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O Shaughnessy is an analytical Philosopher with broad ranging interests in the realm of non-analytical and continental Philosophy: a realm that includes the thoughts of Freud, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Sartre, Spinoza, Kant, the later Wittgenstein, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Aristotle and Aquinas. This broad ranging interest, however, is grounded in Analytical Philosophy and we shall attempt in this chapter to situate O Shaughnessy’s thought in relation to Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy and Kantian Critical Philosophy.
O Shaughnessy however does not, as many Analytical Philosophers of the past have done, conflate the activities of Science and Philosophy, although there are ontological commitments that align these two concerns in ways unacceptable to both Aristotle and Kant. There is certainly no attempt to seek refuge in mathematical logic and logical atomism in order to justify his alignment of the above elements. Indeed, his concern is with how a particular resolution of the mind-body problem will impact upon the problem of the relation of physical action to the Will. In his characterisation of these issues we find surprising and refreshing references to the Freudian Project:
“The prevailing metaphysical conceptions of human nature in nineteenth century European thought tended on the whole to involve the assumption that the mind, no less than the body is a natural and indeed living phenomenon. This was, for example, an unquestioned tenet for Freud who charted the development of the mind of the entire human species as one might the growth of a particular plant.”(P. XXII)
The presence and influence of the Greek/Aristotelian notion of psuche is unmistakeable in the above reflection. O Shaughnessy continues his Freudian reflections by elaborating upon the relation between mental activities such as “internalisation” and the bodily function of feeding. Melanie Klein and her Freudian theory of object relations in relation to the Platonic theme of “The Good”is also taken up in the context of this discussion.
The picture of the mind as containing action-driving forces that are essentially impulsive and that perhaps need regulation is part of O Shaughnessy’s brilliant analysis of the mind body problem and the relation one has to ones own body. These problems were thrown down like a gauntlet by Descartes in his anti-Aristotelian reflections on Thought and Existence.
On this account, the will appears to be both operating on its own and being used by its owner in a complex operation that aims at a world partly constituted by a priori forms. The will, O Shaughnessy argues is an “ego-affirmative phenomenon”(P. XXII), using once again the language of Freud against the background of Aristotelian hylomorphic Philosophy. It is important to note in this context, however, that both Aristotle and Freud would have been more committed to a principled approach which in Freud’s theory took the form of three principles: the energy regulation principle(ERP), the pleasure-pain principle(PPP), and the reality principle(RP). This latter principle demanded a relation to the world and oneself which constitutes the human form of Being-in-the-world.
One of the responses to Cartesian bi-polarism (dualism) was a naturalisation of the mind and the emergence of the organ of the brain as the domain where different kinds of substance interact. One of the problems that flowed from Cartesian idealism was a mechanical view of life forms that transformed the “phenomenon of life” into something “technical”(techné). This disturbed the Aristotelian continuum of being, a continuum that moved from inorganic forms, to plant-life, to animal forms of life and thereupon to the rational animal capable of discourse. Mechanical principles and biological/psychological principles were being conflated in the Cartesian account. We ought to recall in this context that the mind-body problem did not naturally emerge as an aporetic problem for either Aristotle or Kant because neither philosopher made the mistake of viewing the mind as a kind of substance. For both Aristotle’s later work and for Kant, the mind is constituted by concepts and principles(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). There is no ontological one- sided commitment to the world seen through the eyes of a causal network of events, processes and resultant states. Such a world would be an impersonal world without human agency, human desires, human beliefs, human intentions, and the freedom of the will. There is no attempt in the work of either of these philosophers to reduce complex powers and phenomena to simpler events, processes or states.
O Shaughnessy claims that the obsession with the mind-body problem has tended to overshadow other important philosophical questions such as “What is the epistemological relation of a person to his body?” The relation , it is asserted, is not an observational form of awareness but is an awareness or consciousness of some non-observational kind. We know Freud regarded Consciousness as a vicissitude of Instinct and this relation might provide food for thought for how to account for the relation between desire and the will: could the will be a vicissitude of more primitive desires? We have in earlier chapters pointed to the importance of Hughlings Jackson in the work of Freud, especially his reworking of a higher lower hierarchical system of neurones into higher and lower regions of the human psyche. Instead of beginning at the materialistic end of the life-continuum Freud began at the level of the representations of the instincts, e.g the life instincts(Eros) and worked his way up from feeding to the higher mental processes of learning and acquiring knowledge. Later in his career he also boldly suggested an important role for the death instinct(Thanatos) in the affairs of human beings: thus aligning himself with the ruin and destruction prophecies of ancient Greek oracles. The knowledge of the consequences of the workings of these instincts, we know from Aristotle, would be assembled in the canon of sciences contained under the broad headings of Theoretical Science, Practical Science, and Productive Science. The genius of Freud’s Psychology is that it extends over the boundaries of all three sciences, thereby illustrating the complexity of the challenge of the Delphic oracle to “Know thyself”. The emphasis of both Aristotle and Kant on Metaphysics and Practical Science, and the importance of the telos of the flourishing life (eudaimonia), that is to say, the freedom of the agent to act in accordance with areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time)—points to the growing significance of Action and Will in any account of human nature. O Shaughnessy argues that this focus necessarily takes us into a realm of meaning and the Philosophy of language, and this accounts for the Wittgensteinian ring to many of his arguments, especially those related to privacy and the picture of the mind as an “inner theatre” of events, processes and end-states. This Wittgensteinian approach seems to encourage using the language of “events” and “processes” in the mental realm. This in turn licences philosophical investigations into the relation between bodily action and the role of the inner theatre. Given their commitment to the principles of Reason and the concepts of the understanding neither hylomorphic nor critical Philosophy would sanction referring to a mind constituted of concepts and principles in terms of concrete inner events. The concept of “event” for them would belong to discourse grounded in methodical observation. For Kant it would be possible to conceptualise the observation of physical action in terms of events and subsequently launch a search for the material and efficient causes of these events, but this would constitute a theoretical account of something whose essence is best represented in a priori terms of Agency , faculties or “powers” of the mind and “ends-in-themselves”. Without such a categorical framework, Kant would argue, the appearances of life would not make any practical sense.
O Shaughnessy prefers an empirical idea of freedom to the a priori term Kant uses. We are free, O Shaughnessy argues, in agreement with Wittgenstein, to unite any intuition with any other intuition to form a concept and this then does not commit us to anything other than an investigation into the use of the linguistic term. Wittgenstein however omits the Kantian restriction of the Categories which limit this freedom by the boundary of a categorical mistake which would definitely result in the confusion of the categories of theoretical reasoning with practical reasoning. O Shaughnessy discusses the Sartrean notion of character determining our choices in action contexts, and argues somewhat in the spirit of Wittgenstein that the development of character is as open-ended as the choice to change the use or meaning of a word. No personal history, O Shaughnessy argues, guarantees a particular future or character-outcome. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would agree with this position. The starting point of any investigation of humanity must, O Shaughnessy argues, use the royal road of physical bodily action. Action for both Aristotle and Kant was the central focus of the practical sciences but both would insist that the forming of good habits of action were necessary for the formation of a virtuous character. O Shaughnessy wishes to attempt to establish that there are what he calls de re necessities attached to action which Philosophy attempts to articulate, but it is not clear that the logical necessities he is out to elucidate fall into the domain of practical reasoning which may be more concerned with justification than explanation, at least insofar as Kant is concerned.
O Shaughnessy voices regret over the passing of what he called the Absolutes of the dogmatic idealists(does he place Kant in this category?) in favour of the sceptical nihilists inspired by the followers of Hume, but he does not mention the Kantian contribution toward the retention of the truths of dogmatism and scepticism in the formulation of his Critical Philosophy. Instead he congratulates Wittgenstein for introducing the theme of a language-using form of life into a discussion that was rehearsing ancient philosophical dilemmas. We should recall in this context that Wittgenstein’s later position was meant to correct his earlier commitment to both a logical atomism and a sceptical solipsism that postulated a solipsistic act of projection of meaning into dead signs. The animal form of life with its obsession in relation to survival certainly highlights the importance of bodily action in a world where only the fittest of the species survive. This is a very different scenario to the universe of discourse where beliefs are exchanged under the condition of truthfulness and perhaps also discussed rationally in terms of their worth.
O Shaughnessy presents us with a view of the psychical apparatus reminiscent of that which we find in Chapter 7 of Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”. The model presented is an input-output schema modified by precipitates of analytical Philosophy of mind-discussions. Sensation, Perception, and Knowledge feed into Desire, Intention and the output “mechanism” of bodily action. Environmental stimuli and responses lie outside the “model” of the psychic apparatus and form part of the schema. The model is a model of the activity of any life form(psuche):
“Significantly, the direction of psychological causality in this diagram is anti-clockwise, from inner to outer, from awareness to bodily action. One great half of this primaevally bare and simple mind seeks to perpetuate the other half which proceeds to transform the environment–which in turn repercusses within. Thus the rudimentary of the knowing half must be to generate events in the willing half which utilise the cognitive contents of the knowing half, for all that is known in this primitive context is either acted on or else treated with the practical response of indifference.”(P. XXXV)
The above schema is to be applied to all animal forms of life and when applied to the human form of life all that is needed is a more complex relation of the elements. Knowledge, we assume will be subject to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and Reasons for Actions will play a decisive role in determining the ontological nature of action whether it be, for example an instrumental act of survival(feeding, fighting) or a categorical act aimed at living a flourishing life. O Shaughnessy argues in this context that the will takes as its first target the part of the body that will be used to bring about the action and change in the environment the agent desires. If the action is the instrumental action of building a house, the idea of the completed house will of course determine the large number of acts necessary to bring the house into existence. Beavers and bees engage in this kind of instrumental action but human dwellings are not done instinctively but by consciously using technical knowledge(techné): a product of a complex belief system and a complex set of intentions situated in a matrix of rationality steered by a form of consciousness that can begin with an idea and end with a house. Apart from the talk of “events” in the mind(and fixations upon material and efficient causes) both Aristotle and Kant would not see much to quarrel with in O Shaughnessy’s schema except perhaps the possible absence of “forms” and principles. Otherwise the schema could also be seen as a defence of behaviourism and its insistence that experimentation upon animals is sufficient to provide adequate evidence for the functioning of human mental activity. The primary task of O Shaughnessy’s schema is to represent the role of the Will in our transactions with the World. Given this qualification Freud would probably have viewed this schema positively in spite of its emphasis on the dualistic division of the mind into sensory and motor compartments. Instrumental action is the primary focus of the schema. The role of discourse and rationality are not immediately clear but their presence is presumably implied in the elements of Knowledge and Desire. We are, as Aristotle rightly claimed, social/political animals and this implies knowing and desiring in a communal context: the context of a polis. The schema also leaves a possible space for contemplation and the examination of ones beliefs, desires, intentions, and actions. In this space the validity of ones reasons can be subjected to a principled examination.
