person is a person who is good. The same boat could be painted green, the same person could become evil. As an adjective, e.g. a good person, the person has the property of goodness. Meinong thought this was true of beauty as well. He wrote that “the heavens are blue in no other sense than that in which they are beautiful,” arguing that the difference was due to the lower efficiency of feeling, not to a difference in principle or predication. I think that beauty, or a category of color, unlike goodness, is a natural category and that the adjectival sense of color, but not beauty, is similar to that of goodness. The good is not a natural, physiological (culture-independent) category like beauty or color, or a consensual fact-based category like truth. Moore likened the good to an ostensive, such as yellow. But a good deed is not an instance of the category good in the same way that an instance of yellow is part of the category color. The category “color” might subsume all possible combinations of color over its spectrum, but this cannot be said of the category “good.” This is not only because color relates to the physiology of perception, nor because goodness is disputable in a way that color is not, nor because of the importance in goodness, but not color, of a means/end distinction. Rather, it is because the perception of color, though subjective, is independent of personality, whereas goodness is directly related to character. The relation to character means that the adjectival use of the good parses the different senses of goodness as subjective character and objective conduct. Thus, saying an act is good does not say why it is good, or whether the agent is good, though it is sufficient to say that a thing is yellow without saying why it is yellow or why the observer perceives it as yellow. One property of goodness that most people would agree to be essential is self-denial. Yet self-denial is not equivalent to goodness, since it can arise from a sense of inferiority, humility, deference, or as a strategy for later rapacity. An instance of goodness has to be evaluated on an individual basis. Any property is a category of sub-types, but this is especially so with goodness, where the property has both a subjective and an objective aspect. If a group of disparate objects share the property of roundness, or “featherless bipeds,” that property can itself become a category in which all the objects that share the property are subsumed. That is, properties that modify object-categories, such as round table modifying the category of tables, can themselves become object categories modified by their exemplars. The properties extracted from good acts also can become super-

331 ordinate categories independent of goodness, for example a category of generosity or unselfishness, but the category of the good differs from categories such as tables or roundness, or ideals such as truth or beauty, in that its properties require further qualification. Even the most obvious property of goodness needs to be contextually decontaminated. An unselfish parent can ruin a child, generosity can degrade the feeling of selfworth, etc. As with truth or beauty, the good is illustrated and taught by examples, but the category of the good rests more precariously than truth and beauty on its concrete illustrations. Moore’s contention that the good is indefinable is consistent with this line of thought, not for the reasons he proposed but because it is an artificial construction and, more than other categories, it is an ideal by fiat rather than intuition. Desire and the ideal What does the ideal category of the good have to do with desirability? Except in the hearts of saints a desire for the ideal is unusual. The desirability of the good may motivate healthy aims and actions, but that is for acts directed to particulars, not categories. To generalize desire into a rational wish is to transform it from an intention toward an object to an intention toward an ideal. With an ideal, the desire lacks an object for its implementation but, instead, has a category for its aim. While it is reasonable to prefer goodness, beauty and truth to evil, ugliness and error, and even if this preference is construed as a desire, the preference is not essential to the ideal. Whether a thing is an instance of ideal good or beauty is independent of a preference for it, i.e. the preference or desire is for the specific object, not the category of all possible instances of that category. Moore’s argument that a coherent geology prior to life is preferable to a heap of inorganic garbage is unconvincing, except insofar as the former condition illustrates the deep order of nature or the divinity behind or within that order. But is either instance preferable because it entails, or makes possible, the evolution of a mind that could exhibit such awareness and preference? We particularize the good to associate it with desire, and we idealize desire to merge it with the good. To transform a desire for a good act into an impersonal desire for the ideal good unifies desire by desaturating it of feeling with reason. To penetrate desire with reason, or drain it of feeling to transform it to a rational wish, or change its objects to those reasonable people should desire, cannot occur without a change in the quality of the desire, its intensity and intentionality.

332 If selfish desire is not suppressed by reason but rationalized into what is morally desirable, this implies that reason can be “emotionalized” into moral or immoral desires. Reason can mitigate anger, just as anger can bring commitment to a rational analysis that would otherwise be indifferent to action. It is not a symmetrical two-way interaction of reason and emotion. Conceptual feeling can shift to an emphasis on feeling or concept. Concepts that give rise to objects or propositions are imbued with feeling prior to the realization of their targets. The feeling that permeates a concept prior to its objectification into words or objects dissipates as it distributes into them. It is the residual of conviction in the belief behind the proposition. The intensity of this feeling can be recaptured by a withdrawal to earlier phases, in rapture, love, in the transport of the beautiful, in poetry, etc. We also see this intensity in the ferocity of argumentation over supposedly affect-free statements. The presence of covert emotion in reason, or the ability to rationalize feeling, implies that reason itself has an affective tone. The ideal develops out of conceptual feeling as an experience of the pre-object category. Put differently, ideals are created out of categories as rational aims that can supplant the affective aims of desire. When an ideal becomes the goal of a desire, the affective element dissolves in an object into which it can discharge, while the rational element retains the meaning in a concept that is unspecified as to content and intention. For this reason, for its decantation to non-intentional feeling, the desire for the good is like the desire for happiness or the hope for success, a wish for a category of experience without a precise object or goal. The desire for the good cannot discharge in an act of goodness, for acts are particulars accompanied by desires. As long as we stay in the category and avoid the particular, the desirability of the generic good does not help in deciding what is the best desire for a given circumstance. Once a good act occurs and becomes part of history, a desire for a particular good can be inferred from its recurrence. This good then becomes what ought to be universally desired. When we desire goodness, happiness, companionship without a particular instance of the category in mind, we tend to specify the objects or qualities that would fulfill those desires, e.g. a worthwhile job, a friend, etc. It is not a simple matter to desire a generality, a universality or an ideal that is not accented by some instance of possibility. The desire in conceptual feeling can infuse feeling in an object concept, as an object or idea becomes a target, or it can distribute over a category of potential

333 objects. Similarly, value can perfuse the world or have a single object as an aim. One can desire a home or a lover without having a specific apartment or person in mind, though one has some sense of what would be acceptable. The desire that accompanies the category is probably different in quality from that which accompanies the object concept. For one thing, the desire for the category is more like a yearning or a longing, which is a waiting for the object to clarify, while a desire directed to an object embodies the wish to have it: it excludes similar objects and suffers the fear of its loss. Just as we generalize an ideal from the particular in the good objects of desire, we seek in ideal love or in life the particular in the category. The closer to the particular, the farther from the ideal. But particular instances of goodness are not rampantly perspectival, even across widely divergent conducts and cultures. The difference is in the specific adaptations to the unique circumstances of each society. Philip Roth has written of sex as a defilement of the categorical ideal of love, that it is “the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are.” With respect to the good, the summum bonum, the hope for goodness is generally a hope for specific instances of goodness. With respect to the desire for good, we can desire an act, and we can desire a desire, e.g. want to be in love, for desire can also be idealized to a category of feeling that is worthy of praise or condemnation. In sum, the relation of category to particular is replayed in the relation of the ideal good to a good act. The good is not a natural category, like beauty, nor a logical one like truth, which enfold instances of their expression, but an artifice derived from its examples. The category is constructed from those instances in which the appellation of goodness has been applied. Goodness is a conventional category abstracted from its examples, not prior to them. It is an object of thought comparable to happiness or luck. Were goodness a property, it would be a category of other properties such as utility or pleasure, which are equivalent or subordinate to goodness, and each would subsume similar instances. The circularity of the attributive sense of goodness, i.e. that what is desirable is good, and that the good is what is desirable, amounts to saying that goodness is what people say is good.

334 The ideal self The categorical can extend outward and objectify as the ideal good, or it can withdraw inward and remain subjective as the ideal self. As an ideal of goodness, however vague it may be, the good is an objective standard that conduct ought to approximate. As an ideal self, the good is a subjective possibility that aims at self-realization. That is, the categories that specify the particulars of conduct can themselves be idealized at a subjective or objective polarity. Bradley asserted, “There is no part of life at which morality stops and goes no further,” meaning by this that the distinction of moral and non-moral acts on the basis of reflection is artificial, for all acts, he believed, flow from the self, in which, through education and example, reflection plays a conscious or unconscious role. On this view, one’s moral duty is not to conform one’s conduct to the ideal good, but to realize in all acts the ideal self.

Chapter 12. The Ideal To know the full meaning of any category, we must not be content with its definition, but must observe how it grows out of those which precede it. J. M. McTaggart (1901)

Introduction The past century has witnessed a steady decline of interest in the problem of pure thought, the soul and spirit world of Schelling, Hegel and the German romantics, the absolute of Bradley and the British idealists, or the timeless entities of Whitehead, Hartshorne and process theology. Physics and cognitive science have replaced metaphysical speculation. The categories are not abstract or eternal Ideas but have a perceptual structure or a propositional content. Nature is not a realm of unchanging forms but an evolutionary struggle that is vivid and alive, while the absolute is not a homogeneous soup of timeless forms or a non-relational emptiness but the universe of physics. Yet a theory of becoming, of categories and internal relations, of potential and actual, can hardly avoid this topic, for in one way or another it is at the heart of a process philosophy. The first step is to translate the older ideas to a contemporary vocabulary, then retain what is valuable in the inquiry, if not the method or its conclusions, and bring the core problems into relation with an actualization theory of the mind/brain. The ideal may be a fiction, but it is one that merits a better understanding. Its roots are deep in the psychology of thought and, by implication, in the process of nature. The ideal An ideal is a completed universal. A universal is a general conception of an entire class that is not associated with a discrete object. Fruit and color are universals, but a particular red apple is not. Since all things are ideas in the sense of categories, there is no point at which a category is parsed to leave its class behind or is not itself a still narrower class. Every

336 object is not only a member of a wider category, it is itself a category. Yet, since it has been argued that we can only know particulars, and that the essence or quiddity of a thing applies to an individual not a class, the concept of the ideal has been suspect since it was first proposed. The Greek philosopher Antisthenes said, “Where Plato finds equinity or the ideal Horse, I find only a horse.” However, a horse or a red apple is a category that incorporates its parts, as well as its recurrences. Horse is merely a term to describe the event that is the horse, and the bundle of its constituent parts, each of which, similarly, is a bundle of smaller parts. The category of the object is, thus, an implicit hierarchy of sub-categories and a “collection” in the now of its momentary appearances. But an object is also categorical in relation to the epoch of its actualization. Typically, the ideal or universal is conceived apart from the possibility of a partition. This possibility is neutralized by describing the properties of the universal independent of the objects that realize them, what Bradley called “floating adjectives.” By completed universal is meant the fullest possible instantiation of a category, or a specification of the category into objects that exhaust its otherwise detached properties. The notion of completion comes from the possibility of realizing the ideal. If one could, in principle, see an artwork of perfect beauty or an act of perfect goodness, one could say, “There, that is a manifestation of the ideal.” Full expression is at least a theoretical possibility because the scope of an ideal is not unlimited. Generally, the satisfaction of an ideal, or its comparison to the actual, entails trials and approximations. The Holy Grail of the ideal is the idealization, and realization, of a category within a given domain of possibility, just as the particular is inevitably a limit on potentiality. Every particular issues from a category of wider scope, imbued with a sense of its own incompleteness. This intuition of the insufficiency or incompleteness of the part is not achieved through a comparison to an antecedent content. Were an artist who is aware of the inadequacy of his work to have a clear vision of what it should be like, he would be able to reproduce it. The sign of the creative is not knowing in advance what the outcome of one's artistry will be. Dissatisfaction with what actualizes results not from comparison to a definitive personal ideal but to an awareness of not working at a sufficient depth or with originality. In this respect, there is a similarity to inadequate recall. The fact that a person knows he does not accurately remember an event does not imply that there is or could be a precise copy of that event recorded somewhere in memory, but rather there is a feeling of uncertainty, or an estimation that

337 what is recalled is insufficiently detailed or precise. In contrast, a precise but false recollection in a person with memory disorder is ordinarily associated with confidence in its accuracy, lack of awareness of its deficiency and resistance to correction. The most beautiful or perfect of objects has its beauty, for the artist, in the realization of a personal ideal that at the start is vague and inarticulate. The aesthete lacks the creative gift, so he compares the work to great works of the same genre. Another way to think about the category of the ideal concerns the natural history of the concept. Why do we imagine the ideal in love, beauty or goodness? Is this an invention of the poets and philosophers? Is there an innate striving for what is best and most perfect? If so, what is its source? A clearer understanding of psychological sources, not only for the ideal but for all conceptual data, does not eliminate their justification, as some might believe, but strengthens it by demonstrating continuity with the biological. One possible source of the ideal is the evolutionary thrust of will. But positing the will as the engine of the world and the urge to actuality does not explain a striving to betterment that is linked to renewal and rebirth. Why should there be such striving? Survival or self-preservation leads to adaptive fitness, which is a “perfection” of fit to an ecological niche. This is not the same as an upward trajectory, and such a forward development is disavowed by evolutionary science. A striving for an ideal that is “perfectin-itself” is not its fitness to a surround, even if a great artwork or an act of perfect goodness derives its perfection from the individual and socialhistorical context. This is an essential feature of ethics and aesthetics, but what connection could there be to evolution on the one hand, and metaphysics on the other? William James (1890) wrote that “the world of aesthetics and ethics is an ideal world, a Utopia,” a world that is “secondary and brain-born,” and he went on to add that we crave such a world for its agreeableness. This comment is dismissive of the ideal as a bridge from metaphysics to ethics and aesthetics. However, the refutation of the ideal, as a fantasy bred of unhappiness, does not carry with it the negation of a universal process of idealization, or the striving of categories toward more “perfect” realizations. What is important is the aim to perfection, not its achievement, just as the pressure to a more perfect fitness is the vehicle of evolutionary growth, even if there is no endpoint to this process. As an ultimate category, the ideal is unattainable because it is virtual, an illusory bone with an empty marrow, a vacuous substance with floating properties. The ultimacy of the ideal self, like that of substance generally, comes from

338 the assumption that other entities depend on it, while it does not depend on anything else. Substance is the “solid” foundation on which the world of relations is built. But relationality is equally ultimate, though it is expressed in terms of becoming, of striving toward aims, even if aims are ephemera that vanish in the renewal of striving. Thus the aim to the ideal is better conceived as a direction in the growth of categories. Indeed, the idea of the love of god, the emulation and dependency, is a reflection of this trend in thought, while proving the existence of god, what god actually is or the filling in of his nature, is an impossible task once the superlatives have been exhausted. The ideal is not achievable because the final event that would constitute its realization is a transition to an ensuing event that either shatters the perfection of the ideal, attempts to fulfill another ideal, or abandons the path of idealization. Process does not end in ideal categories, it begins with them and ends with involution, the cessation of prior nature and the assumption of novel form. Platonic idealism is an attempt to transcend and so escape the cycle of generation and destruction, while process thought sees the ideal as the engine of transformation, not its final satisfaction. The suggestion that the ideal is a retreat from the displeasures of the world into the calm eternal peace of the conceptual was endorsed by Dewey (1920), who wrote of the tendency to idealize in the imagination that which is harsh and painful in life. He related this psychological motivation to the conception in classic philosophy of an ultimate or ideal reality. Because its potential is latent and indescribable, the category of the ideal is impervious to the critique that befalls the concrete instance, the object that declares itself and can be given a description. The object is a contrast, not only with other objects and potential choices but with all other possible worlds. What a thing is not is infinitely greater than what it is. With the ideal, it comes down to a desire for that which is the opposite of the most critical features of life, that is, for absolute spirituality or divinity and an unchanging, imperishable, timeless unity. These characteristics of the ideal are all linked to the idea of perfection, while the idea of perfection or the existence of perfection is linked to that of deity (Hartshorne, 1962). If perfection goes out the window, as it should, the ideal, which is an aim without a paradigm, goes with it. There is also the disparity between the expressed and the inexpressible, or between the category of a becoming and the object it becomes, that is construed as a direction toward or away from an ideal. A direction away from the ideal is degeneration, a direction toward it is a

339 movement to betterment. If actuality is conceived as partial, incomplete, imperfect, temporal and perishing, and if these attributes entail debasement, there are no concrete objects or acts that can realize ideals, though great art might be considered a refutation of this view. For the reason that great art can be said to exemplify the ideal, we idealize the genius for his “superhuman gifts” and “divine inspiration.” The idea that time and change are not intrinsically imperfect but can exhibit progress toward a better state traces to the final causation that is inherent in ideals of perfection. The progressive elimination of imperfection is the path of progress. An absolute ideal that is timeless and perfect, such as the supreme good or beauty, even if it is a speculative category that arises from the inadequacy of actuality, has the virtue of providing a moral or aesthetic underpinning to the quest for a more ideal self. In addition to the impulse to a more agreeable or perfect state, the concept of the ideal is empowered by the categorical nature of mental objects and, I would claim, of material entities. If the ideal is, as James wrote, truly “brain-born,” it arises in physical process. There can be no pure invention of the mind that does not have its basis in brain activity. One can think of non-existents - unicorns, ghosts, characters in a novel some of which are motivated by human need, others arise in the play of the creative imagination. Ideas that are pure fancy still exist as ideas with their correlates in brain process. However, if the ideal exemplifies a universal tendency toward a higher state, is it conceivable that the trend refers to fundamental patterns of brain activity? Whitehead argued for final causation in evolution. The elimination of the unfit, he wrote, is not an explanation for the upward advance, but “is like the liturgical refrain of a litany chanted over the fossils of vanished species.” Apart from some circularity in the argument that the fit survive because the unfit are eliminated, is it so certain that random variation can explain the forward momentum? Life proliferates into every conceivable niche until mind itself becomes the adaptive ground of change. There is evolutionary pressure towards increasing intelligence, and this may be a sufficient explanation for the evolution of more complex organisms, but random variation leaves out the lawfulness or regularity of the process through which advance occurs. Final causation is unlikely but not implausible. It has not been disproven - how could it be? - but simply dismissed by the objective stance of science, the mechanization of nature and the disdain for any suggestion of an extra-natural bias. The alternative to teleology and randomness is the tendency of process to a more ideal

340 state, a tendency in simpler forms that evolves to the human brain. Evolution is not purposeful nor is the human mind a beacon toward which it is directed. But, given the contingency of evolutionary change, can the steady growth of increasingly higher life-forms be explained by trial and error? If not, can the human urge to higher states be reconciled with a tendency in physical nature that leads to “brain-born” ideals? A retrospective glance from the standpoint of the human mind provides insights on the nature of its antecedents, whereas an account that commences with the micro-physical could not predict the appearance of mind at all. The devolution of ideas or categories to categorical entities in non-cognitive nature is one example. Plato’s Idea was intermediate between god and matter. What it lacks in the divine it supplements in the material. Man partakes of, but is not himself, an Idea. In the Theaetetus, categories take the place of the Ideas. Taxonomic thought supposes a hierarchy of categories from god through man to matter. Metaphysical thought attempts to resolve human conception with physical nature. Yet all categories, whether historical or spontaneous, by virtue of being categories, i.e. having generic properties without a specific content, are subjective, immutable and timeless. It is the nature of a category that it is described in such a way. So long as the category does not individuate it retains properties of the ideal. The transition to particulars de-idealizes the category, as the concrete banality of sex desecrates the abstract ideality of love. However, once an object actualizes, it becomes itself a category, not only because it subsumes a hierarchy of parts and iterated actualities, but because it exists in duration. The concept of the ideal arises as an aim to self-realization. Each state in its quest for survival, pleasure, or self-sufficiency, seeks a better outcome than the preceding that is the substrate over which it unfolds. An animal seeks a burrow that is more comfortable and secure. A person seeks conditions that are more agreeable or beneficial. This tendency to betterment is the natural bias of process. It could account for the evolution of forms that create environments for novel adaptations. But the tendency need not be reified to a goal. One explanation for interpreting a striving as a goal is the attempt to salvage objects from perishing by transposing a drive to better conditions to the source of that drive in ideal categories. If we trace back through the fractal cascade of sub-categories beginning with world-objects, we proceed through conceptual feelings to the core self, from objectification to mentality, from the present to the past and from the concrete to the

341 abstract. The progression is from the temporal order of the world to the non-temporal unconscious. The unconscious is non-temporal in the sense that the heterogeneity of its “latent” or potential content has not yet become instrumental, manifest or conscious. This phase of unconscious mind can be traced, hypothetically, to still earlier “archetypes” that are continuous with physical nature, ultimately to the idea of the absolute or world-soul. The concept of the ideal is the natural outcome of this deepening. It is what intuition gives to thought as it ponders the incessant thrust of process into successive forms of organic life. Time and the categorical ideal The timelessness of the ideal is its eternal presence, which is an imaginative expansion of the duration of the now. The notion of an eternal presence in the timeless now of the mind of god has been most beautifully described by Meister Eckart. An idealized category, timeless before it actualizes, is a metaphoric detachment of time and actuality. If there is no stasis in actualization, there is no activity in potential, and a truly timeless category would be psychically inert. The category enters the sphere of activity when a content begins to individuate. The becoming of the object entails change. But even as change is occurring, it cannot be said to be temporal until it completes one cycle of existence. after which the object fills a single unit or epoch of time. Once an object is perceived, it is interpreted as a temporal event in a linear chain of world passage, or a transition of ideas in the mind. However, the change in the object or its properties is really a succession of unchanging categories that come and go. The appearance of a causal chain arises in the novelty of each momentary actualization. Whitehead (1929), after James and Bergson, wrote, “we live in durations and not in instants, …(and) that the present essentially occupies a stretch of time.” He inferred from this that memory is part of perception. This is consistent with the microgenetic idea that objects are reminiscences sculpted to actuality by sensation as the end-stage development of an objective world out of subjective memory. In basic entities, the transition over the extensibility of a temporal “point” conveys the initial phases of a cycle into the later ones. For example, the early phases in the orbit of an electron in the atom of classical physics are not “forgotten” when the later ones occur, but are part of, indeed, are necessary to the existence of the atom.

342 The presence of the earlier in the later, even in the most basic entities, where what comes before is part of what comes after, can be construed as a kind of memory. Similarly, but more clearly the basis of memory, unconscious configurations in the mental state are conveyed into conscious perception. This transition from unconscious memory, through the self, to conscious perception (action, language) constitutes a perceptual moment or minimal state of mind/brain, and is analogous to the epochal point of a basic entity. The activity of the brain creates categorical objects at its distal polarity and categorical ideals at its proximal one. The ideal (self) is such a category. The objects that issue from the self as partial realizations are themselves categories, with the entire sequence from self to object generating the duration of the now as a self-sufficient epoch. Thus the category out of which the object grows is timeless, as is, for a different reason, i.e. because it is epochal, the transition over which the growth occurs. The epoch is timeless in that it is a whole unit of change that becomes eternally past as it perishes. The timelessness, i.e. simultaneity, of the category that grounds the entity becomes the timelessness of its terminus in the epochal present. The transition is over a subjective trajectory that goes from one timeless category to another, a living process framed by non-temporal categories. The transition becomes temporal, i.e. has temporal order or succession, when its duration is established, but at that point, when the object enters the apparent linear and causal transition of the world, it is non-temporal. Clearly, what is or is not temporal, and at what point, is complex and paradoxical. The becoming of a thing, its life force, is a change over some duration. However, until a cycle of change terminates to reproduce a moment in the existence of the thing, the thing does not yet exist and is non-temporal. The completion of the becoming gives the thing its being. The duration of thickness or temporal extensibility of the thing, i.e. the category of change, that incorporates its becoming, constitutes its being as a unique epoch in its career. The common theory of time takes the succession of epochs as a causal bridge from one thing or event to another. In a replacement model, there is succession in the course of event-deposition but there is no actual event-sequence. All that exists is the present actuality. The sequence, and the time inferred in the sequence, result from an illusory expansion of recurrences within a point to a concatenation of perceptible moments. Can a timeless category exist except in a world of ideal forms? In what sense are categories timeless, and in what sense do timeless categories exist? This has been disputed since Hegel’s system of dialectic,

343 and the difficulty in the transition from one timeless category to another. The difficulty also appears in the transition to the temporal order of actual events. As the font of the actual, the category is asked to do the impossible, namely, deliver a temporal existent out of a timeless non-existent, or shift from being to becoming, or create something out of nothing. But this is a transition from simultaneity to succession, the transition laying down the time series. The transition of phases that make up the thing is a becominginto-being, or a shift into temporality, then a perishing into the timelessness of the actual. The notion that objects perish to become ideals for ensuing actualizations seeks universality in the finality of particulars that bind the past-eternal of perished actualities to the present-eternal of initial categories. The resolution of the timelessness of (ideal) categories that generate objects of perception with the temporal (causal) series of events that pass in the world remains one of the most profound difficulties of philosophical thought. The many events in consciousness appear to change at different rates, and this is a problem for an association of time with change. However, the change that matters is the laying down of the temporal order of mind/brain states, in which the multiplicity of events in consciousness are all partitions of the one event of the conscious state. The transition to the conscious state of that moment is the determinant of the experience of subjective time. Put differently, the subjective time-series is determined by successive acts of cognition coherent across individuals entrained by sensory adaptation to a common material nature. The category is only non-existent if existence is predicated on time and change. Can a thing be timeless and changeless yet nonetheless exist? The eternal verities of mathematical truths are the paradigm of timeless objects, but do they exist independent of thought? In what world does the truth exist that 2 + 2 = 4? We say 2 + 2 = 4 is eternally true, but the concept of truth implies true propositions, which are thought-products. It is only by separating the proposition from the thought and treating it as mindindependent that it can be said to be timelessly true in a world devoid of thought. The proposition is then a non-subjective neutral term of discourse. However, in such a world, there can be no propositions, for propositions have to be thought of. There can be no objects because objects have to be perceived. And, there can be no facts, for facts are object-values that achieve consensus when, like propositions, they objectify in a realm conceived as independent of cognition. Absent mind and god, there are no objects, values or facts in the ordinary sense, but it is legitimate to ask if

344 the categories and value-precursors still exist. The exemplification of the ideal The completion of an object that has finished a cycle of change differs from the completeness of realization when an object satisfies a certain depth and complexity, and transforms what came before to a novel coherence, though we have no way of knowing when a potential has been exhausted or a personal ideal fulfilled. The concept of an ideal self follows on the insinuation of inchoate context to unconscious value. Acts and objects instigated in the unconscious are not forecast in advance, so one cannot anticipate what will actualize even knowing one’s predispositions and capacities, or those of another person. The aim or telos of the act is not given in the category. The particular is not a piece of the unconscious copied into awareness. The act is known only on its appearance, with causal force assigned retroactively. If the ideal is a category that shapes self-realization, i.e. generates objects that satisfy a portion of what it has to offer, it cannot also be a goal of striving. In works of art such as music or drama, a performance is necessary to actualize a composition or score. Though some composers can hear music on reading a score, the average viewer or listener responds to the performance, not the composition, and in this way the performance hopefully recreates the artistic intent. The aesthete must in some manner replicate this process. The artist knows or feels what is good or lacking by the sense of fulfillment, but the person who responds to a work of art may search an ideal outside himself, such as the model of one person at one point in history, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, a Buddha. An ideal has a kind of grandeur so long as its manifestations are left unspecified. We can ask, did Shakespeare realize an ideal in his works, or did he fall short in a way that few or none of us, save him, could imagine? Is Hamlet the perfect drama, the Eroica the perfect symphony? Did Shakespeare and Beethoven think so, or were the works flawed for them in ways we cannot understand? In what sense were the works standards for other writers or composers at the time? Can they serve as standards for modern artists? A work of art satisfies an ideal, but it is also a unique object, so the ideal it satisfies is a specific ideal. An ideal symphony by Beethoven is deeply and complexly expressive of a powerful musical idea at a certain point in the history of music and the life of Beethoven. The composition is a self-realization. It has been said that a mature work by

345 Beethoven is a person.. The ideal satisfies less an objective standard than an artistic potential. The implicit background of a work of art includes everything the object is, as well as everything it is not or could have been. The beautiful approaches an ideal intuited from its approximations, and avoids the nonideal by keeping to its essential (ideal) properties. Realization entails choice, commitment, delimitation, perhaps even ambiguity. There is no settled datum that is not suggestive of further development. We say, a great artwork does not point to something, for that would indicate the work is incomplete, thus imperfect. But every actuality includes its antecedent context. Great art, like quantum physics, has a high degree of ambiguity (Kris, 1953), due less to its indefiniteness than a tacit penumbra of meaning. A mark of genius is that even when the ideal is fully probed we feel the mystery of untapped possibility in wonder or profundity. The ideal is approached when we sense perfection, or infer it from failure. However, if we perceive a good work of art and know it is lacking, we still do not know what it lacks. We do not know what additions to make because the work is, as is every good work, an organic whole. The artist achieves beauty in the parsing of a single form, by eliminating elements that are adventitious. The intuition of perfection does not rest in allinclusiveness but in the order and integrity of the parts, and in what of the essential is retained. We see nothing to change in a “perfect” work. What remains seems exactly right, like an act of ideal virtue. If one is given a work of art that is incoherent or inauthentic, it is difficult to say what should be done, rather like doing a fresh translation instead of making the futile effort to turn a bad translation into a good one. The similarity to the moral life is that good conduct can also result from eliminating bad options, including inaction, so what remains is a good not so much chosen as left over when alternatives have been rejected. Surely, a life not lived with the intention of doing good, but one that avoids the bad in all its disguises, could still be a good life, though the moral depth of the person may be questioned. Art differs from morality in that virtue is largely independent of taste, while beauty or perfection is more closely allied to the contemporary art form. In conduct, the motives or aims of the agent may be suspect, but we are rarely in doubt over an act of genuine goodness. We know a good act when we see it, but we are not so sure of a good artwork. Art may challenge a tradition of authoritative judgment and leave us perplexed. The self-realization of character in conduct, like that of personality in artistic creation, is the fulfillment of a

346 personal ideal. This is the subjectivist attitude. In contrast, an objective judgment of aesthetic quality, like that of state morality, tends to be retrospective. Since we do not know if the art is good, nor do we know the outcome of a moral calculus, we say the statesman is either foolish or has foresight, or the artist is a bungler or ahead of his times. The subjective judgment, that of fulfillment or satisfaction, usually follows on completion of the act or work. The objective judgment, the standard, may be postponed for an act of originality since the models for comparison do not exist. Thus, it is argued, it may take time to know whether a policy or an artwork will survive the scrutiny of history, thus whether it is (was) good or bad. Genius is always a threat to mediocrity, even when it is ignored because the public taste or knowledge is insufficient for a judgment. The public is generally unqualified for a sympathetic understanding or identification (Einfühlung) with the artist. Though high talent will acknowledge genius in its own shortcomings, or approach it in a sporadic undertaking, it is a quantum step from talent to genius. Indeed, it is questionable whether a study of the creative personality taps into the depths of genius, since a quantitative difference of degree is, or at some point becomes, a qualitative difference of kind. Eckermann said of Goethe, genius doesn’t struggle to reach the heights, genius soars. In the absence of the great soul or great artist, mediocrity in art or degeneracy in conduct is taken as the norm. This is the insidious effect of the mean on the ideal. When talent or genius is lacking, the more elevated the standard a person holds, the more inauthentic his acts and the farther they are from selffulfillment. The individual surrenders the personal ideal to consensus. The connoisseur may have an intuitive sense of the quality of a work based on knowledge of greater or lesser works, or an emotive reaction reflecting this knowledge but not explicitly calling on it. Naturally, without standards nothing of value is achieved, but an ideal that is fully objective or impersonal is a model, not a vision. Even in science, where the objectivity of the standard is most pronounced, the creative worker, the one who thinks more deeply or “out of the box,” will follow an intuition, not a mandate. Standards, after all, have no universal assent or dissent, no criteria of perfection other than what the connoisseur, the law, knowledge and taste allow. Yet the concept has a unifying power as an intuitive justification for judgments of quality. Kierkegaard (1941) alluded to the tyranny of objectivity when he wrote, from the standpoint of contemplation and indecision as obstacles to

347 self-realization, that a “too assiduous intercourse with the historical” may fail a person when the time comes to act. Context and perspective swallow up agency. Indecision is a block on wholeness, but not a sign of lost subjectivity. The subjectivist seeking to communicate facts or observations in such a way as to take an external perspective may fall into a pattern of objectivity that conveys a mix of competing outlooks. As the purely objective runs up against the totality of mind, the purely subjective is encumbered with facts in need of explanation. Yet a focus on objects is not the same as an objective focus. Subjectivity is ubiquitous. We live in mentality. Objects are the final reach of the subjective. We can focus at this endpoint and call it an objective focus, or we can recover the fullness of the subjective in compassion for others or withdrawal to the self. Subjectivity begins with the self, and assimilates the world to what is personal and authentic. What is a category? The conventional wisdom is that a category is an element of hierarchical organization whose essence is based on the shared properties of its members. In psychology, this has been studied by sorting tasks in animals, children and normal and brain-damaged adults. Basic and superordinate levels are distinguished, for example, sorting cows or animals (Lakoff, 1987). The capacity to form basic categories can be demonstrated before age two. The superordinate categories develop later. The basic category appears in the grouping of perceptually similar items, and expands as the acquisition of language enlarges the category to create wider groupings that incorporate atypical members, then to progressively more abstract classes within which the more basic ones still have a place. The process is not additive, but has a gestalt-like quality, the basic category expanding from within. Categories can be interpreted in terms of prototypes, cores or “essences” or, what might amount to the same thing, the average of the properties of related particulars. The prototype is a sample in the category that prioritizes representative features. The category of birds might have a pterodactyl at one extreme and an ostrich at the other, with a canary at the core. The fundamental attributes of “birdness” exemplified in a canary are an average of the varied instances in the class. One can see that canaries are birds but one must know the defining features of the category to decide whether to include bats, pterodactyls, ostriches, and so on. In a sense, the

348 core features of a category are what survive after the unique ones are canceled by overlapping perspectives. The core features that are common to all members constitute the essence of the category. The category expands “upward” or “downwarduote , and can arise spontaneously. Cows become part of the superordinate animals, animals of living things, a pattern repeated at all levels. For example, one can have a category of ostriches or flightless birds, birds of Australia, or birds in my garden, and within those categories, other cores or essences. The core features justify or determine the essence of each grouping. The bias toward perceptual over abstract classes found in children persists in brain-damaged cases and normal adults. Many years ago, I asked people with brain damage and normal controls to sort two out of three words or pictures, of the type: head, hat and hand. There was a pronounced tendency in all populations to sort head with hat, items that “go together” perceptually or experientially, rather than an abstract grouping based on “body part.” With a choice of head, hand and glove, the latter two items were grouped together. Similarly, tigers might be grouped with snakes or alligators instead of rabbits, as members of a class of dangerous animals instead of mammals. Perceptual and experiential classes have survival value, and thus have precedence over abstract ones. These findings also demonstrate that categories are fluid, malleable and arise spontaneously. A category of “monkeys good to eat” or “dangerous blondes” can arise on the basis of a single encounter. A category can be defined as having such and such properties, but to define the category in this way is to imply greater definiteness or substantiality than it merits. Indeed, it is precisely because mental categories are so fluid and improvisational that they are problematic for logic. The fuzzy boundaries of some items in category-membership (Labov, 1972), the overlap of categories, and the spontaneity of category-formation are all inconsistent with the idea that a category is a kind of substance. The category is not a continuant distinct from a change in the properties of its members, nor does it contain a finite number of constituents. This is one reason to focus on the common ground of all categories, or on the process of category-formation, not the particular forms or applications of one category or another. In other studies, cases with disorders of word meaning were shown to have vague and more inclusive category boundaries (Grober et al., 1980). The category widened to incorporate items that were ambiguous, situationally-related, or members of neighboring categories. For example, a

349 fireplace might be considered a member of the class of furniture. Again, experiential relations pre-empted abstract groupings. Such patients were also more likely to show holophrastic sorting, with a relaxation of the denotational or referential specificity of targets. In this respect, they were like children who use daddy for all men, or doggy for all animals. The category is initially over-inclusive, and gradually individuates as the properties of membership are refined. Such observations show that the basic categories are not bypassed or replaced but persist as the concrete cores of abstract ones. The ideal and the self Hume looked into his own self and found a bundle of sensations. The Würzburg school looked deeper, did some experiments and discovered inchoate thoughts that were imageless. The vague sensations of introspection are early perceptions, feelings in the throat or muscular sensations, states of bodily perception, not ingredients in the self. The core is too busy generating the introspections that Hume attempted to analyze. The core self is also beneath introspective access. Once an “I” individuates, this background is lost. The “I” takes on direction, orientation, a disposition or bias to action, belief and value. The direction is the momentary person that issues from the core. The core is part of the archetypal world, the “I”, the world of prototypes. The archetypal core is what we imagine to be the universal or ideal self. The first individuation sets the world apart, and places the empirical self against the background of core self and external world. The “I” perceives the world as a totality, but it senses a still deeper, more genuine or authentic self, of which it is a fleeting improvisation. The ideal in the realm of categories, or the ideal self as an abstract timeless unity, must overcome the individuation to a particular or the addition of the other person, object - to its description. Hegel wrote of the ideal as “the overcoming of the Ideas’ otherness, the process of returning - and the accomplished return - into itself of the Idea from its others.” I take this return to refer to the lapsing of the idea to its formative ground, which is really an uncovering of the path that led to the idea, or to the other, with a recurrence of a category now penetrated by the incompleteness of prior individuations. The overcoming is occasioned even before its otherness is realized. An ideal that pits self against other must reclaim what is given to the other as a share of its original oneness. The limits on what is possible

350 tend to erase what is latent. Only rarely in life or in art does one feel that an act, all at once or over time, satisfies its intuitive wholeness. In animals and newborns, categorical primitives achieve fulfillment in immediate discharge even if they do not have the richness of later categories. In great art, the self can be satisfied in artworks that discharge their potential, but this is not a simple mapping of idea or category to “output.” The idea must be revived and satisfied incrementally over repeated attempts. The realization in stages, the uncertainty, the gropings, the false starts and empty gaps, the struggle and revision, the “infinite pains” to achieve the ideal, do not give the agent a feeling of satisfaction until the idea is finally expressed and the work is complete. But every actualization, every renewal, every thought and act, demolishes ever so slightly the “sanctity” of the ideal self. Great art may, after all, be a sign of the holy spirit of life, but the artist lives as we all do, one moment at a time. And each moment, the self, the Idea, actualizes in the other, a thought, an act or an object. This “other,” a gesture, the stroke of a brush, the erasure of a word, a fleeting image, a moment of indecision or conflict, a distraction, presents itself as a particular that, in its shallowness, limitation and partiality, barely intimates the possibilities of full expressiveness. The self/other distinction infers the richness of the ideal not only from what is accomplished, but from its evanescence, and the poverty of its sallies and trials. The distinction of ideal and actual, category and member, unity and diversity, whole and part is inevitable in every pulse of consciousness. The self perceives, believes, thinks and so apprehends a world other than its felt unconscious confines. A category has a structure, minimally, a core or essence, and a periphery. The periphery is the bridge to other categories and, by way of metaphor and like relations, is engaged in productive thought. That is why the interface of different art forms or scientific disciplines is a fertile ground for new discovery. But what is the center of a category, especially such categories as symphonies, paintings, good acts, selves? One could enumerate the formal properties of art works, good conduct and selves, but these do not render a stable, predictable core. When we search the category of the self for what is essential or ideal, or for those defining features or marks of character that continue without change over the vicissitudes of life, we find that the essence of the self cannot easily be abstracted from its attributes or states. Each state of the self is a state of the world for that occurrence. The self is not an invariant with qualities that change like a file with attachments, or an immortal soul that persists over life or after death,

351 or even over successive incarnations. The essential character of the self is not immune to extreme circumstance, stress, hypnosis, brain damage, and so on. The self does not survive a loss of its objects. The self, merely to exist, must specify a world. The world collapses if the self fails to individuate. Conversely, for the world to exist requires a self at its foundation. Put simply, the world disappears if it is split off from the self, and the self dissolves if it is cut off from the world. For some, the self or soul is the ideal of nature as it specifies a given individual. The self achieves a momentary existence, then withdraws for another actualization. The seed of this arising is closer to nature's “mind” than the final objectifications. We are closer to nature in the unconscious origins of thought than its outcome in perceptual objects. This is because we think up the conscious world of perception, but we are thought up by unseen nature. One could say nature idealizes individuality to a model of itself as the world objectifies. Nature generates individuals to create an awareness of itself, so nature can perceive itself through the agency of individual selves. In other words, the self that perceives an illusory nature is nature’s device for reflecting on its own reality. Mind is self-conscious nature, or nature in an act of self-perception. In this process, the core self is a drop of individuality that perishes in the mother-sea of its birth. We tend to see this arising and perishing as the basis of autonomy and community, as particulars arise and devolve back to the whole. Within a given subjectivity, the other issues out of the core. If the other is a portion of the self, and the self a portion of the other, the pattern of world appearance out of the self is the model for the individuation of all selves out of mind-universal. From the standpoint of nature, the multiplicity of selves creates an infinitude of perspectives that can observe and contemplate the world-soul out of which they originate. Each perspective becomes an eternal past that leaves nature continuously enlarged. Objects perish, as we do, in nature’s drive to novelty, but they remain through us a part of nature's mind. Reality, existence and the ideal We can examine more closely the question, do ideals exist, and what is the meaning of existence for timeless entities, by exploring certain of these concepts. Ordinarily, time depends on change. A changeless world of permanence is a world that is timeless. But a theory of entities as a becoming into being, which is an epoch of time, requires us to ask where

352 change is situated. If existence is equated with substance, essence or permanence, there are three ways of looking at stability in a theory of becoming: at the categories out of which things individuate; at the things that individuate, then perish; and at the process of individuation. In a lovely metaphor, the mystic, Jacob Boehme, likened these to elements of the Trinity: God the father as eternal potential, Christ the son as perishing actuality, and the Holy Ghost as the process of actualization and renewal. The source categories of potential are the primary candidates for the timeless essences of the things they give rise to. The things that eventuate, the actualities, are themselves categories of the change that deposits them, while the ghostly process of change is non-temporal, at least until there is an object. According to the notion of existence as substantial, it is also non-existent. In any event, there is no concrete individual, no substance or intrinsic essence that persists in spite of change, there is only change and the stabilities that are its manifestations, for change itself, or transition, is imperceptible. If change is wholly in becoming, is time also in that process? The paradox of becoming is that even non-perspectival time does not exist until it terminates. Earlier and later phases in a particle or an act of cognition cannot be determined until the thing exists. Becoming generates temporal objects out of simultaneity. Without becoming there is no change, without change there are no entities, and lacking entities there is no succession. In human thought, the temporal order of world objects is organized about the now, and established in the transition from unconscious to conscious thought. However, if a unit of time is not an instant but a duration, as Bergson, Whitehead and others have argued, there must be duration before there is a unit of time. Conversely, while becoming creates temporal entities, the transition is not in time until being is created. On these grounds, it is possible for change to occur outside of (before there is) time, and for time to occur in the absence of (after there is) change. Such conclusions, based on intuitions gleaned from patterns in the development and decay of mental objects, extend to all non-cognitive entities. Unreality is not reality mistakenly characterized, for this would assume the possibility of a knowledge and correct characterization of the real when it is the categories that are real, whether they are mistakenly characterized or not. A reality correctly characterized is still a mode of categorization, though one can quibble as to which mode is “more real” than others. Cognition does not merely impose its categories on nature, but expresses the pattern of a nature that is intrinsically categorical. We do not

353 approach nature by stepping out of our categories, but rather, enter the epochal ground of those categories in more fundamental entities. Basically, the real is a feeling and a judgment (Chapter 4 and 22). The former depends on coherence, the latter on correspondence, but the ultimately real is categorical irrespective of what it corresponds to. Thus it is false to say that unicorns exist, but not that they are unreal. If a memory is real, so is a unicorn. Does a memory exist only when it is recalled? If the memory persists over sleep as a potential to be recalled, like a passive vocabulary or a competence for the grammar of a language, what is the meaning of “exist” in this context? We would not want to say that a memory, or a word, or a grammatical possibility, exists one moment and not another, say, that unretrieved memories or unactualized capacities are non-existent and become existents when they are realized. We could say they exist in one form at one moment, e.g. in the relative strength of synaptic connections in a dormant configural network, and in a different form at another moment, e.g. in the revival of the network in an act of cognition. In what sense can a present concept or idea that actualizes out of competence be said to exist? If it is true to say that unicorns are real and exist as ideas, are they less real than actual unicorns? Is an hallucination less real than an external object? Certainly not to the person who is hallucinating. These distinctions of what it means to be real, to exist and to be true are important, since if what is real depends on the categories, the categories are prior to the real and not themselves modes of reality. The application of the categories may determine what is true and false, but not what exists or what is real and unreal. Historically, the problem of the non-real was posed before that of nonexistence. We have many examples in daily life of real and unreal experience but no experience of non-existence in the sense of nothingness. The priority of reality over existence owes also to the fact that a thing can be judged to be unreal, such as a dream, yet still exist, while it makes no sense to say that non-existence is real. Hawkins (1954) writes, “What is fully and unambiguously real is what exists,” arguing after Aristotle that this is most aptly applied to concrete individuals. But what is the reality of an individual? Certainly, a tree or a person seems more real than an idea, but according to what criterion? What is a fully and unambiguously real individual or particular other than what common sense dictates? Is an object fully real when it is felt to be real, or when it is judged to be real? The feeling of realness occurs for hallucination, dream and in many varieties of illusion and error. The dream feels real because there is

354 coherence across perceptions. This is also the basis for the feeling of the reality of waking experience. The knowledge of the real in a scientific judgment has ideas or mental images in relation to the world of perception. In a philosophical judgment, concepts are in relation to objects, or to things-in-themselves that are unknowable. Do we give precedence to coherence in the feeling of realness, or to correspondence in the judgment? (On the similarity of coherence and correspondence, see Chapter 8). In either case, what is real is a judgment, whether a feeling or a comparison. In feeling, the real is compared to an experience of the unreal. We say the dream is unreal when we are awake, meaning that waking awareness feels real while the memory of the dream, like any memory, has less realness to it. Indeed, if we awaken from an intense or frightening dream that is experienced with near perceptual clarity, we often remark how real the dream seems to be, but as it fades and becomes a memory, the feeling of its realness fades as well. In contrast, in a judgment of the real, we accept as real what is public and verifiable, leaving out private experience. We suppose that reality is “out there”, that it can be confirmed by others, so that a shared experience is real and exists. However, if we believe that experience is phenomenal, including perceptual objects, we might consider the source of that experience as the primary reality. The difference between feeling and judging is that in feeling we have an experience of the real and the unreal, and we take the perspective of what feels most real at the moment. In philosophical judgment, we can take the real to be that which we perceive, or we can look beyond the object to its material substrates or the thing-in-itself. The taking of one world - an object or thing-in-itself - as a standard for all judgments is modeled on the distinction of true and false, though if all experience is phenomenal, we can form no definite judgment as to what that standard actually is. If we turn to physics, we are told that a tree is a collection of vibrant atoms, indeed, that the vibrations may be more real than the atom, and that even the atom is a fiction. If we reduce all objects to physics, what becomes of the reduced level? Is the water we drink more or less real than the molecules that compose it? For a practical philosophy, these questions can be dismissed as sophistic, but the way we think about them is deeply reflective of a theory of mind. Is a particular more or less real than its antecedents? An object does not exist without the concepts behind it and its supportive physiology. The concept is as real as the object, yet both are mental phenomena. An object is a collection of replications in duration. To which replication of the

355 object do we assign reality? In a given replication, the object is delimited out of memory. Perception is the objectified tip of reminiscence. The tree a moment ago is a memory. The immediate memory of the tree is part of the perception, as well as the momentary event that makes the tree real and stable. If the memory of the object a moment ago is the major portion of its perception, which portion is real? For a thing to be real has, historically, implied a substance or essence that persists. The essence has been compared to a subject, with realness or existence as predicates or modifiers. An idea is fleeting and insubstantial. On this view it is not fully real. In what sense is the wind real? It has properties but does it have an essence? How long does a thing have to persist to be real? Is a nano-second enough? If I type an x in my computer and then erase it, is it less real than an x that is allowed to stand? Is the tree in my perception the same as that perceived by a monkey or bird, or the ants that crawl on its branches? Why is my perception privileged? If I am color blind and the leaves of the tree appear gray, are they less real than the green ones that other people see? To put existence before reality is to avoid a definition of what it means to be real, other than the circularity of to exist is to be real, and to be real is to exist. On the one hand, we could say that an hallucination exists but is unreal, on the other - my own view - that it is both real and exists. Like a unicorn, hallucination is false in that a proposition such as: a unicorn or hallucination corresponds to an external object, is false, but they are real and existent as ideas in the mind, but what’s the difference if all objects are ideas in the mind? The real in feeling and judgment has a personal and impersonal interpretation, but existence cuts across the subject-object boundary. What then is the meaning of to exist? Kierkegaard wrote that “the only thing-in-itself which cannot be thought of is existence…”. What is one to make of this remark? We think of existence as a pattern of becoming that fills the temporal extent or duration of an entity. Is thinking this process in human mentation? Does the difficulty that he points to lie in the self-reflexive nature of thought? If so, that would invalidate the whole purpose of philosophy, which is mind reflecting on its own activity. If existence is the becoming that is active in thinking, can one grasp an activity using that same activity? How would this differ from acting, feeling, perceiving, which are other forms of becoming? The activity of thinking as a process has no solid resting point for the observer to observe himself, as if the crest of a waterfall could describe its own motion, or a particle of light describe its wave-form. An object of thought must be thought up in the act of thinking and, in the

356 course of being cognized, stabilized as a category. Existence as becoming is unobservable, while existence as being perishes in its observation. Is this Kierkegaard’s meaning? What can we think of a thing-in-itself other than the appearance it presents in consciousness? Is this like asking a person who is color blind to describe the color red? Suppose in a thought-experiment we ask a light spectrometer to speak of the experience of color. Could a person or machine describe the non-experiential? What is the difference between the phenomenal describing the non-experiential and - from an imaginative standpoint - the noumenal describing the cognitive? We have some inkling of the gulf we are trying to bridge if we try to imagine perception or cognition solely from the data of brain physiology. We readily go from visual objects to the underlying neurophysiology, but given only the latter, could a person, whether sighted or blind from birth, give an account of visual phenomena without experiencing those phenomena beforehand? That is, knowing there are neurons responsive to shape and color, could a person who had never seen fruit imagine an apple? Yet, if we show an apple to a person and record from the brain, we assume the electrical effects are due to, and are the basis for seeing, the apple. Neural firings in the visual cortex do not give the experience of a visual object. Even if we could demonstrate the neural correlates of an act of cognition, all we would have are the correlates, not the cognition. The congenitally blind have a space organized around the field of personal action. They cannot build up an extended field from non-visual experience. Even the famous Molyneux question has not been satisfactorily answered in people with congenital cataracts who regain sight, namely, whether a congenitally blind person who becomes sighted gives evidence of general ideas uncoupled from the modality in which they were acquired. Some philosophers argue that a complete description of the physiology gives the phenomenology, but even at the physical level, knowing everything about two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen does not give a liquid, and a complete description of quantum physics does not give DNA. In Kierkegaard's question, the existence of the noumenal is the question at hand, whether the appearance of things is all there is to them, or if the properties of noumena are knowable. Rather than existence, I would say the only thing that cannot be an object of thought is absolute nothingness since it offers no content for thought. Indeed, to experience nothingness is for thought to disintegrate. The nothing of the non-

357 experiential, however, or the non-being of otherness, as described by Plato, which is essential for the distinction of what is from what is not, differs from pure nothingness in that it is an unexperienced something that in some instances can be inferred from what has been experienced before. An example might be the space behind my head, the screech of a snark, the content of other minds. In this regard, it should be noted that in some writings, other is not equivalent to non-self. The world of the self includes the other, while that of non-self is an entirely different world. In such instances, the self/non-self distinction takes the other as an entity outside consciousness. Can some properties of the thing-in-itself be deduced from phenomena? Is the thing-in-itself that which cannot be thought of, or only its existence? The remark implies that properties of the thing other than existence can be thought of. Yet these are all contingent on the existence of the thing. What properties amenable to thought are thrown into doubt if existence is the sole exception? The very existence of things-in-themselves is in question, so how can one speculate on properties other than existence when existence is the precondition for everything else? Moreover, if no combination of properties or adjectives can constitute the existence of the thing they characterize, what are we talking about when we talk of the existence of a thing independent of its description? What is surely meant concerns the existence of the thing-in-itself, including our own existence, i.e. what it is to exist as persons, not our fate or adventures. The Cogito is reformulated as, “because I exist and think, therefore I think I exist,” but even given existence outside of thought, all one can honestly say is that thinking is going on and the self, the “I”, is thought up in the thinking. Thinking is all there is, with the self at one end and the world at the other. To think or say, “I think x”, is to separate thinking into a subject, object and a connection between them. One can say, thinking is going on, feeling is going on, perceiving is going on, and then ask, how do “I”, how does the self, arise at the foundation of thinking, and how do concepts or objects arise at its terminus. Whitehead said that genuine reality is closed to mind. We only know our mental states. We can assume the world is realized in the mind, but the world is not pure invention. We must assume that the process active in the realization of human thought is derived from process in the physical world, in other words, the nature of mind tells us something about (the mind of) nature. Pepper (1930) wrote, “If there were only one set of categories through which alone the order of the world could be conceived… (that set)

358 would be indistinguishable from the intrinsic order of nature.” This is not to say experience comes to us in categories, but that it is ordered in fundamentally the same way as conceptual knowledge. The categories through which nature is perceived are elaborations of the categorical structure of imperceptible nature. The idea that categories are not a priori but are extracted and elaborated from some portion of experience is a needless limitation on a categorical nature that attempts to preserve the a priori by taking an intermediate position that is less coherent than either of its extremes. The basic structure of a physical category is the epoch of its existence. The epochal theory resolves becoming with being in categories that are processual in their extensibility and realization, and substantial in their completeness. This was intimated in Bergson and James, but it was central to the philosophy of Whitehead, who began with physical science and mathematical logic and ended at the doorsteps to a theory of mind. Microgenesis begins at the opposite pole and approaches Whitehead as companion.

Chapter 13. From Intention to Obligation We cannot read our duties off the facts. Dorothy Emmet

Introduction There are many ways to trace the transition from self to world, or from the subjective to the objective pole of the mental life, such as from dispositions and implicit beliefs through concepts to objects, from dreamless sleep through dream to perception, from the first budding of a thought to a concrete action, or from a personal value to an impersonal duty. Among these various forms, there is also a shift from the privacy of an intent to fulfill a promise to the publicity of an obligation to keep it. It is instructive to consider how a promise becomes an obligation, for it is yet another example of the fluid boundary between inner-directed acts and those felt to be under an external compulsion. Along with the obligation to keep a promise, there is the question of what happens when a promise is broken. For some implicit promises, there is a strong expectation that the promise will be kept, even to the point of an explicit duty, such as an oath in the military. The more the promise objectifies, the more it becomes a duty or an imperative. This transition is also one from guilt, which is a conflict in values, to punishment, which is a resolution of conduct with law. Both guilt and punishment are essential to enforce an obligation, as well as to emphasize its gravity. Punishment is usually viewed as vindictiveness or deterrence, the former by an act of revenge, the latter by incarceration or rehabilitation. Hegel had the idea that punishment should take into consideration the person as a moral being, so that a person has a right to be punished, as well as an obligation for his honor. The punishment is for improper conduct that should be freely admitted. The approach is reformative, and places a responsibility on the individual, but it is closer to mortification than rehabilitation, since it requires that pain is invited, and inflicted. This chapter argues (after Ross, 1930) that punishment is the fulfillment of a

360 promise, one that is collective rather than individual. However one interprets the association of punishment with moral obligation, there is an intimate relation between the two. The continuum from personal responsibility and guilt over a broken promise, to moral outrage and a demand for punishment over an unfulfilled obligation, is as much an illustration of the transition from self to world as that from value and intention to conduct and coercion. Promises A promise made to another person is a moral claim on oneself, though the other is usually needed as a witness, at least when the promise is made. If I promise to do something for a person, who then relocates to another country and is not seen again, my promise is still binding. The strength of the promise persists and may even intensify should the other person die. A death bed promise exerts a special force, it is, we say, sacred. Such promises are like vows or oaths before god. They differ from a promise to a person who is unaware the promise has been made, such as to visit my aunt this year, which is a promise to one’s self, like a New Year’s resolution to stop smoking or lose weight, or to be a better, kinder person. Whether the promise or resolution is moral in relation to others, or nonmoral concerning only the self, such commitments usually lapse without guilt or regret. The absence of the other as witness saps the resolution of its force, and the failed promise gives way to excuse and procrastination. Such resolution-like promises can be modified, compromised and reinstated at another time. They are self-initiated, unlike a promise to a specific request that entails an obligation to which the subject must respond even if he requires time to reflect on whether or not to accept it. Moreover, the temporal window of a personal resolution is usually wider than an ordinary promise or favor, and wider still than a deathbed promise, which exacts a commitment at that precise moment. It is an instance where the less the time and opportunity to deliberate, the greater the feeling of obligation once the request is accepted. This illustrates the effect of deliberation on commitment in the sphere of promises and the effect on conviction in the sphere of belief. Resolutions are personal desires, intentions, not obligations, and therefore less binding than promises made to others. A resolution may reflect a strong intention, one that is made with resolve. Yet it is still more like a disposition than a promise. It is usually private and subvocal, more a

361 thought than a statement, and it may not achieve the same degree of clarity, explicitness, verbal concreteness or actuality as when another person makes the request. For the resolution to have force, to be more than a wish or an inclination, it must enlarge inwardly and saturate the self-concept so the whole self is engaged, and character is at stake. Or it must enlist external pressure to become a command or an obligation. A resolution to stop smoking gains added force if a person is reminded by his physician that he will die unless he does. The self then has to act against its desire (to smoke) for the sake of the whole self, or for the sake of others when conduct is driven by values that test the resolution, similar to those that are engaged in acting under an obligation. A resolution that is shared with others may be more binding than one held in secret. The procurement of a witness increases the force of the will to carry out the resolution, from fear of criticism, shame or being perceived as weak. The intention then becomes an obligation, as the presence of others limits the degrees of freedom available to the agent. Adding a witness to a resolution shifts it from the privacy of wish or desire to the publicity of an overt promise. An obligation does not require another person, but the presence of the other in a request, or as a witness to a resolution, further objectifies the intention. Without an obligation to others, a strong resolution must be stated as a promise or oath, to god, to one’s ideal self, etc. Such resolutions include an implicit if not, then such as an aid to self-discipline. Self-mortification once served this purpose for broken vows. Confession or shrift, apology and reaffirmation seek forgiveness for oath-like resolutions not brought to fruition. In a promise, one is exempted by the other of responsibility for invoking the promise or for the idea of the requested action. If the promise is made under duress, and depending on the circumstances, there may be some lessening of responsibility for its implementation or satisfaction. The solicitor bears a greater responsibility for the request, the grantor only its acceptance and discharge (cf. below). The situation is uncomplicated if the promise is benign. But suppose a person is asked to perform an act that, unknown to him, is part of an agenda that is unlawful, say, to deliver a package of stolen goods to someone. How far should one go to establish the nature of the request, its purpose and aim? Is it necessary to determine its legality and rationality in advance? We would not indict a naïve person for compliance in a criminal act if the consent was given without knowledge of its purpose. We would accuse the solicitor, not the grantor. But does the latter not have a responsibility for a full inquiry? If a request

362 is accepted, and then found to be problematic, how bound is the individual to fulfill a promise he might otherwise not have accepted. Obviously, a package of stolen goods is a special case, but what of less dramatic undertakings? In other words, how does breaking a promise differ from refusing one? What is the difference between breaking, refusing, and not keeping a promise? What is the difference between explicit and implicit refusal? Suppose a promise is deliberated before it is accepted, and its fulfillment is an action the person believes to be necessary and good. The promise is an act that is triggered by a request. But if I am asked by the mother of my beloved to promise to be good to the woman I love, whose desire is being fulfilled? What is the point of such a request? If it is to reinforce a vow of love, it suggests she thinks I am insincere. The subtle links between these states are important in determining the locus and degree of responsibility, moral or otherwise. One may be morally bound to break a promise as well as keep it. Indeed, accepting, refusing, keeping or breaking a promise, are all moral choices. Certainly there are instances when breaking a promise is the moral choice and keeping it is immoral. The solicitor of the promise is a potential source of rebuke if the promise is broken. His presence enables the person to “locate” the obligation externally. The promise is made to someone, even if, in truth, the promise is to oneself or one’s sense of obligation. To accept, reject, keep, break a promise are all tests of character, whether the obligation is felt as internal or external. To agree to a promise that is in one’s selfinterest would appear to have less merit than when self-interest is at risk. To promise to give money to someone you detest is an obligation that may be a burden, but if the beneficiary is someone you love, it will be as much a desire as a duty. What is the difference in a promise that requires sacrifice and one that taps devotion? In the latter, the solicitor instigates a desire, in the former he exploits one. In such instances, the objectivity of the obligation fluctuates according to the intentions of the agent, moving inward to the extent the request is consistent with desire. The more the individual wants to fulfill the promise, the more the obligation feels like a wish. This occurs as well when a promise is made out of love and with sincerity. The desire to please transforms an obligation from a duty that may be onerous to a welcome source of pleasure. When a desire to please replaces an obligation to satisfy, what happens is not a change in the circumstance of the promise but the emphasis on its sources of motivation. The inward shift can turn a promise

363 into a resolution that is felt as strictly internal. The resolution differs from a desire in having a trace of obligation, which is necessary since one generally resolves to do something that is unappealing or difficult. When the promise is centered in obligation, the self is less engaged in its accomplishment. It is for the other, not the self. In Kantian ethics, moral obligation and credit dissociate from desire. The goal is for the agent to desire to fulfill the obligation, at which point it is no longer felt as obligatory. The test of character in a promise is usually limited in time. When the objectivity of an obligation shifts to the subjectivity of a resolution, the self is engaged to a greater extent, depending on the depth and austerity of commitment. In some instances, a change in character may be required. Many resolutions aim at a permanent alteration of conduct. A resolution to stop drinking can have a major impact on one’s life. A resolution that is like a vow, for example, to become a Buddhist, if followed devoutly, entails a radical self-transformation. One can say that the transition from a disposition, to an intention or resolution, to a promise with an obligation involves an increasing objectification of the will. Specifically, there is a progressive surrender of agency from an intrapsychic to an extrapersonal locus. One could also say that the exo-centric values depositing in an object carry with them a feeling of agency that is transferred from the self to the other. In this way, intention objectifies in the other as obligation. When this occurs, the feeling of agency that ordinarily develops into action out of egocentric drive follows the exo-centric values into the other, so the self feels less the agent than the object of a volition. In the extreme case, this leads to a command hallucination. But in everyday life, the shift marks the subtle boundary between doing what one wants and doing what one should, i.e. what others want one to do. The greater the force of will, i.e. the more the ego-centric values prevail, the less reciprocity of agency. In contrast, in those with a weakness of will, or those who are unsure what to do, the will flows out to the other, and displaces to the other the feeling of agency, even to the point where one is passive to the other’s demands. According to the relative bias in the flow of agentive feeling into action or perception, what the other wants of the self may supplant or reinforce what the self wants. In a promise, the self is caught between the request and the obligation. The self accepts the promise in a spirit of agency or obligation, the other is the agent who exacts it or exploits these tendencies. The one who agrees to the promise responds to the other’s needs even if their satisfaction is not

364 enforceable. The similarity of oaths, vows, resolutions, promises, favors, requests, commands and obligations, points to a common structure with a different shading of inner and outer, a different valence of the ego- and exo-centric values, and a different locus of will, thus strength of personal agency. From a subjective standpoint, a resolution tends to be weaker than an oath or vow since one’s character is less involved, whereas from an objective standpoint, a favor is weaker than a promise since character is secondary to an obligation to others. The central theme of these variations is the dominant focus of the act in the unfolding of a cognition, the degree of objectification, and the influence of external constraints on intentional states. A resolution is a private intention, a promise is a deference to the intentions of others. Resolutions, vows and oaths are intentions that engage core values to a differing extent. The more personal the values, the less essential are obligation and punishment, and the greater the sense of personal responsibility. In commands, the will is limited by obligation, duty, fear of punishment, shame, rebuke, etc. In a request, there is an appeal to othercentered values to elicit an intention that would not ordinarily be selfinitiated. A favor is a response to a weak request. There is a greater sense of intention or desire. The favor is something one is more likely to want to do. A strong request that exacts a promise is something one feels he should or must do, whether he wants to or not. We see similar comparisons between preference and desire, or opinion and belief. These nuances help us to understand the complex structure of an intentional act. The strength or weakness of a promise or a resolution depends on the values evoked and the accent on self or other. The transition from resolution to promise may involve a shift from non-moral to moral choices, when the opposition of an object of desire for what does not involve the interest of others shifts to an opposition between desire, self-interest and the interests of others. An example might be when a non-moral resolve to stop smoking for reasons of personal health shifts to a moral promise to others who find cigarette smoke offensive. Self-denial does not arise only in deference to other-centered values. The other is a challenge for the self, but a more ideal self is also a challenge to the self of actual desire. A resolution to stop smoking, or alter any habitual behavior, can reflect the deeper self-interest or the conflict between the momentary self of desire and the ideal self. Whether a desire is opposed to one’s own betterment or that of others would seem to be a minor distinction from a psychological point of view. Desire and self-interest do not always coincide. There is a

365 potential conflict between the desire to rob a bank or to marry for money and the desire to be authentic or respectable, or not be apprehended, between a set of conflicting desires on the one hand and, on the other, say, a promise made to another person, e.g. to participate in a robbery, pay a debt, etc. The opposition between the values of the actual and the ideal self are open to exploitation by others. A selfish or devious solicitor may appeal to the egocentric values of the grantor in extracting a promise, while the beneficent solicitor appeals to compassionate ones as, say, one can agree (promise) to be the trustee of a will out of love for the deceased or the beneficiaries, or as an opportunity for financial gain. The conflict in a person between the want and the should is resolved in the promise as a facilitation of one bias or the other. An obligation, moral or immoral, appeals to competing self-interests. What, then, is the important structural difference in the direction of a commitment? Take the resolution of the arhat to achieve personal salvation versus the obligation of the bodhisattva to strive for the salvation of others. Both are dedicated, but in the latter this dedication is referred outward as a social responsibility. One could argue that this shift merely adds weight to selfinterest, or fortifies self-esteem by the responsibility to others. Perhaps the needs of others amplify a weakness in commitment, were an act to be fully self-directed. A medical student may resolve, e.g. promise his mother, etc., to postpone the pursuit of personal happiness to become a proficient doctor. This may be perceived as an end in itself, or as a means to help others. The moral distinction has some import, I suppose, but the transition from self-betterment as a good in itself to self-betterment as a means to the good of others, i.e. a subtle bias in object-concepts or means/ends relations, seems less important than the fact that the ends and the means are both expressions of character. A promise gains strength by the existence of the other, as well as the degree to which personal valuations are invested in the assent. The promise is strengthened by affection, concern or respect for the person making the request whether or not the subject agrees with what is promised. The strength increases in a promise when the whole self is engaged, and in an obligation when the engagement is wholly with the other. There is a fullness of agency in the self or a passivity to the agency of the other, but regardless of the locus of agency, the core values determine which path will arise in the self. A binding promise may be carried out reluctantly, with little resolve, or be broken, while a resolution that approaches a vow can have considerable force. A moment of resolve can re-define a life.

366 Someone who promises, or resolves, to dedicate his life to helping others may not have in mind a specific individual, a method or a career, but the weight of exo-centric values compensates for the lack of a particular beneficiary. The more desire and interest for self or other coincide, the less essential the other is to bind the subject to the promise. In such cases, often a major occurrence in life – the loss of a loved one, a financial reversal, etc. – fortifies the resolution and provides a surrogate witness, so the resolution is not merely for oneself, thus non-obligatory, but for the sake of others, for god, humanity, and so on. Breaking an oath or a promise A person who disavows a private oath to which he was strongly committed is like a person who ignores a promise to someone made in sincerity. It is a matter of some theoretical import that the lapse of an oath or strong resolution is like the betrayal of a promise. In both, self-interest trumps self-denial, whether or not the latter results from moral conflict. The force of a promise is a test of the moral fiber of the person who agrees to it, but this is also the case in non-moral resolutions. Oaths, resolutions, favors and promises have a common structure in relation to the increased claim on the self when a witness is available, imaginatively or concretely. A resolution to finish an education may be an implicit promise, e.g. “mother would have wanted me to,” even if there was no explicit request. A witness, even if no longer alive – and then more demanding still because breaking the promise cannot be forgiven – is an internalized moral judge who embodies the request and is aligned with values guiding its satisfaction. In life, a promise to a dear friend may have the same or greater force than a promise to a loving parent, while after death, the promise to the parent may have precedence. Unlike friends, parents are usually more forgiving of the failures or shortcomings of their children, and often, when they die, the promise intensifies, especially if we realize how much we are in their debt. Self-denial is the element of subordination in promises and obligations. The marital vow, the promise of love and respect, may be heartfelt when it is uttered, but the contract it announces shifts over time to an obligation which may then be felt as compulsory. The element of selfrenunciation that motivates a promise is exploited in the obligations of political, economic or military life. One takes a vow to defend to the death one’s flag and country. The oath can be an obligation that is consistent

367 with a desire, or it can be exacted by others when its consequences are not clear to the subject, e.g. the risks of violating the oath or the dangers in seeing it through. The person is then confronted with a promise made impetuously or under duress that could entail death in its defense, or dishonor in its betrayal. If an unfulfilled promise persists in the memory of a decent person, the breaking of a promise is, for better or worse, a test of the moral will. There are situations in which the moral thing to do is to withdraw a promise to a person who is later exposed as unworthy, or if the conditions that motivated the promise no longer apply; for example, an oath to defend one’s country in a war of conquest, a promise to give financial aid to a person who comes into a fortune, etc. The difficulty is that, from a moral standpoint, breaking a promise (oath, etc.) is more complex than keeping it. In keeping a promise, the subject must merely do what he promised to do. A promise that is kept in spite of altered circumstances, like a frozen corpse, persists through the vicissitudes of life. In contrast, in breaking a promise the context or life-situation of the self or the other has changed and the promise is tacitly re-negotiated. Other motivations or values play a role. For example, a refusal to fight in the army may owe to an acknowledgement of cowardice or the appearance of competing ambitions, the reluctance to give financial aid might be motivated by greed or envy. In those for whom promises have moral force, the delinquent self wants forgiveness for a betrayal. If the betrayal of an obligation is not forgiven – or even if it is – a residue of guilt may remain. Often, the person will not forgive himself if his own conflicts provoked the betrayal. The shrift of the penitent, the talking-cure of psychoanalysis, forgetting and revision, finally grace and salvation, replace the need for forgiveness with excuses or justifications. Or, they provide forgiveness by way of surrogates for those who were injured. When a person commits, or even contemplates, what he perceives to be a wrong, tensions may be unresolved if egoism and self-denial are not reconciled. Self-interest and social or parental obligations are in conflict, one set of values condemning the other, while the concomitants of this friction, guilt, remorse, are the punishments of a divided self. A promise and an oath are also distinguished by the spontaneity of the former and the ritualism of the latter. While an oath can be highly individual, often it is formulaic, consisting of particular words, a pledge of allegiance, an oath to defend one’s country, and so on. For many oaths the specific words are crucial. In the marital oath, if one says okay instead of I

368 do, the marriage might not be legal. According to Pachalska (2002), in Roman law, to say promitto was morally binding but not enforceable, but to say spondeo in front of witnesses was legally binding (Jalowicz, 1996). Ancient Roman law had no concept of a contract, only a promise. A contract consisted of a set of mutual promises by each party, each of which was a separate legal act. Finally, it has to be said that the importance of the promise in moral philosophy has an anachronistic quality in the contemporary world. How rare is it that a promise is kept, that verbal contracts are binding, that conduct is not in conflict with egoist needs, that the consent to a promise does not have the intent, however muted, of promoting personal advantage? The expression, let’s have lunch, has no more meaning or friendship in it than saying to someone, “Have a nice day,” reflects a sincere wish for the other’s contentment. It is not only the mutation to emptiness of such statements that siphons intention from the promise, but the ubiquity of attorneys to contractualize what, in the past, was sealed with a handshake. It takes little experience in the modern world to become cynical regarding the supposed sanctity of a promise and, by implication, the moral character of most people, not only those who destroy in the name of their gods, but ordinary people with an adequate moral education. Still, there are hopeful signs that egoism is not the only motive for conduct. The morality of requests We are usually concerned with the responsibility of the person making a promise, but what is it to ask a promise and place someone under an obligation? Asking for a promise would not seem to have the same moral weight as keeping one, since keeping the promise involves a deliberate commitment while asking is merely a request. But a request that places a person under an obligation has moral consequences for the solicitor. An obligation is placed on the other, but since the solicitor usually appeals to the grantor’s friendship or loyalty, he has an obligation not to exploit his good will. In a promise, responsibility is displaced to another person. To ask someone to do what one is unable to do or what the grantor is better equipped to do is one thing, but to ask someone to do what one is unwilling to do is quite another. If a request places a person at risk, informing him of the risk helps to satisfy the obligation not to exploit his generosity, but the solicitor may still be taking advantage of loyalty, innocence, affection, a wish not to see him harmed, inconvenienced, etc. That is why the nature

369 and content of the promise is no less important than the obligation to satisfy it. Is the request motivated by weakness of will, caution, fear, deceit? What is the character of the solicitor, what are his covert motives? The solicitor is not free of responsibility once the promise is accepted, for its completion, continuance or suspension and the solictor’s gratitude all depend on the judgment of the latter as to how well the promise has been satisfied. The many ways of extracting promises from people, or placing them under an obligation, are the fabric of a society woven together by a trust that obligations will be respected. An abuse of trust is exploitation. Nixon once remarked, in truth and cynicism, that politics is the art of placing someone under an obligation. Most promises or implicit obligations are necessary agreements that bind people in personal, institutional or commercial relationships. A contract is only as good as the good will of the parties that honor it. The critical aspect of a promise or an obligation, the moral context in which it appears, is the sanctity of the trust that is its guarantor. However, as with any bond between people, the obligations of an implicit promise are often asymmetric. The obligation (promise) to work by a laborer may, in the disparity of income, be incommensurate with the obligation (promise) by the employer to pay his wages. A low wage by a wealthy employer, even if the person would starve without the job, and even if the salary is paid in a timely manner, is a form of exploitation, in which one person becomes rich on the bare subsistence of the needy. The asymmetry of tacit contracts is pervasive and deserves closer scrutiny. For example, is it unethical for a physician to accept payment for what amounts to the custodial care of people with untreatable diseases? Should one be paid for dispensing hope and vitamins? As to the moral aspect of a request, take an extreme example. Suppose a woman asks her lover to kill her husband. Which is more contemptible, the request or the murder? Most people would say the request. The solicitor initiates the action, and would seem to have greater intent and more freedom of choice than the one who accepts the obligation. The idea of the murder originates with the wife, whatever her motives. It is elicited out of a potential for innumerable other possible ideas, whereas the idea presented to the lover obliges him to say either yes or no. To think of the act, and the plan to carry it out, differs from a simple assent or dissent. In this example, in addition to the actual crime, arranging the murder – indeed, for many just taking a lover – violates the marital vow, betrays a contract and a trust. The law recognizes the greater culpability of the

370 solicitor in prostitution and some other crimes, yet various forms of entrapment are accepted as legitimate methods to entice susceptible individuals. This may be a necessary tactic, but it is questionable from a moral point of view. Many people can be enticed into an act they would not otherwise have initiated, perhaps they would not even have conceived. In the murder of a husband, the relative weight of the intentions of the solicitor would seem, in most instances, to be greater than those of the killer, who is an instrument or intermediary. This introduces a more general feature of promises, that the keeping of a promise may be an end to the person who accepts the obligation, but that person is a means to the intentions of the solicitor. When a murder is done for love, the gratitude of the beloved may be the only end that guides the killer. If money is exchanged, the murder is a means to largesse and there is less asymmetry in culpability. The admonition, to thine own self be true, entails that we avoid making a promise that conflicts with the best of our values. Then the keeping of the promise will not do violence to one’s character. The same is true for the breaking of a promise that is impetuous or foolish, for example, a death-bed promise to leave an estate to a cat instead of making a charitable gift. A promise is not a contract, the breach of which has legal consequences. The consequences of breaking a promise are usually psychic. Thus, a promise to execute a will should be reconsidered if the beneficiary becomes so confused or undeserving as to vitiate the warrant of the request. Should a person assist a client to gain an inheritance if he knows the beneficiary is a terrorist who will use the funds for murder? How binding is a promise of euthanasia for a person on life support? Depending on the person’s moral outlook, to keep such a promise could be an act of love, or an act of murder. If the solicitor is conscious and suffering, there is greater motivation, and risk, in keeping the promise than if he is terminally comatose or insensate for, at that point, he is already mentally dead, regardless of what the law has to say on the subject. To pull the plug on a person on life-support has no moral credit. It merely allows someone already dead to be buried. One is no less justified in breaking than keeping an impulsive promise, or one that is later perceived to be immoral. No obligation is absolute. The son may question the father’s request, the soldier may question the officer’s command. A promise to a deceased parent to study medicine when music is one’s calling would be kept at the cost of an authentic life and broken at the cost of a betrayal of trust. A promise has to be reassessed and revised in relation to changing

371 conditions and the values they evoke. These issues arise because the accepting and keeping and the refusing or breaking of promises entails the resolution of competing tendencies in a system of personal valuations, those which are felt as private and those which may be equally private but are interpreted as external. Since making or keeping a promise is not a conflict of the person with the solicitor but involves inner- and outer-directed values that are manipulated by the solicitor, a promise, like any commitment to self or other, is a test of one’s wholeness and authenticity. The making, the keeping and the breaking of a promise all may leave a residue of regret. In a sense, there are three selves in a promise, one representing personal advantage or egoist desires, which may or may not be concordant with the agreement, the other, empathy, compassion, loyalty or obligation, the exocentric values, where the needs of the other are represented, and a third that represents the ideal self, the ideal for that individual, which may or may not be of high ethical quality. The ideal self represents the individual’s idea of what sort of person he would like to be, a construct of aspirations in the dispositional matrix of the core self. The guilt over a bad promise kept, or a good one broken, is the friction of these discordant voices. Consistency and change A promise made in one set of circumstances seems to remain inviolate when the circumstances have changed. This is because the self is perceived as unchanging in relation to the world. The promise, and to a lesser extent the self that made the promise, remain fixed in time, though the terms and the conditions of satisfaction of the promise may have altered. The self has undergone a change that is greater than that of the promise, which is fixed through time, while the world is in constant flux. Thus we have a seemingly changeless promise, a gradually changing self, and a more or less fully transformed world, three different objects in varying states of transition. A promise broken or unfulfilled made 20 years in the past, for example, to educate a child or repay a loan, may continue to exert its force in the present, for the promise is perceived as static in spite of other life changes, and the sense of identity or personal continuity is more emphatic than the constancy of the world. While the world provides an apparently stable field in contrast to the changing moods and attitudes of the self, the sense of a self that persists

372 over a change in its states extends to states of the world as well. A promise entails an obligation of self to other (self and world) that is not immediately contingent on such changes. The subjectivity of the promise owes to the continuance of identity, and thus retains its feeling of permanence, while the objectivity of the obligation entailed in the promise may pass as the states of the other pass, or those of the world itself pass. The more objective the promise, i.e. the more it is like an obligation rather than an intention, the more likely it will be forgotten with a change in external circumstance. The fixedness of a promise or obligation and the repeatability of the self are central to the stability of all human contracts. Obligations and promises appeal to a consistency of character. The individual must maintain the promise over some period of time until it is satisfied. The promise cannot be forgotten or superceded by other interests. Rather, it persists, or must be revived, until it is satisfied. Someone who is unreliable might be less likely to fulfil a promise than someone who is steady and responsible. Indeed, being responsible entails the keeping of implicit promises to others, such as being a good parent, worker, etc. A sociopath guided by self-interest would not be a good candidate for a favor. A person who feels no obligation to parents or others could hardly be expected to satisfy a promise, since the promise is founded on the sense of obligation generally, which is a value derived from internalized moral templates early in life that mold the self-concept. The competing interests in a promise – values relating to desire, loyalty, self-respect, honor, the greater self-interest, and so on – illustrate that an obligation, as a constraint on conduct or a brake on desire, is as much a part of the self as the desires it attempts to control. The obligation may be to someone out there in the world, but it points to the exo-centric values that arise in the self. The duty to fulfil a promise to a person who is no longer present, or dead, when there is no possibility of punishment or public disgrace for not carrying it out, indeed, even if no one else knows about it, shows that the sense of duty, of obligation or responsibility, is an internal other-centered value that modulates values dedicated to selfinterest. Specifically, the intrinsic or subjective nature of an obligation is evident in the fact that the solicitor reinforces but is not essential to the obligation. In sum, a promise is not a moral gesture that can be understood in isolation as a responsibility without enforcement or punishment. Rather, it is a psychological state linked on the one hand to an obligation that is

373 intentional, such as a resolution, pledge, oath or vow, and on the other, to an obligation that is perceived to be initiated by others, such as an agreement to satisfy a request or favor. For acts initiated by the self, the degree of resolve depends on the extent to which character is invested in action, and the degree to which the action is reinforced by imaginary others: god, a parent, the ideal self. For acts that are initiated by others, the force of the request depends on contexts that are intrinsic, such as loyalty, and extrinsic, such as shame or punishment. Whether an obligation is described as a resolution, vow, promise, or duty depends on the mix of these contexts. However, except for the most extreme conditions, they all reduce to the pattern of constraints on an act of cognition or the context surrounding an intentional act. Punishment We also see this at work in the relation of promises to punishments. If a promise is an obligation, a punishment is not simply an assault but, rather, it is the keeping of an implicit promise to the person who commits the crime, as well as to the injured party. The sequence from resolution to obligation conforms to a comparable series of states from personal revenge to punishment by a surrogate: friend, family, state. The fluid constraints on promises, or the degree to which the individual feels obligated, have their correlates in the degree to which punishments are proscribed or mandatory, e.g. contract, custom or law. Moreover, as with promises, the degree of felt agency differs according to whether the act is self-initiated or its instigation is displaced to others. The punishment of a person for breaking a contract fulfills a promise by the state to protect those who are victims of failed obligations. Even a verbal promise may be considered a binding contract that carries the weight of a legal obligation. Ross (1930) has argued that a punishment satisfies a promise as an obligation to the one who is injured even (especially) if he is dead. Punishment is an implicit promise of retribution, thus a social responsibility. The responsibility to respect a promise or an obligation is matched by the responsibility to punish its infraction. In tribal societies, punishment is usually not physical, rather there is banishment or compensation to the kin of the injured person. The obligation of the tribe to punish an infraction, even if the exact form of the punishment is to be decided, is as strict as the prohibitions on the accused not to have committed the offense in the first place. There is a symmetry of obligation,

374 though not an eye-for-eye equivalence of justice. The notion of punishment as the execution of an implicit promise by the community to avenge a betrayal lends support to the concept of justice as a device to protect the weak against the strong, though there is greater psychological complexity in the contract than one might at first suspect. The promise to punish a crime such as murder has the gravity of a deathbed promise, in which the solicitor has died. A dying person who asks a friend to do a favor might as well have whispered, “So-and-so poisoned me, promise me revenge.” That person would be “duty-bound” to seek revenge or ask it of the authorities. The victim, being dead, cannot be directly avenged, and has no more direct interest in the punishment of the killer than does the putative avenger. Even a simple request, say for cremation, has no legal force once the person is dead. But the moral force of the promise in the individual is as strong as the promise by the state to avenge a murder. The capture and punishment of a killer is a promise to the living that is kept for the sake of the one who has died. The state assumes the responsibility for revenge that, in prior times, was left to the victim’s family or clan. For Kant, punishment is not to promote a good but to enforce what is right, so that not to enforce punishment is to violate justice. Punishment like virtue is an end in itself. Punishment is the duty to enforce a duty, namely the duty to do what is right. For Mill, punishment is to protect others and to benefit the offender (like discipline in children). St. Thomas wrote of the virtue of revenge, even that the good may be punished for failing to condemn the wicked. From an evolutionary perspective, punishment of social reprobates is comparable to the elimination of the unfit in animal populations. Society takes the place of the physical environment and eliminates organisms who exceed some conventionally accepted deviation from the norm. Only when an offense is disputed, or the obligation itself is immoral, or when the punishment is greatly disproportionate to the crime, or it reflects bias, should it become problematic for ethics. Otherwise, punishment alone is outside the sphere of morality. There is no inherent right of a person not to be punished in a way that is appropriate to the breaking of a reasonable social obligation. Indeed, except in the utopia of a morally enlightened society, the absence of (a threat of) punishment leads to chaos, or to individuals who are their own judges and executioners. The moral worth of a person who commits a crime is augmented if he admits guilt and seeks punishment as a just desert for his offense. The

375 rarity of such an event is the difficulty with Hegel’s theory of a right to be punished. A person who feels culpability and desires punishment is unlikely to have violated the obligation in the first place. However, criminals should be encouraged to plead guilty as a step in the expiation of guilt. The refusal of some judges to accept a guilty plea in the belief that a misinformed defendant would be denied a fair trial is an aberration. Someone with clear guilt who pleads “not guilty” and is convicted without a doubt has perjured in the plea. The lie under oath should be added to the offense, and considered in the sentence. Ideally, a person who commits a crime should accept, even welcome just punishment, though in the highly individualistic, hedonic and egocentric societies of the west, it is rare that a person accepts responsibility for his actions, still more rare that he accepts the punishment that goes with the verdict. This is not so in other cultures, for example in Japan. The violation of a state request even for the most humanitarian of motives, for example, individuals who defy a ban on travel to a dangerous area and are taken hostage, is harshly judged. The demand that a person accept responsibility for his conduct, perhaps even invite and prescribe punishment for a broken trust, is independent of the weight given to “free will” or causal ancestry. It merely requires that character be authentic in relation to conduct, including full responsibility for the consequences of the act. Arguments about punishment as deterrence or as an opportunity for rehabilitation miss the point that punishment for murder, and lesser crimes, is the satisfaction of an implicit promise by the state to the injured party. Kant (1780/81) argued that “the theory of punishment as a deterrent is contrary to our moral feeling, which looks upon wrong as guilt and regards punishment as atonement and expiation.” For punishment to be atonement would require a moral conscience in the guilty of such degree as to have obviated the crime in the first place. Durkheim argued that the criminal serves a social function in providing an occasion for the reinforcement of a moral emotion (cited in Emmet, 1958). In my view, this moral emotion is the fulfillment of a trust by the community to seek retribution for injury to its members. The state acts as a surrogate for those injured. The state is morally bound to punish, for only the one who is injured can forgive the offense. Deterrence does not fulfill an emotional need. It will prevent the individual from a future crime by isolation or retraining, and it purports to serve as an admonition to the criminally-prone, but the evidence suggests that deterrence is probably ineffective, for it has little cognitive immediacy in a spontaneous decision to commit a wrongful act.