O Shaughnessy claims that it is the function of Consciousness to generate intentional bodily action and the more primitive the form of Consciousness the less likely it is that one can adopt the above form of reflection required for civilisation-building and culture constituting activities. O Shaughnessy asks what the function of such a complex psuche could be and gives himself an Aristotelian answer:
“What is the function of the mind in a developed animal like man?…for what does awareness do for life in the rational? Or have we by now managed to transcend the primitive good of our ancestors?Are our final concerns now something else?Such as death? Heaven? The Good Life? Nothing at all?…..Rather as the Freudian libido retains its primal objects even as the resources of symbolism enable it to be deflected in ever widening circles of sublimation outwards into the world, so it seems to me that the developmentally original function of consciousness must be retained as it ramifies into wider horizons.”(XXXVI)
The interesting reference to sublimation raises questions of the psychological activities required for widening the circle of activity dedicated to the furtherance of life: activities that appear to require building civilisations and creating cultures. Sublimation was defined by Freud as a non-sexual form of substitute satisfaction. This defence-mechanism obviously refers to the Pleasure-Pain principle but it also takes us beyond its scope into the realm of Reality and the Reality Principle: a realm that includes the Aristotelian practical principle of areté and its importance in the construction of a flourishing life. Given the complexities of living in a civilisation/culture it is difficult to conceive of Knowledge and Rationality not playing significant roles in the achievement of the human summum bonum. O Shaughnessy points in the context of this discussion to the importance of the roles of intentional action and Consciousness in the generation and integration of the powers necessary to to do what we ought to do in the spirit of areté. He also insists on the importance of physical action that could in principle be observed as an event in the creation of cultural works such as Shakespeares King Lear: without a quill moving physically across a parchment, he argues, we would never have had access to the play. This of course was a necessary material/efficient condition of the existence of the work but we also require reference to the weight of Shakespeare’s knowledge and life experience to appreciate the full cultural significance of the work of Shakespeare. What we encounter in this context of explanation/justification is the presence of different kinds of explanation/causality in the search for the totality of conditions demanded by the principle of sufficient reason.
O Shaughnessy’s concentration upon physical bodily action in the context of the presence of other conscious minds does, however, reveal the fact that my actions have a natural function of expression in a natural organic manner in those cases when my body becomes the organ of expression of my desires and intention. It is this expressive function that otherwise ought to close the sceptical abyss which is opened up by atomising this expressive action into an inner and outer event.
The way in which the Other Consciousness is introduced into the Psychological Theory of Freud is via the agency of the Superego: a critical social agency internalised as a judging function. Maxims, intentions, desires, and actions are submitted to critical standards embodying principles that have helped to build our civilisations and create our cultures. O Shaughnessy argues that it is the concept of another person that is responsible for forming the vicissitude of Consciousness we refer to as Self-Consciousness. He claims this concept is innate but the empirical existence of others is required if this form of Consciousness is to be actualised. Language is obviously also an important power that also requires this innate concept and its empirical conditions that are to be found in the community of language users. Language for Freud was Janus faced with one aspect turned toward the sensory world which it names and describes and the other toward the world of thought which it expresses. There is the I that speaks, and the I that thinks, and the soundest approach to describing and explaining this state of affairs is to refuse to atomise the self into compartments but rather regard the expressive self as logically identical with the thinking self that expresses thoughts in a public realm of discourse–thus realising the social and political intentions of a rational animal capable of discourse. O Shaughnessy’s view is that Self Consciousness is a secondary phenomenon, the primary phenomenon being a vital expressive animal interacting with a demanding environment.
Heidegger’s contribution to this debate was to question the above prioritising and to regard Being-with-others and ones own Dasein as equi-primordial phenomena:
“Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of others belongs to it; this means that because Dasein’s being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of others. That understanding, like any understanding is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them but a primordially existential kind of Being which, more than anything else makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible. Knowing oneself is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially”(Being and Time, trans Macquarrie J and Robison E, Oxford, Blackwell, 1978, P.160-1)
This Being-with is characterised by a fundamental ontological attitude of solicitude, and this attitude is part of the structure of Dasein for whom Being as such, and in particular its own Being is an issue. This raises the question of our Being-in-the-world as a whole and the question of Being in general. Solicitude is an attitude related to Dasein’s basic state of mind and Anxiety–an anxiety that can take the form of fleeing from oneself. The public “They”, the empirical others, encourage this way of Being and also encourage a fleeing in the face of ones own death. The origin of Anxiety lies in the fact of our having being thrown into the world, but amid the chaos there exists the possibility of authentic ways of Being, disclosing itself for Dasein, e.g. the holistic existential characteristic of Care for the world in all its forms, including the instrumental ready-to hand, and the solicitude the other person demands of us. “Being-in-the-world”, Heidegger argues “is essentially Care”(P.193). No attempt shall be made, he continues, to reduce Being-in-the-world to special acts or drives and this might be a rejection of both Freudian Psychology and the Psychology of Behaviourism. Willing, Heidegger argues, is essentially teleological, implying a disclosedness of “that for the sake of which” and a disclosure of something to concern oneself with. Underlying this state of affairs, however is the ontologically prior necessity of Care. This Care is ultimately a Care for all Being or Reality. It is, however, difficult to care for Reality independently of the judgments that one makes of its nature. If, as Freud argues, our relation to Reality is ultimately one of acceptance against a background of discontentment, the question arises as to whether this can be construed in terms of caring for Reality. Indeed it may be that the combination of the state of mind of Anxiety and the Ontological way of Being-in-the-word we characterise as Care may in fact be best characterised by the Freudian attitude of resignation. The wisdom of the prophesy of the Greek Oracle that “everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction” is also raised as a counterpoint to the philosophical point that categorises man as a rational animal capable of discourse. In the light of the History that was flowering around both Freud and Heidegger one may well ask what the best response to this prophesy was–the Heideggerian Romantic idea of Care, or Freuds attitude of resignation in the face of Ananke. Both this idea and this attitude seem important and not necessarily mutually exclusive. The Ancient Greeks Cared about their Cities and protected them from ruin and destruction by passing laws in the spirit of areté, arché, and diké. If metaphysics is the study of first principles of Being then this search for first principles was certainly present in the search for and the passing of laws worthy of praise by the oracles. The virtue of the past, instantiated by war heroes like Achilles, had been courage and was being replaced by a broader virtue of wisdom thus facilitating a transformation of the bestowal of dignity upon the wise men of the city rather than its warriors.
Heidegger, in his Opening remarks in his work “Being and Time” claimed that we moderns have become forgetful of the question that Being raises for us and we no longer are struck by awe and wonder at questions such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Heidegger refers us back to Aristotle:
“Aristotle himself knew the unity of this transcendental universal as a unity of analogy in contrast to the multiplicity of the higher generic concepts applicable to things.”(P.22)
This universalising of the concept emptied the idea of Being of all content and resulted in a turning away from first principles. For Aristotle aporetic questions about the unity of Being and its many meanings evoked awe and wonder in a realm of contemplation that evades us moderns. We find in Aristotle no reference to anxiety, and the concept makes but a brief appearance in Kant’s account of the Sublime when, in the face of an overwhelming physical force of Nature(a powerful waterfall) we experience a momentary powerlessness, only for an awareness of the power of our freedom and worth to immediately emerge and produce a state of mind of awe and wonder. Neither Aristotle nor Kant saw Anxiety to be of primary significance in our philosophical investigations. Heidegger also sees the absence of anxiety and the presence of awe and wonder emerge in considering the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” In this adventure of reflection Man’s Being(Dasein) is raised and defined as having a necessary relation to Being as such. Heidegger concludes:
“Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being”(P.32)
He continues by claiming that man understands his existence:
“in terms of a possibility of itself; to be itself or not itself.”(P.33)
In other words Man’s Being is an issue perhaps because our modern understanding of Being is vague. This issue includes our comportment toward entities that exist in different ways to the mode of existence of Dasein. Deficient modes of comportment towards Being can, Heidegger argues be detected in the opinions and behaviour of the masses, for example, over the issue of our death or ceasing to exist. Death is an issue that is avoided, distorted, or denied by “They”. Obviously there is a sense in which we cannot “care” about death because it is something that happens to us and is largely beyond our control. In Kant’s Anthropological ontology this would place any concern for death outside the scope of the will. Perhaps it was this feature that contaminated the contentment man tended to feel in the use of his knowledge and reasoning. Both of these elements of mans nature must have led to the realisation that all life forms cease ultimately to exist. Freudian resignation appears then to have no serious alternative unless it is the Kantian alternative that is offered to us in his account of the Sublime in which our response to being overwhelmed by the power of nature is to respond not with the passive attitude of resignation but rather with a positive thought activity invoking a positive evaluation of mans moral worth.
Temporality or Time is an issue of fundamental importance for Dasein or the human form of Being-in-the-world. The method Heidegger uses to investigate these matters is the phenomenological method which he characterises as a method which reveals “things themselves”. We should remind ourselves in this context that the Greek word for “phenomenon” designates a verb–“to show itself” that in turn relates to another important Greek term, namely “aletheia” which is a name for our access to Being in the mode of comportment Heidegger calls “unconcealment”–a noun or substantive which according to Aristotle is a part of speech that contains no indication of time. Time, for Aristotle was by its nature a relational intuition that is a consequence of the measurement of motion in terms of before and after. This “measurement” does not necessarily have to be connected to number but can be spatially presented in perception as it is in Kant’s example of a boat steaming down a river. In this perception the motion of the boat is tied together by the unity of before and after. This is “shown” to us in the “phenomenon”. The influence of Temporality in thought however may be more important than its influence in the synthesis of perceptions. In thought we can use reasoning to organise a Heraclitean matrix of change in accordance with a Parmenidean strategic vision of truth in relation to “The One”. In volume one of this work we characterised the role of the truth and mans forgetfulness of Being in the following terms:
“Our understanding of man quite rightly may, in the end, be more Parmenidean than Heraclitean because Parmenides is the first philosopher to write about “The One” in terms of the goddess Aletheia. Aletheia, according to the continental Philosopher Heidegger is the greek term for truth that he translates as “unconcealment” and he contrasts it to the Greek term for “The False” which is “Psuedo”. Pseudo is in turn translated by the Latin “falsum” which carries the meaning of “bringing to a fall”. Heidegger, in his essay on Parmenides points to the fact that this “bringing to a fall” is in the realm of the essence of “domination”. of overseeing. “Verum” in Latin has no connotation of bringing out of unconcealment and simply dogmatically means “to be not false” and thereby leading us once again into the domain of domination, the domain of the imperial dogmatic command.”(Volume one “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, (Mauritius, Lambert Academic Press, 2019), P. 115-116
This is amongst other things a historical look at the process of our modern forgetfulness of Being and alludes to the notion of historicality which Heidegger regards as an essential aspect of Dasein. This vision is not an attempt to characterise Tradition as we conceive it in modern consciousness because historicality is part of what is concealed for us in our forgetfulness of Being. “Pseudos” in Greek is dissembling, which lets something appear differently to its real nature. The ethical/anthropomorphic connotation of the term is unmistakeable and stands in sharp contrast to the Latin inversion of the original meaning of aletheia in favour of the more politicised connotation of “bringing to a fall”. Heidegger maintains that the Greek term for “phenomenon” contains the connotation of “semblance” and this has little to do with our modern interpretation of the term as “appearance”. “Appearing”, Heidegger argues in this context is precisely that which does not show itself but dissembles. So, for Heidegger phenomena are never “appearances”(Being and Time P.53). Rather Phenomenology for Heidegger, is connected to both historicality and Logos whose primordial function is : “to let something be seen by pointing it out”(P.56). Logos also, on this account, has an important role in leading to the “things themselves” via ones discourse and its primordial relation to aletheia. Phenomenology, for Heidegger thus becomes the royal road to the ontological understanding of the Being of beings and Being itself. Heidegger’s Phenomenology emphasises the Aristotelian power of discourse in the process of clarifying the vague understanding we moderns have of the Being of Dasein:
“The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates this business of interpreting…..this hermeneutics also becomes a “hermeneutic” in the sense of working out the conditions on which the possibility of any ontological investigation depends….Then so far as this hermeneutic works out Daseins historicality ontologically as the ontical condition for the possibility of historiology, it contains the roots of what can be called “hermeneutic” only in a derivative sense: the methodology of those human sciences which are historiological in character.”(P.62)
The Kantian telos of transcendental knowledge is one of the aims of phenomenological aletheia which he then paradoxically characterises in Latin as “veritas transcendentalis”. Philosophy is for Heidegger:
“universal phenomenological ontology”(P.62)
O Shaughnessy’s account of the Will has its transcendental dimensions and can be construed as in some respects Aristotelian but it is not in agreement with Heidegger’s concerns especially insofar as the equi-primordiality of Being-with-Others is concerned. One would hesitate to characterise O Shaughnessy’s reflections as phenomenological or hermeneutic but there does seem to be similarities to Kantian transcendental reflections upon the nature of Time and its relation to intentional action:
“First it is because any intentional project whatsoever is a cognitively synthesising force: it unites as one acts the multiple changing cognitions acquired during action. The commitment across time, both past and future which is internal to intentional action, guarantees the retention in memory of the fruits of the cognitive synthesising capacities put to use during the course of action: it guarantees to the agent a knowledge of his experienced active past. After all a self conscious being cannot be engaged in intentional action if he harbours absolutely no knowledge of his immediate active past.” (Consciousness and the World(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000) P.204-5.
The Kantian ontological distinction between the active, what one does, and the passive, what happens to one, is very relevant to understanding the perceptual intuition of time and the active measuring of what is happening. Time can be said to “measure” in the sense of synthesising intuitions into a perceptual unity in the case of the ship steaming down the river. Yet the transcendental commitments of Kant are very different to the commitments of twentieth century Phenomenologists. Merleau-Ponty falls into this latter category. He, unlike Kant, regards Science as a second-order expression of the life-world. His phenomenological “reduction” reduces Science to a form of body-world experience. Kant, on the other hand, defines science in terms of matter in motion conceived of in a matrix of event, substance and material and efficient causation. James Ellington’s essay “The Unity of Kant’s Philosophy”, contained in “Immanuel Kant:Philosophy of Nature, trans Elington J, (Indianapolis, Hacket Publishing, 1985) provides us with insight into Kant’s approach to phenomenology:
“In phenomenology matter is regarded as movable insofar as it can be an object of experience. Here the concern is with the relations matter has to the mind that knows it. Now the fundamental determination of a something that is to be an object of the external senses must be motion, for thereby only can these senses be affected…..Accordingly , the discussions in phenomenology centre primarily on motion itself. We have seen that representations can be regarded as merely the contents of a consciousness or as referring beyond themselves to the objects which they purport to represent. The representation of motion is given to us merely as an appearance, i.e. as an undetermined object of an external empirical intuition.”(P.211)
Kant’s account refers to appearance that might or might not become determined by the concepts of the understanding. If, in the process of thinking the “I” thinks something(conceptually) about something(the appearance) there is what Heidegger called a veritative(truth-making) synthesis and, to take the above example, the predicate of motion is asserted of this change of relation in space. Both matter and space are involved in this account. The intuition of time is obviously also involved as it is in the experience of the Kantian ship steaming downstream, but in this case whether sensibility links up to the understanding and whether the truth is aimed at, depends upon whether the “I” that thinks, thinks something about something in terms of the Categories of the Understanding.
The above is clearly a very different account of phenomenology than that which we encounter in the 20th century. these reflections do not aim at the “things themselves” in the noumenal realm because by Kant’s definition this realm lies beyond determination by the Categories of the Understanding. Yet it also ought to be pointed out that Kant’s account is well synchronised with both Aristotles hylomorphic theory of change and the Greek terms for phenomena. Kant’s account is also partly synchronised with Newton’s Natural Philosophy (Kant has hylomorphic criticisms of the Newtonian account.)
Heidegger locates the positive view of Science we find in Kant in Aristotle’s claim that the care for seeing is essential to mans being. The care for thinking and its fate may be more embedded in the temporality of Historical thought and this is to be distinguished from the care for seeing located in the realm of space and matter. This “seeing” however for Kant is logically connected to that noumenal something that “appears” for the senses. Heidegger calls this “care for seeing” pure “beholding”(P.215). Logos and its operation in discourse “points out” what is seen in this “pure beholding” in an act that must have more ontological significance than the act of ostensive definition we find in the writings of analytic philosophers and logical positivists.
Merleau-Ponty is one of the spokesmen for the phenomenologists that deny the above Kantian metaphysical account of phenomenology. The Phenomenal Field for Merleau-Ponty(MP) is a field of meaning(a field O Shaughnessy also appeals to): a field in which the thing experienced is not to be reduced to a bundle of dead properties or variables. The Phenomenal field for MP is rather constituted by an active act of perception which changes the significance of what is seen, e.g. the child burned by the flame of the candle that attracted his hand is now repulsed by the same flame. The world, for MP, is not a spectacle to be passively observed by a pure observer with his notebook and ones own body living in the life-world is not a bundle of causal “mechanisms” surrounded by a bundle of variables signifying a network of general properties. Rather, the living body, for MP, is the location for a centre of expression:
“But this reciprocal relationship of expression which presents the human body as the outward manifestation of a certain manner of Being-in-the-world, had, for mechanistic physiology, to be resolved into a series of causal relations.”(Phenomenology of Perception, trans Smith, C., (London, Routledge, 1962) P.64-5.
Mechanistic physiology reduced perception to sensation observed by a pure observer and the mechanism of connection for these sensations was “association”. This violated the integrity of the phenomenal field as far as MP was concerned. This atomisation resulted in
“..the living body becoming an exterior without an interior and subjectivity becoming an interior without an exterior, an impartial spectator. The naturalism of science and the spiritualism of the universal constituting subject, to which reflection in science led, had this in common, that they levelled out experience: in face of the constituting I , the empirical selves are objects.”(P.64-5)
Empirical perceivers and thinkers became objects to be incorporated into the scientific matter-oriented matrix. The phenomenological response to this was to criticise Science without distinguishing between the metaphysically grounded science of Kant(and Aristotle) and the modern mathematically inspired methodological pursuit that relied on hypothetical theories or “models”. For MP, Kant was a dogmatic rationalist and is regarded as “worldly” because he refuses to banish science from the human life-world in favour of a phenomenological reduction that attempts to situate meaning at the level of lived experience. Heidegger, in spite of his criticisms of Kant is more Kantian, acknowledging the role of transcendental a priori logic which concerns itself with, as Kant defines the matter, with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as that mode is a priori.
On the other hand, Heidegger regrets the fact that Kant did not explore the question of the meaning of Being in general and its a priori conditions. This criticism is against the background of Heidegger’s rejection of the metaphysical distinction between noumena and phenomena. Given that Heidegger thinks that the central issue involved in the issue of the meaning of being is that of Time( which is intimately connected to Care) he must believe that the Kantian account of time is inadequate. Somehow Kant’s account belongs to a project Heidegger calls “Destroying the History of Ontology” because he shrank from investigating the transcendental imagination which Kant had himself dubbed “an art hidden in the depths of the human soul”. Kant is accused by Heidegger of aligning himself with Descartes and thereby assisting in the shrouding of the relation between time and the “I think”(P.45). Interpretation and criticism of Kant by empiricists, rationalists and phenomenologists alike have failed to appreciate the extent to which Kant’s Critical Philosophy is an attempt to restore Aristotelian hylomorphic thinking in the arena of philosophical reflection. This together with the “domination”(“bringing to a fall”) of modern Science over all areas of thought and investigation relating to the humanities and the human sciences, has led to the submergence of Kant’s Critical Philosophy beneath the advancing waters of Modernism. The perpetuation of interest in Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy was left in Post-Kantian times to a university system formed on the principle of specialisation that we found determined the Guild system of The Enlightenment.
The question to pose in the light of this phenomenological diversion is whether O Shaughnessy’s essentially Analytical account of the Will and Consciousness contains Hylomorphic and Critical elements. The surprising reference to Freud certainly suggests that some principles from Aristotle and Kant are being used in contexts of explanation/justification.