376 In a death-bed promise, as in a murder, both parties are no longer alive, but the promise continues and increases in force, though there can be no acknowledgement by the victim or solicitor that the promise has been satisfied. It is probably the absence of the person on whose behalf both promises are to be satisfied – the solicitor of a promise, the victim of a murder – that intensifies the obligation to satisfy it. Instances of a continuing thirst for vengeance, a blood feud or vendetta, that go on for generations, even if the crime is no longer part of personal memory, illustrate the power of vows to avenge a wrong. Only a great soul like a Nelson Mandela can forgive his persecutors and break a cycle of violence. It is not intuitively clear why a promise to another person should continue, much less intensify, after the person is dead. Why should we feel obligated to a person who no longer exists? One could ask the same about a murder. The dead do not feel gratitude. Punishment does not return them to life. Thus, punishment must be justified by other arguments. For a murder, the arguments are those cited. Though revenge is ordinarily low on a list of rational justifications, if is probably first in the minds of most people, who feel that eye-for-eye justice is intuitively sound. And it is, from the standpoint of fulfilling a promise to the community to act in such a way that each individual feels protected and honored, should he also be victimized. It is of interest that we may not feel the same commitment to a promise if a healthy solicitor dies unexpectedly some time prior to its satisfaction. Unlike a promise to the dying, the later death of the solicitor may relieve the person of the obligation. What counts is not the presence, absence or death of the solicitor. Ultimately, the solicitor is parasitic on the grantor’s values. The promise is a personal commitment. The will is primary. Herbart and Schopenhauer claimed that the mind is a parasite of the body, but other minds are also parasitic on one’s own. The conditions under which the promise was obtained are important. The finality of death heightens the obligation by eliminating the possibility of negotiation or compromise. The death-bed solicitation forecloses an attempt at deliberation or discussion. Having given one’s word, there is no further recourse. The death-bed solicitor and the victim of a murder enter an eternal world, that of the promise, which is timelessly fixed in the past, free of life’s vicissitudes and uncertainties. They are like eternal objects in relation to the temporal world of passing desires. A promise to the dead, like death, is timeless. In American law there is no statute of limitations for murder. This does not mean that the promise to punish a murderer, and the severity of the punishment, are not mitigated by the circumstances of killer

377 and victim. One takes into consideration the cause of the murder, its provocation, e.g. a crime of passion, the role of insanity, mental retardation, and so on. These mitigating factors may intrude on the deathbed promise as well. For example, the grantor might discover an insidious purpose, the solicitor might turn out to have been an unsavory person, a compromise in the execution of the promise might satisfy its intent, and so on. There are cultures in which the victim of a crime is punished for bringing dishonor to a family. The stoning to death of an adulterous woman, or one who has been raped, by her husband, father or brothers, is a peculiar aberration of this impulse. Rather than avenging the crime, the family takes revenge on the victim for the disgrace brought on by the act. To punish the victim to avenge those who are not directly injured usurps the suffering of the victim in a distortion of the imaginative fusion that underlies empathy. It is the reciprocal of compassion and moral feeling, an identification in which the egoism of personal or family honor outweighs empathy, so that the victim, who must further suffer for the imaginary pain of others, is doubly victimized. The inverse of this is the custom in some villages of southern India for families to arrange a ceremonial rape by monks of young girls on their first menstrual period. Here, the victimization of the child brings honor to the family. In these examples of rape with honor or dishonor, the suffering of the victim is secondary to the collective pain or pleasure of the family. Both cases show that regardless of who is taken to be the victim and who the aggrieved, punishments can be viewed as crimes as well as obligations. In cases where victims are punished, the individual is perceived to have violated a moral obligation even if, like Oedipus, he or she had no conscious responsibility for the infraction. Custom demands punishment for an obligation that is broken regardless of the victim’s knowledge or dissent. Indeed, the family is perceived as the victim and the person who is injured is the aggressor. Such customs are not to be tolerated by an openended relativism; rather, they should be condemned, not as immoral, but as pre-moral attitudes. Their psychological structure has not evolved to a moral judgment that is compassionate and impersonal. Yet there is much to be learned about the psychology of agency and the rudiments of moral feeling from such customs. The social contract in which obligations or promises are exchanged between the community and the individual is reproduced, or forecast, at a personal level in the promises we make to each other, even in the

378 punishments, as in a parent’s warning (promise) to punish a naughty child. We say we do this for the good of the child, and often we do, but it is as much a test of parental fairness and consistency as a lesson to the child. In a similar way, we expect these qualities from the law if we are to have confidence in its justice. In the praise or punishment of a child, a parent displays his or her personal values. Friendship, like parenting, involves an implicit promise of tact and affection. We cannot punish our friends as we do our children, yet if one is disappointed in a friend, the friendship is probably in danger. When a friendship is severed or a parent disinherits a child, or throws him out of the house, it recalls exile or banishment by earlier societies (tribal, Greek, European) when separation from the community was a kind of death sentence. Reward For all of us, fallible as we are, punishment in some form is an everpresent threat, while for most of us, as adults, praise is rare, unless it is construed as reward. Reward more clearly contrasts with punishment than praise, which is more closely the opposite of condemnation. In some instances, a compliment is sufficient, but most of the time success (reward, advantage) is preferable. Generally, the threat of punishment is as forceful a constraint on action as the expectation of reward. Threats and rewards, as expectations, are the psychic equivalents of dangers and opportunities. A threat places egoist and other-centered values in a precarious balance, while a reward is mainly bound up with self-centered ones. A threat and the expectation of a reward, a risk and a benefit, are implicitly calculated in most choices. However, for the choice to be moral, the action ought not to be determined by the calculus, for personal benefit must be overcome if concern for others is to be primary. Moreover, every risk has its inducements, every benefit its risks. Moral choices conflict with non-moral ones, valuation and character are complex and contextual, and behavior is not a sum of the pluses and minuses that lead to decision. The very unpredictability of conduct is, itself, an argument against the calculusmodel. Hartshorne wrote that love is prior to reward, by which he meant that love is a giving that seeks nothing in return. McTaggart wrote that love is the end of metaphysics, or the beginning of true knowledge, when all the arguments of philosophy fall away. Ultimately, the science of reason turns to feeling. However, everyday life is inspired by the prospect of a reward,

379 not a pure metaphysical love. In evolution, reward is successful adaptation, whereas punishment is a failure to reproduce or survive. From a biological standpoint, reproduction is the aim of loving, receiving love is successful adaptation in the wider sphere of reproductive behavior. In contrast, punishment is the analogue in society of reproductive failure in evolution, where an elimination of the unfit is the primary vehicle of adaptation. The positive and negative in adaptation are the reward of adaptive and the trimming of maladaptive form, so that behavior ultimately reflects the nuance, richness and diversity of the internal relations that deposit an act of cognition. Praise and punishment, success and failure, are equilibria of self and other that arise in psychological constructs central to character, identity and trust. Implicit and explicit promises What is the difference, if any, between an implicit and explicit promise? Take the promise in a wedding vow, e.g. to love and respect one‘s partner. In a marriage contract, the tacit understanding between two people is formalized in a public record. This is independent of whether the union is a love match or is arranged by the families. The promise was implicit before the vow. If there was no such understanding, the partners would probably not have married, so the vow is not a dramatic change in feeling or commitment; rather it transforms the promise to a contract that is legally binding, with consequences if it is broken. The wedding ceremony and the marital vow objectify the promise. The objectification is supplemented by the presence of an official who, as an agent of the law, serves with others as a witness. The presence of witnesses, the oral vows, the civil or religious ceremony, the finality of license and signature, threats and sanctions if the agreement is violated, much of this only since the Reformation, add weight to its enforcement. These ingredients serve to publicize, sanctify and define an agreement that was originally private. But what changes intrinsically in the two parties as this shift occurs? For most people who are getting married, this complex of events is both a joy and an ordeal, but after a divorce, people realize that, apart from the financial penalties, the marriage itself is no guarantee the promise will be respected; indeed, given the rate of divorce, the fluid definition of marriage, its lax valuation in modern society, and the lack of respect for the civil and religious institutions that validate it, marriage is not an effective deterrent against a break in the promises that are formalized in the vow.

380 What counts in a marriage is what the partners have in their hearts, their love (or need) for each other, and the value they place on the union. In business contracts the most trustworthy agreement is a handshake among people of honor. A legal contract only ensures that a rupture will be accompanied by litigation, rancor and expense. Taking a feeling public into religion and law can objectivize it to the point where its subjectivity is no longer felt. The spontaneous outpouring of love exteriorizes in the social obligation of a partnership. Love transforms to responsibility, devotion to duty, sacrifice to bondage. As time goes by, the objectivity of the contractual element in the promise may replace the subjectivity of loving. Conversely, a marriage that begins as a contract between families, where duty is prior to intimacy (Brown, R., 2004), can subjectivize to genuine love and tenderness. These observations suggest that an explicit, objective contract adds little more than coercion to a promise that is implicit and subjective and, indeed, may so objectivize a bond that it is no longer felt as personal. The contract displaces subjective value to objective worth, as value moves outward from feeling to object, but the subjective remains primary. The difference is largely in the degree of objectivity and the legal obligation that goes with it. What then of the extension of promises to implicit agreements that are reinforced, not by law, but custom, religion and tradition? There are degrees of explicitness. A promise as an obligation falls between tradition and law: the one a covert assimilation, the other rigid and imposed. Customs are implicit accords of values shared in a group over some portion of its history. A custom, as a piece of tradition absorbed in the developing self, fractionates conceptual feelings into conduct that is in conformance with group expectations. These mainly other-centered values promote cohesion among members. A custom, whether the observance of a rite of passage, conjugal habits or rituals of cuisine (Levi-Strauss, 1964), serves to reinforce bonds among members and to resolve self-interest or patterns of deviance with family and community norms. It is an implicit agreement by the subject to act in conformity with the culture to encourage closeness in feeling and conduct, and discourage separation and divisiveness. Customs are imbibed values that mitigate self-interest, yet have enough latitude to condone individual variation, i.e. they prescribe traits of character more than those of personality. Unlike legal obligations, a custom is a bias in conduct that is implicitly enforced, though infractions can be dealt with harshly. Many customs, such as that requiring a man to marry his brother’s widow, assume responsibility for the family farm, join

381 the army at 18, do not differ deeply from promises, except that the request and assent are so inculcated that an obligation does not have to be solicited. In such cases, conflict arises only with an action contrary to what custom implicitly compels. The crucial difference, of course, is that customs are acquired by unspoken agreements within a group that apply to all its members, whereas promises tend to be responses of individuals to unique requests. Unlike a custom, a promise is less directly related to learning and less rigidly supported by tradition. In some sense, the promise is necessary because the given situation is not governed by custom, other than a tradition of keeping promises. The promise distills from a custom the sense of an obligation for conduct that might not ordinarily be warranted or recognized. In a family where it is customary for a young man to go to college, join the army, work the fields, it is unnecessary to elicit a promise from him to do so, since the obligation is implicit. If it is not so customary as to be an obligation, the young man might be asked by a parent to promise he will go to college, stay on the farm, etc. As a promise borrows the obligations of a custom for a non-customary action, so the promise changes to a custom if it generalizes to a rule and becomes habitual in the community. A promise to care for an ailing parent, to raise a step-child, give a portion of one’s income to charity, are all promises that can change to vows if sworn to in public, or shift to customs if they are widely accepted and perpetuated. A promise that is based on a virtue, for example giving to charity, donating blood, food, clothing, helping the sick, can and should become so customary that an obligation is unnecessary. In contrast, an unusual custom that is inconsistent with egoist desires, e.g. revenge for a neighbor’s injury, an unjust bequest, may require a promise for its execution. For some, these are major distinctions. To me, they are the shadings of core values that differ in the degree to which obligations – for self and other – are instilled early or acquired late, the degree to which assents are unique or shared, and their extent of publicity, compulsion and enforcement.

Chapter 14. Taste and Manners ...danger cannot but attend Upon a function rather proud to be The enemy of falsehood, than the friend Of truth, to set in judgement than to feel. Wordsworth, Prelude XI:134-137

Taste The relation of custom to law on the objective side, and to desire and promise on the subjective side, or the relation of an implicit agreement to the publicity of obligation and enforcement, can be examined in other activities that differ from moral feeling, and yet provide arguments for a psychological theory of value in relation to intrinsic process: specifically, taste and manners. Here, we are concerned with taste as refined perception, not an individual preference, such as a liking for Burgundy wine, Swiss chocolates, or romantic movies, in which case the principle of de gustibus non disputandum applies. We will see that a refined taste is closer to aesthetic perception, while manners are closer to moral conduct. Good manners are the equivalent in ethics of good taste in the aesthetic sphere. Manners are moral actions that are ingrained in tradition, taste is a perceptual appreciation of the quality that owes to a tradition of knowledge and judgement. Taste also provides a judgement on the goodness of manners, while manners represent good taste in the sphere of human interaction. Taste and manners can, with cultivation, reach a degree of specialized knowledge, refinement or degeneration that can serve as the basis for social exclusion and class distinction. Taste at such an extreme is a perversion of aesthetics when it lapses into decadence or effetism. Manners at such an extreme are frozen routines emptied of intent and other-directed feelings. With great refinement often comes detachment and less immediacy of feeling than in the naturalism of an untutored aesthetic, a genuine consideration for others, and simplicity of moral goodness, from

384 which manners should ideally emanate. Consider taste, gusto, a 17th century term for a non-intellectual faculty directed to the beautiful. Taste is a kingdom with its rules and rulers. Refinement of taste is a check on rampant crudity and an arbiter for all but the most powerful new concepts. One acquires good taste, but the best taste, so some say, comes with breeding; like a fine cheese, it all begins with the cow. Kant said, taste clips the wings of genius. Genius does not necessarily revise taste but installs its own works in that which taste condones, or expands in order to appreciate. The step from taste to innovation is like that from prodigy to genius. One is the perfection of the available, the other, a capacity to extend it. The moral dimension of genius involves a reconciliation with taste in the form of custom or tradition. Wittgenstein wrote, “Genius is talent in which character makes itself heard.” The engagement of character is the bridge from aesthetics to ethics. Good taste assumes a prior consensus that neutralizes any opinions which might undermine its authority. A democracy of opinion is the shipwreck of taste, for it leads to defining the good as an average of preferences, not a model toward which they should advance. Taste is a valuation upheld as a standard, as in beauty, but with taste the connoisseur replaces the aesthete. Beauty is directly apprehended, though likely it is an average of one's encounters with objects in a certain class, while taste is a response to what is perceived as good or beautiful. It is a judgement of a perception, not necessarily a judgement made after the perception occurs, even if it so appears to common sense, but a perception with an enriched infrastructure in which the conceptual portion, having given rise to the perception, is plumbed for further meaning. In other words, the judgement relies on pre-processing phases in the original perception. The discrimination of the good and the beautiful that we associate with taste, or its correlates in the field of manners, such as courtesy, tact and discretion, are implicit judgements of what is better or preferable within a category. The comparison in taste tends to be among proximate items in a category. We do not generally compare Bach to rock, or a painting with a sonata. That would signal a preference, not a taste. The preference for Bach might be a sign of good taste, but one could also have such a preference without good taste, say, if one simply does not like rock music. Good taste is not at stake in a comparison of a sonata with a quartet, unless there is great disparity in the estimation of their worth. When a person of cultivation states that a given sonata is a fine example of its type, and gives justifications which indicate that the preference is based on knowledge, he

385 exhibits taste. Good taste must dissociate from preference, since the former appeals to authority and knowledge, the latter to likes and dislikes. Good taste prefers that which is endorsed as worthy, not that which is merely preferred. A person of good taste might prefer objects that his own good taste would reject, for example pulp fiction, or admire a great poet, such as Milton, with no affinity for his work. Preference is a felt bias to an object. Taste certifies or justifies the bias. Aesthetic feeling penetrates the object, and preference is a sign of this feeling, whether or not it is supported by justifications. Ordinarily, what is judged better or worse has little to do with moral feeling, except in so far as it approximates a standard of quality. There is a difference in aesthetic and ethical ideals. In taste, an exceptional object does not point to an ideal beyond itself. What ideal would we compare to the Eroica? The work sets a standard for the form. As an ideal, other works can only approximate it. We could say, for example, that Verdi’s string quartet, composed during breaks in the rehearsals of Aida, is inferior in comparison to many other quartets, certainly to Verdi’s own operas, but it is only with reference to superior works that we can offer this judgement. With respect to superior works, only the artist knows how far short he falls of his own personal ideal. Who except Shakespeare could measure the adequacy of Hamlet to an ideal of dramatic art? However, there are instances where even a great artist has misjudged the value of his works. For example, Cervantes had a low opinion of Don Quixote. In fact, he was so embarrassed by it that on his deathbed he asked his friends to buy up all the copies and burn them. He thought his best work was a romance called Persiles y Sigismunda, which has never been translated into English, and has been read only by a few scholars (MacQueen, 1991). Generally, an aesthetic object can only approach a standard set by another object in the same category. The standard is the ideal for its time, its style, language etc. In morals, the standard is not extracted from the object or action but, to a varying extent, is exemplified by it. The ideal of ethics is unrealizable. There will always be a gap between the actual and the ideal, between the unknowable motives that drive an action, the feelings that accompany it and conduct in relation to virtuous character or an ideal of moral probity. The definition of a “classic” as an exemplar of a genre in which nothing better can be produced in that genre indicates that the classic is not the complete realization of its category, but is a marker of an aesthetic ideal that may be as unsatisfied as in morals.

386 Relation to worth Valuation generates desire, which creates worth in ordinary objects. Worth trickles out of desire into the value of an ordinary object. The distribution of feeling on an axis from desire to worth determines the subjective or objective emphasis. The greater the desire, the more personal the worth. The greater the worth, the more impersonal the desire. Taste has a more impersonal framework than ordinary valuations. The object is valued not just because it is desired but because it is objectively valuable. Others with good taste will reinforce that judgement even if there is disagreement as to its rank. In taste, less of the feeling, more of the concept, is conveyed into the object, informing the perception, selecting its objects and providing reasons that justify their choice. Specifically, in preference, personal feeling outweighs the conceptuality of the object, in taste it is the reverse. Put differently, the object-concept predominates in taste, the affective tonality in preference. The emphasis on feeling in preference accounts for its greater subjectivity, the emphasis on conceptuality accounts for the greater objectivity of taste. Beauty exists for the joy of the observer. Taste can be coercive, compulsory for a given object or social class. What is beautiful to the ordinary person may not appeal to a person of taste, and the reverse. Taste is unlike a natural and uncritical response to the beautiful. It tends to appreciate that which it approves, and censures that which it finds lacking, common or offensive. The subjectivity of taste is the enjoyment of beauty, or rather, an appreciation of quality, creativity and intelligence, but taste can objectify in objects independent of aesthetic feeling. A detached work of scholarship may argue the superiority of an object, yet reveal little in the way of an aesthetic response. The more emphatic the conceptuality, the more detached the emotional response. Worth is value that objectifies with its object to the point that it is perceived, and felt, as independent of the observer. We know that a diamond, a house, a family, have only the value we invest in them, but we feel that these things are valuable in themselves – if not for us, then for others – and that they will retain their worth even when we die. Certainly, we have this experience with the categorical objects of good taste. Others will return to the qualities that go into a fine wine, the features of beautiful women, the invention and skill in refined music, long after we have disappeared. We can say that the conceptual objects of good taste have dissociated from the observer, while the affective ones of preference have not. Worth created by need usually dissolves when need disappears. Taste

387 recognizes this role of the observer, but an object worthy of good taste is felt to persist independent of the observer, as consensual and authoritative. We do not argue preferences because they engage concepts that are dominated by idiosyncratic feelings, yet we debate the worth of fine objects that are well-regarded by taste. Having more fully objectified, such objects are available to others for approval or disapproval. Naturally, taste and preference usually coincide, when the affective valence of a particular object is matched by its refinement in its class. In the fact that taste, not preference, can be disputed, the worth of the object is similar to the value of moral objects, since values can also be controverted. Worth becomes an object of choice in aesthetics when a perceptual judgement is required, and an object of choice in ethics when what is required is a judgement leading to or justifying an action. In ordinary perception, there is an implicit judgement in the assignment of worth that distinguishes one object from another, e.g. this diamond will make a beautiful gift, my home is a good investment. Commonly, there is a comparison with similar objects, e.g. my house is nicer than yours, my kids are smarter. In diamonds, this is encoded in a rating scale. The judgement arises in the context that informs an object as it externalizes. In taste, the judgement of what is better is in the foreground, even if implicitly. The object is ranked with similar objects of comparable quality. These evaluations are induced by, and justify, individual preferences, but the conceptual content of the object must further satisfy an external justification of its exceptionality. The authority that certifies the object is external when individual expertise is weak, or it gradually externalizes over time as consensus gathers. But a single individual of sufficient authority may compensate for the ignorance of others in the appreciation of a work of refinement. There is a greater need for consensus with unfamiliar objects, though one authoritative advocate who champions an art work, for example, Clement Greenberg in the case of Jackson Pollock, can offset the indifference or uncertainty of others. Good taste concerns objects of particular refinement, with increasing specificity in the allocation of conceptual feeling. An object is isolated in its class (food, art, etc.) as an instance of exceptional quality. Quality or beauty is the model of taste, as goodness is the model in ethics. The object is valued not merely because it is rare or beautiful, but because it has quality. The quality is vetted by taste – by the authority of an individual and the consensus of connoisseurs – which in turn generates reasons to justify the worth that is claimed in the judgement. The approval or

388 disapproval of taste is an implicit or explicit judgement of quality. At its best, it is a personal love of beauty and a refined sensitivity, which does not become a criterion that stifles innovation or reinforces an elitism that excludes others from aesthetic enjoyment. Taste gives reasons for the inclination or predisposition toward or away from an object within a category. An evaluation entails a comparison, but not precisely between objects, rather, within their common infrastructure. The infrastructure then actualizes the objects to evoke the sensibility of the comparison. The judgement, then, is not an addition to the object but a revival of content bypassed in the immediate perception. Taste is not applied as a secondary feature, say, as a cognitive response to the acoustic noise of a Brahms trio, or an appreciative judgement of the physical coloration, sensitivity and shading in a painting by Rembrandt. Mind does not confront a physical entity that is otherwise naked of aesthetic values, and then apply those values to a barren perception. Rather, the initial perception activates those values, which are then realized as surrogates in what seems to be a stage of secondary revision. Taste may indulge the worth of an object early in its conceptual infrastructure, or the conceptual is implicit in the object as the observer rejoices at its ornamental surface. Taste is a derivative of the initial perception that objectifies value in relation to knowledge articulated by learning in a specific domain of experience. It is not of peripheral interest that brain process, inferred from pathological conditions, conforms to what would be expected by this account. There are disorders of recognition (agnosia) that involve overlearned or highly familiar instances in a class of similar objects. A person may no longer recognize familiar faces, a farmer may not recognize his sheep, a philatelist his stamps. In a personal case, a pilot was unable to identify pictures of planes, though he could give an accurate description from memory. The difficulty is in the visual (auditory, tactile) recognition of an item in an array of conceptually similar items, not an impairment of perception or memory. Such conditions only affect instances in a class that are highly familiar. Ordinary objects may be identified quite well. Disturbances of naming objects in a specific semantic class, e.g. foods, city names, etc., can be interpreted along the same lines, though in these conditions, other determinants are involved. The specificity of taste and its relation to neurological disorder is a reminder that processes underlying taste are not specific to artistic and other cultural objects. Rather, such processes mediate other classes of

389 scientific interest – chemistry, biology, astronomy – where the individual learns to appreciate a form of beauty that is not accessible to the novice. This is also true for artistic objects, where selected compositions or paintings by “minor” artists, that have been largely ignored and are unknown to the general public, are discovered by aesthetes and elevated to the status of great works of art. The more recondite or unfamiliar the object, the more its appreciation depends on specialized knowledge. To perceive a world of beauty under a microscope, to have an informed appreciation of nature, whether in the life cycle of a wasp or a stellar implosion, is to bring erudition to bear on an object within a class. Of course, the difference between a scientific and an aesthetic perception of the beautiful is that the former concerns beauty independent of human intention, while the latter perceives the beautiful in the scope of human creation. Still, we seek to understand god's purpose, or nature's design, in the objects of science, as we seek to understand the intentions or meanings of the artist in his work. In aesthetic discernment, there is also an intentionality that informs an objectified judgement of what is better or more beautiful, or what should be desired, which is then endorsed by taste. Instance and class Taste concerns an exemplar in a class of similar objects. It cannot be applied to a unique, one-of-a-kind object, for the object has to be compared with others of lesser quality, whether in the case of wines, restaurants, horses, art works and so on. Taste must treat the class as an instance in relation to another class, say in wine, to prefer Medocs to Alsacians, or in music to prefer the sonatas of Beethoven to those of Schubert. The determination that a certain individual is exceptional, or deserves unusual respect or deference, or merits a reward for unusual skill, beauty, etc., is compatible with taste in the comparison of the instance to the class, but it does not satisfy the criteria that would extend taste to ethics. Otherwise, we would have to say it is immoral for an Olympic athlete or the winner of a beauty contest to receive privileged treatment, or that any system which rewards excellence, beauty, skill (other than goodness), entails a bias against those who are disadvantaged by reason of birth, opportunity, education, etc. Whatever the merits of this argument, however, it takes us far afield from the topic at hand. Taste involves a refined judgement. Since it concerns instances, for it to take on moral significance it must involve more than a perceptual

390 judgement, it must effect the individual directly, e.g. hurting someone who offends one’s sense of taste. This can occur when properties that are admired or found distasteful are generalized from the individual to the superordinate class. To have disdain for a particular Jew is more a matter of preference than taste, whether for his “Jewishness” or for other features of his personality, but to have disdain for all Jews for the attributes of the one, and then to apply that judgment to all members of the class, is to transfer a preference to a moral judgement. The class is then judged by certain properties of the instance. This is the reverse of taste, which seizes on the instance within the class, and does not generalize from that instances to all members, indeed, it stands out among all members. However, one can discern the psychological relatedness in the hierarchy of quality within the categories of taste to the hierarchy of human worth in the sphere of morals. The boundary of taste and aesthetics on one side with manners and morals on the other is the generalization to others in the class, as well as the emphasis on living rather than inanimate objects (see below). Once others are involved, it is a small step from the particular instance of taste (a beautiful German) to an aesthetic of the class (Germans are beautiful) to a judgement of the class with ethical consequences (Germans are superior). Discrimination and bias Wittgenstein wrote that “taste is refinement of sensitivity; but sensitivity does not do anything; it is purely receptive.” Taste is not ab origine an engine of action. Taste approves or disapproves, it is appreciative, not productive, though the personal values and experiential knowledge that underlie evaluations can instigate actions, such as the desire to possess the object, enjoy it, study it, etc. Since taste tends to know its objects in advance, it lacks the freedom of aesthetic discovery. Those with good taste may be connoisseurs, patrons, collectors, teachers, and so on, but they need not, often cannot, create objects that would satisfy the good taste of others. There is also the danger of excessive refinement when the expert submits to the imperatives of style or the habitual in preference. Authenticity and self-realization in the moral or aesthetic domain are then severed from the good to become an artifice of rote learning. The continuity of taste with morals appears when a judgement of the worth of inanimate objects shifts to one of human worth (see discussion in Chapter 4). Empathy is central to moral feeling, but peripheral to taste,

391 mainly because of the (usually) inorganic nature of its objects. An assumption of the perspective of the other cannot occur for the ordinarily lifeless objects of taste and aesthetic appreciation. We do not empathize with a glass of wine. However, a faint correlate may be found in the imaginative fusion of the aesthete with the artist, or the effort to identify with the artist’s feelings, vision and intent in the act of creation. Empathy may also pertain to the tension between innocence and openness in aesthetic feeling and their distortion by refinement and sophistication. An open sensitivity goes out to the object in an aesthetic embrace. With a closed or judgmental sensibility, the object is scrutinized and only the “best” is acceptable. Creativity has an inclusive sensibility that absorbs and reworks. Art often springs from the popular, even the vulgar. Taste has an exclusive sensibility that discriminates and judges. Taste in food, music, art, shows increasing refinement as specialized knowledge penetrates conceptual feeling to elicit and reinforce value judgements, at the same time that it devalues objects that might otherwise be sources of novel insight. The education of the values in a setting of non-moral concepts leads to the discrimination of taste and the bias of preference. The active mode is desire, which is modulated to preference. The receptive mode is worth, i.e. value or desire that objectifies in an object detached from the observer who is left to express a judgement or an appreciation. For conduct in accordance with taste, i.e. for taste to do something, to act, say, to create a beautiful object, destroy a vulgar one, to praise or condemn, it must revive underlying concepts or values to generate an action on behalf of the judgement. Taste and manners are not motivated by judgements, which are outcomes, but by their conceptual and affective precursors. Judgements are constraints on the refinement of other people’s sense of taste, but for the subject they are expressive features, not higher-order assessments. Statements of likes and dislikes are products of the education (articulation) of conceptual feelings that discharge into perception (discernment, judgement). Taste in the ordinary sense can be refined to an extreme degree and can be infinitely variable. We all know people who have built a life around an esoteric interest, a play of Pirandello, the history of cricket in Lahore, concocting the perfect croissant, and so on. These refinements, however eccentric, can be traced to a source-value. A person who does not value food, company, conversation or friendship is an unlikely connoisseur of wines, since the enjoyment of wine tends to be a social activity. Tastes and

392 preferences are objects and acts that individuate generic values. Because they are endpoints of analysis, the link to the core value is difficult to discern. The love of Venetian bronzes is a recondite taste, but when we inquire as to its origins, there is inevitably a deeper value or personal history that reveals the taste as one tributary of a more generalized field. In this, a refined taste is like a finger movement, of little consequence until a button is pushed. What matters is not the surface product – the preference, the taste – but the context, knowledge, and intention behind it. Taste and moral value We admit that people differ as to taste, but not in their judgement of the good. Many writers have argued that the good should be independent of a personal judgement; otherwise, the good is purely perspectival, like a preference. If two people differ in their judgement of the good, one of them must be wrong. The view which holds that the good is in the act, not in the perspective the subject brings to it, distinguishes conduct from value or character. But the good, like taste, can differ across observers depending on the values and beliefs that are brought to bear on the judgement. For example, abortion is a good for some, an evil for others, and there is no absolute judgement of good or evil independent of the beliefs (see Chapter 13). The beliefs constitute a subtext that implements the judgement, in this case, the definition of life, murder, self-identity, potential, the latitude of personal freedom versus the rights of the state or community, and so on. A naturalist theory of the good holds that the object of the good is part of the act directed to it, i.e. the good act is continuous with, and ingredient in, the agent. There are as many similarities of aesthetic taste and ethical judgement as there are differences, and both are instructive. Thus virtue is a moral valuation of the quality or goodness of character, taste is an aesthetic valuation of the quality of one’s perceptions. The former is inferred from the values that character displays, the latter from the objects that it chooses. Taste concerns mostly inanimate objects, so unless other people are involved, e.g. in a deception concerning the sale of a work of art, a forgery, and so on, there is usually no moral conflict. But taste can easily slide into ethical judgement when it affects other people. Bad taste can be offensive, though ordinarily not to the point of immoral conduct. Taste can be coerced, by force, by social and other pressures, for high or low art, for good or bad. In totalitarian states, laws govern what the artist can and

393 should produce, and prescribe rewards and penalties. When an art form is enforced by a dictatorial regime, such as that of social realism, or a ban on decadent, i.e. “modern,” music, one can experience a kind of moral outrage. The artist can resist publicly or through his art, he can ignore, if possible, the pressures of the government and focus on the art, in defiance or as an underground or samizdat activity, or he can succumb to the political will, and write, compose or paint what he is told. He then gives up all pretensions to being an artist. However, even in such instances, the distinction can be fuzzy. In African art, the “same” objects are produced by generations of artisans, yet some are distinguished for their quality, even if the content is fixed. This can occur in the commission of a portrait or other works. What then is the role of coercion? However, it is not clear that art coerced by a state, or the punishments for its defiance, are immoral. Suppose an artist who defies a ban is punished. If the artist is deliberately in defiance, he shows courage in his actions. The defiance is a political statement, as is the work of art. A work of art is morally neutral. A political statement is a mode of conduct, in this case, against a ruling elite. It is a matter of the relative openness and tolerance for social change. How does one assess the relative ethical merits of the state's position? A society that limits free speech may be regressive, but advanced societies differ in the degree to which they tolerate civic disobedience, “hate” speech, public demonstrations, pornography etc. America has laws against slander and libel, incitation to riot, burning the flag and travel to certain countries. Are these restrictions immoral? If someone were to be punished for challenging the limits of free expression, say by visiting an “outlaw” country, or by an act of public fornication, where is the moral locus? In the state or in the individual? If the ethics of the interdiction is questionable, what about the violation? The immoral is clearer when the state initiates an action based on an ideology that affects classes of people, races, religions, for example, to put Muslims or abstract expressionists in prison, or to persecute homosexuals or Jews. Moreover, there is a paradox in the fact that an extreme position for or against a restriction, such as those that concern pornography, vagrancy, gun-control, and the like, is by virtue of its pre-emptive nature a species of immorality, in that it suppresses legitimate dissent while, in contrast, a point of view that is a compromise of the extremes, however fair and balanced it may be, abandons its claim to theoretical coherence. To take an example, if one insists to the point of intimidation that all abortion is evil and should be illegal, perhaps to the point that a person should be

394 convicted of the murder of a fetus, or conversely, if one argues that any abortion is permissible, since a woman's right to decide on the fate of her body trumps the rights of the fetus, one may achieve a theoretical consistency but at the price of moral insensitivity, while a more pragmatic approach, that abortion is permissible under some circumstances, is merely a compromise of the extremes and devoid of a compelling theoretical foundation. Thus, to allow abortion in cases of rape or incest seems reasonable, but it is illogical, in that right-to-life arguments cannot be bent to allow an exception for deviance in the sexual act. The same is true for right-to-choose arguments. The compromise of the extremes creates an incoherence that is felt in personal conflict. Thus, many people who are opposed to abortion feel it would be immoral to force a woman who has been raped to bear the rapist’s baby, even if that position cannot be defended by the very arguments used to justify the position against abortion. Taste can become a judgement that bridges into law or obligation. We have seen how the criteria of good taste vary over the centuries, especially for undervalued works of art, such as those of Bach or Van Gogh. Conversely, many works considered exceptional when they first appeared are now viewed as mediocre. Ordinary taste is taught, and coerced, by expertise. Historically, art was subordinate to religious doctrine. This influence has waned, but the constraints of political doctrine remain. For better or worse, these constraints affect the concept or knowledge base on which taste depends, thus what is condoned or rejected. The “political correctness” of a work of art can be imposed by force upon the artist, by threat or insinuation, or it can affect the artist more subtly in the attitudes of the artistic and intellectual community. Pachalska (2003) has described the transition from the Classical emphasis on the interpretation of aesthetic values in the artwork with an almost complete lack of interest in the artist’s life, or even his name, to the Romantic emphasis on art as an expression of the artist’s personality. Initially, the life was a footnote to the art, now the reverse is more often true. In a conversation with the composer Penderecki, he is cited as lamenting the failure of an intimidated intelligentsia to condemn sham art, or reject appalling statements by artists such as that of the composer, KarlHeinz Stockhausen, who called the terrorist attack on New York a great work of contemporary art. Taste is under continual siege, especially when the very nature of an artwork, its interface with conduct and moral content, are in doubt. It is not enough to validate what has already been vetted. Art

395 and life are in constant flux, and aesthetic (and moral) values are called into question when the lack of a precedent is an intimidating factor that prevents the taking of a strong aesthetic stance. Taste, personality and character The same process occurs with ethical concepts, an awareness of which deepens our understanding of the relation of aesthetic to ethical thought, which is in part the relation of personality to character. In conduct, an intrinsic value, such as hospitality or generosity, can become an external standard, even a mandate in certain societies. Certain of these customs merge with taste or good manners, and can take on ethical import. In taste, as in custom and law, learning articulates values that repeat the conditions of their installation by externalizing and solidifying as conventions, rules or standards that serve to educate or oppress. In both, the individuality of desire (pleasure, preference) becomes subordinate to fully objectified values. We then prefer what we ought to prefer, act as we have been taught to act, or ought to act, but such preferences or actions may not be authentic to character. The conventional doctrine of the subjectivity of values holds that differences in values are differences in tastes. The criticism of this doctrine is that it allows each person to do what he or she pleases. If it is a matter of taste, which “does not do anything,” taste is morally neutral. Character is not engaged in a judgement of taste to the same extent as in moral decision. We learn about moral feeling from its continuum with taste, though the value in taste differs from that of moral judgement, even if it is described in moral terms such as good or bad. Good taste, good manners and good conduct are variations on a theme of goodness from the aesthetic to the moral. The value that promulgates taste is cultivated, in morals it is imbibed. The authoritative in taste - what is “great” in art or literature - is comparable to the dictates of custom - what is right in conduct - in that a person is taught how to perceive or act. Though taste is educated, like moral conduct, it differs from conduct in that appreciation is primary, whereas conduct requires that one observe a set of formal rules. One does not have to be a moral philosopher to show goodness in conduct, though a moral education informed by a wide knowledge of ethical concepts will perceive subtleties in moral decision that would escape the ordinary person. The individual will become a better judge of others though not necessarily a better person. Someone untutored

396 in taste, manners and morals, may be a social cretin, but he is not necessarily vulgar. Indeed, cases of mental retardation with Down's syndrome are usually described as docile and personable. In this connection, it is of parenthetic interest that infants with increased motor tone tend to develop more outgoing and aggressive personalities, while the reverse is true for those with hypotonia. Here, differences in motor tone in infancy predict patterns of personality development. Other innate determinants of moral conduct and aesthetic perception, e.g. parenting, social adaptation, love of beauty, depending on how these native biases are affected by experience, can incline the individual to simple goodness and love of humanity or, conversely, to greed and an appetite for power. In a word, according to one’s exposure, poor taste and bad values are probably acquired in the same way as good taste and good values. Taste is closer to aesthetics in that it samples personality more than character. A person of impeccable taste can have a nasty disposition, while a good person may have deplorable taste. Manners are closer to morals, sampling character more than personality, though again, dissociation occurs when good manners disguise a malignant intent. “Have lunch with your friends and take your enemies to dinner,” goes the Russian saying. Taste is less strongly adapted to custom than morals, or rather, its customs are elitist and entail a coterie of experts. Ethics applies to everyone. The elitism of taste and the populism of morals come together in some cultures, for example, in France, where the education of some forms of fine taste, say in foods, is as widely inculcated as the generality of moral training in manners. If everyone is a connoisseur and good manners are uniform, taste and manners become facets of custom and are no longer a guide to class. In this, they approximate the education of morals, except for the difference in animate and inanimate objects. In seeking links from taste to aesthetics, from manners to morals, or from taste to manners, a subtle difference in emphasis can decide the category of a given act of cognition. This may be a bias to action or perception, to context and generality on the one hand, selectivity on the other. One may incline to privacy or publicity, to aesthetic or moral values, to the creative or receptive, to the perfection of the timeless or the corruption of the temporal, to the inorganic or the living. Thus custom drives conduct in many aspects of moral and non-moral life. In the sphere of perception, aesthetics develops out of custom into a tradition concerned with the concept of beauty and good form, largely in relation to inanimate objects. Within the category of the beautiful, taste is an informed

397 judgement of the quality of a particular instance. Preference is the inclination, in feeling, toward an object that is pleasing, though the object may or may not correspond with good taste. In the sphere of action, custom generates values that drive behavior toward acts of moral and non-moral intent. Ethics is concerned with the concept of good and bad character and conduct, the effect of conduct on animate others, and a judgement of right and wrong. Within conduct, manners are to the field of action as tastes are to perception, the quality of a particular action in relation to social exchange. Unlike the refinement of taste, as a sub-class of aesthetics, or an elegance of manners, as a sub-class of ethics, goodness and beauty are often closer to simplicity. One may ponder the weighty decisions of moral conflict, ethical choices can be complex, art works can be difficult to understand. But generosity, charity and kindness are often the traits of simple people, while the art of a Praxiteles, the beauty of a rose or sunset, have a universal appeal. In the field of ethics, education, like wealth, tends to distance those who possess it from those who do not, and thus from a sense of togetherness and community. In the field of aesthetics, an excessive refinement is often fatal to creativity and pleasure. Charity and kindness become gifts or declarations, self-serving gestures, not sacrifices. A political stance of liberalism can be a verbal dodge for moral authenticity, as one who pleads for social justice from a coddled life of privilege. Both taste and conduct look to the community, a wider one for morals, a select one for taste. The consensus of taste is the validation of individual preference by those who “know what is best.” This is not the other-centeredness of goodness. It is a reliance on the opinion of a select group of others, not a concern for their welfare. Manners The division of taste that most closely resembles moral conduct is that of manners, which, ideally, are so devised as to take into account the sensitivities of others. Manners are gestures that are expressions of taste in conduct. Put differently, good taste in the field of conduct requires that people act with good manners, since taste is evaluative of the propriety of behavior as an aesthetic object. An individual with exceptionally good manners is the object of an aesthetic judgement. Indeed, good taste is required to appreciate good manners. The importance of manners is that they resemble moral obligations, in that they are oughts, duties or

398 conventions that have evolved to treat people with tact and consideration. They are motivated by a wish to avoid conflict or offense, thus, a desire to make others feel comfortable, or to guarantee that the rules of civil behavior are shared among members of a community so that an infraction does not arouse ill feeling or hostility. But the wish to please or avoid conflict has long been forgotten in the history of manners, which have become more or less petrified in the culture (Durkheim, 1979). The desire to put someone at ease is no longer a necessary part of well-mannered conduct, even though it has that effect. Indeed, manners are a kind of overlearned skill, which, unlike taste, where choices are involved, often runs on automatic pilot. If to judge the manners of others is an expression of taste, to have good manners is taken to be a sign of good, i.e. tasteful, breeding, which entails an education in manners by instruction or example. Those with refined manners are often refined individuals who exhibit taste, elegance and delicacy. The relation to breeding and instruction is also a relation to social class. As refinement is opposed to vulgarity, so good manners have been a means of class-exclusion. On the other hand, the manners of a simple farmer lacking culture, education and refinement may be impeccable, albeit at a rudimentary level, perhaps little more than politeness, civility, hospitality and a solicitous mean. Manners are incidental to moral choices because they are benign expressions of character, and irrelevant to the particulars of a given choice. The fact that manners so readily dissociate from character suggests that, as far as virtue is concerned, they are not ingredients but accoutrements. A robot could be programmed to show good manners. A pleasant demeanor can disguise evil, courtesy can be a window of opportunism, gracious conduct may conceal disdain. Taylor wrote that manners are the clothing of egoism. They are rules to keep egoism “under-cover”. But they are concessions to the other that may also be authentic. Ideally, they should be fluid tributaries of value that flow from the depths of character, little morals that become fixed in rules of gracious conduct. If manners are little morals, they must reflect some facet of character even if it is clear they do not fully reveal it. Good manners can be the authentic gestures of a good person but they can also be the deceptions of a deceitful one. Indeed, as preferences based in feelings relate to tastes based in object-classes, manners are the action-equivalent of preferences when they become routines. They differ from preferences in that they are not idiosyncratic but rather, like tastes, are generic to particulars in a class, e.g.

399 sonatas, dinner guests. Manners do not usually rise to the level of conscious decision as to whether or not they are merited, but are applied “across the board.” Manners are gestures that inscribe conduct, encoding an act without a need for decision. Their targets are unselective. One shows good manners on all occasions. They are implicit duties or obligations in which sincerity and moral sentiment need not be concordant with behavior. The invariance of manners across friends, enemies and relations of convenience, in spite of ill feeling, and even when the situation calls for vigorous exchange, for example in response to an insult or injury, further distinguishes them from moral conduct, which is proportionate to need. A good person may be good to everyone, but if goodness is unselective we might consider it a sign of manners, not character. Indeed, the uniformity with which manners ought to be displayed distinguishes them from moral conduct. A truly moral act may be unselfish, but it tends to be selective. One is compassionate to those in need, in contrast to manners which are invariant. To show good manners to those who do not have them is a test of how good one’s manners are. In moral conduct, as in manners, there is less credit in reciprocation than in selfless giving. Moral conduct entails a greater self-judgement. Manners that govern social exchange are like the responsibilities of work, family or citizenship, though the latter are less predictable and demand greater spontaneity. To be a good parent is not the same as being a good host, since the responsibility of a parent is to punish and discipline as well as to love and support. But the conventions that govern how a mature child should be treated are, ideally, comparable to those that govern how we should treat our neighbors. Because manners derive from values conditioned by training independent of discursive knowledge, e.g. few can give a history or justification for manners other than that politeness is good, they are more susceptible to dissimulation than taste, which is excellence of knowledge in aesthetic judgement. Sincerity is in a different relation to manners than to morals and taste. Sincerity is a measure of the authenticity of moral conduct, while in taste, we accept that it is more indicative of personality and not a sign of character. In taste, insincerity is pretension or affectation, but it is generally harmless. The effete or pretentious individual is an object of ridicule, not enmity. In manners, insincerity may have a more sinister intent, to deceive, seduce, etc. We appreciate good manners but do not confuse them with good character. Many people accept a dissociation of character and manners and do not expect them to be authentic, only that they should be good or proper. Generally, manners are not called upon in

400 situations of moral intent. A charming host at a party may be one’s executioner the following day. A Nazi murderer can be the perfect gentleman over dinner, while a pig at the table may be a model of moral goodness. We accept the uncoupling because propriety in manners, even if inauthentic, improves the overall quality of social life in establishing norms of civility and deference. Good taste is more difficult to feign than good manners for, as mentioned, it requires knowledge and experience in art, food, music etc. Manners are acquired by exposure to those who have them, family, acquaintances, whereas taste, though to some extent “passively” learned, is usually deliberate and cultivated. A person seeks to have good taste or improve the taste he has absorbed, but he is taught to have good manners. Taste is motivated by aesthetic feeling and supported by knowledge, manners are driven by necessity and guided by form. Some manners, such as politeness and courtesy, are closer to traits of character. Others, such as table manners, tend to be encapsulated, context-specific and unique to an occasion, e.g. dining. Table manners are less improvisational and readily schooled, though the history of table manners, were it to be generally known, would raise eyebrows on the presumption of their delicacy (LeviStrauss, 1968). Morality is expressed in a concern for the welfare of others. If others lack concern for one's self, how is the other to be treated? This problem is similar to how one behaves toward a person who is undeserving. Someone who has injured others, when injured himself, deserves, one might argue, the same consideration as that given to a good person. The saint is the ideal in this respect. A person who shows good manners in the face of a personal attack could be accused of a lack of fortitude if his response to the situation is not uniform across similar occasions. The man who scolds his wife at home after he has been criticized at work discharges anger in relative safety. He has, we would say, no backbone. But, if he should “turn the other cheek” in all situations, forgive all who attack him, so long as he demonstrates he is not weak or cowardly, we might say he is a person of rare quality. If, then, one is the target of an ill-mannered assault, what do moral theory and manners advise? Respond with wit and tact, absorb the blows with detachment, turn the other cheek, forgive one's aggressor, instruct him in moral philosophy? The diplomat avoids confrontation, the man of honor demands satisfaction. The problem of honor is of interest, since the defense of honor can lead to disproportionate action, such as revenge for a minor slight, upon the

401 assailant, his family or countrymen, to feuds, and so on. Manners and taste help to constrain the response, so the one who is injured and the offender can settle their grievance in a way that does not spill into further injury. Historically, the duel was such a method, with its own (mannered) code of conduct. Now, one reaches, not for a weapon, but for the telephone to call a lawyer, with monetary recompense replacing the duel as a demeaning but life-saving substitute. In shame, dishonor, humiliation, ridicule, the conscious self suffers an injury in relation to its ideal. The offense is internalized as a powerful refutation of a positive self-valuation. The damage to self-esteem is a “negative” value that must be “excised” for the self to heal. The extent of damage to the self-concept depends on the importance or value of the other in the life of the injured party. An insult by a total stranger is less damaging than from a respected teacher. In the passage of time, the memory fades or is replaced by “positive” selfvaluations, or the equivalents of such psychic “mechanisms” as denial and repression come into play, but even a minor wound may never be forgotten. Often, an equivalent injury to the assailant is the only cure. Since the wound is intra-psychic, the death of the offender may leave the individual untouched, for there is then no possibility of repair by way of apology or defeat. The continuum from a moral obligation such as hospitality, to the manners of a host, is a transition to a greater detail or finesse. The moral obligation to be hospitable, once acknowledged, passes to the manners with which one treats one's guest. This is a shift from the moral decision of whether to accept a guest to the graciousness with which he is received. The more generic the action, the more there is choice and decision. The more specific the action, the more automatic it tends to be. We see this in learning a piece of piano music, as a phase of slow thought-like volitional effort passes to one of rapid, involuntary finger movement. Manners probably arose as instruments of conflict avoidance and/or resolution so if they become transparent devices for betrayal or degenerate to the abusive action they were designed to avoid they become a provocation for an aggressive response. Bad manners hurt the sensitivities of others, or assert the indifference or selfishness of the offender, but their moral impact would appear to be limited and relatively innocuous. A person who is deliberately rude or offensive violates a tacit obligation to be kind and courteous. In so doing, he probably reveals a character that in other situations would act on egoism, but not one that is necessarily immoral. Rude or offensive manners may be a better guide to a poor

402 character than good manners are to good character. A lack of good manners is not equivalent to overt rudeness. A failure to follow the conventions of manners is “bad” in the sense of omission, not commission, as when an offense is involved, a threat, a verbal attack. In the case of omission, to say a person has bad manners is to say he has no manners or lacks training. One who has not learned the art of table manners is not impertinent, merely untutored. Because manners are culture-dependent, a lack of appropriate manners can often be forgiven. Eating with one’s fingers, belching after a meal, gulping one’s food, talking with a mouthful, are norms in one culture that are unacceptable in others. Manners that are context-dependent are like rules, at meals, at work, at the gaming table, etc. In this they are similar to the rules of conduct that govern social responsibilities such as driving with caution, etc. Language shows a similar uncoupling of intentional action with over-learned routines. This is brought out dramatically in pathological cases. I recall a patient (P) with a severe aphasia who, when he was approached at the bedside by (E) the examiner [Prof. Johannes Nielsen], was able to respond clearly and with good articulation to a series of verbal gestures: E: Hello. P: Hello. E: How are you? P: Fine, how are you? E: I'm fine. What’s new? P: Nothing, what’s new with you? E: What did you have for breakfast? P: [no response].

This aphasic patient was unable to name objects or produce any propositional speech apart from these automatic salutations. Similar cases have been described by others (Luria 1977). Such a case is a dramatic illustration of the degree of automaticity and independence from propositional content, thought or decision that social interactions can achieve, albeit at a simple level. Finally, as tastes represent aesthetic categories in relation to preferences as affective habits, so manners represent categories of ethical conduct fixed in routines. And, as taste extends the bounds of aesthetics to all object classes, including scientific objects, so do manners extend the bounds of ethical conduct into rituals of little moral interest. One can display manners of a sort in preparing and serving a meal, even if one

403 dines alone, or in the varied procedures of a skill or profession, solitary or interactive. A schizophrenic having a “conversation” with an hallucinatory voice may still obey the conventions of speaker-listener exchange. A note on fame and mediocrity The discussion of taste would not be complete without a comment on its consequences in art and science. We begin with the question, is it preferable to deserve recognition but not achieve it, or achieve it but not deserve it? To be applauded for the least of one’s works would seem more insufferable than to be ignored for the best of one’s efforts. One imagines that the admiration of an individual who is undeserving would be a painful reminder, indeed a constant mockery, of his unworthiness. Tolstoy wrote that the aesthetic feeling in a mediocre artist must be atrophied, or his own productions would revolt him. Is fame at any price worth the price? I have known academics and other celebrities who were well aware of the hollow nature of their fame, at times assuming a becoming modesty as a shield against criticism. Others who were deserving were eluded by fame in a profession too collegial to acknowledge the importance of their discoveries, or they lacked the marketing skills and insider politics needed to promote even the most original idea. Some circumvent the profession and achieve celebrity by an appeal to the public taste that in this day and age is often the arbiter of success. Within the profession, favor goes to those who do the work the profession approves. Originality is rare, though brilliance is rewarded. However pleasing, scholarly and impressive the work in a profession, it is generally conventional, for the academies are resistant to abrupt transitions. Every discipline has a tradition that stifles new ideas. The more novel the idea, the more it undermines the tradition on which the discipline rests. Tradition is a heavy weight on innovation, due to one’s own sensibilities as well as those of one's peers. For this reason, innovation that might radically alter a dominant trend in thought tends to occur at its boundary with an adjacent field. The origination of a novel approach outside a field is often easier to accept than a transformation within one. The degree to which a mode of thought can dominate a field is wellillustrated in psychology over the past century. The psychologist, George Miller, remarked of behaviorism at mid-century that, “it was perceived as the point of origin for scientific psychology in the United States. The chairmen of all the important departments would tell you that they were

404 behaviorists... The power, the honors, the authority, the textbooks, the money, everything in psychology was owned by the behavioristic school...those of us who wanted to be scientific psychologists couldn't really oppose it. You just wouldn't get a job” (in Baars, 2003). There is irony to the fact that exactly the same thing could be said of the cognitive psychology that replaced behaviorism, though in not so revolutionary a manner as its advocates assume. Naturally, this fact escapes those working in the field, who consider themselves the vanguard of the new. In my estimation, except for a handful of psychologists, none of whom are living, there have been no works in psychology over the past half-century that deserve to be on the same shelf with the Principles of William James. The masses, lay or professional, favor those who amuse them, moving from one amusement to another, seeking novelty as a surrogate for depth. Popular fame discovers the public taste and appeases it, ignoring that fraction of the public thirsting for something beyond a cursory delight. It is not an exaggeration to say that barely 1% of those in any field are responsible for transmitting the higher art of the discipline to the next generation or extending it into novel areas. An entire tradition of Russian ballet could have disappeared except for the efforts of a few individuals. In my own field of human neuropsychology, this too could have happened, were it not for the efforts during the war years of a small number of people around the world. Most careers exploit the known, some extend it, still fewer transform it. The question is whether, for creativity, the critical mass of ordinary work is a hindrance or a necessity. One also wonders about the need for a coterie of connoisseurs, even in an age of mediocrity, to vet a work of originality, should it appear. In a bitter and affecting lament on the struggles of the deserving, Wordsworth wrote “What a small quantity of brain is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day.” In the Prelude, he referred with disdain to those who ...level down the truth To certain general notions for the sake Of being understood at once.

Everything noble and wise struggles with difficulty. The unexceptional is dotted only intermittently by bursts of excellence. Schopenhauer wrote, “The absurd and the perverse in the sphere of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, the wicked and deceitful

405 in the sphere of action, really assert a supremacy only disturbed by short interruption.” There is, I have thought, a spectacular intensity in the forward thrust of the American genius, where replacement, obsolescence and a thirst for the novel tend to preclude a patient exploration of larger concepts that require time to unfold. Presently, in many fields, we are in an age of technique and instrumentalism, conductors who only conduct, concertgoers who follow celebrities but recall no more than a few modern composers, and then not the best. Leonard Bernstein waited in vain for an American Mozart. Not even a Salieri has thus far appeared on the scene. The media reflect, promote and level taste. In psychology, the ease of communication, the proliferation of books and journals, access to the internet, takes a heavy toll on originality. It is often remarked that in an age of the global village, it would be exceptional if genius was overlooked, since everyone has access to just about everything. But a tidal wave of trivia swamps the solitary voice. There are few sanctuaries of quality. I have known many in this country who were gifted, intellectual terrorists who grew acrid in the ashes of their own frantic ambition. The best of them displayed a centerless technique that rippled over ideas, dazzled at its own ingenuity, teasing, inciting, leaving the essential untouched, a ricochet about the table of incandescent wit, like fireworks, shimmering, electric, mesmerizing, yet finally, suddenly, vanishing into thin air. Where is the Darwin who waits years to publish? Where is the Freud who probes an idea for its wealth of connections? The ideals of the young are seduced by small meretricious enthusiasms. There is either an economy of knowledge and only the essential is retained, or there is a succumbing to the mastery of some local detail, in which the scholar is fearful of endangering his authority by extending his field of interest. The best of the current crop of creative artists, writers, composers, philosophers are dwarfed even by their recent ancestors. To discover what the public wants and to make this the object of an appeal is in any age the jinni of success. Ought we to excuse the pandering to secure a fame that is not worth the having? Is it enough to ignore mediocrity as the bedrock of intermittent genius, or is it a pernicious obstacle that must be opposed? I would say the latter, for the success of those who cater to public taste is not wholly without consequence. The mediocre is not innocuous, it distorts the capacity of the public – even the professionals – to appreciate quality. The more the admiration for the

406 unworthy, the harder the burden on the deserving, the more difficult their task in conforming the public taste so that their own contributions can be enjoyed. Finally, there is money, the healing salve of conscience. The ideals of the great are not hostage to the whims of the public, but seek an audience of peers, if only a few in a generation. Think of Milton's “fit audience find though few.” Mahler found none, and engaged in a dialogue with Beethoven. This feeling is not unknown to those who work in a solitary way on projects outside the prevailing fashion. One is reminded of the shoddy treatment of the composer Arnold Schoenberg, largely ignored by his colleagues at UCLA and given subsistence pay for teaching. When elderly and infirm, unable to climb the stairs to an office on the second floor, his request for a room on the first floor of the music building was denied. After his death, the building was renamed in his honor.

Chapter 15. Moral Conflict The nature of obligation The ought is a sign of a conflict in both moral and non-moral choice. A person would not say, “I ought to do” that which he wishes to do, nor would another person who knows what someone wishes to do, be likely to tell him that he ought to do it. A disparity between the ought and the wish is one source of indecision. From an external standpoint, an obligation is independent of what the subject wants to do, but for the subject, there is no felt obligation if it is concordant with his desire. When the ought and the want coincide, the ought drops out. The conflict between the ought and the want is part of the sense of obligation, which is the feeling that one should or must do something for the self or for another person that is contrary to one’s desires. There can also be a conflict between an ought and an obligation, between what one ought to do and what one is obliged to do. This is the tension of duty and necessity. What one ought to do is what is best to do, but that one is obligated to do what one ought to do is another matter. One ought to do many things, yet one chooses to do very few of them. But if one is obligated to do a thing, that is a thing one must do. The difference is the degree to which action is constrained. An obligation that is a must is a stronger form of the ought, perhaps it is the best choice, perhaps there are threats of enforcement or penalty, perhaps the outcome is grave if one fails to act. The conflict is of interest because while the difference can be explained psychologically, by how definite or narrow are the constraints on decision-making, it demonstrates the limits of logic in moral choice in the inconsistency between two premisses that may be equally true. It may be true that, at the same time, I ought to do one thing and that I am obligated to do another thing, yet these two things may be contradictory. A common example is the person who needs (ought) to work to feed his family yet is required (obligated) to defend his country. Williams (1985) writes that “if I am obliged to do X and obliged to do Y, then I am obliged to do X and Y.” Both duties stated as propositions are equally true, thus one has an equal obligation to do them both, even if it is impossible. A general rule might be that when two obligations of relatively equal necessity collide, the one with a stronger desire should be chosen, not because it is necessarily the best

408 choice, but because, regardless of the outcome, one would have fewer later regrets. However, even if the obligations are of equal necessity, and derive from true propositions, the psychological differences between them will be substantial. For example, one obligation might accomplish a considerable good for the few, the other a trivial if any good for the many. In the first instance, the pressures are largely weighted to the intrinsic, in the latter, they are largely extrinsic. Still, one asks, what in this situation is one to do? The answer is not simply that which is the greater good. This is usually unknowable, and even if it were known, the decision might still be difficult. Should a decision rest on a risk/benefit ratio? The duty to family is an ought that is felt as a necessity though it is voluntary, while the duty to serve in the military is a must that is compulsory. How does reason help us decide what to do? The threat of punishment for a refusal to join the army enforces the obligation but does not increase its moral value. Indeed, it may have the opposite effect, since the obligation to follow a command, especially if a refusal leads to punitive measures, tends to relieve the individual of personal responsibility. Do obligations to states, as Socrates thought, supersede those to individuals? Is the duty to family less or greater than that to country? Does saving the life of one person have half the moral worth of saving two lives? Does saving one life have less worth than improving the lot of hundreds, thousands? If an obligation to serve in the military coincides with the individual’s sense of duty, both decisions concern loyalties. Which loyalty has precedence, the intimate few, the impersonal many? Most moral decisions involve competing loyalties or emotional biases, without which the subject would be unable to decide. But is a loyalty a moral obligation? In some respects, a loyalty to some, because it lacks fairness and impartiality, might be construed as a prejudice against others, even an immorality. The impotence of reason in such instances arises because oughts involve values, not true or untrue statements. A value is not a feeling attached to a proposition, it is a complex disposition that discharges in acts or propositions but is not reducible to them. In a situation such as a conflict of loyalties, how is one to act? What is the relative strength of a desired outcome versus a guiding motivation, the impact of cowardice, fear, guilt, empathy, political fervor, naivete, how committed one feels, how just the cause, and so on? A strict moral rationality or an objective morality might rely on the probability of the most favorable outcome rather than the values that determine which choice is made. A decision based on reason is

409 centered on effects. To say a person should do the right thing regardless of whether he wants to, for example, murdering a tyrant, even if it is inconsistent with his desire and character, assumes that he knows what the right thing is. The “good” thing to do may be consistent with character, but it may not be the “right” thing to do. The good is centered in character, the right in conduct. The good is closer to intentions, the right to outcomes. If the immediate outcome is good, and its subsequent repercussions bad, the decision might have been good, i.e. based on good intentions, yet the action might have been wrongly chosen. In contrast, a decision based on value stems from character. It is what is considered the right and natural thing to do regardless of the outcome, regardless of whether it is “objectively right,” assuming that could be determined at the time of the action. If murder is always wrong, refusing to kill a tyrant is a good decision, but is it right if thousands suffer for that refusal? Consider a more mundane example. Suppose that you join the army, contribute little and survive, knowing in advance that your family will perish? Was that the right decision? Suppose you are killed and your family survives, though barely. What then? Suppose you save your family from certain death but for want of your leadership the battle is lost. What does one do? Knowing the outcomes still does not help in the decision. If the moral logic of a computer could be programmed in advance with a hierarchy of valuations, and could calculate the probability of the most favorable outcome rather than the antecedents of choice, motivation or personal repercussion, would this help the individual decide what to do? And, does this mode of thought have anything in common with human cognition? The most favorable outcome may entail lies, deceit, murder and the destruction of one’s family. Of course, such a calculation is not possible, since the future cannot be predicted other than in terms of probabilities, and even probabilities are unreliable since outcomes depend on human psychology, which takes us back to motives, loyalties and uncertainties. Two obligations of equal truth do not have equal weight because the conflict is between the values they represent, not their “quantity” of truth, as in the case of loyalty to family or to country. Take the statement, “one ought to respect one’s parents.” Say this is a true statement, even though there is no non-axiomatic basis on which its truth could be established. Is this obligation canceled if one’s parents are abusive or criminal? At what point? When the parents do not deserve respect, the desire and/or duty to respect them conflicts with the sense of what is right. Should love and

410 obligation be given to one’s parents regardless of merit? Probably, the ubiquity of disinterested or abusive parenting requires a tradition of loyalty by the children to reinforce what might not be naturally forthcoming. In traditional families, children are expected, indeed, are desired, to support and care for their aging parents. In modern life, children tend to be quick to put their elderly parents in a nursing home. Even in cultures where tradition has a strong influence, we often see a conflict between obligation and desire, for example, when a family disapproves of a child’s choice of a spouse. Here, the loyalty, love or duty owed to the parents as an obligation conflicts with desire and tends to be resistant to reasoned argument. Suppose one has parents who provide loving care, except they are thieves or murderers. An unusual film, Panic, explored this topic. A son, well-treated, is trained in the “family business” to be a professional killer. He cannot refuse his father’s requests, for his loyalty to his parents prevails over his sense of what is right. Only when the father begins to train his grandchild to be a future killer does the son rebel, as parental love combines with the sense of what is right to overcome filial devotion. Or, two competing loyalties cancel each other out, and the sense of what is right prevails. Or, from a biological point of view, the prospective direction of responsibility to a child, which is the forward direction of evolution, outweighs the retrospective direction to parents, who are irrelevant from an evolutionary, i.e. reproductive, standpoint. There is a similar example in the Polish novel Deluge by Sienkiewicz, of a man who takes an oath of loyalty to a leader who subsequently betrays his people to the invading Swedes. Having taken the oath, he is complicit in the betrayal until he discovers the man has lied to him in another matter, at which point, free of the oath, he goes on to become a hero of the Polish resistance. One can say one betrayal cancels the other or that one act of dishonor justifies another or simply, that the solicitor was found unworthy of the obligation. Most often, an egocentric desire conflicts with an exocentric duty, but here the impasse is broken by another desire, or value. It is difficult to conceive a choice between obligations that is not a choice in values. Some imperatives are not true obligations, though framed in the language of should or must, such as “I should go to the dentist,” or “I must get out more often.” These are values or desires that take on the tone of imperatives, rather like self-imposed obligations, where the should or must is an expression of a value that becomes concrete and is apprehended as partly extrinsic. It is as if the person were to declare that people say it is best to get out more often, take care of one’s teeth, etc. Even the

411 requirement to pay taxes is a personal value wrapped in an obligation. Apart from the fear of punishment or penalties, there are the values of honesty, respect for authority, greed, and so on. A choice may involve incentives on the one hand, punishments on the other, but degrees of obligation are inevitably gradations in the effects on conduct of qualitative values. Truth and obligation Oughts and obligations are not the only guides to an imperative action. Once a decision is made as to what is best to do, that decision is not the necessary choice. There has to be an emotional impulse or desire in that direction. Otherwise, how would we know what truth to pursue or, given a truth, whether it is worth pursuing? An indisputable truth tells us what we already know, that 2 + 2 = 4, that all men are mortal, or that George Washington was the First President of the United States. It may be good and right that one try to help the disadvantaged or save a drowning child, but is it true that one should? If moral statements are neither true nor false, true statements do not lead to moral obligations. A statement of truth is itself a kind of action, a verbal act, and does not lead to another verbal or motor action. Action is not the outcome of truth, but a means to clarify uncertainty. It aids in the closure on indecision. In this respect, an action is itself a test of the truth of a statement, thus it is a kind of truth, or a search for truth. One could also say that the finality, irrevocability and definiteness of an action add a new truth to what previously existed. Truth, then, is not necessarily an incentive to action. A falsehood can be a more powerful context out of which action arises. A false belief, an incoherent faith, superstition, delusion and other forms of irrationality are stronger motivations of action than truthful propositions. A rational person engages a falsehood in order to rectify it. But we all know how futile it is to persuade someone of a truth who is in the grip of a false belief (Chapter 10). That is because the truth appeals only to those for whom it is a consummate value, and then it is the value that guides conduct, not the truth that the value approves. We ask, should we destroy enemies who are implacable or befriend them in the hope they will change? Is this decidable on the grounds of truth, or must we merely wait until hope is exhausted? Is the statement, “she loves me,” true, false, unprovable? What test would satisfy it? To what action, if any, should it lead? In what sense is the moral “rule” that one should not steal, true? Is stealing bread from the wealthy to

412 feed the poor a sin? I once had an assistant who justified stealing a computer from the laboratory with the clever retort that a low level of theft improves office morale! There is much to be said for the notion that the most fundamental facts are errors that enjoy their truth from the limits of our capacity to refute them. Science attempts to test a belief for its truth, though a profound truth, as Niels Bohr once remarked, may contrast not with an error or a falsehood but with another profound truth. Most truths are contextual and provisional. Is death inevitable (and Socrates mortal) or might science discover a means to immortality? What is the meaning of mortality in an age of cloning? Is (fresh) grass always green? It is a different color in a different light. Grass might appear red to a different visual system, and so on. The philosophical argument that the truth of a (non-mathematical) proposition is independent of evidence, but not its probability of being true, strikes me as an odd distinction. That Socrates is a man includes the category of men, along with ambiguous cases. What, exactly, is a man? Are male children or hermaphrodites excluded? Male and female are the extremes of a spectrum of transitional forms. If we could fingerprint the brain activity that mediates personal knowledge and experience and transfer it to a physical clone, the personality could survive the death of its original brain, and the person would be immortal. The truth of statements such as grass is green, is strengthened by making them trivial or tautological, such as green grass is green. Yet we still have to say that “for the normal (specify) non-color blind (specify) human (specify) visual perceptual system (specify) on planet Earth (specify), fresh (specify) grass (specify) is perceived as green (specify).” What about the common sense truths of everyday life? Honesty is surely not always the best policy. Could we survive without illusion? Where does illusion end and reality begin? Is there an absolute reality or a bottomless descent of categories? Are there rock-bottom beliefs that cannot be falsified? Moore’s rock-bottom belief, this is my right hand, is refuted by cases with phantom limb, or brain injury and autotopagnosia (Brown, 1986), in which there is confusion as to whether the hand exists or belongs to the person. The Cogito does not necessitate a thinker, only a thought, but whose thought is it? How do I know a thought is being thought up by “me”? What is the “I” in “I think”? If I believe the statement, “she loves me,” is false, should I continue to pursue her in the hope that I can make the statement true? If my love for her is all that matters, ought I care what she feels or only what I feel?

413 Assuming one is inclined to do what is best - a substantial assumption given the fallibility of human nature - and assuming one can determine the best choice in a tree of known and available options, the long-term outcomes that can be surmised, their conditions of satisfaction, one’s capacity to see the action through, and so on, ideally, one should want to implement an action that would achieve that goal. That would be the rational thing to do. But knowing what to do and doing it are separate affairs. A dissociation in knowledge and action is not unusual; in fact, it is one of the most prominent features of frontal lobe damage, which merely exaggerates the normal tendency. The uncoupling is not an aberration, it points to an essential feature of ordinary cognition, since brain damage does not add behavior to a pre-existing repertoire, but teases cognition apart along its natural lines of organization. Such patients correctly describe the strategy required on a task but cannot use the strategy in performance. The dissociation of knowledge and action can occur in many areas, such as the ability to comprehend or criticize music without the ability to plan an instrument, or the capacity to understand a foreign language without being able to speak it. However, the dissociation of comprehension and production differs somewhat from that in the field of moral action, where it is evident in not doing what one should do, can do and knows how to do. Here, the dissociation is between execution and knowledge or moral purpose. Some patients appear as disinterested spectators of their own behavior, others know what should be done but cannot initiate the action. In daily life, this translates to an adequate knowledge of right and wrong, but an inability to use this knowledge to determine conduct, which is driven more by past experience, present needs and immediate events. Does this not sound familiar? The feeling of obligation Knowledge in awareness is perceptual, as is consciousness, choice and deliberation. The feeling of agency is largely based in action and kinesthetic recurrence, though there is a volitional quality to the control of visual images. With regard to the role of action in agency, the inclination, disposition or orientation toward an action and the feeling of activity and self-initiation may pass into desire which, satisfied or not, may fade or recur; if it recurs, it may lead to frustration, or pass into resolve and commitment. With regard to the role of perception in agency, a desire may discharge in an act or object, or it may be attenuated in choice, with

414 indecision as to needs, options and obligations, the should, the ought, the must. These shadings in language reflect uncertainties as to commitment, and differences in the conceptual specification of conscious content. At times we are not sure if an action is volitional or involuntary, free or constrained and, if constrained, whether restricted by endogenous or objective circumstances. Initiative and volition may shift to the feeling that one is forced or fated to perform an action with little or no choice in the matter. We often say, “I have to …(go to the store, see the doctor, etc.),” in the absence of compulsion. This feeling of obligation points to a receptive mode in which the agentive self feels disempowered by needs not felt as its own, even when obligations are independent of serious consequence or enforcement. Such feelings are attributed to pressure, guilt, habit, etc., but we do not fully understand their force. Psychoanalysis explains them by populating the mind with little agencies that argue with each other. A person unable to resist an inclination to harm himself or others may feel the compulsion as a duty or obligation. From an intrapsychic standpoint, the duty to pay taxes is not dissimilar from the obligation to make a telephone call on Mother’s Day. Fines and guilt are comparable penalties for a violation of law or custom, but the internal obligations are similar. In each there is an “inner voice” that says, “you must.” Mandelbaum (1955) put it succinctly: “Demands upon the self are very likely explicable in terms of the same principles as are demands issuing from the self.” He argues that it is erroneous to assume “that duty and inclination are ultimately discontinuous by nature, resting on different faculties, rather than being differing modes in which a common substrate of motivational forces manifests itself.” We see this phenomenon with great clarity in pathological states, when the active, “free” self becomes passive and responsive to the inner voice of obligation. In schizophrenia and other disorders, inner speech shifts from a motor to a perceptual bias. The construct that prefigures the realization of both acts and objects now discharges into the objectdevelopment. When this occurs, the verbal images that ordinarily precede action and contribute to the feeling of agency, especially when action is attenuated, shift to a perceptual bias and are experienced as (hallucinatory) objects (Fig. 15.1). In passing to a perceptual development, inner speech dissociates from the self of agency, and actualizes in voices distinct from the subject. This may proceed to the point that the subject not only hears but obeys a (self-generated) command to injure someone or to commit suicide. The fact that the voices are accusatory owes to the passive feeling

415 of the self in relation to its own verbal imagery. The passivity is similar to that in perception or some forms of visual imagery, and complements the agentive feeling of action. The content is incomplete, less fully analyzed and remains intrapsychic, accompanied by other fragments of preliminary cognition, e.g. the dream-like sense of (paranoid) victimization by hallucinatory voices.

Fig. 15.1

Legend: A = speech (verbal action), P = language perception. 1) A full derivation of A that discharges into motility gives normal speech. 2) An incomplete development of A and P gives inner speech. 3) The derivation of an endogenous content into perception gives auditory hallucination. 4) The substrate of an hallucination becomes auditory perception when it is constrained by acoustic sensation (see Brown, 2005)

In chronic cases, the incompletely specified perception is accompanied by a propagation of delusions that can become encapsulated and systematized in symbolic or metaphoric modes of thought. The feeling of passivity to images or ideas may lead the person to perceive his inner voice as another person, a god, a devil, who instructs him to carry out actions that he cannot refuse. It is, after all, his own voice he hears, even if it does not sound like his voice. For this reason, among others, it may be more difficult to resist the command than if the voice arose in, or was referred to, a “real” person. It is easier to say no to the other than to one’s self. In hypnotic trance, the instructions of another person may take on the status of obligations. Since it is perceived in a trance state as an incomplete auditory object, the voice of the hypnotist is heard as an inner voice that does not fully externalize. The perception remains an inner voice but since it is regulated by sensation (the hypnotist’s voice) it is not apprehended as

416 an hallucination that arises endogenously. Command hallucinations and hypnotic suggestions display the confusions that can occur between auditory perception and inner speech. Many of us no doubt have had the experience, on falling asleep, that an agentive monologue of inner speech becomes passive, perceptual and/or hallucinatory. The fluid transition from image to object and back again corresponds to a fluctuation of the feeling of agency and external reference. Such phenomena also show the basis of command hallucinations in the bias of inner speech to a perceptual development or the usurpation of inner speech in the recurrence of a hypnotically induced auditory command. The mirroring and exaggeration of normal psychological process in brain pathology remind us that the different forms of obligation are subjective in origin. Specifically, they are an objectification of the subjective phases through which they materialize, even those that seem thoroughly objective. The objective forms of obligation, those enforced or punished, have their effects as much from the fear of disapproval or exclusion by others as from censure, exile, incarceration, torture, or a (real or metaphoric) gun to one’s head. These latter are impositions forced on a person outside his control, but every occasion of experience is still subjective, some referred to the mind, others to the world. The transition from mind to world, from an inner to an outer locus, or within mind from the agency and inwardness of action to the recipience and externality of perception, are subtle and difficult to appreciate. This difficulty is incorporated in the ambiguity of language. Such terms as compulsion, duty, must, have both an inner and outer reference. Quantity of obligation Some philosophers (e.g. Brentano) have proposed a quantification of values. If obligations represent values, and values are quantifiable, there might be a comparable scale of obligations. from “it would be better” to “it is one’s absolute duty.” Let us examine this unlikely possibility. Consider the inclination to be hospitable to strangers, or to respect a tradition or duty to be hospitable. Is there an increasing quantity or intensity of obligation from a disposition to aid a stranger to the submission to a law that dictates that strangers must be assisted? Or, is it a matter of the valuation assigned to hospitality that is linked to traits of generosity, unselfishness, sharing and empathy, or conversely, to fear, indifference, misanthropy, and so on? Suppose I am told I must accept a stranger in my home but am reluctant to

417 do so. Does my character have less influence over my conduct than if I offered the hospitality spontaneously? If I reluctantly accept a stranger in my home, I have accommodated a personal value to an external compulsion, say, a fear of punishment by the authorities. If I accept the stranger but complain to the authorities about doing so, there is a lack of generosity in my character but I have the courage to assert a dangerous opinion. If I refuse altogether, or abuse the stranger and send him on his way and am willing to accept the consequences, I express still greater courage and independence, even if I am a miserable specimen of humanity. In every case, however, my character is at stake. If the presence of an objective threat of enforcement is irrelevant to the moral quality of the act, and if the sense of duty is not quantitative, how should we approach the condemnation for a crime? Should “the punishment fit the crime,” or not? I think we are often divided on this question, not so much because of the possibility of forgiveness or rehabilitation, but because if crimes cannot be quantified, how can we quantify punishments? We have murder in the first, second and third degree according to levels of intent, and the punishment is determined by which level the court decides is appropriate. The abiding character of the person is secondary to the immediate state of mind when the crime was committed. In law, volition and choice are recognized as being more important than character. We think we can infer deliberation and planning from actions leading to the crime, whereas moral character is slippery and hard to pin down, except from a pattern of good and bad acts that, in confirmation of this thesis, are often not admissible in court. The idea that a person should not be punished for a poor moral character, but only for its expression in conduct at a given moment, tends to mitigate responsibility. This reflects the view that we are all culpable to a greater or lesser extent and that most of us are just fortunate in having avoided those conditions that contribute to a weak moral character. Or, we have been spared the upbringing that leads to the vicious character of the sociopath. That is why we can control our conduct even in the most trying of circumstances. But consider whether a deliberate murder is worse than one that occurs in the course of a crime. There may be similar or dissimilar motives, say greed in both instances, or greed in one, revenge in the other, but in both the killer is indifferent to the life of the person who is killed. The robber who carries a gun may deny an intent to use it, but if he carries it he must be assumed, as in the cinematic “law of the old West,” to be prepared to use it. The punishment for a crime of passion may be less

418 severe in many countries than that for a deliberate homicide, but betrayal and loss are so common in comparison to murder, i.e. many are betrayed but few kill, we must assume a weakness of character in a person given to homicidal violence regardless of its provocation. From a subjective perspective, the murderer has an imperfection of character and must be held accountable, like Oedipus, for whatever his character happens to be, regardless of the circumstances in which it was formed. Only a fraction of those who were abused in childhood commit murder as adults. It is the rare individual with mental retardation or a psychiatric disorder who is a criminal. The circumstances in which the crime occurs, e.g. greed, jealousy, are familiar enough to the vast majority of law-abiding people, many of whom have life histories not so dissimilar from those of criminals. Take the example of a person who shoots to kill but only wounds, or two people shot in separate robberies (by the same criminal, to make things clearer), one who recovers, the other who dies of his wounds. One case is an injury, the other murder. Or, one is murder, the other attempted murder. Take Hinckley’s shooting of James Brady, which was incidental, and President Reagan, which was deliberate. The fact that a person survived in each instance thanks to the fortunate location of the bullet or good medical care is irrelevant to the murderous intent or “depraved” indifference of the shooter. The fact that one individual fully recovered, while the other was impaired for life is, to me, as irrelevant as if the bullet had been aimed to kill but missed its target completely. That the law is confused on this issue is clear from the fact that a victim of a shooting might be in coma for 20 years, effectively dead, but it is only when he actually dies, and can finally be buried, that the shooter can be tried for murder. A quantitative approach treats these actions differently, a qualitative one treats them the same, since it is a purely contingent matter, an accident of fate beyond the control of the shooter, that one person dies, another is wounded, another is comatose, while another recovers. This distinction has been discussed in terms of moral luck (see Chapter 17), but the shooter who misses or only wounds is “lucky” in avoiding capital punishment only because the law chooses to emphasize outcomes. The emphasis is warranted for different intentions that lead to different crimes, not different outcomes that arise from the same intention. If obligations are not quantitative but qualitative valuations, the punishment for conduct that defies a moral principle, such as not to (attempt to) kill someone, should also be measured by qualitative criteria. It is a question of whether the emphasis is on values, character and choice,

419 as opposed to the magnitude of the effects once values have been realized in conduct. If obligations or values within a category are not quantifiable, neither are crimes within a category. The category must to some extent be preserved, since murder cannot be compared to loitering, shoplifting or the torture of pets, other than to say it is obviously a more serious crime. Just as the difference between murder and attempted murder is irrelevant from the standpoint of the assassin’s character, so the murder of one person is equivalent, from a moral standpoint, to the murder of many. Wittgenstein wrote, “The whole planet can suffer no greater torment than a single soul.” We feel the same horror over the actions of a morally deranged person, a Jeffrey Dahmer, who tortures and eviscerates one individual, as a Nazi who is responsible for the deaths of multitudes, though we are inclined to think the isolated killer is crazy, while the Nazi is a “cold-blooded” murderer, i.e. that there is greater intent and self-possession in the latter. However, one could as well say that one person is unable to control his acts because he is forced to act by an internal compulsion, while the other is unable to control his acts because he is forced to act by an external compulsion. Dispositions can become internal compulsions, obligations can become external compulsions. The inner and outer are arbitrary boundaries. The “awareness of right and wrong” commonly disputed in psychiatric cases is, in my opinion, irrelevant to punishment, except in young children or someone unaware of right and wrong in a foreign country, where customs differ from those of the culture in which he was reared. Psychiatric disease does not eliminate the distinction of right and wrong, merely the ability to act on it, due to a bias in conduct in the direction of an inner compulsion. It is more accurate to say the psychotic knows the distinction but is unable to resist a malevolent impulse. In other words, he is driven by an intrinsic compulsion. What about those who are aware of right and wrong but cannot resist an extrinsic compulsion? This was the Nazi defense that conduct was “right” in conforming to the conventions of the culture, that there was no opposing “wrong,” and that conduct was in conformance with the obligations of an officer in the Wehrmacht, i.e. action according to duty or obligation. Imperfections of character – minimally, indifference to the sufferings of others – lead one person to butcher an individual, another to execute millions. But the extent of suffering, or the number of people caused to suffer, has no bearing on culpability or, for that matter, the reverse, on praise for the amount of benefit, whether for the very few or the great

420 many. The quantity of good or evil a person does is less a function of character than of power and opportunity. The greater the power, the greater the range over which character can be expressed, thus the greater the amount of good or evil the person can do. The extent of good or evil reflects character but also involves non-moral traits that lead to worldly success, such as perseverance, charisma, the ability to persuade, etc. We admire a virtuous person of moral courage who acts to save a single life. On the other hand, a mean-spirited egoist may discover an antibiotic that saves the lives of millions, with no motivation other than the excitement of scientific research. We would speak highly of the moral character of the first and poorly of the second, in spite of the enormous disparity in the “amount” of good derived from their efforts. This illustrates the disparity between the quantitative and qualitative orientations to moral conduct, the one being a calculation of costs and benefits on a large scale, the other, a striving for the good in the heart of every individual. From the qualitative point of view, the general or politician who sacrifices the lives of a few to save the lives of many, as field commanders are frequently called to do, has taken an immoral stance despite self-serving justifications. One thinks of the uncertain story of Churchill sacrificing the city of Coventry during the war, or the firebombing of Tokyo, or the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or Kissinger in Vietnam. The justification of such acts is a computation of the quantity of pain and pleasure produced by an act. The moral calculus, especially of political decision, is set against the value-based conduct of character. States are not bound to the same moral principles as individuals, though they are obligated to seek those principles as a goal. One can have a just and moral war. The calculus is the justification. Yet when we apply a character-based morality to a society, especially the foreign policy of the society, we recoil in horror at the sight of innocents brutalized in combat. From a subjective point of view – that of character, quality and immediate effects – there is no justification for killing or maiming. From an objective standpoint – that of policy, quantity and remoter outcomes – the suffering of the few is justified by the good, e.g. the relief of suffering, of the many. It is difficult to resolve these competing modes of thought, though the aim of moral “evolution” is the eventual triumph of subjectivism, with the result that the calculus is no longer necessary. However, given the cycle of existence and the incessant renewal and assertion of egoist drive, this is surely a fatuous hope. In a less than ideal world, safety depends on placing limits on the strong to insure the protection and greater good of the weak.