O Shaughnessy points out, for example:
“that Freud believed that consciousness developed out of , and was as such an agency for the expression of that part of the mind that is entirely inhabited by psychic forces that are closely akin to “will” in its broadest sense”. P. XLV
The Subject for O Shaughnessy is no passive observer or spectator but rather a subject in charge of the contents of his own mind and this in a similar way to the way in which a playwright assembles the words of the play he is engaged in writing. One of the aims of Freudian therapy was to put the patient back in charge of his experiences. Insofar as consciousness is related to this wakeful active state of mind, it is, O Shaughnessy argues, connected to the non-psychological cause of the lived-body and this is clearly a hylomorphic position. On this position, man is an instinctive animal that is unconsciously attracted to a world that he Cares for. O Shaughnessy’s unique elaboration upon hylomorphic/critical accounts of human activity involves focussing on the Will and intentional bodily action. The focus on action brings the sense of touch to the forefront of the phenomenal field(cf Berkeley’s theory of vision). The desire and care for the world obviously also echoes Jonathan Lear’s view of the work of Aristotle as containing the essential feature of a “desire to understand”. We are rational animals capable of discourse and in the process of the actualisation of our potentialities to become social/political beings, the tie between knowledge and intentional action becomes less easy to discern. We need, however to remind ourselves that it is man, the person, that is the bearer of the will and not his mind–man, that combination of form and matter(lived body)
O Shaughnessy signals his Kantian view of Action by maintaining that it is not as many rationalists and empiricists would maintain, a mode of causation, although action does instantiate causation in the physical external world. Action proceeds from the depths of a soul that “moves” a lived body. This movement is “spiritual” and instantaneously responsive to the Agents intentions, judgement, understanding, and reason. This is an expressive movement that is happening in one actively but is not happening to one passively via a play of causes that give rise to “events”. Intentional action is poised on the threshold of a part of the mind that contains the principles of action and a lived body that can be immediately activated by a will operating in accordance with these principles. In simple animals, intentional action operates in relation to a will moved by instinct and impulses and a system of powers that constitute the form of the animal concerned. In such simple animals there is no ability or “psychic space” to delay the action in order to “think about alternatives”–only more complex animals capable of discourse and rationality have this power. That is, there may not be an “I” that thinks but rather a form of consciousness that is bound to stimuli in its environment. Consequently animals are less capable of the phenomenon of “Work”: a phenomenon that expresses complex desires connected to more complex forms of life manifesting the temporal property of historicality.
Sometimes we may have difficulty in separating the Aristotelian and Kantian aspects of O Shaughnessy’s work from his more materialistic and dualistic concerns. The ideas of the will and freedom are not of course naturally connected in dualistic positions and this is probably due to the “royal” category of “substance” determining events via mechanisms of causation. On such accounts deciding to move ones foot and the actual movement appear as two “events” and the relation between these events of course becomes problematic. We see this problem surfacing in O Shaughnessy’s work when, in discussing this relation he refers to a “magical force”(P. xlv). Kantian Critical Philosophy would refuse to embed the phenomenon of action in a matrix of categories containing substance, causation, and event and insist that the correct context for the phenomenon of action is a network of concepts containing power, agency and freedom.
That there are a priori limits to the will could well have been a Kantian position but we find this claim in O Shaughnessy. It is, he claims, a fact that there are actions which it is logically impossible to will, e.g. the relation between the chemical interactions that is occurring in an arm. I cannot be conscious of these chemical interactions but this does not entail that such processes are not to be counted among the material and efficient conditions of any action such as raising my arm. There are other further Kantian elements in O Shaughnessy’s reflective process. Firstly, in Kant’s “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”, Kant draws attention to an ontological distinction that O Shaughnessy appears to accept in some key elements of his account, namely, that between what a man does and what happens to a man. Secondly, whilst there are reservations, O Shaughnessy appears to accept the metaphysical distinction between causality and the freedom of the self-initiation of the will. An involuntary raising of the arm due to cramp, connected to certain chemical processes in my shoulder and arm is an event that happens to a man. The voluntary raising of an arm/hand in a lecture is an intentional voluntary action that is self- initiated and freely chosen by the agent. Sensations receive the status of “passive” in O Shaughnessy’s account and are also among the phenomena that cannot logically be willed. The sensation of pain, for example, is given an “Inactive” will-value yet it is a psychological phenomenon of significance. The arguments for this position refer back to origins. Pain has its origins in the physical lived body– a psychological but non-mental realm of our lives. Intentional bodily actions, on the other hand, have origins in the realm of the mental which is a vicissitude of the realm of the psychological. This reflection is perhaps an elaboration on the Wittgensteinian grammatical observation that I cannot be said to know that I am in pain. I must however know that I am raising my arm/hand to ask a question. The above distinction helps in constituting an ontological identity for Action,
So, on the ontological schema O Shaughnessy provides us with, some psychological events can be actions and some are not and it may prove useful to raise a Kantian caveat here. According to Kant one can conceptualise actions both as events that happen and as willed mental activity. In the former case we are dealing with an observer/spectator relation to the phenomenon and a cognitive attitude that is interrogative. In the latter we “live” or inhabit the phenomenon and “know” what we are doing non-observationally. I do not, for example “notice” that I am raising my arm/hand in the lecture. This caveat clearly questions the wisdom of speaking as O Shaughnessy does of “events of the mind”. Aristotelian hylomorphic Philosophy also would question this description given Aristotle’s later characterisation of “form” as “principle”. The principle may well originate in the mind for Aristotle but it would be misleading to characterise this as an “event”. The mind is not an inner theatre with events occurring on a mental stage, but rather something which springs into existence(self-initiated) when we think. Reasons are then provided for this activity and these reasons will contain reference to principles. For example, if someone hallucinates that they are an angel of God delivering a speech to the inhabitants of earth(whilst addressing a group of cows) it is difficult to conceive of this in terms of a will-active phenomenon, and the conception of this phenomenon happening in and to the agent appears a more rational ontological characterisation. The reasons given for doing what one is doing are in Kantian terms “maxims” and maxims embody principles which in themselves have different ontological values. The pleasure-pain principle behind the experience of pains and hallucinations, for example, are explanatory principles relating to what Aristotle referred to as material and efficient causes and what analytical philosophers refer to as “events”. Confining explanation to the psychological realm regulated and constituted by the pleasure pain principle risks limiting the scope of the reality principle and its use in constituting and regulating instrumental and categorical ethical action. The scope of the rational idea of freedom also risks being limited in its use. The Kantian approach to this discussion is to distinguish “behaviour” which, as an event, appears as physical motion, from “action” which is constituted by maxims that are formed rationally and in accordance with the knowledge of the agent. O Shaughnessy sees in the mind a division of import that can be construed hylomorphically or dualistically:
“It corresponds to a major divide running through the phenomena in the mind, comparable in significance to the great divide that marks off these phenomena that owe their existence to the faculty of reason(beliefs, desires, actions, etc) from those that cannot(dreams, emotions, sense impressions, etc) “(P.19)
The above quote also aligns well with the Kantian architectonic of sensibility, understanding and reason and the implied metaphysical distinction between phenomena and noumena. There is a significant difference between regarding the above phenomena as events or as acts of mind. The schema O Shaughnessy presents, divides belief and desire, and both are unwillable yet both have an interesting relation to Reason which has no obvious place on the diagram. Irrational beliefs and desires are also an integral part of the psychology of the human individual. Belief in the epistemological mode, when it is self consciously believed by self conscious believers, occurs under the aspect of Truth, but it is nevertheless on O Shaughnessy’s account of the will-value of mental phenomena, essentially inactive. One of the aporetic questions one encounters in hylomorphic and critical Philosophy is the question of the relation between The Good and the True. The truth, it is said colloquially, will set you free and both “forms”, “ideas”, or “principles” are what Kant would call “ends-in-themselves, but the exact nature of their relation remains to be investigated. The logical validity of practical arguments have of course been investigated and for Kant the primacy of practical reasoning has been clearly established, whilst for Aristotle there is at least a relation of equi-primoridiality between the two forms of reasoning. Plato, in his “Republic” also testified to the primacy of the form of the “The Good” and in his architectonic of ideas truth plays an important but subordinate role to “the sun” of his system. O Shaughnessy(OS), position thus resembles the Platonic position in that it is claimed that willing is a primary phenomenon and consciousness a secondary phenomenon.
An important logical limit of will is placed upon its terminus in the lived body. We know some parts of the body, e.g. limbs and their tendon and muscle systems are movable by the will but once the work of moving bodily targets is done, OS argues, the wills work is done. Control of movements that fail to achieve their purpose, e.g. trying to turn the television on with a remote control whose batteries are dead, are not under the control of the will. Nevertheless orders such as “turn the television on!” make sense, because actions can in principle make statements relating to the television being turned on, true. The action, that is, can make statements true. There is no doubt that there is an intimate relation between Truth and The Good. The power of language also makes itself felt in the context of discussions relating to the will and OS’s account is not afraid to use the Kantian tools of a priori ideas of the mind regulating our Being-in-the-world:
“Like a vine on a trellis our very minds are moulded by a conceptual edifice that is structured out of Time, Action, Consciousness, and Reality…what is innate is the particular endowment, what is experienced is language and the items of the world, and what takes place when these concepts are acquired is the product of the interaction of these factors.”
Freud’s acceptance of the description of psychoanalysis as a “talking cure” may well be related to the power of language to contribute to the process of setting his patients free of their maladies. We know that Wittgenstein at one point in his career regarded himself as a disciple of Freud and this may be related to the important role that language plays in forming thoughts in the mind. Curing patients and preventing philosophers from talking nonsense obviously have something in common with each other.
So, even if it is true that the will terminates in certain target areas of the body, action itself shall not be restricted to bodily movements, and whilst the language of action may not be philosophically transparent, it is clear that it is intentional and extends out into the World, allowing one human to order another to turn the television on. The relation between external and internal factors constitute the inner and outer face of the phenomenon of action and this must also partially determine the active use of associated linguistic terms. Both these dual aspects are present in the linguistic demarcation of intentional actions. Actions, OS argues, can be both mental and physical. A number of factors coalesce in this linguistic demarcation process, e.g. inner factors such as desire, intention, non-observational knowing, and the selective process involved in determining the choice of the region of the body to use in the intended action.
OS discusses so-called volitionist theories of the will which refuse to extend the scope of action beyond the movements of the lived body. He claims this theory to be a false metaphysical theory because it fails to demarcate the proper scope of the a priori concept of action. Such volitionist theories, OS argues, end up by falsely construing physical actions as mental events which stand in some kind of magical relation to their objects. The mind, on such theories, instead of being occupied by maxims and principles is transformed into a private theatre housing concrete events that come and go. This is the picture that has become embedded in the minds of the “new men” of our modern age: amongst these new men we find scientifically inspired philosophers who have, since the Enlightenment, deliberately jettisoned the metaphysical reflections of Aristotle and Kant.
Now whilst the role of knowledge in action is obviously connected to knowing, for example, that I am raising my arm/hand to ask a question, it is not so obvious to find a role for sensation in this phenomenon. Do I, for example, know that I am raising my arm/hand because I sense a sensation in the limb? That would place my relation to my action in a category resembling the category of events that have happened to me and if the Kantian account of action is correct, jeopardise the agency involved in this activity. OS locates sensation in this activity by claiming that were it to be the case that the limb were anaesthetised I would not be able to raise it even if all the knowledge conditions were present. So, on OS’s account, the sensation in my limb is some sort of condition for the power of agency involved in arm-raising. This sensation-based awareness of my limb is, then part of the mechanism involved in the raising of the arm. One of the material conditions for the operation of this mechanism relates to the material constitution of the limb, the fact that my arm is composed of bone, tissue, nerves, tendons and muscles connected to a nervous system. Now if we were dealing with a mere bodily movement of the arm caused by a reflex, that in turn was caused by the cramping of muscles in the limb, it is quite clear that because we are dealing with a non psychological causal event, it would not make sense to request a reason embodying desires, beliefs and intentions. It would, in such circumstances, not be grammatically correct to say “I raised my arm”. The “I mentioned here is not the cognitive “I think” but rather the “I ” of the personality–the person or the agent. One of the conditions of my saying I raised my arm is the non-observationally based knowledge referred to earlier. The aforementioned “mechanism”, of course, has to be “on-call” and subject to initiation by the “I” of personality. OS points out that were my arm to cramp and raise reflexively there would be an element of surprise attached to this event(P.115): no such surprise ought to occur when the movement is self-initiated and flows from knowledge I possess. The purpose of the action of raising my arm is obviously the reason for the action, and this reason is to be distinguished from material and efficient conditions and causes, and this reason will also be connected to the formal and final forms of explanation referred to by Aristotle. The sensations experienced in this process are then connected to the mobilising of the limb by the “I” of the personality.
Action for OS has a dual aspect, an interior aspect connected to the psychological conditions that we find related to the “I” and connected to first person reports of actions, and an exterior aspect connected to third person observation based reports. Either aspect may serve as a corrective to the other but it does appear to be more difficult to be mistaken about the first person report, e.g. “I thought I raised my arm but was mistaken” would be a very puzzling thing to say and require abnormal circumstances involving perhaps the loss of a limb and the fantastic postulation of “phantom” “actions”. Contrariwise someone who upon being truthfully told that I had raised my arm/hand was met with a sceptical retort “But could it not have been a muscle spasm?” would respond with incredulity to such a retort. This is testimony in favour of the priority of the psychological conditions which are admittedly not completely inviolable. This however should not encourage volitionist accounts in which the whole activity is divided into two kinds of event, one interior event and one exterior event. Both of these aspects are synthesised in an action, and although it is not certain OS would agree to describing this in Aristotelian terms, namely, of form organising matter, this nevertheless appears to be the best way of avoiding the atomisation of the action into two events. Plato’s metaphysical dualism was a far better theory than the epistemological dualism of Descartes, but both would be the target of neo-hylomorphic theory: a theory in which, in the case of action, it is a principle and not a ghostly event that is organising the movement. In hylomorphism the mechanism is mobilised not by a ghostly pilot governing a floating machine but rather by a principle “governing”(in the political sense) a living body.
Spinoza claimed in his Ethics, that the first idea of the mind is an idea of the body and this is also registered in Freud’s claim that the first task of the agency of the Ego is to protect the body. OS refers in similar vein to an epistemological relation to the body: a state of affairs that enables the will to utilise the power of the body for its purposes. Involved in this relation is a non-observational form of awareness of the parts of the body that are potentially utilisable. On this view these parts are “present” from a first person point of view. Undoubtedly it is also the case that from a third person point of view the matrix of substance, event, causation can become a relevant perspective, but the question remains as to whether this is the perspective one ought to use in describing and explaining/justifying the maxims that lie behind willing an action. According to Kant it is these maxims that provide us with the essential aspect of the action. Willing is perhaps better conceived in terms of an actualisation of the potentiality of the principle embedded in the maxim. The action from this perspective is a self initiated phenomenon located within the confines of the lived body-image. We relate to the world via this image and the action that flows from its activated parts. OS claims that the Freudian Ego provides an interesting framework of theories of body-image. The Freudian account begins with an oral centre which then spreads in accordance with the ERP and PPP to the entire body via other regions. For Freud it is the Ego that is the nucleus of the will, an ego whose sensory-motor idea of the body can be instinctive, connected to memory and associated knowledge centres. The Principles that constitute this ego are the ERP, the PPP, and the RP. The ID is one of the more primitive agencies of the Freudian account being the locus of both the life instincts and the death instincts that play their part in the unleashing of aggression. Death is the end of life but it is never present to the dead person. Dying by its very nature is painful and this is the best evidence for the truth of the Aristotelian claim that all human activity aims at the good–when activity is no longer possible the anticipated end of all activity can only be painful.
OS warns us in his later work, “Consciousness and the World, of the danger of unnecessarily splitting the mind up into psychological forces that never reach the realm of representation(the forces of the id) (P.170-171). The risk one takes with embracing wholly and completely Freudian and Schopenhaurean theory is that man can be characterised as a non rational being. In Freud’s case this is less likely given his claim that his Psychology is essentially Kantian. The Freudian Reality Principle must at the very least operate in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason but it is also a fundamentally practical principle regulating mans action normatively with the aid of laws and looking forward in time to the flourishing life and the flourishing city. One may be worried about the ultimate unity of the mind as characterised by Freudian theory but given the fact that the “parts” of the mind are defined(in accordance with Aristotelian recommendations) holistically and not atomistically, the unity of the Freudian mind is guaranteed by the hierarchy and interrelation of the three principles(ERP, PPP, RP) and the interaction of the agencies of the id, ego and the superego in their relations to the external world. These principles are tied irrevocably to the phases of actualisation of the human psuche: phases in which first consciousness, and then higher mental processes, arise as a consequence of the actualisation of powers rooted in the system of organs that constitute the human lived body. In these phases we encounter psychological processes such as identification and sublimation and these appear to be invaluable additions to Aristotelian and Kantian theory. The organ limb system of the human form of life begins with zones of activity and the production of pleasure in relation to certain kinds of object. As these zones of pleasure expand and are integrated with each other, powers emerge that allow a wide range of substitute satisfactions related to a wide range of objects. These powers and objects form constellations in various psycho-sexual stages. The instincts involved in these stages can even change their aims. The “defence-mechanism” of sublimation uses the power of the life instinct to change the aim of the instinct and construct objects necessary for a flourishing life. This change of aim is fundamental–from aiming to survive /reproduce, to a quality of life that sustains more abstract forms of satisfaction and contentment and also abstract attitudes such as resignation because one is discontent with ones civilisation. This more abstract aim and attitude contribute to the attempt to construct a cultural environment worthy of a rational animal capable of discourse. A strong Ego sublimates its more primitive impulses, redirecting the energy connected with them instead of denying or repressing it. One of the purposes of the Freudian RP is to regulate sensory impulses so that the motor system is not used detrimentally. In practical reason thought sublimates these impulses with the idea of the Good. For Freud , the motor system (in practical contexts) is the telos of thought processes. The telos of the sensory system on the other hand is feeling which , according to Spinoza informs the experiencer of whether the body is faring well(pleasure) or ill(pain). When the body expresses to the mind that it is not faring well we experience anxiety which is a disintegrating force for the mind whose aim is unity and harmony. It is this force that motivates a possible battery of defence mechanisms which reduces the activity of thought and inhibits the wise use of the motor system.
OS distinguishes between a short term body images and a long term body image: between an “i ” interacting with the environment and changing with the changing circumstances and a more permanently constituted “I” . This latter I is not however an “I think” but rather an “I intuit” or “I represent”. The latter, intuitive I, however is a material and efficient condition of the “I think”.
The body-image is, for OS the “iron in the soul” that enables the will to remain rooted in earthly limits. Here there is no desire to soar out into the external world magically. This body image is the target for the will: it is pre-attentional, pre-conceptual, and intuitively constituted: it is “felt”. The logical space of thought, on the other hand, has its origins in a thinking process in which one weighs up whether or not to act in accordance with impulsive urges. This, when developed at the conceptual level, provides us with a type of discourse reminiscent of Hamlet’s soliliquy: a conversation that occurs at the doors of the motor system which is itself keyed into the body-image. The question to raise here is whether the categorisation of the above state of affairs ought to be in terms of event and causation–or whether, rather, this is indeed a logical space constituted of a pure potential of activity activated by activity from other realms of the mind. OS, however, might conceivably consider this an unnecessary ontological elevation to a metaphysical realm: a realm too far to be defended by his dual aspect theory. It is undeniably the case that we consider our acts as part of the realm of action but the question remains as to how we ought always to categorise these acts : whether it is nobler to classify them in terms of actuality: in terms of facts and the truth, or whether actions conceived of in this logical space of thought is best characterised in terms of ought premises and the categories of potentiality and possibility and the telos of the good.
OS claims that the act is formed in thought but he also claims that when we act, the phenomenon of action is like that of a substance leaking from one world into another! His account of a man making a chair in the presence of a physicalist noting the movement of material from one location to another, might be able to invoke physical laws to explain the motion of the material, but such a form of explanation will never be able to provide us with the ontological principles that determine the chair to be the kind of artefact that it is. Such principles will be instrumental in character and these are also expressed in terms of ought-premises in an argument culminating in a concrete particularistic ought -conclusion relating to the commitment to do the action in question. The forming of the intention to make the chair will eventually involve choosing to do the first action in a chain of actions that will lead to the construction of the chair. Involved in this choice will be reference to that part of the body image that will be mobilised in this first action, e.g. chopping, sawing, or buying the wood. A series of directing imperatives will result from a series of ought judgements designed to transform the potential idea of the chair to its actuality. Amongst this series one might find: “buy the wood” “Cut the wood” “Make the chair stable”, “Make the chair comfortable”. Different kinds of principles will be involved in the performing of these different kinds of actions. Whether the description given by OS relating to the leaking of one substance from one world into another is appropriate for this situation is a matter for conjecture. The body is the vehicle for change in the above instrumental act. It is also the vehicle for the actualising of the knowledge of the chair-maker.