421 If a calculus is not motivated by a moral principle or obligation, or if compassion does not underlie the calculus, there is an ever-present danger that ruthlessness or miscalculation will put large populations at risk. A subject-centered morality is qualitative through and through. This does not entail that each individual has a unique moral perspective, but that life is not a commodity. Subjectivism is neither impersonal nor egocentric. Social adaptation sees to that. Impersonality is achieved, not by objectivity or rationality, but through empathy, self-denial and acts of “imaginative fusion.” Obligation as personal valuation On a presumptive scale of obligation, there are duties, laws, rules, customs, etc. that do not exact punishment, such as respect for parents, and there are those that carry a penalty for infraction, such as stealing. How is one to distinguish values that have the force of punishment from those guided by conscience? Specifically, what is the difference between obligations that are partly external (because they are coerced or punished) and those that seem external but are internal and voluntary (enforced by consensus, opinion, tradition, etc.)? The Decalog contains both types of obligation. Most societies punish theft and murder but not (male) adultery or a lack of respect for one’s parents. Is enforcement the objectification of the massed values of a society? Or are the values of a society internalized as obligations, some of which are enforced by punishment? This is the question of whether custom or law is the fabric of a society or the manifestation of its dominant beliefs and valuations. It is often difficult to ascertain the internal or external status of values that prompt a decision. The sense of duty and loyalty are assimilated in the self and become part of its belief system, as much personal as impersonal. Customs become part of a person through experience and education, mutable to an extent but still “wired-in,” almost like a native accent. Except in despotic or military rule, enforcement or threat should not be pertinent to conduct, which should flow from moral feeling, not acquiescence. The threat of punishment adds another layer to moral adaptation. A failure to conform to social obligations has consequences, even if it is not punished, such as exclusion or resentment. A community will permit some latitude in behavior until it overshoots the limits of what is acceptable, violating the norms of the society as a whole or a given social niche. In modern life, novel situations arise that are not instructed by custom, so that

422 censures have to be improvised on the basis of the predominant moral sentiment. For example, sexual relations between teachers and students, doctors and patients, presidents and interns, presume an asymmetry in power that turns the object of a potentially enriching experience into a victim of sordid abuse. As in tribal societies, the punishment for such an “offense” tends to be a kind of exile (loss of tenure, license, office), legal fees and remuneration, not prison. For other crimes, mundane or grave, the public stock of olden days has given way to the media glare of fleeting notoriety, in which the shame of either party is sanitized in a perverse sort of celebrity that often brings financial reward. Some would say this exposes a moral shallowness in society, others point to media hunger and the folly and uncertainty of the law. Is it a sign of moral licentiousness, a jading or prurience of taste, or a laxity of judgment and moral inclusiveness that signal greater tolerance? Whether or not we accept a higher moral standard was at stake in the Nuremberg trials. The Americans who resisted conscription during the Vietnam war were prosecuted and jailed for recognizing this principle. The Nazi defense of a duty to the state was disputed by the argument of a higher duty not to kill. The Americans claimed the same obligation but, unlike the Nazis, did not kill or betray anyone. It could be conceded that in both cases lives were at peril. The Nazi would be shot for refusing a command, the American jailed for evading conscription. Otherwise, the cases are not symmetrical. The Nazis have enormous moral blame because their actions were guided, if not by a belief in the Nazi ethic, by careerism, power, brutality, indifference to their victims, etc. In contrast, the resisters have moral credit only if their conduct was not guided by cowardice, disloyalty or self-interest. The prosecutor is merely a judge of the discrepancy between conduct and convention. In the first instance, a judgment was applied by one community to another that did not share its values. In the other, the judgment reflected the failure of a subset of the citizenry to honor the conventions of its own society. Such judgments within or across societies are closer to law than moral philosophy. Ideally, the individual is his own moral judge. That is the higher obligation to which the Nazis were held, and to which the Vietnam resisters, to give them the benefit of the doubt, held themselves. In hindsight, the country has come to agree with the protesters, yet such a principle might be thought inconsistent with the interests of the community, in that it fosters a reckless disregard for the law. Socrates is the example here. Morality is, finally, an obligation to one’s ideal self or the best of one’s character.

423 The point of this exercise is that obligations are not true or false propositions, but values that elicit or coincide with dispositions. For all of us the obligation to obey the law, or in some instances to defy it, is instilled in childhood through education and example. We are helpless to moral instruction, without which defining patterns of moral character are not well established, leaving the individual to navigate the shoals of life without a reliable compass. The gold standard is then not virtue or duty but live and let live. Arguments tend to devolve to pro and con without sampling the context beneath them. To take one example, abortion is not just a matter of life or death, pro-life or pro-choice, but potential and personhood, selfidentity, compassion and autonomy, and the relation of individual to community. The dispositions or beliefs that underlie choice will only cohere when the self acts with vigor and authenticity. Logical arguments are an uncertain a guide to the thought process, as are the choices that emerge from them. We tend not to sound a position too deeply or rationally, but rather take it on a “gut” feeling and then seek arguments to support it. William James wrote that philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than reason, the reason coming afterwards as a justification. One can be told an action is right, but the appeal must speak to the inner sense of rightness. For a principle to be effective, it must be a personal value. As a command, it carries little or no moral weight. For the principle to work it must also be shared by the majority in a community. Williams (1985) wrote that the aim of ethical discourse is to give reasons to people already disposed to hear them. To accept a principle that appeals to the personal good is itself a value that has to be inculcated. One must feel the principle and believe it is right to submit to it, and know that others submit to it as well, not because it is rational – on an individual basis, the cynical “do unto others before they do unto you,” is equally, if not more, rational – but because the principle appeals to the best in one’s character. From the highest good of altruism to the simplest duty in everyday life, e.g. to stop a car at a red light, conduct must cohere with this system. In the case of a red light, one must have a desire to be a good citizen, avoid injury, not harm others, and so on. An obligation is only felt as objective when it does not call up a corresponding value. Take the example of a country that undergoes a coup or sudden change in the nature of a regime. In such an event, the installation of the new regime will clash with the values of individuals loyal to the prior state, for there has not been sufficient time for the changed obligations to be assimilated. Regardless of whether the change is in a direction to greater or

424 lesser freedom, there will be resistance. Each group will feel their personal values endangered by a new system with a different agenda. In time, most people come to accept or forget the rules they have been taught. The laws of the new state infiltrate the developing self-concept and are woven into the fabric of individual belief. We see the persistence of a submissive mentality when new freedoms encounter resistance from those nostalgic for an authoritarian regime, and the reverse, when individuals living in a liberal society are indoctrinated or “brainwashed” into a radical group. Often we see an acceptance, indeed an advocacy, of conditions in restrictive states that a free and open society would find deplorable, for example, cultures that limit the freedom of women. Even in relatively progressive countries where women protest the old ways, they tend to be outnumbered by those who reinforce the status quo. In countries where laws and traditions are felt as obligations, enforcement is less pronounced. We are reminded by such observations that those who enforce the laws of despots are despots themselves. Jaspers denied that the German people had legal or moral blame, but admitted to a transgenerational debt, owing to collective guilt, justified by participation in a shared culture. Others have argued that it is naïve to think the German people did not, by and large, embrace Nazi doctrine. There were then, and there are now, solitary voices of courage, but the masses absorb and tacitly condone the values responsible for their own shame or subjugation. Subjectivity and relativism The subjectivization of external obligation, where the uniformity of an external duty shifts to the perspective of personal responsibility, does not entail a moral relativism, it merely recognizes the primacy of personal values in determining what is right and wrong. The world engages the subject in a dialectic of adaptation. The inevitable compromise of personal values and self-realization with the standards of the community may be perceived as “me against them,” but ideally it is a struggle in each soul for a proper balance. A radical subjectivity entails life in a social vacuum. A schizophrenic or autistic lives in such a world. His perspective is not conditioned by adaptive pressures and suffers for that lack. The unique “world view” of the schizophrenic is achieved at the price of miscomprehension, exclusion and alienation. If it is the case that obligations must be internalized to have moral force, individual conduct and its impersonal evaluation are always

425 subjective, whether they concern private decisions or public pronouncements. Approval and disapproval are subjective states. The exception to this is the imposition of a custom or punishment that could not have been anticipated by the self’s own value system. There are situations when an obligation or punishment is imposed with no correspondence to social experience or personal values. An example might be a woman traveler caught up in an African country and forced to undergo clitoral excision. As this is an event totally out of context with her life experience, the satisfaction of that obligation would be forced and extrapersonal, as if she were imprisoned and/or executed for a crime she did not commit. Her situation would be quite different were she a native of that society. Her protest would probably be muted, or at least there would be internal conflict, because the valuation of the procedure would have been soaked up in the self, for better or worse, from an early stage in life. There is a difference in moral outrage according to whether the confrontation occurs in one who is raised in a society or has the society suddenly imposed, since social obligations, through learning, become part of a positive or negative moral vocabulary. This way of thinking is consistent with the writings of Kekes (1989), who has argued, with Oedipus as an example, that strength of character lies in the acceptance of responsibility for actions that offend convention, even if one has acted without awareness of having given the offense, so long as the convention has been inculcated in maturation. If someone is responsible for actions that defy a convention, the conduct is wrong even if he is unaware of its impropriety, so long as he is a product of the society that supports those conventions. The converse would also be true, namely, a lack of responsibility for such actions if one is alien to the culture. The obligations of convention have the force of moral duties precisely because they are internalized in character, even if they are independent of knowledge or agency at the time the action occurs. For Kekes, the responsibility obtains so long as the conventions are consistent with the person’s subjective beliefs. Oedipus had to share the values that were violated in order to feel responsible. A person is ultimately responsible for his own character regardless of the choices available when he acts, and he should be held accountable for that character even if he denies responsibility. Ideally, a person accepts responsibility and its consequences, even if blame is withheld. The assumption of responsibility is consistent with the primacy of character, as is the suspension of blame by others However, it

426 is rare in contemporary life that a person accepts any responsibility whatsoever, even for acts freely chosen, much less for those that occur without full knowledge or in an altered state of consciousness. That one is “not guilty” in American law until proven otherwise does not justify a notguilty plea. This refusal to accept responsibility is an impeachment of character, and provides a further reason for society to exact punishment. This argument also pertains to the cases of internal and external compulsion, the psychotic and the Nazi. We should not expect those raised with inadequate moral training to behave in a manner consistent with the best of moral ideals, nor rise to the level of the great soul who by force of will or quirk of circumstance is able to overcome the limitations of his own moral education. But all of us must accept the responsibility for who we are and the consequences of our actions, however unconscious our values and motivations. We must believe we are agents of change, not victims of a causal inheritance. It follows that the judgment of right and wrong – for one’s self and for others – is a judgment of one’s own character, not the comparison of conduct to external obligations that is the logic of law. It also follows that, with rare exceptions, lack of knowledge is no excuse for avoiding punishment. Selfexamination involves a scrutiny, so far as possible, of the unconscious values driving conduct. The goal of a moral education is to instill values that are life enhancing and humanitarian, that preserve individualism and at the same time enlarge the self-concept with other-directed concerns. What is a loyalty? Thus far I have discussed obligations and duties as if they were independent of desire, or its constraints, referring to a sense of inner or outer compulsion depending on the actualization-bias. A duty is an obligation in which the feeling of compulsion is less pronounced, i.e. it feels more intrinsic than an obligation. But it is a short step from duty or obligation to loyalty, and often the most difficult choices involve obligations that are felt as competing loyalties. What then is a loyalty and how does it relate to desire and obligation? Desires are wishes or needs of the self, generally for objects that are not yet possessed. A desire is intentional. The self is antecedent to and directed toward an object. Desire is the feeling of a relation of need or want that is directed from the self to an object or to the concept of the object. The object of a desire is not a vague hope, but has clarified to the point

427 where the person knows what he desires. The object is the fulfillment of a need or a lack in the self. Though a person can desire knowledge or selfbetterment, the object of a desire is usually felt as external. An obligation differs from a desire in having the self for its object. The self feels an obligation, but it is the self that is obligated. The object of the obligation is not the action the self is obligated to perform, but is directed to the self. The self is the object that is obligated if the obligation is to be fulfilled. The intentionality of obligation is reflexive. The external referent of the need has the self as its target. This neutralizes the feeling of agency. Thus, the self feels active to a desire, and passive to an obligation. We do not say the self is the object of its own desire, except perhaps in narcissism, where there is a love of self, not a desire for the self, but we can say the self is the object of an obligation. My obligation to serve in the army or to assist my family feels like the army or my family wants or needs me to provide them with a service. The intention is the will of an imaginary agent with the self as the object of its need. Desire and obligation arise in the self but their actualization-bias has a different course. Desire corresponds to the agentive or voluntary feeling of an action, obligation to the passive or receptive feeling of a perception. Specifically, desire inherits agency as feeling bound up with the actiondevelopment. Obligation inherits recipience that is bound up with the object-development. A loyalty is some combination of the two, namely an obligation that feels like a desire, in which the self has a commitment to the obligation. In loyalty, the self feels as much an agent as an object. The intentionality of loyalty in the momentum or direction toward an object is greater than in obligation. The intentionality only reaches the level of a desire if loyalty becomes volitional. A loyalty is like an unenforced duty, in that it entails an obligation. The main difference is the feeling of volition in the former. This feeling derives from desire. A strong obligation is felt as a loyalty to the extent it is not compulsory. If I am required to serve in the army and do not wish to do so, the requirement is felt as an obligation or duty. If I wish to serve, the obligation can be interpreted as a loyalty. I might want to join the army for other reasons – travel, opportunity, adventure – but loyalty to country or comrades is often one of them, and it is a sufficient reason for wanting to join as opposed to having to. The addition of a wish or a desire to an obligation transforms it to a loyalty. Once the feeling of obligation is erased, the loyalty becomes a desire. An obligation that is not enforced is still felt as a compulsion, while a loyalty is felt to arise in the will of the

428 individual and the desire to accept an obligation. The feeling of an obligation as an imposition rather than a desire accompanies the sense that the obligation is at least partly external. The obligation can range from the fully external, as in a command with penalties for disobedience to one that is acknowledged as internal yet still feels compelled. In all of these instances, the obligation has the feeling of a relation to an extrinsic agency. The compulsion of obligation is linked to an external, perceptual and impersonal object. The agency of loyalty is linked to an internal, active and personal act. This reflects a bias to perceptions that exteriorize and become independent, or a bias to actions that are self-realizations. A bias of values to a percept-development induces an obligation that feels external and compulsory, whether it is or not. A bias of values to an action-development induces a desire that feels internal and freely initiated, whether it is or not. Loyalties express features of both or, put differently, the values that account for a loyalty are specified in a way that is equally distributed across the two components. An obligation to family or society becomes a loyalty when it is accompanied by desire, just as a desire to help a relative, a friend or a community becomes a loyalty when it is accompanied by an obligation. Since desire and obligation are often at war in the self, a loyalty that combines them probably indicates a better integration of value in the self. In a psychological model, the denominations of feelings such as duty or loyalty attempt to capture a subtle bias in the distribution of value, or the patterns of neuronal configurations. This model differs from an account in which obligations are derived from a principle or maxim that is impressed on the subject. To the question, what is the origin of ought, one could say that obligation forms a category of felt impositions on the drive-based, action-bound desires of egoism. They arise in, or constitute, the exocentric values, which are conditioned by an adaptation to the other. The presence of the other necessitates the category. The other is part of the social Umwelt of the individual that limits the scope of personal desire. There is a continuous transition in the feeling of outer and inner in relation to the structure of agency, from enforcement to compassion, from obligation to desire, from the duty to serve out of necessity to the wish to please out of love. The ought becomes the want as extrinsic constraints on egoism internalize as voluntary commitments. Desire that goes outward in perception deposits value (worth) in an object. When worth deposits in the self, the feeling is that of self-esteem or narcissism. In the former, the self receives worth, in the latter, love.

429 Narcissism heightens self-worth as love heightens the worth of the beloved. These outcomes of self-interest infuse inner- or outer-directed desires. They are active and volitional. The action has an object as its goal. When other-centered values infuse desire, the outcome is obligation (duty, loyalty, etc). The self is passive to the value and agency instilled in the “representation” of the other (individual, community). The psychology of obligation involves a displacement to the other, i.e. to its own exocentric values of agency and control, the self disowning its own volitional impulse. The abeyance of self-interest and the agency that goes with it accentuate the demands of the other on the self. Obligations may require explanations, but loyalty is tacit and unquestioning. We speak of dogs as being loyal to their masters. There is a devotion or dedication, indeed, an expectation of altruism and self-sacrifice that, as in love, needs no justification. An irrational loyalty to a lover who betrays or is undeserving may find reasons for its intensity that will baffle the impartial observer. Perhaps the absence of conflict between act and object, agency and compulsion, the personal and impersonal, trumps the opposition of ego- and exocentric values. An obligation can be opposed by a desire or another obligation, or merely by a “no.” Singer (1961) argued that a refusal is irrelevant to the categorical nature of obligations, though not to their implementations in that justifications for a refusal are essential if the action is to be moral. This does not apply if the obligation is fulfilled. I think justifications only justify, they are explanations or excuses, not causes of the violation of a moral principle. Here, however, an obligation is conceived as the expression of an intrinsic value, i.e. a psychological event, not a moral rule that one is required to obey. Obligations are opposed by desires, as self-denial is opposed by selfinterest, but a loyalty tends to be opposed by another loyalty or obligation, less often by a desire, since the combination of desire and obligation that constitutes a loyalty disarms other desires. When a desire overcomes a loyalty, the loyalty itself is in question; it is more like an obligation. Loyalty is often thought of in terms of love, as in the loyalty among comrades in arms, in a family or between lovers. Loyalty is an obligation that the agent freely desires. This is what occurs in combat and, ideally, in marriage. It is one thing that marriage and military life have in common, they create and solidify loyalties by wedding obligations to desires. Loyalty and obligation are subtly interwoven when the love between lovers or friends is penetrated by tacit or explicit contracts. A conflict of loyalties is not so different from a conflict of obligations,

430 or an obligation and a loyalty. The decision rests on the strength of the loyalty or obligation, not the fact that a loyalty is in conflict with an obligation. In a Sophie’s choice of loyalties, love and obligation are in balance and the person cannot decide. We see a similar equilibrium of loyalties, or of loyalties and obligations, when a young man takes his life because his family will not permit him to be with his beloved. We see this as well in the paralysis of indecision that may follow a plea for euthanasia from a loved one who is ill. Such dilemmas are not resolvable if the weight of loyalty or obligation does not tip the scales of action in one direction or another. There is no rationale for a decision among genuine loyalties because a loyalty is not rational, especially if it has love as an element, so the individual suffers for either choice and may be haunted for life no matter what the decision is or how it is rationalized. The distinctions between desires, loyalties and obligations, and the choices that are made, depend as much on feeling as the content of what is desired or obligated. But it is not feeling alone that decides; rather, feeling is a marker for the neural configurations that deposit occasions of experience, which include the subject and the state of choice. Each occasion is a pattern of emphasis on action, perception or their linguistic derivations, as on the concepts and values enlisted in their activation. This pattern, the path of emphasis, the phase in the path that is accentuated, and the concepts that undergo derivation, determine whether the subject feels a desire, an obligation, a loyalty and so on, while the beliefs and values that instigate the pattern determine what content actualizes. It is an observation of some interest, and one that fortifies the claim that a perceptual or action bias determines whether the subject feels a desire or an obligation, that choice usually settles on two competing categories of action rather than a broad menu of possibilities.

Chapter 16. Morality and Suicide On love’s grave grows the flower of peace. Heine

Suicide and altruism: self and community The progression in evolutionary and social development is from genus to species, whole to part, community to individual. Dependency is prior to separation. The individual becomes autonomous through a process of individuation. In line with this pattern, altruist suicide precedes egoistic suicide as the community or whole precedes the individual or the part. A suicide for the other engages the community as an isolated suicide does not. Ordinary suicide tends to be more common in advanced societies. Durkheim claimed that altruistic suicide was more prominent in primitive societies. Most people who helped the Jews during the Holocaust were not the professional or intellectual class but ordinary people. Rationality may well be the enemy of sympathetic feeling even as it justifies compassion. Altruistic suicide has an evolutionary rationale, or at least it could be argued that it has evolutionary precursors. In ant or bee colonies, the individual is expendable for the whole; the existence of the whole depends on the sacrifice of the parts. However, an ant hive is not an appropriate model for human altruism, since there is no evolutionary continuity with humans, there is no awareness of death or risk, the “quantity” of “altruism” diminishes from ants to animals, and the similarity is superficial and deceiving. An ant that perishes in the defense of a colony against an intruder is like a lymphocyte that dies in the defense of the body against a viral infection. Low-level organisms do not anticipate human altruism, in the same way as do behavioral repertoires in social animals, such as food sharing and infant care. An animal that fights to the death to defend its infants, or generalizes the defense to other infants, exhibits a tacit concern for others, especially for kinship relations and the priority of the coming generation. Though evolution entails an individual genetic adaptation, evolutionary process subordinates the individual to the species. In this, human altruism is an atavistic trait, a form of adaptive process with an

432 incomplete individuation of the organism as a unique instance and its pruning for the sake of the group. We see the roots of human altruism in the “madness of crowds,” cults, religious fervor, the loyalties of “comrades in arms,” strikes, demonstrations, etc., where the will of the individual is submerged in that of the group. Self-sacrifice is a regressive trait that in its spontaneity retains its instinctual force, but in deliberation loses its evolutionary rationale. The exchange of one human life for another serves no ostensible purpose. Often, the strong die for the weak. One human life may be given for another of “lesser value.” Nagel (1970) argued that altruism – for him, selfdenial generally – is parasitic on self-interest. But altruistic suicide does not fit neatly into this mold. Extreme self-denial for others, viewed positively, from a standpoint of libidinal denial, is altruism, and viewed negatively, from a standpoint of libidinal submission, is masochism. Both actions can be construed as self-denial, that is, a lack of selfishness or of egoism. We distinguish altruism and masochism on a difference in “ego strength,” on the focality or ubiquity of their objects, moral purpose, agency, sexual coloration, and so on. But if a masochist is not defined – in a self-oriented way – as a person who needs to suffer or as one who enjoys pain, but from an other-centered perspective, as one who accepts abuse or sacrifice for the pleasure of others, the distinction is blurred. A woman who is a doormat for a selfish husband may be a saint to some, a masochist to others. A missionary who is tortured by those he serves, a social worker who is beaten by clients he continues to love, are examples of virtue to some and, to others, lunacy or dependency. The reaction depends on the dominant mentality, i.e. compassion linked to syncretic thinking or reason linked to analytic thought. Since moral conduct reflects character independent of the virtues or vices of those to whom it is directed, and irrespective of the breadth of its objects, it is arguable what amount or quality of sacrifice should count as being altruistic or masochistic. The relation of pleasure to obedience in masochism could readily be interpreted as a distortion of its relation to obligation in moral conduct. One should seek continuities, not disjunctions. On an evolutionary account, altruism is a fragment of social adaptation. Since the interests of the individual require the group for support, sacrifice for the sake of the group is a byproduct of dependency. Prince Kropotkin (1924) argued for the importance of “mutual aid” in evolution. The concept of pruning in microgenetic theory, as in fetal development, is a theory of elimination as a form of adaptation, for the

433 social good, niche competition, etc. On these grounds, self-elimination could be construed as an excessive zeal, or dominance, of the eliminative tendencies over the egocentric ones. Exuberant growth might be compared to assertion and egoism, while the trimming of excess can be compared to annihilation or subordination. If altruism derives from an adaptive strategy, for example, in benefiting collective survival, even if it gives the advantage to one’s reproductive competitors, it should be common in human society. I think it is more common than is generally assumed. Soldiers take risks for their comrades, firemen for people trapped in a burning building. Parenting is a form of altruism, though the pleasure that parents receive, or hope to receive, from their children may be an implicit compensation for their sacrifice. In contrast, ordinary suicide has little or no evolutionary justification, unless it is construed as the self-pruning of those who, by virtue of despair, boredom or inertia perceive themselves useless and unfit, and a drain on the community. Without predators to devour them, or family, neighbors or disease to kill them, the unfit must destroy themselves. Altruism is aligned with evolutionary process, but suicide is a perversion of that process, in that survival dissociates from self-interest, i.e. the will to live becomes the wish to die, and the death of the individual may have no social benefit. Indeed, Aristotle argued that in destroying a productive citizen, suicide was an offense against the state. In suicide, the wish is to die, in altruism it is not to die but to aid others at the possible cost of one’s life. Considered in the abstract, few would choose to die for others except those they love. But confronted with a choice between personal risk and cowardice, courage or shame, many act boldly, more than they might have anticipated. In situations of danger, when immediate action is required, character may rise to the challenge where reason would hesitate. Death in an act of altruism is usually spontaneous, suicide deliberate. If a fireman knew he would die to save another person, it is likely he would have acted in a less heroic manner. The spontaneity taps into character, a kind of herd or tribe mentality submerged beneath a rational cognition, a sense of community that lies dormant just beneath a pretext of autonomy. The immediacy is necessary because it bypasses the logic that would say no to the very risk to which animal feeling and core character assent. There are many types of suicide, depending on age, tradition, personal need and social context, but in all cases the will to live is altered. Alvarez writes that suicide “is a confession of failure …(and all its excuses)

434 disguise the simple fact that all one’s energy, passion, appetite and ambition have been aborted.” However, for Schopenhauer suicide “differs most widely from the denial of the will-to-live, which is the only act of its freedom to appear in the phenomenon…(that suicide) is a phenomenon of the will’s strong affirmation… The suicide wills life, and is dissatisfied merely with the conditions on which it has come to him.” Elsewhere, he “locates the contradiction in the suicide’s simultaneous denial and affirmation of the will-to-live” [see Jacquette, 1999]. William James attempted suicide, and was saved by an act of faith, that his will to believe in “free will” was his first act of free will. After the Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who had a cosmic theory of conflict between two primary forces, love and strife, Freud described eros and the so-called “death instinct,” thanatos, the latter being an urge to destructiveness that can turn inward on the self as an object. The reflexivity of aggression is of more interest than an instinct for death, since there are clearly aggressive impulses (fight) that offset and intermingle with their opposites (flight, sexual and other self-preservative drives). Freud thought of suicide as a murderous impulse toward another, especially a love object that, under the influence of an avenging super-ego, turned on the self. This was the interpretation of depression and other forms of suicide. Many psychoanalytic concepts depend on a primary impulse directed inward to self or outward to objects. For example, primary masochism turned outward becomes sadism. The notion of suicide as displaced anger, i.e. murder transposed to the self, has been accepted in one form or another by many courts. However, one can ask: if the outward expression of anger is blocked, withered or repressed, must it invert on the subject, or might the obstruction of action or deadening of desire release the only drive that remains, sleep? The effect would be the drive-displacement described by the ethologists. When flight, fight, feeding and libidinal drive are blocked or of insufficient force, sleep is the last drive-manifestation. Death has always been compared to sleep, Lethe, forgetfulness. Suicide would then be the desire for eternal sleep. Schilder (1942; 1976) broke with Freud in arguing that death is the interruption of a continuous creative activity and that suicide served life purposes. He noted that Freud thought the life-instincts arise in the libido, the death instincts in the ego, but the latter do not appear in the conscious or unconscious life. For Whitehead, as for Schilder, the creative urge is fundamental. In suicide, the drive to self-preservation may unravel or ramify to conceptual outposts that justify annihilation as a legitimate

435 desire, a final act of desire when other desires have been extinguished. When action is impeded, the forward-going impulse cannot be discharged, and the psychologists say it turns inward. Augustine argued that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies as much to self as to others. Suicide for others Altruism and self-sacrifice may have a suicidal outcome, but they possess a moral value in love, compassion and obligation that suicide foregoes. Love exists for its own sake, it does not require that one do something. Charity is like this, but one is usually prompted to help. Compassion without action is sympathy. Empathic feeling occurs when there is nothing to be done, say, for a person who is dying. If a person gives an organ donation while dying of cancer, the sacrifice is less worthy than the same action when the person is healthy. Yet if a dying person’s condition is hopeless and he and his world are about to be annihilated, a concern with the fate of others would seem to be compassion in its purest form, lacking the conflict of self and other-centered desires. A man with a few months to live, who dedicates his last days to helping a stranger, has nothing to gain. However, if the desire to add meaning to his life is construed as egoist, we might interpret all compassion and kindness along these lines. A healthy person who would risk death to briefly prolong the life of someone who is dying may act out of altruistic motives, but we wonder at the grounds of his choice. Is it a sign the person loves the other more than himself? The lack of self-interest or the indifference to personal risk is not necessarily the reciprocal of love. One can dedicate a life to caring, even dying, for others without loving them, in fact, without knowing them, for example, a physician who contracts a fatal disease through the selfless care of his patients. In altruistic suicide, a life or a principle is at stake, generally both, as in the fireman or physician for whom sacrifice is guided by principles of service, dedication and professionalism. There is greater moral credit when an altruistic sacrifice is the conscious purpose of the person who dies. Then, character, conscious choice and awareness of objective circumstance are all fully aligned. A person who throws himself in front of an oncoming car to save the life of a child reacts automatically. The reaction is a sign of character, a could-not-have-done-otherwise. Near my home in southern France, a little girl fell in the rapids. Her father, grandfather and a passerby jumped in to rescue her, and all drowned. In a spontaneous action of this

436 type, altruism does not involve deliberation. The action is a mark of virtue, that is, of character. We admire virtue, and moral feeling ultimately devolves to character, but we think that morality requires choice, even if hesitation in such an act signals fear or calculation and would be fatal to character, if not to purpose. There is a sense in which an individual who acts to save a life in spite of fear, or shows courage in overcoming fear, has greater moral credit than one who acts without thinking. Soldiers who risk their life to save a fallen comrade do so out of an overriding sense of duty. They have been trained to act in this way. Courage alone is not a moral virtue. A person may exhibit courage in solitary pursuits, even in immoral acts. A gangster will risk his life in committing a crime. It is only when courage is applied to acts of goodness that it becomes virtuous. Similarly, fear is not a moral defect, though it is a sign of a weak or uncertain character. However, the moral fiber of a person is tested by overcoming fear or lack of courage for an action of moral consequence. In such instances, the failure to act altruistically brings not only shame but moral discredit. Yet if the rational thing to do is not act impetuously, why do we still praise the moral character of one who dies in a foolhardy attempt to save another life? Generally, altruism entails the sustenance of the life or well being of others by self-denial or suicide. While any act of self-denial could be termed altruistic, risking death for others has a particular resonance. Such an act can be viewed from the standpoint of the subject, the community, or from an “objective” perspective. Suppose a person deliberately commits suicide for the sake of the community in which he lives. Suppose further that in so doing he kills others who are perceived to be enemies of the group. The kamikaze or suicide bomber is such a case. From his perspective, he sacrifices his life for the sake of his community, and the community reinforces this attitude, though unlike the traditional altruist, he does this by killing others, not saving them. Other communities that apply an “objective” standard may perceive such actions as malevolent and barbaric. Yet were an individual to self-destruct in the chambers of the Nazi high command and kill them by an act of self-destruction, he would be widely commended for heroism and altruism. To sacrifice one’s life to destroy evil is an act of nobility and virtue. But the suicide bomber kills people that even he knows are innocent, small children for example, for a cause he perceives to be greater than the value of an individual life, his own and that of others. He is unlike the AIDs patient who deliberately infects other people, thinking that if he has to die, why not others. This is

437 malicious, “cold-blooded” murder. The suicide bomber has a cause, a principle that governs his behavior. Like the soldier, he is drilled to carry out his duty without question. Unlike the altruist who dives in the river to save a child, the planning and deliberation of the suicidal bomber add to the moral credit, or blame, of the action. For those who applaud the act he is a martyr and a hero, for others, a murderer and a coward. Psychoanalysts describe such people as pathological victims of “brainwashing,” with an “inner lack of control,” a “destabilizing selfhatred… surrender to an unconscious equivalent of the omnipotent parent protector … driven by grandiose primitive destructiveness.” Descuret (1860) listed numerous causes of suicide with onanism first on his list! Stekel also related suicide to masturbation, Adler to inferiority and revenge. In the suicide bomber, the murder of self and other has the added motive of the desire to enter a cartoon paradise. But the guru covets praise, the monk seeks nirvana and the Christian desires a release from the “vale of tears” on this sorrowful earth for the glory of a heaven in waiting. Alvarez (1971) wrote of the Viking paradise, Valhalla, to which only those who died a violent death were admitted, first the warriors, then the suicides. Those who died in bed were excluded. Similar beliefs are found in a variety of populations, from the Aztec sacrifice of virgins, to the Land of Day of the Iglulik Eskimos, to the depths of the Hawaiki of the Marquesas Islanders. The suicides of the odalisques of a dying Inca, the immolation of widowed Hindu women, were glorified as a means of hastening their reunion in the hereafter. We might suppose that a desire for a privileged place in the after-life is a delusion, and we might agree there are occasions when killing others who are evil by an act of self-destruction is moral. We might further agree that “brainwashing” is just a more vigorous form of moral (or immoral) education. We might say that violence to others is immoral, yet agree there are moral wars. We might distinguish between soldiers and civilians, even if the oppressed do not make such distinctions. The Americans no doubt killed more civilians in the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq than died in the World Trade Center. The toll in Cambodia was many times greater. The bombing at Hiroshima was targeted at civilians. No nation is immune to this charge. In Afghanistan, the failure to commit soldiers on the ground, the use of a surrogate army, the saturation bombing, led to “collateral damage” that was justified as a byproduct of missed targets. Surely, to condone or condemn suicide bombing – or suicide in general – depends less on the action than its aftermath, its rationale and consequence, that is,

438 the reasons or justifications for the action. The more we approximate conduct, the farther we are from compassion, which is the domain of feeling, even if action is essential as a guarantee of authenticity. There is a world of difference between the selfnegation and charity of a saint who acts out of kindness and love, and a secret service agent who would take a bullet for the president out of a sense of duty to satisfy an obligation. Both are forms of altruism, though one owes to pity and self-effacement, the other to duty and bravado. A missionary may risk death to convert a native as a policeman may risk his life to protect the helpless. Say the missionary is butchered by savages, the policeman killed in a robbery. We might be more inclined to speak of the latter as heroic, for the combat of the warrior has a stronger claim to courage than the submission of the priest. The policeman acts out of a sense of duty or obligation, the missionary out of a saintly calling. The important difference is the relative emphasis on feeling or conduct, which is a sign of the relative proximity of action to subjective desire or objective necessity. The closer the emphasis to conduct, the further from core beliefs, and the less the other is the need of the person one loves the more that action is guided by the ought of duty irrespective of compassion. Shame, not morality, is the guardian of courage. The agent who guarded President Kennedy may or may not have felt compassion for the slain president, but he lived with remorse for over twenty years because he did not respond a fraction of a second sooner. This readiness to die for another is the price of dishonor at a failure to discharge one’s responsibilities. It is not a good act in that its desires are not impersonal, nor is it motivated by compassion. It is a test of courage, a fear of reproach or cowardice. Such a sacrificial suicide of obligation is like seppuku, the disembowelment of the Japanese, where the “must” of duty takes precedence over the “want” of self-interest. To do other than one's duty is to suffer dismissal, humiliation, shame. In seppuku, the retribution is exacted on the self for the betrayal of one's own standards, a matter of honor, not conscience. The very manner of performing seppuku with a knife thrust into the intestines is intended to produce a painful death, which is necessary to erase the shame. Under these circumstances, suicide is an act of violence against the self. Self-hate, like any other hate, reduces the self to a worthless stranger, an object that is despised and deserving of brutality. Such conditions cry out for renewed dedication. There are other paths to consider than suicide. I admire the courage of those who continue, as Plotinus wrote, because “there must be no withdrawal as long as there is

439 any hope of progress.” Altruistic intent and objective value Meinong tried to quantify measures of what he called “actualityvalue.” Thus, saving a dog from drowning has less value than a child, and saving a child from drowning with a stick has less than diving in the water, while drowning in the act of saving the child has a kind of negative actuality-value. Why is saving a dog of less moral credit than saving a child? The person who saves a dog would likely have attempted to save a child. The courage and moral virtue are the same, it is merely accidental which object is rescued. For Meinong, a saint or an artist would be worth more than an accountant, an accountant more than a janitor, a healthy child more than a sickly adult, and so on. What then of saving the last animal in a vanishing species compared to an alley cat, a severely retarded child versus one who is gifted, or even someone who is trying to commit suicide by drowning? Blum (1992) asserted, incorrectly in my view, that risk is adventitious to altruism, the minimal ingredient being a lack of concern for the self. What matters are the intentions and values of the agent, not the objective worth of the object of altruistic intent. Risk is a measure of altruistic intent, thus character, whether diving into a river or sheltering a refugee from persecution. The impersonality of the act also matters, not as an objective measure but, as with Christ and the lepers, a sign of compassion. One could argue that a white saving a black, a Nazi saving a Jew, a Turk saving a Greek, has greater value, for it overcomes bias in the respect for a common humanity regardless of racial, ethnic or religious loyalties. We need the objective as a sign of the scope of moral feeling, but to include it in evaluating conduct introduces a quantitative element that undermines the qualitative nature of character. The attempt to measure object-value recalls the story of an expedition of academics to the jungle, captured and auctioned by cannibals. The dean, sold for a few pennies, asked why he was worth so little compared to other professors, and was told, you know how long it takes to clean a dean? Deans aside, we would not want to say the life of a murderer or a severe retardate has the same value as that of the saint or genius, but the principle that the higher sentient life forms are of equal value should not be breached. C.P. Snow once remarked that he could accept that the life of an ordinary man was worth the same as the life of a genius, but not that two

440 ordinary men were worth twice as much. Value is not a quantity. The attempt to quantify objects or events irrespective of the feelings directed to them confuses the act-value, in Meinong’s terms, e.g. saving the object, with the object-value, e.g. a dog, a child. The mix of intentions, objectnature and extra-personal knowledge contaminates and threatens to erode the altruism of the act. If a worthless person acts altruistically to save the life of a saint, does it have more value than the reverse, a saint who saves the life of someone who is worthless? Does it matter what the life is worth? It cannot be denied that both parties to the altruistic suicide must be taken into account. The doctor who saves the life of an injured person he knows to be a murderer assures that he will survive to kill another day. A patient who describes a rape or murder he has committed to a psychiatrist cannot have the admission of guilt reported to the police, even if there is an implicit risk of another crime, but why not? The respect for privacy is broken by the confession. The psychiatrist may argue that a violation of confidence would endanger a tradition of privacy, while the privilege is also protected by the threat of litigation or censure. I think the clinician has a higher obligation. There is a strong intuition of inconsistency in such acts. When a psychiatrist is prohibited from testifying against a murderer who has described the crime in therapy, the concerns over privacy are not the result of compassion, nor are they aligned with the character of the clinician. They are based solely on the convention of a professional obligation. In some sense, the individual or principle that is rescued by an act of altruism should be, or become, worthy of the sacrifice. Though character is fundamental, the objective cannot be wholly eliminated if we are to determine the altruistic value of the act. Nagel wrote that an appeal to internalist criteria abandons claims to moral objectivity, and that “the evaluative factor which is always left out by any naturalistic description of the object of ethical assessment is in fact the relevant inclination or attitude.” In the domain of moral judgment, criteria and standards are applied to intentions as external and “objective” determinations, but these appraisals are subjective values vetted by consensus. Ultimately, the failure of a person to act in an altruistic or compassionate manner, or an act of altruism that is misguided, points to a deficiency in the value system of the agent that a moral judgment exposes. Is a death altruistic if a man takes his own life to relieve his suffering and that of his family? A murderer who commits suicide in jail might have, among other motives, the wish for self-execution for a crime for which he

441 is guilty. Such a person is exceptional in our society in the admission of guilt and acceptance of responsibility, though suicide spares him punishment, remorse, imprisonment. There is perhaps some redemption in the confession of guilt, even more if the individual is both judge and executioner. A person of conscience will be haunted by grief over a crime that is, for him, inexcusable. If he is a suicide, he is not passive to his execution but an agent to the end. If a man has cancer and similarly takes his life to relieve his pain, but his family presumes that his suicide is altruistic, say, to relieve them of care and expense, even if, after his death, their burden only increases, from what perspective is his death to be interpreted? A physician of my acquaintance on the verge of retirement shot himself in the head when faced with a malpractice suit. Another physician, an elderly and famous neurosurgeon with a fondness for young girls, committed suicide to escape blackmail from two adolescents. Did these suicides not realize that the litigation (or disgrace) would continue against the estate – as was the case in Roman law – and that they had selfishly shifted the burden of defense (and shame) to their family? Was the suicide an act of honor or cowardice? In his libertarian approach to the topic, Donne claimed that suicide to avoid an occasion of sin (i.e. crime) could not be justified. In samurai culture, the suicide is the path to regaining honor. In other times, a condemned man, especially a captured or disgraced soldier, was given a gun and expected to “do the right thing”. These different attitudes reveal confusion as to the moral valence of suicide and its subtle relation to duty, shame and honor in a solitary act and altruism. An altruistic death can become a suicide when the legitimacy of motive is questioned. It is a slippery slope from altruistic intent to actual effect and it is a short step from altruism to folly. The intentions of the agent are paramount, but not sufficient. As with any (all) decisions in which the outcomes cannot be known precisely, there is always a secondary revision. The man who gives his life to save someone with a fatal disease or a serial killer is an altruist in the action and a fool in retrospect. To what extent, in Meinong’s view, must the object be worthy of the sacrifice? Here the object-value is independent of the personal valuation. A dog is valued less than a child even if the subject cares more for a pet dog than another person. Since the object-value is external to the subject, the moral judgment is in the world of effects, not of internal causes. Clearly, we would wonder about a person who risks his life to save a drowning chicken. That internal values lay down priorities is reflected in

442 the uncertainty as to whether the value of the chicken is inflated or the person feels his life is worthless. Since we can only act on our capabilities and the information at our disposal, there are two sets of relations to an action, one that looks backwards to its causes, the other that looks forward to its effects. One is related to character, intention, knowledge and the immediate situation, the other to object-value, duties and outcomes. However, once we leave conduct behind and move into the world of effects, i.e. from agent- to object-causation, in proportion to the interval after the action, we move farther from ethics and closer to history. Moral value must be assigned to the moment of the action. Apart from this immediate effect, the objective judgment, i.e. how things eventually turn out, is too dependent on prescience, luck, contingency and so on, rather than the moral feeling that dictated the original action. Take a statesman who acts to improve the lot of a people by deposing the president or dictator of a country only to have a worse tyrant come to power. An example is Henry Kissinger’s complicity in installing Pinochet in Chile. Kissinger argued that states cannot be held to the same moral standards as individuals, since they have to chose the lesser of two evils. Certainly, political decisions tend to be more complex than those of individuals, and responsibility is often distributed, but I think this is largely a self-justification when one tries to balance competing interests and objectives rather than giving a clear statement of moral purpose. How does one compare the fault assigned by many to President Bush for the loss of American or civilian lives in the Iraq war with the strategic goals of the war and/or the liberation of millions? In contrast, it has been said on good authority that a timely telephone call from President Clinton, admired so much in this country and abroad, might have saved the lives of nearly a million people in Rwanda. Clearly, those who act risk condemnation for conduct that may pale in terms of outcome and responsibility to those who could act but do nothing. Still, the subsequent ramifications of an action do not impact on the morality of the decision. The action must be judged morally on the basis of good or bad intent, e.g. to subvert a democratic election, to prevent the spread of communism, the strategic or economic goals that are advanced, and so on. The unfortunate consequences of an action may indicate unsound judgment, incompetent advice, poor follow-up, bad luck, etc., but an historical perspective, however necessary for the moral calculus guiding political decision, is an untrustworthy guide to an assignment of individual

443 moral credit or blame. The original context is forgotten, or at least not experienced in the same way, and the judgment will vary with the changing mood of the society. At a personal level, such a view would have the consequence that the moral credit of parenting is assessed by the outcome. If a child becomes a criminal, the parents would be condemned, no matter how blameless their care. The reverse would also apply, unconscionable behavior by the parents might be nullified if the child becomes a person of high moral standing. Clearly, these are untenable conclusions. Altruistic and ordinary suicide make death interesting, for unlike ordinary dying they are both linked and separated by intentional meaning. One becomes the other according to its interpretation, which could be a judgment by the agent, a weighing of intentions, the verdict of others, the context and outcome. We are in a shadowy domain, of value, subtext, aim. The suicide bomber who kills a platoon of soldiers, the kamikaze pilot who sinks a battleship, has greater moral credit than someone who kills civilians on a bus, while the bomber who explodes without harming anyone is merely a suicide. Depending on his motives, he is a fool, a failed terrorist, or a martyr comparable to those who starve or immolate themselves in political protest. The terrorist who gives his life in an explosion is altruistic in his selfless dedication to a political cause, but not when the cause for which he dies is inane, or the purity of his altruism tainted by murder, or the lure of martyrdom. A deliberate act of altruistic suicide is cheapened by the expectation of public approval, money to the family, posthumous fame or reward in the after-life. The being-conscious of the merit of the act, whether the merit is real or imagined, deprives it of some integrity. Is a selfish value hiding in the most unselfish motive? Should the saint or mystic not desire union with god, salvation, liberation? It is said that the bodhisattva must even surrender the desire for nirvana. Altruism and suicide are anomalies that are fundamental to human nature. They are important because they reflect the extinction of selfinterest in despair, or the sacrifice of one’s self for others or futurity. Yet, inevitably, it is the mix of values in the self that guides the action. Take the writer who is a suicide because he is no longer able to write. An artist without his art may have no reason to live. For some, a life needs a reason beyond living, without which the life has no value. This indicates the extent to which a life is sustained, motivated and terminated by its own valuation. We want our deaths, like our lives, to have meaning. Suicides, especially altruistic ones, risk or attempt a meaningful death. A suicide

444 dies for his own sake, or for others, but others remain to give testimony. Even an accidental death may raise questions of fate or god’s will. Such questions attempt to find meaning or agency in luck, good or bad, or contingency. A suicide evokes the same considerations from the standpoint of human intention. A person who dies by his own hand might give his life for another if there is a witness to claim it is so. If an other-centered act of altruism can change to selfishness or folly, can a self-centered act of suicide change to altruism? A social benefit from a suicide, even indirect, bridges into altruism from the standpoint of the community. If we read context and meaning into the privacy of suicide, the two are closer than it seems. Suicide The import on conduct of an agent’s happiness or unhappiness can be assessed in actions that do not impact directly on other people. With happiness, egoistic pleasure may or may not have moral implications. Masturbation provides sexual pleasure without consequences for others, though it has been held to be immoral. When another person is involved, even in love and mutuality, moral uncertainties are inevitable. Pleasing a person, sexually and otherwise, becomes a moral responsibility. The joy at a beautiful sunset is not an expression of selfish feeling, though aesthetic pleasures can have ethical consequences. I was almost thrown off a cliff in the Himalayas by people scrambling for a view of the sunrise over Mount Kanchenjunga. There would seem to be few examples of ethical dilemmas posed by the happiness of a solitary person. Yet a hermit in his cave, however blissful, could justly be accused of indifference to others or lack of compassion as a negative moral defect. But if solitary happiness is generally non-moral, the prime example of solitary unhappiness with moral consequences is suicide. What are we to make of suicide as an instance of moral action? Generally, a person needs a reason to commit suicide, for himself or for others. The reason may be known or discovered, say, when a note is left behind, even if it is an apology or an explanation rather than a cause. The nature of the unhappiness or the justification has a bearing on the moral interpretation. There is a difference in a suicide over cancer pain, financial ruin or weariness with life. The effect on others is a consideration. In all instances, however, a life or death needs a justification, which is the meaning we give to what we have accomplished

445 or become, or what we are prepared to relinquish. Most every life has a crisis at a certain point, but there is also a continuous need to justify, to renew and rededicate. The pleasures of the past are not beacons to the future. When reasons for living are not forthcoming, or life is empty of meaning and there is no hope of renewal, suicide can be a final attempt at justification, a signifying, as in a statement, an act of defiance, a gesture of freedom. Oddly, we ask the causes of suicide but not what makes a person go on living. In some instances, suicide might occur as an outcome of the failure to justify continued existence. If there is no reason to live, life and death are equally meaningless. I have personally felt the need to justify my life in rededication to creative work. A justification – for living or dying may be an excuse, but without reasons or justifications there are no considered acts. At each stage in life, the justification incorporates the life up to that point. A justification for living may only be the dread of death, curiosity, future plans, pleasure in everyday life, a reminiscence of past enjoyments. But no matter how shallow, these justifications are evidence of re-commitment, a search for new meaning, for affirmation, purpose, all signs of the creation of value. One who lives for another round of sexual intercourse, tomatoes in the garden, fresh coffee in the morning, has found a purpose, albeit a pig’s happiness, but even here there is a re-commitment to extend life another moment. In this respect, it is a conceptual analogue of the rebirth of a cognition in the ashes of the just-prior state. Suicide is usually a considered act. To my knowledge, suicide does not occur in sub-human primates, nor in very young children except in rare circumstances. Chimpanzees may be depressed, they may kill other chimps and mourn for dead mates or infants, but they do not commit suicide. Is language necessary for suicide? A patient of mine, a 40-year-old film producer with a massive left hemisphere stroke, right-sided paralysis and severe aphasia, tried repeatedly, and eventually successfully, to kill himself, for example, rolling his wheelchair to the roof of a building and tilting it over the edge. Presumably, the suicidal goal, the determination, the method, and the ability to conceive and plan the idea internally must have been available for an act that was intended for the future. This aphasic man had a total loss of propositional speech and a moderate loss of comprehension. Yet, unless such a plan could be imagined visually without the aid of language, which is conceivable, there must have been sufficient inner speech or thought to contemplate the act and accomplish it in so deliberate, step-wise and methodical a manner.

446 Generally, suicide follows a period of deliberation, though it can occur as an impulsive action. There are casual suicides such as that of Zeno, who took his life after wrenching his finger, though he was in his late 90’s and no doubt well-prepared. Socrates said after drinking hemlock that he was “cured of life.” For many people suicide is never a consideration, others have to decide every day whether or not to go on living. Some say they cannot shave without thinking of slicing their throat. I rarely drive a car without a fleeting thought of deliberately crashing into a wall or driving off a cliff. From where in the mind comes that voice, “Now, do it now!”? I grip the wheel, shudder, the mood passes. Life’s gloomy companion, death, like an ever-present spouse, often ignored, now and then insistent, a sullen background that weakens and enriches, darkens and vivifies, but always intensifies the drab palette of everyday life. A thing must be renewed or die. The self is renewed out of the unconscious of that moment. Bored with daily events, we are refreshed in each perception. We can decide to terminate the series of replacements or leave that decision to illness, accident or old age. A psychiatrist once said to me that life for him was like a movie, and after repeatedly watching the same film he was ready to leave the theater. He was, later, a suicide. As long as there is recurrence of mind and world there is novelty, even if it is buried in habit. Yet there are moments when, stunned by life’s unpredictability or dulled by its repetition, the old meanings that moved us forward no longer suffice. At such times we say, as Beckett put it, “I can't go on,” and we stop, or we continue and then we say, “I must go on,” yet we are weak and tempted to end the tedium and sorrow or, finally, we say, “I will go on,” and somehow find the strength to continue. If we cannot be free of the past, at least in suicide we can free ourselves of the future which, according to one’s focus, is simply more and more of the past. From the perspective of the present the past is a physiological limit on possibility, though layers of the past may anchor a justification for purpose in the future. For a soldier, actor, athlete, aging widower, great loves, adventures or accomplishments are sources of pride or pleasure in a life that is otherwise dismal or uneventful. Or, they are sources of melancholy that hover like ghosts over joy in immediate experience. Some people continue for the pleasure of recollection, the revival and the savoring, others for a better future, still others, the wisest of all, live in amazement at each passing moment.

447 Death, early or late Since only the present exists, the duration of a life is not of great metaphysical import. Lucretius, himself a suicide, said that dying earlier or later is all the same. The stoical, even indifferent, attitude toward suicide by the Greeks, or its apotheosis in the romantic visions of the poets, mostly English in the 19th century, or the sense that it is immoral or a sign of lunacy, have by and large not survived into the present day. Depression is now thought to be an essential factor. For moderns, it is a tragic loss, especially in the young. The brief duration of a life, though of little account from the standpoint of deep time and the mass of life on the planet, is not trivial to the person who is dying, or those who care for him or his works. Of course we are all dying at different rates and with different capacities for awareness, some oblivious to the last breath, others with pervasive apprehension. There is sadness for the loss of self but also for the loss of a tradition and a history that may have all but perished except for the few who keep it alive. Gabriel Marquez, afflicted with cancer wrote, “I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.” There is not only the death of the body and the self, but with them a lifetime of knowledge and skill. In truth, however, it is knowledge in the present, or the potential for present knowledge, not a lifetime of experience that is lost. From the perspective of geological time, the sum of presents in a life adds up to a moment of physical passage. From the point of view of subjective time, the present replaces itself. Whether a life is a drop in an ocean of time, or an ocean is a drop in a living moment, the duration of life is meaningless, a span somewhere between death as a stillborn and life as a vampire, the infinitely brief, the eternally long, a life snuffed before a drop of experience or one of unending recurrence. For the Buddhists, a life has stages and each is a preparation for the next. The stages differ from the transitions described by Erik Erikson, in that the outcome is not acceptance or reconciliation but transcendence. Otherwise, except for the tragedy of loss and mourning in a circle of personal relationships, it matters little whether a life is arrested early or late, though I do wish that Schubert had lived a few more years. In Buddhism, the ordered life leads from a stage of learning to one of family and acquisition of goods, then to self-denial, enlightenment and the life of the spirit. If death arrives too soon, depending on the stages traversed, a “higher awareness,” a resolution of the dialectic of truth-finding and enlightenment, are not possible. The advent of enlightenment is the portal

448 to extinction, so that, in spite of the agility of Buddhist thinkers, annihilation is the fruit of infinite knowledge. The aim of life is the end of all aims and the end of life with it. Rare is the bodhisattva that achieves this goal, for innumerable passages are required. A life cut short is a postponement in karmic ascent. A progression from one instantaneous flashing of non-self to another has moral significance only in a theory of selfless karmic transmission, i.e. in the possibility of an improvement in character in another identity. All things are what they are the moment they are, whether the beginning, middle or end of a life, which is to say the past means nothing if it is not in the present of a life. I was not Shakespeare in my youth, but this means as little as if I were Shakespeare, for I am what I am at this moment. My present is derived from my past, so it is hardly possible that I could be other than what I am. Certainly, I could not be an aging Shakespeare, one who has forgotten his writings and barely gets by in his native tongue. All that matters is what I am now, and that depends on what I revive of the past, namely, what I remember myself to be. My past is a dinosaur reconstructed from the scattered bones of my memories, as my present is illuminated by their unconscious reminiscence. The real clock is subjective, each moment arising out of the lifehistory, not moving forward from one moment to the next but recycling all the moments of life, delivered into them, perhaps further back than that. The subjectivity of the duration of a life, as with the duration of the present, differs for each subject. We all run on slightly different times. For most of us life passes too quickly, for some it is too long. A single day may seem interminable or fly by unnoticed. In fact, the length of a life is the feeling of its duration, not the chronology it consumes. The feeling is like a mood with indistinct limits and contents. A mood is punctuated by feelings. But the mood is not a collection of the feelings into which it disperses, as a duration is not a boxcar of moments in a process of summation. For some, the value of a long life is in the goods it accrues, the praemia vitae, acquisitions, interests and the health of a person, or in the sacrifices one makes for others, what one receives from life or what one gives to it. The value of a life changes as life goes on. The elderly may seek authenticity in a nostalgia for earlier years, an innocence chipped away in life’s struggle, its trials and validations, the loss of immediacy and, with it, integrity. As we age, we seek wholeness in acceptance. Yet there is isolation, fragmentation, of interest, value, responsibility. Unity lies before

449 us, unreachable, like a Valhalla at the end of life's voyage. Toward the end of his life, Schopenhauer sensed a plan by which his life had been guided. The ability to see one’s life en bloc having lived through it and come out on the other side recaptures a spatial wholeness that embraces its temporal realization. The wholeness that is realized in the myriad acts and experiences of a life gives the sense of a pattern that has been completed. The pattern is the warrant of the conviction that one has a destiny, which is just the potential of a life intuited after most of it has been lived. Once we sense the teachings of the unconscious in every act or decision we have made, we understand that life is whole. Even the regrets and what-ifs of life, its accidents and catastrophes, can be interpreted or justified by this awareness. The occurrence of novelty as an iterated flowering of potential helps to explain how life is derailed from what might have been its more authentic course. The fortuitous and incidental may have a greater impact than crises of decision that, at the time, seemed momentous. Once a life is perceived as a whole, it feels complete. What follows is inessential to the life that has passed. This feeling can occur at any point in life, and is one element of suicidal ideation. The disappearance of time Fundamentally, in suicide there is a shift in the sense of time, obvious in the wish of the individual to dissolve into non-existence from a temporal world of identity and self-repeatability, but apparent as well in subtler changes. For those who contemplate suicide, the length of life in the future shrinks to zero. The future in any event never did exist, it just became the past in the pressure of a becoming-to-actuality as an aim to self-realization. To live in the past or present is to live at an early or final segment in the mind/brain state. Early segments elaborate memory and pastness, final ones perception and the present. All of us have moments when we are lost in reverie and the present disappears, or we are energetic in the world and the past disappears, so we know it is possible to live in past or present time. When we are young and unburdened by the past, we live for the future into which we seem to be heading. As we age the future contracts and life, like a dream, seems more like a memory than an ongoing experience. More often than not the suicide withdraws from an emphasis on objects to antecedent phases of memory, with an inability to reconcile the revived past with the actual present. When this retrospective orientation is

450 maintained, the hope of change and possibility in the future grows dim. For the suicide, the past mounts in importance as the future contracts. Distressing events in the past serve as magnets for attention and cancel the normal prospective impulse. Fear of a painful future may neutralize the forward-going impulse. Anxiety is a sign of a suspension of intentionality. The future is not difficult to eliminate for it never did exist, while the past is hard to get rid of for the present depends on it. In this respect, suicide contrasts with altruism, which takes the future into account. This may be true for deliberate acts of altruism, perhaps also for acts of personal risk that are spontaneous. Suicide may be spontaneous, as with altruism, or deliberate, as in a considered act of sacrifice for others. In the latter, the distinction with altruism is clear. A deliberate act of altruistic sacrifice entails a hope for the future, if not for one’s self then for others, while a deliberate instance of ordinary suicide is firmly in the present. If the suicide is done for others, it is altruistic and future-oriented; for the person alone, the past no longer matters, while the future has effectively disappeared. Once the present of the suicide is replaced by future presents and becomes a past idea, when there is a change of mind or the attempt fails, the act may not be reconsidered. Suicides that are rescued usually do not try again to kill themselves. When a rescued suicide moves on, the will to suicide may not follow. Like a drive, it discharges and is satisfied in the act, even if unsuccessful. Of course, many people continue to attempt suicide, or finally achieve it, as the drive seeks satisfaction. During the suicide attempt, the psychic or physical pain and the present of that pain feel endless. Perhaps the present expands, stretching the now at the expense of past and future. The Lebensfilm phenomenon, seeing one’s life pass before one’s eyes in near-death experiences such as drowning, clips off the future for the sake of a past that spreads out in a simultaneous whole. This happens in meditation, in which the subject has a fuller awareness of the whole of his life at the same time that he is dying. Freedom, morality and suicide Suicide can be interpreted in many contexts, including that of subjective time awareness, but many societies have expressed the opinion that suicide is an immoral act with diverse and unnatural causes. Shakespeare asked:

451 Then is it sin To rush into the secret house of death, Ere death dare come to us?

The arguments of Augustine and Aquinas and the doctrines of the Church do not, I believe, bear on the question of the immorality of suicide, but rather set it in the context of religious law, which is closed to philosophical thought and psychological complexity. The freedom of choice in egoistic suicide that appealed to the Greeks, later revived by Hume and Donne, was transformed to the self-murder in a sinful act that was judged in relation to good and evil. The idea of suicide as sinful infects the psychology of the act and its causes. The morality of killing a person, whether someone else or one’s self, always depends on the context. “Thou shalt not kill” is arguable in a justified war or in self-defense. To ignore a plea for euthanasia may be immoral. To shun the obligation to protect others or assist someone who wants to die might be construed as an act of cowardice or indifference to a neighbor’s pain. Others are affected by one’s inaction. Moral actions are relational. We kill living things to survive or protect ourselves. To kill them without good reason is immoral or, depending on their degree of mentality – from prion to primate ecologically unsound, which may also be immoral. To buttress argument by an appeal to god’s will or natural law presumes a god, and knowledge of his will and natural law without the support of science or logic. Yet acts in isolation that have minor effects on others may not meet the criterion for ethical action, namely that other people or living things are affected by one's conduct. Since we all die, a person’s eventual death is a biological, not moral fact, but the impact of one’s death may have moral consequences. Others can be more or less adversely affected and, according to the effect, a suicide can become an immoral act. Indeed, a suicide may be both rational and immoral. A person with incurable cancer or a creeping paralysis that promises months or years of suffering has good reason to end his life. Suppose he has many debts that could be repaid were he to go on living, or a clause in an insurance policy that denies a large sum of money to his needy family in the event of a suicide. In such circumstances, suicide is understandable as a purely egocentric act, even if it has a negative impact on others. It is comparable to a person who jumps off a building and kills someone on the ground. The moral thing to do is to end one’s own suffering without increasing that of others, preferably alleviating it. A suicide can create a moral dilemma for those left behind. There have been periods in history when a suicide to

452 raise money for a family was performed as a public spectacle. In such cases, the suicide is an act of altruism, but those who pay to see it are immoral for giving money to watch someone die rather than giving it to feed his impoverished family. A suicide abandons his responsibilities to others or the state in many less weighty circumstances. Such an act might well constitute a serious moral breach, especially because there is no possibility of retribution. A person who commits suicide to avoid debt or punishment is dishonorable. The person is judge, jury, victim and executioner, yet the crime is not absolved and others may be called to judgment as surrogates. The man who commits suicide when he has lost a great deal of money only transfers his debts to his family, who are then pursued by his creditors. Socrates pondered this dilemma in the Crito, deciding that obedience to the law assumed a greater priority than obligations to children. Rationally, if not emotionally, the obligation to community supersedes the loyalty to family and friends, as the interests of humanity precede those of individuals. In cases where a suicide is an abrogation of a duty to others or the law, it shifts the act from a personal expression of freedom to one with a questionable ethical basis. Unless one is despised by others, or lives as a hermit, suicide often leaves an emotional scar on family and friends, but the mere hurt of suicide should not be judged too harshly from the moral standpoint. A young Danish philosopher of my acquaintance, with no signs of illness, depression or difficulties in life, killed himself one day for no apparent reason. If he contemplated the act over a period of time, it was not evident to those who knew him best. There was no note for his wife. It was many years before she could re-build her shattered life and support her children. Yet still, 30 years later, she wonders if the suicide was a result of something she said or did, or if he was unhappy with her. Does the hurt to someone make the suicide immoral? I do not believe that a severe disappointment in love, as in those left behind by a suicide, merits an accusation of immorality. We cannot be responsible for being loved and the “egoism” of suicide is mitigated by its lack of profit or self-interest. A suicide that appears to be egoistic is as much a sign of ego-loss as a manifestation of ego-strength. Conceptually, suicide is an act of free choice. For Hume, suicide was an exercise of freedom. Montaigne wrote that the most voluntary death is the fairest. Nietzche said the thought of suicide helped him get through many a hard night. For Epictetus, it was a back door always open. There

453 are deliberate, rational and freely willed suicides, but more often suicide is a letting go, a relinquishing, a surrender. The self does not have the will to continue. Depression is not essential. The Epicurean suicide, for Durkheim, occurs in a mood of ironic tranquillity. The option of suicide is empowering in the decision to live or to die. The feeling of control over one’s death, if not one’s life, is liberating, even if the choice disarms one’s enemies or persecutors, illness or bad luck. The sense of freedom in the contemplation of suicide is for me, as for Hume, its chief theoretical appeal. The feeling of freedom is further enhanced by the fact that suicide is an act of defiance against the exigencies of biology, a resounding No to the bondage to brute evolutionary force. Do we not feel trapped by the biological imperatives of life, the nature within us, the world outside us, those needs that keep us alive, the absurdities of sex, the banality of life and its cycles? How can the will be aroused to the aim of its own extinction or the drive to self-preservation be overcome by an act of self-destruction? Put differently, if there is no will to live or no will toward any act in life, how does the individual summon the will to die? It is an exercise of will that destroys will. Schopenhauer was much vexed by this question, and did not have a satisfactory response. The loss of will is a loss of intentional feeling that accompanies a disinterest in the future. The intentional rides outward with the object that is its aim. Does the loss of intentional feeling mean that the non-existence of the future is literally felt? But I think there is no loss of intention, rather, the lack of intention to live is replaced by the intention to die. The freedom that enlivens the thought of suicide takes on nobility by overcoming the fear of dying. For Aristotle, courage was the willingness to die for a noble cause. This is not the same as a conquest of the fear of death, say in drivers of racing cars or those who engage in perilous undertakings. We admire those people who scowl in the face of death. If death is the mistress of fear, the conquest of the fear of death should make one fearless. Shakespeare again: So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, there's no more dying then

Death is not always the most fearsome outcome. Loss, shame, disgrace can be more terrible. For Plato, the art of dying was a release from concrete ephemera to timeless forms. These forms or eternal objects are not the ideas into which we perish, but those we have left behind. For me, a

454 life is a meditation on the cycle of arising and perishing that frames a moment, a day, encircled before and after by the stillness of a non-personal existence. I am reminded of Wordsworth’s lines on a mind, his own, that “... takes heart again, then feels immediately some hollow thought hang like an interdict upon her hopes.” Among the suicides I have known were those of several close friends that left me seeking justifications for my own life and in a way in their debt. My friends did not die on my behalf, but the effect was the same as if they had. I gave a narcissistic reading to their solitary deaths, trying to shift the incomprehensibility of suicide to an interpretable act of altruism to give meaning to acts that seemed senseless and tragic. I was impelled in my own ambitions by the loss of a friend, though it was my imagination at work, not the friend’s intentions. When a suicide gives meaning to the lives of others that was not intended in the person’s death, the act bridges into a kind of accidental altruism, though altruism cannot be imputed to the act independent of the intentions of the suicidal person. A similar effect occurs in people whose lives take on new meaning after witnessing the death of someone close to them, as in a recognition of the sacrifice of soldiers who gave their lives so others could live in freedom. A suicide, or any death, can be given an altruistic interpretation by others who, from their own standpoint, have received some benefit, real or imagined. A word on dying Personally, there has never been any solace in the hope of an after-life. So too for angels, devils, rewards and punishments in the beyond, metempsychosis, paradise, nirvana. A myth of creation precedes and transcends consciousness, one’s origins and after-life, an eternity on either side of the flicker of life’s brief candle. These are phantoms without memories or psychic individuality, at best a transmission of character without personality, thus extinction, replacement, the barren immortality of one’s physical atoms. What possible consolation in the cycle of samsara, the release of moksha? To grow older, nearer to death, is to cede one’s will to a greater power as if careening into the path of a powerful magnet. Dying is simple, which is not to say comprehensible. The truly simple is never so simple that it does not have an element of wonder. The passage to the inorganic is simplicity and mystery. The divide between the living and the dead, the passage to oblivion is like the drab frontier one crosses on leaving a land of suffering. Its markers are the inaudible gasp, the slow

455 exhalation, a road sign missed in a blink. The struggle to live can be painful, as with decline, yet a voyage through the portals of death is swift and inauspicious, the shiver of a leaf in the wind. I have watched people die. I have been a witness to the deaths of many whose names I did not know. Death came quietly as they left this world. I gave them comfort, held their hands, listened, reassured. A glance to the side, the relaxation of a grip, they were gone. For those still living, the loss of a life filled with promise is a challenge to find meaning where its surrogates in goals and hopes can no longer be realized. The death of another, the thought of impending death, especially one's own, the contemplation of nothingness, the loss of the world, evokes meanings in our own subjectivity that are engines of creative power. In subdued dread, Otto found religious feeling. For Heidegger and Hölderlin the truly creative was poised on the edge of annihilation. Life, too, is constructed of decay. Every throb of life is a cry in the void, a declaration, a defiance. The search for the sources of creative energy in layers beneath the conscious life, the recognition that meaning and purpose are not in the world waiting to be discovered but are generated in a process of self-creation, are the beginnings of true individuality.

Chapter 17. Luck and the Pursuit of Happiness We degrade and prostitute virtue, when to those who do not love her for herself we bring ourselves to recommend her for the sake of her pleasures. F. Bradley

Greater happiness In Utilitarian ethics, happiness is an impersonal measure of the quantity of pleasure in the greatest number of people, though personal happiness is pleasure in the free exercise of personality. Since one can obtain pleasure from non-moral or immoral conduct, it is necessary for goodness that virtue motivate the pursuit of happiness to align it with ethical conduct and guarantee that its goods have equitable distribution. Virtue is an objective assessment of the goodness of character, happiness a subjective assessment of pleasurable feeling. Virtue is a quality, happiness a state They are not coordinate concepts. A virtuous person may be unhappy, a non-virtuous person may be happy. If happiness is independent of virtue, they must be combined for the individual to receive pleasure from acts of moral goodness. It is pleasing to be well-treated by someone with your happiness in mind, but why should pleasing others be a source of individual pleasure? Giving pleasure to increase one’s chances of receiving it does not make the giving moral, since it is given in hope of a reward. This is like pleasing someone sexually to receive favors in return. It is an overt or tacit negotiation, the price one must pay for pleasure, not a source of unselfish satisfaction. For the Greeks, happiness was an activity desirable and virtuous in itself, self-sufficient, seeking nothing, lacking nothing, a contemplative activity in accordance with virtue, or the best within us. Happiness was virtue in pursuit of the Good. Thus, we say that virtue is not to be bartered, it is, as the saying goes, “its own reward” and should, if genuine and consistent with desire, be a source of personal pleasure.

458 Happiness is also a measure of freedom from conflict or psychic pain or discomfort. We presume, perhaps incorrectly, that a person who is in conflict or under stress is not happy, since action is not “whole-hearted” but is impeded by opposing values or desires. An act that carries a feeling of guilt or obligation does not have the whole self freely in the act. An obligation that has not been assimilated as a personal value is not a genuine desire. To the extent it is not internalized, it is felt as coercive and, according to the degree of resistance, it is an obstacle to happiness. If giving pleasure to others feels like a duty rather than a desire, or if the desire to please is in conflict with self-interest, whether or not the happiness of others is enhanced by the action, the happiness of the individual will be diminished, at least in the short term. A tension is set up between the want and the should, between the desire to do or not to do something, or the justifications as to why it should or should not be done. Leslie Stephen wrote of the shift from “do this” to “be this,” the move from objectivity and obligation to subjectivity and character. Schopenhauer wrote that the goal of moral development is for the oughts to disappear. The closer the pursuit of one’s objects to the values that evoke them, the more happiness is aligned with goodness of character, or to the Greek ideal of happiness in relation to virtue. A virtuous character is surely the foundation of goodness, but is happiness essential to virtue? Does goodness of character give happiness, i.e. pleasure? One might then, egoistically, strive to be good merely for the pleasure that follows on a good act. Conversely, a virtuous person who is distressed by poverty in the world, who devotes his life to helping others but is unsuccessful in his efforts to alleviate suffering or improve the general welfare, may become frustrated and disillusioned. The greater the good he wishes to accomplish, the greater the number of people for whom he toils, the more ambitious and disinterested his enterprise, the more he suffers for the claims of others, the more likely his undertaking will fall short of his expectations, and the greater the potential for unhappiness. This does not mean the effort is not worth making. Indeed, it is an effort we should all make. However, there is reason for the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Virtuous actions that strive for the greatest good may elicit resistance or punitive action, nor do they necessarily lead to happiness or satisfaction, which probably depends less on one's accomplishments in the world, or for others, than on the intimate rewards and pleasures of daily life. Such sayings as, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” or

459 “Nice guys finish last” embody the popular wisdom that virtue is no guarantee of happiness, perhaps a hindrance to the success that is a fair portion of a happy life. Moreover, virtue is unnecessary to improve the general good. Indeed, an argument can be made that more has been done in modern times to help the poor by companies that exploit cheap labor in third-world countries than by all the missionary work put together. In this regard, Sidgwick (1886) noted that happiness as a standard does not obligate happiness as a motive, since happiness can be produced by nonbenevolent acts. Further, the concept of greater happiness implies the converse, that if the good person strives for the greatest quantity of happiness, the bad person strives to produce the greatest quantity of suffering, so that evil will be proportionate to the quantity of the injury to others. But how does one compare a small hurt (or good) to many to a great injury (or good) to a few? Is not a deliberate act of isolated savagery, say the torture of a single child, in some respects an evil as great as the ordered massacre of unknown thousands (see Chapter 7)? Is evil a quantity, related to the amount of suffering produced, or is it a qualitative state of mind? Evil is an expression of character and intention. A solitary person who kills a number of people has a greater responsibility than a mob would have for the same crime. For a mob, responsibility is distributed, and individual agency is diluted in the “group mind.” Does not the individual who acts alone have a greater culpability than the many who are inflamed? How, then, do we interpret “greater unhappiness” when a single individual wreaks moral havoc? Is the slaughter of a half-million Jews in the Warsaw ghetto a greater crime than the murder of a single person? We are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the crime, of the lack of compassion in those who carried it out, the mass suffering, but is the guilt of a German officer who puts a bullet in the head of one person increased after killing a dozen more? Is a serial killer more guilty after the tenth murder than the first? Our anger and outrage increase, as do the threat and the urgency, but from an interior perspective, the immorality of the agent is established with the first act of brutality. And if evil and suffering are not a quantity, neither are happiness and the good. Such examples, I believe, demonstrate the inadequacy to moral theory of an economical, empirical or quantitative theory of ethics. On the positive side, morality is often concerned with generosity to the few, even sacrifice for one person. Crudely put, $1000 given to one person may transform his life, while $1 given to a thousand may have no

460 significant or lasting effect. A man of great wealth has it in his power to help millions, a poor man can do little. If the wealthy do little, and the poor do much, even if that much is as nothing compared to the little of the man of wealth, what is their relative moral worth? If men of great means do little and those of modest means do as much as they can, and if both arrive at the same contribution, is their moral worth identical? Utilitarian ethics is silent on this distinction. The rightness of an action is secondary to the happiness or pleasure, i.e. the good, it promotes, because it shifts actions to ends (Hartland-Swann, 1960). The calculus of the Utilitarian is closer to the morality of states than an ethics of character. Thus, the man who risks his life to save a child makes a small dent in world happiness, but the act has great moral value. What of the virtue of the simple man who aspires to be no more than a devoted husband and father, even if that means his personal needs are sacrificed for the benefit of his family? Such a man may see no farther than his front door, yet is he not worthy of moral praise? This example raises the question of what is required of a person for the greater happiness. The happiness of the ordinary person may consist in nothing more than work, shelter, food and companionship. I have been told by several expatriots that they were much happier in Russia before the Soviet collapse than now. The little they had was enough, while the freedoms prized by the intellectual class were of no interest to the masses. Currently, we see this replayed in Iraq. If the populace are sheep, and the ambitions of a small percentage of the population are blocked by the political system, the greater happiness is better served by satisfying the masses than the claims of a minority. Yet it is inevitably the minority that needs protection. However, to satisfy the minority may promote unhappiness among the masses. Even granting the principle, who is to determine what is the general happiness? Beyond the basic needs, what brings happiness? The varieties of individual pleasures have been recounted since antiquity. Aristotle wrote, “The same things delight some people and pain others, and are painful and odious to some, and pleasant to and liked by others.” We can ask the same of a Golden Rule morality, or the categorical imperative with regard to a detached perspective. The principle helps with the extremes of hunger, physical pain and suffering, etc., but tends to factor out the diversity in a multitude of perspectives, and leaves little other than subsistence, equality of opportunity and fairness under the law, all important adjuncts or pre-conditions for happiness, but not synonymous with what happiness is. Ultimately, the application of the principle depends

461 on what an individual thinks is good averaged over all individuals. Thus, for many kinds of controversy, e.g. abortion, pornography, etc., the result is a poll of preferences in which the minority is at a disadvantage. On the other hand, if we all desired the same things, there would be a leveling of satisfactions to a relative similarity of needs in the attempt to achieve a parity of goods. One can ordain a homogeneity of goods, but not desires. What of the morality of the man who forsakes his family to save the world (see below)? Is he driven more by ambition than virtue? Even were he successful to a point, the fact that he abandoned his family to meager resources – perhaps they even starved to death though thousands were saved – would make him, in my judgment, an unworthy candidate for moral praise. In such examples, there is a dissociation of character with personal or impersonal happiness. The point is not that a virtuous character is problematic, for virtue is just character dominated by other-centered values, but rather that character cannot be linked to greater happiness, which is a principle that depends on external relations, not inner satisfactions. Utilitarianism dilutes and transforms moral feeling to an objective quantity of shared experience. Benthamism is social theory, not moral philosophy. Bradley put it well when he wrote of Utilitarianism that “its heart is in the right place, but the brain is wanting.” The other sense of greater happiness (or good) is that the perspective of the many should guide the actions of the one. However, the perspective of others is not necessarily accompanied by empathy or compassion. We see the tyranny of states that are driven by certain faiths or ideologies, and the murder of those who do not share the dominant belief. An external perspective in such an environment merely reinforces the immorality of political or religious coercion. This is not to say that an impersonal perspective is meaningless, but that it must be supplemented by a rule. The more impersonal the perspective, the more axiomatic the rule, the more artificial the methodology (e.g. Rawls), and the more the morality becomes a metapsychological attitude distinct from its affective base. To see a situation from another perspective is not to feel the situation as if one were actually in it, which entails an experience of oneness or fusion with the other. One may have a tolerant attitude towards persecution until one’s own family is assaulted. A fusion with the other mitigates this disparity. A detached perspective reduces self-interest and should increase the moral value of an action, but it is engagement, not detachment, that aligns moral feeling with right conduct. Self-denial and detachment are an insufficient foundation for happiness and no warrant for moral conduct.