OS also uses the image of the intervention of one realm into another in relation to an action which carries the possible interpretation of being designed or created. For Aristotle the idea of dividing the whole of the creation of chaos into events of different types to be connected by a linear mechanical idea of causation, would, to say the least be a questionable strategy. For an observer that has absolutely no knowledge of what is happening in an environment, perhaps atomising the chaos into events until it becomes clear what is happening is a possible strategy, but if in this process one atomises actions into events one might never get clear about what one is doing, .e.g. , if one is making a chair out of the chaos of wood-pile. Such is not the world of the chair-maker who is engaged in the world via a series of maxims directing acts which form a different kind of entity to events. These acts can, for the observer be condensed into “events” via hypothetical judgements but they can also be a chair-series which is linked to knowledge driven activities aiming at making a good chair in the spirit of areté. In this latter case the observer “participates” in the situation in a different way involving the sharing of knowledge. Perception is, of course, involved in this process of chair-making but it is not of the observational interrogative kind (Lo! What have we here!) but is rather of the circumspective kind referred to by Heidegger, and to be found in the realm of the ready-to-hand (to be related by “In-order-to” judgements). Observation for Heidegger is a different kind of concern. It is not situated in our life-world in the same way, but is a more theoretical kind of activity. The world of work(chair-making), on the other hand, for Heidegger, is a practical world in which the context of equipment and material form a practical whole. The chair is produced “in order to” provide equipment for different kinds of activity. Observation is not “work” in this sense even if it is done in the name of theoretical science in the spirit of exploration/discovery. For Heidegger the chair belongs in a context which he defines “ontologico–categorically”(P.101 Being and Time). For Heidegger “work” is not a series of events but a series of phenomena: the chair only presents a theoretical problem for its user if it can no longer be used, perhaps because it has been broken. In such circumstances the chair presents itself for interrogation of a theoretical kind(Can it be fixed?). We are not “absorbed” in this activity in the same way in which we are when we are involved in the world of equipment. The state of affairs in which we atomistically confront the broken chair is a world containing the event “The chair is broken” and this is not the life-world that interests the phenomenologist. Now whilst the Heideggerian reflection above suffices to distinguish a change in the world as an event from a change in the world that involves a process of work, or a product of such a process, is not sufficient to distinguish a technological instrumental work of labour(making a chair) from the more disinterested process of producing and appreciating a work of fine art. This latter form of “work” rather is not “rule-governed” in the same way but rather is a free work of genius involving faculties and powers of mind striving for a mental harmony. The beauty of art, in other words, pleases neither via sensation or concept, Kant claims:
“Now art has always got a definite intention of producing something. Were this “something”, however, to be mere sensation(something merely subjective), intended to be accompanied by pleasure, then such a product would, in our estimation of it, only please through the agency of the senses. On the other hand were the intention one directed to the production of a definite object, then, supposing, this were attained by art, the object would only please by means of the concept. But in both cases the art would please not in the mere estimate of it, i.e not as fine art, but rather as mechanical art.”(P.167)
Kant goes on to suggest that in order to avoid these possible responses, the talent of the artist ought to include the ability to disguise the intentionality of the work, and present it as something natural.. The requirement of originality or uniqueness is thus important in the production of fine art. Kant then makes a fascinating observation relating to Science and the ability of scientists to imitate the Genius of Newton. This is not the case, however, with fine artists of genius who most of the time are unable to say exactly how they produced their finest art. Their genius is free and cannot be imitated in a process of labour. We lesser mortals require Taste to form an estimate of the value of the work of the genius. We do not, for example, necessarily need to understand the final end of the work but satisfy ourselves with its formal cause. This, from the point of view of the genius is a soulless form of appreciation. The presence of soul in the process of appreciation is evidenced by understanding all the causes of the work(material, efficient, formal and final, in a holistic act of appreciation. Soul, Kant argues:
“..in an aesthetical sense signifies the animating principle in the mind”(P.175 C of Aesth Jud)
In such contexts we are dealing with aesthetic ideas freely presented and not deterministic rule-governed concepts. Aesthetic ideas, Kant goes on to argue, are the counterpart of rational ideas–and are related to our freedom. The imagination obviously plays a key role in this process of estimation in which we arrive at the experience of the Beautiful via a free play of representations of the imagination.
The equation of the “genius ” of Newton with the technological ability of a craftsman, suggests the predominance of an instrumental form of rationality and its hypothetical form of necessity. Kant also points to the importance of freedom in a cultural life-world context, aligning this aspect of Culture more closely with ethical goods than with the “scientific truth”: a position that Plato articulates in the Republic.
OS does not consider intentional aesthetic action in his account of willing. Clearly the play of the imagination in the selection of representations is better characterised as an act of selection rather than as an observer-constituted “happening” or “event”. Events are more difficult to characterise as expressions of an agent, and are more likely to demand evaluation in terms of the categories of substance and causation(material and efficient causation). Acts, on the other hand are the natural form of expression of an agent. Such acts fall more naturally under the notion of self-initiation. This concept of self-initiation, if inserted in to a substance-causation matrix, is more likely to result in the kind of speculation that gives rise to strange supernatural phenomena such as spontaneous generation. A car that bursts into fire is of course not an event that has been spontaneously generated. Looking at the car as an agent in the context of such an event rather than at some prior underlying cause is a pointless investigation. Similarly , characterising the act of willing as an event rather than an activity of an agent seems also to invite confusion.
In volume one of his work on Willing OS has been resting his analysis upon a notion of sensory-motor integration that he has not explained or justified. In volume two, however, we provided with a brilliant hylomorphic analysis of the foundational state of his reasoning. He begins by claiming that our ascription of visual powers to one another requires a behavioural foundation and vice versa:
“The concepts of physical action and perception naturally require one another.”(vol 2 , P.4)
This move of referring to the mutual implication of items inhering in a circle of fundamentally necessary items is a phenomenological tactic used with great effect in Merleau-Ponty’s work “Phenomenology of Perception”. In another earlier work, Merleau-Ponty provided us with a fascinating account of a moving light in a dark room attracting our attention. He claims that what we have here is a holistic phenomenon gifted with both intention and meaning that is incorrectly analysed by science into two kinds of event–an inner and an outer event–the light is both in us and also a vibrating outer phenomenon–the latter causing the former which is degraded into a “subjective” effect. For the scientist the real effects of this vibratory movement occurs on the surface of the retina and then subsequently in the nerves leading away from the eye and toward the brain. What the scientist presents us with here is, instead of the phenomenon of the movement of light as experienced, a classical reflex classified in terms of the hybrid category of action-reaction. In this matrix the experiencing organism is passive, and the account we are given is of something happening to the organism. In this form of description the light ceases to be an entity invested with intention, human value, and meaning. The “figure” of the moving light against the background of the darkness of the room is the form of phenomenon that engages with the living organism by attracting its attention and dragging this attention along with it. There is no “event” of attention merely “happening” but rather the activation of a perceptual element of the stream of consciousness of an agent: a form of life that expresses its interest in the light by actively following its path across the wall of the dark room. This power of seeing or sight is a fundamental power of an agent that is a free self initiating entity causing itself to act in an act of expression whose form is not decomposable into events that are mere responses happening in a particular segment of the spatio-temporal matrix.
OS’s analysis also displays psychoanalytical characteristics. He analyses the actualisation of the potentiality of “seeing something” in the new born infant.. An infant, it is argued, can see and his visual field is:
“more or less continuously inhabited by visual sensations(without necessarily implying that they engage his attention)”(P.6)
But, we might wonder, would the infant necessarily follow the moving light in the darkness. OS doubts that this is possible because all we know about infants is that they can see but not necessarily see something(e.g. as being closer to or further off than something else). On this account the visual sensations the infant experiences have not got formal objects, i.e these sensations do not mean anything to the infant until he develops the capacity to see “something”. Indeed until the infant begins to show in his actions that he sees something, e.g. by reaching for it–it is doubtful that his visual field is even three dimensional. For OS we can only say that the infant sees the world three dimensionally when he can act in relation to the object that he sees. Depth perception is only possible for this who have sufficiently structured visual fields:something that is possible only when a certain level of integration of sensory-motor powers has been achieved. Both of these powers in turn are connected to an awareness of space as something that is not merely external to me, but is organised in a form that can be explored by other senses such as touch. Space itself is not constructed bit by bit in such an exploration but is taken to be an apriori given for all life forms. This space cannot be said to be a purely visual phenomenon because an animal that was totally paralysed and enable to act in the world or actively touch the world would not be able to know very much about this world. OS also argues that a being without any sensation of touch but could move, would be inconceivable. The possession of the powers of sensation and the ability to move without any capacity to organise ones perceptions and actions in time would also, OS argues, be inconceivable for any life form. Here the Aristotelian principles that connect the before and after of the action-sequence are the following: that from which a thing is changing, that toward which something is changing, and that which endures as the same throughout the change. These are three central principles of hylomorphism and suffice to explain and justify the role of before and after in the constitution of objects in an environment of development and change.
Freud’s use of these principles is in relation to the bodily ego that emerges with the help of the integration of the sensory-motor activities of the human life-form. OS claims, for instance, that the infants “kickings” are meaningless until they can be integrated into his bodily ego–a structure that is of central importance for intentional action and willing. Consciousness also has its role in the actualisation of the sensory-motor powers. Consciousness, is, namely, a state in which sense experiences and instrumental intentions give rise to instrumental actions that emerge from some region of the body-image. All of these phenomena are interdependent and ultimately constitute the defining conditions for the activities of a rational animal capable of discourse:
” a tightly meshed grid of psychological concepts of type “see”, “want”, “pursue” etc(p.15)
Perception and action, on this account, are a priori conditions in animal life, but this in itself does not justify using the third person form of perception(observation) to define type conditions of action. For OS is very clear on his position that the type of awareness involved in action is non-observational. Furthermore the idea of agency and powers(e.g. action, perception, language etc) assume epistemological attitudes that are non explorative and non interrogative and not part of any context of discovery which seeks to arrive at knowledge of what is happening. Rather we are dealing here with contexts of explanation/justification in which knowledge of the principles and ends of action are assumed. In thus kind of activity and possessing the appropriate epistemological attitude we use principles to change nature and do not wait for events in nature to happen and help us form principles.
OS then provides a proof of how the process of involuting ones attention onto ones action destroys the inner structure of the action(the intention and meaning). The normal role of action, OS argues, is circumspect. Circumspection engages with a dynamic ready-to-hand world in a different way to that which occurs when we are observing the world. In the latter case the world is a static world of present-at-hand events. OS uses the example of watching ones hand while throwing a ball at a target. The moving hand is thus transformed from a dynamic instrument dynamically connected to a target to a passive entity to be explored with an interrogative attitude.In the ethical mode of the imperative mood the dynamical world containing the dynamically moving hand is both intentional and laden with meaning. This world is a world of action governed by imperatives, e.g. “The road up the hill is the road leading to the Professors house” and the same road(according to logos) leading down the hill is the road leading to the policeman’s house. OS uses the example of the imperative “Pick me!” guiding the hand toward the orange. The world of the observer, on the other hand , is a world that is being questioned rather than being forced to respond to a knowing intervention. The world of the observer is a world in which we are wondering where this road up leads and where this road down leads. If, OS argues in the midst of the action of reaching for the orange, I begin to observe my hand in motion, the unity of the world collapses into two present at hand objects–the hand and the orange(no longer tied together by an intention). The knowledge that I was going to pick the orange dissipates and the meaning of the movement becomes unclear until the attitude of exploration dissipates in confusion and the intention is renewed, thus renewing the unity of the hand and the orange.
As an observer watching someone else act, I wonder if his hand is moving toward the orange hanging on the tree. The hand and the orange remain unconnected categorically but there may well be a postulated hypothetical connection awaiting confirmation at the terminus of the movement. This is not the dynamical categorical world in which the agent is imposing a form upon the world motivated by the knowledge of what he wants to do. In the case of observing someone else I do not even know whether they want the orange. In this case I impose a number of hypotheticals on the world and await their verification/falsification. OS asks whether in the case of involuting my attention upon my own hand in an interrogative manner, I have lost the will to act, or whether I have merely lost my orientation toward the object. Obviously I still want the orange so neither of these are true. It is rather, OS insists, that I am in this case trying to do two things at once and the diffIculty is that I am one person and not two and the different attitudes demand the agent to engage totally in accordance with them. I cannot both circumspectively act, and observe hypothetically at the same time, OS argues. The hypothetical and categorical attitudes are logically distinct in that they both require the active presence of the personality–both attitudes give rise to different intentions. If one does try to do both of these things at the same time the result OS argues is a dispersal of the self. On Aristotelian principles, observing ones actions then becomes impossible, because there is no one enduring self throughout the change from active agency to the more passive activity of observation.
The major problem with a reliance upon first person reports of intentions, beliefs, desires etc is the Freudian problem. Under certain circumstances, perhaps because of a certain causal history, the mind may not be conscious of these intentions, desires or beliefs. If this is the case we are forced to rely on third person hypothetical reports which are embedded in a matrix of substance, causation and event and the method of observation in contexts of exploration/discovery. In so doing we marginalise the third person attitudes connected to “reading” or “interpreting” (not substances interacting causing and being caused by events but rather changes involving agents, actions, beliefs and desires embedded in a life-world). Here, the reading and interpreting will involve an explorative hypothetical attitude and a “logic of probability”. An enduring agent is the Aristotelian necessary condition of understanding the change that is occurring in this human life-world. Kant in his account of ethical action guided by the categorical imperative adds another a priori element that demands practical action toward each other in the sprit of treating each other as ends-in-themselves—in the spirit of respect.
A problem occurs however in the interpretation of particular action situations in which it is difficult to conceptualise the action I am witnessing. In such a context of exploration we need to use powers of observation and the testing of hypotheses to establish the intentions, desires and beliefs of the agent. Yet even in such cases I am a priori aware that the agent is attempting to make something true and establish some form of the good in the world, even if it is egocentrically connected to his own life-world. Sometimes, in circumstances where the agent does not have full control of his intentions, desires, and beliefs, the “motives” of the agent may only become apparent via the use if special Freudian techniques, e.g. free association, analysis of transference relations, Freudian slips, or the interpretation of dreams, symptoms etc. OS claims that in such circumstances the Cartesian thesis of consciousness being transparent to itself does not hold.
One of OS’s theoretical goals is to integrate the Cartesian and Freudian theories into one account. Freud, OS argues, has definitely proved that in certain circumstances there is no privileged access to ones own mental world that is “infallibly guaranteed”(Vol 2 P.75) OS categorises 4 types of mental phenomena( forgettings, motives, pains, and mental images) and on the basis of this claims that a limited form of Cartesianism must be true. Forgettings dwell in the Freudian unconscious and motives too can be forgotten(as can beliefs, desires and intentions). Pains can both elude consciousness and be brought into consciousness. Bodily sensations obviously cause conscious knowledge of themselves under certain conditions, e.g sanity, and wakefulness.. The marginalisation of pain from conscious awareness also obviously requires special conditions. All of these facts enable us to construe sensations as a type of phenomenon that definitely falls into the Cartesian category of translucence. This reasoning also applies to some tryings but here too there are qualifying conditions, e.g. wakefulness. Now trying to open a door is not an interior event in the mind given that it is occurring in the space in the vicinity of my arms and hands, and thus(when successful) has universal and sufficient and necessary psychological truth- conditions. It is, OS argues, however unlikely that we will ever be able to provide a full list of these truth conditions given the differences that exist between individuals, species and forms of life in general. These conditions can however be condensed into the following formula:
“the immediate active event effect of a desire to act. It is the will moving in a certain direction.”(P.115)
This applies over a whole range of types of action including basic act striving, instrumental strivings and sub intentional basic act strivings(e.g. seemingly idle tongue movement).
OS continues to insist, however, that we can without confusion identify an act with an event(P.127). The argument OS provides for this position appears to be “grammatical”. He claims that acts are often singled out by event terms, e.g. swimming, lifting, murder, rape, etc(P.128) but it is still not clear that we can perform an event of swimming or that an event can be linked to the power of agency. Events appear to be more akin to states of affairs than the active bringing about of change in the world. Can an event support a moral property such as “wicked”? Surely moral principles apply only to actings, e.g. “So act…”)?
OS claims that:
“All action necessarily have metal causes.(P.133)
But is a reason for doing X, a cause? The Greek word for cause us aitia which is often translated as “explanation”. Explanation, however, can take 4 different forms for Aristotle, the primary form of which is “the principle” constituting the phenomenon. The issue being discussed here, of course, is that of the ontological status of events and actions and perhaps also that of the ontological status of events and mental activity. The discussion becomes more convoluted when OS claims that physical action is “the most primitive manifestation of consciousness”(P.134) along with three other items, namely perception, desire, and belief. Now these three latter items are clearly psychological, which in OS’s mind raises the question as whether in dealing with physical action we are dealing with something that belongs to the category of the psychological. OS maintains that we can see the above quartet of terms at play in the phenomenon of a crab moving along the sand on a beach. We see, he argues, the crab striving and giving expression to desire. OS has no hesitation in attributing consciousness to this form of life. Could we then argue that the crab possesses a primitive ego? OS does not say. Perhaps Aristotle may have agreed to the use of the term consciousness for such a form of life(Psuche)? Certainly Descartes’s denial of the pain and suffering of animals on the ground of them being mere “mechanisms” is questionable. The crab when kicked does not if course squeal like the dog kicked in the presence of Pythagoras, so it does not give “voice” to its suffering, but perhaps its struggles suffice to convince us that it does not want the pain we are inflicting upon it–it wills to carry on expressing its desires.
The counterargument to the claim that actions are psychological, involves reducing action to the same category of biological events as digestion and this for OS is inconceivable. For Aristotle there us a hierarchy of life-forms which are embedded in one another. The functions constitutive of these life-forms are nutrition, reproduction, sensation(including the feeling of pleasure and pain), movement, memory, imagination, and reason. When all of these functions are present in one life-form the result is also expressed in terms of a particular constellation of limbs and organs. The human form of life is obviously the most complex life-form because it integrates all of the above functions into one unity. There is therefore a hierarchy of functions such that “soul” is the actualised potentiality or first actuality of the living body. The exercise of “soul” is a further actualisation of a potentiality or a second level actuality. So a man who is asleep possesses a soul but is not actualising its potentiality. In the state of sleep the human psuche most resembles the lowest plant-like form of psuche. The distinguishing potentialities and actualities that differentiate man from all other life forms are the power of discourse and the power of rationality. These are connected to the power of thought which contains intellectual principles. Thought, according to Plato and Aristotle is entirely independent of any physical substrate such as a physical body and it only comes into existence in actual thinking activity. It is in thought that we grasp the essence of what we are thinking about. Mind, on such an account, is independent of any material substance. The soul, however, according to Aristotle, is intimately connected to both particular memories and particular images from the imagination. This us, for example, evidenced by geometrical images which are used in our reasoning about shapes in space. Geometrical reasoning seeks to establish relationships between images. For Aristotle too, then, reason when conceptualising is blind without the presence of intuition.