462 For the Arhat, self-denial is self-absorption, not service to others, while detachment can never reach full objectivity. The justification of detachment is the liberation of reason from its subordination to emotion in a bridge from Utilitarian to Kantian ethics, in the belief that an ethics of reason is preferable to one that depends on the vagaries of pleasure or happiness, if for no other reason than that the latter does not justify actions on behalf of an oppressed minority at the expense of a larger contented majority. The major problem with greater happiness is that it is act-bound and linked to outcomes, not values or motives. A life conceived as the sum of its acts ignores the intrapsychic portion, which is the inner life. The surgeon who hesitates to save the life of many by an organ transplant that would entail killing a healthy person, a driver who swerves to avoid a child and kills two others, increase by action or inaction the amount of unhappiness in the world. Does the moral choice in these situations not depend on the agent's character rather than the actual outcome? Inded, the contradiction in the calculus is shown in the fact that Utilitarianism would tolerate a great benefit from the use of medical data obtained by Mengele, even if the man and his methods are denounced as immoral. The unwillingness to take a life and the effort to avoid hurting someone are signs of good character, even if the effect is to magnify unhappiness. Such examples show the vulnerability of the principle to the elimination of agency and subjectivity. I think it is inconsistent with a naturalism in which character and intrinsic value play a central role. The move from intrinsic to extrinsic relations is the shift from personal value, which is qualitative, to impersonal fact as a quantity. MacKinnon wrote of Utilitarianism as “the sovereignty of fact.” Basically, it is the moral calculus, upside-down with a kindly face. The question arises as to whether greater happiness could entail the avoidance of displeasure, the conducting of one's life so as not to needlessly inflict unhappiness on others. On this view, general happiness would rest more on negative than positive determinations. This interpretation of the principle avoids a definition of happiness, which runs into difficulty with the individual pleasures of diverse people with differing needs after the bare necessities have been satisfied. It also obviates the difficulty with the argument from impersonality. The avoidance of displeasure has its problems, chiefly that of egoism and indifference to suffering. While not increasing displeasure is a different theory than increasing pleasure, neither principle provides a basis for a sound

463 philosophy, since the one entails a virtue without an aim and the other makes a virtue of abstention or inaction. We know in general what makes people unhappy – sickness, pain, poverty, loneliness – but not what makes them happy, since health, wealth and companionship still do not translate to happiness. Buddhist teaching reminds us that unhappiness comes from the want of certain objects or the subjugation to objects that are unwanted. The inward turn is one cure, as unfulfilled needs become less important. One can learn to eliminate desires if their objects are wanting. But aims and desires are essential to happiness, one’s own desires and those of others. A surrender of the world is a withdrawal from others who need help and compassion. Russell (1930) wrote that happiness is a form of excitement, its opposite being ennui or boredom. He asked us to “imagine the monotony of winter in a medieval village.” As one who has a home in such a village and can attest to the dreariness of winter, though not to the level of happiness, the incidence of suicide in such village folk is exceedingly low, while that in larger cities where people are relatively well off is much higher. Those who do not struggle to survive are more prone to depression and more likely to kill themselves. In this regard, even illness and disability are not barriers to happiness. Pachalska (2003) questioned 200 healthy and ill Polish people, asking them to indicate their degree of happiness on a scale from the 0 of severe unhappiness to the 10 of maximum enjoyment The subjects were not told what criteria to use to define the endpoints of the scale, but were asked to use personal criteria and briefly explain them. Most people, regardless of whether their health was good or poor, rated themselves around 7.5, with no 0’s or 10’s. The main conditions that were cited as the causes of unhappiness, defining a 0 on the scale, were poor health, lack of money, loss of status, and loneliness. The conditions for happiness were more diverse, but mostly boiled down to the pursuit of a goal. Achieving the goal does not guarantee happiness, rather, it gives way to new goals. For a paralytic, the goal is to move his legs. Achieving that, the goal is to stand, or walk. For a writer, it may be a new idea, completing a page, a chapter or a book. Even publication does not lead to a final happiness but instead begins the process of finding a new goal. For an entrepreneur, it may be a new acquisition. Happiness consists in the ability and opportunity to seek that which one desires. It is the enjoyment of a subjective aim, an alignment with the forward-going process of life, a finding that contrasts sharply with the Buddhist concept of desire as the source of suffering and

464 the extinction of desire as the key to happiness. Given the diversity of goals in happiness and the importance of seeking over achieving, how would we know what a general maxim or law would be like, other than a mean of all possible aims or perspectives? To “act in such a way as to...” does not tell us how to act in a given situation, other than to seek to increase opportunities in others for a creative advance. Ross (1930) asked what makes right acts right, and he answered that the principle of greatest good or happiness – conflating the two principles – is the primary control on egoism. Following Moore, he leaves good undefined, and accepts prima facie the existence and quantification of moral duties, fairness, self-improvement, reparations, truthfulness, etc., but on what grounds? If the good was unanalyzable for Moore, the right is axiomatic for Ross, consisting of ad hoc conditions or intuitions as to what makes for greater happiness. Smart (1963) wrote of the tricks that Ross plays with his prima facie duties, comparing them to Moore’s organic ones. Even if one accepts that fairness or generosity is a pre-requisite for moral conduct, the appeal to common sense rather than argumentation exposes gaps in the analysis that are fatal to the principle. A philosophy that avoids psychology by positing givens just when psychological explanation is required may constitute an edifice that is logically consistent all the way down, until it arrives at its own foundations. How do objects give pleasure? The principle of greater good or happiness begs the question of how objects give pleasure. Nietzsche wrote of the pleasure in acting for the sake of others, that even if we have pleasure in unselfish conduct, the occurrence of this pleasure offers no arguments in favor of it. But there are more arguments in favor of altruism than why, given innate egoism, one should have pleasure in self-denial. Since self-denial goes against the grain of egoism, what is surprising is having any pleasure in it at all. But an explanation of pleasure in self-denial supposes an explanation of pleasure in other objects, even those that are the natural pursuits of egoism. However, the pleasure in giving, or in any activity, is not an argument for that activity. The feeling of pleasure in an action is no less in need of explication than the activity to achieve it is in need of a rationale. If altruism gives pleasure, how can this pleasure be explained? Eaton (1930) wrote, “Intrinsic values are just held dear in and for themselves without any rationalistic judgmental process as to their

465 qualifications thus to be valued.” Surely, pleasure does not follow judgment, but rather is the basis for many judgments that are supposedly affect-free. But how can giving pleasure to others, or increasing the greater happiness, be pleasurable, other than as conscious or unconscious egoisms, i.e. self-satisfactions, along the lines of psychoanalytic theory, e.g. that a pleasure derived from pleasing others serves to enhance self-esteem, mitigate guilt, etc.? It is likely we will never have an ultimate answer to the question of how objects induce pleasure, other than that an individual finds them pleasing, since the objects of pleasure are so diverse across individuals, while the feeling of pleasure is less variant. What response can we give other than that some neural configuration is more pleasureinducing than another, or that pleasure corresponds to such and such activity in the brain? We cannot derive a feeling from a rational argument. The fact that an object ought to give pleasure or that it is logical that a given object should bring pleasure, e.g. that virtue leads to pleasure or happiness, does not explain why, or even predict that, it gives pleasure. However, I do think there is more to be said than that objects are “dear in and for themselves.” To value an object, or for an object to have value, is not an explanation of why it gives pleasure, though an object of desire is ordinarily felt as pleasurable. But even this is not conclusive. The desire for an unobtainable object can be painful. The acquisition of the object should satisfy the desire, and when it does, the pleasure may cease or continue, so that having the object is often no less pleasurable than desiring it. The desire to see one’s lover may be accompanied by the knowledge that the meeting will only bring quarrels and heartache. We can desire objects we know will not bring pleasure, and we can enjoy objects but not desire them. A person can have immense pleasure on hearing a new piece of music for which he has not yet developed a desire. Even solitude is a source of inestimable pleasure. Such observations raise questions for any theory of pleasure that depends on the value of its objects. The example of music is worth exploring a bit further. All people respond to music. It is surely a primitive, innate response. Darwin believed that speech evolved as rudimentary song (Donald, 1991). Some have argued that we recognize the emotion in music through a resemblance to human gesture and speech. Kivy (1980) wrote, “A musical line maps or resembles the bodily manifestations of human emotions.” Still, we wonder how “acoustic noise” gives pleasure. For the average listener, music involves categories, and its rhythmic, temporal structure engages brain

466 activity directly. The more primitive the music, the more bodily its enjoyment and the more communal the activity. We do not disco or march in solitude. Popular music can be enjoyed in public, or privately with a recording. The subtler pleasures of refined music are often solitary even in a concert hall, though we may wish to share or communicate our pleasure with others. Happiness is similar, in that we also want to share it with others. Does the feeling of pleasure in music provide an insight to the problem of how any object gives pleasure? I wonder if the subtle, acquired pleasures of fine music, and the desire to share those pleasures with others, might correspond with the acquired pleasure that is evoked by giving pleasure to others and in sharing their happiness. If so, the key to greater happiness is not in the obedience to a principle or an obligation, but in the pleasure of giving, which is also the pleasure of sharing. The one who hurts another person is either indifferent to suffering or enjoys it, but the one who pleases another person participates in that pleasure as a shared experience. A moral duty or rule as a guide to conduct is inadequate, and inorganic, in that it attempts, by fiat rather than by example, to induce people to share in what is a spontaneous impulse of innate empathy. In contrast, a naturalist theory of morals might equate desire with self-pleasure in its satisfaction, but not with the moral quality, the goodness, of the act, unless an idealized act such as a desire for the pleasure of others gives pleasure in its moral quality. In this respect, the comparison to a non-moral pleasure, such as in music, is not unwarranted. One must also consider the difference in feeling for objects and actions. Feeling is subjective, intrapsychic, it is not in the object. An object is an inadequate receptacle for feeling, it is a target, not a container. Objects carry feeling outward, distill and divide it into intrapsychic desire and extrapsychic value. In contrast, actions directed to the world discharge in the body. The feeling remains in the body. The agent feels that an action belongs to him but that an object belongs in the world. Objects realize a subjective aim in the world. Acts and words deposit in a body-centered space, containing their process in their aim and invoking intentions in others as after-effects of their realizations. Objects do not have this intentional quality except in the world of primitive belief. Thus the pleasure in acting or “doing” differs from the pleasure in “perceiving.” Feelings are tributaries of drive that transition will into action in combination with object-concepts. Feelings that flow into actions do not necessarily discharge or dilute their power in acts. In some finely-individuated actions, like playing the

467 piano, feeling may spill into the motor act, but it largely remains behind as a repository of emotion in the subject. The listener feels this emotion as a gift of pleasure or happiness in the music. The feeling in the performer is not necessarily transmitted to the listener, just as the donor’s pleasure in an act of self-denial is not the same pleasure as that felt by the recipient. Inevitably, the expression of feeling is both aided and impeded by its articulation in action. Speech is constantly attempting to exhaust concepts and feelings, but it fails when there are intense or subtle feelings that are essentially wordless, ineffable, unanalyzable. No matter how much we give, express or attempt to convey, there is a sense of impotence in the ability to pass feeling to another, say in acts of loving, where feeling intensifies in each partner but is only weakly exchanged between them. Agents and victims Does it matter if sacrifice for others leads to personal happiness or unhappiness? If a good act makes one happy, the agent’s values are aligned with his conduct. If the same good act incurs a sense of obligation or makes one bitter or frustrated, does that diminish its moral value? Kant praised the man “cold in temperament and indifferent to the suffering of others... (who) does good, not from inclination, but from duty (that is).… subject only to legislative reason.” Can the psychology of an act be cut off at the act, and the act considered as an object independent of the agent? The values and intentions of the agent are intrinsic to the immediate moral consequences of the action, just as are the values of those affected. If we cut off the act from the agent and treat it as an objective fact, it has to be spliced back again to the internal states of others to assess its effects on their happiness. The masochist who invites and enjoys the actions of the sadist excuses his conduct, for hurtful action is judged differently if it is consensual and gives mutual pleasure. If we look only at conduct and its effects, we disregard the feelings of the agent at the same time that we consider the feelings of those affected by his conduct. If subjectivity is not a factor in the origin of the act, it has to be introduced later in the interpretation of its consequences. To permit it at one point and exclude it at another is arbitrary. In sum, if the subjective is eliminated at one end, it cannot be reinserted at the other without inflicting a fatal incoherence in theory. An objective moral theory must remain objective on all sides of the action. But when we take this position, a hurt or good inflicted on others

468 has to be determined by its observable effects without consulting the person affected. Do we accuse a person of a crime in spite of the victim's forgiveness, or forgive the crime if the victim fails to bring charges? Is $100 stolen from a millionaire the same crime as when stolen from a person who is left penniless? The law recognizes the necessity of including the psychology of agent and victim in the weight given to intention, duress, competence, and so on. A monetary value is placed on injuries that produce “pain and suffering,” yet punishment is exacted more for physical than psychological damages, probably because the latter are easier to simulate, less predictable from the physical injury and more difficult to verify. Praise and punishment depend on hurts and benefits, and a judgment of severity requires a subjective appraisal. A fully objective or act-based account of moral conduct, or one based on conformance to an external standard or ideal excludes reasons, motivations, character and the psychic concomitants of injury. An action cannot be severed from the private states of those involved, but engages character intrinsically at all phases, not as a subjective quality added to an objective fact. Specifically, the principle of greater happiness cannot implant an obligation in an agent irrespective of his private states when the effect of his conduct is assessed by an appeal to the private states of others. Yet as a practical matter, even if it collides with human psychology and is theoretically incoherent, to act in such a way as to increase the greater happiness is, like the Golden Rule or the maxim of Kant, advice that is reasonable and useful. Luck A discussion of happiness would be incomplete without a consideration of luck. The Greeks argued that happiness depends largely on good or bad luck. To emphasize this point, Aristotle noted that Germanic tribes had over a thousand distinct expressions concerning luck (cited in Dewey, 1925). Luck begins at conception with the genetic endowment, continues through the pregnancy and after birth with health, family, educational opportunities and so on. These forms of “constitutive” good or bad luck, after Aristotle, are the conditions of a life over which one has little control. In some respects, they are related to sudden disasters that can strike at any time. This form of luck is like the avoidance of bad luck, such as contracting a fatal or debilitating disease or dying in an airplane crash, less to the chance occurrences that account for much of what we

469 think of as good fortune, for how these turn out depends on what one makes of the opportunity. Does chance become luck when it is entirely unexpected, say, when sudden good fortune veers into opportunity? Do possibility and destiny depend on the agency or predictability that configures the events? Let us first ask what is the difference between luck and inevitability? Does volition applied to luck delimit the feeling of contingency, so as to give an impression of inevitability? Perhaps the idea of fate owes to a preparedness that makes us feel we deserve the lucky or unlucky events that befall us. Otherwise, they would be chance instances of good or bad luck. Perhaps one simply feels lucky to be the recipient of what a happy fate has in store. Fate or contingency delivers the event, good and bad luck are descriptions of its reception and aftermath. It is surprising that most people seem to believe that fate more than chance – or rather, chance interpreted as fate – plays a role in meeting their partner even if the encounter is at a single’s bar, through an advertisement or a dating service. We are familiar with such terms as “star-crossed” lovers, an “ill-fated” romance, or a “marriage made in heaven.” The linkage of luck and fate in affairs of the heart is pronounced because the “chemistry” between two people is so hard to predict, and as a result the feeling of agency is reduced or overcome. One can aggressively hunt a partner, but finding the right one seems more a matter of chance (or fate) than volition. The suspension of agency accounts for the feeling that one “falls” in love, or is “swept” away. One cannot foresee the events that will bring a partner into one's life, nor will her into existence, nor expect she will reciprocate. A string of coincidences, good luck or the trials of Job, may convince us, however irrational it seems, that we are guided by forces outside our control, or that our will and the path it creates in our life are fortified by a will and a fate beyond personal consciousness. Many people believe their course in life is predetermined and fixed, and yet, without realizing the incompatibility, they also believe they exercise freedom of choice. The worlds of agency and object causation never meet, like parallel lines in Newtonian space. Since we desire good luck and hope to avoid bad luck, the feeling of agency in good and bad luck is not symmetrical. Once bad luck strikes there is often little we can do about it, but good luck engages volition in preparedness and exploiting an opportunity. We may attempt to increase the possibility of good luck by trying to be in the right place at the right time, or reduce the possibility of bad luck by taking precautions, but we

470 have so little control over the accidents of a life that to escape them seems almost remarkable. Someone who is killed in an airplane crash, we might say, is a victim of both bad luck and unkind fate. The absence of agency is decisive. One could say that winning a lottery is good luck, but not that one was fated to win. Since one hopes to win, buying the ticket is the outcome of a desire. One either has the winning ticket or not. Buying a fatal airline ticket differs from a lottery not merely in a different risk/benefit ratio, but in that the decision to fly is unrelated to the plane crash. Buying the plane ticket has no causal relation to the outcome, unlike buying a lottery ticket that does, albeit weakly. Many steps intervene and the crash will be attributed to one or more of them. A person who decides at the last minute not to take a doomed flight would not, because of the volitional element, attribute his decision to fate, but rather to luck or good fortune. Here, we see that the distinction of luck and fate hinges on the degree of personal agency. Suppose the plane arrives safely without him, but he is injured in a taxi ride home. Then, there would be a greater sense of agency or responsibility, since the decision not to fly was a proximate cause of the taxi injury in a way that a decision to fly would not have been the cause of death in a plane crash. These subtle differences incline us to attribute an outcome to fate, luck, choice, etc. Generally, the feeling of luck is related to the psychological distance of the event from the person, i.e. the degree of freedom from agent-causation. The concepts of luck, contingency and probability relate to objects in the world, not psychic events. The concepts of agency, certainty and choice relate to processes in the mind, not events in the world. Fate is an overarching concept that removes agency in a way that luck does not. People who get on an airplane and find it comforting to say that it is a matter of fate whether or not they survive, surrender their own will (and responsibility) to that of causal necessity (or luck). However, such a person who accepts the idea of fate in object causation, treating himself as an object along with the airplane, would probably not consider his actions to be determined, i.e. he does not believe he is a robot, though he would also admit that he is no less subject to the “laws of nature” than any other object. These inconsistencies in belief are an important topic for psychological study, since they reflect the infrastructure of agency, intention and object perception. Some consider an event to be good or bad luck, others interpret the same event in terms of fate. What is coincidence or fortune for one person is destiny for another. Luck takes the unexpected as accidental, fate perceives the same event as inevitable. One who

471 believes in luck could think that world process is unpredictable, contingent or determined. One who believes in fate thinks process is fixed. I think the latter view entails an absence of true agency in the mind, and for many people a surrogate agency in the world, a deus ex machina in physical nature, for how could anyone otherwise believe that Laplacian causation could be so particular and rigidly determined as fate requires? The idea of god's will, the “divine luck” of Aristotle, introduces the specificity of god's agency into accidents of probability. Fate is the hand of god, the laws of nature, universal causation, impacting on events that would otherwise be random or probabilistic. Agency or mental causation refers in part to the imposition of the will on the uncertainties of choice. The sense of personal agency in conscious action is clear and distinct. We do not consider a voluntary act to be probabilistic, only its outcomes. Once the action leaves the body and effects an external object, it sets in motion a sequence of events that cannot be foreseen. This sequence is either probabilistic or causal, its influence on others a measure of their fate or luck. The agency we assign to the events we experience is either personal (volition) or impersonal (fate) according to the degree of recipience we feel with a decrease in the sense of personal control. The mind wavers on a tightrope between probability and fate. The probability of an event is like its potential. Once the event occurs, and probability becomes actual, its actuality becomes its fate. The openness of probability is opposed to the irrevocability of fate, as a manifold of possibilities collapses to the inevitability of the actual. Probability, like potential, looks ahead, fate like actuality is retrospective. A definite if unforeseen future is inferred from the fixity of the past. The fixity of the past is imposed on the openness of the future. This openness derives from an intuition of the potential in each actuality. The actuality itself is not prospective, it perishes and is replaced. Once the actuality is settled, its potential evaporates, giving a succession of actualities in what appears to be a causal chain, the sequence of which is what it must be since it couldnot-have-been-otherwise. That is why a look backward in life suggests to many a plan that guided the life along. Fate is to agency and decisiveness as probability is to choice or uncertainty, but fate and probability, being extrapersonal and outside human agency, are not related to moral conduct in the same way as agency and choice, which are intrapsychic. Choice can be interpreted as a weighting of probabilities, or as an alignment with necessity, but personal

472 action is usually not experienced in this way. Luck impacts moral choice retroactively because it straddles the metaphysics of change. The fact that the present, as it becomes past, can be revised from a future perspective undermines the stability of an outcome-centered moral theory. We use our best judgment with the knowledge at hand, but a good act can be reinterpreted as a bad one, and the reverse, as conditions change. Luck is also like this. Take an opportunity that, in retrospect, led to a path that was favorable. If one wins the Kentucky Derby, the luck begins with buying the ticket, but this is an outcome, say, of an impulsive decision to go to the races, which itself was an effect of the sudden cancellation of a competing obligation that, for all we know, may have led to a parallel series of unfortunate effects, and so on. A myriad of serendipitous events, each contingent on the other, going back an indefinite time in the past, all happily converge on buying a winning ticket, which may or may not be a stroke of luck depending on its consequences. The event that is lucky – going to the races, buying the ticket, a better horse stumbling, and so on – owes to a series of past events that are of equal good luck, or misfortune should the event turn out to be unlucky. Suppose the person who wins the money is robbed and injured on the way home, or his wife takes the money and leaves him. If the money brings unhappiness, the win, in retrospect, will be unlucky after all. Suppose the reverse: a person comes into a great deal of money or other good fortune through a series of past misfortunes. Take a person who is destitute after being injured by a car, who wins a few million dollars in a law suit. He is now a paralytic, but rich with an adoring if mercenary sweetheart. The same event, the accident, is an instance (effect) of bad luck and an instance (cause) of good luck. Events that seem random or catastrophic are incidents of bad luck, and their avoidance is a measure of good luck, but such events as illnesses or accidents that seem so random, and to which the individual is a passive victim, differ from winning a horse race or meeting a lover, where human agency is involved. Unlucky events often occur irrespective of choices or agency, e.g. a brick falling on one's head, while lucky ones are lucky to the extent that chance is involved. The more that personal agency plays a role in the event, the less that luck or chance intervenes. Agency is irrelevant to a person who believes all events are fated to happen as they do. And what is fate if not universal causation, or the mind of god depositing the accidents of life that human thought forges into destiny? Fate and luck point to a different metaphysics. The view that events

473 are rigidly causal and nothing occurs by chance leaves no room for luck in the machine of the universe. Luck is the individual’s interpretation of events that were bound to happen. The implausibility of determinism becomes palatable through events that are unexpected. A stroke of good luck is a bit like a miracle, in that it seems to violate the view of nature as purely mechanical. Conversely, in a world governed by chance, luck personalizes the horror of sheer randomness. Luck introduces a kind of magic when need is not satisfied by determinism or contingency. Fate is the objective interpretation of what otherwise seems accidental. Luck is the subjective interpretation of why fate is distributed unfairly. As a physician who is daily witness to the arbitrariness of accident, disease and the throw of the genetic dice, where people are struck down at random and life seems a mine field of pending misfortunes, even knowing that what seems to be chance will eventually be understood by a knowledge of genetic mechanisms and the biology of disease, one can only shrug that when god rains down disaster it is useless to run for cover. Good luck as the best possible outcome requires that other preferable outcomes are not precluded. Luck demands an estimation of probabilities based on personal expectations. The less one expects of life or oneself, the more the possibility that one could have a life that is happy purely by chance. The lower one's expectations, the more likely they are to be fulfilled, since the person who expects little tends to contribute little. He does not strive for betterment nor does he attempt to enhance the possibilities of his success. Moral luck in retrospect In recent years, the problem of luck has received some attention in moral theory. Constitutive luck has been interpreted in both intrinsic and extrinsic terms. As to intrinsic luck, character is shaped by nurture, but so, it is argued, are choices. The agent has little else to work with other than what is given to him by his causal ancestry. Unless free will is conceived as an addition to character, and immune to time, change and causal law, the endowment at birth and that acquired in development deliver a self into a present that “contains” the totality of its values and beliefs, and thus preconditions its choices. The genetics of constitution and the accidents of parenting are a bit like karmic transmission, though displaced later in maturation, where one is a product of an ancestral complex, yet possesses some degree of freedom for self-betterment or the capacity for

474 degeneration. That intrinsic constitutive luck is essential to character would seem inarguable, since the installation of exocentric values depends so heavily on experience in childhood and on the moral instruction and example of parents. The question is, what is left over for free will to do if character is so fully determined by prior experience? Extrinsic luck raises a different set of issues even if it also concerns circumstances outside the agent's control. If one is not fully responsible for being the person one is, or if moral praise and blame merely attest to the inheritance of a character that one is helpless to change, what of events extrinsic to character and also beyond one's control that affect private or public moral judgment? I have already discussed the case of a person who tries to kill someone, but misses or wounds the person, or causes a permanent coma (Chapter 15). Take the reckless driver who hits a person on the road. He has a culpability that an identical driver, who is fortunate that the person does not run on the road, does not share (Statman, 1993). Unlike the shooter, the driver has no intent to harm but he still feels guilt or regret, probably more than the shooter who meant to do what he did. In this, he is similar to Oedipus, who unknowingly committed a harmful act but took responsibility for it. This owes to the feeling of agency even if a decision was not involved. For example, the individual may attribute the accident to the reckless driving, which he could have avoided. Often, the lament is of the type, “if only I had stayed at home that day”, shifting the blame to fate or bad luck rather than the decision the moment before the event when it might have been avoided. Thus bad luck of this type tends to have some element of agency even if the events are largely outside the agent's control. For the individual, self-justification is primary, moral or rational. Ideally, he should be his own judge and jury, though an appraisal by others is essential for punishment, as well as to modulate the selfserving effects of denial, forgetting and rationalization. How things turn out apart from the agent’s conduct, knowledge and motivation is seen, by some, as critical to the social and personal judgment of culpability, both in the long and short term. The shooter who intends to kill but misses, the driver who does not intend to harm but kills, are subject to differing judgments by themselves and others. If the driver swerves to avoid the person and kills a passenger, who is to blame? The driver? The person on the road? The shooter wanted to kill and may have regret that he missed, even if it mitigates his punishment. Such events are not perceived as mere happenings, like the rearrangement of rocks after a storm. The mind seeks meaning and explanation and assigns responsibility: to god or

475 physics for natural events, to cognition for human ones. Such judgments turn on the structure of intent and agency. Attempted murder for the shooter, and negligent manslaughter for the driver, are lesser verdicts that consider intent on the one hand and luck on the other. In a less than convincing argument, Williams (1981) maintained that “agent regret” for selfish choices is mitigated by personal success or selfrealization. If one is a failure, malicious or unfeeling conduct that was not offset (justified) by the achievement of personal goals can become a source of later regret, such as leaving a family to pursue a career. But even with success, one could still feel regret for immoral acts. Williams uses Gauguin as an example, but even Gauguin, who left his family to pursue his art, sent money to them as an expression of his concern. Many people climb the “ladder of success” on the backs of others. Even philosophy professors may ignore their families, exploit their students and give specious reasons to justify their conduct. George Miller (1997) wrote that he, like many prominent psychologists, achieved success on the figurative backs of female workers. The Russian neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria, introduced me to a sizable and exclusively female staff with a wave of the hand, saying, “They’re all Natashas.” These are (to some) amusing examples of what is a graver and more widespread exploitation, in which adults and children are worked to the bone for the greed of their employers. How does worker exploitation differ from abandonment if both contribute to self-serving desires? It is difficult to achieve success in any field, let alone celebrity, without a healthy dose of ambition. Why does the selfish pursuit of self-realization in an artist or a lover justify the hurt to others, while egoism in other areas is deemed immoral? As to later justification, it seems to me that a contemptible person who undergoes a spiritual awakening will regret injuring others regardless of how his life turns out, while a person of moral sensitivity would not have caused needless hurt in the first place. Earlier in life, the calculus may say, to a calculating person, “It was worth the price,” but with mellowing, disillusionment or genuine contrition, a sensitive person may come to see that, after all, it was not worth the price at all. My intuition, like that of Kant, is that while later regret may depend on success or failure, the morality of conduct is judged by what the agent knows at the time he acts. One is judged on the moral content that is brought to bear on the decision. States are judged by long-term consequences, but not individuals, who are, and should be, judged by themselves and others, on the basis of their character and intentions.

476 Indeed, if luck is to play a role in moral judgment it is not, from the standpoint of the individual, associated with a later revision or a calculus that rests on the agent's success or happiness, but rather, would seem to have more to do with the attitude of his victims, since they would be called to testify. If a woman who is raped states that the act was consensual, the accusation would be dropped, but the fact of the rape and the rapist’s moral culpability would remain. Similarly, if an abandoned wife is glad to be rid of her husband, how does this impact on his conduct? It would seem that the effect of success on moral judgment is not quite the same if the victim excuses or forgives the offense, since it is the selfrealization or personal happiness of the agent that is claimed to justify the act, not what happens to the victim. A selfish person who fails to satisfy his ambition is not spared moral judgment even if the act turns out, in retrospect, to be a “blessing in disguise” for the injured party. The moral quality is not altered if the victim is forgiving or goes on to have a happy life. These contingencies affect the agent's feeling of guilt or regret, they may have legal implications, but they have little to do with the moral quality of the act. There is a confusion here between the psychology of guilt, legal prosecution and a morality of conduct based in character. Nagel (1979) interprets this as a tension between the subjective and objective point of view, which is also the difference between an intentional and a consequential theory of ethics. Generally, if a good outcome were to alter the moral quality of an action, it could even turn a bad action into a good one, for example murdering an infant Hitler. The reverse of this happened to a British soldier who spared Hitler’s life in the first World War, and said later that not killing the German was the one act in his life he most regretted. It is one thing to say it is immoral to leave a wife and family for the sake of a career or personal happiness, and quite another, as was the case with Gauguin, when the separation arises partly out of marital discord. In such instances, leaving a lover, spouse or family is not of great moral consequence, since the alternative is a form of personal enslavement. The guilt over leaving a wife is mitigated if she finds another man with whom she is happier. Nowadays, it is lessened still more by a litigious assault that turns the husband into a victim as well, and neutralizes or replaces with anger any guilt that he might feel. The situation of the wife who finds happiness with another man is not so different from the driver who accidentally kills a person and later discovers the person was a murderer who escaped from a prison. Such outcomes assuage the guilt over an

477 action, but they do not lessen the moral judgment applied to it. We do not equate the degree of guilt or self-justification with moral approbation. A criminal without regret – probably the majority – or those who give selfserving excuses – from child abuse to obeying hallucinatory commands – and a person genuinely remorseful after a heinous crime are, regardless of their feelings of guilt, guilty of the crime, though their punishments may differ. The events that transpire to cause or assuage guilt make the agent feel better or worse, but are not of moral consequence. Nagel points out that the interaction of luck with guilt or agent regret applies differently to actions where outcomes are uncertain or risk is involved, for example, a captain who leads soldiers into combat or a president who starts a pre-emptive war. These acts also depend on luck, but the agent’s awareness of the uncertainty, and his own risk or lack of selfinterest, lessen the culpability or guilt for an unfortunate outcome. At least he can say, I considered all options and did the best I could. If some options were overlooked or opportunities missed, those fragments of choice and responsibility may invade the tranquillity of self-justification and induce a guilt that otherwise would not be present. How the individual later feels about a revised action hinges on the fine structure of agency and its relation to events that are consigned to luck, chance, fate or uncertainty. What is wrong from an agent's standpoint, as Kant argued, is timelessly wrong. Rescher (1993) put it succinctly: “Although the role of luck may be decisive for the consequences of our actions, it is not so for their evaluative status, be it rational or moral.” This assumes a certain standpoint, namely, that of the character and values of the agent at the time he acts. Later self-justifications or incriminations are also, like the original action, mirrors of character. An offense in the service of love or art or selfrealization is still done for selfish reasons. It sets the egocentric needs of the agent against his exo-centric feelings for the other. The case of Gauguin is a bit different from that of the man who leaves his wife for work, travel or a lover, in that the self-realization of the artist is set against moral conduct. It assumes a trade-off between personality and character, or aesthetic and ethical judgments. Though not central to William’ s argument, implicit is the gift of great art to civilization, or the immunity of the great man from moral judgment. In Utilitarian logic, art is the recompense for the misconduct that is assumed to be necessary for its production. However, if abandonment is immoral, to excuse it on the greater good of personal success in art or any endeavor, or the public benefit, is comparable, though on a different scale, to forgiving the Nazi or

478 Communist, or a sympathizer like Heidegger, or Sartre, for the deaths of millions who were sacrificed for a utopian ideal. One encounters situations of agentive inaction where the immorality is the failure to respond, such as that of Germans during the Nazi period who were forced to make choices that people in other countries were spared (Chapter 15; Nagel, 1979). The failure to act against a despotic regime is the immorality of inaction. It happens that some people go through life without having to make such choices, though in many of them a weakness of character probably appears in other contexts. Some people constantly face such choices. Take the case of Shostakovich, who is often criticized for subordinating his politics to his music (and as often by others for the opposite). Is the artist, for the sake of his art, less guilty of compliance than anyone else? The example is symmetrical to that of Gauguin. In both, moral character was sacrificed for art, though for Shostakovich the options were fewer and the stakes were higher. Conversely, taking a moral stance, say in advancing a strong political opinion, when one is in no danger of contempt or retribution, often has a hollow ring to it, especially when we think of those who suffer harshly for their views. The tension between the subjective and objective standpoints rests in the notion of blame or culpability, thus punishment (and reward). The person who intends to do harm but for whatever reason does not act on his intentions will not be found out, and will have escaped blame, though perhaps his malevolent disposition will be apparent in other activities. We do not punish for intentions, only actions, so we must wait for an action to occur in order to evaluate whether the person is blameworthy. Though some people are tormented by guilt for hurtful thoughts, most of us regret hurtful actions more than intentions, largely because of the blame that accrues from them, i.e. objective blame is added to subjective guilt. An action is a fact, an intention comes and goes, and feels impermanent. Unless it is an obsession, it is not fixed and immutable. Moreover, an intention that leads to action, for good or bad, may be said to be stronger than one that does not lead to action, and therefore, the former has a greater claim to blame or praise. The lesser blame for inaction is partly due to the presumption of a weaker will and the transience or reversibility of intentional states. Since we do not have brain scans to detect a person's good and bad intentions, the only way to discover them is by their expression, either directly in a specific action or inferred from other actions over time.

479 Timidity may allow a weak or bad moral character to go unnoticed. The absence of bad conduct does not make such people morally superior to those who are noticed, though for the reasons cited they may well be. It only means their character has escaped detection, thus blame and punishment. The difficulty for a moral theory based in character, unlike the law which is based in conduct, is how to prescribe blame for the various ways that action combines with character in a spectrum from premeditation to chance, while the difficulty for an action-based theory is the ascription of intent and degree of blame from the actual circumstances. Character must be reconciled with action or inaction, i.e. the outflow of values, while conduct must be reconciled with motive. The subjective view is oriented to the posterior instigation or cause of an action, the objective view to its anterior effects or consequences. Usually, and wisely, there is a compromise of the two perspectives. If the problem for a subjectivist morality is that character cannot be appraised until it is put to the test, statements or protestations of good or bad intent when there is no risk, for example, political dissent in an open society, or a dinner-table boast that one would leap in a river to save a drowning person, are of questionable value as predictors of moral courage in a life-threatening situation. Some people, regardless of the direction of their intentions, are simply more courageous than others. If courage is, strictly, not a moral quality, should a person who acts cowardly in all circumstances have as much blame for actions or inactions that follow from his cowardice (see also the preceding chapter)? Would we blame someone for not saving a person in a fire if he is fearful, under ordinary conditions, of crossing the street? Certainly, if his fear reaches phobic intensity, or the weakness of his will approaches inertia or catatonia, the failure to act will be perceived as a sign of a mental illness that requires treatment, not condemnation. The medical label certifies that the person does not have agentive control. It is also a mark of poor constitutive luck. With such a diagnosis, the person is relieved of responsibility. When dispositions are sufficiently pervasive, or pathological, the emphasis on conduct is trumped by that on character. The pendulum swings from the objective to the subjective, from the irrevocability of effect (action) to the inevitability of cause (intention). The centrality of conduct, extrinsic luck and consequence in the law, as well as for common sense, give way to the importance of constitution, intrinsic luck and (degree of) agency. Such problems arise whether a person claims to feel he is merely a product of his upbringing – are there really such people outside the

480 courthouse? – with his decisions forced by education and ancestry, or conversely, that he is a moral agent with choices that are not determined in advance. Because luck is outside the sphere of agency and rational decision, it forces us to examine the nature – the microstructure – of agency. This is a topic on which I have written elsewhere (Brown, 1996). The locus of agency is precisely at the junction of inner and outer, where the presumptive freedom of the will meets the causal world. That is why a psychology of agency, as Nagel points out, is a central goal if we are to understand the complex issues that pertain to culpability, regret and responsibility. Regret and remorse There is a difference in a regret for an outcome as opposed to a regret for a decision that led to that outcome, like a thief who regrets being caught but not the crime he has committed. Partly, this reflects the contrast between the agency that “causes” an action, and the probability or luck that determines its consequences. Suppose I want to kill someone for a wrong they have done me but, unaware of my thirst for revenge, that person dies of a heart attack before I have a chance to confront him. If it is his death that I wished, my aim has been satisfied at no moral cost, unless I believe my thought alone was efficacious. If killing him was my objective, I have been prevented from an immoral act by chance. I may regret the missed opportunity at personal satisfaction. I am a beneficiary of good or bad luck depending on how it is construed. My desire for revenge may not have been satisfied, for I now may feel cheated by his natural death. Had I killed him, I would be a murderer. Had I meant to kill him but misfired, or only caused a wound, I would be accused of assault. In the latter case, luck spared his life and, at least in the court of justice, mitigated my moral blame. Regret is as often for the things one has not done, perhaps an opportunity missed or wrongly taken, as for when you think you have done something wrong, or could have done better or differently. Remorse is when you know you've done something wrong and feel sorry for it, usually an injury to someone else. We can regret the hurt we have done to others, but such regret is more like remorse. Regret tends to be for the self, remorse for others. In the first instance, the wrong action is a voluntary one that affects the person directly. In the second instance, the wrong has been done to another. When the self is involved, the feeling is more like self-

481 pity. When the other is involved in remorse, there is an element of empathy. Regret tends to involve unforeseen outcomes, and is usually felt later in a re-assessment. Luck plays a role in regret, in that whether a decision is right or wrong (though not good or bad), or gives rise to regret or satisfaction, is retroactively established. I decide to go to the movies, and on the way I am hit by a car. I do not regret being hit by the car, that is beyond my control, an instance of bad luck, but I do regret deciding to go to the movies, which was a purposeful action. One has remorse for an injury to another person that could have been avoided. It is my remorse, but the other person's bad luck. One is thankful for a good marriage and regrets a bad one, but whether it is good or bad depends on how lucky was my choice, the change in me or my partner as life’s events transpired, the luck of the marriage itself, i.e. sufficient money, health, loyalty, children etc., to compensate the partnership for the common attrition of feeling over time. Thus I regret an action that in retrospect turned out to be wrong or unlucky, whereas I have remorse for that action if it caused suffering in others. From the other's standpoint, there is regret for ever meeting me as an occasion of bad luck in their lives. Some are prone to say, “There are no victims, only volunteers.” This shifts part of the responsibility for an unfortunate encounter to the aggrieved party. Since one does not usually have regret for one's own shortcomings, the events that elicit regret are usually interpreted as at least partly under one's control at the time they occurred. Perhaps one was young and impulsive, confused, misguided. Instead, take someone who was mature and deliberate in an action with some certainty as to its outcome, say a predatory male who impregnates or otherwise damages a naïve young girl. If the person is of good conscience, he will have regret for his action and remorse for the girl, though this will most likely occur later in life when he is able to see his selfishness in wider perspective. Of course, if the girl and child go on to have a rich, successful life from which he is excluded, his regret may be a form of self-pity that an opportunity for a good union was missed. Again, there is a retrospective dimension in determining which of these competing emotions is felt. One can regret a foolish decision, but at the time it may have seemed the best thing to do. If I regret gambling away all my money, what I regret is my bad luck in not winning. Had I won, I would have no regrets. Thus, the retrospective view entails an important element of good or bad luck that determines whether or not the situation merits regret. This does not mean, however, that the morality of one's conduct at the time is contingent on a

482 subsequent revision. In contrast, remorse is more directly linked to agency. To the extent an injury to someone else was not deliberate I am spared some remorse. If a passenger in my car is killed, my remorse is deepened if the accident was my fault, less so if it was the fault of another driver, still less if the passenger insisted on coming over my objections, and to the same extent it is either my responsibility, thus my remorse, or his responsibility, thus his bad luck. In sum, regret tends to occur when a deliberate action turns out to have been unlucky, whereas if that action is the cause of an injury to another person there is remorse. In regret, there is self-pity, in remorse pity for others, which is a form of compassion. A happy life ought not have too many regrets. Williams asks if a life should be lived so that retrospective justifications give no cause for regret. But whether self-justifications are adequate or not depends less on reason than on self-serving revision, given that reason can be used to justify almost any atrocity. I can regret not having killed a person who later betrays me. I can regret that others profited because I was not sufficiently materialistic. An immoral choice that turns out in retrospect to have been a good decision, e.g. failing to save the life of a person who is drowning out of cowardice who is later exposed as a murderer, is still cowardly or immoral if the subject was unaware of the shady character of the individual. A happy outcome does not mitigate a selfish decision so long as the outcome was not foreseen, though it does reduce the person’s later regret. Conversely, an unhappy outcome can lead to regrets for an unselfish decision where one was a paradigm of moral goodness. Regret is for personal choices, moral or not, while remorse, which has greater moral weight, involves retroactive compassion, or guilt over acts harmful to others for which one feels responsible. Guilt arises in the friction of competing values that may or may not concern moral actions, whereas remorse is guilt in the moral sphere. Typically, guilt develops in the competition of self- and other-directed values, especially when egoist values prevail at the expense of an important other. Neglect alone can give regret or guilt, say, a failure to visit an ailing parent, whereas remorse is guilt with actual harm. The element of compassion or at least concern for the other that is ingredient in remorse is specific to a particular individual, unless one has affected many. The other is an immediate victim, and has an identity. The compassion is associated with an awareness of a wrongful act, perhaps it is closer to the self-pity of regret than a true compassion for the other. Were remorse based on compassion, it should generalize to those

483 who have been injured by other people, not just those one has personally injured. The role of personal agency magnifies the feeling and concentrates it in a specific act. Thus, if a person is capable of remorse, i.e. responsibility and compassion, for those he has injured in the past, one should not suppose he is capable of compassion for those who have been injured without his participation, or for those who need aid in the present. The feeling of remorse for injuring someone does not translate to the feeling of responsibility for helping someone. Remorse over causing an injury is not the reciprocal of the desire to cause a benefit. In this respect, it recalls the alternative to Utilitarianism in replacing greater happiness by not adding to the amount of suffering. If responsibility can accentuate compassion in the agentive, and egocentric, feeling of remorse, can it be encouraged to enhance the same kernel of compassion to the non-egocentric feeling of caring? This requires the agency for not doing harm to be supplanted, or supplemented, by that for doing good. Since agency is linked to selfrealization, an expansion of exo-centric values is necessary to induce a modest equilibrium with innate egoism. The first requirement of Utilitarianism, as in the Hippocratic oath, is do no harm. When one looks at the current state of the world, it is hard to deny that religious tolerance would be a good place to begin.

Chapter 18. Efficacy and Illusions I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. Rilke Choice is critical to decision, while free choice and the self that chooses are critical to moral responsibility. Choice is a fork in the road of value that gives direction to agency and intention. The feeling of agency is value flowing from the self into action. Apart from whether agency is a real or illusory capacity, the feeling is central to the claim that people can choose between right and wrong independent of who they are, i.e. that choices are not the inevitable outcomes of character. Free will and choice are an escape from the impact of the immediate situation and the determinism of one’s causal ancestry. Values and intentions arise in the core self. Free will arises in relation to the temporal structure of an action, or the duration of the present. The possibility of free will, and its relation to duration, to subjective time, change and the nature of past, present and future, were discussed at some length in a previous book (Brown, 1996). This chapter addresses the nature of the efficacy of a free will that may be illusory. Agency in the discharge of an action is accompanied by a feeling of activity. This differs from the feeling of passivity or recipience in perceiving an object. Actions go out to the world from the self as occasions of will or desire. Objects and events come to the self as occasions of interest or accident. The feeling of the self going out to the world in action parallels the feeling of the self as a passive observer to the objects it encounters. The thesis of this chapter is that a deeper understanding of freedom, choice and efficacy entails a radical re-thinking of the perceptual process, no less than that of action, since the feeling of agency is largely perceptual. It is a matter of the transparency of the choice or selection through which a content individuates. Agency and choice come to the fore in action, especially in verbal imagery (inner speech), as an accentuation of penultimate phases in the language act. This experience is central to the feeling of conscious choice, intention and desire. The feeling of activity is generated by the action-development, but the dynamics of choice are perceptual features usually obscured in the objectformation. A perceptual object develops through a phase of covert

486 selection that is ordinarily traversed, unnoticed in perception, as in spontaneous or automatic actions. This phase is recovered in choice, uncertainty, and in pathological cases. Free will requires an elucidation of this transition. In perception and action, there is a progressive analysis of character (self) to choice (selection), decision (specification) and effectuation. The act/object sequence corresponds with a series from will (drive) to desire and from intention to act or object. Moral responsibility depends on the mix of ego- and exo-centric values. In perception, values are transmitted to objects of interest. In action, they delimit conduct in relation to self-interest and the needs of others. Prediction and the open future The physics of transition and a theory of change have been the topics of much recent speculation on the basis of voluntary action (Libet et al, 1999), and so they should be, for the nature of change is critical to the interpretation of agency, automatism and the possibility of free will. Whether change is governed by universal causation and/or determinism, probabilities, emergence or, in Whitehead’s term, is a “creative advance into novelty,” external events are still largely unpredictable from the perspective of the individual. The only predictable events result from the immediate actions of the agent, and even then there is no absolute certainty. The bulb lights each time the switch is thrown, but each time there is a small probability of failure. The awareness of probability in this instance concerns less the transition from self to action, i.e. the motion of the hand itself, than the workings of the switch and its effect on the lamp. If I want to lift my arm, I do not feel the slightest improbability that my arm will rise, unless it is weak or I am struck by lightning or apoplexy. The unpredictability of the coming state of the world parallels a multiplicity of unforeseen choices. The world might be a Laplacean filmstrip that comes into awareness as it unreels, but the individual feels the future is open and that the self is positioned at the forward edge of change. For the individual, change in the world is felt as uncertain but is attributed to a mix of fate and chaos, certainty and chance, destiny and randomness, but not as wholly deterministic. We may think that all things happen for a reason and we may think those reasons are the cause of what happens, but rarely do we know exactly what those reasons are. Indeed, the need to provide reasons as causes of events when the cause is not obvious or the event cannot be explained scientifically leads us to explain the event on the

487 basis of blind chance, luck, fate, god’s will, and so on. In contrast to events in the world, or to events that involve other people as objects, we think we are reasonably sure of the sources of our own thoughts. However, when pressed for the source or cause of a given thought or an action, we are often at a loss to specify it with certainty. When not questioned, we usually accept the thought as a kind of gift, especially if it is a creative thought, and we do not ask where it came from. We may wonder about the process of thought-discovery, give reasons or motivations, but it is mysterious. We know, or think we know, the conscious sequence of thoughts that lead up to a given act, and we anticipate the act that will follow an effort of the will. The foreknowledge of the immediate effects of a decision to act, say to turn on the light, contributes to the feeling of causal agency for the action. If I purposefully turn the switch on at successive moments, why did I decide to turn it on just then, just now, once again? In this instance, the feeling is more of a sudden impulse than a conscious thought that then impels an action. The experience of foreknowledge is linked to the feeling of agency for the event that is foreseen. This association of self and action in agent causation is equivalent to – perhaps the source of – our idea of god's absolute foreknowledge and his causal power to make all events occur. The presumption is that god knows all that will happen and, thus, he is the cause of all future events, in the same way that our own more limited knowledge of what we are going to do, such as to turn on the light, is causally related to that event. The linkage of foreknowledge and agency in the self, i.e. a thought in advance of an action that is its cause, is transposed to the agency of god. The individual “projects” the psychic experience of a self that freely acts upon the objects of thought or perception onto a god who sets in motion and intervenes in the passage of nature. In other words, the concept of god’s agency is derived from the feeling of human intention, as the perception (theory) of object causation is derived from the feeling of agent-causation. Schopenhauer (1818) appears to have had a similar view when he wrote, “The body… precedes the application of the law of causality, and thus supplies it with its first data.”

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Causation and potential Historically speaking, materialism and mechanistic metaphysics – as distinct from mechanistic science – designate the doctrine that matter is the efficient cause of life and mind, and that “cause” occupies a position superior in reality to that of “effect.” Both parts of this statement are contrary to fact. As far as the conception of causation is to be introduced at all, not matter but the natural events having matter as a character, “cause” life and mind. “Effects,” since they mark the release of potentialities, are more adequate indications of the nature of nature than are just “causes” (Dewey, 1925:262).

The doctrine of cause and effect is fundamental to science and the philosophy of mechanism. Scientific thinking gives priority to the cause, whether going from cause to effect, or from effect to cause. Essential to the theory of causation is the implication that specific causes match specific effects. In medical science a certain disease is caused by virus X, or by X in combination with gene Y, or by X and Y with a pre-existing debility Z. The specificity of the cause is taken as equivalent to the specificity of the effect, even if one begins with the effect and moves backward to the cause, since the effect is evident and can be identified with precision. Another way of saying this is that an actual object, an actuality, entails a cause, and that even if the cause is multi-factorial (XYZ in the above example), its components are as discrete as the effect, so that the transition from cause to effect is like that from one actual object to another. When potential is the “cause” of the actual, no such precision of antecedent cause is forthcoming. Specifically, the apparent causation of a cause-effect pair entails a transition from one actual entity to the next, whereas passage in nature is a replacement of one potential-to-actual epoch to the next. A shift from potential to actual is one complete actualization, or epoch of existence. The epoch is the ground (?cause) on which the next epoch (?effect) develops. The replacement is a recurrence over the epoch of a prior state, with the ensuing epoch initiated prior to the perishing of the occurrent state. A given epoch or potential-to-actual transition could not develop after the just prior epoch perishes, for then each round of potential would recur out of non-existence and there would be no world- or self-continuity. If an actual object must be absorbed into the ground of a novel actualization

489 (similar to, though not the same as, Whitehead’s notion of “concrescence”) with each actualization complete before the next arises, the interval, however timeless, theoretical or virtual it may be, would constitute an interruption in the seamless continuity of transition. If, as Dewey writes, the cause in mechanism is “superior in reality,” it is because the cause is equated with actuality in the world, unlike potential, which is unconscious supposition. For this reason a cause is presumed to have greater reality than an effect, for the effect is non-existent at the instant of the cause. At the instant of the effect, the no-longer-existing cause is inference or memory. If the immediate past of memory has greater reality than the immediate future, which has not yet occurred, a present effect will have greater reality than a present cause. If the cause is an actual object, the predictability of the effect gives greater reality to the cause. If actuality delimits potential, one can ask if a delimitation is a cause. If a potential contains past actualities like marbles in a box, removing all but one does not make potential the cause of what remains, other than by causal persistence. If potential is a possibility to become something shaped by elimination, like pruning a tree to shape its growth, it is unclear how eliminating what is unwanted causes what is possible to appear. If I remove a rock from a river and allow the water to run freely, the rock was a cause of the turbulence but its removal is not the cause of a lack of turbulence, no more than its removal is the cause of a person no longer being able to step across the river. Turbulence is an effect of placing the rock in the river, but the effect of removing the rock is the absence of the rock. Can a cause be the cause of a non-event? If I stop a hunter from shooting a bird, I am not the cause of its ability to fly. There is a sense in which the elimination of a cause is itself a cause, but these are two different senses of cause. In one the cause makes something happen, in the other, the “cause” prevents something from happening. To act or not act in such a way as to make something not happen leaves the causal effect less clear than an act that makes something happen, since the something that happens is known, while the something that does not happen is surmised. This difference carries over from the conditional, as in the case of the hunter, where the outcome is uncertain (will the hunter shoot? will he hit the bird?), to cases such as removing the rock, where the outcome is more assured given the knowledge or inference of the resting state, i.e. the flow before the rock was put in the river. These considerations on the causal role of constraints or delimitations suggest the need for a different way to think about potential and actual in

490 relation to cause and effect, namely that the former are phases in a single existent, as opposed to elements in causal succession, where cause and effect are distinct objects. On this view, potential does not exist until it becomes actual, and it is then not causal but ingredient. The transition from potential to actual is causal if it is divisible into intervening phases, but this does not apply if potential and actual are part of - as stem to leaf - the same entity. Potential perishes at the moment of actuality, not successively at each phase in the path to the actual, since potential at each phase is part of the actuality it leads to, i.e. part of the epoch of its actualization. Potential and actual are successive phases in a single momentary existence. The feeling of agency The intuition of agency begins in action and extends into perceptual objects as a relation that connects a cause to an effect. This intuition begins in the child, as Guyau (1988ed) noted, in the reaching for an object. The infant’s control of its limbs and action on objects in the world gives the feeling of causal power. There is anticipation in grasping a moving object or one that is displaced. This is especially clear when a not-yet-existent point in a trajectory is tacitly computed. There is an inference in the present state of an effect in the immediate future. The origin of agency in early cognition is also the beginning of a theory of subjective time. The agency felt in the transition from self to act, both causal and decisional, is displaced into the world in the transition from one object to another. The primitive motion is to the future. The sense of causal power when the infant reaches for a rubber ball is perhaps not so different than a cat reaching for a rolling ball of wool, but the consciousness of this power develops to an awareness of agency with its roots in organic process. The necessity in causation arises in infancy as a psychic residue of nature exemplified in human cognition. The control of the object that is the seed of agency is less a projection of human thought onto nature than an elaboration of indeterminateness in natural process. The further individuation of the self and mental objects leads to greater autonomy and an opposition of self to inner and outer objects, fostering the growth of intentional feeling. Kant criticized a gradualism of purposefulness on the grounds that intentionality would extend to inorganic matter. A purposefulness that goes all the way down is the path to theism. An evolutionary psychology has purposefulness developing in relation to the direction of feeling. The repeatability of the direction gives

491 the appearance of purposefulness. Prior to establishing anisotropy of direction, the becoming of the entity is arbitrary. Purposefulness undergoes an advance to intention. The argument that advanced forms exist in earlier ones in statu nascendi is also the critique of an evolutionary account of consciousness and value. Purposefulness achieves its aim when it terminates. The aim is not given beforehand. As feeling takes on direction, what is implicit in drive becomes explicit in desire. An object, an idea, an image or a feeling, as a content in consciousness, is an intentional object. In human thought, the derivation of affects and ideas out of the conceptual feeling of the self gives intention its directional character. The immediate action of simple agency arrives at conscious intention when an idea crystallizes between the self and the world. The interposition of a conscious idea or feeling abbreviates the outgoing stream, further separating the self from its objects. Intention is the awareness of the goal or the “aboutness” of this direction. It is an attempt to mark off a closure that was satisfied in the immediacy of direct action. Agency in organism is the basis of a theory of object-causation. Intentionality in organism is the basis of a theory of (conscious, but incipient) agent-causation, as nature individuates still further into human thought. Mental objects are wider surrogates that forecast the denotations of external ones, as potential undergoes delimitation, action is delayed, and immediacy becomes deliberation (chapter 19). A desire discriminates one thing from (all) others. The choice in desire, especially for absent or imaginary objects, is the root of personal freedom. The implicit causation in agency is the orderly in perception that underlies the incompleteness of conscious deliberation. Freedom is achieved by relinquishing the illusion of predictability for that of uncertainty. The theory of nature as mechanical obscures a diminishing contingency inherent in the evolutionary series all the way down to the inorganic. The intrinsically contingent is a mark of potentiality. Volition is made possible by a contingency inherent in the object that is not a mere dependency on the unforeseen vicissitudes of extrinsic change. Mind is a figural prominence of psychic nature, autonomy an artificial focus – an excessive individuation – of one organism in a society of others, actual or unrealized. One could say the individual is a totemic object aware of its own power carved out in nature as a category of psychic experience. It follows that human thought is not ab origine an individual phenomenon. The mental life of the individual is subordinate to the society, which in turn is subordinate to ever more

492 inclusive categories, out of which all particulars, including minds, arise. Causation, autonomy and freedom Autonomy and causation are linked concepts. The artificiality of the individual in relation to the field of organic life, or the self in relation to its own objects, is like a cause or effect in isolation from the whole of nature. They both depend on a mode of thought that replaces continuity with an exceptional degree of separation. As the self individuates, it perceives a world of particulars distributed in space and time, and it interprets them as a succession of causes and effects. The distinction of cause and effect in object-causation is parallel to the distinction of self and world in agentcausation. In the former, such problems as the demarcation of the cause, its transition to the effect or the attribution of contingency to accidental causation resist analysis by the methods of the very theory they subtend. Since they cannot be explained by the doctrine of external relations, they vitiate the theory. A theory that cannot explain its core assumptions is vacuous, not merely incomplete. A persistent incoherence is close to an unacknowledged refutation. Similar problems bedevil agent-causation, but here, contingency translates to free will and the connection of cause to effect is even more obscure. The other way to think about the partaking by mind of nature is that perceptible (definite) effects are not the outcomes of perceptible causes but instead are actualities that individuate potential. The definiteness is in the effect, not the cause. In the transition from potential to actual, the specificity or autonomy of a cause, e.g. a present object, is exchanged for the uncertainty and inexhaustibility of the potential in a past object. The efficacy of potential coincides with the priority of whole to part, of community to individual, of nature to organism. However, the doctrine of potential has its own difficulties, chiefly that its contents cannot, in principle, be specified. Potential in the mental life corresponds, as Dewey put it, to the fringe of feeling-qualities, premonitions and inchoate meanings, the stuff of intuitions, guiding the selection of acts, while the antecedents of these unconscious phenomena are even more inscrutable processes in the natural world. Individual mind specifies, and lures, a gaze, like a flower in a field as a momentary focus in the outflow of value. Whether I know, or god knows, what will happen is not the same as making it happen (Lucas, 1989), even if, in the case of god and, by implication, in the future of all other beings, what happens could not have

493 been otherwise. The experience of direct knowledge of our inner states is in striking contrast to the indirect knowledge or ignorance that we have of the series of co-temporal states of the world and other minds. The immediacy of awareness for our own thoughts does not occur for the internal states of other objects or the thoughts of others, unless one accepts the possibility of mental telepathy. The conscious anticipation of a coming state and the feeling of agency and intention contribute to the continuity from one state to the next. The other side of a lack of direct knowledge of processes linking the succession of states in the world is the inference of lawfulness in physical passage, whether due to probabilities, causal necessity or divine guidance. Since ordinary objects do not contain selves that can intercede in the flow of world events, they are inferred to be the outcomes of a causal series that, in principle, traces back to the beginnings of the universe. The present state of a mind also has a prior cause, but the sequence is felt to begin with a spontaneous act of conscious will or choice, which itself is not caused. We have difficulty with the belief, even more the feeling, that a present act is an outcome of biology and experience. This feeling for self-initiated actions contrasts with the actions of others, which are more like causal effects, in that we think they can be explained by their histories. For example, we tend to postulate hidden causes (motivations, conflicts, etc.) to explain the actions of others, which they believe are freely chosen. It is easier to accept a theory of strong causation applied to external objects than one applied to mental contents, and to feel causation more in the acts of others than in our own. It is easier still to believe that an individual is free in his choices than that choice exists in nature. While the presence of choice in nature is consistent with some interpretations of process metaphysics, the feeling of choice in nature is sensed primarily in the “primitive” thought of animism and dream cognition. The uncertainty in quantum theory is ordinarily interpreted not in terms of choice but of probabilities which collapse, retroactively, into causal effects. If mental causation (agency) is impressed on the order of natural events as object causation, free will might extend into the world as choice, either as contingency or in the belief that god intervenes in the stream (cycle) of change. In any event, our concepts of objective change have their sources in psychic experience. If god is the ultimate agent, his agency is inspired by man. Hugo (ca 12th century) said, “The way to ascend to God is to descend into oneself.” Kepler wrote, “My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner within

494 and inside me.” In sum, freedom in non-cognitive nature, as well as in the brain state, is grounded in contingency or probability or creative advance, yet the concept of object causation is inherited from human agency, just as the concept of probability is inherited from human choice. The potential, the novelty and the possibility that are so forceful an experience with an image in the mind survive in the contingency of external objects. The feeling of volition that is lost as the object exteriorizes is replaced by the feeling of a causal force that is extrinsic to the observer. The will exteriorizes with the object as its causal power. In a word, object causation is mental causation objectified. The free will that imposes certainty on indecision becomes the power of causation that imposes necessity on contingency. Indeterminacy The tension between the certainty of agent causation and the uncertainty of choice for the subjective side of an action is reflected in the tension between determinism and chance in physical transition. At the microscopic level, causation is replaced by uncertainty. Quantum theories of consciousness arising at the level of micro-tubules are of marginal theoretical interest, for they tend to be generalized to consciousness in the human brain without a thought given to neuropsychology. Quantum theory is held to be consistent with free will, which it explains by a compounding of indeterminacy through an increase in informational complexity. Physical uncertainty at the quantum level is supposed to “trickle up” to human choice. Is creativity, then, an elevation to awareness of the novelty ingredient in non-cognitive nature? Stapp (in Libet, 1999) finds confirmation in quantum theory for the proposal by James, and Whitehead as well, that experience occurs in “drops,” each an informational whole comparable to a quantum jump. Microgenesis also posits that an act of cognition is epochal. But in what way is the replacement of an epoch analogous to a quantum jump? The problem of freedom seems to vanish as individuality shrinks to insignificance in the view from deep space in a universe that seems deterministic, just as determinism evaporates at the quantum level. Is there one theory for everything, are different aspects of mind mirrored in physical theory, or the reverse, or are there different (known) universes of mind and nature? I think the causal theory of nature is a strong extension of the feeling of agent causation to external objects, while contingency in

495 nature is a weak extension to objects of the feeling of choice, possibility and personal freedom. There is a complimentary relation between, on the one hand, the rigid laws of macrophysics and uncertainties at the quantum level with, on the other, the certainty of agent causation and the freedom – creativity, uncertainty, etc. – of personal action. We intuit in our own minds what we find in our models of the universe. Instead of asking if the mind conforms to the principles of physical science, we should regard these principles as expressions of fundamental patterns of human thought. This is in agreement with Stapp’s comment that the founders of quantum physics concluded “that the mathematical formalism of quantum theory is about our knowledge,” which somehow has to be reconciled with “nature herself.” On this view, the objects of physics have their correlates in human thought. The “laws” of the mind that give the objects of perception (and science) become the physical laws that govern mind-independent entities as well as mind. Free will and spontaneity A principle reason why the belief in the causality of world process differs from that for psychic objects is the feeling that acts originate in the self. When I will my hand to lift, I do not attribute the act to its causal ancestry; rather, it feels spontaneous and self-initiated. The decision to raise the arm is a “causal primary,” an event that does not seem to be necessitated by antecedent causes, of which, in any case, I am unaware. When I go to act, there is no sense of an activity interposed between my self and the action, once initiated. This is because self and act, like self and object, are successive segments in a single actualization. Our acts may be the causal outcomes of immediately prior states, but we do not feel a causal connection in their sequence. That is, the immediately preceding conscious state is not felt as the cause of the occurrent state. I could decide to lift my arm now, or I could wait some minutes, with various actions in the ensuing interval, and then spontaneously lift my arm. There are two main reasons why we do not have this experience of a causal sequence in consciousness. First, there is the intercession of the self in willed actions, which we sense as a break from antecedent causation or the initiation of a novel cause. Second, there is an accurate intuition that acts are generated “bottom-up” from an unconscious source, not from one conscious state to another. The lack of awareness of the unconscious sources of the current state, the self's ability

496 to forecast the oncoming state, the drive from past to present, the novelty of acts that individuate in the shift from wholes to particulars, all give the feeling of a self that plans, creates and implements acts in its future. This feeling pivots on the axis of a self that can, in memory, revive, “at will,” events in the recent or distant past, and can control, in willed action, events in its immediate future. Surely it was not laid down in the distant past, in all prior experience, that I should decide to suspend writing and lift my hand at this precise moment. It is inconceivable that this act reflects a causal ancestry that began prior to conception, was causally fixed in my genes and transmitted in parallel with the causal history of the universe over countless generations, going all the way down to a slug in a primeval pond and beyond to the birth of the universe. Even if an action were a causal outcome of an incomprehensibly complex series of brain events, the microscopic links between a relatively limited combination of causes and their effects, should they exist, are so obscure and undiscoverable in comparison to the intensity of volitional feeling that the belief in absolute causation, however appealing to logic and science, could scarcely be a matter of felt conviction. Spontaneous or deliberate choice is essential to freedom. The will must choose to act or pursue a goal for moral responsibility. Hodgson (in Libet) suggests, consistent with microgenetic principles, that character constrains or limits the options in a decision and their appeal to the person, i.e. preferences and the capacity to choose, as well as the reasons for the action that is chosen. This determines, causally, “how easy or hard it is for the person to make one choice rather than another,” while the agent has the freedom, and the responsibility, for the exercise of that capacity within the constraints of character. But why is the agent not constrained all the way through? The feeling of free will owes partly to the imposition of stability on uncertainty as agency limits the possibilities inherent in choice. Choice is not open-ended and contingency is not random, i.e. events that intersect have their own causal and/or contingent histories. Past choices influence future ones. The values, beliefs and traits of character that delimit the self prevent a deluge of choices. The self is relatively invariant from one moment to the next due to its near-replication and overlap in each act of cognition. Its choices are also limited because they arise in a common set of values and beliefs. Even so coercive a choice as to face the gallows or a firing squad must traverse the self-concept to become conscious, and even this terrible choice is not the only one left to the

497 individual. To face death with courage or with fear is, after all, the ultimate test of character. Character discharges into the self, which in turn distributes into concepts, acts and objects. The objects we perceive are shaped by values and beliefs to become what they are. Perhaps this last remark is difficult to grasp or accept, but it is of central importance. Contemporary psychology and psychoanalytic formulations maintain that objects are imprinted on consciousness, by direct perception or by object construction in visual cortex, with rapid fading of sensory impressions, such as postulated by Freud in his metaphoric device of the magic writing pad. For visual neuroscientists, perception is largely passive, cognition is post-perceptual, and flow is uncoupled from patterns of evolutionary growth. Psychoanalytic theory presumes that we only become aware of some part of that which is not repressed, or that defenses are guardians of what becomes conscious, with external objects conceived as independent of unconscious mechanisms which act secondarily on the traces of past perceptions (see discussion of the metapsychology in Brown, 2000). For microgenetic theory, beliefs and values condition character, deliver the self and its concepts, configure the choices that are available to the self and, ultimately, articulate the world and its objects. The more objective the choice, the less the personal responsibility. People tend to objectivize personal choices to avoid responsibility – the “shoulds” and “have-to’s” of ordinary discourse – as they blame others for their own failings or attribute a kind of coercion to their own decisions, e.g. I must go to the doctor. The politician or diplomat may finesse a choice to evade or distribute a responsibility. There are many ways to disinvigorate choice, by altering its terms, by dilution or contextualization, by postponement, by shifting the responsibility to others, and so on. When such maneuvers reach the point where the “plain-spoken” yet decisive person who accepts responsibility for his actions is dismissed as naive or foolish, when choices are cleaved from moral obligations, or in cynicism, and when such attitudes become widespread, regardless of the sophistication of the rationale, it points to a dissipation in the character of a society that is a fatal mark of decay. Freedom, contingency and choice Can free will in the sense of a self that is not predetermined to choose a given option be explained by the contingency of world and brain events?

498 Contingency, like probability, excludes god's foreknowledge of possible outcomes, and “makes room” for free will by allowing a multiplicity of possible futures. Contingency also refers to the conditional in language - if this, then that – but at a deeper level it pertains to unpredictability. Probability is a measure of the degree of certainty in a designated event. In this respect, it is a statistical theory of contingency. We recognize that all actions are contingent – on waking up in the morning, on having the time, money, opportunity, etc. – but this does not translate to a feeling of contingency for a given action. The further an event in the future, the more contingent it seems. The exception is the certainty we feel for that portion of the future that is the leading edge of the present. A moral choice that begins with a willed action, such as to join the army or feed one's family, may not include other options, e.g. protest, emigration, which do not surface into consciousness. The option may simply not occur to the person, or it may not be considered because it is weakly valued. Once an option is clear and the choice is settled, the person does not feel that the choice, whatever it may be, is contingent on other intrinsic factors. The success of the act may be contingent. The person may wonder if events will play out in a favorable manner, or if he has the strength or courage to see it through. This is a contingency that hovers over the action sequence, it is not intrinsic to the self-in-action. It applies to the uncertainty of the world of perception, and the choices it imposes, perhaps to the act of choosing, certainly to the effects of an action, but not to the action itself. The intention to act may be uncertain, the individual may be undecided or disinclined to choose, decision may be withheld pending the outcome of other states of affairs, but the final act is not felt as contingent on internal happenings. This is because the internal contingencies that drive agent causation are largely unconscious, disappearing once the agent is conscious of, and wills, the intended action. Some authors have attempted to uncouple volition and conscious decision and postulate a parallel arising of action and intention (Brown, 2003). This postulates two mechanisms where one is sufficient, and may even require a third mechanism to integrate the other two. The microgenetic account is more parsimonious. It posits that intention, or an awareness of the goal or choice in acting, is ordinarily buried as an implicit phase in the action development. Conscious indecision or hesitation reflects unconscious conflict, since the action (or inaction) is pre-set. What occurs in consciousness is the awareness of what, in advance, has been unconsciously biased.

499 This agrees with the conclusion of Libet and others that the onset of a purposeful action at least 400 msec. prior to the action, and prior to awareness of the intention to act, indicates unconscious pre-activation, i.e. a voluntary act is not instigated in consciousness. Libet’s notion of a bubbling-up of the action is consistent with microgenetic concepts. It also agrees with evidence that a volitional movement has its onset at the peak of the cycle of the normal resting or physiological tremor, i.e. that an action is not sui generis, but is generated out of unconscious oscillatory systems. The temporal lag in perception suggests that act and object individuate from a common base construct. Libet’s idea that consciousness may exercise a “veto” on pre-set actions has the problem that inaction is also action, which he acknowledges, but also that conscious control is unnecessary. In my view, the entire process has the form of a veto. A conscious veto is merely a continuation of the same trend of inhibitory sculpting that occurs at more preliminary phases. The pattern is that of whole-part transitions by serial constraints on the action-development. In consciousness, we become aware of this process as a veto by the conscious segment. The veto is not implemented by consciousness but is a further individuation through conscious phases as maladaptive possibilities are eliminated. The difference between the felt contingency of perceptual immediacy, and the felt certainty of intentional immediacy, can be summarized in the following way (Fig. 18.1). In the voyage of an object through the mind to the world, contingency, as the fate of the object when it is finally “out there” in the world, is a psychic residue of the possibility inherent in its formative phases before it became a concept or an image in the mind. Contingency in the world is what is left of implicit or explicit choice in object formation. The autonomy of the self and the indecision that is resolved by will are carried through the actualization to the autonomy of objects and the contingency of their change. Potential resolves to definiteness in the actualization of acts and objects. Similarly, contingency resolves to causation as the indeterminacy of potential is fixed by the necessity of definiteness.

500

Fig. 18.1

The transition from potential to (implicit or explicit) choice appears in the object as an acausal principle (probability, creativity, uncertainty). The transition from choice to the final act or object appears as a causal principle (agent causation). The cycle of phasetransitions that is responsible for change in the mind extends into objects as a theory of linear change in the world (object causation)

Change and stability As important as contingency is to agency, still more important and in some respects its corollary is the slow growth of the self in comparison to the rapid change of the world. The world may change dramatically from one day to the next or the self may be exposed to radically different worlds but, barring illness or other afflictions, the self remains much the same from day to day, an island of stability in a sea of uncertainty. We feel we can control our own acts but not those of other objects, though in truth we have more control over objects in the world than our own character. These phenomena conspire with others – the intrapsychic locus of will, the extrapersonal locus of objects, the actualization of self prior to objects, the anisotropic passage from past to present, the forward surge to actuality, and so on – to create an illusion of the self as the “rock-bottom” center of personality. This stability is deceptive; the self is constantly changing, though slowly, while external events are unpredictable because their antecedents are invisible and their consequents are known only when they come into perception. Objects are more or less ephemeral categories of change. The sense of a self as persistent over time is the result of a positive illusion of a prolongation of its arising and a negative illusion of a lack of incessant perishing. The replication of the arising over the perishing of each moment swamps the perishings and accentuates event recurrence, transforming events into objects, while the obscuration of the perishings by

501 the new arisings accounts for the hardening of objects into substances that appear permanent. The stability of the self mirrors the illusion of a dynamic will, as stability and flux achieve a compromise of permanence and relationality, or inflexibility and change. The will cuts across the perceptual boundary of mind and world. The shift from a repeatable self to a changing world has the will as a vector of process leading from mind to object. The will goes out as a kind of bridge from mind to world. In the shift from self to act, the self is left behind as the act and its content materialize. The categorical self achieves a stability that eludes the will, which is process in the mode of voluntary feeling. The wholeness of self distributes into the particularities of concepts and objects which, intermediate or terminal, are other wholenesses or categories that deposit or undergo further individuation. The idea of freedom as the resolution of stability with uncertainty, or unity with diversity, helps to explain the diminished sense of freedom with an absence or a surfeit of choices. The self is intuited as substantial, the will as relational. The sense of a will that is fluid and a self that is unchanging are intuitions of process and category, energy and substance, becoming and being, that arise at the incipient diversification of conceptual feeling as it is derived outward to the world from character and the core self. This resolution recalls the paradox that objects do not exist until process makes them real, while process actualizes only those objects (categories) that already exist as “containers” of the process that creates them. This paradox gives the sense of creativity in action and contingency in objects. An object cannot be what it becomes until it becomes what it is, but it cannot become what it is until it is already that object (category). Creativity is the realization of what in some sense one already knows, as contingency is the realization of what is not known until it is realized. The juxtaposition of the agency of self-realization with the contingency of perception extends the novelty of basic entities to the freedom of the will, and extends the freedom of the will to possibility in the world. The pathology of agency The contingency of external events entails a factor of chance or probability built into the event sequence. Since an action that is selfinitiated is not in doubt, it is not felt as contingent even if contingency applies to the physical brain events underlying the action sequence. This deeper contingency may be fundamental to all entities in the world and the

502 brain. Occasionally, this spills into feeling in pathological forms of intention. In chorea, a seemingly random motion may be completed into a purposeful action. For example, a person feels a sudden jerk of the arm and completes the movement by scratching his head. The usual interpretation is that the person feels the movement is involuntary and is trying to conceal it. However, just as often he is uncertain as to whether the movement is spontaneous or voluntary. The apparent randomness of the choreic movement has the felt contingency of an extrinsic object. The contingency is constrained, i.e. the probability increases of achieving the target action, when the action takes on a goal and becomes purposeful. Similar experiences occur with the limb movements induced by stimulation of the motor cortex. In contrast to the assumptions or preconceptions of many who have not personally examined such cases, in those few cases I have seen of alien hand syndrome (Goldberg, 1985), a denial of volition is often accompanied by a confabulatory justification for the limb movement. That is, the feeling of (lack of) control is not clear-cut. Such cases illustrate the continuum from spontaneous to deliberate action and the transformation of acts that are contingent to those that are willed and goal-directed. The feeling of agency is affected by an attenuation of objectformation. The attenuation exposes the agency concealed within the object, as preliminary phases recover the agency in the object that is lost when it objectifies. An attenuated object is more like an action in that it is not detached in external space. The image is like an action in that it belongs to and is controlled by the self. Agency may be in doubt, for example in patients who are uncertain whether an image is a purposeful idea, a memory, or the product of another mind. In some cases, the agency is not felt in the self at all. An example would be an instruction to the subject coming from an hallucinated voice. A command hallucination has dictatorial power. The hallucination is a mental object but it has an objective status and is felt as alien to the individual. Verbal hallucinations occur when inner speech undergoes perceptual objectification. Because the image is not fully objective, the self, as in dream, feels less an agent than a victim to its own imagery, i.e. a recipient of the agentive power of its own hallucinatory images. Such observations show that free will is not restricted to action, but concerns perceptual and linguistic derivations as well. The sense of conviction, passivity, obedience, accompany subjective phases in object formation. Whether the self is agent or victim depends on the phase most prominent in the actualization, and whether the primary

503 direction is to action and speech on the one hand, or to the perception of speech and objects on the other. The dictatorial power of the hallucinatory voice reflects a personal agency invested in a near-independent image. The command tends to emanate not from a chair or a tree – though inanimate objects can be the “source” of commands - but from human voices or faces. The hallucination is close to a perception and is often referred to another mind. Since there is no person consistently in the environment who appears responsible for the hallucinatory voices, they may be attributed to god, to the devil, to spirits, extra-terrestrials, etc. Yet, no matter how real they seem, hallucinations are psychic objects, closer to the subject than perceptions; when visual, they persist with the eyes closed, and tend to vanish when the subject reaches out to touch them, or when they are scrutinized. When auditory, they replace auditory perceptions. Hallucinations of the face may have an “inner life” distinct from that of the observer, with brilliant colors, facial distortions and agonized expressions. The occurrence of the “other” in an auditory or visual hallucination affirms that, from an intrapsychic perspective, self and other do not engage in a dialogue as the coming-together of autonomous objects, but are rooted in the same self-concept. To say, I am the other, is literally true. Like objects, choices can be felt as subjective, objective or both. A choice to keep or break a promise is no less subjective for the presence of an obligation than a choice to go to a concert or a movie. The more objective the choice, as in the submission to law or authority, or intimidation or coercion, and the more external and imposed the options in relation to the subject’s desire, the greater their contingency or arbitrariness and the less the feeling of freedom. Unlike hallucinated voices which instruct or persecute without the subject feeling he has other options, or hallucinatory commands that exact obedience without the need for reinforcement, external obligations that are not personal valuations require the reinforcement of punishment, censure, divine mandates, accusations of heresy, threats of excommunication, and so on, when they require an action that is contrary to personal desire. When determinism is applied to the mind as a postulate concerning mental activity, the feeling of volition tends to be subordinate to the logic of causality. Yet, in contrast to the idea of object causation or determination, the feeling that the self and its actions are causal outcomes usually occurs as a pathological symptom. We may suppose we are causal entities, and that choice is an illusion, but when feeling is added to the conviction that one is the causal outcome of preceding and occurrent states,

504 the person is in serious danger of psychic collapse. A person who believes and feels he is an automaton or a puppet controlled by internal or external forces, or a person who feels that others are robots, is more likely to be a schizophrenic than a philosopher. This difference between thinking and feeling was nicely brought home to James Joyce when he asked Carl Jung about his own quasi-psychotic ideation in relation to his daughter's schizophrenia. Jung is said to have replied, “You're swimming in it, she's drowning.” One is reminded of the remark of Compte, that madness is an excess of subjectivism, as idiocy is an excess of objectivism. Illusion, reality and will If microtemporal constraints in the transition from the self to a state of choice are such that a given choice is inevitable no matter how free it may seem, freedom would be the absence of awareness that choices are covertly determined and free will would be illusory. But even if choice is laid down by unconscious probabilities, this only introduces unpredictability, which is the opposite of free choice in the sense of prediction and decision. It does not explain the feeling of volition. The self and its will may be illusory, but even so they are efficacious. One cannot proclaim that the will is free and not explore the basis for this conclusion, or the distinction of the illusory and the real, the as if quality of all experience (Chapter 22; Vaihinger, 1924), and the possibility that illusory phenomena can be efficacious. What does it mean to say that an illusion can effectuate an action? What is an illusion, and what is its relation to the latitude of options given the self and the constraints through which they surface? How is efficacy to be conceived within the typically narrow window allocated to choice? These questions, of vital concern to the problem of free will, can be studied in the pathological case material. The distinction of the real and the illusory depends on the lack of correspondence of the “false” image, the illusion or hallucination, to the “real” one, i.e. an external object. Yet the real object is known by a comparison to the unreal one. Were there no unreal objects, or if mind and nature were to be conceived as part of the same psychic field, as in animistic thought, the question of the real might not arise. But the question does come up, given the ubiquity of dreams, fantasies, natural illusions, e.g. the “bent stick” in water, and so on, and the comparison of such phenomena to ordinary objects. One then asks, are the latter real because they are “more real” than hallucination or illusion, or are they real, so to

505 say, in themselves? To define a thing as unreal by reference to another thing that is more real is to claim a definition in the very concept that needs to be defined. If one hears an hallucinatory voice with no objective correlate in the subject’s visual world, one could say the auditory hallucination is unreal because it does not coincide with objects realized in another perceptual system. But once the person has visual and auditory hallucinations, the objective world that was the basis for this judgment will be lost and all images, as in dream, will again seem to be real. The coherence of the unreal replaces the recognition of unreality by an absence of correspondence to a greater sense of what is real. Reality is given by a conspiracy of the senses, as scientific objectivity is given by a consensus of opinion, not by the intrinsic properties of what is perceived. When we say an illusion or hallucination does not correspond to a real object, we are saying that an early phase in perception does not correspond to a later phase, or that the realization of a subjective segment, within or across perceptual modalities, does not correspond to the realization of an objective segment in the same perception. That is why, when the objective segment is lost and replaced by an hallucinatory image, there is no objective world for comparison. A perceptual image, whether hallucinatory or veridical, corresponds not to the external object it reproduces, but to the neural activity through which it is generated. If every image points to the relative accentuation of a phase in the mind/brain state, including the body image and the self-concept, no mental event has greater or lesser efficacy than any other, especially if it is conceded that efficacy has its basis in brain process, of which the mental is a superficial mark. We do not expect an hallucination, because it is “unreal,” to have less efficacy in behavior than an external object. The two differ with regard to the phase actualized, not that one object is more real. In ordinary experience, the reaction to an illusion is often more striking than to a perception. Hallucinations can be terrifying. Delusion leads to deranged behavior. Delusional beliefs and hallucinatory objects have the power to influence behavior to an even greater magnitude than normal thoughts and perceptions. Whether or not an image is “real,” i.e. objective, veridical, has little significance for its capacity to induce an action. Indeed, the more “real” an object is, the less passionate we are about it. We will sacrifice for the sake of love, or the fantasy of love, what we would not think of doing for another person who in all respects save being loved is comparable, or even superior in the opinion of others. Action, especially altruistic action, is neutralized by objectivity, as decision, however rational, is not decided

506 by reason. An hallucination or delusion can be said to be unreal due to a lack of correspondence to public events, but the image or concept of the self, because it has no external referent, is less vulnerable to the same criterion. People tend to retain an inaccurate self-perception in spite of repeated failures, rebukes and the testimony of others. Some gradually come to terms with their limitations and inadequacies, many never do. Those who suspect their self-concept is fraudulent or deficient may search for an external model in the selves of others, or seek within for a self that is more authentic. Yet they would not deny the reality of the self they have. It is no less difficult to convince a person with hallucination or delusion that his objects do not exist or that his beliefs are false than to convince someone that his self-concept is illusory or non-existent. The psychotic accepts the hallucination as real during the hallucinatory episode because he does not have a “realuote world in the affected modality. This is the normal condition of the self, an image or hallucination that has no “real” correlate in the external world. The self gives rise to external objects but does not itself objectify, except partly in the case of autoscopy and auditory hallucination. Without an external referent, the self remains wholly subjective, and the greater the subjectivity, the stronger the conviction. Illusion can induce change - the illusion of self, duration, etc. - as categories can induce (generate) members, or as wholes can induce parts. The antecedent constrains the consequent. Minimally, categories constrain membership. Wholes relinquish their wholeness as they are replaced by the parts they give rise to. If any part of a whole is eliminated it is a different whole. The self gives up its wholeness for the acts into which it distributes. We say we know a self by its acts, for action carries the self into the world. An act is a piece of the self, a part of the categorical self that is itself a category to its implementations. The act seems more real than illusory, while the self seems more illusory than real. The act does not traverse the self, the self does not initiate the act. Self and act are one state. The state in which the self is emphatic (“I will move my arm”) precedes the state in which the act is emphatic (the arm moves). In the former, the act is embryonic or anticipatory, in the latter, the self is in the background. One line of thought (going back to Parmenides) holds that unity is real but its distinctions are illusory. McTaggart argued that the Humean bundle of perceptions of the self was comparable to the parts of a whole, which could not exist apart from that whole. This would entail a self as a category, and its perceptual bundles as constituents. Parts individuate

507 wholes and themselves undergo further individuation. Reality is the process of individuation, the transformation of wholes-to-parts, and the categories that turn such transformations into stable forms. A tree is no more or less real than the atoms that compose it. Both atom and tree are repeatable moments. In both, a dynamic of internal relations is “contained” by a category that achieves stability in recurrence, according to the degree of self-replication. This process of individuation is a whole-to-part shift with a transition to novelty at every phase (Brown, 1996). The creativity of process is a kind of freedom that is fundamental to change but not specific to human action. Free will requires the self to be responsible for its own creativity. Though creativity is opposed to universal causation and, broadly, is essential to freedom, in some sense free will is antithetical to the creative spirit. The passive ego is essential to creative thought. Ruskin wrote, “Egotism is destructive of imagination.” Creativity demands contingency, or possibility, or potential, or probability, not agent causation. Joseph Conrad wrote that explicitness “is fatal to the glamour of all artistic work, robbing it of all suggestiveness, destroying all illusion.” The ambiguity is the indefiniteness prior to agency and actuality, and points, just as do command hallucinations, to the passivity of the agent to his own creative imagination. The feeling that the self is free depends on another illusion, actually a delusion, of an interface of self and action. The belief in one world of private experience and another of public events is deeply entrenched. To think otherwise borders on mysticism, to feel otherwise is psychosis. The “gap” from mind to world is fundamental to the entire edifice of western thought. Yet the assumed confrontation of the self with objects that are, in fact, tributaries of the observer's mind is an error only slightly less pernicious than the separation of mind from physical nature. The diachronics of subject and object corresponds with the synchronics of self and physical process. The subject/object relation of phases in a single mind is a succession, while the concurrence of the mental and the physical at each phase in the mind/brain state is simultaneous [Brown, 1996]. Freedom seems to require a juncture in the transition from character to act. Yet the self is realized out of character, conduct is realized out of the self, in a progressive individuation that extends without rupture from mind to world. The self achieves freedom in the virtual (illusory) present that frames the action sequence. On the continuity hypothesis, each act is a selfand world-creation. Creativity runs from its physiological onset in neural

508 substrates of the unconscious to its objectification in neural correlates of the perceptible world. The feeling of agency for action, of recipience for perception, depends, as we have seen, on a variety of factors in subtle exchange. The feeling of a free self unencumbered by antecedent events, a self that can take each moment as it comes and act accordingly, or make unexpected decisions, is the result of an occasional accentuation of preliminary phases in a continuous transition to novelty. Self and choice are successive segments in becoming. In fact, the awareness of choice owes in part to the “location” of the self antecedent to act and object selection, prior to final definiteness. The creative would seem to be the “highest” expression of free will, as habit and repetition are its nadir. But the creative is not a product of the self, for the self is re-created with its contents. Process is creative at every phase.

Chapter 19. Thought and Action Go! Say not in thine heart, and what then, were it accomplished, Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use and the good. Arthur Clough

Immediate and deliberate action Most moral acts are performed without deliberation as a natural response to a situation. These acts range from spontaneous rage or altruistic sacrifice to everyday acts of kindness, meanness or indifference that, collectively, discharge the values and character of a person over time and in a variety of circumstances. In such actions, choice is not absent, but is implicitly resolved without becoming an object of awareness. The choice is “automatic,” but with hesitation or delay it can become a conscious terminus. The analogy is with the choice of a word, which can become a conscious phase of selection, though in conversation words are ordinarily selected automatically. When the phase of word choice is momentarily in the foreground, we have the experience of searching for the right word, that which embodies a feeling, a concept, or if we are closer to the lexical target, the precise word, which we say is on the “tip of our tongue.te In the latter instance, we have the general shape and segmentation of the word. We may even have the initial letter or sound, and search for the phonological content. The feeling of agency that occurs with search is not a volition applied to the “retrieval” of the word from memory, but rather, the feeling of agency arises in the process of word specification. A search that is within an object or semantic category is not merely linguistic, but ideational. A conceptual search is also agentive, though it is marginally intentional, since the object of the search is imprecisely known. In both cases, we struggle to find the right word, or capture the concept it vaguely subtends, or we mine the concept for its most befitting, alluring or poetic realization. The experience of a process that is usually automatic but then

510 becomes deliberate, especially with fatigue, distraction or brain pathology, is explained by the attenuation of a normally traversed segment of implicit choice. The surfacing or actualization of that segment reveals an earlier phase of potentiality when the intended content is not fully realized. The earlier the choice in this process, the greater the opportunity for novel or creative diversion. The closer the choice to the endstage of the process, the greater the constraints on the final form, and the less possibility for the unexpected to occur. The shift from the automatic to the volitional in speech is a microcosm of what occurs when there is hesitation in action. When the hesitation or indecision in action is a sign of choice or conflict at a conscious or unconscious phase, as in word search, there is also a feeling of effort or agency, and a prominence of the conceptual precursors of the action and of options prior to act-selection. The shift from immediate to deliberate action entails the becoming explicit of the implicit transition over phases of choice or selection. Of note, the line between the pathology of errors in word finding and the poet’s search for the exact concept, word or theme consists in a distinction between a lesion-related neoteny (derailment) of process and a creative neoteny that allows the poet to withdraw “behind” automatic content and replace an ordinary product with one that is unusual. The depth of the neoteny determines whether the derailment will respect the lexical or semantic boundaries, or will arise from earlier symbolic or dreamwork systems. When action is immediate, we say it is natural to the person. There is no evidence of internal conflict, no conscious decision. As in fluent speech, where it often seems that we discover a thought after it has been uttered, spontaneous actions can disclose to the agent his own character. One often hears people say, “I don’t know what I think until I say (or write) it.” The same applies to action. Do we not often say, especially in situations that require moral courage, we do not know how we would act until faced with that choice? Indeed, in such circumstances – saving a drowning person, rushing into a burning building, protesting brutality when there is danger of retribution – the action is the choice, which is exposed retroactively. We acknowledge that a rational decision made in advance of an action, whether a moral act or one of personal courage, say to fight a fatal disease rather than to take one’s life, is a poor prognosticator of what one will do when the situation arises. When action is required, all the predictions go out the window. The action may or may not be reasonable, or justifiable in retrospect, but it is not determined or sanctioned by a pre-packaged logic or an unconscious rationale. The unconscious has a logic of its own that

511 differs from that of consciousness. The unconscious impulse is often in defiance of reason. An act of heroism may be foolhardy, one of caution or cowardice may be prudent, but the act, whatever its content or assessment by the agent, or by others, is an expression of the core self or character. The more immediate or impulsive the response, the greater its affinity with that of other people in similar circumstances. Rage, fear and flight, for example, are common to all of us. Hesitation penetrates the ground of impulse by a diversity of individual thought, and the ensuing action is more expressive of the uniqueness of personality. The result is often a partial or stepwise action that illustrates the value-distribution over time, as opposed to an immediate action, which illustrates the dominant value at the moment. Immediate and deliberate actions both display character, but the outcome is not necessarily the same; even the same action may have a different structure. More often, reflection cancels an action, or replaces it with ambivalence. Yet we could also say that a person able to delay an action or someone who is open to reflection is a different person than one who acts on impulse. We would not expect the “same” person to act impulsively on one occasion and deliberately on another when the occasions are similar. To the extent that actions are consistent, they show that a change in character is glacial compared to that of circumstance. The conflict, planning and reflection that accompany moral choice are resolved automatically in spontaneous action, but this does not indicate that the resolution is for the same options exposed by deliberation. The immediacy of action requires a more or less instantaneous “computation” of the mix of values, which does not permit subsets of those values to grow to the point where the overall bias is controverted. The configuration that discharges in a spontaneous act undergoes individuation when the act is postponed. The resting valence of the ego- and exo-centric dispositions may then fluctuate as one set gains the ascendancy. In principle, a delay permits further specification of the dominant value-set, perhaps more often muting expression than enhancing it, as contemplation or persuasion sorts out the most judicious, advantageous or moral course to follow. Deliberation also takes new information and long-term interests into account that may be neglected in acts of greater immediacy, as well as the attitudes and needs of others, the rationale of the action and its ramifications. The bias in the mix of values that inheres in covert choice is likely to be preserved. A person prepared to risk his life to save another but persuaded the risk is too great can still be said to be altruistic, but not to the point of suicide if, in the end, self-interest prevails.

512 Deliberation is the touchstone of moral decision. It is itself a value and the principle focus of philosophical inquiry. Legal documents require an “informed consent,” which implies knowledge, deliberation and unobstructed choice. Individual deliberation is presumed to involve choices that develop out of uncertainty or conflict in desires, reason, values or obligations. The final act is, or should be, determined, ideally, by moral principles or the sense of what is right, even if the right thing to do is inconsistent with character and often not clear. At times of uncertainty, decision is most likely to be guided by adaptation to the social environment. The egoism of a moral calculus tends to prevail when right conduct is clear yet self-interest prevails. In some respects, the more deliberative the action, the more it approximates that of an informed political decision, where impulse is fractionated by the complexity of the situation and the best strategy to achieve the goal. At the opposite pole, impulse is impelled by foundational beliefs that are close to drive, habit, custom and feeling. Hesitation and the weighing of options support the common interpretation of a subjugation of impulse to reason, when there is a failure of immediate discharge. If spontaneity is closer to the core self, deliberation is closer to moral rules, duties and the principles of rational thought. But in what fundamental way do these forms of conduct differ? To answer this question, we should ask how a spontaneous act becomes a conscious choice. Whether it is diving into a river to save a drowning child, or giving aid to a stranger, the same act can occur with or without reflection. An act that occurs without reflection suggests the primacy of instinctual will or unconscious motivation. An act that engages conscious intention is rooted in moral logic and choice. The contrast of spontaneity and deliberation is that of automatism and freedom. This contrast is central to the relation of thought to action. The common belief is that spontaneous action does not engage decision, or bypasses it, while in deliberate action, thought guides and implements choices. Some would argue that spontaneous and deliberate actions are not distinguished by the intervention of conscious thought and its effect on action. Among others, Wegner (2002; see Brown, 2002) proposed a dual route model, in which free will is a fabrication that arises “from perceiving a causal link between thought and action.” In his schema, one pathway, the causal path, leads from the unconscious to action; the other, for the illusion of agency, leads to thought. Such attempts to preserve causal determinism by segregating the automatic in one system, the volitional in another, only one of which is

513 causal, violate Einstein’s dictum that things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. The strategy is that, if a deterministic theory of the mind based on a model of object-causation cannot be integrated with the difficulties posed by reflection, choice and free will, then split the “functions” apart, assign them to different compartments and claim that the perception of a connection between the two is the basis of the illusion of free will. In my view, the ad hoc postulation of dual routes is as illusory as the perception of their association. A more parsimonious approach interprets the feeling of agency, decision, intention and the final effectuation of the act as relations within and across segments in a continuum of act-development. This continuum leads from the core self at the inception of the act to motility at its distal implementation [Brown, 1996]. The continuity of the automatic and the voluntary can be interpreted in this context, but before this, more has to be said about deliberation. Deliberation Deliberation is no guarantee of good conduct. Spontaneous action can involve moral or immoral outcomes, deliberation can lead to ethical or unethical conduct, or obstruct a person from acting in an ethical way. While deliberation is preferable to impulse, one can deliberate how best to commit a crime, profit at someone else’s expense, evade capture, or engage in a war [e.g. Sun Tzu: The Art of War], etc., so that deliberation alone does not necessarily arise in a conflict of ego- and exo-centric values. There are occasions when reflection is unwarranted. A child will drown and a stranger will move on, as one deliberates what to do. Deliberation in such instances is a reflection on means that can evade the sacrifice or risk of ends. In certain cases, the very occurrence of deliberation, in replacing action with thought when action is required, is a species of immorality. This is true for both moral judgment and personal conduct. The interpretation of acts of violence by others can become a justification for revenge or a plea for mercy, an excuse for torture or a motive for forgiveness. A description of the political or social antecedents of a crime by those seeking to understand it can provide, even if unintended, a kind of excuse for its consequences. When the developmental history of a criminal is invoked as the reason for his crime, it tends to mitigate responsibility. In the famous defense by Clarence Darrow of Loeb and Leopold, the crime was argued to be inevitable given that the individuals were merely the outcome of their causal ancestry, victims of inheritance and circumstance.

514 Suppose in the course of deliberation a person is exposed to persuasion. Suppose also that persuasion does not install values but appeals to existing traits, i.e. the person who takes advice is someone whose values are in line with the advice he is given. If the deliberation that precedes a moral or immoral action is a choice of moral ends, not means, conduct in a person who is indifferent to attempts at persuasion would seem to be as vivid a display of character as if it were spontaneous. The person who refuses good or bad advice has probably decided on the ends and is weighing the means or consequences. Affirmative values that might have been aroused by others will exert some influence, but this is generally through inciting or reinforcing existing ones. The value-configuration undergoes a gradual evolution with age and experience, hopefully in the direction of a lessening of egoism. However, at any stage in life, unless the individual undergoes a personal crisis or a spiritual conversion, the equilibrium of self and other is unlikely to dramatically shift simply through learning. The criminality of the young may dissolve into the benignity of age, but the reverse also occurs, as the idealism of the young gives way to the corruption of power and money. It is doubtful that an immoral person, young or old, could be persuaded to abort a planned criminal act by an appeal to an other-centered value, though an egoistic one, e.g. fear of punishment, might be a deterrent. If the value-dynamic is relatively stable, why should one expect an appreciable change after a stay in prison, a course of rehabilitation or years of psychotherapy? Criminals may outgrow the selfish or anti-social conduct of youth but rarely undergo a moral conversion. The value-pattern is little changed, rather, its discharge into violence and aggression may slacken, probably due more to physical decline, absence of peer support, lack of confidence, fear of incarceration, etc., not necessarily because the individual has acquired beneficent values, though the individual may, selfservingly, explain a change in desire or conduct through a change in value. We know how difficult it is to reform miscreant children once anti-social patterns are entrenched. If positive values are not there to begin with, or are weakly effective, i.e., subordinate to egoistic needs, moral education later in life will generally not suffice to modify the original value-distribution. However, there are strong philosophical arguments against the rehabilitation of criminals, regardless of whether it is effective (Chapter 13). In spontaneous action or impulse, thought is pre-empted by action. In deliberation, action is replaced with thought. A debate over whether to

515 ignore an offense or respond to it, seek justice, revenge or retribution, punish or forgive, in other words, to be open to contrasting opinions when the categories of possible action vary widely, multiplies options to the point where action may be all but impossible. Ambiguity, context and complexity challenge definiteness and commitment. It is a matter of whether the deep conceptual structure of the act or its concrete realization will prevail. Ultimately, the goal is to achieve coherence of thought and action. We see this in both the individual and in society, when conflict leads not to an action that is energetic and forthright, but to compromise, inaction and delay, though there are occasions when inaction and/or compromise are preferable. When a decision is distributed over many people with differing views, or when one person holds beliefs and values that are incompatible, or if one set of values does not predominate, conflict or compromise is inevitable. The individual is paralyzed by indecision, action is replaced by consensus, diplomacy becomes an end in itself. Strong character, purpose and determination at one extreme, blind faith, totalitarianism, mob action at the other, enjoy a certainty that is not shared by a democracy of opinion which, by its own edict, cannot satisfy every claim. We tend to think of impulse as the more primitive reaction and of deliberation as the higher level capacity. But deliberation often precedes automatic action, especially in learning a skill. The fact that automatic action can shift to deliberative action, and the reverse, is further evidence that the automatic and the voluntary are interpretable in terms of a common process. Moreover, the continuum applies to all actions, not just moral ones. When a person learns a musical piece, a pilot learns to fly a jet, a doctor learns to manage a medical emergency, a period of deliberation and uncertainty precedes the acquisition of a skillful technique. If there is a shift back to this stage, the piece will be played in an unsure, halting manner, the plane will crash while the pilot is refreshing his memory, and the patient will die while the doctor consults his textbooks. Moral decision that entails deliberation is like the initial stage in learning a skill, a musical idea or the treatment of a medical disorder, where the subject engages in mental trial-and-error before a commitment to action. Of course, in these examples of non-moral action, the goal is relatively clear - to perform the piece, cure the patient, fly the plane - whereas in moral action, the goal must first be decided, then its means of accomplishment.

516 Context and commitment The greater the sensitivity to context, the more recalcitrant the individuation and the more elusive the definition of a single path with conviction. Commitment may be weakened when it lapses into deliberation, or strengthened by an interval of reflection, whether choices reflect ends or means, values or strategies. An impulse that is delayed and replaced by language and/or thought does not easily recapture the passion or dedication of the act that was postponed, unless the intervening phase serves, in a single-minded way, to shore up the initial impulse. The delay provides time for the person to gather his resources, support the predisposition and reinforce the action with planning and strategy. Without a strong predisposition to act in a given direction, delay can derail the action from its course, vitiate the impulse of its force, allow it to wither in forgetfulness and distraction, or prevent one course of action from resolving with clarity. An inclination in one person to caution, in another to action, say, the difference between the diplomat and the soldier, reflect unconscious trends of character that spill into actions. The conscious derivations of these core dispositions merely solidify the trends with reasons, justifications. Given these traits of human psychology, the best one can hope for is that action will be humanized by delay, that selfish or destructive impulses will be replaced by compassion, and that beneficent impulses will be fortified with courage. Yet the initial impulse may be the most authentic and is silenced at some personal cost. Do we not at times regret the stillbirth of those impulses of our “instinctive nature,” later nullified by mature judgment, as some of the most honest of our life? What happens when a spontaneous impulse, not just one with moral implications, is withheld and scrutinized as an object of thought? Conscious choice arises when a phase prior to the individuation of an action is retarded in its transit, so that the phase of selection, not the act that is selected, becomes a focus of reflection. The preliminary phase is “carried through” to a conscious endpoint. On this view, consciousness is not a receptacle into which contents are introduced, rather, it is supported by phases that are ordinarily bypassed but are prolonged as contents for introspection. Selective retardation (neoteny) and incomplete specification (parcellation) are instruments of advance and degeneration in evolution, in fetal development and in cognition (Brown, 1996). The elaboration of ideas prior to act-selection is a manifestation in cognition of an expansion at pre-terminal stages. The antecedent is a means to the consequent. If what is earlier is a bridge to what is later, the antecedent, when it surfaces in

517 deliberation, becomes the aim of the momentary thought. The growth and surfacing of antecedent phases samples the context of competing valuations. We see the same process in pathological cognition, where derailments at preliminary phases sample the background context and are thrust into behavior as errors, i.e. wrong choices. Choice may seem a “higher” function than spontaneity, but it results from the uncovering of phases traversed in automatic acts. The postponement that takes unconscious commitment to conscious choice is consistent with the evolutionary principle that the “higher” (later) is not a cognitive or evolutionary add-on, but a branching of “lower” (earlier) uncommitted stages. When the choice implicit in spontaneity becomes explicit in deliberation, we have the feeling of a self with the capacity to choose. The strength of this feeling is such as to overcome any suspicion that a choice is inevitable, or that choice occurs by the foreclosure of competing options. Agency arises when the self is felt to select and implement one of a set of choices between spontaneity, intention and indecision, or habit, resolve and akrasia, i.e. between the implicit will in automatic or rote action, the anemic will in a surfeit of choice and the determined will in a conscious act. The feeling is enhanced by few rather than many options. With only one option, i.e. when any action, or even inaction, is foreclosed, the self feels unfree or coerced. The “coercion” may also reflect a strong, even dogmatic, conviction, in which actions contrary to the “mind-set” of the person are rejected. The continuum from conviction to obsession, compulsion or delusion is discussed in Chapter 15. Conversely, when there are too many choices, the self may be unable to choose. If one cannot decide among twenty dresses in a department store, or thirty plates on the menu of a Greek diner, there is paralysis of the will. This phenomenon indicates that voluntary feeling is not an option added as an external power, for then the number of choices would not matter. Rather, volitional feeling distributes into the act as it is developing. Too many avenues of action-realization dissipate the intensity of voluntary feeling, while a lack of options, if not coerced, or a habit of repetition, discharges (the self) directly in the act. An examination of the microstructure of choice (Brown, 1996) affirms that concepts are not conveyed, but survive into consciousness, as deliberation or indecision uncovers the covert struggle in their actualization. With a recurrence of thoughts, a person is said to become obsessed over a single line of thinking. Or there may be multiple, competing lines of

518 thought, strategic, pragmatic, dialectic. At some point, the contents exhaust the potential of their precursors. When this occurs, thought congeals into one line of advance, or circumstances compel an action, or the individual is distracted and takes up other concerns, or a state of indecision persists, or conflict remains “sub-surface” to be exposed, say, by psychoanalytic methods. Competing claims on (within) the individual owe to opposing values or beliefs. In a sense, there are competing selves. Mandelbaum (1955) has written that moral conflict within a person has the same general form as conflicting judgments between people, just as obligation takes a similar form whether it is internal or external. Ideas propagate as knowledge infiltrates concepts to add nuance to bias. Latent contents are activated out of memory and novel arguments are elicited through propagation or metaphoric extension. Knowledge has its effect by impression or imaginative fusion. Lines of thought or patterns of memory are facilitated and brought to bear on precursor concepts. The gradual assertion of a leading concept reinforces the action path, less by impulsion than an elimination of competing trends. Deliberation is not anticipatory, it revives past objects obscured by a fixation on the present. Ideally, it forges an act that is seamless and spontaneous, as the study of a musical piece leads to a flawless performance. Spontaneity in moral conduct as an outcome of knowledge and reflection is preferred to goodness as a result of moral drill. However, the effect of knowledge is to facilitate commitment by reinforcing presuppositions, not by adding conviction. Did Kant not say, “I must abolish knowledge to make room for belief.” Means/ends in moral and non-moral action The acquisition of knowledge and skill in its application are the aims of study, practice and deliberation. This stage recurs when automatic function is impeded. In moral decision, what is in doubt is what to do; the act is the very thing that needs to be decided. The decision is, or ought to be, about ends. Non-moral decisions, whether to buy a pair of brown or gray socks, climb a mountain or go fishing, or career choices, such as to become a doctor or a soldier, engage a choice of preferences or values at a different proximity to the core personality. Here, the means/ends distinction is less important. Often the ends are implicit - to climb a mountain, play a sonata - while the means are in doubt, e.g. the best route, the preferred interpretation.

519 The structure of non-moral choice is indistinguishable, psychologically, from that of moral choice, except for the emphasis on obligation, or the significance given to the means/ends relation. The importance of this observation, i.e. that emphasis shifts non-moral to moral action, is that it is fruitless to search for the correlates in the brain of moral conduct, in the frontal lobes or elsewhere, since there is a continuum from ordinary to aesthetic to ethical concepts and acts. The continuity affirms the processual nature of these performances. In contrast, an emphasis on their differences leads to an artificial separation of what are continuous facets of perception, of thought and of behavior, and their attribution to different brain systems or locations. Thus, I may be dissuaded in an action by fear of injury (racing cars) or punishment (stealing cars), impelled by arrogance or anger, I may think twice about the courage involved in the conquest of a dangerous mountain, or the selfishness involved in the conquest of a vulnerable woman. A person confronted with a diagnosis of cancer may show spontaneous courage or be tormented with fear, an act of altruism can occur on impulse or emerge out of self-examination. In all these situations, the same thought process is involved and in all character is the key. Consider a soldier who is afraid to fight or parachute from an airplane. Self-protection is rational but may be inimical to courage. Fear is the anticipation of an attack (injury, illness, etc.) by another person or object when one is a target or victim. Values linked to self-interest compete with those that support acts of courage, shame, self-esteem, etc. If one substitutes for the latter those values that represent moral rules or duties, the structure of choice is identical. The non-moral choice is, say, to fight, to overcome fear, to demonstrate courage, and so on. The moral choice is to protect the weak, prevent or penalize an attack on family or nation. In the former, the self is the object, the choice is private (e.g. courage, selfesteem). In the latter, objects are social (e.g. loyalty, patriotism) and choice, as in duty, has a public dimension. The self is asserted in the most unselfish acts, while the other is present, even as a negation, in the heart of egoism. Self and other are implicit in all actions. Why fear death if not for one’s attachments? The difference in the values that underlie courage or the duty to serve in the military is a matter of emphasis on different concepts. In courage, the self is the object. In service, the object is the nation, fellow troops or citizens. A soldier who fights an enemy or rescues a fallen comrade brings the self/other contrast into focus. The moral perspective is that of altruism

520 overcoming egoism. The non-moral perspective is that of courage overcoming fear. Courage is usually conceded to be a non-moral virtue. Courage and cowardice are personal judgments of praise and blame, pride and shame. Such judgments may be private, with no one else aware of an accomplishment or an embarrassment, yet they presume an internalized other. Why else would an individual – say, a mountain climber - care whether he shows courage or cowardice, were it not for the fact of this judgment? The value of self and other are co-temporal at their origination, and continuous in the process leading from self to object. When two egocentric desires or values clash independent of the needs of others, the choice is non-moral. When ego- and exo-centric values clash, the choice is moral. Since values derive from drives, which are adaptive, the origin of every value supposes a social factor. When a moral action places a person at risk, as in fighting a war or saving a comrade, the action appears to be an end in itself. Suppose, however, for a brief instant, a soldier fancies winning a medal for bravery or becoming a hero to the corps. Does this flash of awareness of personal advantage deprive the act of some moral praise? Say the flash is just a bit of foresight in the moment before the act. It may be a reasonable expectation if the outcome is successful. Does it introduce a selfish motive? Does the fear of death increase merit? Oliner (1992) suggests that degree of risk is adventitious. The minimal ingredient is a lack of concern for self. Suppose one soldier perceives little risk in a risky operation, while another anticipates danger in an action that is relatively safe. Suppose the soldier is reluctant, foolish, over-confident, filled with bravado. Is the reluctant hero more or less meritorious than one who is foolhardy? If a soldier is injured trying to rescue a comrade, and the platoon is then weaker by two, thus placing the group in greater danger, what exactly was accomplished? Should others volunteer for a mission if it weakens the group still further? The rational thing might be to leave both comrades and pursue the enemy. The soldier’s motto, “no one left behind,” is good for morale; it is also a refutation of the “moral” calculus, which dictates that five or ten soldiers should not be at risk for the life of one. Such soldiers are not cowards, indeed, they might welcome a fight, yet one can question if an assessment of risks and benefits prior to an action gives a decision that is not clearly moral. The intrusion of the calculus is already a stain on character, turning a moral choice into a matter of military strategy or policy, again aggravating the tension between means and ends, or the will of the individual and what is best for the community.

521 The point of this exercise is not to deluge a virtuous action with a litany of possible motivations and interpretations, but to illustrate how difficult it is, from a psychological standpoint, to distinguish means and ends even in acts that have moral credit. It also illustrates the poverty of any quantitative approach that avoids these difficulties by looking only at conduct. With regard to means and ends in the contemplation of an action, if the person has the end in sight - good or bad - he will contemplate the means. If he is undecided as to ends, he will contemplate both. Kant and others have argued that for an act to be moral it must be an end in itself. Aid to another person should reflect a pure generosity of spirit. It should not, for example, be a means to cultivate a friendship for personal gain, win a medal, appease a “guilty conscience” for past indiscretions, etc. Yet if I enlist the aid of another towards a noble end, he is treated as a means to my end, even if his participation has the effect of increasing his moral worth. The problem does not arise when a person is a means to a beneficent end, for example, when a leader uses an army of conscripts as a means to defend a country against a cruel invader. It only occurs when a person is treated as a means to an unsavory or selfish goal. The leader of the attacking force is evil, that of the defending army good, while in either case the soldiers are means, but in the latter instance, one would not say the leader is immoral in using his army as a means. Regardless of whether ends or means are primary in the mind of the agent, they both reflect his character. The question is whether the complexity of an act or thought can be reduced to this distinction. Is an end a lure, a motive, a terminus or a cause (means) to other ends that may or may not be conscious? Is a means a temporary end, i.e. the terminus of an act of cognition, replaced by another act with yet another end (or means)? Every end devolves to a pursuit of its means of attainment. The preponderance of the means over the ends is a well-established principle. What, then, returning to the example of a fallen soldier, is the best way to help? How should the comrade be rescued? How much time and effort should be expended? Should the rescue depend on the severity of his wounds? Should he be abandoned if transporting him increases the vulnerability of the group? One can ask how long assistance should go on. In similar situations, if one helps others and improves their lot, so increasing their expectations, is it immoral to stop? How far does responsibility extend? Should one give encouragement, money, advice, training? Ends become means to further ends, they necessitate the means to their satisfaction.

522 I want to play a sonata or help a stranger because… Is that my true and only reason? In order to do so I must…. What must I do to accomplish the goal? Only when a person is oblivious to his own motivations can an act be considered an end in itself. That is perhaps why goodness seems to occur in people of great simplicity. Only when the means to achieve an end are transient can they be said to portend goals. When a fractious truce becomes a substitute for a lasting peace, when deliberation persists beyond the conflict that was its source, we can say the end is superseded by the means. But, in many cases this simply implies that the original goal has been forgotten, attention has been diverted, other priorities take its place, etc. Unless this goal is continuously in sight, the means/end relation will be uncertain. As noted, the different emphasis on means and ends in moral and nonmoral action owes to a difference in the nature of conflict, for example, moral acts involve an opposition of egoism and sacrifice, non-moral ones, an opposition among personal desires. The doctor, the pilot, the musician are motivated to learn their craft. Yet there may be conflict prior to commitment when a variety of career options are being explored. A conflict over goals (ends) may concern the individual’s doubt as to his true calling in life, his capacity, stamina or forbearance in its pursuit. But those are not the only concerns. Say a musical individual reluctantly becomes a doctor to please his mother. Suppose a dying mother asks him to promise to study medicine. Suppose the dead mother never makes such a request, but he feels this would have pleased her. Suppose he is in conflict over the study of music or medicine and, uncertain why, assigns the uncertainty to external factors. Non-moral conflicts merge and intertwine with moral ones to such a degree that to distinguish them one has to take extreme cases, the courage of a sailor tossed about on the ocean, death-bed promises, acts of altruism, and so on. Once there is commitment and action is initiated, choice concerns the means to attain the goal. Each means becomes an end or goal for that cognition. The means involve a series of other moral decisions. To become a doctor, pilot, pianist, one may have to dedicate many hours of study at the expense of the needs of close friends or relations. There is competition with others who, as a result of one’s success, may fall behind. Each act of cognition, taken as a momentary state, specifies an aim. The aim – goal, end – becomes clear as it is realized. The conscious aim is not the construct that initiates the action. That some aims are ends and others are means stretches the causal theory of conduct over a concatenation of acts. From

523 the standpoint of process theory, the distinction of ends and means is probably barren of import. The means/ends distinction requires a reconstruction over a series of acts of those that can be considered means and those that can be considered ends. In fact, the end of each act, conceived as a means to a subsequent act or a terminus of the current one, is in both instances the aim of its actualization. Coherence of concept and act The lack of conflict, the naturalness of an action not its rightness, is a mark of authenticity or coherence. The resolution of conflict, or the specification of choice, is the coherence of the outcome with its antecedent configurations. Cognition is incoherent when its final elements do not fully satisfy their semantic or conceptual base. A lack of coherence is a felt sign of this incompleteness. We perceive a spatial or synchronic coherence in the interlocking pattern of everyday objects. This coherence depends on the seeming immediacy of perceptual contact. Another, deeper coherence concerns the temporal or diachronic pattern through which the spatial elements are derived. Action is diachronic, though it becomes synchronic in the agent’s perception. Diachronic coherence is felt or intuited, not directly perceived. All acts and percepts develop in essentially the same way, i.e. as temporal or diachronic “products.” Synchronic coherence is largely a result of visual perception, while diachronic coherence is most strongly felt in audition, of which the prime examples are oral language and music. In music, synchronic unity is inapparent. Music runs in time, so the unity, though built up from the tonal elements, cannot be given all at once. We say we retain the tones in memory to hear a musical phrase or melody, but what does this mean? A melody is perceived as a whole, not as a concatenation. The whole points to the depth of the construct realized in the tones. Similarly, a sequence of words makes sense only with reference to the idea that supports them. Words, like tones, are generated out of concepts, then vanish into memory. The linguistic concept is recovered in the pattern of words. So in music, the coherence is not in the sequence or collection of tones, but is rather an intuition, from them, of the conceptuality of the whole. There is a formal unity in the development of a theme, but even a naïve listener will know when this development, however successful, does not flow from a musical idea. We apprehend the concept behind the words of an utterance and the objects of experience, as

524 we sense a musical idea among the tones. The unity is sensed from the elements, which parse the concept beneath them. It is sensed or felt even when the parts are poorly understood. Lacking an over-arching concept, in music, art or speech, no amount of skill can achieve more than technical interest. The listener is ingredient in what is heard. The feeling for the music is part of what the music is, so much so at times that when the composer speaks directly through the listener, all distinctions of self and other melt away, the world as well, and only the music remains. This, in T.S. Eliot’s words, is music “heard so deeply it is not heard at all.” At such moments, evanescent as they are, the parts dissolve in the whole, the diachronic is felt in the synchronic and all is sensed in all. We then understand an immediacy of knowing in music that is like the immediacy of feeling in loving, and we apprehend the truth of feeling and knowing without the betrayal of words. A coherence of the synthetic and the analytic, the universal and the particular, occurs when the whole resonates in the parts and the parts partake of the whole. A powerful realization of this relation has been, for many thinkers, from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, the very definition of genius. When the tendency to ever-greater generality overcomes the deference to endless detail, facts are no longer taken to be elements in concepts but their realizations, and concepts, leaving facts behind, pre-empt the elements they purport to explain. Whether the universe is conceived as animate or material, when the boundaries of the conceptual are unsettled or the nature of facts is undecided, the categories become ways of specifying the limits of value as the absolute is probed by theory. Yet the beauty of any theory must still bow to the “stubborn facts” of nature, which have the last word in what the concept has to say about them. Concepts are not inductions of facts, but generate facts as realizations of value. The accommodation of concept to fact is an historical process of fact-creation, the transition of conceptual valuation into objects that seem value-free. Concept and fact are reconciled in the relation of thought to action, or deliberation to spontaneity. We see a comparable reconciliation of abstract potential to concrete possibility in the adjustment of ambition to achievement or of the desired to the attainable. More obscure is the scope of conceptuality in a science of material fact. The conceptual and the material, like the mental and the physical, are symbiotic concepts. The one supposes the other, to which it is a response. A fixation on facts as building blocks of concepts can suffocate an ambiguity that may be our best

525 approximation to truth. Assertion and refutation seem to be the sole paths to knowledge, but what sort of truth survives? A negation, unlike a refutation, constrains; it does not reject but exposes the nugget of truth that remains after a mountain of error has been excavated. The limits of any theory are at stake when anything is described, for a description is a piece of the theory that supports it. For every category, there is another just beyond its contours. Every statement plumbs the depths of the presuppositions on which everything depends. Responsibility There is a sense in which responsibility differs for an action that is spontaneous as opposed to one that is deliberate. Generally, a period of reflection prior to an action presumes a responsibility for it in a way that is not credited to spontaneity, though we are inconsistent in the application of this principle. A person enjoys moral praise and is held responsible for a spontaneous act of heroism or altruism, but does not have the reciprocal degree of responsibility and blame for an equivalent fit of destructive anger. One person runs into a burning building to rescue a child, another panics and seeks only to save himself. We praise the character of the altruist and infer responsibility for a beneficent act, while its opposite may be excused to some extent as impulsive, emotional and involuntary. This distinction is ingrained in the law in the greater responsibility for premeditated action. Since there is no point in praising actions for which an individual is not responsible, the inference of responsibility is essential to the moral credit that accrues to a spontaneous act of goodness. Why should an individual who commits a spontaneous act that is harmful be less responsible for his actions than someone whose conduct is virtuous? Since the psychological process in these acts should not be radically different, it implies that we read responsibility back into the agent from the nature of his acts. We judge the action, infer the character, impute intention or impulsiveness behind the action and, based on this, assign praise, blame or degree of responsibility. The consequences of an action and its inferred intentionality are the grounds on which we decide whether or not a person is responsible. The inference of weak intention in spontaneous actions that are harmful may owe to the presumption of a natural goodness from which immoral acts are a deviation. The assumption that a natural striving for goodness is derailed by irrationality owes to the idea that virtue derives

526 from knowledge, vice from ignorance, and that the latter is less culpable than the former is praiseworthy. Thus, we are inclined to attribute harmful actions to a defect in judgment, or a lack of clear thinking, while beneficent action indicates an enlightened moral consciousness. This is especially so if goodness is conceived as conduct in opposition to egoism, which is held to be the natural condition, so that to counteract self-interest implies greater intention. Further, unlike bad acts, good ones do not require explanations. Since explanation tends to mitigate punishment by pathologizing the crime rather than vilifying the criminal, the tendency is to a diminution of responsibility. The pragmatic need to reinforce acts of goodness irrespective of their spontaneity leads us to interpret bad acts as aberrations that must somehow be corrected. This amounts to a preferential attribution of agency and reason to virtue, while indifference or depravity is left to the field of abnormal psychology. Yet within the domain of immediate, automatic or spontaneous action, for good or bad, there should be equal responsibility according to the psychological structure of the act regardless of its moral worth. It is not always the case that a person who thinks before acting is held to have greater responsibility for his conduct. It is often assumed that people who commit a crime, even the most heinous, especially with extreme moral perversion, have a deviant mentality that has its roots in the vicissitudes of early life. The psychopath is a victim of child abuse. If a person is psychotic his judgment is deranged; if he is starving and steals food, he is desperate; if he commits an act of revenge for an egregious wrong he may be justified. In such instances, moral blame and responsibility are diminished. Such cases fall loosely under the rubric of “insanity,” temporary or otherwise, and are assumed to have a lower efficacy of volition. We hear these excuses repeatedly: the person “did not know what he was doing”; “he could not help himself”; “he was not acting ‘normal’.” In our legal system, we require that a person can distinguish right and wrong. But an inability to make this distinction, or at least verbalize it, should not excuse an act of immorality, since the vast majority of psychotics, brain-damaged or people with mental retardation, some of whom may have difficulty with such judgments, do not behave in an antisocial or immoral manner. In sum, we take a different view of self-control in immoral than moral action, regardless of whether it is automatic or deliberate. A presumption of impulsiveness and a lack or a weakness of self-control mitigates the responsibility for immoral acts that are spontaneous. The responsibility for

527 immoral acts that are deliberate is mitigated by the distortion of thought by mental disorder or other circumstances, thus also a weakness of selfcontrol. It is not, therefore, the spontaneity or intentionality of the act that is primary, for in all forms of action there is an interpretive disconnect between good and bad acts from the standpoint of premeditation and intention. The good acts are praised, the person is responsible; the bad acts are reproached, but the person may be said to lack sufficient self-control. We do not attribute the same degree of volition to immoral acts as moral ones, regardless of whether they are spontaneous or deliberate. This dissociation introduces mercy and compassion into the system of justice, but makes no sense at all from the standpoint of human psychology. It seems to boil down to a choice between a theory that is universal to volition or one that is individual to character. A theory of volition, in order to be useful in attributing responsibility, would have to entail that choice is independent of character, for otherwise intention would be a sideshow to the main act of personality, with every act a sampling of some aspect of character. If conduct is determined by character, which in turn is the outcome of one’s causal ancestry, volition would be a sort of psychic slight-of-hand en route to acts and objects. If intention is fully based in character, conduct should be judged irrespective of whether or not it is voluntary. The self, slave to the mistress of character, still believes it is living freely. Spontaneous actions involve covert choices. Choices, overt or covert, explicit or implicit, point to the same phase cyclically entrained. To be aware of a choice is to be aware of this phase, to bring it into focus, to explore the context of other possible outcomes. In this process, traits of character still guide the main lines of thought and action. Some people show greater restraint than others, some are circumspect, others hotblooded, some placid, others intemperate. These dispositions arise from the core of personality. We do not all have a murderer under wraps in the unconscious, but, in each of us, a unique experience carves up innate predisposition to determine the purposes to which they are put. If intention does uncouple from character, a person would have the power to choose the right – or veto the wrong – course of action, to some extent independent of what sort of person he is. Then, it would be fair to judge the action as a unique volition. There is a problem in either case. If we judge the individual according to his character, of which the volition is an expression, the volition is irrelevant. A volition independent of character is a momentary quirk. Yet, the meaning of responsibility entails

528 not just “who did it” but why. Can the person decide among the options that are available and does he recognize their moral priority? The self may have some independence from its causal inheritance, through contingency and the duration of the present, but intention still collapses to character. A free-floating self, Kant pointed out, is a self “out-of-time,” empty of the beliefs, values, preferences, and loyalties on which any decision is based. The psychological structure of intention (Brown, 1996) is central to understanding responsibility. The case material indicates that the feeling of volition or intention is linked to the phenomenon of choice or, rather, both volition and choice arise together in the course of act-definition. The feeling of volition associated with choice resolves to the feeling of intention associated with targets or aims. The progression from vague indecision (potential) through options (choice) to goals (object specification) is accompanied by a different feeling of volition at each phase. Volitional feeling is present for thought imagery but not dreams or hallucinations that arise at greater depth, nor is it pronounced for eidetic or after-images close to the perceptual surface. Volition may be present for a phantom limb. A person might feel he is deliberately strangling someone with a hand that does not physically exist. In the unusual condition of the “alien hand,” an intact hand may try to choke the agent without a feeling of control. Given a dissociation of this type, not to mention instances of sleepwalking, fugues and other states of dissociation, how can we read intention into an act from the act itself? The image- or act-development generates its own volitional quality. Like the arrow of Leibniz that believes it selects its destination, the self is informed of choice when that phase becomes explicit. Volition is ingredient as the self goes out to its subjective aim in a trajectory from unconscious potential to the definite and the real, from value to fact. Every thought or action begins with the values, beliefs and personal experiences that, collectively, comprise a personality. Character is fundamental to who we are, what we think, how we act. Reason develops out of the ideational context created by conceptual feelings, which in turn are generated from the core personality, as an expressive, not instrumental, feature. Values enrich those constructs that incline the self to personal or social ends. They facilitate dispositions to configure concepts and their implementations in words and acts. It is more likely that character lays down volition than that volition influences character and, thus, that responsibility begins with character, not volition. Even if we are not the authors of our own character but its victims

529 or beneficiaries, the question remains whether the self freely chooses, or whether character spills through intention into behavior. If the latter, the objective judgment is the only judgment we can make, even if it stops where the subjective is felt to begin. A judgment of conduct by others leaves untapped those inner states that constitute the greater part of its structure. For an objective theory these states are inferred. For microgenetic theory, the process leading to the act, not the act itself, is the primary datum. The conclusion of this line of thought is that in judging an action we are or should be judging the character of the actor, even if we must infer that judgment from conduct. The option of choosing right from wrong and the intention that inheres in an act of choice are an origination myth on the unknown antecedents of acts. Like any myth, this one survives and is perpetuated because it satisfies human needs, agrees with common sense and is necessary for justice, but also because it discharges society of the responsibility for creating its own saints and monsters. If an agent is not responsible for an immoral action, he must still suffer the consequences of being the sort of person he is. If he is not even responsible for his own character, which is an outcome of genetic predisposition and nurture, how can he be responsible for what he does? If volition is bound to character and free choice is illusory, which is not to say inefficacious, is there a possibility that character can be changed by an act of will? If a person cannot choose his acts, can he decide his values? If not, we are automatons without agency or personal responsibility, with as little reason to praise a good act as blame a harmful one. We simply diagnose character and the benefit or danger it poses. Those of good character are – in an ideal if not real world – rewarded by positions of responsibility, those of bad character are removed so others are protected. However, if the self cannot choose its acts or values, might character be intentionally elevated or debased, not by an act of will, for it seems unlikely that the will could act reflexively on its own foundations, but by openness to change? This would require a self that is aware of, and willing to have limits placed on, its own egoism, and to have positive values instilled, i.e. to allow other-directed values to more fully infiltrate existing unselfish dispositions. Specifically, if volition is the deception that we decide on choices that in some sense have already been made, might the self choose to adapt a receptive attitude toward self-betterment? This would not entail direct action, but rather a kind of permission to others for one’s own moral improvement. Can the self assume a posture that is

530 receptive to moral education? The subjective criterion of responsibility would then not be restricted to whether a person acts responsibly, for this may be beyond his control, but whether he is mindful of his moral failings and open to the growth of personal values that are empathic and lifeenhancing.

Chapter 20. Thought and Memory I have forgotten the word I intended to say, and my thought, unembodied, returns to the realm of shadows. Mandelstam In contemporary psychology, since the early days of rote learning experiments (Ebbinghaus), memory has been treated as an isolated faculty, or as a bundle of multiple faculties or components, all of which are independent of, and interact with, other components of cognition. Thus, we have, inter alia, the well known divisions into long term, short term, iconic, working, episodic, semantic, procedural, declarative, and so on, with efforts to pin down anatomical substrates for each type. How these components relate to thought, dream, perception, imagery or feeling is rarely discussed. It is merely assumed that perception provides the material for memory, and that memory – reciprocally - provides the material for feeling and thought. This approach has been justified by the presumed need to study memory apart from its relation to other aspects of cognition, which have their own sub-systems and separate lines of observation and experimentation. This trend toward increasing analysis, compartmentalization and localization - the triumph of the “splitters” over the “lumpers” - is the bugbear of modern day psychology. The division of memory into part-functions and the breaking of larger units into smaller ones seems to have all the earmarks of discovery and advance. However, it is one thing to analyze a whole into parts, and quite another to re-unite the parts once they have been separated. Aside from the part-functions, once memory as a whole is carved out from other aspects of cognition there is no simple algorithm, only a mere compilation, that allows the context to be reinserted back into acts of learning or recall. The presumed heuristic of the methodology gives a plurality of mechanisms that grow ever more distant from the starting point. It is useful, then, to examine the topic of “prospective memory,” for it illustrates very well the bond between deliberation or planning and recall or, more precisely, the unity of process that gives rise to productive and reproductive thought. The fundamental argument of this chapter is that the different components of memory can be understood in relation to micro-temporal

532 phases in thought- and object-development. Such an approach is essential if the thought-like quality of memory – and the converse – are to be given a satisfactory interpretation. The paper first takes up arguments for the continuity of memorial experience with other aspects of the mental life, then returns to the question of anticipatory or “prospective” memory. The continuity of the mental life Prospective memory is recurrent thought about the future, and thus a dialectic of thought and memory on the axis of time. A thought of a prior experience that is accompanied by a feeling of pastness, repetition and familiarity is as much a memory as an idea, while memory becomes thought when it departs from reproduction and its content is not evidently perceptual. Take the difference between a memory of going to work yesterday and a thought of going to work tomorrow. They have essentially the same content, going to work, are intentional, can recur as reiterated, i.e. relatively static – even obsessive – contents, or serve as a point of departure for deliberation. A memory would appear to be about something that actually happened, i.e. an experience, while a thought may be about an experience, but unless it is intense or recurrent, it is not itself usually felt as experiential. The question arises, if experience is the key, how do we know a memory corresponds to a “real” and not an imaginary experience? We think that “real” experience is the basis of memory, whereas an imagined experience is a kind of thought, or a dream. Memory is grounded in experience, but actual or objective experience is not necessary for a memory, and with respect to experience, the distinction of memory, dream and thought is not sharply drawn. If I remember going to work and regret not meeting Sally on the way, or I remember that I forgot to take my keys, the “memory” is for something that did not occur, i.e. for a non-event, where thought fills in the blanks in the memorial content. If the memory includes the fact that I was thinking about Sally as I was walking to work, or hoping to meet her on the way, then the recall is not only for a perceptual experience, but also incorporates thought and expectation. Suppose I remember that I was thinking, as I was walking, that I did not meet Sally. That would be a memory of a thought about a non-event together with a memory of the experience of thinking, or one could say that the thought of Sally was part of the experience of walking to work. If I did not think of Sally on the walk, but later regret that I did not see her, that is a present thought with reference to a memory, but not itself a memory of a thought. A memory can be for a thought, even a “non-event,” as well as an

533 actual experience. This statement is non-controversial, but it is important to emphasize the presence of thought and memory in every act of recall, since psychology, as mentioned, tends to isolate memory as a discrete function. The inability of psychology to account for memories of non-events has made it difficult to explain counterfactuals, such as "If I had met Sally on the walk...", showing the fuzzy boundaries between thought and memory. Memory is never exactly true to experience, especially for a reminiscence that spans repeated events. If I walk to work every day, each particular event in the daily routine will be forgotten, but the memory of the route and the occurrences on a typical walk will be extracted as an average or model of all of the walks I have taken, almost all of which have been forgotten. This memory of the route and the regular events of the journey is not for any given instance, but is a kind of generalization, or category, or ideal in which those instances have a share. Similarly, one may recall only a few of the many times one has met with or made love to the same partner, but their general character is preserved at the expense of a reminiscence of each particular moment. Memory for language and objects is also like this, e.g. semantic or conceptual memory. We do not recall when we first saw a chair, or learned its name, or the innumerable exposures to the word or object “chair” but when we recall or use the word chair, or recognize the object it signifies, it is the category that generates (perceives, expresses) the particular. This is the model for memory in general, that of an abstraction or categorization over events, whether an event that is continuous or one that recurs (Chapter 1). When memory generalizes to cover multiple events, or experiences, but does not apply with exactness to any one of them, is this still memory? At what point does a memory become a concept or a thought? The continuity of thought and memory is apparent in forgetting. As memory decays, it passes through “short-term” stages that preserve some “physical features” of the object, or, one can say, are relatively faithful to the perceptual event. Forgetting then proceeds to less pictorial, vaguer “long-term” stages that are characterized by meaning and conceptual feeling. However, even in the early stages of forgetting or recall, there is “chunking” of items into semantic groups (cf. the classic paper by Miller, 1956), indicating the presence of a conceptual factor in recall. At some point in forgetting, there is uncertainty as to what part of the vagueness is a thought or a memory. It is not necessarily that a person is confused as to the content, but rather, that the content exhibits features of both thought and memory. The closer the memorial content to the perceptual surface, the

534 greater its resemblance to the original perception. An eidetic image is the paradigm of this phenomenon. As the eidetic fades, it becomes less perceptual and more like a memory image in the “mind‘s eye“ before it transitions into thought (Klüver, 1933). The more distant the content from the perceptual surface, the more it is like a thought, memory or dream. Amnesics cast in relief the process of normal forgetting. Quantitative studies on “retrieval” are designed to show what details of a target are or are not recalled, suggesting that memory and decay are piecemeal. However, in clinical studies, Betlheim and Hartmann (1951) showed that recall in amnesics has features of dreamwork, with symbolic distortion, displacement, etc. In other words, bits of memory are not forgotten, rather the qualitative transformation of the recall achieves a level of dream cognition. Memory decays (or is revived) to dream and the precursors of conscious thought, becoming ingredient in recognition, unconscious learning and motivation, value, belief, habit, neurosis, and all other mental phenomena. Dream The relation of memory to perceptual experience raises the question of the memory for a dream. A dream is also a perceptual experience, but one that is imagined, and in this regard it is closer to a thought. When I recall walking to work yesterday, I know that the memory is for an actual event carved out of all the events of that day, indeed, all of the events of my past, but how do I actually know, divorced from its temporal context, that I went to work on that day as opposed to having dreamt the same occurrence? Did I really meet Sally, was it a dream, did my strong desire to meet her lead to the belief that we actually met? One may be confused as to whether the content of a memory was an actual experience or a dream, especially after some time has passed, and when the dream is “true to life.” We have all had the experience that Keats described, when he wrote, “Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?” When this occurs, we attempt to revive the wider context of the memory in prior or subsequent events to be certain as to its authenticity. When the content of a dream is very different from waking experience, not necessarily bizarre but merely unnatural or unfamiliar, the lack of coherence with waking experience is sufficient to establish it as a dream. When the dream is close to, or about, waking experience it may be confused with memory, and the recollected dream is felt as real. We do not usually have this confusion shortly after a dream, but looking back after

535 some time there may be uncertainty as to whether the dream occurred. Depending on the novelty of the dream, it may approximate memory, creative thought or fantasy. There are many examples of original thinking, even Nobel experiments that have occurred in dream. The conclusion is that the various forms of thought, dream and memory do not point to separate and distinct mechanisms but are determined by subtle biases in the process of actualization. It is a good thing we do not remember most of our dreams. or we would be in a constant state of uncertainty about the “reality” of the past, and whether life itself is a dream. The confusion of dream and memory is common in primitive cognition. Myth is the transitional case. The dreamtime of the myth does not contradict the serial order of the conscious present. Rather, the myth informs or merges with the perception as part of the reality of present experience. Elkin (1943) has written of the totem as the door to the eternal dreamtime of the myth, as a state of recollection and receptivity allows intimations of mythic import to pass into and color present experience. The simultaneity of imagery displayed in the myth is like a dream transmitted into the conscious experience of an individual or a community. In the primitive mind, thoughts are real objects, objects are infused with thought. Dreams are as real as objects, and like objects, have magical powers. The past is very much alive in the present. For moderns, this mode of magical or animistic thought is little more than a fleeting intuition rapidly obliterated by the oncoming state, but later in life it may return as one looks back and imagines that one’s life has passed like a dream with the quality of an illusory image founded on an imaginary or no-longer-existing past. As to the question of why dreams are largely forgotten – indeed, forgotten memories are the bedrock of dream – perhaps it is because they do not occur in relation to a temporal series organized about a past, present and future. The “timelessness” or simultaneity of dream described by von Hartmann (1893), then Freud, generates the serial order of waking time awareness. The particulars of the dream are embedded in the simultaneity of the unconscious, and can be revived only when events, or the mental state in which the events occur, resemble in some respects the dream state and evoke a portion of its content. The combination of simultaneity and state-specificity might explain dream forgetting. If dreams, as Freud wrote, concern the least noticed or ambient fragments of the preceding day, it is because those fragments, not having individuated to conscious objects, can only be revived to the preliminary

536 phases of their initial encounter, and thus have greater proximity to the unconscious, meaning-laden symbolic images of dream cognition. The fact that ambient experience is more often revived in dream than the objects of discrete or foveal awareness might explain why dream contents, buried beneath the floor of conscious attention, can only be accessed by a statespecific recall, as in the contents of hypnotic or other trance states. If so, while we have no sense of memory during the dream (the thought or memory is the dream) a dream might be revived in a subsequent dream to give a continuity of the dream-life similar to that in wakefulness. I wonder how many others like me have experienced thematic progression over successive nights in a dream-series. Such observations confirm that there is no solid ground on which a memory rests. Others may attest to the reality of the event, but all one knows of the event is what can be revived as a content in the present. The past happened, and perhaps there is a true account of the past, though this would not be the actual past but propositions about it, for the actual past has no existence other than its present revival. A proposition about a past event may be said to be “timelessly” true or false, but if it is as true to say an event did not occur as that it did occur, its non-occurrence is related not to existence but to a proposition about existence. In some respects, the past of memory is like the past of history. The historical past, whether or not it is remembered and whether or not one can say it actually occurred, leaves its mark on consequent events in the same way that the personal past leaves its unconscious effects on thought and behavior. Indeed, invented or misconstrued events can be more vital to behavior in the present than true facts. What exists in the personal past is, for the subject, as for historical consciousness, what is actively remembered, and this varies with the state of the person at the moment of acquisition and/or recall. Recall, true and false We are aware when a memory is vague or incomplete, but not because it is compared to what actually happened, which we cannot know unless others serve as witness, and even then, through the medium of others we are doubly removed from personal experience. Rather, we know a memory is sketchy or inadequate simply because it is not fully or clearly remembered, or because certain of its details do not cohere with others. There will be successive attempts at recall until the revived segments fit together in a context that makes sense. This is as true for accurate recall as for confabulation. If I recall the major part of my walk yesterday, even if

537 the memory is a total fabrication, I am satisfied that what I remember is faithful to the original event. It is a common observation in amnesic cases that the listener is uncertain whether the story he hears is accurate or not. Without knowledge of the person or a model to compare with, the plausibility and coherence of the story may be convincing. The individual with frontal or temporal lobe brain-damage may give an extravagance of erroneous detail on tasks of story recall, while the normal person will tend to show incompleteness. However, a memory can never be complete. We do not have the ability of Funes the Memorius in the short story by Borges, who required a whole day to remember a day’s events. Even in this tale of imagination, Borges remarks on Funes’ limited ability to form concepts in the face of total recall. In an actual case such as Luria’s mnemonist (1969), a photographic memory was accompanied by a lack of conceptualization. Ordinarily, remembrance is a process of selection in which value and meaning play a role. The mnemonist of Luria said that he had so many memories crowding into consciousness that he was unable to sort them. The fact that he could not inhibit irrelevant memories was taken to indicate that selection involves the isolation of contents by the suppression of others. In everyday life, we know that the recall of an event is affected by feeling, novelty and familiarity, interest and semantic or conceptual relations. What is not generally recognized is that this is also true of what we perceive. Value and meaning are guides to perception. This is evident in the perception of an artwork, but especially apparent in music, where perceptual categories and expectations are essential just to hear a melody. What a person does or does not notice, what he remembers or forgets, is central to a theory of mind. It is also the basis of interpretation in psychoanalysis. Such observations affirm that memory is not an isolated faculty, as it is treated in psychology textbooks, but is a realization of thought, value and personality. On formal tests of memory, incomplete or tentative recall differs from false memory in that an incomplete memory can be revised, piecemeal, as its detail gradually fills in. On tasks of list-learning in normal subjects, intrusion errors from previous sets are not easily rejected. In personal memory, say a walk to work in the morning, I may remember what I was doing when I met, or was hoping to meet, Sally. If we did meet, I may recall our conversation and parting. As these recollections rise into awareness, each segment of the narrative seems to facilitate the recall of a related portion. Later on, I may recall an uncertainty or ambiguity in the

538 conversation. What did she mean when she said such and such? Was it an expression of sincerity, interest, hope, or just a pleasantry? As the memory recurs, the story fills in, but at the same time, it becomes more like a thought than a memory. After a while, we may search the experience in an attempt to revive its factual content. Eventually we come to see that there is no exact replica of the encounter that is a reliable basis for recall, or even a trustworthy starting point for contemplation. Thought influences, penetrates and gradually usurps the shadowy grounds of perceptual experience. We see a similar phenomenon on a smaller scale when we search for the name of a person. We may give a description of the person, when we last saw him, how he behaved, what he said, yet still the name eludes us, and the memory is felt as incomplete. We make further attempts at recall, but even with an incomplete memory, unless the name is very close to recall, it is unusual that a false recollection occurs, though subsequent recollections may revise prior uncertainty. But in the unusual case that such an error does occur, for example, saying with confidence that John’s name is Harry, it is usually only rejected with evidence to the contrary, not by more accurate recall. In the florid confabulation of amnesia or schizophrenia, a false memory can either become encapsulated as a delusion or be revised or replaced by other false memories. The failure to reject a false memory, or the satisfaction that a memory is accurate even if it is involuntarily fabricated, combined with the inability to convince a person who confabulates that his recall is an invention, argues against the existence of an accurate record or standard against which a remembrance is compared. What it comes to is that a memory does not consist of “bits” of information that are “retrieved” from a “store” like money from a bank. or accessing a file in a computer; rather, a memory is a configural pattern that actualizes a potential. When the potential actualizes in part-memories, further elements are generated to fill in the recall as much as possible. Revision is spontaneous, as the configuration is derived to part-memories that satisfy their anticipatory phases. This continues until the possibilities of revision are exhausted. The memory does not exist in situ, it is a potential for realization. That is why the recall of an event may vary over time. One may remember later what one has previously forgotten. The word I was searching for yesterday may suddenly “pop up” in my mind today. Such phenomena, together with experiments - indeed, everyday

539 observations - that show the effects on conscious thought, perception or behavior of unconscious memorial data, as well as studies of “consolidation,” recall under hypnosis, etc., have suggested to many the existence of a store with variations in access or retrieval. However, these observations are equally consistent with a concept of memory as a potential for revival that is variable, in which the memory is not stored and retrieved, but develops through a set of phases into (with) consciousness The concepts of store and retrieval, and the copy theory of memory to which they are linked, do not address the problems raised by this line of memory study, e.g. how a memory is looked up, found and brought into awareness, and how a memory can be found without knowing in advance what one is looking for. Most importantly, “who” is doing the looking? Does anyone seriously believe the conscious self “reaches” for a memory into the unconscious? Indeed, the self is as much a product of memory as what is remembered. What is remembered, and when it is remembered, reflect the configural and contextual aspects of the mental state, the ongoing thought and experiential content, and the conflicts and distractions, etc., at the moment of recall. This is especially apparent in state-specific recall, where recapturing the initial state facilitates revival. What is referred to as the “memory store” is most likely a limbic network of dormant synaptic strengths that, on provocation, are activated to initiate the recall process. The memory in this latent or potential network - a vast population of neurons - is a pattern of synaptic biases which, when activated, arouses the infrastructure and formative phases of the memory, but does not yet correspond to the final content in awareness. These biases contribute to and depend on the pattern that is aroused, since the same synapses no doubt participate in countless other memories. The strength of the synapse in relation to the myriad strengths of innumerable synapses in a neuronal population is part of the wave-like propagation of the configuration that undergoes sculpting at successive phases to individuate a specific pattern corresponding to a given thought or memory. From this perspective, the “trace” is the full derivation of this pattern over phases in the mental state. The final actuality (thought, reminiscence) individuates a virtual infinitude of inchoate possibilities. The pattern of the trajectory is more or less fully realized when a memorial experience recurs, and this can vary from one moment or day or year to the next. All of this is by way of saying that the experiential ground of a memory contributes to its recognition but is not what makes the content

540 memorial. From the subject’s point of view, apart from the unconscious effects of experience on learning or value creation, what is recollected is all there is of experience. If I recall a word today that I had previously forgotten, that word is alive in the present moment, whereas before it “existed” as one of an incalculable number of possibilities. It is not the link to experience that establishes a content as a memory but the memorial character of the cognition that informs us that the momentary content has an experiential basis. An event that is remembered is presumed to have occurred by virtue of its being recognized as having been revived. An insistent false memory of an event is pathological. What is “lost” in such cases is the ability to derive unconscious content to normal waking consciousness. That a true or false memory is not inextricably bound to experience is seen in the fact that amnesic patients confabulate on future events. Ultimately, what designation or tense we apply to a content depends on its character in the present state. Familiarity The feeling of pastness occurs in a state of consciousness when the incompletely revived content is the focus of attention within a fully developed cognition. For the awareness of a memory, and the feeling that the cognition is centered in a past experience, the incomplete segment that generates the memory must occur in relation to a veridical present. An incomplete segment that actualizes as an endpoint results in dream or pathological cognition. Without the perceptual immediacy of the present, i.e. without an immediate past in relation to an oncoming future, all mental phenomena are apprehended as present events, as in dream. This may also characterize animal cognition. The feeling of pastness is an essential aspect of memory, but alone it is not sufficient to distinguish a memory from a prior thought or dream. Ordinarily, we only realize how tenuous these distinctions are when we cannot decide on the category of a given mental content, i.e. whether it was a dream, a thought or a perception. The perceptual quality of dream and waking experience is critical to their distinction. Yet such phenomena as déjà vu unsettle the stable ground of experience by reminding us that novel events may feel familiar. In déjà vu, the feeling that we have had a prior experience corresponding to the present one raises the question of the relation of familiarity to memory, i.e. whether the experience of memory gives the feeling of familiarity or the feeling of familiarity gives the experience of memory.

541 An implicit feeling of familiarity may owe to the reactivation of previously traversed configural patterns that were ingredient in the original traversal, but on reactivation do not undergo the perceptual completion of the original state. If this is true, it implies that a déjà vu experience has some basis in memory, but the revival is sufficient only for the sense of familiarity, not for the underlying memory. This might suggest that conscious recognition, or the awareness of sameness or similarity, is an implicit déjà vu that becomes explicit in altered states. However, recognition is usually automatic. We do not have déjà vu each time we see the same person or use the same coffee cup. What is important about déjà vu is not the possibility of an inchoate memory, but that it is false recognition, the conscious feeling of familiarity or recurrence for a novel situation, specifically, a feeling of recognition without a (remembered) basis in reality. Déjà vu is infrequent in normal people but common in certain pathologies, especially when the temporal lobe is involved, as in the onset of a migraine or the aura of an epileptic seizure. The phenomenon of déjà vu shows that the feeling of familiarity can occur in the absence of a memorial experience, or that an experience may feel familiar without a memory. I would interpret déjà vu as a brief attenuation of a perception, in which penultimate phases in the perception are accentuated. Since memory is the incomplete revival of perception, the accentuation of earlier phases in an object gives a memorial experience that is embedded in ongoing perception. In this regard, déjà vu is similar to other symptoms of brain “dysfunction” that can also be interpreted as submerged pre-processing phases. To remember is to have an explicit awareness of the implicit revival on which thought and perception depend. Implicit recognition is essential to memory. Explicit recognition without a basis in memory, as in déjà vu, marks the continuum of perception and memory. It is also an intuition of the combination of recurrence and novelty that is present in every act of cognition. Déjà vu as a memorial experience for a prior event, even if no such event occurred, is a reminder of the implicit or tacit recurrence that pervades every cognition and, in this regard, is an insight to the iterative or replicative nature of mind as each fleeting present is shed by living process in the pursuit of continuous novelty. Normally, a first meeting is judged to be novel in that a memory, i.e. a similar configural pattern, is not elicited. When we say a person reminds us of someone, or we ask if we have not met the person before, we acknowledge the tacit recognition that underlies perception. In amnesia, a

542 repeated occurrence, such as seeing the same person over several occasions, may be experienced as an initial encounter and, in this sense, as novel. The absence of recall gives an artificial novelty in which the individual is unaware of the sameness in the event. We would not say a person with Alzheimer’s disease has continuous novelty if both novel and habitual encounters are apprehended as unique. The amnesic who thinks a repeated event is novel because he has lost the ability to evoke the prior experience should not have the concept or awareness of novelty, which depends on comparing prior with present states. For most of us, novelty resides in a perception that is unfamiliar, and is most apparent with a radically different experience, say, a voyage to an unknown land or an encounter with an original personality. There is also novelty in an unusual thought or utterance. The theory of generative grammar proposed infinite creativity in language production, though most people are limited to one or two conversations, and tend to repeat themselves endlessly within the topics of their interest. The categorical nature of perception limits novelty to unfamiliar objects, i.e. those which seem outside the usual categories. The novelty of any object or thought is not felt acutely because it resembles in some respect the objects and thoughts we have previously experienced. The priority of the categorical over the particular gives the feeling of the habitual that pervades most aspects of life. Perhaps only the genius who is aligned with the creative power of nature is sensitive to the insistent novelty that brings each object into the world. The genius abandons objects of perception for the process through which they are generated. Ordinary mind focuses on the replication of the mental state and its objects that gives stability to transition. This is also the seed of habit. In contrast, in the retreat to the memorial undersurface of objects, one becomes aware of reminiscence melting into thought in a creative process of actualization. Here we come again to the distinction of memory and thought, memory on the side of replication (revival, stability, habit), thought on the side of innovation (change, novelty, originality). The greater the feeling of stasis in reproduction, the closer the object to perception and memory. The greater the feeling of change within a replication, the closer the object to thought. The novelty that pervades all material and mental process involves a departure of memory into thought. There is a precedence of becoming over being. The stability of category over process entails the relaxation of the activity of thought into the solidity of being. Now, replication or memory predominates.

543 Intentionality and desire Is intentionality the core of “prospective” memory? The intentional involves a relation of the self to objects in the past, present or future. It is a feeling generated in the object-development as objects issue out of the self. We think of the intentional in relation to action, and thus to future acts, but any content can be the aim or topic of an intentional state. Intentionality is independent of temporal direction. The orientation to past, present and future is secondary. Recollection and anticipation are equally intentional. To think of a past experience is no less intentional than to think of a future possibility. A state without specific content, such as a mood, is nonintentional. When an intention is bound up with desire or expectation it has an aim beyond the present, as in the intention to take a walk or to give a call to Sally. Thought intentionality has no one temporal orientation; it does have direction – from self to object – but there are differences in the intention to a present thought or object, a memory or future idea or possibility. One difference is that memory is spontaneous, similar to the way an external object comes into perception, while a state of intentionality engaged in thinking or directed to an event in the future feels as if it plays a part in bringing the event about. If one thinks of or recalls a planned vacation, it is felt as a preparatory stage or plan that eventuates in a decision. This feeling of preparation or expectation is usually attributed to an intention, but the more rigorous interpretation is that intentionality is not an inherently agentive consciousness. In prospective memory, say the intention or recollection that I will walk to work this morning, the idea of walking to work arises spontaneously as a kind of memory. One can as easily say, I have the thought I will go to work, as that I remember to go to work. As a memory, the construct is an object of an intentional awareness that arises with a passive or receptive feeling in which the obligation is part of the memory. The obligation may owe to this passivity, in which the memory comes to the subject, as well as to the habit that develops out of memory. The feeling of obligation depends critically on mnestic content and the preservation of custom or traits of personal character. In creative thinking there is a shift from habit to novelty or from obligation based on should to responsibility based on agency and choice. Like memory, thought also arises spontaneously, but is often felt as voluntary. If the idea of going to work is conceived as a memory, an elaboration or permutation of that memory as it is reviewed in the mind

544 takes on volitional feeling. The memory of the route and incidental features is relatively fixed, but any step in the progress of the walk – the corner cafe, the news stand, etc. – can serve as the nucleus of a thought. This nucleus can also lead to an intention to act. What exactly is the difference between knowing (remembering) that I must walk to work this morning and intending to walk to work, between an obligation based in memory and an intention based in thought? A memory is felt more like an obligation. An intention is more like a desire. Can one say that the portion of the thought consisting of the memory develops into the intentional state in a manner not unlike that of a perception, but once in that state, the portion of the memory consisting of the thought is felt as the product of intentional interest? The central phenomenon is the relation of an active self to a mental object. In memory, the self is passive to the memorial content, becoming active to the extent the subject undergoes a shift from the receptive mode of memory to the active mode of thought. A feeling of forward momentum is generated as the state actualizes. The transition is from past to present. The orientation to the past in memory occurs with a retardation of this momentum. The emphasis on preliminary phases reduces the force of the drive to the perceptual surface, i.e. the present or future. When we reflect on a memory, attention is concentrated at penultimate phases in the mental state. The accent on memorial content diminishes the feeling of agency, which is enhanced by the forward-going drive to present objects. Agency does not arise from the momentum to the present but is enhanced as the self goes out to objects. The shift in attitude depends on the subtle accentuation and degree of completeness at serial points in the actualization process. The temporal direction of an intention is closely related to the prospective or retrospective character of memorial experience. Desire is critical to prospective memory or thought. We desire what we do not possess, or if we possess it, we desire to retain or enjoy it. Desire is the forward impulse in a subjective aim. Desire is more closely associated with intention, but the difference between them is that desire knows and wants (fears, etc.) its objects, while intentionality knows its objects but may not desire them. The distinction is more pronounced in memory, which provides the objects of desire, but not the desire for those objects. Agency enters intention to the extent that we desire what we remember, either to repeat a prior experience or, in prospective memory, to possess an object that recurs in thought. The relative freedom of

545 intentionality from desire tends to align the former with the “reflective faculty.” This is partly its appeal to philosophy as the criterion of mentality, much as syntax for many linguists is the hallmark of language. However, intentionality is not an affect-free state in opposition to feeling and desire. In the intentional state, one object – idea, memory – is selected as a focus of interest from all other possible foci. This interest is a sign of value. Unlike desire, in which feeling is centered in the self, or worth, in which feeling is centered in the object, interest occurs with weak desire in an object of modest worth as a state of feeling in which self and object have an equal share. Intentionality is a mode of interest in which affect is more evenly distributed over the self and its subjective aim. The “aboutness” of intentionality becomes desire when the self (subjective pole) is accentuated and the subject wants the object of interest, or when the aim (objective pole) is accentuated and the subject is drawn to an object invested with value. Ordinarily, we desire objects, not thoughts or memories, though the idea of the object is as much the aim of a desire as the object itself. Thinking of an object, or remembering the object into thought, increases the desire for it, though one could as easily say that the desire, yet unsatisfied, seeks to exhaust a yearning for the object by reviving its image in memory. But the image itself is usually not the object of desire. Nor do we desire a thought or a memory that is already available. We may wish we could better recall an event or have more productive thoughts, but not knowing what those memories and thoughts would be like, the desire, if it be so called, lacks a specific aim. This is not to say that one may not feel the activity in a search of memory or the hope to recall a past event. Moreover, the desire to remember a past event is unlike the desire for an event in the future in that desiring is not felt to assist in bringing the event about. The more one struggles to think or remember, the farther away the desired content may grow. Deliberation and Prospective Memory If I contemplate a future event on repeated occasions, for example a planned vacation, the memory of the preparation is for an anticipated but not-yet-existing event, but the preparatory events, which include everything from enthusiasm to apprehension, to the details of ticketing and itinerary, are revisited and reworked in consciousness. The contents are thought-like in that they do not have a basis in past experience and are

546 directed to the future, yet memory is involved, in that a plan or intention is recalled which has not yet become experiential in the usual sense. In “prospective memory,” we are face to face with the interplay of memory and thought. Prospective memory revives the subjective aim of a thought about a future object. It involves the memory of a thought, not necessarily a perceptual experience, for example, the thought of a voyage in the future. When the thought is revived, it is apprehended as a memory, whereas a revision in the memorial content is apprehended as a thought. Prospective memory differs from ordinary memory in that it feels largely selfgenerated and not bound to actual experience. In this respect, it is more like the memory of a thought then an external event. The event that will be its experiential content is in the future, but the present memory is a recollected thought about that future event. It is an example of a memorial phenomenon for a non-experiential event, or a thought that is the experiential basis of a memory. Regardless of whether a vacation was inspired by a film, a book or a conversation, or the idea developed without clear links to a precise experience, a signal character of prospective memory is the absence of initial sense-data as a constraint on later recall. What is recalled is the pattern of thought-generation, not the sense-data that may have originally constrained the pattern, even if recurrent sensedata act as an aid for both memory and thinking. Take for example the writing of this chapter. Each time I think about the manuscript the theme recurs in my mind, but having the manuscript before me facilitates recall, not only for the text, but aso for the shaping ideas and the propagation of related concepts that support the theme. Rereading the text arouses further thought, often by unpacking statements or trimming what is inessential, and thus uncovering what was previously inapparent or unavailable. Without the text before me it is doubtful the process could readily go forward. It is unlikely I could remember the arguments sufficiently well to finish the text “in my head” and dictate it to someone else. There are exceptions. Solzhenitsyn was said to have composed A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in prison, memorizing the text until he was released and could write it down. Some philosophers are said to have worked out a system of thought in their minds before committing it to paper, with composition a kind of after-thought, but for most of us a manuscript serves not only as a reminder of what has so far been written, but also as a basis for further composition. To be sure, I have composed a paragraph during a walk and after some

547 rehearsal later wrote it down, but a lengthy text, or the revival of what has been written up to the previous stopping point, would have to be memorized by sheer repetition, reciting the text over and over in my mind. Brahms wrote many compositions on walks in the woods. Milton, blind, is said to have composed Paradise Lost by working on a single stanza each day and dictating it for transcription in the evening. Vergil, writing the Aeneid, is said to have done just the opposite: dictated a few dozen lines at the beginning of the day and then spent the day pruning them down to four or five verses. But Vergil was not blind, and the written text was an essential part of his creative process. Thus the subjective aim can express a delimited thought or verse as the means to a larger end, or to an overall theme or interpretation that is required of others. For the most part, this theme is an unattended background out of which the part-compositions arise. The parts are the immediate topics at hand, though every portion of a coherent work, a manuscript, a poem, arises out of this background context. There are exceptions to the limits of conceptual or word memory, though one has to acknowledge the ancient oral tradition of recitation “by heart” of epic poems (the blind Homer is the famous example), or lengthy philosophical texts, such as Buddhist sutras memorized by Pali or Sanskrit scholars. There are prodigies of visual or auditory memory, mnemonists with an ability to retain prodigious amounts of perceptual material after a relatively brief exposure. Such feats are anomalies of memorization and reproduction. Similarly, forgetful or “absent-minded” geniuses are capable of extraordinary acts of innovation. The extremes suggest a dissociation of mechanism, but they are merely accentuations of the novel or the memorial – productive or reproductive thought – that co-occur in every act of cognition. In instances when the content is not rote memory, but a provisional idea that is amenable to revision, the ideational elaboration requires first that a memory be revived. The productivity of thought, as with all acts of cognition, begins with conscious or unconscious reproduction In perceptual experience, sense-data constrain thought to model the world. The extrinsic constraints are outside cognition and do not go into the memory, but the intrinsic or endogenous constraints of knowledge or habit, and the influence on intrinsic process by sense-data, determine what is inhibited and what individuates. In later recall, the exposure to a similar object or portion of the object, or the pattern of original perception, accentuates the accuracy of the memory. When I am working on a

548 manuscript, the memory of where I left off is reinforced by sense-data that support the prior experience. Still, it takes some concentration on the perception and its memorial basis to recapture the prior mood or mental state for the work to continue. For the reason of a lack of a preliminary template and the inability to re-enter a mood of creative thought, there is difficulty getting started with any project, whether preparation for a vacation or writing a paper. But once “into” the process, revival is more facile, as one becomes more and more preoccupied with the theme and its content. Intrinsic constraints on thought serve to facilitate its renewal. In contrast, the relaxation of extrinsic constraints enhances originality and limits the reproductive tendency. For most of us, though not all, thought does not have the concrete specificity of experience, though certainly there are people for whom thought is more real than observation. This is common in those with deep-seated beliefs or lively imaginations, but it can become pathological in delusion or psychosis. While there is considerable variation in the ability to revive a prior thought, the recall of an idea does not usually achieve the specificity of a perceptual memory. But once a memory fades to a state of fuzziness or uncertainty, it approximates a thought striving for clarity. Content The mental state determines the phase-level of the content irrespective of what the content is about, whether we attend to perception, present thought or reminiscence, but the content of the state is determined by the pattern of what develops within the categories of that phase. If we are thinking of a past occasion, we have a memory. If we are thinking of a present occasion, we have an experience. If we are thinking of a future occasion, we have an expectation. The temporal orientation and tense of the category does not point to a specific process. Tense is not responsible for time frame. Rather, tense is applied to temporal orientation, which in turn is a result of the dominant focus within the mental state. We think of the past when the revived content within the present state is the focus of attention. We think of the present when we are aware of an ongoing thought or perception. We think of the future when we imagine events that may come to pass rather than those which have already occurred. The contents of each mode of thought may be similar – what I have written, what I am writing, what I will write – but a theory of content is secondary to a theory of its realization. The latter is likely to submit to explanation well before we have a glimmer of the how and why a specific content

549 develops. We finally arrive, then, at the topic at hand, prospective memory, which combines past, present and future – memory, thought and expectation – in a single cognition. The microgenetic account of this state holds that the revival of a familiar content in a present thought concerning a future event can be interpreted in terms of a single process of thoughtdevelopment which, by way of intrinsic constraints in the phase-transition, tends toward the reproduction of prior contents, while the growth of the content over successive recurrences is a measure of the degree to which the constraints of habitual thinking are relaxed, so that revision or expansion of content can occur. The future Does the fact that prospective memory is oriented to the future have any significance in its interpretation? First one should ask how to conceive the future in the context of a mental state. I have written at some length of the present, of duration and its relation to the various components of memory, but not to any great extent of the future. This is because the future has no actual existence in mind or the physical world, unless one believes that time is reversible and the future is fixed, or that a pre-determined Laplacean future comes into view like a frame on a movie reel. Unlike the past, which exists in memory and recorded history, the future is not grounded in experience, only in thought. The past is a source of true and untrue propositions, but so too is the future. It is either true or false that I will go to work tomorrow or complete this manuscript. This implies the existence of the proposition, as a thought or statement, but not the existence of its objects. To say it is true that dinosaurs once existed is only true because we have evidence of their existence, but without such evidence, the truth of the proposition cannot be proven. This is also the case with propositions about the future, but in this instance we have no evidence, only the projection in thought of probabilities based on past and present experience. Only when a future event becomes a present occasion can it be said to exist. While the actualization of a mental state does have forward momentum, its endpoint is not the future but an actuality in the present. More precisely, the actualization is the present state, the furthermost endpoint of which is the final object of consciousness. Since the direction of actualization is from past to present, the forward thrust and continuous replacement are felt as a pressure to the future. The direction from past to

550 present implies the occurrence of a future, and the forward thrust gives the intuition of a future lying in wait for an oncoming present. A present implies the existence of a past but only the possibility of a future. Without a present, there is only earlier and later. Any point in a sequence from earlier to later, if not a present, merely divides the sequence into before and after. The before-after sequence requires the “after” to already be a fact. In a time sequence without a present, an “after” that has not occurred cannot be specified. One can say that the second president of the United States came after the first, or that the first came before the second. But to say that the 50th president will come after the 49th is not an “after” but an article of faith. It is a future that is probable but not certain, and requires a present on which that future is predicated. The existence of the past depends on the present in a different way than the “existence” of the future. The present rests on and develops out of endogenous patterns that are outcomes of prior states. Novelty in the present is afforded by deviation in pattern and change in the sensory environment. The present is constructed on the past and is inconceivable without it, but the future is always in the realm of possibility. At the moment of death, all future personal states are foreclosed, yet past and present are, for that moment, as real as at any earlier moment in life. Indeed, it is partly the drive to the future, i.e. to an ensuing (replacing) present, that gives the hope of a future even after death. The future, in contrast, does not contribute to the present other than by way of present hopes, expectations or consequences. All there is, is the actualization that lays down the state. In this actualization, which is an indivisible epoch of time, the past is more real than the future. Except for some branches of Buddhist philosophy in which past and future collapse on the present, or in the isotropic time of physics in which time is reversible and “backward causation” can, in principle, occur, the future “exists” as a forecast based on the pattern through which present events are deposited. At any moment we are the final in a series of innumerable replacements, each with sufficient novelty to promote the feeling of an open future. Nonetheless, we live in the virtual bubble of novel epochs developing over the remnants of the ones just-prior, with anticipation and expectation the forward projection of becoming in imaginary, subjective time. Those who live in the past and those who live for the future still have only a present in which antecedent or consequent events predominate. If a thought has memorial content it is retrospective. If it is anticipatory it is

551 prospective. People incline in one direction or another –retrospective or prospective –by these differing attitudes. We feel events as they happen but savor them in thought, memorial or anticipatory. Subtle biases in thoughtdevelopment and their sources in personality are responsible for these contrasting orientations. A chief irony is that reflection on past or future tends to detach the individual from the vividness of the present, while immediacy of experience is felt by those who are unreflectively engaged in life as it passes.

Chapter 21. The Moral Dimensions of Aesthetic Experience Mind is the sole self-intelligible thing, and therefore it is entitled to be considered the fountain of existence. C.S. Pierce

From perceptual to aesthetic objects An ordinary object is an encounter, an artwork is an experience. The former seems to be an objective thing in the world, the latter, a thing in the world plus the conceptuality of the artist. The observer brings experience to bear on both of these objects, though ordinary objects tend to be familiar and recognized automatically, while an artwork requires an act of engagement. The engagement of the aesthete and the creativity of the artist bring subjectivity into the foreground of aesthetic perception. Yet when a person treasures an artifact from an unfamiliar land, one that is common to its inhabitants, say an elephant prod from India, the unfamiliarity of the object is taken as a mark of its originality or uniqueness that bridges the object to an art work. Ordinary objects can become works of art when perceived from a certain point of view. The difference is one of emphasis, not kind. How this difference is understood depends on a theory of perception. It is usually held that the objective properties of artworks, the lines and colors of a painting, the acoustic noise of music, as with ordinary objects, are properties of physical, mind-independent entities that impinge on the viewer to provoke a perceptual or aesthetic response. We think of perceiving as a “taking-in,” of experiencing as an affective response and of creating as a “doing.” An artwork is viewed as a neutral entity that induces aesthetic pleasure from outside. This common sense belief is grounded in the fiction of two realms of interactive reality, an inner world of the observer and an outer world of perception. The belief that objects are independent of the mind is necessary for survival. Even if all one has to do is close one eye, then the other, to realize that an object is not what and

554 where one sees it, that it is an image extracted from binocular disparity, a compromise of the retinal images from each eye, in a word, a mental image, still, a Paleolithic who believed a mammoth was a mental image would not survive to reproduce. The belief in an inner and outer world and the springs of behavior that stem from such a belief are implicit, covert, and deeply ingrained in the psyche. The “mass delusion” that objects are simply out there to be grasped, avoided or appreciated starts with the object as a given, a source of the perception not, as is the case, a final phase in its objectification. This common sense approach has lead to an upside-down psychology, in which the features of an object are interpreted as elements in its construction, detected by specialized components in the neocortex, assembled into complex, coloured objects, relayed to memory for recognition, conveyed to brain regions for motion detection and mapping to the changing spatial environment and then, somehow, unified and projected back into the world. Clearly, information on the size, shape, color, etc. of a visual object is “processed” early to delimit perceptual development. The question is whether sensory data are ingredient in the perception as its building blocks, or instead, if they constrain the image in its transit from unconscious concepts and meanings to the consciousness of object form. Are the neocortical zones of the standard model loci of initial processing, or do they mediate endpoints of perception as postulated in microgenetic theory? The standard model posits that first we perceive a material object – a chair, a painting – and then the perception arouses concepts and memories in the observer. In other words, conceptual arousal is post-perceptual. Once the object is perceived, recognition and memory come into play. On this view, aesthetic feeling is a response to an art work. The feeling and knowledge in aesthetic enjoyment are assumed to differ from that engaged in ordinary perception. An aesthetic sensibility is applied to art works or objects of taste or value, not everyday objects. Yet we do see people with an aesthetic sensibility for ordinary objects. Some people find beauty everywhere. This suggests that ordinary and aesthetic perception have a common ground. In artistic creation, so the convention goes, this process is reversed. The making of an art work is an action. Concepts and memories appended to aesthetic perception now instigate actions that lead to an art work. For microgenetic theory, the quarrel is with the standard model of perception, not action, for perception is interpreted in the same way as production, as

555 an expressive activity that goes out to the world (Chapter 1). Bergson wrote of perception as an active search. The conceptual feeling in the making of an aesthetic object is revived and traversed in its enjoyment. This feeling, as well as metaphor, imagery and experiential memory, are evoked early in both aesthetic and ordinary perception. To be experienced as an artwork, an aesthetic object demands an emphasis on this phase and a heightened awareness of value and personal signification, minimally, a response to beauty and originality. The point is that objects take on aesthetic value not by an addition of psychic qualities, but by an accentuation of those qualities at segments prior to their objectification. The shift in emphasis from the external, public and fixed to the internal, private and plastic takes the object from a world of external relations and independent things to one of internal relations, meanings and intentions, i.e., from causal interaction in the world to actualization in the mind. This process is attenuated in imagery and desire. The aesthetic experience uncovers this attentuated content by a withdrawal from the object surface to its formative concepts, a becoming-explicit of the transition leading to the object. The subjectivity or inwardness exposed in the withdrawal taps the creative power of early cognition. The objectivity of art appears in its adaptation to tradition and community. Ethics also is subjective in the transition from character to choice and conduct, and objective in the relation to obligation, law and standards. An example of the extrapolation of the standard theory to aesthetics is Danto’s (1981) account of a painting of a red square. The same red square, he argues, or multiple examples of the same painting, can have different meanings to the artist and the observer. It is the same painting, but its meaning depends on the mind that perceives or creates it. This account seems relatively innocuous, self-evident, even irrefutable, but it is loaded with implications, one of which is that the multiple interpretations of the same painting, or the experiences of various artists that result in painting the same red square, indicate that the painting itself is invariant across its interpretations. Once the painting is a finished artwork, it leaves the mind of the artist and comes to exist as an independent entity in the world. The perception of the painting, the cognitive activity that goes into its production or enjoyment, the inspiration that lead to its creation, its meaningfulness to the observer, are psychic antecedents or additions, while the painting itself is a thing in the world separate from the context around it. The perception of a simple red square is complex and dynamic. The

556 same object is not perceived in different ways, rather, there are different perceptions of a similar object and different selves within each perception. The object, the red square, is the actualization of a surface form that is similar across observers because the brain process of each individual is constrained by similar sensory impressions, but its dynamic undersurface differs according to personality. Borges touched on this theme more deeply in his story, Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote. From a temporal standpoint, the object includes, as part of what it is, all the phases traversed in its perception, including the subject. That is, the object “out there “ has a microtemporal structure that includes earlier phases that lay down the subject. We speak of subject and object, but to be more precise, they are subjective and objective segments in the same act of cognition (Chapter 2). For this reason, even if the observer is unaware of an aesthetic experience, or the intentions of the artist, the final object is mediated by phases responsible for that experience, and for the subject who experiences the object. The same path is traversed in every perceptual voyage regardless of whether the scenery is noticed or enjoyed. The question of whether the mind receives or creates the world is an ancient debate and a critical distinction in philosophy of mind. The distinction is implicit in the contrast of opinion with fact, where opinions are states of subjectivity and facts are independent of the person who believes them. It appears in the dialectic of perspective and verification, the one personal, the other consensual. This dialectic is at the heart of moral philosophy; e.g., does goodness depend on the agent’s intentions or the fulfillment of his obligations? In recent philosophy of mind, the world has undergone a theoretical enlargement at the expense of the psyche, the boundaries of which have shrunk to states of feeling, belief and internal qualia. This imbalance can be redressed if the notion of qualia is expanded to include the entire perceptual field. The way this matter decided is important, if aesthetic and moral concepts are to be conceived as elaborations in the process of perception, rather than an application of concepts to autonomous percepts. There is a tendency to treat these domains as isolable spheres of knowledge. Indeed, the inclination to divide and analyze is stronger than that to compare and synthesize. This is an adaptive mechanism. A go/nogo decision that is immediate focuses on contrasts or oppositions, not continua. People are quicker to note differences than similarities. However, instead of demarcating and analyzing, one finds if one looks more closely that what appear to be distinct nodes in a category, or separate domains of

557 function, are gradations with indistinct borders that are constantly changing and merging. For example, we speak of memory, thought and perception as if they are separate functions, but in actual behavior one phase in perception is memory-like, another concept- or thought-like, still another related to object form. Acts and objects do not greatly differ. They originate in the same construct and unfold in parallel. One moment perception is dominant, another it is action, but every object contains an embedded act, and every act is an object in consciousness. These phenomena, which appear to be so different, are attributed to separate neural processors, but they can be explained on a common basis by the relative emphasis on early or late, the relative prominence of act or object, the relative distribution of ego- and exo-centric, and so on. This chapter argues that a psychology of acts and objects as actualizations of intrinsic value aligns ordinary and aesthetic perception with the creative imagination. Value is the bridge from aesthetics to ethics. Central to the continuum is the concept that value is allocated at different segments and in different proportions to the transition from self to object, from drive and intrapersonal desire at one polarity, to attention, then realness and extrapersonal worth at the other. In the compromise of othercentered self-denial and drive-based egoism, the subjectivity of conceptual feeling, in art or ethics, confronts the objectivity of custom and/or approval. The artist and the aesthete What is the difference between artistic creation and aesthetic perception? Alexander (1933) wrote that a “work of art throws the spectator back into the frame of mind in which the artist produced it,” and that “the appreciation of beautiful art is to repeat the creation of it, so far as the spectator can.” Surely it is an overstatement that Beethoven's frame of mind, other than a gay or melancholy mood, must be revived in order to appreciate his music. Yet there is some truth in Alexander's remark. An artist produces a novel object or arranges an existing object in such a way that it takes on a new meaning or value. The observer can share in this value-experience. If we think of perception as a productive activity in which the image adapts to the “real,” and art as an imaginative conception in which the “real” adapts to the image, the two may be closer than is believed. Suppose we keep the external object before us and move inward to a

558 point, such as in reverie, between an object and a trance. At this point, we find a resurgence of concepts, feelings and images ingredient in the context out of which the object developed. A further excavation of earlier substrates exposes dreamwork and hallucination. As the inward turn recovers these phases, there is a suspension of the immediacy of contact with external things. Images and memories expand, the outer field contracts. The lifting of the constraints that restrict perception to a model of the world exposes and so promotes a conceptual growth at the undersurface. This is the creative imagination. The shift from object to image leads from receptivity to volition. The observer is no longer a spectator, he elaborates images that belong to him. Through access to phases ordinarily traversed in perception, the artist creates a novel object out of the potential for a conventional one. At the same time, he becomes an agent when before he was an observer. Any object can serve as a basis for this retreat – a madeleine, for example – for every image samples the potential out of which every object develops. The feeling of agency, deliberation and possibility that distinguish an image from an object are expressive features as potential undergoes partition. This occurs in action, and in visual and verbal imagery (i.e. inner speech; Brown, 2004). The receptivity of perception is replaced by purposefulness in the imagination, though in creative work of depth and authenticity, volition is tenuous. The artist may be uncertain as to the feeling of agency, he is passive to his own creative output. The productivity and creativeness of the imagination are intimations of the novelty concealed in ordinary objects. We may believe, and feel, that perception is passive and receptive, and action productive and volitional, but to transform this belief or feeling to an accepted fact is a widespread error in philosophical psychology, one that William James and Henri Bergson endeavored to correct. Searle (2001) reopens the wound when he writes, “I am a passive recipient of perceptions which are experienced as caused by the external environment.” He goes on to compound the error by contrasting the passivity of perception with the volitional feeling of raising the hand, a feeling that owes, in fact, to collateral and peripheral recurrence, i.e. perceptions, arising from the action discharge (Roland, 1978). The feeling of an action is a perception of a movement. The action discharge alone contributes the sense of activity that distinguishes an active from a passive movement. A perception is an adaptive model of the world. The stability of this model is due to its recurrence. The choice within a perception is obscured

559 when the process is dedicated to replication. In both primitive and mature cognition, replication assures the sustained existence of the entity. Survival may reward innovation, increasingly so in human evolution, but it mandates the expected or habitual. Perception veers from expectation when images or thoughts replace objects. The novelty glimpsed in the deviation from reproduction is the creative in early cognition. Dreams, magical ideas, images, differ from external objects as thoughts differ from acts, as trial acts in the imagination differ from spontaneous actions (Brown, 1987), or as creative thought differs from routine behavior, in the relative freedom from intrinsic (habit) and extrinsic (sensory) constraints. In sensory deprivation, a relaxation of extrinsic constraints exposes endogenous process. Like a parasite to a host, the external delimits the objects of endogenous fantasy to those that are communicable to others. Imagery is coerced to adapt cognition to the sensory field. Phenomena that arise in the shift to the subjective recover valuations that saturate the antecedents of ordinary objects. Values in the self are egoand exo-centric, i.e. inner and outer-directed, selfish and unselfish. Value flows outward with the object as an affective valence derived from conceptual feeling. An object imbued with value is closer to its source in the self. Such images have a high degree of ambiguity and signification. The object is more alive when the life of the artist or observer is engaged. Creative thought is a failure of memory to achieve reproduction. The nucleus of productive and reproductive thought is the same. A single construct can become a thought or a memory, and discharge into an act or an object. From aesthetic to moral objects As ordinary perception is the foundation of aesthetic perception, aesthetic perception is the basis of moral feeling. Joseph Brodsky wrote that aesthetics is the mother of ethics. Gide maintained that ethics was a branch of aesthetics. Goethe titled his autobiography Poetry and Truth, to indicate that some truths could only be expressed in poetry. More ambitious still, Yeats wrote, “whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent.” Not only philosophy but physics as well. Niels Bohr once remarked that “when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” Boundaries are indistinct. Dramatic tension in the language arts depends on moral choices. For the artist, the aesthetic is primary. For the moral philosopher, an aesthetic content that cannot be

560 given an ethical perspective is hard to imagine. Which is prior depends on a theory of value and self-realization, the primacy of a subjective or objective point of view. Both poetry and philosophical idealism escape from ordinary reality. The transition from the everyday to the aesthetic is a shift from a veridical ideal to a “true” ideal, an ideal as a product of thought, yet one that maintains contact with the real. The transition from aesthetics to ethics creates an ideal as a standard by which the “real” is judged. The intrapersonal life of the aesthete is engaged by way of inanimate objects (painting, music, etc). The objects of moral feeling are other minds in social contexts. Because its objects tend to be inanimate, thus insensate, aesthetics looks to the intuitions of the artist and the observer for the subjectivity that seems to be lacking in the object. The animate objects of ethics, i.e. people, animals, require the inference of mind in the organism. The inference of mind may reach an extreme as in the ascetic who sweeps the ground to avoid stepping on microbes. Non-cognitive objects may arouse ethical claims, but the ends are for persons or animals. The defacement of public property is immoral for the displeasure it evokes in others; it is the observer, not the property that is at stake. Concern for the environment is an act for other living creatures. A painting is an aesthetic object. If someone destroys a valuable painting, even though it is inanimate, by inducing displeasure in others or depriving them of its enjoyment, the act takes on an ethical dimension. An intuition of the conceptuality within the painting turns an ordinary object to an aesthetic one, while a decision to destroy the painting transforms an aesthetic experience into a species of moral action. The subjectivity of moral objects also has a temporal dimension. The timeless objects of aesthetic contemplation become actual through the observer’s emotions and ideas, while the living things that have our moral attention incite a timeless obligation of protection and trust. Aesthetic feeling approaches moral conduct when a decision that effects others is required. This may simply be showing a painting that others find offensive. In this context, political art and pornography are transitional to morality. An aesthetic decision involves a discrimination, a preference, a judgment of better or worse, not a matter of right or wrong. Aesthetic and moral judgments can become confused in evaluating the work of an artist of dubious character. To dislike Wagner on aesthetic grounds is not the same as to dislike his music for its ideational content or corrupting influence. What is the difference in these judgments or the

561 criteria on which they are based? Aesthetics is wider than ethics in expressing personality, while conduct expresses character, which is personality from the standpoint of right action. Artistic personality combined with weak character appears when the self-realization of art overtakes the compassion for others that is central to moral conduct. Generally, the objects and choices in art are interior, those of ethics external – the right idea versus the right action – but this merely shows that ethics is closer to the demands of others in the world, i.e. it is further objectified, while aesthetics concerns the self-expression of imaginative concepts. The elaboration of concepts and the prominence of imagery depend on a relaxation of social constraints, while moral action is an adaptation to those constraints. A theory of moral character based on self-realization is transitional to an aesthetic of personality. The parallel is the realization of character in conduct with that of personality in, say, painting or composition. The common element in both is authenticity, how true an art work is to the personality of the artist, and how true an act of conduct is to the character of the agent. Ethics is to the sphere of virtue, i.e. goodness of character, as aesthetics is to taste. In both, self-realization is primary, it is a matter of whether the imagination is given free range or identifies with others, i.e., the prominence of the egocentric in value-expression and the exocentric in value creation. The saint embodies in his acts the ideal of goodness, genius embodies in its works the ideal of beauty. In art, self-realization trumps obligation, in ethics, in the saintly or compassionate person, they are aligned. Language tends to fractionate feeling and dispel it over time, art concentrates feeling with greater immediacy. Unlike art, which has been increasingly liberated from mimicry, even tradition and communicability, language cannot escape realism without becoming incoherent or ejaculato. Speech is a form of conduct that can hurt even more than a physical injury. A painting or musical composition is not conduct, unless there is an intention to provoke a moral issue. We do not think an action such as dance has ethical values. To the extent that conduct veers from what is appropriate, and in proportion to its depth of conceptual feeling, conduct can become an art form. Performance art is transitional in the field of action from conduct to art. Agency and responsibility are the prerogatives of the artist, less the observer who samples the undersurface of decisions already made. In ethics, choice is the foundation of responsibility. Without options there is

562 no moral stance. The importance of action is reflected in the central importance of conduct and its precedence over intention and character in most moral theories. A virtuous heart does not absolve a person of a cowardly act. In ethics, inaction can be as immoral or reprehensible as conduct. In art, inaction, unresponsiveness or lack of feeling, is aesthetic vacuity. An action does more than solidify an aesthetic or moral feeling, it specifies potential to a particular outcome. The intention may be to avoid action or to mislead, but it is still a commitment. Whether an action is a means or end, and regardless of its motivation, action or inaction takes cognition from contemplation to consequence, from character to choice and commitment. This corresponds to the transition from personality to image in aesthetic perception, or from image to art work in artistic creation. Beauty and the good We all appreciate the beauty of a sunset. Most of us can enjoy the beautiful in art or music, of various types and from diverse cultures. There are similar patterns in the judgment of beauty in men, women and children across different cultures. Babies grimace to dissonant music. That the judgment of natural beauty is rooted in biology is no longer in doubt (Etcoff, 1999). One can learn to see beauty in complex patterns, difficult music or mathematical objects, but the sense of beauty for natural objects appears to be innate. The innate foundations of aesthetic pleasure reflect the evolutionary continuity with feeling in lower forms. In aesthetics, the innateness of the appreciation of beauty is consistent with its subjectivity. In contrast, moral values are largely taught. The transition from aesthetics to morals is on an axis of beauty, which serves as an ideal or a goal towards which an action is directed. In aesthetics, the ideal is unconscious. It is discovered in what it concedes to individuality. In ethics, the ideal is more often conscious, and individuality is subordinate. For an art work such as a painting, or a natural phenomenon such as a sunset, the ideal resolves the emotive with the conceptual in the valuation of an instance in a class that is pleasurable and/or unique. The most intense aesthetic experience, that of the sublime, occurs when a spatial and temporal particular is set against an infinite and eternal whole (Brown, 2000; 1999). The pleasure in beauty is associated inter alia with order, harmony and the affective satisfaction of a creative idea. In ethics, there is pleasure

563 in good conduct, whether an act of personal goodness or the greater good of Utilitarianism. The attribution of mentality to an artwork or natural object, i.e. the presence in the object of the creative power of a genius or a god, is a species of animistic thought, but it is the first step in a transition from aesthetic to moral concepts. A sacred object, a totem or talisman, has both aesthetic and social import. The inference of mind in objects is essential for them to become objects of moral feeling. We see this in a more conventional setting when a person resents being valued solely for his or her beauty. An individual does not want to be treated as aesthetic statuary, since art works are perceived as non-cognitive objects. The mantra is, love me for my mind, not my body. To desire a person solely for sexual enjoyment or physical attributes is seen as exploitative and predatory, and is judged to be immoral. In such examples, we see a sensitivity to the personality of the individual, to subjectivity and feeling, as a precursor of the moral sentiments. The obeisance to duty in moral conduct is like technical proficiency in art, perfunctory and insufficient. Feeling is essential, for neither beauty nor goodness can be fully grasped or felt through a formalism of method or reason. However, emotion is usually conceived as selfish and, almost by definition, irrational, even if a sensitivity to art and the needs of others, though distinct routes in the expression of feeling, have a common basis in “imaginative fusion” or “identification.” Thus, the effort since Plato has been to ignore or suppress emotion, or to infiltrate appetite with reason, in order to control, dilute or rationalize the emotions. Hartshorne (1987) wrote of the tendency to distill the “brute” emotions by elevating them to the “higher” sympathies, such as compassion. The intellectual faculties sanitize the drives. The effect is reciprocal, though perhaps not equally so, in that humane feeling can mitigate the rational justifications of an immoral act. Concepts and feelings are inseparable. The emotional intensity of dream objects, hallucinations, delusions or certain religious beliefs indicates that concept and feeling have a common basis in the “drive representations” or conceptual feelings that prefigure the subtler affects and ideas of a subdued consciousness. In the hedonic or pleasure approach to ethics, feeling is privileged in valuation, yet on the surface there appears to be little in common between pleasure and moral conduct. Most choices arise out of the subtle coercions of habit, responsibility and dispositional bias, and have nothing to do with happiness, which is not a motivation but an assessment of the manifold of outcomes of everyday decision-making and luck, though any choice can be

564 construed in terms of risk/benefit or pleasure-seeking. The feeling of pleasure is concrete and idiosyncratic, the good is abstract and generic. That is why beauty is important, for it is one quality that art works have shared, historically. Beauty is a category that subsumes aesthetic taste, and at the same time it serves as an ideal to which taste is directed. Goodness is also such a category, so that beauty is the joint between pleasure and goodness. One can agree in this respect with Moore, who wrote that the ultimate and fundamental truth of moral philosophy is the aesthetic pleasure given by the intrinsic value of the consciousness of beauty. Alexander implied an innate sense of beauty when he wrote, after Croce, that “the aesthetic sense is what satisfies the impulse to beauty diverted to unselfish contemplation, i.e. the beautiful is what is given to the impulse to beauty.” Bradley (1927) attempted to combine an aesthetic of self-realization with goodness as the actualization of character, in the affirmation of the self that is one with the ideal, its content furnished by social interaction: “the end for morals is… the realization of an ideal will in my will.” To live morally, he wrote, is to live within one’s station. Self-realization has the aim of greater perfection. In identifying the moral with self-realization and the drive to greater perfection, the good life becomes an aesthetic object. A good person may be perceived as beautiful, i.e. as having “inner beauty.” The reverse is also true; we think of beauty as goodness in the sense of perfection. Clearly, the mediating concept is perfection, as it applies to beauty in the laws of aesthetic harmony, or goodness in the golden mean or the rules of moral conduct. Perfection as the conformance of an artwork to the grandeur of the artist’s conception, i.e. the fullest realization of his potential, contrasts with conventional accounts in the philosophical literature (see discussion in Hook, 1966). Goodness can be a judgment of conduct, where it is close to rightness, and it can be applied to character, where it is close to virtue. Since a person, in the many acts of a life, only now and then approaches the ideal of goodness, and since we have all acted in ways we later regret, goodness as an abstract ideal, even for a saint, is less compelling than goodness as a concrete standard. In conduct, goodness is a relation of category to particular; as a standard, the act is a particular in relation to the category of such acts. The good is generic and subsumes instances of its expression in conduct. The goodness of a life is the measure of the greater number of good acts or the average goodness of all of one’s acts, but no matter how many good acts one performs, they are realizations of a goodness of

565 character that is thematic in all of the acts of one’s life. Since we can never know exactly which act is best, nor what are the motivations for acts of apparent goodness, nor, because of the competing claims of rival perspectives, can we be guided by an ideal in a choice among particulars, the ideal good is a psychological invention. It arises in the category of good acts antecedent to conduct that externalizes as an aim or philosophical lure. Beautiful objects and good actions approximate an ideal. Art approaches this ideal by degrees, morality by choices. In beauty, there are shadings, in morality, options. A judgment of the beautiful, like that of goodness, disambiguates a perceptual or ideational context. The judgment makes the ambiguity of the relationality explicit. In that beauty is contemplative and goodness instrumental, the relation of beauty to morality is like that of perceptual commitment to conceptual obligation. In this respect, there is a comparison of philosophy to life, or theory to behavior, which is the relation of thought to action, choice to decision, need to satisfaction. Universal and particular The values that evolve in the life of finite beings are the real phases of the Absolute. Bosanquet One can distinguish between abstract and concrete universals (Sprigge, 1993). Abstract universals and particulars are unreal, and all real universals are particulars. Particulars realize universals and then share the properties of those universals with other yet-unrealized particulars. The property of beauty is shared with other objects as a description of their membership in a class. The property that relates a beautiful object to the class of similar objects, or to an ideal of beauty, is a way of describing the relations engaged in the actualization and recognition of a particular object in the perceptual field. This is the basis for saying that the universal is imminent in the particular. Concrete universals involve identity over occasions of the same thing, e.g. the self, an object. Universality is sameness over difference, in space, time or context. However, there are no exact repeatables. Each entity individuates a relational whole, so supraordinate or categorical universals are as fictitious as isolated

566 particulars. The idea of an absolute repeatable is motivated by a desire to introduce conceptual stability into a world of change. One might ask if there are intrapsychic universals, i.e. repeatable categories that are not merely extrapersonal abstractions. The category of a color such as redness is not unchanging, for what is red changes with novel exposures, with the lighting, with the observer's visual system, etc. The category can be widened or narrowed as it comes into contact with instances at the boundary or those which overlap. A non-natural category such as furniture is constantly being tested by transitional items. Is a oneof-a-kind antique chair still furniture, is it an art work, an investment? Is a damaged chair or table without legs still furniture? Is an orange crate furniture? Should an eternal category depend on the vagaries of use or perception? One has categories such as color because particulars show a resemblance across occasions. When a reddish event resembles a subsequent reddish event, both belong to the category red. Here, a nolonger existent past event is compared to a present one. The resemblance is between qualities extracted from the things possessing them when, in fact, the things are bundles of relations, redness included. In relation to conduct, goodness as an ideal, or duty as a maxim or rule, involves an opposition of subjective and objective categories to momentary acts, or of what is lasting to what is evanescent. As with good character and right conduct, the ought of duty requires a persistent self that transcends the actions of the moment. The enduring self in relation to the succession of acts is a relation of category to instance, perhaps it is even the nucleus of the idea of universal and particular. The universal will that gives rise to acts gives the formal will that is independent of a particular individual or emotional state. Since the ideal is a category of ideal objects, the aim to the ideal is also an aim to wholeness. Bosanquet thought a “spirit of the whole” was essential to our nature as an urge to wholeness. But the mode and direction of thought is to the particular, so the spirit of the whole must be that rare capacity to reverse the emphasis in this process, to turn inward to the whole behind the parts, seeking wholeness in surrender rather than in completion. The concept of a generic category opposed to a particular instance arises as a whole/part relation in time consciousness. The temporal incrementation of spatial wholes, or the elaboration of succession out of simultaneity, is the creation of time order out of non-temporal wholes. A conflict of character with conduct, or desire with duty, is a whole/part contrast of antecedent potential and consequent actuality. But such

567 contrasts are also parallel phenomena, in that a “part” of character or a concession or opposition to duty is set against the remainder, though the “parts” arise in the conflict of ego- and exo-centric value. In that the obligation applies to all comparable individuals, it transcends occasions that are unique to those individuals. The obligation persists while the occasions come and go. The self is the source of a contrast between the categorical – goodness, virtue, beauty – and the momentary – desire, act, object – or the everlasting and the transient, the abstract that endures, the concrete that perishes. Danto (1997) wrote that “the history of art is the slow stripping away of whatever is inessential until what is essential to art shines forth for those prepared to receive it.” This is consistent with the microgenetic account of the sculpting that occurs in every act of cognition. The process of specification leaves the category behind as the part individuates. Aesthetics is grounded in the concrete particulars of an artwork. The objects of moral thought involve classes such as good and bad acts that are activated by instances. In producing an artwork, the artist moves from the general or conceptual to the particular or concrete. The aesthete would seem to move in the opposite direction, from the particular work to the concepts it calls up, but, even in perception, conceptual phases precede the analysis to particular objects. The abstract class shapes the work, e.g. for the Eroica, symphonies, but the work also develops, and is appreciated, out of categories of personal experience and feeling. If we expand the category of the good from the individual who is its example to the many who are its illustrations, the good becomes transpersonal, “out of time” and independent of its realizations. As character surrounds conduct, as Art or beauty embraces an artwork, the eternal category of the good, beauty, Art, surrounds the temporal category of a given personality or character. This assumes that categories are distinct from their exemplars or exist independent of their realizations, or that the good, because it transcends specific occasions is, as Moore wrote, for reasons other than those he might have endorsed, a given opaque to analysis. Subjective Category Personality Character

Objective Particular Artwork Conduct

Transpersonal Category Beauty Good

568 The relation of the good to good and bad acts, like that of perfection to genius or corruption, is also a relation of the “timeless” to the temporal. This is a transcription to the most abstract level of the whole-to-part shift that underlies all cognition, including the evocation and refinement of aesthetic and moral concepts. Perhaps art has greater universality in the ideal of beauty than ethics has in the ideal of the good, yet both aesthetics and ethics share this relation of general to specific, though differing in the greater objectivity or impersonality of ethics, and the greater subjectivity of art. The social adaptation that is essential for ethics is less pronounced in art, for the artist and the work are almost expected to be unconventional. But one domain is constantly transforming into the other. For an individual, the emphasis is always on an adaptation at successive levels of constraint. In perception, the endogenous is sculpted by the sensory environment to a model of the “real.” The “real” in aesthetics is the adaptation to the art community, to tradition and to taste. For ethics, it is the adaptation to law, obligation and custom. Yet in aesthetics and ethics, the community - past, present and future - is internalized in the form of endogenous values that compete with other egoistic ones for supremacy. Custom and tradition Pushkin wrote, “Custom is despot among men,” and Dewey (1925) that custom is “lord and king of all, of emotions, beliefs, opinions, thoughts as well as deeds.” Custom is a learned set of transmitted values appropriated by the developing self which becomes, inevitably, an agent of their enforcement and a vehicle for another round of transmission. The social environment limits what is permissible to the scope of possible actions. There is an attribution to culture of assimilated values that seem external and objective. They are taught by instruction or example, enforced by punishment, and are felt as external guides or brakes on conduct. In fact, however, the predominant influence is internal. Values have an external locus because they begin with instruction, but their effectiveness lies in a subjective process of value-creation that leads through character to conduct. Value distributes into objects as they objectify. When value infiltrates a multiplicity of objects or is distributed evenly over the field, objects are felt as real. When there is a relative sequestration of value in one or several objects, it is felt as interest. When the affective tonality is concentrated in one portion of the perceptual field interest shifts to worth. The composer

569 Janacek asked, “what makes me pick this flower from a flower bed?” Interest can be evanescent or grow to an intense feeling of beauty or worth. Perry (1926) believed that values were based on interest. In some respects, interest is a sign of the intentional nature of attention, as a perception shifts from a “passive encounter” to an active search. In that interest can expand internally to desire, and externally to worth, it is midway in the objectification of value (Chapter 5). The habitual distribution of value into certain objects hardens over time into custom, tradition, rule and law. Individuals come and go but values recur, gradually becoming transpersonal “solids.” Depending on the mentality of the subject and that inferred in objects, the feeling of agency may transfer into them. When this occurs, agency, like value, may generalize to an obligation to community or deity. The Decalog is a set of personal values that have so objectified they are believed to emanate from deity. A god delivers laws, which become values that issue in conduct, but those laws were assigned to god after having been conceived by man. God becomes the source of scripture by virtue of the recipient attitude to transpersonal valuation. The authority of scripture reflects the force of god's agency, though it derives from the inspired writings of mystics and wise men. Even to its author, the deeply inspired, like the artist's muse, seems to come from outside. Thus did Swedenborg write that he received his vision of heaven from an angel, as Schopenhauer wrote that his great work was dictated by the Holy Ghost! For the religious person, the attribution of the word to god is literal fact, as in the belief that god composed the Decalog or the Qur’an. The word is then internalized as a personal value. A moral value that is instilled in the self, such as to honor thy parents or not to steal, becomes a personal belief. The legitimacy of the doctrines and their prescriptions is enhanced by the authority of god’s word. The subjectivity of value moves from a perceived external source in god, through social institutions to a locus in the individual mind, as value is assimilated in the moral education of children or conscripts. Yet the actual flow is in the reverse direction, from self to external mind, or from intra to extra-psychic agency. A religious tradition, like any tradition, must be revived from its origins in those individuals who shaped it, into the teachings and authority of those who promulgate it, a pope, an imam, a judge, a mentor. This renewal sustains the living meaning of what would otherwise be an artifact of a lost craft or dead culture. What is attributed to god, to his earthly representatives, to cultural

570 tradition or social institutions, arises as a product of the human mind that is revived over generations to consolidate in a codified system. Once the system has fully materialized, it seems objective and mind-independent, yet it remains a collective ideation. The subjectivity of law prevails even when the individual is a victim of its covenants. A judge and his rulings embody the exteriorized consciousness of individuals in the community. Even under corrupt and brutal conditions, an individual is not a bystander but a co-conspirator in his fear, passivity or ignorance. What kind of society allows its own sons to become its oppressors? What kind of society allows radical elements to attain power and suppress its populace? When “life is cheap,” is it cheap for the victims as well as their killers? A society that encourages its children to be suicidal martyrs cannot be one that fully cherishes the life here-and-now of the individual. The efficacy of any custom requires it to be part of a personal belief system. Conversely, beliefs extend values into impersonal objects in moral codes, religious dictates, and so on. The guiding metaphor is that we are not islands of autonomy but waves in an ocean of being, each with an effect on the motion of the whole. The community is a psychic intermediary between the individual and his god or nature, the latter an account of the presumed source of causal power on the other side of our perceptions. Whether a society is mono- or polytheistic, if religion plays a role, deity is felt to cause, limit or enforce the conduct of its members. The society may be cruel or humane, but it is a collective instrument of implicit or revealed instructions. The solitary individual, the most particular and subordinate element in the community, the nadir in a funnel of responsibility, would seem to have responsibility only for his own actions, if that, and certainly not for his neighbors, yet he is as much a creator of the society as its victim or beneficiary. The nadir of a system is its core, creating values and extending them into power or deity. Thomas Mann asked what aspects of German culture could invite a Hitler to power, and speculated on the power of core myths and the Urconsciousness of the German people. Today, we ask the same of Arab societies. What beliefs or religious presuppositions underlie the prevalence of dictatorial regimes? A population is not involuntarily subjugated by rulers that arise within its ranks. Its beliefs and values create the conditions in which corruption and oppression flourish. The demands of custom, the rules of law, the oughts of obligation and religious faith, began historically as a discernment, in the context of magical thought, of the wishes and whims of the gods, inevitable like fate,

571 or random like luck. These customs passed into the hands of kings, benevolent or despotic, to gradually become the laws of the land. An obligation or law usually appeals to the collective will of the people, and is perceived as a tradition with the force of a drive. Most obligations are internalized wishes and censures, the implicit parental voice that becomes part of a personal value system. The internalization of social constraints as values shows a gradation from the fully internalized – the conscience, super-ego – to the fully external, in a police state. The difference between freedom and free will is replicated in value, which also respects a difference in the extrinsic and the externalized. As necessity is the ground of freedom, coercion is a test of moral will. For Kant, the moral includes the aesthetic with reason as a guide to the education of the will and the quality of goodness. The imperatives of duty are driven by an intrinsic, irreducible duty to one’s self. The ought is imposed as an expectation that a person can be driven by obligation if not by character. It is a valuation of what exists, or the obligation of the person to achieve or acquire that value. In a person of good will, the worth of an act derives from the intentions and character to which the objects of duty have assimilated. The free or “autonomous” will aligns its volitions so as to harmonize them with universal moral laws. Kant’s maxim, that “every rational being must so act as if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends,” entails that moral laws do not exist independent of cognition but are generated by a universality of perspective. Duty is prior to individual feeling as will is subordinate to universal law. Kant wrote, “the man who once appeals to his feelings forswears all rational grounds.” Yet, he conceded to psychology “the secret springs of action ... (the) inward principles which we do not see.” The discovery of these inward principles and patterns of selfrealization is the goal of process theory. The subjective and objective sides of ethics and aesthetics are a challenge to disambiguate. Ethics judged from an objective point of view relates to duty and custom; from a subjective point of view, to character. Except in the case of forceful coercion, obligations are not pure objectivities but conceptual valuations derived to external objects. Aesthetics can be approached subjectively with respect to the creative imagination and objectively as an accommodation to taste and tradition. The artwork can be judged sui generis, as an individual object, from the standpoint of the artist’s intentions or the observer’s interpretations. In the transition from aesthetic to moral feeling an internal perspective engaged

572 in aesthetic perception is displaced to the external perspective (law, custom) of moral convention. Morality objectifies aesthetic feeling in the self-realization of character. In this process, privacy gives way to publicity, the intrapsychic becomes the inter-personal and the creative becomes the expected or habitual. Even so, an external perspective involves othercentered values arising in the self. If deference to others is not imposed by force, and if egoism is primary, as it must be given the link to survival and the drives, the moral tendencies, innate or learned, must arise in character. In aesthetics, tradition plays a role in artistic creation similar to that of custom in moral conduct. An art tradition is not punitive, but it can be coercive, even if a break with its dictates is part of what the tradition holds dear. In art more than in morals, one recognizes the need for an imaginative reinvention of tradition as both a hindrance and a stimulus to novel form. When an artist absorbs a tradition, it is available to him not as a reference but as a part of an artistic vocabulary, which he must respect yet also free himself. Aesthetic traditions, like moral customs, are living conceptual products. Moral aesthetics Maslow (1970) follows many writers equating moral development with self-actualization. This view identifies empathy, i.e. “psychological closeness,” as the “highest” level of moral feeling in a developed selfconcept. Such interpretations propose an ideal of personality toward which the developmental trajectory is oriented. The quest of personal growth, in the life of a Muslim or Buddhist, is to arrive at a state of selfless devotion to community. The difficulty with the goal of unselfish dedication to others as the zenith of wisdom or compassion lies in the uncertainty of the needs that motivate it. People may care for others out of a weakness of selfesteem as much as strength of character. Further, the empathy of the developed self is not the final rung on a ladder of moral ascent but a withdrawal to primal wholeness. This is not a regression to the fused objects of infancy, but the finality in love of a passage through life, when the individual understands that wholeness is the root of feeling. T. S. Eliot’s wrote, …. the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

573 In art, we speak of a creative personality that generates an artwork, in morals, a virtuous character that leads to good conduct. The actualization of value on the path from inner to outer or self to world is closer to perception in aesthetics and to action in ethics. Aesthetics inclines toward ethics with an objectification into action, when inter-personal, social or historical context takes precedence over self-actualization. Ultimately, ethics and aesthetics fuse in a life of self-realization. What is at stake is authenticity of character. The id and superego of psychoanalysis are metaphors of endogenous drive in entrenched faculties. The id refers to drive-based needs that lay down patterns of self-interest, the superego refers to constraints on drive actualization that are apprehended as not fully intrinsic, thus coercive or punitive. Ultimately, they reflect the claims on the agent of the ego- and exo-centric values. The wild horse of instinct held in check by the reins of higher reason is a fairy tale of mental process. The drives individuate by an adaptation to the physical and social environment. Every adaptation involves self and other. A decision for self can be maladaptive, a decision for other can be beneficial. An animal that tears at its food, or withdraws and gives way to the pack, makes an adaptive choice. In humans, these choices are multiple and conceptual, but they all trace to valuations in the self, some beneficial, some destructive. Hedonism and compassion are extremes of self- and other-centered action. Yet both can be situated at a subjective or objective polarity, for example, an Epicureanism of pleasure or one of mechanical satisfaction, a dedication to others that is genuine or one in which others are means. To love thy neighbor, to honor thy parents, are core valuations directed at others. Enlarged self-interest includes the welfare of others in a definition of self. Cain’s question, am I my brother’s keeper, asks whether caring for others is part of who I am. This question, asked anew in each new life, cannot remain unanswered. It must be a core value imprinted in the selfconcept. Otherwise, self-interest will always place the other at risk. The good and bad of art refer to quality, not moral consequence. An artwork judged as right or wrong assumes a moral dimension. We see the transition to ethics in artworks that are meant to instruct or inform, promote a religious agenda or make a political or ethical statement. Tolstoy is the great example. The use of art to influence matters of moral consequence exploits its fluid boundaries with ethics. To paraphrase the poet Archibald MacLeish, art should be, not mean. Otherwise, art looks beyond itself for completion. When this occurs, art bridges into

574 propaganda and encroaches on ethics. The foundation of ethics is in character, of aesthetics in personality. Character and personality reflect different facets of the self. Character accentuates the other-directed values, personality the egocentric ones. At times disparities appear, especially in the extremes of genius. Beauty and goodness are not interchangeable. We see this in the life of the artist who creates works of surpassing beauty in contrast to the questionable morality of a bohemian life. Even when the divergence is extreme, the traits that bind life and work are deep and attitudinal and follow an ideosyncratic path according to their occasions of satisfaction. Implicit beliefs or unconscious presuppositions (Collingwood, 1940) guide life and work. Fichte wrote, “What system of philosophy you hold depends wholly upon what manner of man you are.” Kekes (1989) wrote, “What people do is usually not the result of choice but the surface manifestation of the deeper structure of their characters.” Subtle links of temperament and thought entwine the ontology of Heidegger and his Nazi beliefs, or Sartre's existentialism and his political betrayals. The venomous diatribes of Wagner were the rueful meanderings of the same evolutionary concepts that flowed into the Ring. Some artists have justified an immoral life in the creation of beauty out of evil, well-expressed by Baudelaire in the title of his work, “fleurs du mal.” The privacy of art is in contrast to moral action in the world, so it is no surprise that an artist may claim a license for recklessness that, while hard to condone, is easy to overlook if justified by the work. The immoral in the beautiful is often ignored, as we ignore ugliness in the moral. There is beauty in deviance. The distortions of El Greco, the rhinophymatous nose in the portrait by Ghirlandao, the devils of Signorelli, the dissonance of atonal music, are aberrations that can make for a more intense aesthetic response. In ethics, a comparable aberration would be a psychological deviation that increases or excuses moral blame, but does not lead to an increase in praise. Perhaps a correspondence exists with moral decisions made by a statesman who orders a lesser atrocity to avoid a greater one. There is also the question of artistic conception and its means of realization. Set aside the stunning beauty of artistic images that unsettle our moral consciousness, say the photographs of Mapplethorpe, which like any erotica are of parochial interest to moral philosophy, what would we say of a painting of exquisite beauty etched in the blood of children tortured to death? How does this differ from our admiration of the pagoda at Mingun, the pyramid at Cheops, or any number of great projects in which thousands

575 died of forced labor over generations to satisfy the vanity of tyrants? The grandeur of a work and a mature aesthetic sensitivity contrast with the immorality of its creator, the means of its construction or the ruthless contempt for the lives and dignity of ordinary people. Do means justify ends in art? Can they be ignored in aesthetic experience? In that beauty and goodness transcend the events in which they are realized, they can be viewed as ideals in relation to the occasions of their approximation. From a subjective standpoint, the realization of goodness in conduct is similar to the realization of beauty in art. Character achieves goodness in action, personality achieves beauty in the creation of perceptual form. To the extent that any act is creative, it deviates from expectancy. To the extent that an artwork is a perspective on good and bad rather than a good or bad work, it approaches moral action. The beautiful includes all that which renders an object aesthetically pleasing. Beauty absorbs the ambiguity and context in art that moral conduct is committed to resolve. In art, context is the experiential meaning of the work, in ethics it is the reason for an action or its justification. Ambiguity is an accentuation of the relational, the sense there is more to the work than initially perceived, or that the meaning is not given in the form. The ambiguity that is critical to great art can be fatal to moral decision. Conclusions Microgenetic theory is the basis of an account of ethical conduct and aesthetic feeling in the recurrent specification of acts and objects out of the self, i.e. as self-realizations of character and personality. The creation and enjoyment of aesthetic concepts and the elaboration and judgment of moral ones can be understood in relation to ordinary perception. The starting point is the description of the mind/brain as a process of self-realization. In this process, concepts objectify by way of constraints on the actualization of endogenous form. An artwork is the realization of a creative personality. Moral conduct is the realization of a good or bad character. Character tends to emphasize self-in-the-world. Personality tends to refer to the self for-itself. These tendencies reflect the relative strength of egoand exo-centric values. More than value-direction goes into creativity and moral conduct, but a shift to an internal or external mode is an important determinant of whether cognition is dedicated to the self or service to others. The creative and the good are infrequently found in the same person. The artist may sacrifice the other for his art (thus, for himself),

576 while the good person prioritizes the needs of others at the expense of his own. The emphasis in art is on the preliminary in mentation; in conduct, on finality. The early phases are subjective and private, like dream or imagination. Later conscious phases (imagery, language) are objective, public and adapted to the situation in which they occur. In addition to the relative emphasis on ego- and exocentric values, aesthetic and moral experience are distinguished by the relative prominence of early or late segments in the mind/brain state. This determines whether self-realization is largely subjective and intrapersonal (aesthetics) or objective and extrapersonal (ethics). The intrapersonal mode (symbolism, metaphor) of meaning and conceptual feeling contrasts with the impersonality of adaptation and custom. Aesthetics is usually biased to perception, ethics to action. Decisions in the creation of an artwork are not crises of moral decision. People kill and die for moral values, rarely for aesthetic ones. Ethics tends to concern living or animate objects in proportion to their degree of mentality, aesthetics tends to concern lifeless or non-conscious artifacts. Beauty applies to both. There are innumerable boundary cases. A person might eat vegetables as a matter of preference or taste, or because it is immoral to kill animals for food. From a process standpoint, art and conduct move from subjective wholes to objective parts. In both, the subject feels the centrality of personal value and motivation. However, the subjective is revived in recreating an artwork, which is vetted for its power to induce this revival in others and the depth of feeling evoked. Conduct is also vetted by those who revive the act in the imagination according to their valuations, but unlike an artwork, conduct is not revived concretely, only a judgment of its context and consequences. This leads to external judgments in conduct, internal ones in art. The relation of art to personality and conduct to character is that of an actualized part to an antecedent whole. Conceptual antecedents are fluid, the social categories in which they actualize tend to be fixed. The fluid is the potential of what is to come, the fixed is the commitment of what has occurred. On either side of an objectified part, artwork or moral action, categories that actualize range from the mundane to the unconventional. Ultimately, art and conduct develop out of the personal valuations and potential of the self. To revive the universal in the particular is the essence of aesthetic enjoyment. For Schopenhauer, it was the mark of genius. A category becomes a universal in artistic and moral genius – Beethoven in

577 art, Buddha in morals – when the parts are discharged in such a way that they realize human perfection. Perfection in art is perfect beauty; in morals, perfect goodness. In this way, now and then, beauty and goodness coincide.

Chapter 22. The Illusory and the Real The thought-objects of perception which are presupposed in the common thought of civilized beings, are almost wholly hypothetical. The material universe is largely a concept of the Imagination which rests on a slender basis of direct sense-perception. Whitehead (1932)

The ubiquity of illusion All experience has an illusory quality, from a vision of the starry firmament to mathematical objects at the smallest scale. Yet the illusory or phenomenal nature of experience, which is at the heart of many great philosophical systems, escapes the minds of most ordinary people, who live their lives as if the self and world are fully real and material. Rarely if ever do they question the brute facts of the world, indeed, they search its essence in science and their inner lives. They may confess to the little we know of the nature of things, but not a reality that is beyond their grasp. Descriptions of the world are taken to be our best approximations to the actual foundations on which the world of experience arises. According to this way of thinking, the facts of the world are near-realities or partial views of reality, hypotheses rather than fictions, not illusions that screen a reality that is impenetrable to thought. There is good reason why the feeling of reality is so impressed on our thoughts. We can sympathize with the conceit of Dr. Johnson who thought he refuted Berkeley by kicking a stone. Even with the knowledge that a stone is mostly empty space and vibrant atoms, in other words, that the objects of nature are insubstantial even from the standpoint of physical theory, we cannot shake the feeling they are changeless solids. The idea that objects are changeless, or that change is added to objects, is an important part of the sense of reality. If an object such as a chair were to appear and disappear, we might think it was an apparition rather than a real object, more like a mental image that persists for a moment and then vanishes.

580 We also accept an object perception as real because we have no choice if we are to survive in the world. We do not believe that dreams or mental images are real objects, for they and their histories are neither reproducible nor verifiable by others, and they show a lack of correspondence with world events. But if external objects are conceived as externalized images, there is no (knowable) reality with which to compare them, and a (lack of) correspondence can no longer settle a dispute as to which image – internal or external – is real. Illusions illustrate this epistemic problem. Unlike everyday illusions such as a rainbow, bent-stick-in-water or Necker cube, which are surface manifestations of sub-surface effects, pathological cases provide insights as to the locus of this effect in brain process. A change in size, shape and spatial orientation occurs in metamorphopsia with temporoparietal lesions. In alcoholics with delirium tremens, illusion is attributed to a distortion and elaboration of a real object. A scratch on the wall becomes an army of bugs. The bugs disappear when the eyes are closed, so it is natural to assume misperception. In contrast, hallucination does not usually incorporate details in the environment, the image does not change in size with increasing projection distance, and it persists with the eyes closed. Thus, it is interpreted as an imaginary construction. However, we know from patterns of symptomformation in cases of brain damage (Brown, 1986 for details) that the basic difference between hallucination and illusion is the degree of specification in object-formation. The critical factor is the phase in the objectdevelopment that bears the maximum brunt of the disturbance. The later or more distal the disruption, the closer to the actualization of a “real” object through primary cortex, the more likely the subject has illusion. The earlier or more proximal the disruption, the closer to limbic-temporal formations mediating dream cognition and conceptual feeling, the more likely the subject has hallucination. Illusion is an endogenous image that carries with it features of a terminal cognition. It appears to be an alteration in an external object because the image is close to full objectification. Even if we know an external object is a mental image - what else could it be? - as long as we feel it is real and independent we are still on firm ground. In psychosis, the object is initially felt to be unreal. Gradually, the feeling of realness develops when it becomes evident that the recurrent image is the only reality the subject has. In dream or chronic hallucination, with some exceptions, there is no “real” object for comparison, so the hallucination is perceived as real and the objectivity of the world can no longer be sustained. This is because the “real” world in a given perceptual

581 modality is unavailable to perception or memory at the same point in time and space if there are hallucinations or illusions in that modality. Hallucination and illusion replace perception and arise at successive phases in the perceptual process. Hallucination and illusion are incomplete perceptions, while a perception is a fully exteriorized hallucination, guided by sensory constraints. Admittedly, this is an exceptional view of the world. It is not surprising that those who see the world in this way, i.e. as an extension of the mind, are tempted to look for another, more dependable image of the real, such as that of physics or the absolute, or a noumenal world beyond experience. Subjectivity pervades not only the outermost shell of perceptible nature, but goes down to the smallest parts, atoms, particles, superstrings, which are phenomenal in the sense of being hypothetical or conceptual. The most basic entity still has a micro-temporal extension that is the category of a subjective unfolding (Brown, 2003). A world of such entities is not a collection of moving solids but a nested hierarchy of categories. It may be unsettling to ponder the insubstantiality of the universe, but a dynamic world of categories is truly alive, or becomes a living reality to the observer, only when it is felt. At that point, however, the felt awareness of a phenomenal world may give way to psychosis or despair. Illusions are not limited to those we perceive and study, but are found in all aspects of daily life. They include such fictions as object stability in a world of flux, time as linear rather than recurrent, change as an external relation between objects rather than intrinsic to the object formation and being as thing-like rather than a category that enfolds a becoming. On these foundations, the whole edifice of mind develops, and with it, the gap from self to world, the emergence of the present moment and, around it, past and future, and the feeling of intention and desire. Following Vaihinger (1924) one could add semantic class and conceptual classifications, light and dark, hot and cold, the notion of the mean, the atom, mathematical objects, archetypes, ideals, noumena, time in relation to celestial movement, and isolated instances of animals, plants or any object. Every object is a distinction, every distinction a potential class. As Wordsworth put it, We create distinctions, then Deem that our puny boundaries are things Which we perceive, and not which we have made” (Prelude II, 221).

582 Image and reality In what sense are any phenomena real, that is, physical entities or non-conceptual properties of physical nature, including the brain? The illusory is opposed to the real, but if brain process is part of physical nature, and if mind reduces to brain, mental events are equivalent to brain events, and are then illusory only if mind and brain are uncoupled. Otherwise, nature would also be illusory, and the illusory would become the real, since there would be no distinction from the non-real. Put differently, if an idea and a tree are phenomena – concepts, images, appearances – reducible to brain process, the correlated brain process could not be more real than its mental equivalents, since process and image are ultimately the same. If brain process is a concept, thus unreal, what then is real? Is the real ultimately unknowable, discovered only when we die and become part of it? Is this what Schiller had in mind when he wrote, “Knowledge must be death”? One is reminded of the old saying that in the womb we know the universe, at birth we forget it. The usual sense of the real lies in a comparison of concepts and images to events in perception, not to the brain events underlying imagery. A perception of a tree is real if the tree is real for the observer and for others. It is an illusion or hallucination if the perceived tree does not exist as such for the subject or for others. The concept or image is said to be illusory if, because of ignorance, false belief or misperception, it does not conform to events in the world. We have our dreams, and knowledge of essential illusions such as constancy effects and binocular disparity. But it takes only a little insight in a spell of vertigo, when the world spins around one’s head, to remind us of the subjectivity of all so-called veridical perceptions. The perception of a tree is illusory in that the tree is inferred from its multi-modal adequacy and if necessary, a consensus with others. We do not say that brain events are unreal when the brain is affected by injury, drug use or other pathology. Rather, we say the brain is impaired, but that whatever brain activity occurs is nonetheless real unless we believe the brain is part of an illusory nature. The difficulty is that one portion of nature (the brain), which is the substrate of the illusion, is no less unreal for producing the illusion than the illusion it produces, while the other portion, the non-perceptual tree, is inferred to be real, though we can only approximate it through our perceptions. The physical brain and world are posited as the real, the mental as the unreal, and illusion is the lack of correspondence between mind and world, as phases in the same mental

583 state. The unreality of immediate data in the mind is supposed to arise in the disparity of mental phenomena with the physical data that support them. We accept that mental activity is resolutely bound to brain activity, and that brain process conforms to that in physical nature of which it is a manifestation. The only possible deviation is that of mind and physical nature excluding the observer’s brain. In idealism, the judgment of the real hangs on the least immediate and most speculative datum, namely, the inferential real tree. The tree we do not see is taken as real, that which we do see, is illusory. Since a false perception cannot fork nature into real and unreal portions, the mind must be forked into real and unreal “representations.” One world or two? Why not prefer the parsimony of one world instead of two, assuming the world is exactly as we perceive it? Why infer that everything is an illusion and elaborate another world on which the phenomenal depends? The two-world concept is a disturbing prospect, while a separate world of categories seems less plausible than the world of solid objects evident to common sense. The truth is, we live not in a world of raw feels, sense data and naked matter, what is usually thought of as the essence of physical reality, but one that is organized into middle-sized objects that are felt to exist pretty much as they are perceived (Rescher, 1992). This is the world to which we have adapted, even if some objects, like the imaginary sound of a train in the distance (Russell, 1921) seem more illusory than others. Is a thought or an emotion less real than an act, an act less real than an object, a relation than a substance? These are all “true facts,” they all exist as world or mind events, but some have greater realness than others. To the “primitive,” a dream or hallucination may seem more real, or have more of the truth, or is a more profound revelation of the truth, than the images of daily perception. And it has been said of poetic truth that it begins, like love, where philosophy leaves off. Kant wrote, “All illusion consists in holding the subjective ground of judgment to be objective,” or to assume that thought is a copy of reality. The reverse is also true, a belief in the subjective ground of an objective world. For Vaihinger, “The division of the world into Things-inthemselves = Objects, and Things-in-themselves = Subjects is the primary fiction upon which all others depend.” The partition of experience into

584 subject and object is an important fiction but not the most fundamental. That of substance is deeper, more pervasive and responsible for the illusion of subject and object. The subjective phase of thought lays down the self and its will, the objective phase lays down concrete actualities. The progression to definiteness is an aim to stability. The shift in quality in a progressive individuation is the basis for the division of experience into self and object. Stability is achieved in the finesse of time and internal relations. If things are pure relations and all is in flux, there are no stable existents. Wittgenstein wrote, “And here we come on the difficulty of ‘all is in flux.’ Perhaps that is the very point at which to start.” If substance is primary, change is unreal, if relations are primary, substance is illusory. If one begins with substance, one cannot arrive at change, and the converse if one begins with change. The distinction of substance and process, or being and becoming, dissolves when substance is conceived as being-as-the-category-of-becoming, and becoming is conceived as process over a temporal extensibility that is framed by a category, and category is conceived as a duration of relations, the awareness of which is obscured for the sake of stability. An object is its temporal extensibility. We ignore the change depositing an object in order to see it, and then we transfer change to the surface of an object as an added property. Duration stabilizes change into existents as categories stabilize process into objects. The mind chunks experience (Miller, 1956) into things, selves, ideas, propositions, the perceptual and logical solids that articulate and anchor the “all is in flux.” Do internal relations deposit objects or do objects interact through external relations (Sprigge, 1993)? Either view is compatible with idealism (Bradley, 1893; McTaggart, 1901) and both are consistent with materialism or panpsychism. The world including the mind could be purely material, the mind including the world could be purely subjective, and the ground of the mental or the physical – the absolute – could be pure flux or emptiness, or a substrate of irreducible atoms. A theory of pure relations accounts for substance as category, while substance theory must do more than posit change at the object surface. One metaphysics is not decisive over the other, though in my view, the dialectic of stability and change can be resolved in a process monism where subjective and objective realms of existence mirror a foundational world of process iterated in cycles and framed by object-categories.

585 A conspiracy of perceptions Is an object-world of solid things and external relations any more or less real than a process-world of intrinsic relations and categories? Whether or not a thing is real depends on its coherence across perceptual systems and the correspondence of antecedent to consequent phases within a perceptual system. Specifically, the feeling of realness arises in the relatedness of contents within an act of cognition. What is the difference between the illusion of a bent-stick-in-water and the notion that the stick itself, out of water, in perception, is also illusory? The illusory quality of the bent-stick owed to an awareness of its lack of correspondence with the “real” stick. But, the illusion of the straight stick, as of all perception, involves a comparison to a noumenal reality beyond personal knowledge or the recognition that perceptions are imaginary products of brain activity and thus, in some sense, they are unreal. Here, unrealness does not refer to a feeling of a thing being unreal, but is a metapsychological judgment about the origin of perceptions. Unrealness is unreality, not the absence of a feeling of realness, which arises in the perception as an incoherence across modalities. Where is the illusion in the perception as unreal? A perception is as real or unreal as anything else. In the sense of existence, the perceptual image of a tree is as real as the tree that is inferred to be its source. An hallucination of a tree exists, i.e. the hallucination exists if not the tree, and it is real in the same way that a tree exists and is real. To ask if a tree exists without a mind is to ask if a mind can exist without an object. One is evanescent and private, the other enduring (recurrent) and public. These are properties, not determinants of existence or reality. The “reality” of a tree is confirmed by agreement across perceptions (vision, touch, language, etc.), by seeing and touching the tree as well as agreement across observers, which is also an agreement across perceptions. The interlocutor who confirms my perception could as well be part of my dream. As in waking life, a dream has cross-modal coherence. That is why we take it as real. Whether an entity appears and vanishes in a flash or recurs over centuries does not affect its present existence. Whether an idea is “in the head” or in the world depends on its exteriorization, not its existence. Reality is different than existence. The concept of reality presumes a match from mind to world. The concept of existence is independent of verification. The non-existent cannot be real, while a thing must first exist in order to be real, so that reality presumes existence. The coherence or cross-modal compatibility of perceptions is not

586 dissimilar from the correspondence of an image or concept with an object. The problem of “other minds” is also similar to that of the continuity of a single mind. Coherence refers to the “correspondence” between equivalent segments in simultaneous images across modalities, e.g. the phasecoupling of the auditory and visual. Contextuality is coherence in the pattern of relations within or across parallel networks. Correspondence refers to the “coherence” of an image with antecedent phases over successive segments within a modality or act of cognition, e.g. a concept or mental proposition that maps to an object. The former involves agreement across contemporary intra- and/or extra-psychic phases, the latter, agreement across successive phases, i.e. from intra- to extra-psychic segments. This sense of correspondence is involved when an illusion is perceived as false or untrue. The real and the true In some ways our concept of the real and unreal is guided by our judgment of what is true and false. Indeed, there has been a way of looking at mental imagery from the standpoint of its propositional content (Anderson, 1978). However, it seems more likely that the origin of truthfinding and falsification depends on an awareness of the relation of the real to the unreal, which provokes the individual to distinguish what is true (real) from what is false (unreal). A true proposition is conceived as a real object. It corresponds to the facts, conceived as objects or events in the world that can be verified, even if the objects to which facts refer are perceptions (including propositions, verbal images, etc.) in the mind. Correspondence refers to the match or mismatch of a proposition or statement to a perception. The match is judged true or false, the mismatch gives error or illusion. The problem is that an illusory proposition could match to an illusory perception. A subject could say all Martians are yellow, and see yellow Martians. Other people could be in the grip of the same false belief. This is common in mass hysteria or religious delusions, so that verification by others is no warrant of truth or reality. A formulation such as “All A's are B's etc.” does not avoid a match to experience, since knowledge of objects and properties, or classes and particulars, is experiential. Apart from knowledge and experience, we cannot ascertain whether a proposition is true and events illusory, or events “true” and the proposition illusory (false). To say a proposition is false implies a lack of correspondence to the real or true. We would not say a proposition is

587 illusory, though delusions would qualify as illusory propositions. Conversely, we would say a perception is illusory if it does not correspond to the real, but probably not that it is false. Correspondence refers to the match or mismatch of an antecedent to a consequent phase in the mind/brain state, e.g. belief or proposition to perception. The direction is from idea to fact. The relation is asymmetric because thought tends to increasing analysis. The real and unreal are absolutes, not comparisons like hot and cold. We think of truth in this way. We can say what is unreal or false with some assurance because we have the real and the true to compare them with, but what do we have, other than a memory of the unreal or false, to compare with the real and the true to know that our perceptions are real and our beliefs are true? If truth lies in a mapping to true or false facts, and the real lies in a correspondence to real or unreal events, how can the true and the real be independently established? These difficulties are bypassed in the supposed autonomy of logic, in that logical truths, like mathematical ones – or, one could say, like shared perceptual objects – are in principle independent of experience. Uchenko (1929) notes this common philosophical bias when he writes, “A proposition is presented apart from and independently of the concrete and existential source of its birth, if there is any.” But the proposition is no less independent of the mind than the “external” objects to which it refers. The psychic infrastructure of a proposition is the system of beliefs and values out of which it arises. This infrastructure is evident in the assertion of the proposition, its defense or negation, and the conviction in its truth. Elsewhere, Uchenko notes that the relation of the content of a proposition to its unity and meaning is like that of actual to potential. Facts and propositions issue from mental states, and then, like other objects, detach as independent contents. However, the truth of a statement depends on other contents in the same mind, or on consensus, which is merely a massed perception. When an object is perceived as false, the lack of correspondence can appear as a mismatch of intra- to extra-psychic, or a lack of identification of the perceptual with the real. From the subject’s perspective, within the affected modality there is no reality beyond the illusion or hallucination, no perception “more real” than the image. The perceptual objects of others cannot supplement what is lacking in the illusion. One cannot distinguish an illusion due to incomplete or distorted realization and one due to the failure to match a noumenal entity. In one instance, the real object is

588 beyond the reach of an illusion or hallucination. In the other, the noumenal entity is beyond the reach of a real object. The observer thinks a person who hallucinates does not see objects as they really are. Yet he fails to distinguish his perceptions from the noumena to which they presumably refer. A person with hallucination or pathological illusion does not usually recognize their unreality by comparing them to real objects. Instead, the recognition of unreality occurs by a mismatch with experience in other modalities. Facts are propositions in the mind generated as verbal images and subjected to a judgment of true or false. Propositions are not free-standing. They arise out of concepts. That is where correspondence comes in. For the statement, snow is white, to be true requires a correspondence of the object snow to the color white. Snow and white are perceptions. The color is bound up with the object, since shapes are demarcated by color boundaries. To be informed by others that snow is white does not add to the truth of the proposition, but entails a regress of verifications. The more observers who agree that snow is white, the more likely that either snow is white or that they are all watching the same movie, i.e. have the same illusion. Multiplying observers does not test the correspondence, since every observer is limited to his own perceptual experience. A group of likeminded observers adds verbal or deictic weight to one’s beliefs, but the reinforcement is ultimately through the perceptions of each subject, which may not be trustworthy. They may reinforce a belief, but do not add to the truth of the initial statement. The object snow must correspond to (fall within) the concept snow. The color white must correspond to (fall within) the concept color. Inevitably, snow and whiteness instantiate concepts that are broader than their realizations. To know that the object of the perception of snow is really snow, one must touch it, taste it, feel it is wet and cold, see it in the proper context, and so on. If we should see a field of white snow on a hot summer day in the middle of a heat wave, or under the blazing sun of the Sahara, even feeling the snow might leave us unconvinced. Is it really snow, is it a mirage, a hologram, a dream? Even if real and true are fictions, even if truth is at best ambiguous or an approximation and the real is unknowable, we live in a world that seems real and we understand the difference between what is true or false. Success in the world depends, crucially, on recognizing this difference. While the terra of truth and reality is less firma than we think, there are compensations for this instability. One thing that is true is that all

589 knowledge involves a comparison, minimally with its negation. Hegel proclaimed the principle of negativity as the principle of world process and philosophical logic. The negative judgment was a principle of truth-finding for Whitehead as well. This principle is consistent with the elicitation of objects by inhibitory or “negative” constraints in microgenetic theory (Brown, 1996; 2002), where the “what is” is shaped by eliminating the “what is not.” In continua, points are located in relation to other points, like the before and after in non-perspectival time. Where we are in the continuum depends on where we begin, or where we choose to be. If we are thinking heat, hot dominates cold. If we are thinking reality, objects dominate hallucinations. The truth is in the relation, not in the relata. An acknowledgment of the ambiguity or uncertainty of truth or reality is the first step in their honest pursuit. In fact, ambiguity may inhere in truth if the dialectic employed in its discovery extends into the truth that is discovered. This depends on whether the dialectic is an outcome of what is unconscious and uniform in nature, or if the method itself preconditions truth to display the procedures through which it is arrived at. But the unconscious ubiquity of the implicit comparison essential to all aspects of mental life does not signify that, in consciousness, comparison is a criterion of truth or reality. What is pervasive and covert in nature extends to a metapsychological judgment, transforming what is active in the individuation of particulars to a formal principle or operational mechanism. If the dialectical method is an outcome in evolution of the oppositions or contrasts that characterize basic entities in nature, the dialectic is expressive, not instrumental, or it is a creation of thought that does not produce but infects truth-judgments. All psychological phenomena involve contrasts: memory and perception, light and dark, the duration of the present, the boundaries of the self, a nose on a face, a face in a crowd, interest, value. The comparisons tend to involve wholes and parts, or categories and instances. A figure individuates a ground. An object is analysed to its parts. A comparison of two noses or colors has an object or a category as the ground to its features. The interdependence of all things, and the dependencies within all things, remind us that we are sets of constitutive relations embedded in still larger sets. There is an implication of such observations for moral philosophy, in that the artificiality, tentativeness and transience of autonomy speak against egoism and isolation, and provides a metaphysics that reinforces an ethics of generosity, shared experience and the primacy of community.

590 What is an illusion? From this discussion, it is evident that illusion, truth, belief and conviction are all inter-related phenomena. Consider the following. If a person thinks, falsely, that his wife is having an affair, that would be a false belief or, if it is strongly held and resistent to disconfirmation, a delusion. If he thinks a stain on the wall is an insect, that is both a false belief and an illusion. Depending on the strength of the belief, it merges with delusion. If he closes his eyes and still sees the insect, it becomes an hallucination. If he does not recognize the image as hallucinatory, and accepts it as real, i.e. if he falsely believes he sees an insect, he is again deluded. In all of these cases, delusion depends on rejecting the data of perception, not, from the subject's point of view, a failure to compare the illusory or false belief with a real object or a true statement. False beliefs can be described as a mismatch with “reality” by other people, but for the person who is deluded that is not how they arise. It may be true that a wife is faithful and that there are no insects on the wall, but the gradient from doubt to conviction, or from awareness of a falsehood to certainty in an error is determined not by a relation to fact but by the experiential quality of the object. Coherence, not correspondence, is the psychological determinant of belief. What then is an illusion? Could we then say it is less the taking of the phenomenal for the real than the missing of the real in the phenomenal? Everything conceivable exists in the form of its conception. A unicorn exists as the idea of a unicorn. The idea is no less real than a unicorn would be were it to exist as a flesh and blood animal. We cannot compare two categories of experience – idea and object – and conclude that one is more real than the other. Are dinosaur bones more real than dinosaurs? The distinction of the real and unreal rests on a confusion of categories. It may be a confusion we have to live with, but at least it should be acknowledged. I think the basis of illusion lies not in a comparison of appearance to reality but in the unquestioned acceptance of the reality of things which, down to their very core are, for many people, the very definition of the unreal, namely categories of intrinsic relations. What appears most real is the substantial object, not is constitutive relations. However, an eventontology (Chapter 1) conceives an object as that category of successive realizations (acts of cognition) within an epochal present required for the object to be perceived. If categories are held to be unreal, unseen nature is as much an illusion as is private experience and the visible world. If categories are real, so are ideas, hallucinations and objects. The concept of

591 the “real” is itself a category of presumably real things. But real things are hardly what they seem, not because they are misperceived, or because they are shadows or phantoms, but because what we observe, and what we infer behind our observations, are entities modeled on our experience with inner states that are opposed to external events, when the external is not the real world but the final segment of the mind/brain state that objectifies as “reality.” The universality of illusion What does it mean to live a life as if? The world as an illusion is more real to us than anything else we know. Illusion consists in missing what is truly real in that world, that is, in a lack of knowledge of the truth of what we conceive to be illusory or phenomenal. The real is what goes unnoticed precisely because it is uniform. Illusion goes deep into nature, but not as deep as the real. We can explore the real in the as if that underlies deception in the animal world. The camouflage and mimicry that we interpret as forms of as if in insects or animals are examples of adaptive trickery without awareness, pretense or dissimulation. The animal is unaware of the ruse. When an insect resembles a leaf, we know what is resembled. Nature creates a deception as an artist produces a fake painting. There is an exchange of one thing for another. Unlike an illusion, we understand the substitution or the duplicity, even if at first we do not perceive it. In illusion, there is an appearance, and there is an intuition of something behind it that is more fundamental. We may or may not know what that something is, but we feel that the appearance is false. The displacement of instinctual behavior in ethological studies described by Lorenz and others, say when intense fear is replaced by sleep, is a form of as if that is innate and automatic, but one that involves psychological process at a rudimentary level. Again, we know what behaviors are exchanged. When an actor acts as if he is angry, a suitor tempts an opportunistic target, a politician misleads the public, they act in a conscious and deliberate manner. In the first instance, a truth may be conveyed by a fabrication, in the second, a fabrication is more seductive than a truth, in the third, a truth is concealed in a fabrication. In these examples, the psychological aspect is in the foreground. The dissociation reflects a sympathetic identification in the actor, whereas in the suitor or politician there is an opposition of values or purposes. This is more like play than illusion.

592 Other dissociations are less clear, for example, when the apparent happiness of a person conceals an underlying melancholy, or when grandiosity is an attempt to “compensate” for a more basic feeling of inadequacy. The substitution is hypothetical. Psychic mechanisms of sublimation, repression, defense, etc. attempt to explain how the substitution, the as if, occurs. These effects are closer to illusions in that the behavior is in some manner false, but we can only speculate on what an authentic behavior would be like. However, the substitution is not, as in the relation of the mental to the physical, a reduction to a lower level but occurs across behaviors of the same general type, though there is a sense in which the concealed or unexpressed is deeper. These dissociations are comprehensible. They do not challenge fundamental concepts of time, space and category. The more fundamental the fiction, the more deeply ingrained or implicit it is in thought. The duration of the present, the unity of the self, the subject/predicate relation in language, and so on, create illusions that can only be exposed by the most ruthless and uncompromising skepticism. Denial and the grounds of false belief According to microgenetic theory of the symptom (Brown, 1994), focal brain damage exposes preliminary or pre-processing phases that are ordinarily bypassed or transformed in the course of normal cognition. Thus, observations of abnormal behavior in pathological cases are applicable to the interpretation of illusion and false belief in people without brain damage. One form of “negative” substitution is the lack of awareness or the denial of a disorder – a kind of illusion of normalcy - in which the absence of a behavior, unawareness of a defect or the claim of normal function, may be implicit in action or explicit in language. Denial is a form of as if that can be a conscious pretense or fiction, an unconscious assumption, an implicit strategy, or mere ignorance of the true state-ofaffairs. While we are all in the latter category, there are cases of brain damage in which the absence of knowledge of a condition is in the foreground of behavior. Unlike substitution, in which the person may justify or be unaware of the replacement, denial is an inability, or an unwillingness that is ordinarily not deliberate, to face a disagreeable situation that is evident to others and should be obvious to the subject. Denial is a universal phenomenon, common in people with a terrible diagnosis or tragic loss, but it is so common in brain pathology that if a

593 patient is acutely aware of his deficiencies one might almost suspect he is neurotic or malingering. Often it is accompanied by confabulation, in which the person gives false justifications. These linguistic substitutions are not guesses, but occur with a regularity and pattern that obeys the laws of thought. An elderly man with Alzheimer's disease is usually the last to notice his memory loss. A person who is blind due to lesions of the visual cortex is unaware of or denies his disorder, as does an aphasic with a disruption of lexical-semantics, or a patient with severe memory impairment or an acute left-sided paralysis. Under these conditions, the knowledge of blindness, amnesia, language impairment or paralysis requires some recollection or “representation” of the previously normal capacity for a comparison. This is not merely a recollection that one could once see or walk, but a revival of visual or kinaesthetic imagery so that seeing and walking are reexperienced in memory. A person will not know he is blind or amnesic unless a “standard” of the intact state is present in cognition in the affected domain or in a neighboring capacity, since all that can be known at a given moment are the (defective) experiences of that moment. On the microgenetic interpretation of continuous replacement, memories are revived in the present as incomplete percepts. The person with cortical blindness does not have a memory of what the visual world was like before he became blind, since the same (damaged) brain formations engaged in reviving that world are entrained in perceiving it. All that is available to the present is what can be perceived or revived in the present state. There is no storehouse of actual experience in the affected domain of function that can be matched to ongoing events. There are no copies of perception that can be retrieved from memory, since the “retrieval” of a memory “trace” is its full microgenetic traversal. Denial does not occur in every pathological case but is specific to the condition, so that an account based on motivation is unacceptable. A person with jargon aphasia is euphoric and unaware he is speaking nonsense, while a person with a different disorder of language shows full awareness, self-correction and depression. Kurt Goldstein’s (1939) “catastrophic reactions” in cases of amnestic aphasia occur with inability to produce names for objects. Cases of right hemisphere injury and left-sided paralysis show a striking denial of their impairment, and often cannot be forced to admit the deficiency even when the flaccid limb is waved before their eyes. This is much less common with left-sided damage and right paralysis. Cases of frontal lobe dysfunction show lack of awareness or

594 concern for inappropriate or provocative behavior, though when pressed, they will usually admit that they know they are acting badly. The denial of symptoms of brain damage is a dramatic illustration of that which occurs for many events in daily life, where an explanation based on motivation or repression could not apply. How often do we regret an action done in relative haste, even one that is trivial and not on impulse, when it is reconsidered a day or two later? How often does a writer shudder at the foolishness of a piece of writing with which he formerly was satisfied on re-reading it several months later. The juvenilia that once evoked rapture are discarded in the hindsight of a mature sensibility. Cases of jargon accept their own language productions when they are played back to them, but reject them when transcribed and spoken by others. We have less ability to “monitor” our own verbal and written productions than to judge the accuracy or validity of others. The “blind spot” for one's faults may not extend to others unless we love them, when they become part of the self. The lover is “devoured” by the self and, like the self, as part of the self, is refractory to criticism. Most people tend to blame their shortcomings on others rather than accepting responsibility. We are no more sanguine in self-judgment than in the “objective” description of a beloved or, in many instances, the faults of our children. Parents will defend children who are murderers, they will deny, excuse or justify their crimes. We would probably say a person is the worst judge of his own character, and even those who are self-critical may misjudge the traits they criticize. A fool may count himself a wise man, the more arrogant a person is, the less informed he may be, a beautiful or intelligent person may see himself as dull or unattractive. That painful facts or events tend to be denied more than neutral ones does not entail a mechanism for pain avoidance. We may “repress” or forget a painful experience in childhood, or it may be vividly recalled. Not every trauma is “repressed,” and the traumatic is a small fraction of what is forgotten. Since repression is leaky and forgetting unselective, additional “mechanisms” are ad hoc’ed to explain the exception. More likely, there is a gradient from pain to pleasure in which unpleasant facts accentuate a normal trend to avoidance or forgetting. Heightened anxiety explains the common occurrence of amnesia for traumatic events. The phenomenon of state-specific recall (or forgetting) may apply to that in alcoholic amnesia as in the forgetting of hypnotic trance. Probably, the brain and its drives are predisposed to a positive outlook. Painful experiences are usually recalled with less displeasure.

595 Time heals all wounds, we say, and this is generally true. Survival requires organisms that do not surrender to stress or discomfort but adapt and struggle on. The brain is insensitive to pain on direct stimulation, though stimulation in certain areas can induce pleasure. There is sufficient pain in life without the need for a brain center to enhance it, but pleasure, being a less natural state, would require such a system. The finding of “pleasure centers” in the diencephalon by James Olds, but not equivalent ones for pain, provides a biological counterweight, an antidote one could say, to the grim realities that are the daily lot of most people. What appears to be localized to a center in humans is a bias in lower organisms. The biologist Schneirla (1965) posited that approach and avoidance to mild and noxious stimuli in single-celled organisms evolves to a similar dichotomy in humans, that this opposition is responsible for what is a truism of human behavior, namely that we all seek to increase pleasure and avoid pain. Though somewhat crude and limited in its application, this approach led the great neurologist Denny-Brown (1963) to construct an entire system of human neuropsychology. Living with illusion The “mechanism” of denial may help us to understand how most people can live a life without morbid pessimism, crankiness or melancholia, or find fault or despair in every facet of life. There is a common tendency to ignore what is unpleasant, to bury grief and avoid pain. Life goes on. The sun rises anew each day! The presence of suffering would not seem to be a constant of life, but rather, an effect of living poorly, marginally, in oppression, poverty, ill-health, with no hope of betterment. Life is misery and suffering for much if not most of humanity, yet pessimism is not ubiquitous. The young are more hopeful than the old, but not merely out of ignorance. There is greater possibility, potential is less constrained by habit, and the will-to-live is strong. In the old, the will is weak, the future shrinks, prior hopes have not materialized, life’s disappointments accumulate. Resignation sets in. Frank Sinatra remarked that when one has lived the life he did, one life is enough! Good fortune can rescue optimism from a morbid philosophy. If life is suffering and futile, and our desires and their objects are illusory, then people also are worthless. One wonders why we are not all misanthropes like Freud, who remarked that most human beings are trash. He said, “My dear fellow men, with few exceptions, are worthless.” Schopenhauer (in Janaway, 1999)

596 thought optimism not merely shallow and absurd but “a really wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind,” agreeing with Byron that: “know, whatever thou hast been/’Tis something better not to be.” The will-to-live is the origin of the forward surge in life and the failure to accurately know this fact is the source of life’s illusions. This is the core of many philosophies, including Buddhism. That life is illusory is not, as Schopenhauer would have it, an argument to overcome the illusion in death but rather, as Vaihinger points out, to achieve a knowledge of the illusion and to employ it to live a good life and help others. The error in the illusion is in locating the will at the onset of the act, as a cause or pressure behind it, not in the objects toward which it is directed. This error traces to the false belief that relations are external to solids. Schopenhauer wrote, “What everyone wills in his innermost being, that must he be; and what everyone is, is just what he wills.” This is the core of his philosophy. The will is process, becoming, but not only within the individual, it is the temporal dynamic within all entities. Here illusion consists in displacing the will outside the object as a power that acts upon it rather than inside the object as part of what it is. The avoidance or denial of the unpleasant is a form of as if that ignores a metaphysical truth. The loss or perishing of the past and the incessant renewal of the present are a surround of process in the midst of which moments crystallize as “drops of experience.” Oblivious to the ebb that precedes and follows each rising tide, we strive for a pleasure that seems permanent and imperishable, clinging to an object that is empty on either side, as if death could be forestalled in the birth of the oncoming moment. The sense of as if when external objects or mental contents, and their relations, are accepted as direct and unmediated has its foundation in this isolation of the metaphysical point. We are the products of millions of years of evolution, so well-adapted to nature – one might say, we reflect the nature we perceive – that only an act of imaginative thought allows us to escape the emphatic realism of the natural situation. If insects, animals and people are not always what they seem, so too is nature not the surface it presents to us. The real is a covert process of creation that we mirror as spectators or participants. It is not that objects are unreal but that the real in objects is missed and, with it, the groundlessness, i.e. emptiness in the Buddhist sense, of all claims, all entities and all objects of desire.

597 What matters The distinction of the illusory and the real depends on whether the intrinsic relationality of an object is part of its description. The consequences of a failure to address the dual aspect of objects and of accepting the phenomenal as real, whether in the abrupt sacrifice of a life for the sake of an important belief or the gradual pursuit of a trivial one, is a life as if appearances matter. That is not to say the appearances do not matter, for an object can matter or not whether or not it is real. The imperceptibility of intrinsic relationality does not alter the appearances, but an awareness of this missing aspect shifts our focus to what is essential. The insubstantiality of things accompanies a greater sense of their, and our, interdependence and with this the fictitious existence of isolated individuals: points, atoms, selves. We should not be asked to choose between the substantial and the relational. An object is a combination of category and process. A process cannot create an entity without a category to enclose it, while a category devoid of process is an empty abstraction. From a metaphysical standpoint, there is no middle way between the extremes of substance and relation, or persistence and annihilation, rather one way that accepts being and becoming as complementary aspects of the real. Illusion and reality are not divisions of conscious thought but unconscious ingredients in the nature of becoming that trace to the very beginnings of material process. A solid particle is an illusion, not merely for the unawareness of its temporal dynamic. Relations do not exist apart from the duration or category that “contain” them. The real lies in the knowledge that all objects consist of a simultaneous being and becoming. Two illusions or half-truths combine to the one truth of reality. The illusory duality of wave and particle is resolved in the actual unity of the real. Whitehead wrote that the process is the reality. Process needs category-boundaries for substance (being), while substance (category) exists through its realization in process. Keeping this in mind lessens the force of objects and beliefs, our own and those of others, and enables us to respond with deeper awareness and detachment. To focus solely on the relational and ignore the categories is to renounce objects and the desire for them as distractions from an hypothetical absolute or the ultimately real, an error opposite to that of object permanence. There is a price to pay for renunciation. If we believe that everything is relational, we may turn our back on the world and seek the real in a denial of the illusory, or meditate on dependent origination and drown in monkish retreat. If we choose this path, we relinquish one half-

598 truth for another and are in danger of missing a full knowledge of things, not to mention life itself. We live with being and becoming, the insubstantiality of process and appearance, the intangibility of relations and categories, yet we must also live as if the categories are necessary and real. Accepting things at “face-value” is part of everyday life. We give importance to family, career, culture, hobbies, games, sports as if it all matters. We give importance to phenomena - objects, laws, feelings - that, though inherently empty serve more fundamental purposes, albeit equally relational, to motivate or constrain behaviors that benefit the individual directly, or indirectly by way of the group. Tomes have been written on silence or emptiness that in their very writing expose the ambivalence of the author to the opinions he espouses. Books on modesty are written by authors who do not remain anonymous. A belief in the emptiness of all pursuits does not prevent an explication of why that belief is true. Were such beliefs deeply felt and unopposed by the will to live and the desire for what is illusory or phenomenal, the urge to self-expression would disintegrate in utter hopelessness and futility. An everyday example that most of us would agree on, is the tacit understanding that certain rules or values have importance for human conduct, even if not justified by physical laws. We are “hard-wired” for the serious view of life. In evolution and society, the stakes for survival are high. The drive for self-preservation continues after the necessities have been achieved, in the pursuit of other less essential needs and acquisitions. The very excess of want or passion exposes the desire at its core, the fatuity of the quest and, by implication, the insignificance of all human endeavor. Consider those who fight over rival teams at a soccer match, or those who grasp at yardsticks of their own progress in gossip and petty jealousies of the successes and failures of others. People rarely seem aware of the utter vacuity of their opinions. We smile at what we hear and say they are simple or deluded, but then we shudder at how far a life in the illusory can go when frivolous opinions evolve to hateful and destructive beliefs. Some would say a life has to be spent doing something and that, except for the great artists, doers and thinkers, perhaps even for them, one thing is more or less the same as any other. What counts is passion, engagement, regardless of their objects. Whether a person takes pride in his teachings, in travel and adventure, or in his tomato garden, most people participate in life's pursuits with a whole heart, with commitment and involvement. Some search for their “bliss,” as Joseph Campbell put it, but

599 whether or not they seek it, or find it, or realize it when they do, rarely do they feel they are sleepwalkers, or puppets, or that life is a charade. Life, as it is lived by most of us, does not seem like a dream. The will to live is affected not by the illusoriness of its objects but, in the chill apprehension of death, by the certainty of their loss, which gives the sense of futility the “what is the point of it all” - that now and then invades even the most sustained dedication. The philosophy of as-if In a book so titled, that relies heavily on Kant’s views as to the limits of human knowledge, or the mediation of all knowledge by categories, Vaihinger (1924) wrote that the appearance, or the consciously false, plays an enormous role in science, philosophy, religion and life. The as-if is a conscious fiction that differs from an hypothesis in that it is a knowing illusion, not a testing of truth or an approximation. The as-if assumes the utility of conscious illusion, whereas for Jamesian pragmatism, truth depends on utility. The one claims utility for the unreal, the other asserts validity from utility regardless of whether it is real or true, though in pragmatism, utility is the basis on which the truth of a belief is determined. The world of the unreal is sharply distinguished from the world of becoming. The as-if is especially important in the value world of ethics and aesthetics. Ethical objects are among the most obviously fictitious ideas to which we must submit. The as if is apparent in the Golden Rule, Kant’s maxim or the principle of greater happiness. The subject is asked to make an imaginative projection of a fictitious ideal or illusion that is useful as a guide to conduct. Such iIlusions are little lies that require other illusions to reinforce them. For example, duty requires shedding one's egoist skin to assume an impersonal perspective. Responsibility and punishment require that people act as if there is free will. In general, conduct in a society is regulated by custom or a social contract that is an artifice of thought. When people are guided by religious doctrine, even those members who are skeptical of the meaning or justification of a custom will endorse it as essential to group cohesion. Value is often taken to be the most important of all fictions. Life without value is unthinkable, not merely because we create value, which is only partly true, or that without value life is barren of interest and meaning, which again is true, though in a different way. Intrinsic value is a creation

600 and a lure. If value is intrinsic to basic entities, there is a quotient of will in the least particle. The world itself can be conceived as a creation of value magnified in human cognition. Like the human will, which is its precursor and most vivid articulation, value is attributed to human agency. Most people would accept that value is an expression of desire, itself a product of will. The question is if these feelings are outside the object that is their aim and outside the self that is their agent? Or, does intrinsic value expand the feeling from within to create subjects and objects connected by a bridge of process from will or drive at one polarity to value or worth at the other? There is a difference between an illusion such the self or conscious present, or an appearance such as a perceptual object, and arbitrary fictions such as social customs, religious doctrines and the whole of jurisprudence. The former are natural, irresistible aspects of mind, the latter, arbitrary constraints specific to a culture. The former are innate, ingrained, the latter assimilated to character to become a more or less comfortable part of the self’s system of beliefs and values. Or, they are imposed on conduct as restrictions that can be oppressive. From a psychological standpoint, a law that prohibits murder is equivalent to one that prohibits spitting on the grass. It is merely a law that can be enforced or ignored. A law that takes its power solely from interdiction is in danger of rebellion, for it may be impossible to enforce. The laws against marijuana are a contemporary example. The law has to find its real strength in an appeal to religious or personal values. It must be assimilated to character and apprehended as the self's own value. In this way the law is reinforced by affirmation as well as by punishment. The as if is so powerful that even the most corrupt, cruel or inane laws, e.g. against witches, homosexuals, “ethnic cleansing,” can be justified on religious, eugenic or political grounds. Even a proclamation that has no credibility, a tyrant who declares that all children born with light brown hair are to be put to death, even that, can be assimilated to a value system; for example, as a race- and gender-neutral strategy for population thinning. The mind never has enough as ifs, but continues to seek them to resolve uncertainty, conflict or tension, i.e. to increase pleasure, through justification, distraction and new interests. In the same way, the mind seeks variety in the as ifs of pleasure, in conversation, sport and other amusements, avoiding incoherence in their resolution, for a failure to do so leads to psychic discomfort. To avoid, deny, “repress” or otherwise subdue painful experience is equivalent to striving for pleasure.

601 Take the law against spitting. Once it becomes a personal value, the restriction may be more an annoyance than an obligation. However, if the effect of spitting was similar to murder, e.g. if spitting were to spread a fatal disease, the penalty might be similar to that for murder and the two would have a comparable gravity. The law itself does not account for this difference. It lies in the context in which the law is invoked, e.g. a vaccine would neutralize the prohibition. If polio was spread in this way, and polio was eradicated, the law would then have no basis, though many laws, now traditions, such as kosher and other dietary laws, continue to govern conduct long after their rational has been forgotten. The law becomes a custom when it has been fully churned through the psyche over many generations. Its transition to as if is then complete. The law engages and transforms desires and beliefs, not by imposition as elicitation from within. In this way an intolerable fiction, a law that is fraudulent, say that women should not work, protest, go to school, leave the home, etc., passes through the mind to become a fully illusory belief. Ethics and aesthetics are no more illusory than any other aspects of life since value pervades all thought and action. The intrinsic value in the appearance is what makes a thing real to the self or the other. However, a psychology of value can only go so far to establish the aesthetic context of an artwork or the moral context on which judgments of right and wrong are based. The value may be intrinsic but its valence is not. At some point, standards of beauty or criteria of fairness intervene. To act as if “all men are created equal” is as groundless as to act as if conduct should be guided by maxims of reason, impersonality, greater happiness, temperance or moderation. These as if assumptions are no less illusory than any others. We may be persuaded by argument, but conviction is not in the argument if it is not already in the value. Value theory informs us that feeling is continuous from monad to mind, from passion to particle. All things die or can be destroyed but they do not all renew themselves. As death evokes awe and shuddering, life evokes reverence and wonder. Since it is easier to demolish than create, life being more fragile than death, it deserves our protection. Conduct that is life-enhancing is directed to the aid of others. The best argument for values that are life-enhancing may be that the evolution of intrinsic value creates entities of increasing value development which disintegrate to entities of a lesser complexity in which intrinsic value devolves to mere energic process. If all things have value in proportion to their complexity, are we not obligated to preserve value in relation to that proportion? If

602 value is extrinsic, it can be applied or withheld, and every moral theory based on external relations is arbitrary. But if all things develop out of value, any attack on intrinsic value is a perversion. Thus the enlightened soul does not seek to import or extend value into the world, but rather, apprehends and strives to enhance a world that is literally shimmering with value in all its objects.

Chapter 23. Wholeness and the Creative Life It is by my not denying as false what I do not yet see to be true, that I give myself the chance of growing in insight. Baron von Hugel Suppose someone is given reasons why he ought to do a thing, accepts the reasons as valid and persuasive and offers no satisfactory rebuttal, yet still asks, “Why should I do it?” A philosopher who is faced with such a response will throw up his hands and say, “What more can I do? If you accept the arguments I have given, and have none of your own to refute them, why should you refuse to do what reason dictates?” The denial of a logical proof would certainly be illogical, but in this instance, the person accepts the argument as sound, and still asks why he should act. I think we all have such experiences on many occasions, when we know or have been advised of the most rational course of action and have not taken it. Every parent has such experiences with a willful son or daughter. This occurs for everyday non-moral decisions, such as a person unable to change a behavior like smoking, reckless driving or eating fatty foods that he agrees is self-destructive, or someone who cannot leave a partner who is abusive, or a job that pays little and is humiliating. It also occurs in relation to the most general moral principles, such as not to tell a lie or to always be considerate of others. Regardless of whether a decision concerns moral or non-moral objects, why is it that logic does not impel action? Indeed, if the problem is that ethical argument does not carry force, it would seem futile to respond to moral skepticism with more argumentation (Willliams, 1985). I think there are several reasons, some of which I have discussed elsewhere (chapter 10). Here I would like to consider the psychology of conviction and the lack of satisfaction in the fully rational life when affective needs are inconsistent with the dictates of reason and social convention.

604 Belief, conviction and character Of first importance is that logic may demonstrate a truth but does not give the feeling of conviction in the truth it affirms. A conviction is assumed to grow out of a belief according to its truth, with false beliefs gradually altered in the direction of true ones by reasoned argument. This seems sensible enough, but it does not correspond to the psychology of conviction. Unless logic confirms what we already believe and are convinced to be true, a logical argument alone is insufficient to give a conviction in its truth. If one accepts a finding as true on the basis of logic or demonstration, the honest attitude is that of the model scientist, who considers truth provisional. In science and in life, an “open mind” is healthy, while an excessively strong conviction veers into dogmatism or faith. An action is guided according to its strength of conviction, not its truth. Though one may readily assent to a convincing proof, conviction does not follow automatically on explication, nor is conviction essential for a belief in facts that are accepted as true. It is commonly asserted that conviction requires rational grounds, but I see little evidence for this. “I know” expresses some degree of certainty. “I believe” expresses doubt. With doubt, there is the possibility of error, the awareness of limitations, inclusiveness, thus civilized conduct. Tennyson wrote, “Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.” Descartes began with doubt and reached the core of what he felt to be true. Most of what passes as knowledge in people who are reasonable is provisional. Even the most indisputable facts can be disputed on some grounds. George Washington was the first president of the United States, but the role and definition of president underwent many changes, as did the United States, as did George Washington, in one of many possible worlds. If someone were to show me that there was a brief interlude prior to Washington when another person, equivalent to a president, acted as a de facto leader, I could readily accept and integrate the fact that George Washington was the second president with little damage to my belief system. If I had written several tomes entitled: George Washington, First President of the United States, I might be shaken by this discovery, because it would go to my reputation as a scholar. If I can accept this discovery as true with equanimity, it is because I care too little in its truth to muster much conviction one way or another in my belief. It does not engage my being in a way that another “fact” does, say, that “my lover is unfaithful”. The transition of a statement from belief to knowledge is a sign of its increasing truth, but this is still independent of the strength of

605 conviction. A person who believes in god’s existence with a strong conviction, if asked how does he know god exists, would find it difficult to answer. “I believe she loves me” is weaker than “I know she loves me” – the latter being truer to the believer than the former – but only a fool would place much conviction in either! The primitive may have a more powerful conviction in his crocodile gods than a modern in his scientific truths. The natives tremble when the shaman with his chicken bones predicts a scourge upon the land, but when the weatherman, with all the technology at his hands, forecasts a hurricane in several days, many people merely smile, for he has been wrong before. So too the shaman, but he has magical resources, while the reputation of the weatherman depends on people forgetting his false prognostications. The unassailable conviction in a primitive belief is hardly a matter of knowledge. Generally, it points to the depth of origination of the belief content, which is a sign of the degree to which the belief is personalized and integrated with values in the self. In conviction, the self-concept is at stake, the belief stemming from the presuppositions that inform character or the sense of who that person is. Conviction may also occur in those instances where alternative thoughts are absent or dispelled, when there is no possibility of doubt. Perhaps brainwashing is like this. But then, as in the prior examples, character identifies with false belief, because conflicting beliefs and values have been effaced by force or intimidation. The average person is inclined to accept as true that which is consistent with his beliefs rather than waiting to determine whether the matter is true or not before he commits to believe it. Someone who has the belief that all Irishmen are drunks will take his belief to be true in spite of evidence to the contrary, which constitutes for him merely an exception to the rule. This tendency is still more prominent in some cases of brain pathology, where truth is irrelevant to belief. If a patient believes it, for him it is true. A patient with syphilitic brain disease may have an unshakable megalomania. A psychotic who believes he is Napoleon or that aliens are trying to kidnap him cannot easily be converted in his belief. They are false beliefs that are felt with conviction, and thus are termed delusions. Too strong a conviction in a true belief is also viewed as pathological. A healthy and secure person who lives in constant terror in the true belief that he will die is in need of psychiatric help. If instead, he believes he will live forever, and has the same terror at the prospect of an endless life, he would also need help, but would then be delusional. If he accepts he will die but fears eternal damnation, some would claim he is

606 delusional, others would see his belief as plausible and encourage him to seek salvation. Delusions are often, but not necessarily, fixed. The fixed delusion is an encapsulated belief that distorts novel events so as to be coherent with other elements of the belief system. The delusion absorbs experience and twists its interpretation so it will reinforce the delusional content. This is an accentuation of a normal tendency. The phenomenon of denial has a similar basis, as when facts that are unpleasant or challenge false beliefs are ignored. The pathological is not an aberration, but gives insights to the nature of normal belief and conviction. There is a continuum from such cases to everyday encounters with people who argue vehemently about topics, especially politics, with little or no knowledge of the facts. The healthy tendency is that the more one knows about a topic, the more complex the truth, the more tentative and balanced one’s convictions. What sets a pathological delusion apart from the “normal” conviction in a false belief is less the structure of the belief than the degree of fantasy in the content. In the amnestic or confabulatory syndrome there is also conviction in the truth of a false belief or memory. The alcoholic vagrant who claims to be a millionaire is not dissuaded when the examiner points to his shabby clothes and questions his empty bank account. He merely gives other reasons for these contradictory facts, for example, that he is a deposed king living in temporary poverty until he resumes the throne. However, the next moment the person may forget his belief, and go on to another confabulation, or the examiner’s questions may lead to a mutation of the false belief, usually coherent with the prior one. At times, it may be difficult to say whether the facts are true or not. The content of confabulation in cases of brain disorder is “closer to reality.” One sign of this is that the confabulation can be altered by the examiner’s questions, unlike psychotic confabulation or paramnesia, which is more dream-like and resistant to manipulation. Psychotropic drugs may leave a false belief relatively intact, yet diminish conviction and thus permit self-scrutiny, and the possibility of a path back to sanity. In some cases, they seem to eradicate the false belief, or rather, one could say, they reduce the tendencies or psychic incentives out of which the belief arises. What is the essential difference between the elderly woman who cannot be dissuaded from the belief that a rapist is hiding under the bed, or the elderly man who claims his money is being stolen, or someone who believes there has been an alien invasion, or a person who thinks he is

607 beset by imaginary vermin, or another who argues that the destruction of the Trade Centers was an Israeli or CIA plot? In some instances, the belief is related to devotional teaching and peer pressure, in others to mental weakness, magical thinking and other forms of susceptibility. In some there is a charismatic teacher, in others an inner voice, in still others, the herd mentality of a mob or cult. Some have political motives, others monetary. For some, there appears to be no motive at all, or there is a brain disorder. But in all instances, whether the belief is endogenous or inculcated, the will is subordinate to the belief, which tends to arise largely out of need or fear. All cases resist contradiction, and preserve the false belief by distorting or denying true facts. To die for the leader of a cult, a failed political movement, or for the virgins and sweet water of paradise – a wish-fulfillment that is understandable in people who are sexually repressed and live in the desert – would count as delusional behavior were it not encouraged by clerics, endorsed by other believers and reinforced by the community. The suicidal terrorist is an example of conviction in an uncritical mind. There is a long history, and there are many varieties, of religious and secular suicide (chapter 16; see Laquer, 2003), but they have in common a surrender of choice in the self, whether to an internal or external agency. When the belief is instilled or implanted by others, we speak of hypnosis, intimidation, brainwashing or indoctrination. When the belief arises spontaneously, we speak of an idee fixe, an obsession or a delusion. In the one, the belief is attributed to external or objective sources, in the other, to internal or subjective sources. The difference between the fanatic and the psychotic is the objectivity of origin of the belief in the former and its subjectivity in the latter, though the boundaries are often not clear-cut. An obsession can arise sui generis or it can be conditioned by events in the world. An overpowering belief can arise as a response to a chance encounter or a ghostly visitation. The fanatic is predisposed to his belief by a receptive personality, while psychotic beliefs are influenced by experience with others. In both instances, the belief comes to dominate cognition and usurp agency and choice. To say a belief is objective is not to say it is true, only that it is shared by others in a group or community. To say a belief is subjective is not to say it is false, only that it is idiosyncratic and not shared by others. The more idiosyncratic the belief, the more fantastical or incomprehensible the content, the more the belief approaches a delusion – or a creative discovery. The more widespread the belief, the greater the consensus, the more the belief approaches fact or

608 dogma. Most ordinary people fall in a spectrum somewhere between these extremes. The scientist or philosopher who welcomes debate and holds as an ideal the disinterested pursuit of truth is no less immune to this phenomenon than the ordinary person, only perhaps to its more extreme versions. When a person takes a strong ideological position, say a liberal or conservative, and is resistant to argumentation by those with opposing views, in some degree he exhibits features of one of these extremes. It is but a miniscule percentage of any population that is able to hold two or more opposing ideas at the same time, to scrutinize them with detachment and to search for the facts that will lend support to one of them. For those few who can entertain two beliefs at the same time, especially if they are contradictory, without committing to either of them until evidence in favor of one belief accumulates, the impersonality or detachment that is the ideal of such an inquiry, where belief is forestalled until truth is decided, may arrive at a certainty which, in spite of its truth, lacks a deep conviction. The irony is that while the strength of belief corresponds to conviction, neither belief nor conviction correspond to truth. Indeed, conviction is inconsistent with the dialectical spirit in which truth is discovered. That is one reason why the “truth” is so scarce, and so precious. Thus belief and truth dissociate, as do truth and conviction, though conviction is an expression of the strength of a belief. A false belief or delusion will guide behavior more strongly than a belief that is true. The psychotic who is terrified of imaginary rats in his apartment may have greater agitation than a person who has to deal with real ones. In the former, the rats are created by, or accompany, the fear: if there were no fear, there would be no delusional rats.. The effect of knowledge on conduct is to constrain action within the limits of the knowledge base. I know if I walk in front of a moving car I will be injured or killed. If I doubt this fact, my conduct is no longer constrained by my system of beliefs or, one could say, it is motivated by a false belief, or by risk-taking, or by foolishness, all of which, in a relatively sound personality, correspond with some awareness of choice and possibility. This raises the question of whether everyday beliefs, especially those that arise in perceptual experience, such as that walking in front of a moving car is dangerous, are part of a knowledge base that is less susceptible to falsification than other, more conceptual beliefs, such as those having to do with religion or politics. For beliefs that concern moral conduct, as in terrorism, faith or the after-life, the facticity of choice is uncertain. This leaves conviction to fill

609 the vacuum that uncertainty or doubt should occupy. Though we see conviction for false or unverifiable beliefs more often in a political or religious context, any belief can become invested with feeling and take on a conviction out of all proportion to its accuracy or significance. My sense is that there are no “rock bottom” beliefs that are immune to falsification or distortion. Moore thought the belief, “This is my right hand,” was a rock-bottom belief. But he might have changed his mind if he had had the opportunity to interview amputees with phantom limbs, who know their hand is missing yet believe it is still there. Wittgenstein’s brother was a famous example. This belief is linked to the perceptual modality of somaesthesis. The person feels the hand is there and, with his eyes closed, believes it is there, only to doubt the veracity of his belief on seeing the stump. The knowledge of the amputation is insufficient to counter the somaesthetic experience of the limb. The false belief is only canceled with the introduction of another perceptual modality, that of vision. A similar explanation pertains to individuals with a hemiplegia who deny the limb is paralyzed, even if the flaccid extremity is passively waved before their eyes. Here, the false belief that the limb is normal is not corrected by visual confirmation. Cases with hemiasomatagnosia with a lesion in the parietal lobe have a disorder in the recognition of the presence or functional state of one side of the body, usually opposite that of the lesion. For example, they may locate their good right hand on the chandelier. Such cases might have made Moore think twice about a “rock-bottom” belief (for examples, see Brown, 1988). These examples indicate that the conviction in a belief is independent of, may precede, and often displaces, a clear knowledge of the content on which the truth or falsity of the belief is based. The pursuit of truth must proceed with a suspension of belief and a profession of lack of knowledge. Perhaps this is easier to do in science, which deals with relatively impersonal facts, but not of course when those facts (values) are bound up with the vanity and ambition of the scientist, or when they threaten to undermine another belief system, e.g. evolution and divine creation. A spirit of doubt, uncertainty, openness, even mystery, is essential for discovery. Burtt wrote of Newton and the scientific and philosophical movement that preceded him, that “one of the most curious and exasperating features of this whole magnificent movement is that none of its great representatives (i.e. Galileo, Descartes, etc.) appears to have known with satisfying clarity just what he was doing or how he was doing

610 it.” The setting-out on uncharted seas with a sense of adventure is characteristic of the creative personality. It would also appear incompatible with intolerance and dogmatic assertion, at least in the domain of creative talent. We also see an attitude of receptiveness and passivity in mystical thinking. Certainty or conviction is not an attribute of mysticism, which entails a sense of awe of the unknown. Mystical experience is not uncommon even in great scientists and philosophers. Goethe is but one example. Burtt wrote of Kepler that “the whole of his work was overlaid and confused by crude inherited superstitions which the most enlightened people of his time had already discarded.” Even Descartes cited a visitation by the Angel of Truth on November 10, 1619, as the decisive point in his career (Brown 2000, on magical thinking and belief). Lying When the attempt to communicate or convey a false belief to others is made with the knowledge that it is false, we speak of lying, not delusion. It is said that a person who tells or hears a lie often enough will come to believe it. Here, we see the transition from lying to self-deception to delusion, as the belief comes to dominate and gradually overwhelm the grounds of truth and choice. Increasing valuation is dedicated to the belief, or the belief expands in the self-concept, and with repeated assertions may objectify as an established fact. However, a deliberate attempt to deceive by lying is far from unknowing fabrication, or certainty in a false belief. In some respects, lying is more complex than honesty from a cognitive as well as moral point of view, in that the former requires inventiveness as well as conscious choice, which, in the latter, may be absent or not apparent. In spite of ethical arguments to the contrary (Kant), honesty, or the attempt at disinterested truth, is not always the best policy. It is not just a question of tact. Lying to one’s enemies can save one’s life at no cost to others, or save the lives of others at no cost to oneself (chapter 13). The “Emperor’s New Clothes” is the moral dilemma of the truth teller who defies convention for honesty. How great a risk is acceptable and for what magnitude of truth? Should a calculus govern honesty according to the moral weight of the issue and the peril attached to its defense? Someone who tries to convince a tribe of cannibals that their customs are immoral may wind up in the pot. The missionary who attempts to introduce cannibals to “civilized” values deserves to be eaten for his arrogance and

611 moral imperialism. What is the obligation of an interloper in a community that does not share his values? The honest expression of personal values in a foreign or hostile environment can be a kind of folly. “All men are created equal” is an essential fabrication. “Political correctness” is a form of dissimulation in the service of equity. Still, we honor the person with a great heart who speaks out regardless of the consequences, even if he is aware that his conduct will be regarded as foolish or dangerous. When a false belief, a religious dogma or a superstition is true for most people in a community, even if it involves human sacrifice or conduct that is abhorrent to other societies, such as communities that devour the elderly, or execute members for the violation of food distribution rules, we might say such people are primitive or untutored, but not that they are immoral, malicious or delusional. Moral principles are most efficacious when they are followed by the majority of people in a society, or when a society has grown to the point where a moral principle such as honesty, charity or hospitality has force. Otherwise, moral rules that are unconditionally obeyed may put the individual who obeys them at a disadvantage to those who do not. The disreputable can exploit a strict principle of honesty, just as the enemies of a benevolent state can use its morality as a weapon. A good person will be trampled by a ruthless government, whereas a ruthless person will profit from its kindness, which he will interpret as weakness. What is the obligation of the individual to speak against an atrocity when there is great danger of retribution? Is this a moral obligation or a matter of courage? Is the futility of the gesture, say to speak the truth by loudly proclaiming that one’s captors in a concentration camp are evil, an argument for silence? Is it a matter of discretion, not cowardice, when a good person in a camp of thieves is unwilling to sacrifice himself for a moral principle? One may dissuade a person of from an evil action by wit, pleading, guile, but it is quite hopeless to change the moral character of someone – much less an army, country, mob – bent on a malevolent undertaking. The greater the disparity in beliefs or values, the less hope of moral conversion. The psychological transformation that is required for such a conversion is not unlike a realignment of faith or a shift in a scientific paradigm. An account of belief and conviction is preliminary to that of selfrealization and an authentic life. We seek the attainment, and the fulfillment in action, of a wholeness of character, but what does this mean? That a person in conflict should aim at a resolution of opposing values, that

612 conflict should spill directly into behavior as honest self-expression, that rational indecision should be sacrificed for the fake coherence of a piecemeal unity or the satisfaction of impulse? If conviction receives the full heart of the person regardless of its truth, while the impersonal truth that is the goal of critical inquiry leaves the heart still uncertain, is there not a conflict in the desire for commitment or fulfillment and the detachment that is essential to the life of reason? The irrational life Perhaps reason does not always prevail in the decisions of a life because a life lived according to reason, or its correlate in strict moral rules, may not be a life worth living. The path laid out by logic, like the shortest route to Cannes, may not be the most scenic or interesting. The highway of truth may be a less exciting voyage than the byway of fortune. Frost’s fork in the woods is an occasion for an irrational choice and an unpredictable outcome. The fact that a moral theory can provide impeccable arguments for conduct yet comes up empty-handed against the rebuke, “Why should I?” cannot be due merely to ignorance, selfishness, impulsiveness or irrationality. After the arguments have all been made, the question is the Achilles heel of a rationalism that ignores psychology, the role of persuasion, conviction and unconscious value in determining conduct, not to mention inventiveness, play and curiosity. Not only the ordinary person may refuse to follow the “voice of reason.” Many of the most perceptive of the moralists and the most poetical of the philosophers have asked whether the human spirit seeking self-realization is not tethered to choking by layers of obligation, manners, responsibilities, the oughts of decency and consideration. The fear is that the social and self-censure of moral acts will denature the spontaneity of non-moral action, e.g. that a habit of self-denial may smother the creative spirit. The artist is particularly sensitive to this concern, for his conduct embraces work and life in a way that is foreign to the average person. The artist more than most must steer a path between the imaginative and the real, self-expression and constraint, the wishful delights, the shackles of convention, and the more unusual and brazen the personality, the more difficult the adjustment. Santayana wrote: “Is not morality a worse enemy of spirit than immorality?” going on to say that the romantic poets with “irregular lives,” e.g. Shelley, Leopardi, were “children of the spirit condemned to flutter on

613 broken wings” for lack of discipline. So forthright yet reluctant an example of respectability as Bertrand Russell – T. S. Eliot’s “Priapus in the shrubbery” – admired D. H. Lawrence, Conrad and Wittgenstein for what he felt was sublimated in his own personality: risk, passion, the “white heat” of raw subterranean energy. The trickle of spontaneous impulse into civility is the feared byproduct of a morality that chains too tightly the savage instinct. Or so we are led to believe. The notion that reason quells or perverts the brutish but honest forces of instinct, indeed, that there is a beast to be calmed – the wild horses of the Id harnessed by the conscious Ego – is a fairy tale of human psychology. The ancient idea of man as an animal tamed by imperial reason is a false description of the human psyche. We have learned from behavioral anthropology and the bloody history of the past century that the most primitive of communities is no less moral than the most advanced culture. Reason can justify good or bad intentions, while magical or syncretic thinking can promote peace and cooperation as much as barbarism. There is no evidence that ancestral societies, given the harsh conditions and the need to survive, are less moral than contemporary ones. Morality is so easily corrupted by politics, jealousy, personal ambition and outright malevolence that the moral life clearly has less to do with logic or intelligence than a simplicity and goodness that needs to be cultivated, not drilled, sermonized or intimidated. It would be more accurate to say we come into this world as tender natives wanting little more for a moral life than a loving parent or surrogate to instill the gentler values and provide a modest restraint on competition. The beast that is buried within is an impulsive but creative force – for good or evil, for art or for life – that surges into novelty to replace the static and habitual. Primitive thought in myth, superstition and the dreamtime of early societies may appear charming, forbidding and inscrutable to moderns, but when conceptual derailment at early formbuilding phases actualizes in a world of rational objects we become aware of its originality and creative force. These layers of syncretic thinking are the conceptual precursors of conscious acts, percepts and propositions with the potential to break the grip of repetition, the bonds of convention, the recursive structure of logic, all of which trammel and deaden the forwardgoing surge of the creative spirit. It has become a platitude to say that creativity is a product of unconscious cognition. The microtemporal structure of the unconscious, inferred from its pathological disruption, is not the hydraulics of a Freudian

614 orthodoxy, but a process through which drive categories are derived to conceptual feelings. A thoughtful assessment of the architecture of the mind leads to the conclusion that the qualitative shift from unconscious to conscious thought is not a relation of the animal to the rational, but a successive analysis of a non-temporal core into temporal objects. When we descend into the dark night of the soul, we do not find brutal, immoral and murderous impulses, rather a different mode of thinking: paralogic, animism, symbolism, synecdoche, metaphor. Life as an aesthetic object Art can shock, it can be perceived as immoral on sexual, political or cultural grounds. The acceptance of an artwork involves a dialogue with society and its traditions. In this dialogue, art approaches morality. Art that is offensive takes on moral significance, but art is not coercive or cruel – art does not ordinarily injure individuals, nor does it transform social or political thought – so damage to others or an effect on social policy is ordinarily trivial. For this reason, an artwork, though a mode of conduct that engages the other, is of marginal interest to ethics. There is a perceptual similarity in the ideals of beauty and goodness, but not in the sphere of action. The obligations of the artist are to his art and the art tradition, not the public nor the connoisseur. In contrast, morality depends on obligations to others. The narrative of art is the growth of spirit into form as a mirror of culture, that of ethics is conformance to principle, reexamined anew in each generation. In ethics, the creative is not valued. The break with convention in art that underlies the immoral is the pursuit of originality. The decisive turn occurs when the break spills from aesthetics into comportment. The reverse also occurs, in those who think that by living a bohemian life they will become artists. The originality for which we value the art-work often entails a rupture with authority and a replacement of the old with the new. Moral conventions change more slowly. The authority of moral convention is more binding than that of the art tradition and supplemented by blame or punishment, whereas deviation in art is “punished” by derision or neglect. Unlike aesthetics, where the artist creates a novel world, the great soul exhibits moral authority. The impulse to originality is suppressed in moral conduct to achieve uniformity. This suppression is what the spirit fears. Art is less susceptible to moral sanction because the artist in his art lives more in the subjective, while the ordinary person in his moral life

615 lives further from the sources of creative mind and closer to the objective world. The subjective impulse of personality is what the objective rules of morality aim to subdue. The free will or choice that is the foundation of ethics is tied to reason and responsibility, that which is at the heart of aesthetics is tied to creativity and independence. The ordinary person, or the artist in his ordinary life, must temper conceptual feeling with moral convention to objectify desire in conduct that is in conformity with the needs of others. In art, the individual is of supreme importance. So too with a morality centered in character, but the judgment of character is based on social norms, that of personality on self-fulfillment. Though art and morals differ in the objects they value, the duties and responsibilities they impose, and in the acquiescence to the demands of society, aesthetic and moral feeling have a common basis. One arises in character, the other in personality, one is closer to conduct and sanction, the other to image and individuality, but this reflects the depth of conceptual origination and the bias of action to values that underlie adaptation or autonomy. Compromise A life is not the sum of its acts, for then the interior portion would be missed, and with it choice and desire. Nor is it solely character, for then a life in the world would be missed and character could only be surmised. Plotinus remarked that all action weakens contemplation. The reverse is also true, when a life of thought replaces one of commitment. Wordsworth wrote, “Action is transitory – a step, a blow... suffering is permanent, obscure and dark.” Character is abiding but mysterious, action is clear, yet impermanent. Is a life a combination of action and character in choice? Is it a cumulative outcome, a final compromise, the sum or the average of one’s choices, one’s acts? The implementation of an action by character in relation to available choices, and the growth or decline of character in the options that are chosen, are the inheritance of each new instance of self in the recurrence of a living moment. The ancestry of every act is successively realized in each momentary existence. What counts is Now. Past acts do not exist except as a ground for the occurrent state. Yet we do think of a life as a collection of acts, responses, initiatives, that must be taken as a whole. As a delicate memory whets the appetite of a dreary existence, an act of surpassing moral value rescues a life of ethical mediocrity. We continue to admire the exploits of an aging athlete, the deeds of a decrepit war hero,

616 we do not easily forgive the war-criminal or sex-offender who claims to have reformed. Is the moral credit or blame of a past action “bankable” by a person irrespective of his current moral standing? Do we evaluate the person as he is, or the memory of what he was? Is a life to be judged by good or bad actions in the past – an act of turpitude, a momentary crisis, an impulse of altruism and risk? Or is it the sum of the large and small, mostly forgettable moments of daily moral contact? Is a person a history, a mean, a collection, a succession? Is the Samuel Clemens at 30 the person we admire the same as the alcoholic pedophile at 50 we condemn? Do we ignore or reward moral improvement, punish or excuse moral decay? Take a person of moral integrity who undergoes a shameful transition in later life, or the reverse, a debauched youth who later discovers piety. Are the different selves of a single lifetime to be separately praised or blamed, or do we examine the life as a whole? What then of dear Augustine, who cried, “Make me pure, O Lord, but not yet!” For most, a life is an outcome of the compromises of everyday living, the continuous, little-noticed concessions that get one through the day. A philosopher friend once boasted that he had never sold out, but then, he added, he had never been asked! The great decisions are few and far between. What counts in daily life is the attention to friends and family and the gift of one’s time to others. Like the weathering of an old oak, the manifold of the little acts of kindness, the bursts of conciliation, protest, humiliation, outrage, leave their imprint as one ages. The implicit negotiations of spirit and necessity in a gradual maturation or attrition of the self are brought to terms by the world. Occasionally, there is righteous defiance. Indignation over suffering is always honorable no matter what it accomplishes. Most of the time it is little more than a cat’s wail in darkness, yet every so often a soul appears – a Ghandi, a Mandela – to grace humanity and serve as a model for others to emulate. “The mass of men,” Thoreau famously wrote, “live lives of quiet desperation.” What is the meaning of self-realization for them? The will to resist is crushed. Desperation is a sign that hope is alive, but what is hope in the jaws of defeat but a final outpost of despair when all actions are blocked? At a certain age, the encrustation of cynicism begins to appear. We may doubt the idea of progress and the possibility of meaningful change. We may feel that protest is less for the sake of others for whom too often there is little we can do, than for our own self-respect. The lectures, arguments and writings we thought would transform the world now, having passed through life, seem a verbal exercise to stave off resignation,

617 finality and the eclipse of spirit. Once resignation sets in – whether the bliss of Hinayana enlightenment or the vacuity of a conquered spirit – there is no distinction of the moral and the non-moral. The extinction of desire does not leave untouched a passion for a better life for those less fortunate. The person who is battered into selflessness has eliminated ego in the service of both self and others. The contemplation of death and its quickening, a constant reminder of the triviality of self, is also a vindication of the community that endures after the spirit is annihilated. Dickinson wrote of the morality of death as “the triumphant affirmation of the supremacy of the race over the individual.” Decline and renewal The microphysics of birth and death that frame a life, a day, a moment, a particle, have their analogy in the resignation and renewal that punctuate the reflective life. Self-realization is not an accomplishment but a process that must be re-asserted and renewed. The triumphs of the day are forgotten, lost in renewal or despondency. Every moment we begin anew the concepts that punctuate work and life. The creative is a struggle with the habitual on one side and the unknown on the other. The artist confronts the unknown and then waits for it to seize him. The effort is an intensity of concentration or a withdrawal from the world, it is not for the products of this activity, which are unknown until they appear. “Thinking doesn’t help thought,” Goethe said. And Eckermann said of Goethe, “Genius does not struggle to reach the heights, genius soars.” The artist is engaged in this struggle, which is also a process of self-discovery. Hölderlin wrote vividly of the door to the abyss that is waiting and must be entered. The artist, the composer, the writer live in this process more than most and more intensely. To pick up a pen, a brush, is a new beginning, as T. S. Eliot wrote, “a raid on the inarticulate.” The creative is not limited to novel concepts but penetrates every detail. Taking myself as example, when I complete a book, it is difficult to begin the next one. When I complete a chapter, I have difficulty starting up again. When I complete a thought within a chapter, where do I go from there? When a sentence is finished, what is the best way to start the next line? Within the sentence, it is a choice among words. The idea drives the expression. The problem is not which words to use given an idea, rather, the activation of a new thought for the next sequence. Does the difficulty in initiation reflect the persistence of an idea after it is drained of potency? Is

618 it a vacancy for the next phrase, or an inability to ignite still deeper categories out of which the part-concepts individuate? After some words, a chapter, a book, an idea is exhausted. If the idea is trivial, one sentence discharges its meaning, an epigram, a witty remark. If profound, it takes centuries to explicate, as we still explore Plato. But the trivial is a leaf on the tree of the profound that can be followed to its root. In the same way, the value latent in a preference is the avenue to a belief. A book is a slice of the writer’s life artificially demarcated by its covers. Life is the one great idea an individual has that pours itself out on the pages of daily living, except that the jackets to that book are the fatal limits of its continuation, save for the debt to writers past or readers future – our personal or literary ancestors and descendants – who are illusory bridges to the bound and unbound volumes of innumerable other life stories. What happens when the creative does not come? Take the case of “writer’s block,” which is a capsule of creative failure. Should it persist or lengthen, it may be a prelude to literary and psychological decline. The block – the failure to generate or realize a creative ideation – is a moment at the crossroads of self-realization, as the potential of the inchoate struggles to be actual, real. When there is nothing in consciousness to write about – and this is close to a description of creative writing – one is amazed to write anything at all. The block, a wormhole to Hölderlin’s abyss, is not the source of the amazement, though it should be if one descends into it, but rather, it is the something that one writes. The block is an absence of whatever impels the writing, a sign one has not entered creative trance deeply enough. Since the words seem to come from nowhere, one is uncertain if the pump is broken or the well is dry. The anxiety is over this uncertainty. Anxiety is non-intentional, it lacks a clear object. The other side of uncertainty is the habitual, the mocking guardian of the unknown. If one struggles to write, that struggle is the tension of the conscious will to give unnatural shape to what ought to be non-conscious and automatic. There is frustration with conscious mind to grasp beneath the words and get into the dimension that is called for, “insisted on,” as Heidegger said. Anyone who works in this way feels a conduit for thoughts pressing out of potential to a life in the world. The sense of passivity weakens that of agency. There is pride in the best of one’s efforts, but also ambivalence as to a responsibility for what is produced. Many a father feels this way about a child who has matured to a pleasant surprise. Schopenhauer thought his great work was dictated by the Holy Ghost. Others have used the same imagery. Jacob Böhme thought the Holy Ghost was the process leading from the

619 potential of the father to the actuality of the son. The feeling of responsibility is unstable because of the immediacy of the writing and the passivity needed to induce it. Without conscious reflection, there is no choice, and without choice, or when one is a recipient of a choice that is unconscious, the feeling of responsibility is mitigated. Of course, the writer is responsible for his work, but when the writing is at its best, the words are given, not selected. That is what separates the creative from the merely purposeful. Creativity is volition in the service of novelty in which the agent is given over to the involuntary act. The agent accedes control to the volition that runs through him, not as a voluntary impulse where he is acting as a conscious doer, but as a felt creation of which he is a product. The ability to assume an attitude of passivity or receptiveness is the essential character of the creative personality. The air of authority or assurance that one sees now and then in creative people is merely an attempt to achieve a mastery of the conditions of life so the individual can surrender to the creative impulse. This, incidentally, is an important piece of any theory of responsibility. The feeling that an action is one’s own, that it belongs to the self, or emanates from the self, is the basis for responsibility. However, this may occur in the absence of a feeling of agency. The creative individual wants to be whole in every act, to act fully, completely, without deliberation, without desire or self-contradiction, to go with the will before it breaks into desire, interest, preference and divisiveness. I want my will to run through me and carry me into action. This wholeness is rarely achieved, at times it is encountered after ceding its goals. Whatever is considered and then chosen is a loss of active will, a loss of wholeness, ashes to the fire that gave them life. We strive for wholeness in constant partition. Wholeness is not reconstituted from its parts but is prior to them, even as it is emptied in its satisfaction. The fulfillment of wholeness is lack of further partition. The truly creative is not intentional, for it does not know its object. When the work is complete, we know, or think we know, the object that was intended, or at least we can say that the work is what the artist had in mind, but then the creative is over, replaced by the object toward which it was striving. The person cannot say at any point that what he is writing is what he intends to write, only that he is writing on such and such a topic. Writing is like hoping, where the object is uncertain, and the events one hopes for are outside one's control. Hoping does not make the events happen. Writing has as its objects the effects of the writing. How can we speak of a book as the goal of a writer when even he doesn't know, except perhaps for a theme,

620 exactly what he is going to write? This is true for many acts that are intentional, but it is most clear in those who are creative. The mental state of writing or hoping resolves into objects that are not simply waiting to receive the intention directed to them, but are generated by the observer out of his desire to produce or obtain them. The parts are not given in the whole but are unknown or indeterminate when the whole predominates. Whitehead wrote of creativity as “the evocation of determination out of indetermination.” Yeats in decline wrote, “I sought a theme and sought for it in vain.” At a certain point in life, hesitation in search of the creative may expand to a preoccupation with decline. The “writer’s block” persists. This can be so paralytic one fears becoming an autodidact to one’s own pathology, which in people of a certain inwardness can flower to composition with decline as its theme. To search the cause of decline when there is no injury, drug or disease is to canvas the landscape of human emotion: distraction, stress, confidence, the reprise of a too late success, winters of obscurity. Does philosophy starch the poetic imagination, shifting the mind from concrete images to abstract forms, does it promote detachment, self-scrutiny, a distrust in feeling and animal faith? Do liquid feelings that have frozen, shatter into crystals of belief, facts, qualifications, annotations? The evaporation of the analogical or metaphorical thinking of youth can expose a vertical intuition that facilitates a retreat from fact to value, from data to concepts, in which a single idea traffics in power without depleting potential in a multiplicity of elements. In such people, the consolation for decline is a conception that can be sustained and burrowed into, undistracted by allusion, persuasion, demonstration. A prime example is Kant’s Critiques, so heavy in consistency, so far from the early poetic writings. Still, one wants the warmth of imagery, the rapture of symbols, the cocoon of fancy, the pictograms of metaphor, the fits of clear vision. As the sickly value health, as the bleakness of winter aches for summer warmth, as the old look upon the young with a melancholy longing or, as the poet wrote, “the young behold with envy what the old man hardly feels,” an inner life of timeless thought and a flood of possible objects becomes a pallid impostor for a concrete life of action and immediacy. Can a fresh cycle of growth begin with the plantings of seasons past and ripen in the imagination? Can one reharvest the same ground without adding to the soil? More than ever we feel that:

621 Mine is indeed the mind of a very idiot, So dull am I. The world is full of people that shine; I alone am dark. (Tao Te Ching)

Consider Wordsworth, who wrote so little worth reading after the age of 36, that he would have been a lesser poet were he known only by his later poems. The clarity of youthful passion became a homily rearranged by technique. He went from an ecstatic to a versifier, as Hamilton put it, from a prophet “whose purposes were round him, like a light,” to a priest with “the ensigns of sacerdotal office.” Was this a result of his matter-offactness, remoteness, bookishness, hypochondriasis? No longer demonic, passion spent, depleted of visionary contact, Wordsworth still had sufficient talent to sustain a level few others could match. Having left the world of men for that of mind and nature, a passage recorded in the Prelude, his cup was empty, only the theme remained. Thus did he collaborate with the Wordsworth of earlier years. A friend of mine, a classical pianist, confessed that she quickly recovered from bad reviews, but as she grew older, she became depressed over a decline in technique that was intensified when she listened to her recordings from earlier years. One's own standard! Shelley might have had Wordsworth in mind when he wrote, “Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.” There was an even steeper decline in his friend, Coleridge, strangled by the weed of German metaphysics, Wordsworth hinted, a diagnosis Coleridge endorsed when he wrote, “...that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partake of DEATH?” What was perceived with the wonder of genius was acknowledged in the Nabokovian lens of a dispassionate voyeur. That is not to say that ill health, financial worries and sourness did not figure in his decline. I think, too, his genius was sabotaged by comparison to the preternatural gifts of his friend. If we envy gifts we do not possess, so do we also envy in ourselves those gifts we have lost. The comparison is not with others but oneself at an earlier time. In some, self-envy is for the mere fading of beauty, the loss of agility or lightness of bodily motion, for others, it is an infirmity unlike other afflictions of aging. The normal is a curse if the extraordinary is no longer in reach. One can achieve a mastery of knowledge without a grain of passion and a virtuosity of technique without an ounce of novelty. Dewey wrote of the “sterility that is the Dead Sea fruit of academicism.” More dangerous are the urbanity and sophistication that mark a cynical intelligence. They are counter to creative immediacy, a diffusion of feeling and the possibility of

622 new beginnings. One takes heart in Goethe’s remark that “only the inadequate is productive.” One must evade a logic of lifeless clarity for the spontaneity of natural organism. William James wrote that philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of logic... logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards. It is not only logic and morality that muzzle the inner voice. A Sargasso of learning can strangle at first breath the tentativeness of the newborn phrase. Aurobindo put it nicely: “knowing too much they missed the whole to be known,” reminiscent of the lines of Goldsmith: And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew.

The traction of the past weighs heavily on the freshness of the moment. One wants to shed the familiar garments for the naked sonorities of innocence and awe, feel the power sleeping in the subtle ferocity of words, listen to ancient wisdom, silent, at the throne of magic, possibility. The poet's lament echoes that feeling, when: ... the days gone by come back upon me from the dawn almost of life

Not one for setting out in new directions but rather at the mercy of a slow unconscious growth, I could not make a lesson of a thing and then proceed to teach it. Instead, I awaited an accumulation of quiet faith in those avenues on which my thoughts were tending as the momentum of their progress and their coalescence to a goal grew clearer, finally surfacing, dimly, in a presentiment or a dawning of direction. Yet still, revelation was the most reliable means of knowing, sweeping into awareness what deliberation could peruse. The conscious mind does not invoke, it edits what unconscious mind has written, which is I believe the direction of thought itself, from obscurity to light. In the course of my own life, every new work began as a mode of therapeutic recovery heralded by a sense of loss, a way to empty the Freudian dream chamber onto paper. Each word was a testament to the blood of those departed, some before my birth, lost friends and mentors, a graveyard of personal time, rewriting conversations writ in symbols cast in stone. Shostakovich said his notes were tombstones. I did not endure such devastation, but each paper was a monument to a perishing, and an arising in its wake. Writing, creation, is poised on this threshold. Wilhelm Muller

623 captured this mood to perfection when he wrote: Is it the echo of my love's torment Or shall it be the prelude to new songs?” [Ist es der Nachklang meiner Liebespein Soll es das Vorspiel neuer Lieder sein?] Müller

Conscience and authenticity Authenticity is not found in the assessment of acts “from outside” as a judgment, or in a feeling that action is fluid or that conflict is absent, even if the goal of self-realization is to be whole in every act. The transition to the concrete is not merely for comfort in acting. The unbroken is sensed by an intuition that is given whole as an immediacy that does not lead to something beyond itself. Ferré (2001) writes that an intuition is “directly felt with the unmediated character we associate with perception,” with ethical intuition a “direct grasp, somehow, of the ethical values involved in situations, possibilities or persons.” He denies a faculty for intuition, but the account agrees with an outpouring that is abbreviated prior to act or object-determination. The conscience involves an act of intuition limited to specific acts or choices. When the act generalizes to the rightness of multiple actions in relation to enduring character, conscience becomes the intuition of authenticity. Generally, late in life, one looks back and takes stock of what sort of person one is, or has been. Perhaps the intuition of authenticity extracts what is common to multiple acts of conscience, or is a kind of conscience for the life record. The richness of an intuitional context – in art, science or life – depends on what is given to it of the self. The immediacy or the “selfsufficiency” of the intuition, i.e. its lack of intentionality, keeps the intuition fully within the subject. The impact of the context is stronger because it is wholly intrapsychic. Intuition appears at the threshold of language and consciousness without the gap from agent to object or idea. Put differently, the “distance” or temporal extension in the mind/brain from self to intuitional context is less than that from self to act or object. The proximity to the self, or the lack of self-act opposition, explains why intuition is non-agentive. There are no intentional or perceptual objects. An intentional state has an object that extends partly outside the self, or it has an object in the future and there is a sense of incompleteness. The object of an intuition is the intuition itself, not a content it points to or gives rise to.

624 That comes later as the intuition shifts to an intention. For the moment, however, the intuition gives bare direction to possibility prior to verbal or perceptual individuation. The intuition can either dissolve and be replaced by another state, or revive and undergo analysis to facts (acts, objects, statements). The intuition objectifies as its antecedent relations are severed. The realization of a fact is the aim of its becoming. Once a fact arises, the work of becoming is over. The fact is a thing in the world, a dead object for creation. Authenticity is internal coherence, the fit of thought to thinker, which is a fit of the relations that rise up to consciousness with those out of which they originate. An intuition that gives way to an analysis, into acts, objects or ideas, must recur, repeatedly, to achieve a staged realization of its potential. In the course of this process, i.e. multiple revivals over time, there is a gradual slackening of fact-generating power. In the production or composition of an artwork, an aesthetic intuition must be re-asserted for each new round of creative work. The individual may go to some lengths to facilitate the revival by re-establishing a situation or a certain mood. At some point, the intuition is depleted or can no longer be revived. The artwork is either finished or abandoned. In ethics, the intuition - one’s conscience - is occasioned by an act of choice or commitment.

625 Fig. 23.1

The bias to personal or impersonal knowledge (concepts) leads through personality (aesthetics) or character (ethics) to aesthetic or moral objects or acts. Though it is less evident, personality and character are entrained in scientific intuitions. The diachronic coherence of an intuition to its core gives authenticity in aesthetic (beauty) and ethical (goodness) objects, and intuitive truth in scientific ones.

Self /Valuation For a person to “search his conscience,” the moral demand must elicit an intuition of the fit of values to conduct, or character to choice. Is this genuinely who you are? What you feel? Conscience refers to the effort at authenticity in a given act, but the feeling of having lived with authenticity is an intuition that pertains to a life span coherence of conduct with character. Self-realization applies to personality in art, to character in ethics. Personality is the wider category. Character is personality with egoand exo-centric values at stake. The many acts of conduct over a life are comparable to the words, tones or brush strokes of a work of art. The act of intuiting is fundamentally the same in artistic, scientific or ethical thought, but in the latter, especially in the intuition of a choice or action that is authentic to character, the relation is to personal values, not aesthetic or scientific concepts. In mathematical or scientific intuition, there is a relation of the intuited content to an unconscious knowledge base, while the link to character or personality, though present, is less apparent. Knowledge partitions the self into beliefs, values and desires. Each is defined by the distribution of personal and impersonal conceptual feelings. Through the bias to one or another set of values (aesthetic, moral), concepts (personal, impersonal) and feelings (desire, compassion) and so on, the intuition taps into systems of aesthetic, moral or scientific (mathematical, etc.) belief (see Fig. 23.1 above). In aesthetic intuition, there is a relation of an aesthetic concept to the personality. Experience is shaped in a way that is irreducibly subjective. Intuition is a way of knowing the rightness of action in relation to that experience. Ultimately, intuition and authenticity concern the view from inside, i.e. what a thing or person is. The standard for intuitive truth is not the correspondence of scientific relations but the coherence or rightness of intrinsic relations. This is the truth or beauty of a work of art and the goodness and authenticity of an ethical choice. Both ethical and artistic intuitions achieve truth in the

626 harmony of their spatial and temporal relations, in relation to personality or character and the objects or acts (conduct) they give rise to. A mathematical or scientific intuition also conveys an aesthetic of truth or beauty in the coherence of a theory, but the intuition requires an assertion in propositions for a judgment of truth or error. Intuition can remain inchoate, but once it objectifies, data are brought to bear in a test of its truth. The greater the depth of intuition, the closer to character or personality, the more resistant to verification. If adequately realized, the contextual relations recur and enclose a succession of nested particulars. We sense this in music as a guiding concept or theme behind the tones. We apprehend it more emphatically in poetry, where the density of expression gives the intuition directly, when the content is compact and not fully unpacked or disambiguated by the words. We infer it in character from the person’s acts. Once the intuition is spent and only its products remain – acts, demonstrations, art works – to reclaim the context secondarily from the facts, i.e. to reproduce the original state of inspiration or insight, is inevitably an artificial procedure. The lost context cannot be grafted to the facts like a severed hand that is re-attached. Some features of the original state can be revived through a kind of imaginative identification. One does not confirm the authenticity of an intuition by saying, “I am whole in my act,” for the need to make such a statement contradicts what it asserts. We make judgments of wholeness in our own character or that of others knowing little of the unconscious sources of thought and action. Such judgments can scarcely be trusted, even if they are all we have to rely on. Can we ever say that an action realizes one’s inmost self? Does moral decision necessarily involve conflict? After a decision is made there is often a residuum of doubt or uncertainty even if the choice is correct. The very fact one is aware of making a decision speaks against an instinctive action in which the heart has no other choice. An intuition or judgment of authenticity is biased to the good. A person does not ordinarily wish to be authentically evil. It would be unusual for someone to lament the fact that he was not sufficiently malevolent. A good character exhibits remorse for bad acts, but a bad character would be unlikely to show remorse for good acts. Those who are evil often justify their actions on behalf of a greater good. Coherence simply requires a correlation of selfnature with conduct, not to good or bad acts. A malicious person may act in a malicious way or perform a good act, but he is no more or less authentic for the choice than a good person who acts well or badly.

627 An intuition of authenticity is more than a feeling of harmony, though there is a sense of being one with one’s acts. The conceptual content of the intuition is essential to an assessment of the knowledge brought to bear on moral or any other decision. So also are the distribution of beliefs and values that are shaping the use to which that knowledge is put and their realization in conduct in accordance with knowledge. Conscience pertains to a good or bad act, authenticity has greater scope, entailing an educated feeling of rightness. On this way of thinking, conduct is the outcome of self-realization which, when complete and, to the extent it is whole and unselfish, it is the basis of a personal ethic of goodness. This ethic affirms the primacy of the subjective in a landscape otherwise dominated by diverse modes of concreteness, in which conduct is judged in relation to the claims of society and to the traditions and values of the community. These objective limits on conduct, however, are largely intrapsychic trends or dispositions, if not in their origination, then in their assimilation to personal values and the process of act-generation. Modern society values a dull materialism that attracts its members to an objectivity invading all aspects of daily life (Brown, 2000). Celebrity and status triumph at the surface of personality. Diversity of life style is more evident in overt display than the life of spirit. The inner is forgotten or placated, the other an opportunity, not a responsibility. Greed and utility flourish at the expense of compassion and sacrifice. But the inner life cannot be effaced by an emphasis on acquisition, pleasure and success. The need for self-realization, which is muted in a competitive, industrialized and technological society, is channeled into other paths of spiritual practice, healing or meditation. A sign of the lack of authenticity is the common search for one’s genuine nature, a search as touching as it is simplistic. The self is a momentary creation, not an entity that persists, certainly not something one looks for. There is no reference to a self that changes, but rather the individuation of a succession of selves of greater humanity. For Hegel, self-realization was the central principle of the universe. For him, this was the realization of reason, as concepts actualize into essences. This is an evolving process. Chakravarti (1966) has written, “Reality evolves in order to realise itself, or, to be self-conscious.” One might even suppose that phases in the realization of the self and its objects correspond to levels in the evolution of reality. Self-realization is the completion of existence of all entities, not the satisfaction of a momentary self. Thus the stability of the self-concept does not owe to an unchanging core that is accessible to conscious thought. It is not a matter of a self that

628 satisfies its desires, but realizes the full actuality of the person. Many desire this experience, and explore this possibility in therapy, but life is the better teacher. Therapy reverses the natural trend of thought by turning the self into an object of interest. What is genuine is not the self but its realization in acts that give full expression to its potential. Self-realization, in the accommodation to others, or their appropriation as the subject’s own needs, is the basis of authentic character revealed in acts of goodness. The potential of the core is the community of its dispositions, in which values are grooved into habits to delimit interests aroused in the momentary state. Authenticity is the relationship of these dispositions to what is realized in thought or action. The worth of an individual lies in the wholeness of his acts, the place of others in his personal valuations and their concordance with the inmost life. This is not a calculus on the limits of self-interest, for then conduct is a cynical negotiation. An act that is conceived as a quantity or commodity makes too many concessions to advantage and reward. An organism struggles to survive, the community does what it must to prevail, the physical world nurtures and menaces. Life is enacted in struggle. In ordinary life, one adapts as best he can. The life of the genius is the fulfillment of the potential of self through works of art or science in spite of the claims of others. But for the great soul the other is “represented” in the self, and self-realization is equally a realization of the other’s needs. One self or two? The competing values of self-interest and compassion, the dialectic of good and evil, right and wrong, raise the question of the unitary or dual nature of the self. Whether we are conscious of a choice, or we reflect after some time has passed on options that were overlooked or ignored in an action, imagining the choices we could have made, we are at least potentially divided in every thought or action. In addition to the conflicts of ego- and exo-centric values, there are implicit or explicit conflicts in all aspects of cognition, in personal desire, in belief and language use. The pattern of contrasts in the actualization of acts and objects is felt as a succession of competing possibilities at every phase in the actionrealization. The plan might have been different, the means of implementation, the objectives, the reasoning, a word, a gesture. Usually, choices are limited to two or three options, most often two, and in the form of polar opposites. If we sense the presence of conflicting values at unconscious layers of personality, and if we are conscious of opposing

629 values in every choice, from the core of our being to every fragment of speech or action that materializes, is this conflict a sign of primordial duality, as for example Schelling believed, or is there beneath it all a still deeper unity? If the dialectic descends all the way down, if nature itself is a dialectic out of which consciousness emerges, what are the physical and conceptual primitives underlying the mental state, and what is the bottommost arising out of which all constructs differentiate? That is, if there is core unity, what is its nature, and how does it fractionate into dual orientations? There are two ways of thinking about a contrast, one in relation to the ground out of which a thing develops, as in a gestalt and a field, and as a contrast between objects of the same general form, as between members of an object or word category. As to the former, every object or entity is a contrast. The appearance of any one thing is, in some sense, a relation to everything else; it presumes the spatiotemporal ground in which it individuates. The entity specifies a field in opposition. It defines by way of contrast what it is not in becoming what it is. The poet Mark Strand wrote, “In a field I am the absence of field.” The concept of the self as having a subjective and an objective nature entails a contrast or opposition in every act of cognition or self-realization. However, in the second sense of contrast, every particular that individuates is felt to be opposed not only to what it might have been or to a field of antecedent potential, but to another particular with which it is coordinate or co-extensive. Every object is a subor supra-ordinate category in opposition to other object-categories at the same phase of individuation. Thus, hot is opposed to cold, not temperature, which is the background category of both terms. Similarly, the desire to help a beggar is opposed to the unwillingness to help him, or to indifference, or to the desire to help a different beggar, rather than to more generic values of which the instances are expressions. In sum, every object in a perceptual field is a contrast with every other object, especially those adjacent objects (or colors) that form its demarcations. And, every object in the field is opposed to the antecedent ground out of which it individuates. With respect to duality, the issue is with the synchronic contents rather than with the diachronic or temporal ones, and primarily the synchronic contrast at the inception of an act of cognition. If we descend to unconscious phases in the mental state, we find, or we can infer, the existence of the submerged dispositions out of which objects surface, especially the conscious particulars that realize opposing concepts. The integrity or coherence of these dispositions determines whether their subsequent individuations will be discordant or harmonious. That such dispositions

630 exist has been asserted by many philosophers, even if the unity or duality remains unsettled. Most writers assume a kind of core metaphysical duality. Victor Hugo wrote, “nous sommes deux au fond de mon esprit,” lover and beloved, self and other, eros and thanatos (as in the chant of the islamic terrorists, you love life, we love death!), the Manichean duality, Jekyll and Hyde. The Christian struggle of good and evil, sin and redemption, the “soul's mumps” as Emerson put it, is central to the concept of the dual nature of the personality, even if it now seems quaint and parochial. The self/other contrast appears even within the self. Jorge-Luis Borges wrote that he allowed himself to live so the other Borges might contrive the literature that justified his existence. The duality of character au fond is not just for the spiritual core. The mind seeks unity but grasps at oppositions, black/white, hot/cold, life/death, truth/error. The dialectic runs through all experience, and is resolved in synthesis, temperance or compromise. Bernard Shaw wrote that to use Wagner's own contradictory quotes against him was like citing Beethoven's adagios against his scherzos to settle a dispute among fools as to whether he was a melancholy man or a merry one. What of Shaw himself? Does he write about his subject, or is he always writing about Shaw? Are dialectical polarities the first step in the analysis of unity, an opposition of that which develops from what remains? If there were only one category, the first individuation would create a polarity, and further divisions would specify the initial opposition into the particulars of another constrast. An atom in the void is already a commitment. The metaphysics of morality is fundamental to whether character is unitary or dual. Bosanquet wrote that the hardships of life are rooted in the double nature of man as a finite-infinite being, in the opposition of a differentiated finiteness out of the universality of the infinite; the temporal and the eternal, the corrupt and the ideal. He believed the absolute is realized through the self-realization of individuals, specifically, that “the values that evolve in the life of finite beings are the real phases of the Absolute.” For Kant, the perceived unity of the world is realized by the self as a unified experience, an experience that belongs to the self, and would not be what it is without the self experiencing it. What is this sense of belongingness that unites me to the world, that makes it my world, a world that exists in relation to my experience of it, and my felt participation in that experience? After all, the world could be a chaotic assortment of momentary impressions swirling around me, assaulting me. I could feel I belonged to the world, that I was part of the world, like a plant. I might think I’m one of

631 nature’s creatures, but I feel that this experience of the world is my experience, not that I am experienced by the world. Kant’s a priori categories of the self that structure the facts of experience are what make possible knowledge of the world. Though we find duality in every aspect of mind, the dual as an explanatory principle is not itself explained. What might be its terms? Something out of nothing is an asymmetric relation. In a duality of something and nothing, the nothing offers nothing in opposition. The tension in the individuation is not reciprocated; the something perishes or is a ground for a further individuation. The contrast of thought and language, or mind and world, is an artificial duality. They are interdependent phases in succession, not coordinate oppositions. The contrast of mind and world differs from a fundamental partition of the mind, as in the “struggle” of good and evil. The origin of duality We are aware of a spectrum of change from one polarity to the other. Hot is relative both to cold and to that which is still hotter. Might truth come in degrees, like temperature? The statement, the grass is green, is more or less true depending on what is meant by grass, by green, by their correspondence to each other, to the lighting and the observer’s color perception. Even if truth and falsehood can be construed in a binary manner within a system of language or logic, most things in the world merge into other things, yet still we focus on the extremes, not the transitions. This is a result of the substantialist bias in thought. The gradual shift from one object to another within a category, or the fuzzy boundaries of categories, are unstable points of attraction for a mind that reifies objects and perceives them as contrasts. Studies of categorical perception show invariance within categories and sudden all-or-none shifts across them. An object, e.g. a speech sound, is either perceived as within a given category or outside it, but not as transitional across the category boundary. For example, b-like sounds that differ acoustically are perceived as /b/ until the sound deviates to a point where it jumps to another category /p/. The relative deafness or blindness to continua and the predilection for pairs in opposition occurs because the mind is more comfortable with polarities or contrasts than with transitions. The category stabilizes the object over a range of transitions, while the transitions themselves are invisible to thought. In the case of speech sounds, the minimal noticeable difference is

632 between the phonemic categories. Some distinctions are not perceived by those who do not speak the language, e.g. the distinction of /r/ and /l/ in English is not heard by a Japanese speaker. Ralph Gerard mentioned seeing a stimulator in Japan with the factory label, stimurator. My daughter at 2 years of age asked, “Daddy, can I have the thugar?”, to which I replied teasingly, “You want the thugar?” ”No,” she replied, “not the thugar, the thugar!” She could hear sugar but not produce it. Similarly, my 7 year-oldson, bilingual but more fluent in French, along with his mother, who is quite fluent in English, simply cannot say this, that, those, but rather, dis, dat, dose, no matter how much prompting. As the person becomes fluent with the language, the gestalt that was formerly undifferentiated can be analysed into discrete phonemes. One can say, the whole gives way to the parts, which then serve as irreducible wholes for further analysis. No matter how deeply the spectrum is analysed, the termini are categories for analysis and instances in a (prior) category out of which they individuate. This chunking into categories is the way continua become articulated into stable objects. All perceptual systems are alike in this respect. It is just that the stability of visual categories is so pronounced in the conscious experience of sighted people that we think of auditory continua as the exception rather than the rule. In all forms of perception, we are aware of the objects (categories) the mind produces, not the temporal process (change) through which they arise, nor of the transition from one momentary object or state of the world to the next. Categories are formed by rupturing continua. The imperceptibility of process, change, relations, is necessary so that things and categories can exist. The dual perspective arises when segments in a continuum become contrasts or categories to anchor mental contents. The system of phonemic contrasts, or distinctive features, was applied by Lévi-Strauss (1964) to binary contrasts such as life/death or male/female. He tried to turn a theory of phonology into a cultural grammar. Yet life and death are transitions. Many believe that male and female are the poles of a continuous transition in gender and sexuality. Osgood (1959) explored these polarities in his semantic differential. These distinctions, conscious and unconscious, are highly dependent on language. Regardless of how the duality arises, the question is whether it arises from unity, or if the duality, or contrastive process, goes all the way down. Collingwood believed that the presuppositions guiding philosophical thought were unconscious. Even a philosophical proof appeals to an unconscious value or presuppositional bias. In a proof of god, for example,

633 the possibility of his existence has to be assumed in the premiss. Similarly, the idea of value has to be available before its existence or nature can be argued. Dilthey claimed a man’s philosophy reflects his psychological make-up. If this is so, as surely it is, it raises for me the question of the relative small number of process theorists, given the ubiquity of change. Clearly, there is a bias to a belief in perceptual and logical solids and their outcome in a self-identical personality as coping mechanisms in the struggle to survive. But process theorists must have a special frame of mind, a retrospective stance, a preference for context, ambiguity, embedding, dialectic, levels of dependency. Many process theorists share an interest in Buddhist thought that has a metaphysics of a shared perspective. The fascination with transition is a release from the habitual, an inclination to paths not taken, choices not realized. Ideally, a morality would stem from a metaphysics, though in truth it might be the other way around. Wave theory entails a mutuality that particle theory does not. Are we particles or waves? Waves are co-dependent, indivisible. Events converge on my existence. I am the focus of a universe infinite in all directions. This is the teaching of Hua-Yen Buddhism. Is a human or a society a collection or an organism? We are societies of cells, but is each individual society not also a cell to its neighbors? Are we swimming in a great ocean of being or are we separate islands hammered by the storms? If what exists is the negation of what does not, every act or desire leaves unborn a world of possibility. Every obligation is a denial, every commitment an abdication, as Dean Inge wrote, “a negation posited in the Absolute.” The slightest gesture is an assertion. Even the stanceless may be accused of their own openness. Wholeness and unity Authenticity is often identified with wholeness, oneness or unity. For wholeness, there is a unity of organization or purpose. The unity is not like the workings of a car, in which the functions of the separate parts come together in an orderly way. Then it would merely be a static arrangement of spatial parts. Rather, unity is a balance or equilibrium of dynamic tendencies – dispositions, values, concepts, etc. – so that each phase in a transition is a harmonious realization of its antecedents. Whitehead’s saying that the many become One and are increased by One refers to the prehension of a multiplicity to forge a novel unity. The One also becomes the many as a temporal becoming out of, and into, the duration of spatial being. From a

634 subjective standpoint, unconscious unity distributes into a multiplicity of objects, in thought and in the world. From an objective standpoint, multiplicity in nature (or brain) individuates an individual unity. Organic unity arises in diversity, diversity arises in organism. Unity is a dynamic harmony, not a spatial homogeneity. In oneness, there is no division, no specification. Once a line is drawn, unity may persist but oneness is broken. A commitment is a loss of possibility. Every act embodies its negation. Something is emptied by the enactment, and defined by the non-act on the far side of its boundaries. It has been said that one cannot worship a privative, but presences are framed by absences and one’s devotion is always directed to one or another side of a contrast. There is no oneness in consciousness, for its essence is the relation of self to image or object, but there is a unity that begins with the duality of parts and wholes, of relata and plenitudes. Oneness is the sought-after, the profound but never uncovered primordium from which unity and diversity emerge. This primordial oneness is glimpsed in the recognition of multiplicity or many-inoneness that leads to an inference of origins in the intuition of an unmarked whole. Self-realization is the experience of becoming into being as every entity, to exist, strives to become what it is.

Chapter 24. The Nature of Existence What if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, an intellectual Breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all? Coleridge

Reality and existence What is real? The mind looks outward for the real in a physical world on the “other side” of perception, and inward for a physical ground “beneath” the illusion of self and experience. For consciousness, a belief in the reality of inner and outer depends on the awareness of unreality. The intuition that experience is phenomenal implies an inferential reality or an ideal as a standard for comparison. The match of what is real in consciousness with what is apprehended as unreal gives the false impression of degrees of reality. For example, a perception is more real than an illusion. To recognize that an experience is illusory requires a veridical experience for comparison. We know the bent-stick-in-water is an illusion because we have observed that the stick is not bent out of the water. Moreover, our knowledge of the world informs us that sticks do not behave in this way. When we see and touch the stick out of the water we believe we perceive a real object, but then, we have no experience of an object with greater reality to compare it with. How do we know the unbent stick is real? If all experience is illusory, in what objective sense is one event more real than another? If the criterion of reality is the proximity to the physical underpinnings of experience, every experience is unique in this respect. It is only the comparison to the inferred “real” entity, in relation to which the stick is an appearance, or to the reality of the absolute, that gives the impression of unreality, or of grades of illusion that approximate the real (see previous chapter). If some things were not felt as unreal, everything would be felt as real, and the idea of the unreal would not occur, like the idea of red to the

636 colorblind. The awareness of illusion, the hallucination of dream, the belief in a realm on the other side of consciousness – unconscious mind or objective world – and the hope that spirit is not extinguished in death motivate speculation on the nature of the real as the end of an illusory life. I think the non-illusory real is pattern in nature that goes unnoticed because it is uniform, while the illusory real – the categorical or conceptual – is everything else that is noticed, in mind and the objects of perception. The mind-independent real is not the same as the feeling of realness, which is the affective residue that accompanies the outgoing stream of perception. This feeling in everyday objects derives from beliefs that help us to cope with the incapacity of mind to tolerate unreality, once we become aware that some events seem to be more real than others. Time and reality Duration in mind and in nature is the central fact of existence. In mind, the duration of the present, and the continuity from one state to the next, are not different problems. The now arises in the comparison of the “floor” of the decay of a past state to the actual “surface” of a present one, while the continuity of nows arises in the overlap of contiguous states (chapter 1). Since time is generated within a state, the “interval” between contiguous states is timeless for that person, though other minds might exist in the interstices of those states. The microgenetic theory of subjective time is consistent with the possibility of parallel worlds, a topic of lively debate in current physics. Anticipating this debate a century ago, Bradley (1893) wrote, “Different worlds might very well run on together in the universe side by side and not in one series of effects and causes.” He accepted the possibility of multiple and independent time series, each internally coherent but unrelated to the other, similar to the time series in the mind of a dreamer. Parallel lives could exist alongside our own, even without succession and in a reverse time direction, and of a different character. The fusion of moments across timeless intervals is one source of continuity. The duration within a moment, because it spans instants of physical passage, is another. The overlap of contiguous states and the lack of awareness for the “depth to surface” transition (microgenesis) of a single state is yet another. States are not concatenated in chains, as in cognitivist theory or the causal sequence of arisings and perishings in Buddhist metaphysics. Rather, like the “pulses of consciousness” described by

637 Willliam James, states arise in overlapping volleys in the decay of their antecedents. We are neither aware of the process over which mind/brain states develop nor of the “gaps” between them. What we are aware of is the virtual duration elaborated by a comparison of phases within a single transition. It is a paradoxical feature of microgenetic theory, as in process metaphysics, that temporal epochs are created out of non-temporal phases that are “collated” after their traversal. Take the example of listening to music. One is aware of a segment of sound flow. The relation of tones in the immediate past to those in the momentary present gives the melody. Without duration, there is no melody, nor even a tone, merely an instantaneous or “split-second” fraction of a sound. This is not a matter of persistence or retention, but a revival of past states of consciousness in the present. The revival of an image of the prior tone in the perception of the present one is the basis of a duration that spans tones in the immediate past. If the “floor” of the revival is lowered to include still prior measures, even prior movements, is it conceivable one could hear, at the final tone, all of the music that passed before? In other words, could the perceptual now of a tone first become that of a phrase or melody and then, the perceptual now of a movement or entire piece? The event might enlarge the now, or the now might expand to enclose a longer string of tones. But is this the right way to interpret this phenomenon? Some musicians and composers claim to “hear” an entire piece all at once in the mind. The piece is not compressed to fit the duration, nor is the duration enlarged to incorporate the piece. Rather, the piece is laid out spatially, so the duration is not required to expand in relation to a temporal sequence. The piece is “heard” as a whole because the series of tones into which it distributes does not correspond with an external container time, but creates time subjectively. The whole of the piece actualizes into parts. The parts, the individual tones, are as illusory (virtual) as the duration of the whole they retroactively increment. A virtual duration has illusory length. Its component “instants” have a duration that is equally illusory. This phenomenon, incidentally, has been well documented in other domains of knowledge, and is characteristic of dream thought. Bergson noted that the duration of the present is felt as an imaginary one-dimensional line in time, though it is really a non-spatial point arising as a virtual span across each objectification. In the human mind, this point is the mind/brain state. The onset of the proximal phase of the state antecedent to consciousness is in the physiological unconscious. This phase of unconscious arousal evokes the intuition of antecedent constructs

638 that in metaphysical speculation go “all the way down” to the ground of physical nature. At the other extreme, the termination of the distal phase, the world of perception evokes an intuition of noumenal entities beyond its limits. Thought is bounded by an unfathomable unconscious on one side and an unknowable material world (or divinity) on the other, while the brain is the physical ground of all experience, from the unconscious to the perceptible world. Yet we seem to live in the filmy divide between two modes of physical existence, the physiology of unconscious thought and the physics of a noumenal objectivity, both outside awareness like the pure materiality of death. And we fear that we can only attain the real, the absolute, by dissolving into one of them. The duration of the mind/brain state within which the transition from unconscious to world is played out is the outcome of an evolution that begins with the temporal extensibility of inorganic particles. The duration can be collapsed to the world of physics, or expanded to the infinite present of god or the absolute, but in both directions, all events, from the momentary existence of an atom to the experiential awareness of a conscious now, with respect to their duration, are simultaneous. Subjective time is created within the extensibility of points that are filled by nontemporal successions. The intuition that the foundations of all knowledge rest on momentary intrinsic relations, bounded by physical unobservables, exposes the surreal quality of conscious experience. Those who are sensitive to this experience will have the impression that what is taken for the real is like the thin, fragile elastic of a balloon, balancing constraints on its inner and outer surface. Finally, on reflection, we come to understand that the world of perception is a virtual image generated in a specious present suspended between two orders of physicality that, ultimately, devolve to a single reality that is unknowable. We further understand that the transition giving this world is non-temporal, while the temporality of its objects is merely apparent. And more, that the overlapping moments in the life of every entity trace to a ground simultaneous with respect to all entities. Knowing all this, what becomes of the real world? What is the real world? Is reality the everyday perception of cars, trees and houses? Is it the world of science and physics? Does it include the inner world of concepts and dreams, or the virtual world of films, computer images, rainbows and shadows? What about the hallucinatory world of a psychotic? Since the

639 real is a mode of thought, not a mode of existence, worlds that are real to the observer are equally real. A movie, a life, is no less real than a brain or cinematic tape. These, too, are perceptual objects. Nature is a thoughtworld, however real or unreal it seems, even if thought-worlds are not equally true, by which is meant testable or adaptive in the Jamesian sense of truth as pragmatic. Truth is adaptation or fitness, independent of verification even though it appears to rely on it (chapter 2). Others may share the same version of a true or false world, whether that world is real or unreal. A tested perception in which a factual thought adapts to the world is assumed by the perceiver to be real. Since untestable perceptions, such as visitations, can feel intensely real regardless of their fit to what is “out there,” testability is not the distinguishing factor in a personal judgment of what is real, only in what is true, or our best approximation to the truth. An hallucination that seems real to the observer will be acknowledged as untrue until its chronic recurrence or involvement of other modalities makes its unreality or non-factual status untestable. Reality is usually assumed to be about the world outside of thought, but what happens to reality if nature is what is given to perception, and perception is externalized thought? Is a thought or a perception of nature as real as nature herself? If not, what can we say of real nature, or reality? It may be that some thoughts of nature are more real than others, or that nature herself is a true thought. But for us nature is as real as we think (feel) her to be. If thought is less real than reality, say in comparing an image with a perception, or a perception with a material entity, regardless of whether or not we consider reality to be ultimately knowable, the relation of a real or unreal thought to a true or false fact becomes of central importance. A perceptual fact that is known to be true must also be felt to be real. If one should step in front of a moving car, it helps to know, but more importantly, to believe and feel, that the presence of the car is a factual truth (see previous chapter). Nature appears to be such a truth. But delve a bit deeper, and the solid facts of the world and its felt realness begin to dissolve before our eyes. If we attempt to determine the truth of the feeling of realness, what appears to be real in perception may well be false. If a color-blind person sees the grass as gray, we might say that his perception is defective or false, but probably not that it is unreal. If he were to see a field of grass on the desert, we would say this is an illusion, that it is a false perception, and that it is unreal (to others, if not to him). If the perception turns into a statement such as, grass is gray, we can then decide on its truth. But, what

640 truth are we deciding on? The color-blind person has no idea of the color green, so grass is, in fact, gray for him. For those who see colors, grass is mostly green, even if it has a different color according to the light and shade. But what is the basis for saying that one perception is true and another is false? Is the lack of the perception of green similar to the inability of humans to see infra-red or hear ultra-sound? Is the truth of a perception to be determined by limitations on our perceptual systems? On this basis, not only the perceptions of one individual but all perceptions can be construed as false or illusory. Color is a topic on which arguments of this type have historically been engaged. For some philosophers, and for many religions, all perceptions are illusory. For most people, some perceptions, such as rainbows or movies, are more illusory than others. Indeed, what is a film in reality other than a reel of celluloid tape? If the film becomes real when it is perceived, is the perception part of reality? This does not concern the illusory movement across frames, though the contribution of the mind to this phenomenon provides an illustration of the more general point, namely, the experience of watching the film. We understand, and we tell our children, this “is just a movie, not real life,” but the reality of the “moving picture” as a real object independent of our perceptions is seldom questioned. The film is happening “out there” on the screen, and we are only spectators. Conversely, perceptions that for science are known to be false, i.e. lack a direct correspondence with presumed physical entities, are often felt as real, such as the “fact” that the sun rises and sets. This includes all perceptions that arise as virtual images out of binocular fusion, or as a result of size constancy. The problem of real and unreal, in relation to fact, true and false, does not ordinarily invade our everyday life, but it has plagued philosophy since its inception. >From the first person perspective, a perception is tested by its concordance with other perceptions and how well the object concurs with the person’s momentary experience and life history. If one suddenly sees a movie while walking down the street, like a mirage in the desert, he might wonder, is it a movie after all? Do we not wonder if life itself is like this, not necessarily a Laplacean reel in which the pre-scripted frames of a life come into view, but a dream-like picture world in which, for a while, we are spectators, even of our own actions? The point is, reality is not what is real, it is what is true – veridical – and the only way we have of turning the real into the true is to put the real into the form of a statement and then test whether or not the statement is truthful. How we test such truths is a

641 complex matter, but they often involve negation, which achieves a relative truth by the elimination (sculpting) of a falsehood. There are two versions of “reality testing,” one by the subject and one for the subject. The latter, the “objective” determination, is a judgment based on the person’s behavior. If we see a person who acts in an unusual manner, who converses with imaginary others, or a person who admits to having hallucinations or delusions, we assume that his picture of the world is skewed or “unrealistic” and, if sufficiently aberrant, psychotic. By unrealistic we mean maladaptive. Dreams are adaptive when asleep, but not when awake, so the context in which the behavior occurs is a clue, to the subject or to others, that the experience of reality is disturbed. Mythological thinking is an adaptive response to the environment that would not be adaptive in today’s world. A dream, a myth, an hallucination, a delusion, may be real to the subject, even more real than his day-to-day experiences, but such thoughts or perceptions are not factually true. The determination by another person that someone has false or unreal thoughts or perceptions is an inference about the reality of his inner world. This is comparable to the subject’s judgment about the reality of the external world. The jump from one mind to another mediated by the other’s behavior is no less problematic than the jump from mind to the physical world mediated by the self’s perception. In the former, behavior is a clue to the mind of another person, while in the latter, objects are a clue to the entities they model. Of course, the other can speak to us by way of acoustic sense-data, and in different ways inform us of the state of his mind, but then, nature also speaks to us in the language of sense-data. The sense-data tell the receptors what is going on in the immediate surround to conform perceptual experience to a model of the world. When endogenous objects (images, hallucinations) supersede the constraints of sense-data, perceptual experience affects one’s fitness to survive. The person is then eliminated as unfit, to become a recluse, to be killed or institutionalized. Truth and reality Nature given by the senses ignites the undersurface of the concept to become an object. A completed perception is a factual thought. Nature is perceptual fact. A fact can be a perception, i.e. a factual thought, or a concept, i.e. an incipient perception. For example, the physical “laws” of nature, of electromagnetism or gravity, are conceptual facts. Thought and perception are modeled to nature by sensation and consensus, in either

642 case, by adaptation. But the nature that is realized in thought and perception is not the nature that underlies that realization. Whatever is conceived by the individual, or confirmed by others, distills to the activity of a single brain. We think of the brain as the physical substrate of the mind, and indeed it is, but the brain is known as a portion of conceptual nature, i.e. as an idea, and inferred to be a portion of physical reality. The morphology of the brain, and the functional areas that are mapped and associated in experimental studies, are not the physical brain. The brain is not a receptacle of parts or a structure that supports or discharges a variety of functions. It is sheer activity, process, change – the “enchanted loom,” “flashing shuttles” and “shifting harmony of subpatterns” described by Sherrington, the “blooming, buzzing confusion” of James – artificially frozen by description into static elements. Just describing a process severs its relations and turns it into a thing. But there are deeper problems in access to the physical brain than the inability to capture its dynamic nature. The question, can we know a physical nature that is impervious to thought, can be ignored or dismissed, but not resolved. Apart from the philosophical difficulties, we have learned from physics that there are limits to the description of events. Psychology is still in the Newtonian mode, yet the role of the observer that is inherent in quantum physics has been shown to be critical in psychological description (Heelan, 2004). A scientific object is not a neutral entity that is confronted by multiple perspectives, but owes its existence to a dyadic relation. More precisely, independent of their truth, scientific facts are riddled with, indeed, are actualizations of, the values and beliefs of the observer. It is an important question whether facts are values, but the more general question is whether we should apply to physical nature those qualities of thought by which nature herself is known, or whether thought is external to nature and does not infect the observation and interpretation of physical data. In most instances, the subjectivity of scientific discourse is considered irrelevant to scientific progress and, to the extent it is a factor, is presumed to be eliminated by multiple observations. But this still does not go to the core of the problem, which is that the observer does not so much introduce error into the description, as that all objects, including those of science, are products of thought, and this would not be the case were thought imposed on object description. The rock-bottom fact about fact is that any fact is an objectified perception in a single brain. The relation of mind and brain is prior to an understanding of the relation of perceptual objects to physical entities, and the ultimate “fact” about the mind/brain state is that our

643 knowledge of this state rests on experiential data. Of course, in daily life as in science, facts are denuded of mentality and treated as mind- and brainindependent. But to an individual mind, they are inextricable from the psychic realm in which they are born. For those who take the brain seriously, there is no way out of this dilemma. Every thought, every perception, every feeling, so far as we know or infer, involves a series of brain events. The brain is merely a portion of nature that mediates our knowledge of the remainder. Facts are values through which we infer a reality common to all perceptions, or a reality on the other side of perception that is conveyed through the senses and verified by thought. How we interpret sense-data determines what can be said about reality, but no matter how much weight is given to sense-data in object-construction, the actual nature of a reality independent of mind can never be directly experienced. We have the experience of a world outside the mind. Within the mind, we are aware of the concepts, feelings and purposefulness of our own psychic states. On what grounds should we abandon this intuitively certain (real) evidence of direct experience for the uncertainty of an inferred and very different physical world? There is no compelling reason to believe that reality – even if it is ultimately non-experiential and unknowable – differs fundamentally from the thought-life in which it makes its appearance. Specifically, if the temporal extensibility of physical entities is continuous with the categorical nature of the mind, the distinction, since Kant, of the noumenal and the conceptual, of material entities and innate categories, is resolved by the evolution to the forms of categorization in the human mind of the temporal epochs of basic entities. In our time, this difficulty – the gap from mind to brain, from the ideal to the Real – has been avoided by reducing mind to brain or ignoring mind completely. The consequence of an extraction of mind from nature is that the psychic qualities of nature are not realized in the mind, that mind is not determined to be, as it is, the mirror of a psychic nature. The elimination of mind from nature, then the brain, abdicates thought and shifts to future science the burden of explaining the reduction. It is comparable to saying that the discovery of a gene or chemistry responsible for schizophrenia makes the study of hallucination and delusion unnecessary. To know the physical facts (scientific objects) underlying delusion or normal thought can reveal some aspects of the process of thinking through which normal or deviant thought develops, but it does not give the content of the thought, including its implicit layers of feeling, experience and signification.

644 Sensation and perception Were the senses recipients of the properties of entities in physical nature that are re-assembled to objects or entities, one could argue, as many have, that perceptions are constructions of sensory data that accurately render the entities from which they are derived. That is, given an intact perceptual system, the brain constructs a picture that is our best and only version of reality, regardless of how it is accomplished. This line of reasoning entails an unbroken chain from the putative physical entity through physical transmission (light, sound), to physical registration in the brain or its receptors, to a physical reconstitution of the data by unconscious brain process, to the conscious appearance of a mental object. The notion of direct perception excludes “anomalous” instances of illusion or hallucination and presumes an immediacy and fidelity of reconstruction by the brain. Sensations, however, like the entities they point to, are extrinsic and non-experiential. In spite of the best efforts of science, they cannot be given a description that excludes the conceptual. We can describe transmission over neural pathways and the physiology of the receptors, and consider these the correlates of sense-data, but we do not feel the changes in the nerves or in the receptors. We sense visually with the retina, and perceive an object by means of, but not in, that organ. We do not feel a stimulus, we have a perception. When we describe the physiology and neurochemistry of the sensory and motor nerves, even the description reflects the conceptual apparatus and categories of the scientists. We have no idea what a sensation is like. It is a speculation on the origins of a perception, a kind of fable on the connections of a mind with its body and the world. In humans, sensation is conceived to be located at the boundary of mind with physical matter with one foot in material nature, one in the mind. Sensation is described from a physical point of view in terms of mechanical conduction, membrane effects, neuro-transmitters and so on, and from a cognitive standpoint as the initial stage in perception. The physical foot compels a physical description of the mental, i.e. a compounding of sense-data to perceptions, unlike the mental foot, which does not seem to compel a mental account of the physical. Such an account would have the salutary effect of incorporating the psychic in observations of what are presumed to be non-cognitive facts. Many years ago, Lord Adrian (1928), writing on sensation, observed that while his work did “not bridge the gap between stimulus and sensation (i.e. sensation and perception)… somewhere on the way between the two

645 (sensory and mental events) there must be a smoothing process which converts the disconnected impulses into a change of a much slower period.” The gap to which Adrian referred between physical sensation and mental perception has still not been bridged in contemporary research, in part because the material is unobservable, but also because there is no continuum in human thought from sensation to perception. From a microgenetic perspective, the conversion of the “disconnected impulses” of sensation into the slower periodicity of perception is not explained by a “smoothing process,” which implies a continuous transition. Rather, the constraints of sense-data impact on, but remain extrinsic to, the rhythmic or cyclical actualization, i.e. the “slower period,” of the mind/brain state. In brief, sensory registration in the retina, hair cells or joint receptors is a physical event outside cognition. What is perceived is part of and inside of cognition. A photism that arises in the retina, tinnitus that arises in the inner ear or pain that arises from an injury, are referred by the brain to the body part. An interruption of the peripheral nerve abolishes the perception, while peripheral incitation alone without brain activation is imperceptible. Damage to brain areas that interface with sensory innervation results in a loss or impairment of perception, while perceptionlike events can arise from brain activity in the absence of a peripheral stimulus. Physical sensations do not necessarily induce or depend on mind. Many unfelt sensory events control bodily functions that do not reach consciousness. We tend to think that primitive life-forms have sensations, but not minds. Yet for organisms that have a mind, mind is not possible without sensation. Consciousness disappears with the cutting of all sensory input to the brain. Sensation is necessary to sustain arousal. We see a gradual breakdown of consciousness with sensory deprivation. The fact that this breakdown is gradual indicates that consciousness can be supported by the habitual path or recurrence of prior perceptions, but only for a limited time. Without sensation, perception will fail to achieve a conscious endpoint. The evolutionary advance from the behavior of sensory (reflex) organisms to perceptual organisms is not a result of the compounding of reflexes but involves a basic shift in design, namely from the seriality or circularity of sensori-motor loops to the simultaneous realization of acts and objects. This shift is postulated to occur through an expansion of small, internuncial cells in the midbrain reticulum (Chapter 6). Sensation is the proximate inference about nature. We feel (see, hear)

646 perceptions, not sensations, so a sensation is an explanation of where perception comes from. The senses give rise to perceptions, but how? Through the building blocks of classical theory, or as constraints on endogenous images in microgenesis? Objects are detached from the senses that convey them, doubly removed from the entities to which sensations refer. Even in assembly models, where sensory features are combined and matched to spatial and memorial data, perception is largely an endogenous process that builds on material data. In microgenesis, the senses delimit spontaneous image formation. In either case, what we perceive is a thought-up nature – one that is assembled or constructed, or one that actualizes out of potential – but in both, the outcome adapts to an inferential world of sense. The choice is between a world of endogenous objects or one that is constituted by their sensory ingredients. In the former, the brain generates images that adapt to a noumenal world, in the latter, sense data build up entities in physical passage. All we know are inner and outer perceptions. The microgenetic idea that sensation is an extrinsic constraint on endogenous imagery gives more than lip service to the noumenal quality of physical nature. The sense-data coming from physical entities, and the movements of the body on those entities, are outside cognition. The recurrent collaterals and distal feedback of a discharge into movement induces a perception of the action. Actions are perceived secondarily on the unconscious discharge of movements. We initiate an action before the awareness of an intention to act, we perceive an action after the movement discharge, and we are conscious of an object after a temporal lag in its actualization. Acts and objects are initiated prior to the consciousness of an intention, or a perception. It takes time to create the world and to effect a deliberate action in that world. In sum, perceptions are endogenous phases that model the sensory world. There are no transitional states from a sensation to a perception. A sensation may involve a multiplicity of sensory states, e.g. visual input at successive brain levels, and a perception involves a succession of perceptual states, e.g. from the vague to the definite, from inner to outer, from the bodily or somatic to the fully external. At their inception, the different modalities are blended together and individuate to discrete percepts and feelings. The initial construct in upper brainstem is multimodal and contextual, then partitions to a given modality. A toothache is a perception, not a sensation. Activity in the sensory nerves of the teeth registers on the brain to induce a perceptual equivalent of what the nerves “tell” the brain, but the nerve impulse going to the brain is non-cognitive

647 and non-perceptual. The cognitive locus of a perception is evident in the context within which even the most primitive perception occurs. A toothache concentrates perceptual experience to pain in a tooth, but it is embedded in a landscape of other modalities. In cerebral disorders, it is possible for the feeling of a peripheral pain to dissociate from its noxious quality, and for some people, certain pains can be pleasurable, while pain, as with other perceptions, can arise from a cerebral source (phantom pain, thalamic pain) without incitation in peripheral receptors. Similarly, a primitive perception such as odor can also carry a pleasant or disagreeable affective tone. Memories are evoked. Affect and reminiscence are not psychic additions to archaic or advanced perceptions. They are ingredient in the perception, or rather, the perception is ingredient in cognition. Experience What is experience? In one sense, it applies to personal knowledge, however acquired, and includes both momentary knowledge and the capacity to evoke or utilize such knowledge. One’s competence in language or memory are as much part of experience as the perception of a tree. Indeed, to perceive a tree presumes a body of knowledge for recognition, classification and so on. If one confines experience to the content of a present thought or perception, there is still the unconscious psychological underpinnings of the present experience that makes that experience possible. Dewey (1925) included the unconscious in experience when he wrote that “what is not explicitly present makes up a vastly greater part of experience than does the conscious field to which thinkers have so devoted themselves.” Experience would seem to be the “total knowledge” available to a person, past or present, direct or indirect, explicit or implicit. When used in a philosophical sense, experience is a general term that includes the multiple experiences of all observers. It is so broad that it merely excludes that which cannot be experienced. Dream and fantasy must also be counted as experience, for otherwise one would have to choose among psychic phenomena those which correspond to fact, those which create new facts and those which depart from fact. And then one would have to distinguish between intra- and extra-personal knowledge, the experience of memory and thought and that of perception. Experience in the general sense is what can be “experienced” or what it is possible to experience across individuals regardless of their sanity or intelligence, including the higher intellects, the

648 artists, philosophers or mathematicians, and the lower or deranged intellects, perhaps even our closest ancestral forms. In a not too rigorous fashion, one can speak of the “totality of experience” available to individuals of the same general type or that which is potentially available to any one individual. Since the unconscious is not experienced except by its conscious products, an unconscious thought might as well be brain physiology, which can be studied but not experienced. Whether the unconscious, except as a theoretical construct, belongs to the world of experience is questionable. The problem is that if the unconscious goes, so does competence, which is the tacit knowledge underlying behavior, such as the knowledge of a grammar, and if competence goes, so does the potential to remember anything, and then we are left only with conscious experience limited to the present moment, and even the present has no sharp demarcation. What is the difference between the unconscious phases of a thought or utterance and the final conscious outcome in thought or speech if the unconscious phases are implicit in the outcome? We infer competence and the unconscious from their products or disorders. The unconscious as part of experience is an inference from conscious behavior. An inference is a kind of theory about experience. One might say the state of inference itself is experiential, not the object that is inferred. I might infer from the noise that there are squirrels in the attic, but the noisy squirrels, other than as noise or inference, are not part of my experience. The squirrels are inferred in a manner similar to a syllogism, and their presence can, in principle, be verified. This is unlike the unconscious, which is inferred as an antecedent, and cannot be directly verified. In what way, then, does one justify including the non-conscious antecedents of language and thought or the potential to produce them as part of experience? We assume that perceptions do not appear spontaneously but result from the physical impressions of sense-data. Similarly, the contents or products of conscious mind have a history that must be included as part of conscious experience. Not all inferences should be included in experience, but direct experience is only a portion of what is experienced. The inferred is its major part. It has to be said that in this area the search for precision can be fatal to certainty. At least one can agree that if inference depends on experience, the fully non-experiential, for example, the nature of noumenal reality, is beyond inference. Experience may exclude many things, but to paraphrase Wittgenstein, it would seem to definitely exclude only that which we do not even know that we do not

649 know. One might add that experience is for things that appear to be stable (objects) or changing (events), not for the change out of which things materialize. Transition gives rise to feeling, but it is the feeling, not the transition, that is experienced. Lacking an awareness of genuine change, we have no experience of that which is essential and uniform in mind and nature. Moreover, if experience and the experiencing self are deposited by change, we do not have experience, we do not have a self. Experience is not a possession; selves and experience are creations of process. The experience of the self for that moment is, for that moment, what the self is. While experience and the thoughts or inferences that flow from it are all that we can know, experience, even so broadly defined, in respect to the non-experiential nature of change, does not include what is essential for its own manifestation. It remains to point out that the general account of experience is an exception to the individualism of everyday life, or for that matter a pure subjectivism, in which I can be certain only of my own experience. Ordinarily, one’s experience is conceived as different from that of others, though experience in philosophical thought is a generic concept. In this regard, the particularity of the self is an accident of the adaptation of mind to mid-sized objects. At the micro-level of atoms, molecules or tissues, we are pretty much the same. So too at the macro-level. When observed from the moon, we are mites that scurry about in what seems random disarray. The individuality of the person appears when he is observed at a mid-point in the scale between the very small and the very large. The temporal window is of comparable magnitude, leading one to speculate that the temporal frame of a life, which is but a moment in eternity, is equidistant between the eternally long and the infinitely brief, between the history of the universe and the cyclical existence of a chronon. Individuality also emerges at an intermediate phase in the mental state between the generic character of unconscious drive and the limited scope and predictability of immediate action, or the oblivion of dreamless sleep and the pictorial quality of waking perception. We think of ourselves as unique with respect to personality and potential, but the Greeks for all their genius, as well as most primitive cultures, tended to view individuals as embodiments of natural forms or categories. The category, in this case the community, is primary. Individuality is a relatively modern concept linked to freedom, introspection and self-awareness. The attitude of many-inoneness that is common to earlier cultures has been lost in the egoism of

650 modern life. The feeling of community within which individuality develops can be regained by regression to an earlier phase in thought. The mark of this feeling – compassion – is concealed beneath the pretense of autonomy. Alienation is of course the price of too forceful an individualism. Organic and inorganic The characteristics of the organic are unity of feeling, dependence of the parts on the whole and self-replication, but with respect to these properties there is no sharp transition from inorganic to organic life. This has been shown in such “organisms” as prions, which replicate through host DNA, but are not themselves self-replicating. What is the status of free amino acids antecedent to a genetic string? An amino acid in a strand of DNA is subordinate to the whole. If we examine the basic constituents of organic systems, there are no fully inorganic entities, since organic and inorganic share the same basic objects. Does a free molecule become organic when it is part of a living system? In what sense is an element bound to the whole in a way that is lacking when the same element is free? Is carbon inorganic in a diamond and organic in a living system? In what manner is the “90% water” of the human body an organic constituent or a fragmentary puddle? The difference is that the activity of elements is ordered by the directional feeling of the whole. The organic is characterized by needs to which elements are subordinate. Needs involve the direction of energy. The physical-chemical bonds that establish the energy of the base constituents of inorganic matter have no prevailing direction. The energic cycles of organism have a direction. The need of organic life is in activity, the need of a plant for the sun, feeding, reproduction. This need is an expression of the direction of its energy, i.e. subjective aim. When energy becomes directional, it transforms to feeling. The transformation of energy to feeling marks the shift from the inorganic to the organic. The directionality is construed as a cause of its outcome, as an activity directed to an aim, but the direction does not aim at an object, it merely deposits the object toward which it seems to be pointing. The unity of a system depends on a relation of parts to whole. Within a person, separate limbs or organs that normally work in concert can be removed without great shock to the system as a whole. To what extent is this true of the brain? The Canadian neurosurgeon, Wilder Penfield, compared the effect of damage to a small area of brain to removing a violin

651 from the string section and trying to hear the difference in the sound of the orchestra. This formulation is not often applied to the study of braindamaged cases, where the disruption of the part is examined in isolation from its effects on the whole. At times, one does feel there has been a change in the personality after a focal brain injury, but the characteristics of the change are hard to pin down and tests of cognitive performance are inconclusive. This was especially evident to me in studies of patients with stereotactic ablations of thalamic nuclei. It happens that the global often evades description, while the local is self-evident. The problem is that everywhere we look, including the brain and behavior, we see a multitude of particulars, simple and complex, inorganic objects such as trains, cars and houses, and organic ones, such as insects, animals and vegetation. In what way is a particular related to other particulars, and in what sense do its constituents cohere? Is a house a lesser unity than a tree or a piece of music? From another perspective one can say the universe is a whole to parts that only seem to be particulars because the whole is incomprehensible and the whole-part relation is imperceptible. In the external world we are presented with a manifold of individualities, but the perception of this manifold is a unified field. Specifically, from an external perspective, particulars add up to larger or smaller aggregates, finally, to a construction of the world, while from an internal perspective, the world is ingredient in every object. We see a pile of bricks. The bricks are a unity within the unity of the field carved out as static objects in perceptual space. When a brick is removed, the pile is altered with respect to the absence of the brick. Physical nature from a perspective external to mind has the bricks lacking cohesion. But the subjectivity of the pile is revealed in brain disorder, when the entire field is distorted, including the pile of bricks. In vertigo, the bricks spin together in the visual field. Another perspective is introduced if the pile is assembled with some purpose in mind. A pile of bricks as an artwork is defaced if one is removed. Suppose a random pile is identical to an artwork. Does the deliberate placing of the bricks in a pile give them unity? What is the difference between a brick pile as a random grouping and one that is an artwork? The artist would say, and perhaps others would agree, that the pile as an art work has an organic unity which is lacking in the random grouping. For one person, the bricks are an accidental array, for another, a work of art. An aggregate might satisfy an aesthetic or be a hodgepodge. Suppose the bricks are mortared in a wall, or the spaces are filled in by a mudslide. Does the brick pile then take on

652 unity? From a subjective or experiential standpoint, the pile of bricks is a recurrent event (an artwork, a random pile, a wall), similar to other objects in the field. We tend to extend unity to an aggregate if the parts adhere, or it has been ordered by a mind or an aesthetic principle, but even a tornado can leave a pile of bricks that, like driftwood, is aesthetically satisfying. Only from an objective standpoint, when bonds between elements are lacking, or the object seems changeless or without growth or incapable of perishing, do we can say the aggregate is not unified. It seems that what gives an object an organic unity is less in the synchronic relations that appear to keep it together, than the diachronic relations through which organic systems grow. The relevance of synchronic and diachronic relations is that the assembly and microgenetic models of perception hinge on this distinction. The point is, unity and whole-part relations are too elusive, especially at the putative frontiers of organism, to serve as boundaries of the organic and inorganic. Even the dynamic of a photon has order and beauty. The transition from the inorganic to the organic, from energy to feeling, from isotropic to anisotropic time, is a forward-directed process that is aligned with life itself, and thus is freighted with the mystery of creation. The initial step of directional feeling is the urge to selfreproduction, to a process of growth, death and rebirth. Once the first glimmerings of organism are achieved, as with prions, or the bacterial origin of mitochondria, the rest can be left to evolution. The precise steps are not known, but the debate has import over how far down life and, by implication, the psychic extend. Can value, feelings and consciousness be traced from the human mind to their primordia in elementary particles? Kant criticized a gradualism of purposefulness on the grounds that intentionality would extend to inorganic matter. A purposefulness that goes all the way down is the path to theism. An evolutionary psychology has purposefulness developing in relation to the directionality of feeling. Prior to anisotropic change, the direction of becoming of an entity is arbitrary. Once feeling takes on direction, its repeatability gives the appearance of purposefulness. Gradually, purposefulness advances to intention. The specious argument that the advanced is present, in statu nascendi, in the primitive, e.g. that human intention derives from purposefulness in inorganic matter, is also a critique of consciousness and value. Purposefulness is the manifestation of directional becoming, it is not given beforehand but achieves its aim only when it terminates.

653 In sum, if features of the organic such as feeling, temporal extensibility and the part/whole relation apply to basic entities, there is a continuous development from the inorganic. But continuity alone is not an argument for pan-subjectivism. One could as well maintain that living things are complicated machines that are programmed by their genomes to age and die, and that life is just an organized, self-replicating form of the mechanical. The outcome of materialism, as with pan-subjectivism, is a blurring of the organic-inorganic divide. In one, mechanism is continuous, in the other, spirit. The inorganic has temporal extensibility, but its energy does not lead to ends. It does not grow, it does not require nourishment and it is purposeless, for there is no consistent direction. Yet the notion of entities as epochal packets of energy aligns the inorganic with the first glimmerings of organism. The importation of change into matter enlivens the inorganic with creative energy and is the transition to living matter. Teilhard de Chardin (Sherbourne, 1993) wrote that for the modern thinker, it is now impossible to philosophize seriously without keeping the theory of evolution constantly in mind. The question is, how we are to understand the evolutionary continuum? Whitehead wrote that nature is a structure of evolving processes. For him, the subject emerges from the world. For Kant, the world emerges from the subject. The microgenetic idea is that self-conscious mind arises in subjective nature as an elaboration of a psychic world. The subject, the One, arises in the plenitude of the world. Multiplicity in the world is created out of unity, the oneness of a subject. If a subject is an individuation of a a pre-cognitive subjectivity, what is the nature of this transition? For Bergson, it is god’s creative activity. Whitehead wrote of the creative principle – the Creature – of the universe. The great neurophysiologist, Charles Sherrington, wrote that man is nature beginning to be self-conscious. Physical nature is continuous with organism as the non-cognitive world is continuous with mind. Indeed, mind is its final realization. Reality is mind in the process of becoming aware of itself, the product of world organism that enfolds all forms, all changes, of greater or lesser degree of development. What exists What is ultimately real is what exists. Change, time and relationality are the measure of existence. To say the real is a non-relational emptiness or a non-temporal absolute is to deny reality to time or events in time, as some have done, and attribute reality to a speculative universe out of time,

654 or one that contains all times. Bradley (1893) wrote that if time is not unreal, the absolute is a fiction (see also McTaggart, 1934). If what we know is illusion, and if the illusory is the unreal, what is real is what is unknown. If the real and the unreal both exist in the same sense, they are not adjudicated by existence. Similarly, truth is not predicated on, or contradicted by, appearance, since the illusory can be true or false, though error is false appearance. We can conceive an illusory existent but not a non-existent reality. The concept of reality is linked to existence, to time and to change, but the linkage of existence and reality, or both to a timeless absolute, is not of the same order as that of reality and death as nonexistence. If atoms are real and exist, the atoms that constitute our bodies and brains are also real and exist whether we are dead or alive. After death, our atoms are still real and exist. We – our selves – no longer exist, yet our bodies are as real as anything else. There is at least one sense in which the non-existence of the nontemporal does not apply. This relates to existence as the minimal cycle of a momentary entity. A non-existent in this sense is not a nothing. A nontemporal becoming creates an entity that does not yet exist, but will exist, or is coming into existence on the completion of its becoming. The entity does not actualize out of nothing or non-existence. The universe is a continuous process of becoming. Were becoming to cease, the universe would not exist. But between the arising and perishing of a becoming, “between” potentiality and actuality, the process is not yet temporal, thus not yet an existent. The ordinary concept of reality as a collection of instantaneous events – the “solid” particles of the older physics – is inconsistent with the interpretation of existents as epochs. The epoch encloses phases that, being non-temporal, do not exist until they are traversed. For an entity to exist is for it to have a minimal duration, i.e. for becoming to actualize into being. A physical instant is an imaginary section through this becoming. Thus one notion of existence is that of a single epoch or cycle of change. Another is bound up with the identity of the thing, and concerns its continuing existence or repeatability. For a conscious person, existence requires self-identical moments. Assuming the mind/brain state has a (clock) duration of about 100 msecs, it would be replaced over 300 million times each year of life. Somewhere between a single cycle and a sequence of cycles, an existent takes on identity. How long does an entity have to endure. i.e. how many replications must occur, before the identifiable thing it is can be said to exist? Is a mind that exists for only 1/10th of a second

655 without recurrence truly a mind? At one extreme is a single cycle of becoming, at the other a sequence of many cycles. A bolt of lightning is brief, but it is real and exists. Lightning is the outcome of a sequence of events without which it would not exist, though for the most part we are unaware of the sequence leading to the bolt and perceive it as an isolated occurrence. A tree, on the other hand, is inconceivable without its history. If a tree suddenly appeared and disappeared like a lightning bolt, we would think it was an hallucination or a hologram, not a real tree. The difference between a bolt of lightning and a tree is, in the latter, the similarity of recurrences that allow us to perceive it as stable and enduring. Stability is minimal deviation in recurrence. Since every replication creates a new object, every object is an event with greater or lesser novelty in replication. Psychic nature? The traits of natural existence which generate the fears and adorations of superstitious barbarians generate the scientific procedures of disciplined civilization. Dewey (1925) The description of the physical world as that which remains after mind has been subtracted is a nature inaccessible to the mind it supports. Indeed, how could one subtract mind and leave its physical nature unaffected? One might imagine a mental state without a brain state, since we live in the mental state. Indeed, this is the foundational insight of dualism. The brain state is an inference about the sources of the mental state, but can we imagine that same brain state less a mental state? We can no more abandon mind for the material brain than invent mind in non-psychic nature. Once nature is “in the mind” it cannot be directly known unless nature is an extension of mind, so that a subjective description of nature implies the subjectivity of all nature. Still, we cannot say if there is an absolute or noumenal nature beyond experience. Once mind is “inside nature,” mind becomes a mode of the physical and relinquishes all subjective properties, unless nature exhibits those properties. Mind “outside” nature is exempt from physical process, unless the notion of “outside” entails a different meaning of physical. What it comes to is that the world is either a self-

656 realization and we live in a kind of cognitive bubble-chamber, or the mind is a fiction and the world, including the brain, is a vast, unobservable spectacle in the void. The materialist argues that nature is everything mind is not, i.e. mechanical, non-conceptual, purposeless, extended, and so on. But any truth about physical nature can be no more than provisional and ultimately unknowable. To maintain that one can assume an objective perspective is coherent only if nature is mind, so the perspective does not sacrifice psychology to achieve objectivity. What does it mean to have an objective perspective? It is impossible, even imaginatively, to step out of mind. All knowledge, concepts, categories, discriminations, even the self, go out the window. We have no concept of what material nature is like, in itself, yet we deprive it of all the trappings of mind save those needed to describe it. Or we reduce mind to brain and link it to a mindless nature. But given that all we know of nature is inferred from personal experience, how can we know if nature is devoid of mental attributes? Perhaps nature exhibits properties continuous with mind. That would be the simplest explanation of how mind evolved, namely, as an elaboration of nature herself. Is it not a non sequitur to assert that nature is mindless, and at the same time contend that reality is unknowable? Problems with materialism beyond the derivative and uncertain sources of perceptions and the construction of entities in an “empty” hypothetical space, include the “time” taken by – and the how of – the transmission and combination of the senses to a unified object. To invoke a mechanism for the unification of experience – the re-integration of that which science has fragmented – illustrates the improvisation of present-day thinking in psychology. Such postulates ignore other aspects of perception, e.g. object-recognition, familiarity, constancies, conceptuality and category membership. In sense-data theory, the overwhelming contribution of mind to perceptual objects is secondary and post-perceptual. In microgenesis, this contribution is preliminary or pre-perceptual. If we assume the existence of a physical nature that is mindindependent, mind is an addition to the totality of the world. If we relegate mind to brain process, so that physical process is all there is, we might as well say that mind does not exist. What exactly does this mean? Can we have a description of physical process in brain or nature that does not employ the concepts and categories that are the essence of mind? Take the firing of a nerve cell. If we ask, does (did, will) the cell fire, we need a concept of the neuron and the sequential events in its firing, and the time

657 when the neuron fires. The boundaries of an event are limits imposed on passage. The meaning of when, i.e. now, depends on a point of view. To speak of the events involved in neuronal firing, or the moment when a cell fires, is to isolate an epoch of time and segment the before and after into past, present and future. The perspectival “now” does not usually apply to a non-cognitive nature. If we cannot reach a physical world outside of thought, by excluding thought we do not have a complete account of reality, which otherwise consists of a physical nature that excludes all the worlds elaborated by all the minds that nature generates, great and small. Bradley (1893) wrote, “All appearance must belong to reality. For what appears is, and whatever is cannot fall outside the real.” For Bradley, that was not just the world of the subject, but whatever exists, including the experience of others. The experience of a single mind or all minds is a small part of the real, and there is more to reality than mind or experience. A flower that blooms unnoticed in a wilderness is as much a part of reality as an unconscious digestive process or a meteor that falls on a distant planet. Realness is an experience, but it can also be a judgment, say in deciding whether a dream or illusion is real. When we say on waking that a dream is unreal, we mean that it is a false or untrue perception. We are making a judgment, but in the dream we felt its realness. The judgment of the real requires an implicit comparison with the unreal. In this, it is like a comparison of true and false. A different way of saying this is that we know the truth but we feel the real. When unreal is used as a judgment, it means untrue but not non-factual. The dream did occur, and its occurrence is a fact. What is or is not real is in relation to mind. The notion of the real is meaningless without mind. The relation of appearance to reality is that of mind to physical nature. Appearance is unreal only in relation to objects perceived as more real, or entities inferred as ultimately real. However, real and unreal apply to perceptual images or objects, not physical entities. This may not be the case with fact or truth, for we do not speak of objects or entities as being timelessly real, as we do of truth. Yet in spite of all the arguments concerning “timeless truths,” at least since the famous sea battle of Aristotle, it is difficult to understand how such terms take on meaning in the absence of mind. If we judge a dream as a false perception, yet still a fact, would we say that dreams are outside reality? If we exclude the dream from reality, what about other mental contents, such as images, concepts and feelings? Clearly, there is a confusion between what is real, what exists and what is

658 true. Whatever is, exists, and this includes everything that is. Imaginary objects exist even if they do not correspond with world events. Thoughts exist whether or not they are true. Since the unreal exists as does the real, the real is not decisive as to what exists. The unreal exists even if it does not correspond with perceptual fact. Were that a requirement of existence it would eliminate much of thought, including creative ideas, fantasy and play. The implication, as Bradley seems to argue, is that what exists includes appearance plus everything else. In a word, the real is not a limit on existence. Several conceptions of nature are at stake, that of the observable, that of experience and that which underlies experience. The first is the world of the perceptual, including the brain as an object, the second is that of the inner and outer life. As an object-appearance, in perception or in science, the brain is conceived as an entity in physical nature and as the physical basis for the mind. Nature without mind reduces to nature as mere activity, which is not absolute nature, or nature unknowable, because it is still theory (i.e. mind)-driven. There is a double reduction, first from the mind to the brain as perceptual object, then from the perceptual brain to the brain as a physical entity. There are those who would reduce mind to brain, or those who are satisfied with an identity of mind and brain or, what amounts to the same thing, those who would eliminate mind altogether. Such accounts may begin with a physiology of “nature alive,” for example, behavior associated with primitive ganglia in slugs or insects, and attempt to explain the human mind as a result of increasing complexity of sensorimotor activity. The problem with the reduction is that once mind is equated with a physical substrate, it then has to be derived from that substrate without foreknowledge of its nature. Otherwise, mind would continue to influence its own description, and the material brain would merely limit the scope of that description. This would be like an account of the experience of color taken solely from the study of the physical light spectrum. Identity, elimination and reduction have in common the artifice that theorists do not feel compelled to explicate the reduction, which is the intuitive challenge of how nature in the form of a brain creates such a richness of mind that can so easily be collapsed to its physical base. Or once reduced, how mind re-emerges. Or, how one could surmise that an image of the world in the brain of a perceiver is independent of its perception. Or, how such a world is often felt to be more palpably real to an observer than the inferential nature it purports to reproduce. If mind disappears in brain physiology, does nature or reality change? The concern

659 is not with identity theory or reduction, which like Crick’s “astonishing hypothesis” is little more than a platitude, but with an explication of the reduction, and a theory of mind that respects psychological detail beyond the mantra of an “emergence from complexity.” If we are just brains, as I have no doubt we are, why do we tremble at the fragility of mind to the erosion of its physical supports? It is difficult to understand the urgency of reduction when so little of mind is known. We can agree that the unknown is a swamp of superstition and false belief that is slowly drained by science. But can we also agree that the unknowable may well be a reservoir of mystery at the limits of scientific explanation? Reality I am the hymn the Brahmin sings Emerson The many perspectives on nature do not give a single reality that can be understood or described. The multiplicity is part of that reality and alters it with each new perspective. Reality cannot include one and exempt another perspective. If one perspective is eliminated, so are all. If one is excluded, which one is to be chosen: a lunatic, a dog, a flea, my neighbor? Reality does not exclude diversity but includes it by transforming its character, resolving discrepancies into a greater unity. Perfection, being an absence of discord, is often considered the essential characteristic of reality. The one reality must either be changeless, or it must include and be changed by all possible changes, since every change brings about a new reality. The world is the axis around which different perspectives turn, but the world itself changes independent of its perspectives. Different selves, one’s own self at different moments, different classes or species of organism, bring different perspectives to bear on a reality that embraces them all. A perspective is not reality, nor is reality altered by having a perspective other than as an alteration of the total reality in which the perspective is one aspect. Reality, or nature in the widest sense, is what exists. What exists are epochs of process or becoming, i.e. the dynamic of creation within the temporal “thickness” of an entity. Reality is the universe of such entities, the momentary becoming that creates being and brings it into existence. The view that reality consists of aggregates or unities of epochal

660 individualities as features within the whole of nature provides a coherent account of mind and world, the “real” and the illusory, mental objects and physical entities. Cognitions realize the becoming of the brain as one of an infinite number of simple or complex loci in nature. Recurrence sustains existence by replacing epochs, and imports the before into the after for sameness and difference, or continuity and novelty. Epochs of differing periodicity recur in larger entities as part of the renewal of the totality of all epochs. This account differs from Whitehead’s “societies of occasions,” in which the prehension of a multiplicity gives a novel unity. The microgenetic theory of mind applied to actualization in the physical world entails a manifold of nature unified at the onset of an epoch that gives rise to novel particulars. Diversity does not combine to unity but, like speciation in evolution, is the outcome of an individuation of the whole. We have no direct knowledge of such epochs, or even of genuine change, which is unobservable, nor the events in the brain that deposit an act of cognition, nor those in consciousness that underlie the appearance of a “stream” of events that pass from one state to the next in mind and world. The modern concept of mind is derived from experience in a world that appears solid and everlasting. Life is evanescent, mind a fleeting instant, but life forms evolve over millennia. Is the ephemeral the criterion of reality? Actually, I think it is! Direct knowledge for experience in the world leads us to assume that the world is the source of knowledge, and so it becomes the basis for theory of mind. But nature “unobserved,” not limited to direct experience, reaches beyond mind to the universe as a whole. The greater part of reality consists in that “far side” of nature conceptualized in physics but, ultimately, impenetrable to thought. To return to the earlier discussion, for all the speculation on nature, physical reality and the absolute, the only “first hand” knowledge on which to form a conception of reality is personal experience. What conclusions should be drawn from such experience? This does not imply that reality is experience, rather that experience informs theory of what reality might be like. I believe the immediacy of perception and the interior life insist that we begin with psychic, not material, facts. Even if mind is phenomenal or illusory, when we describe a material basis for organism, at the end of our search we would still have to account for the emergence of mind from a material substrate. The move from the psychic to the material is done with great facility, especially in science, but the move back again to the psychic has always been problematic. The problem is avoided from the start by remaining wholly in the mind in every scientific encounter. Mind itself is

661 the natural starting point of scientific inquiry. Mind would also seem to be its natural termination. Followed deeply enough, a psychic nature, or a subjective universe, is a metaphysics of evolutionary psychology. James thought that an understanding of psychology would ultimately be metaphysical. Aristotle wrote that metaphysics is “the ultimate goal of the scientist’s pilgrimage through the realms of knowledge (and that)… the person who studies it will be doing what in all his previous work he was preparing himself to do.” What can be said of the ultimate nature of reality if we take the psychic as primary? Apart from common aspects, such as a continuum of feeling, the ubiquity of duration, temporal extensibility and recurrence, the more the general implication of subjectivism has to do with the extension of mind to nature or the transition from nature to mind, i.e. a psychic nature that is continuous with mind. The contention that nature has features of subjectivity independent of observation, or that nature has deep commonalties with mind, is a form of animism. So too are the notions of soul, spirit and divine presence, which can be traced to animistic belief. Historically, the view of an individual as a vehicle through which the forms of nature actualize preceded the idea that experience is what the self experiences. If we strip away the superstition that overlays animism, and its ornamentations in magical thinking and everyday life, and accept the bare primitive intuition of mind in nature as a kind of unmediated truth, we are left with a sophisticated theory of reality that asks what features of psychic life are present in the world and how those features are elaborated in the human mind.

Chapter 25. Reflections on Immortality If I remain ceaselessly active to the end of my days, Nature is under an obligation to allot me another form of existence, when the present one is no longer capable of containing my spirit. I do not doubt the continuance of our existence. May it then be that He who is eternally living will not refuse us new forms of activity analogous to those in which we have been tested? Goethe

Introduction Given our knowledge of brain function and the alterations of the mind with diffuse and focal pathology, is there a possibility that a personal consciousness can survive the cessation of bodily function? By “personal consciousness” is meant, minimally, an awareness of self, which requires an awareness of personal memory irrespective of continuing experience. The self is re-created in successive revivals, whereas the “soul” is enduring and timeless. So far as we know, this cannot occur without the relational compresence of self and object or image and idea in a field that extends from inner to outer, from memory to perception or, as in dream, from the intra- to the extra-personal. We know this complex is necessary from states of altered consciousness due to a disruption of perception. A non-personal consciousness or awareness without a self could be attributed to small children and animals. A “pure” self without content or without a relation to objects and images is probably not possible in life, though there are accounts of pure consciousness in meditative states. A remembrance of such a state does suggest that the self was aware of something, even a kind of “nothing,” that was still enough of a content to serve as an object of recollection. Even if the survival of a non-experiential subjectivity or disintegrated psychic elements were possible, we desire an immortality in which personal identity is preserved, preferably a self with ongoing experience.

664 But what is the meaning of identity, of survival, of mind-eternal, of the persistence of personality, of an abiding of the final-most state, of continuing experience, of an expansion of the now to a timeless duration, and so on? A self that survives without continuing experience is changeless. Can a changeless state exist if existence entails change? What is a changeless existence? What does it mean for the survival of personal identity to be absorbed in the absolute? Bradley thought of the present as a non-temporal center of experience in which time and space are constructions. Bradley's absolute is comparable to the mind, in that the unity of the whole informs each center of experience, just as the personality infuses every act. These “centers” are more generic than the “pulses” of experience of William James, which individuate out of them, or the actual occasions of Whitehead. Each, however, in a different way, is a momentary occurrence that arises into being, and lapses back into a nonrelational ground, physical nature, the absolute or an image in god's mind. Is there a non-conceptual reality to which concepts refer? Sprigge (1993) wrote, “We could not refer our ideas to a reality beyond the contents of our own consciousness if we had no awareness of that reality except through our ideas of it.” What awareness do we have of “mindyonder”? For thinkers with a mystical bent, all experience is unreal or illusory, or it is an approximation to the real which itself is unknowable. Whitehead wrote, “As we perish we are immortal,” but is a personal identity retained in the transition from death to immortality? In process theory, and especially in some forms of Buddhism, such as Hua-Yen (Odin, 1982), the identity of a present occasion is interwoven with all past and present occasions in the universe. A survival of personality requires a persistence or identity of the self across occasions, most importantly the transition from life to death. The idea of persistence conflicts with the processual nature of change. But self-identity does not require the persistence or recurrence of an identical self, only that the self retains membership in its own category, a subset of the category of persons. A revival of the category of a given person, not the particular self or the self of a given occasion, one that renews the properties of that self, which are no less categorical, enables the self’s own category to be revived, and with it the feeling of self-identity. The categorical nature of a particular self and its properties brings the universal into relation with the individual, giving each individual a share in the whole. There is a misconception about the survival of personality that arises from the infusion of the immortal ideals of value into the changing nature

665 of activity. Immortality is a negation of the transitory character of the self (Whitehead, 1941). Given the similarity of Whitehead’s concept of the immortality of value with Bradley’s absorption into the absolute, “the final unity seems to demand that the constituent individual natures and appearances surrender their unique characters to the whole (McHenry, 1992).” There is an unresolved inconsistency in the idea of a self that is temporal, imperfect and changing, that differentiates out of an absolute that is timeless and perfect. Rather than attributing change to the absolute, it can be argued that the “pure” self is perfect and timeless, with change being the appearance of its changing manifestations. The question is: How individuated is the whole, and can it support the survival of a unique personality? Such problems have been subjected to profound analysis by many of the finest thinkers. Here, I only wish to discuss the possible compatibility of some sort of psychic continuation after death with process psychology. Concept of immortality Immortality is an idea and a quest; it is a speculation about the nature of life and death, and a longing for life ever after. Among the many forms of immortality that are conceivable, only that of psychic continuity seems worth considering. For Kant, the death of the body is the end of the sensational use of the mind, and the beginning of its intellectual use. Hume argued that the possibility of life after death presumes that of life before birth, and if we have no acquaintance with the latter, what expectation should we have of the former? What consolation in the mind dust, critiqued by William James, that supposes an individual consciousness filtered out of the “mother sea” of world consciousness by brain activity, which after death returns to the cosmos without personal continuity? The feather-light soul atoms of Lucretius, like the psychons of Jack Eccles, are no consolation for the annihilation of individual consciousness. What hope for genetic perpetuity or karmic ascent in a consciousness destitute of antecedent memory or consequent personality? What comfort in Fechner’s lovely image of continuous sleep prior to conception passing through the half-wake of life to eternal wakefulness? For some, the perpetuity of the life that was lives on as a completed biography in god’s mind. For others, experiences are added. Immortality implies perpetual duration. This persistence of mind, and body in mind, is the sense of life everlasting. An everlasting consciousness

666 is conceived as a consciousness that endures, i.e. it endlessly consumes new presents in an enlarging past, while an eternal consciousness is one for which the present embraces all eternity. This latter concept is of greater interest, a present that in death, as in deep meditation, expands to an eternal now – the timeless now first proposed by Parmenides – to become one with the all-encompassing now of the absolute or mind of god. Could an eternal now transcend the temporal life of the body, as the momentary now transcends instants of physical passage? Immortality pertains for the mind to the persistence of the psyche, not to the reincarnation of the body. Spinoza thought the mind was the idea of the body (or brain), but in truth, the body is the idea of the mind, which is “represented” in the mind as a body- (or brain-) awareness. If a body were to be represented in a bodiless mind, e.g. the cognition of a “brain-in-a-vat,” that body would exist and would be real for the “person,” no less than if the body were actually “there.” The duration of a conscious moment that is “surrounded by a sleep,” or a now that is infinitely expanded, must traverse the instant of death to be revived after the traversal. Might the instant of death be a timeless interval between two conscious moments, like that between successive conscious states, or across an interval such as sleep, electroshock or other loss of consciousness? Robert Musil wrote, a life is a “hopping over thousands of death-seconds every day.” Schopenhauer had a similar view, that “real existence is only in the present, whose unimpeded flight into the past is a constant transition into death.” A close attention to the perishing of the present into a no-longer-existing past is the model for dying. The perishing of each conscious moment is unnoticed when it is replaced; the interval, being timeless and not incremented, is nonconscious. Thus, we feel a seamless and continuous self across perishings. In life, this “bridge across moments” is extracted from the present state. Since we live in the present state, the next state, the one that will replace the present state, does not exist until the replacement occurs. Could a state immediately after death replace one just prior to death? For the present state, the post-mortem state, like a state in the immediate future, does not exist. But death is a perishing that is unlikely to have a replacement. The perishing at death needs an arising on the other side to bridge an interval of physical passage. So far as we know, an arising can only be generated by a coherent spatio-temporal pattern of brain activity. A life in an illusory present is an illusory life. The loss of this illusion is the portal to reality. But if all experience is illusory, what then is real, and would we want

667 reality if we could experience it? If the real is the presumed oneness of the absolute that underlies a multiplicity of individualities, it can only be achieved when the appearances of perception and the illusion of personal consciousness are extinguished. Consider a sudden change in the state of an object, such as a house that collapses. The physical entity exists and is real before and after the collapse. After the collapse, it has changed to a novel entity, a pile of rubble, but the object, house, no longer exists as before. The configuration or pattern of its constituents has changed. This is an extreme example. So is death. Every entity undergoes novel change with its replication. When the change in an object is unnoticed we think the object endures, even though what we perceive is a replicate of what we perceived a moment before. A tree, a house, a person, all undergo change, but we do not say a tree in winter is a different tree than in the spring, or that a house which is repainted or enlarged is a different house. If an oak should suddenly become a maple, or a house should be demolished and rebuilt, or radically altered, we might then speak of a different tree or house. Human existence is similar to such objects, with a more emphatic sense of identity. When we know a person who has suffered a dramatic change in personality, we may say he is no longer the same person. In this sense, a person can “die” while still alive. We grieve for this “loss” and may mourn the person who “is gone.” Were a case to be made for the survival of bodily death, say a form of disembodied consciousness, what possible joy or pain would there be in such an existence? To be an idea in god’s mind for all eternity, to relinquish want and suffering, but desire and pleasure as well. What tedious bliss! What joyless ennui! A heaven that can be imagined as the best of what life has to offer, or a soul that is a replica of the self, is an impoverished vision for those who trust in the reality of eternal objects. Heaven and the soul that seeks it should not be fashioned on earthly knowledge. They are, if they exist, unimaginable.

668 Personal immortality And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new. Robert Browning How many body parts need to be exchanged before we say the same person no longer exists? Suppose after a severe injury, or to evade the police, a person has surgery to create an entirely new face or, in a thoughtexperiment, has a different brain implanted in his cranium. Our intuitions tend to confer identity to a recognizable personality, not its physical accoutrements. A different brain implies a different personality, even if the “person” looks the same. This is the “body snatcher” scenario. What would occur with the same brain and personality and a different appearance? A facial transplant for scarring and disfigurement can give a person a face taken from a cadaver The concern is what happens when a person looks in the mirror and his face is unfamiliar. What happens in such cases is far from clear. Suppose one lives in a world without mirrors, like a desert nomad. We tend to think a continuity of personality, even without a body, is sufficient for self-identity, but in fact there is a dramatic adjustment of the self-concept when a person undergoes an alteration in bodily form. This ranges from a mastectomy to the loss of one or more limbs, to quadriplegia from a spinal cord injury. A person with a cervical injury and paralysis is the equivalent of a brain in a vat, a head with no sensation below the neck. Such unfortunates often pass through a psychotic phase in adapting to their condition. Many, if not most, wish to die. While peripheral injuries can induce major transformations in personality, damage to the brain is of still greater significance. In cases with prolonged unconsciousness, as in coma, a radical transformation may occur even of the person’s appearance, so that they become unrecognizable even to close friends. The memory disturbance attendant on the brain damage makes it difficult for the patient (even without clinical amnesia) to answer the question, “Who am I?” Those neural formations that mediate knowledge of the body – the body image or schema – are closely bound up with the core self. Though the association of self and body image has been disparaged as “an integumented view of the personality,” the identification of the core self with the body schema and

669 the objectification of mind into the body are old ideas. There are many deaths to be feared, a loss of the face, a loss of the body, finally, a loss of the experiential self, regardless of whether brain and body are alive. Though alteration of the body, or disruption of the “body image” with brain damage, leads to a readjustment of the ego, personal existence comes to an end when the replication of personality ceases, or the self is replaced by one that is quite different. Physical death is not necessary for this to occur. We see this in coma, severe brain damage, addiction and other altered states. One could become a zombie, a post-lobotomy, a psychotic or a person in a trance or state of possession. Annihilation requires a cessation of the near self-identical recurrence of personality. The abolition of physical existence is the most extreme transformation the self undergoes, but the self can be lost while the body remains intact. The stability of the self may be illusory, but some compromise of sameness and growth is essential to sustain a narrative of personal identity. Novelty of replication and stability of form are intricately interwoven. We become disoriented when perception is uniform, as in snow-blindness, or when change is too rapid, as in stroboscopic perception. The self and its world are sustained by a novelty sufficient to regenerate a now that is not too dissimilar from its antecedent, but not so excessive as to endanger stability and continuity. What is the significance of the duration of a life if it is computed in a momentary state? Some people who “die” and return to life in a neardrowning or a fall from a plane onto a snow drift claim to see their life unfold as in a film. Paul Schilder wrote of such cases. This Lebensfilm experience happens in a flash. The present stretches into the deepest past of one’s life. One explanation of this phenomenon is that it represents a fragment of the expanded now of deep meditation and enlightenment. The duration of the present – the now – is not fixed and immutable but elastic; it can be contracted in pathological conditions, and expanded in meditation or hypnotic age regression. Yogic meditation expands the now in a “pure consciousness” detached from the flow of objects. Mystics have written of such experiences. They speak of an individual consciousness becoming one with the mind of god, embracing a world process of becoming of all past, present and future times in a single all-encompassing now. Duration, replication, persistence What does this have to do with immortality? Is consciousness possible in the after-life? If so, what becomes of personality without experiential

670 memory? If at death we leave the perception of an artificial stability to enter a non-cognitive world of transition, is death the end of the illusion of conscious reality and the beginning of a non-conscious journey into the real? A common way of thinking about an after-life is that individual consciousness returns to the mind of god or the absolute from whence it came. Buddhist thought offers a metaphysics that attempts to account for the passage from one category of existence to another. The bliss of enlightenment is a liberation from the cycle of transitions – Samsãra – and the entry to nirvana, which is the emptiness of the absolute or, in religious terms, the paradise of oneness with god’s mind. One way to think about this, which was so beautifully described by Meister Eckart, entails the enlargement of the personal now to the eternal now of god. We know that the now of waking consciousness can be enlarged by an extension of its posterior boundary into the past to embrace images earlier in life. Since its forward edge is the world surface, it is doubtful that the anterior boundary can be extended into the future. The expansion extends the past by lowering the “floor” of decay in an episodic stacking of prior states. This floor, a phase in forgetting, or incomplete revival, is the limit of a content that slips beneath awareness to long-term memory. The posterior boundary of the now is extensible because its floor is essentially bottomless. In life, the present state of consciousness is largely the revival of past configurations in memory. Should we expect a consciousness after death to be modeled on that during life? If there is consciousness after death, we do not know if a personal past is revived. If not, all of personality, character and experience would be lost, save that evoked in the finalmost state. If the past recurs, presumably as part of a wider consciousness, or in the mind of god, there would be less autonomy than in life. Surely what is lost in the transition to physical reality is the illusion of waking autonomy. The concept of a noosphere, for example in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, is that of a higher community of souls. In death, as the body sinks to inorganic matter, the mind ascends to the spirit world. The earth receives the body, the heavens receive the soul. On such a view, the revived past of conscious life is to consciousness after death as the former is to the consciousness of dream, in which we do not apprehend a “higher” waking state. So, in the latter state, we do not apprehend the noosphere of an afterlife. Dream is embedded in waking consciousness, while dream and waking awareness are embedded in consciousness after death. If we dreamt continuously, what knowledge would we have of waking

671 consciousness? Being awake much of life, we are like dreamers in relation to a superordinate level. In a faint echo of Keat’s, “Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?,” my grandmother’s last words, in Yiddish, were, “ales a cholem,” all is a dream. Such intuitions lead us to ask if visions of deity, spiritual contacts, apparitions, revelations, mystical encounters, paranormal and after-death experiences may be fleeting intimations of this plane, as lucid dream is a glimpse of waking consciousness. The possibility should not be dismissed as a mystical vanity. The notion of an individual consciousness after death is not a mystical insight. Keyserling (1927) wrote that mysticism ends in an impersonal immortality. Though we seek a personal immortality, we have less interest in preexistence than in survival after death, no doubt due in part to the terror of annihilation, but also in part a reflection of the directionality of time and the surge to the future. As mentioned, Hume argued that the presumption of life after death entails life before death. However, a life could have only one death and be uniquely immortal, or it could be bounded by two transitions, one from a prior, another to a subsequent, self. A transition from a living to an immortal self, restricted to the life that survives death, presumes a substrate generating that self without a recurrence in another life. If there is continuity of lives, the substrate (brain) must be a temporary vehicle for the binding or concentration of spirit to account for the “brainless” interval. The possibility of change across the death-boundary entitles the self and its imperfections to continue, but not to persist, eternally, until perfection is achieved. Since, except for reports of psychic experiences, we have no memory of past lives, it seems more likely, if likely at all, that a life after death is a life of spirit that continues in another form of existence without a subsequent rebirth. The absence of memory for past lives does not make a future existence less probable, for the self might develop throughout life and persist after death without a succession of incarnations. However, it does make the continuity of lives less plausible, and probably less desirable, since each incarnation would generate a unique self, depending on its inheritance and experience. The transmission of character without awareness or memory gives a token immortality. This problem of a lack of memory for prior lives vanishes with the rejection of rebirth. A continuity of consciousness after death need only carry with it a memory of the current life for personal identity to survive. Consider the self an sich, the self out-of-time, postulated by Kant. The

672 self an sich was hypothesized to rescue the freedom of will from causal ancestry, though a self that is detached from its history and experience would be independent of feeling, character, experience, loyalty, etc. Choices would be free but there would be no grounds on which to choose [Brown, 1996]. Could a present uncoupled from the physical passage of brain activity – a now that is virtual during life – remain virtual after death independent of its material origin? If the present is sustained by the regeneration of objects out of memory, could memory recur with a destruction of its physical correlates? If consciousness survives the death of its physical substrates, along with those of memory, a consciousness after death, lacking a memory of a preceding life, would begin with death as the initial state. Indeed, the final state of life-consciousness would constitute its death-state for all eternity. This might resemble in form, if not in content, a consciousness at birth, with duration, such as it is at birth, directed to the future in a now that would be markedly restricted until a past was able to build up. Put differently, a non-personal consciousness that continues after death would be no different, in any important respect, from a consciousness that commenced with birth, with one exception. The state would contain only that content actual in the state, with no possibility of regenerating past content, which would be lost to the future of the state. The state would not recur, it could not grow or enlarge unarticulated by novel experience, but it would endure eternally. One of the most fully expounded and widely held theories that resembles this account is that of karmic transmigration, which is a questionable legacy to Buddhism of more ancient Hindu texts. In transmigration, the last spark of living consciousness, whatever its outcome in virtue and/or defilement at the end of life, is conceived to somehow attach to the first moment of a new life, vijnana, in a fetal brain [Stcherbatsky, 1923, 1968]. A receptive fetal brain is required for the final state of past consciousness to undergo growth by way of experience. This transition, as Danto has pointed out, is an impersonal rebirth of the end state cravings of the past life. Those who believe in transmigration are still concerned about their fate in a future life devoid of memory for the present one. This might increase the moral credit for their conduct did they not harbor an illusion of continuance or were they able to accept or comprehend death as absolute annihilation. In the Anatman theory of Buddhism, there is no self or craver that can be reborn. However, the fact that we are not conscious of our past lives does not mean they are no longer active. Past-life memories might justify

673 present choices by having become instincts that exert their effects unconsciously on character. Still, this theory would seem to have little to recommend it other than as an anodyne for the masses, though there is much to admire from the moral point of view, i.e. that good acts are for the sake of the character of anonymous successors. Karma is also a justification of acceptance and resignation for those who are disadvantaged, even if it has lead to the perversion in Buddhism of the lama tradition, which has been transformed beyond recognition, as Inge put it, into a “degrading idolatry.” The metaphysics of karma must be taken seriously by Buddhist scholars, because the other side of the goal of nirvana through enlightenment is release from transmigration, Samsara. If we get rid of karma, nirvana is achieved at too cheap a price. Nirvana The great pillars of Buddhist metaphysics are the concepts of momentariness and emptiness, as they relate to the two pillars of practical wisdom, that of karmic transition and the passage to nirvana. These concepts are inter-twined. Momentariness is the arising, perishing and replacement of point-instants, emptiness is the insubstantiality of their relationality (Brown, 1999a). The point-instant is the irreducible or atomic unit of the metaphysical system. It consists of a becoming and a subsiding in a time-irreversible causal relationship of before and after. Stcherbatsky has written of durationless points with temporal thickness. The temporal extensibility is the minimal thickness for the point-instant to be what it is. The point-instant has thickness and phases and is epochal. The perishing of one epoch is causally contiguous with the arising of the next. The completion of one cycle of arising and perishing creates a minimal unit of time, a moment (ksana), that is equivalent to an element or unit of change (dharma). Yet the elements are discrete and, so far as I can tell, not overlapping; i.e. separate entities in a causal sequence, yet also relational segments in a continuum that cannot be arbitrarily sliced. The causal connection of wave-like relations has not been adequately reconciled with the demarcation of momentary points. The theory of causal continuity is inconsistent with that of momentariness. Stcherbatsky wrote, “A cause for the Buddhists was not a real cause but a preceding moment, which likewise arose out of nothing in order to disappear into nothing.” The concept of emptiness is more elusive than that of the pointinstant. It depends on the relationality and groundlessness of epochal

674 points. Ultimately, the universe is constructed of points, like atoms, a hierarchy of illusory categories built on (the illusion of) the durationless point. The hierarchy consists in the relations among sub-categories, and decomposes into the thicknesses of change that constitute the pointinstants, which are themselves categories that enfold virtual phases. The concept of emptiness alludes to this decomposition. The phenomenal nature of a category, as well as a duration, which is also a category, and the relationality of the process within the point-instant, sustaining layers of mental and physical structure, are central to the concept of emptiness. Emptiness is the insubstantiality of the relational, the negation even of relationality, for the relational is not a nothing, it is still a discrimination, an affirmation. Pure relationality or flux is a conceptual film that is finally unpeeled as consciousness attains absolute emptiness. This concept of nirvana has points of contact with Bradley’s notion of the absolute as a non-relational many-in-oneness, i.e. a “flat monotony of emptiness.” Vallée Poussin (1925) asked, but did not answer the question, why did the Buddha eliminate the old doctrines of god, self and miracles and retain the idea of nirvana? In retaining the concept that nirvana is a release from Samsara, the Buddha was obligated to retain several allied concepts (as previously mentioned, that of karma), as well as the gandharva, a subtle essence distinct from the body that seeks reincarnation, or a spiritual principle that invades an embryo. Echoes of spirits that mediate the transition from death to an after-life are found in the beliefs in the ungwulan of the Aruntas of Australia, who hovers near the camp after death, the Tibetan bardo, a contact between the living and the dead, or the gilgul of the kabbalists. Elkin (1943) notes that for the “primitive,” spirits are “never completely tied to their manifestations.” Aborigines will abruptly leave off a conversation and go into a state of receptivity for totemic animals or intimations passing from the spirit life of the eternal dreamtime into the momentary present. The primitives have their initiation rites, by which the vital spirit is transferred from one corporeal frame to another. Frazer mentions a Basque legend of the hunter who said he was killed by a bear, which then breathed its own soul into him, so that now he was animated by the bear’s soul. Nirvana was retained because it relates to the concept of arising and perishing that is central to the metaphysic. Nirvana is the final arising into non-relationality. In contrast, a permanent, unchanging god is incoherent in a metaphysics of change and relations, as is a substantial self, while miracles, since they violate the natural order and flow from god, are

675 equally objectionable to metaphysical universality. The arising of the point-instant of the last conscious thought inherits its antecedents but dissolves in a ground that is infinite for all antecedent and subsequent points. If nirvana is an arising of a conscious mind that passes, in enlightenment, to a permanent abiding as part of the absolute, the body having perished, it is an absolute perishing of the final arising into a ground that is non-relational. This timeless emptiness is not changeless permanence, though it is unclear on what basis they are distinguished. If the last enlightened, conscious thought is free of desire, the spirit will be extinguished, or enter some mode of existence or non-existence of infinite duration, a kind of formless permanence in an everlasting now. What survives is undifferentiated matter, a negation of feeling, conception or consciousness. For some, this is not a nothing but an inanimate something, while for others it is a form of spirit. Stcherbatsky wrote of an absolute stoppage, an eternal blank, the annihilation of all the pure dharmas of the highest spiritual being. The goal of world process is release from samsara in a total suppression, an absolute calm and immutability. Ironically, what does not achieve nirvana is the very thing that must be elevated in karma and liberated from samsara, namely consciousness. Psychic continuity Karma is a transmigration that depends on moral character, but what we care about is the survival of personality. Bosanquet (1913) wrote of “chains of personalities linked together by impersonal transitions.” Plato thought the impersonality of this transition related to the degree of forgetfulness across reincarnations. But it is difficult to conceive how consciousness after death could include the survival of personality. Even in life, the loss of visual and auditory perceptions with brain injury has a devastating effect on the self and conscious experience. The selective loss of discursive or conscious memory may leave consciousness relatively intact, due to the preservation of the unconscious skills and habits that account for so much of character and behavior, but a total loss of memory would be incompatible with personal consciousness such as we know it. One could devise a variety of scenarios for the survival of a personal consciousness, such as a slippage of the virtual duration of the present into the interstices of other worlds. But given our knowledge of brain function and pathology, and the alteration of the mind with local injuries, how

676 would personality survive the cessation of bodily function? All objects, ourselves included, are recurrences. Change is cyclical. The appearance of progression arises as a vector toward novelty in a replacement of forms. If consciousness is an effect of brain activity, the brain activity would not be coincident with, or identical to, but a cause of mental events. Since Aristotle, many have postulated god as a first cause or first mover, an initial cause, not the effect of a still prior cause. The first cause and its agent are outside and prior to the world. The mind of god sets the material world in motion. Many now accept that at some point in evolution the material brain achieves a complexity such as to cause mental events. Suppose consciousness is a psychic effect of a material cause. Consciousness would be the effect of the activity of the brain, regardless of whether a mental state has a causal effect on brain activity or a causal effect on subsequent mental states. One could then ask if the last conscious state can be construed as a final effect of the brain’s final cause in the life of the individual? This final effect would be epiphenomenal and selfsufficient. On this view, the final state of consciousness is neither a cause for a further effect nor an effect that requires another cause to sustain it. If consciousness is a causal outcome, can we conceive of an effect that simply is, or terminates, without serving as a cause, or leading to another effect? A first cause sets all things in motion. A final effect at the end of life would liberate consciousness from causal dependency, to leave a causal world of temporality and enter the realm of eternity. Whatever appeal or comfort may obtain in this vision, it has many difficulties relating to the causal account of consciousness. These include: (1) the obscurity of the transition and the “time” it takes to go from brain cause to psychic effect; (2) the “horizontal and vertical” direction of causation, i.e. across brain states, across mental states and, reciprocally, across brain and mental states; (3) whether consciousness is epiphenomenal or acts on brain and behavior; and (4) the possibility in dualism of a causal influence of a conscious state on an ensuing conscious state independent of brain. Moreover, the concept of consciousness as an effect distorts Hume’s argument that consciousness provides the necessity in causation. Consciousness is a configured pattern of brain activity, a manifestation of this activity, not a product or an output. Consciousness as a product would still depend on neural substrates no less that its antecedent phases. Finally, the consciousness of the present that spans physical (causal) passage is precisely the issue in the survival of consciousness after death.

677 A universe that arises in god’s mind, and perishes in the mind of an individual at death, begins with the consciousness of god independent of nature, and survives as an individual in god’s mind. It is as if the history of the material world and the individuality of our conscious natures were but one idea articulated into world process and the manifold of conscious states. Arising and perishing are thematic in existence, from particle to brain, from the birth of the universe to its eventual implosion. They frame the blink of the Brahma, the cycle of life and thought, the unsettled boundaries of every transition in the actualization of the mind/brain. A phenomenal present, an act of cognition, a state of consciousness, all arise in the decay of its antecedents and all perish in the next arising. Apart from the infinite nature of god, there is no abiding, no persistence, only perishing, replacement and an illusion of stability. We are just beginning to understand gradations in the transition from one state to another in the evolution and maturation of life. We study multiple stages in the arising of life at conception, and ignore, repress or are repelled by perishing in death. Except metaphorically, we do not see the perishing of death as a ground for another arising. Ashes and dust await us at the end of a life, not at its origins. Death is a more abrupt transition than birth, and unlike birth, which is a continuation of life, death is a passage to another mode of existence, from a living consciousness to noncognitive inorganic matter. We have a molecular biology of life, birth and growth, but no comparable science of death and dying. Perhaps that is because death, viewed as the extinction of life, has non-existence as its theme. How is non-existence to be investigated? We think the growth from gamete to conscious mind is a progression from an organic entity such as a cell to levels of neural organization sufficiently complex to generate consciousness. In contrast, we think of death not as the reverse of this process but as a collapse and disintegration of organic matter to its constituent molecules. There is a painful asymmetry in the fact that life and death come only from life, but only life, not death, gives new life. Time and eternity It has been said that the ultimate identity of existence and value is a venture of faith to which mysticism and speculative idealism are committed. A naturalism that seeks explanation in the origin of things must posit value at the earliest stages of existence to avoid its ad hoc insertion at later stages. Existence is the progressive elaboration of value. The

678 manifold of existents comes into being and perishes as the next manifold is created. The perishing is not a passage to non-existence, as in the Buddhist exchange of point-instants, for an arising cannot arise out of nothing. A nothing can only be conceived as the absence or negation of something. Nothingness has nothing out of which an arising could develop. Instead, the transition is from one mode of existence or value to another, not a passage from or into non-existence. All things change, but in respect to their form, not their existence. In death, the transition is from the subjective time of the consciousness of a living organism to the reduced temporal extensibility of its decomposed parts. The extensive duration of complex entities devolves into primitive ones with limited duration. The idea that the actual values of conscious experience perish into the eternal values of timeless forms, which then regenerate actualities for novel occasions, cannot be understood as a flow from time and existence to the non-temporal and non-existent and back again. Existence, temporality and value are preserved throughout all changes in form. The common meaning of eternity is of unending time, of which, sub specie aeternitatis, the life-span is a segment. McTaggart wrote, “Time finite Time- is simply a part of Eternity.” The other meaning of eternity is of timelessness, as in a truth that is forever true. For McTaggart, any event can be viewed in this way. That I sneezed last Christmas is a timeless truth. Still another use is for the timelessness of existence. Only the temporal exists or what exists is temporal. A thought exists, its correlated neural activity is temporal. Once an event passes, it no longer exists. The event is non-existent in the sense it no longer exists. However, it has not vanished into thin air, rather it has passed into another mode of existence. Only the truth of its former existence exists, and even that exists as a realization of that truth in a mind. A god can be conceived as the negative of our mode of existence, namely as timeless, changeless and perfect, but such a god is unimaginable. McTaggart thought that to exist and be in time were distinct, giving the timelessness of god as the example; i.e. “the timeless does not change.” Whitehead’s notion of a processual god with a primordial and consequent nature is less implausible. Eternity as unending time leaves finite time as one of its segments. Eternity as timelessness refers to timeless entities: god, truth, mathematical propositions, and so on. But the concept of a timeless object entails a mind to think it. Absent a mind in the universe, in what sense is 2 + 2 = 4 a timeless truth? Except for such timeless truths, or the concept of a god as existing yet not changing, what exists must change. Change, existence and

679 time are interdependent concepts. In death, we seem to go from the temporal to the non-temporal in a passage from time to timelessness. But one existence in change and time is merely replaced by another. An act of cognition is a creation of a subjective time experience out of the apparent “timelessness” of the unconscious. The unconscious is timeless only in the sense of a lack of an experience of time. There is physical passage in the unconscious but no time-awareness. Subjective time arises out of the simultaneity of the core and takes on temporal order as it actualizes. Dreams appear to have an historical quality as one event follows another in a definite order, but this order is realized on waking when the dream is recalled. We have no way of knowing what the experience of time is like in the dream. Von Hartmann (1893) wrote of the unconscious as timeless. Freud agreed. A timeless core would seem to entail a changeless non-existence, but the core is simultaneous, a totum simul, that distributes into a succession of forms. Conceivably, in death, there is a reverse of this transition, dissolution of time order as consciousness devolves into simultaneity, i.e. a consciousness that is simultaneous, everywhere, anytime, in a present that embraces all time. McTaggart (1934) asked what establishes time order and wrote, “those states come next together which only vary infinitesimally in the degree of their adequacy, and ... the whole of the time-series shows a steady process of change of adequacy.” By adequacy he seems to mean closeness to reality. I would say, if order occurs in the arising of the mind/brain state, the sequence taken on by the events is established by the similarity of event-configurations, i.e. the coherence of their patterns, so that widely disparate events do not ordinarily give the sense of temporal contiguity. McTaggart goes on to say, and I would agree, that “the time-series, though a series which gives us the illusion of Time, is not itself in time…(yet it) is the only serial element which remains as real, if time is to be condemned as unreal.” His conclusion is that “the most appropriate metaphor for the Eternal is that of an eternal present.” The concept of an eternal present eliminates the obstacle to immortality of a discontinuation of the personality, since all lives are timelessly present. The implication of this view was spelled out in his work of 1901. McTaggart wrote: An infinite series of lives forgetful of the past would not be more meaningless, and would certainly be less dreary, than a single unending life cursed with a continually growing memory of its own false infinity. If we can get rid of time, we can dispense with memory. If we cannot get rid of time, memory would become intolerable.

680 What do we want from immortality? Few educated people today believe in the picturesque heavens and hells of medieval and Renaissance artworks, the inferno of Dante or the great triptychs of Bosch. Such architectures of heaven as were dictated to Swedenborg by an angel are not to be found in contemporary theological texts. Many people still believe in a soul, though they have no idea how to describe it, nor the heaven they hope will be its home. Whitehead gave a description of the soul that bridges into karmic theory, that “the soul is nothing else than the succession of my occasions of experience, extending from birth to the present moment (giving)… the complete person embodying all those occasions.” Faith is a repository for the fear, uncertainty and dread that are the engines of conviction. The paradise and dungeon of the hereafter are inducements or admonitions, fictions that appease and control. But one wonders, within the caricature, is there not an intuition, as Inge put it, of mind-yonder? Religions do not bother to document the existence of the objects they endorse, science, to say the least, is dubious. Science offers no evidence for or against religious belief, though its methods promote a tolerance of doubt, a seeking after truth, a resistance to dogma and, from time to time, a deference to the views of others that is healthy in any society. Inge criticized the assumption that religious truth is a branch of science, holding it rather to be a method of ordering life with a view to the formation of character. If we seek scientific evidence for spiritual truth what we find is neither spiritual nor true. Spiritual or religious truth is to be determined by its role in human affairs. In many ways, reason is opposed to faith – indeed, faith is invulnerable to reason – but reason at its most insightful is aware of its limitations and knows that logic cannot command the totality of commitment that faith enjoys. If a motive for a belief is a reason for its doubt, the purity of faith is surely a part of its certainty. The conviction in faith has the unquestioned authority that reason dissipates in intellectual combat and dialectic. Faith, Inge wrote, makes its forms, it is not made by them. The more we know of biology and physics the less a conviction in the hereafter and the less personal our god. One basis for the resurgence of a fundamentalism that is so anachronistic in the modern era is that it substitutes spiritual ideas for material interests and in so doing arouses an intensity of belief that overrides appeals to reason. The fanatic may be a messenger of evil who distorts every religious teaching, but he shows in his passion the poverty of a skeptical rationality and the fatuity of moral

681 relativism. Faith requires a surrender of ego, to training, to the mob or cult, or to utter helplessness. One asks, should faith be acquired in an act of desperation at the moment of greatest need or absorbed at a time of tranquillity through quiet meditation and self-probing? A personal trauma, despondency, hopelessness, are often the beginning of a spiritual quest, since a breakdown of self and reason opens the doorway to religious belief. In the Christian tradition, the models are St. Augustine, St. Francis or St. Ignatius of Loyola. Writing these words in the days after the destruction of the World Trade Center, what moved me greatly was the widespread rebirth of religious feeling, evident even in those not directly affected by the tragedy. The numbing triviality of a life of mechanical comforts takes its toll on the vitality of spirit. We are inundated with the sex scandals of politicians, while millions are killed in the Congo. Yet, close to home, misfortune elicits a well of untapped feeling that seems to have been waiting for an occasion of release. Governments unfurl their banners of god to sanctify the wars they plan to wage, but the spontaneous outpouring of a shared sense of loss, of community and religious feeling, suggests the existence of an authentic core of spirit, no less than intuitions of paranormal experience suggest a realm of spirit or consciousness beyond that of everyday life. The brevity of life’s duration explains the wish for immortality, at least for those who love life or fear death. Life passes quickly, and with age seems to accelerate. Most of us want a long life, but who wants to live forever? Life does not have to last for centuries. It only has to seem that way. The long and short of life are relational concepts. We measure life by clock time, but life passes subjectively. The feeling of life’s duration is reconstructed from the events that articulate it. The duration of the past, the life saga, is reconstructed from the revival of episodes that punctuate and stretch out the feeling of past duration. Amnesic cases have a markedly contracted feeling of the duration of the past. If someone had a limitless memory, duration might approach the eternal, with an unlimited number of remembrances to fill it. Given this, it is conceivable that a way might be found to alter the feeling of subjective duration so that 70 years feels like 300, at which point one might feel that he has lived long enough and is ready to die.

682 Community and spirit Objectivity taken to extremes loses contact with the person, as subjectivism only goes so far before it stumbles into solipsism. But either view is a plausible starting point for a theory of moral action, since conduct precipitates at the boundary of self and other to reconcile the will of the individual with that of the community into which it discharges. In one theory, self is primary, in the other community, or their interaction or compromise. But neither a self- or other-centered approach, nor one of tradeoffs between desire and necessity, can fully grasp the role of the individual in the community, or the place of the community in relation to the individual. Even a relational view of self and other achieves little more than a trite understanding of inter-locking dependencies, unless the objects of its analysis are conceived as dynamic all the way through, from the origins of community in self to the emergence of self in community. The community is, in some sense, a realization of the collective will of its members, thus dependent on the revival of shared concepts and values. But if the other and the community are conceived as collections or populations or multiplicities of individual selves and their traditions, the concept of self will pervade the concept of other – the other will simply be another self – and the deeper significance of both will be missed. When we reconstruct the meaning of a society, a culture, a civilization, we attempt to grasp from a wider perspective those deeper constructs that in mysterious ways seem to be guiding along the microscopic and often incoherent acts of daily experience. When we shift from community to nation, or from decades to epochs, we have a sense of the sweep of historical thought over the events that are its temporary signposts. Yet we can also turn to the momentary genesis of an event, the process of mind, not history, in which the breadth and sequence of historical events are markers of psychic and philosophical depth. The psychic depth refers to the unconscious forms that actualize in behavior, the philosophical depth refers to the theory of eternal forms that actualize a series of ever-vanishing appearances. History is the record of incrementations in the actualization over multiple cores and extensive durations. The succession of momentary events temporalizes individual unconscious as historical process distributes unconscious form into the ornamental detail of daily life. The realm of eternal forms is an imaginative extension of the intuition of a world of still waters beneath the eddies and swift currents. This psychic field recalls the Jungian archetypes, the Orphic and Pythagorean

683 predecessors of the Platonic nous, the mystical traditions of the unseen ground, the immateriality of spirit, a mode of religious and spiritual thought dating from Plotinus and beyond in the West to still more ancient scriptures in the East. These strands of intuition and feeling attempt to grasp and articulate the unknowable in the concept of community. From this perspective, acts and personalities are contingent displays of the passage of nature, its superficial masks, a skin that is constantly shed and restored. The intensities of life are evanescent glimmerings or gestures of spirit that distribute into a succession of transient actualities, unfolding, one after the other, an endless shower of forms. The nexus of relations that constitutes a person, the successive selves of that person and others, for their very transparency are apprehended as links between units and fail to be appreciated as realizations of community. Thus perceived, they are brittle and tenuous demarcations that obscure the process of renewal. We think of individuation as a kind of separation, like gestation and birth, the infant becoming independent of its mother, with growth leading to detachment and autonomy. Autonomy comes as a resistance to dependency, which can be a metaphysical truth or a psychological need. A dependency is an admission that our very identity requires another object for support. Love is the dependency on another to satisfy the wholeness of those one loves. Aragon wrote: “lè parfum derriere toi que tu laisses, et quand tu sers je suis malheureux comme ton miroir.” The scent that lingers after she is gone, the indentation on the sofa where she was sitting, her lipstick on the rim of a glass of Bordeaux, my face in her imagination. If loving continues after the beloved has parted, did it begin before she appeared? Is consciousness like the feeling of loving that lingers and makes love possible before the beloved appeared? After she is gone? Process has its aim and its return, a motion outward and an inward relapse. But the pressure to autonomy blinds us to the oneness in which we are all enfolded like blossoms on the same tree. Yeats was thinking of the war, but he captured the explosion of form out of unity when he wrote, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” This apartness is the spatial and temporal procession of the world, the vast image out of Spiritus Mundi, the grail, the sought after, the well-spring of life. Individuation is a mirror of dependency as separation is of fusion, or entropy of order. Every so often, though, we apprehend that the relation of self to other is not like that of bonds attaching one thing to another, or a mutuality of support that is its domestic residue. At times of personal vulnerability, autonomy is

684 endangered. A disintegration of coping and adaptation are threatened at every phase in the elaboration of mind. Adaptation defines the boundaries of self and other. The disintegration of self is not the chaos or fragmentation it seems. Fearful of loss and the surrender of integrity, the self merely sinks into the potentiality from which it is incessantly arising. Duality and perspective The tree of nature has many levels, from the blossoms to the soil, but the spirit of nature runs equally through all. The metaphor of depth and surface alludes to an eruption from a bubbling core of self to the dry crust of perception. At the depth are the precursors of consciousness, the invisible, the inaudible, the world beneath the palpable. A scrutiny of what is evident does not reveal the presence of the wholes that are the true carriers of signification. Nature is neither the continuum of a Heraclitean river, nor the persistence of its Parmenidean bed, but the surge of becoming into the next round of actuality, with each perspective created by the limits of the other’s contour. Every occasion enjoys the vantage that every other occasion excludes. What is ambiguity but a perspicacity that sees too well from every side? As the saying goes, a man is known by the dilemmas he keeps, an either-or built into experience like a duck-rabbit figure, the dual nature of illusions, the illusion of duality, the duality of nature, the dualism of mind and brain, positive and negative, the twin faces of unity, something, nothing, both, neither. The world, its anti-world, still greater spheres, greater wholeness, endless upward-downward expansion. Everything is expandable and decomposable without limit. What is anything composed of? Locke ridiculed the Hindu who supposed the earth to be supported by an elephant that was in turn held up by a tortoise. Hawking was amused by the woman who said it was turtles all the way down. Now we are in an age of fractals and superstrings. The turtles have disappeared but the depth still seems bottomless. We live in the middle of a fractal hierarchy that in Dyson's phrase is infinite in all directions. What is real, or what exists, depends not on the level but on the process that runs through all levels, and how this process deposits the categories that constitute the “furniture of the world.” Many would argue that the external object is prior to knowledge as sensory registration precedes perception. I believe the objectification of a perception is the only objectivity that we know. Hume wrote, “The only

685 existences of which we are certain, are perceptions.” Russell was exasperated by having to repeatedly define the view that “all our knowledge is, strictly speaking, not about the world but about our percepts.” Yet the outer world impacts at every phase in cognition. Even the genes are sensitive to the microenvironment. The relation between the intrinsic and the extrinsic is the contrast, or the constraint on form, that defines what a thing is. Every object is a set of contrasts. In any dyad, one member requires the other for its individuation. My neighbor and I individuate from the common ground that, in sincerity, we seek to reclaim. Gadamer wrote, “The relation between the speaker and what is spoken points to a dynamic process that does not have a firm basis in either member of the relation.” The oppositions are created by individuation and autonomy. I would describe it as a common process, in which the members are co-arisings. Hartshorne wrote, “To be is to be in relation.” Every entity, every phase in cognition, every act and object, posits the world of which it is not, as well as the world in which it appears. Divinity and grace Whitehead wrote, “God is the great companion, the fellow-sufferer who understands.” This is not the appeal to a personal god that it seems. Whitehead’s god is the eternally creative dipolarity of arising and perishing. Pattern in nature ebbs and flows in a momentum of creativity leading to human mind, perhaps to higher forms of thought. Creativity is continuously creative. God is the temporal pattern of this activity, its order, its power, its invention, its exemplification, not a set of properties outside or added to nature, or attributes of a personal deity. We have no need for mythological underpinnings or divine personality, nor the abstract, eternal forms of the philosophers. There is reverence enough in creative process, its tides of change, its novelty and recurrence. The Talmud advises not to look for god but to study and trust that one day god may find you. But where is one to look? In an act of goodness or the penumbra of evil it quietly denounces, in beauty or the imperfections it casts in relief, in the dream of unity or the reality of unending multiplicity? What exists is nested in the silhouette of a contrast. Everything unholy is the birthmother of what is sacred. God escapes dialectic by an assertion of totality, but still we ask, is god order, chaos, their resolution, the initial fractal or the last, the arc over all things or the word that contains the universe. Is god recursiveness, cyclical return or linear flow, probability or

686 causation, the inferred or the evident, the affirmations of the priests or the negations of the mystics, the shalts and shalt-nots of moral duty, determinism or freedom, culpability or penitence? Is god the image of the world or the image behind that image, what is left over after I am subtracted, the outside, the within, the everywhere, the nowhere? Is god the giver of life, the bringer of death, the sanctuary of the before and after? Did I hear god in a Schubert quintet or a thunderstorm? Did I see god at Chartres or in a spider web? Did I sense god in genius or repetition? Was god lurking in the spiky pirouettes of a parched leaf on a breezy autumn day? Unknowing, I began with a question no one else was asking. Where do god’s “mistakes” come from? Accidents of nature are deviations from the expected, which is only the norm of recurrence. There are no actual accidents, since nature comprehends all things, but there is a spectrum from slips of the tongue to fetal monsters. These little aberrations are usually ignored. What does a two-headed snake have to do with the ordinary concept of snakes? What does the process of thought in a retarded child or schizophrenic have to do with that of the normal human mind? Like static on the television we attribute these “deformities” to a malfunction of the normal, when, in fact, they expose the process through which the “normal” is achieved. Beethoven and Shakespeare are aberrations in the other direction and as poorly understood. These are all “mistakes,” snapshots of god’s work, outside the range of the expected, like miracles. Surely, god is not the spectacle of perception but its backstage puppeteer. Einstein said god is subtle but not malicious. For Heraclitus, the Lord of the oracle (wisdom) neither states nor covers up; he gives instead a sign. All around there are signs of god’s presence but god is unnoticed. We are dazzled by appearances, by what is actually there. God is not so obvious. This is where “mistakes” come in. They are signposts on a journey back to the source of things or, at least, harbingers of the “genetic code” of nature, which is not a code but the genesis of objects out of pattern, in the same way that the genetic code itself actualizes out of world process. I pursued this journey with faith in its correctness with a reverence for symbols as gatekeepers. The truth, or my version of it, began with errors that disclose the normal but concealed process of brain activity, god’s encyclopedia, Blake’s grain, Tennyson’s flower. The beauty in pattern is as close to the divine presence as we are likely to get. That beauty, I think, is god’s nature, more elusive than Emily Dickinson’s lovely phrase, “the brain is just the weight of God,” for his secret lies in the

687 perchless flight of time. Hartshorne writes that past entities are not wholly dead, not at all for god, but rather they live forevermore. Life is a larval stage of existence. God experiences everything we experience and to a greater extent, and god loses nothing of the past. The objective immortality in being remembered by god differs from personal immortality. To be remembered by god or others is not to have personal memory or identity but to live as an image or idea in another memory. God remembers me and his memory makes me immortal, as the past of all history is revived in god for each new occasion of the universe. Auxier (1998) adds the possibility of a subjective immortality with a locus in divine conscrescence, in the succession of subjective immediacies in god’s becoming. Death lifts the limitation on the experience of a personal subjective immediacy. Before Hartshorne, Inge wrote, the question “is not whether in heaven the circumference of the soul’s life is indefinitely enlarged, but whether the center remains.” Actualization is a progressive elimination that achieves material actuality through phases of restriction or limitation. Schelling (1810/2002) wrote of death as a clairvoyance uninterrupted by a waking up, “the release of the inner form from the external one that keeps it suppressed.” McTaggart (1916) speculated that the dependence of the self on its brain is a limitation during life that is lifted in death. Hartshorne also wrote that life is a mode of limitation and death a lifting of that mode. In the progression from a subjective pole of potential to the objectivity of the actual, death is a loss of the objective pole into which potential specifies material existence. The de-individuation of death would spare prior subjective phases, which become one with god’s potential to provide the ground of novel experiences. Brains are “organs of concentration” for separating a world soul into distinct personalities, a view that harks back to speculations on mind-dust. But the subjective pole is as contingent on brain process as the objective pole. Personality is a limitation in physical existence of the subjective participation in god prior to birth and after death. Life concentrates god’s spirit, death liberates it to full participation. If before life or after death we are ideas in god’s mind, in life these ideas undergo restriction and limitation. This line of thought raises the question of life as memory. The mitosis of a cell is the visible proof of replacement. There is a quieter replacement that goes on each moment keeping the cell alive. This is the near replication of the cell in its durational cycle. In complex systems, the replications are less exact. Does the DNA have to be replicated in the

688 causal persistence of the cell? Is cancer a result of erroneous replacement? DNA is the memory of the cell, but what is the memory that replicates the DNA? I too depend on memory to replace myself, as memory itself is replaced. Memory is growth and decay. Ultimately, my life, my self, my personality, are the products of memory remembering itself, and what is memory if not recurrence? The annihilation of personality is the loss of the memory of one’s self, not the destruction of a self distinct from its revival. Where does this lead? No wonder on some questions even the Buddha was silent. Mircea Eliade wrote that man must at all costs find in this world a road that issues upon a transhistorical and atemporal plane. His aim was stability, the certainty behind a world of illusory change. The timeless has always cast its spell on the mystic. One longs for the life transcendent, not for eternal life. For me, it was the reverse, a sense of the mystery of change within the illusion of stability. As a non-mathematician, immune to the lure of abstract forms, the non-temporal is for me inconceivable. It has been said that a timeless universe requires a timeless observer and is thus doubly inconceivable. An eternity that is timeless is changeless, thus non-existent. The search for the timeless is a manifestation of the wish to escape transition. Becoming is death, immortality is the timeless world of permanence. Was it Dean Inge who wrote, no one wants to be ubiquitous but we all want to be immortal? Croce thought that every individual should feel his work is a trust for which he must give an accounting. This accounting is like the repayment of a debt or the keeping of a promise. This promise is an offering to the spirit of life or the will of nature, of which instinct is a superficial mark. Such a debt is acknowledged in the fullness of self-realization. It is an obligation without an object, a duty without a command, a sacrifice without a cause. The spirit is greater the more one gives to it, and is most precious in the impulse to regain one’s strength and move a step further. A life dedicated to will and wholeness is recompense for the grace it receives. The trust is the service. The accounting is the measure by which, with the aid of grace, we profit and endure. There is a moral dimension. We give aid to those in need, as it was given to us, receiving spirit and passing it on, nourishing others as we were nourished, by the whole, each in his own way imparting a portion of that which is always One in its many parts and disguises. We are beneficiaries of grace in every act of will, in our darkest moment, in the process of life, its continuous rising up and rebirth, a resurgence of will that comes to us from we know not where to go on with

689 the choices given us by fate. Every darkness is the dawn of a new day. These are the conclusions I have reached after a lifetime’s study of the patterns of mental activity. Each act of thought creates the present in loss and recurrence. The old present dies so the next can be born. The self is an island of fragility pounded on all sides by flux, veering this way and that in necessity and acceptance. Finally, we may understand that freedom is an assertion, not in power and confidence but in utter helplessness and despair, and in the willingness to receive grace in the pit of gloom. Tolstoy put it beautifully in War and Peace, as Peter “cast his eyes upon the firmament, filled at that hour with myriads of stars. ‘All that is mine’, he thought. ‘All that is in me, is me. And that is what they think they have taken prisoner.” I did not begin my work as a religious man, nor would I call myself religious today. My god has never been a personal deity. But when seized with the realization that everything in the mind reflects this pattern, and observing that all things in nature are similarly infused, or that the middlesized world into which we are borne is just a more intricate arrangement of a much smaller world, and things smaller still, all appearing to be outcomes of the same process and driven by the same creative force, how could one fail to be inspired by the unity, the grandeur and the sublimity of it all?

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