For Freud, the interpenetration of practical powers was connected to three principles which are recognisably Aristotelian: ERP, PPP, RP. The Reality Principle(RP) covers both the first principles of nature and the first principles of morality. There is, however, in spite of the integration and interpenetration of these powers a recognisable hierarchy that ends in the rational ideals of Truth and The Good. Reducing the rational ideal of The Good(an a priori of action, according to Aristotle) to a biological event like digestion is as OS claims, inconceivable, but it does nevertheless seem easier to conceptualise digestion as an event. It is less easy to conceptualise thinking in this way, as an event that self- initiates because thinking is nothing until there us an act of thinking. Does the crab scuttling across the sand think? Does it have a will? It is not capable of discourse or reason and might this suffice to differentiate the crab from the human life-form? Is the behaviour we observe sufficient for an attribution of consciousness? The crab is certainly alive and functioning in accordance with the ERP and PPP but does it possess the psychical power to act for the ideal of the Good? Can it make something true by acting? More exploration of these questions is required. When the crab remains still for a long period, is it awake or asleep? Aristotle had this discussion in relation to fish and decided that when it was dark and the fish remained still for a long period of time the fish were probably asleep. Many of Aristotle’s critics jested at this judgement and asked what grounds there were for saying such a thing. Subsequent evidence from fishermen proved him correct. So perhaps if a crab sleeps during the night and comes back to consciousness when it is light we can attribute consciousness to the crab? Other questions also arise in the light of this discussion, e.g. if there are forms of life, are there forms of consciousness? Certainly possessing the power of thought could suffice to make perception, desire, intention, and action more complex powers but is the difference we discover one of degree or a difference in kind? If the crab lacks thought, how far down the hierarchy of powers must we descend before we arrive at the highest power of it’s being? Does a crab remember its hunts and when it gets old does it forget them? Aristotle clearly conceived of a chain of being that included a complex continuum of life forms. If a crab can “remember” things does this occur as a content of its stream of consciousness? If so, is this content best conceived of as an event, or as an act? Sensations, we know would seem to be the most likely occupants of such a stream. For us humans, on the other hand, we can be at one end of the continuum when we sleep and at the other end when we philosophise about the human psuche. The question that remains hanging in the air, however, is “How ought we to characterise action?”: as involving mental activity, (perception, intention, belief and desire) and physical movement linked into the unity of an action? Or as something primarily mental and psychological?
OS wishes to demarcate the psychological in terms of a lower realm of mentality containing sensations and sub intentional activity and a higher realm that he designates as “mental”: a realm that contains thoughts, listenings etc.(P.148). I can notice sensations occurring in the lower of realm of mentality but not in the higher realm, i.e. I cannot notice my thoughts and mental images.
Perhaps the key issue to raise in any attempt to establish the ontological status of action is related to the idea of the body which we have in our minds. Mental activity such as tryings to remember, and forgettings, are obviously in the realm of the mental( a higher realm than the psychological non-mental realm). Bodily action may then be placed in the psychological non-mental realm. If, as OS claims, all physical tryings are actions and if we have the same kind of epistemological relation(of knowing) to them, then perhaps there is no doubt that physical actions are psychological non mental activities. This realm of the psychological is not physically confined to the substrate of the brain but can be extended to the limbs of the body and its outer skin and tissue covering. The organs of the body, however, do not fall into the realm of the psychological but must rather be construed as material and efficient causes of “the psychological”. They will therefore play a role in sub-intentional and intentional limb and tongue movements. Reflexive arm raise due to muscle spasms fall within the scope of the ERP but outside the scope of the will. As a consequence of such spasms the connection of pain with the spasm must however be some kind of necessary connection. OS argues that the mental realm is independent of causal laws relating events. On this account phenomena such as belief are holistically related to the contents of the mind(P.217). This, however, creates difficulties in accounting for Freudian phenomena such as hysteria in which a patient can in fact lose sensation in his limbs or alternatively feel pains where there are none. OS makes the following Freudian claim:
“The hysterical symptom is a disturbance of that part of the ego-function that relates to the sub mental(psychological non mental) part of the mind. This is so even though the trouble lies, not in the “frontier post”(of the body) itself but in the sector of the mental that links the “frontier post” with the Mental receptor centre that is geared specifically to the frontier…..for hysterical symptoms are the fruits of attacks on the thinking ego-function.”(P.219)
Examination of the paralysed limbs or painful area reveals no physical ailment. OS’s theory, then, is that hysteria is a mental non psychological dysfunction. This is a good illustration of OS’s thesis that the “mind has a body”(P.222) and this fact in turn illustrates how the past evolutionary history of homo sapiens has left its traces in the system of the human mind.
In a section entitled, “The Evolutionary History of the Self-Conscious Mind” OS charts the developmental of that part of the mind he calls the “Mental”. First, he claims, there was a physical universe out of which life emerged. OS is a physicalist and life for him is a matter of brute fact for him an organisation of the materials of this physical universe(e.g. carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur phosphate and a few trace metals). The next momentous ontological differentiation occurred in later forms of life when the brain differentiated itself from the rest of the lived body and perhaps changed its function. This in turn led to the self conscious form of life:
“and with it the coming into being of rational general modal concept dependent truth sensitive thought, i.e. f anything really worthy if the title thought”(P. 231)
We are not informed of the roles of discourse and language in this actualisation-process. For this we may need to turn to Psychologists like Julian Jaynes. Language, he argues began as an expressive phenomenon partly connected to events of importance in the external world(e.g. hunting and gathering). By a charted series of functions this developmental sequence eventually reaches the level of representative thought in which we find the names for animals developing into a more complex stage in which names are given to individual people. At this stage it would be fair to say that we are definitely thinking something. As group life evolved we then find language evolving into more complex forms via the use of sentences with subject-predicate structures which illustrate the fully mental power of thinking something about something, which Heidegger called the veritative(truth-making) synthesis. This, however, is not the final level of the Mental which is achieved only when the principles of Logic and Truth tables begin to constitute and regulate the field of sound argumentation–the field of rationality. These higher mental operations are undoubtedly inhabitants of the realm of the mental being essentially connected to the telos of self-conscious thought.
When such a form of thought begins to operate in practical reasoning about the maxim of actions and an ought system of concepts and principles begin to be formed, we are then dealing with another form of higher mental process. The Greek/Socratic idea of defining thinking in terms of “talking to oneself” belongs in this arena of higher mental activities. In the case of the Kantian ideal of the universalisable maxim we are obviously dealing with “arguing with oneself” in the initial actualising processes of embracing the moral law, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept, I promised Jill I would pay back the money I owed her, Therefore I ought to pay Jill..”
In the above example “Promises ought to be kept” is a universalised maxim that holds necessarily of all promises made . It is of course a generally known fact that not everyone who makes a promise with good intentions fulfils the promise made. It is not however, a universal fact. Just because it is a fact does not prevent anyone from adopting a critical position in relation to this fact, and arriving at the universalisable maxim “Promises ought to be kept.”. OS, however, continues to insist upon using the terminology of “event” and “cause” to determine the essence of the realm of “the psychological” but it is not clear whether appeal to material and efficient causation is enough to satisfy the logical demands the principle of sufficient reason makes upon the argumentation we encounter in such investigations. Whether we, in fact , on every particular occasion, reason in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is, of course, irrelevant. Anyone that fails to do so is still subject to the criticism that one ought to organise ones life and arguments rationally.
The question of Mental Causality is in fact taken up at the end of volume two of OS’s work on the Will. OS gives us a description of what he calls the causal sequence involved in action:
“A particular act-desire springs up in a man. Whereupon he begins to wonder whether to perform the act . He engages in a procedure of trying to decide whether to do so, which necessitates reaching a decision on some matter of fact. Then the instant in which resolution of his factual uncertainty occurs, is the instance in which a certain intention takes up residence in his mind. Now the instance in which he judges the time ripe for the expression of that intention, is the instant in which both the intention and the act-desire begin expressing themselves: and their expression consists in a striving. Finally, the process of striving is one that in the body tends naturally to lead to the occurrence of the willed event. Then most of these phenomena stand in a causal, and for the most part mental causal, relation to one another.”(P.289)
The argument above us curiously circular. He claims that all that is required of the connection between phenomena in the mind is that they not be mediated causally by non-mental events or states. This he claims, is in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. Yet this is clearly not a sufficient reason for the application of the category of actuality to an area of reality defined by the category of potentiality. OS goes on to claim that the relation between phenomena in the mind possess “certain peculiarities”(P.291). Now it is true that we experience mental phenomena as they occur in time in terms of before and after, but do we also experience a causal relation? Hume’s argument certainly appears more appropriate here than it does in the case of one billiard ball causing another to move into the pocket of the table. Aristotelian argument explains this mental phenomena relation in terms of formal and final causes in the context of the category of potentiality. The reason we give for our actions in both instrumental and ethical cases is given in the form of ought-premises in an argument structure, but the whole experience may well need all 4 types of Aristotelian explanation if the principle of sufficient reason is applied. In such a case the sole appeal to the material and efficient explanations or conditions will not provide us with a complete explanation for the relation between the agent and his reasons for acting. In such an explanation we might find ourselves talking about an actuality that is an actualising of a potentiality. The future state of affairs contained in the formulation of the intention also supports this account. Beliefs are also held for reasons, and these can also be characterised in terms of a syllogism that presents the concluding belief as a justified true belief. I can, that us, have a good reason for believing that every event has “a cause” but the reason for believing that not every action, desire, and intention are events, may lie, not in the realm of theoretical reason, but rather practical reason as defined by Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy. This issue, namely, concerns the principle of sufficient reason related to both the ideals of “The Truth” and “The Good”.
OS defines action in terms of striving for an act fulfilment and this, on Hylomorphic and Critical accounts places any such definition in the arena of the actualisation of a potentiality, that OS describes in terms of expressing a desire, an intention, and a decision. He then claims that that striving is an expression of act-desire and this he further claims is a psychic force. Now, no one will deny that desire is a power we possess, a potential that under certain circumstances can be actualised, but perhaps the only reason for using the term “force” may be connected with the categorical requirements of the matrix of actuality, substance, causation, and event. If we focus upon the moment of making up ones mind as to whether to do X or not, the question arises of whether it may be preferable to use the matrix of potentiality, agency, power, action/activity.
OS claims that Will takes a back seat in the process of the forming of cognitive attitudes(ratiocinative activity) such as the forming of a belief. It can be argued that this is an act for which one is required to take responsibility and thus is further strengthened by the claim of practical reasoning that universalised ought premises are not statements of universal fact but rather statements of law: normative, prescriptive statements. OS refers to the process of actualising the potential practical rationality of the agent as “cognitive crystallisation”, again using a physical inorganic process to model psychic processes. This in turn invites mechanistic descriptions/explanations. We are, of course, not denying that where the issue is a physical one and the intention is to view a series of phenomena under the aspect of “The True”, reference to material and efficient explanations is necessary. The same phenomena, however, can be thought of under the aspect of “The Good”, i.e. is crystallisation a “good” thing. What we must not do, however, us to confuse the one aspect with the other. OS discusses the case of a juror deciding whether to cast the vote of guilty on the base of evidence produced in the course of a trial. He claims that the making up of the jurors mind on the basis of the facts and the deciding to vote guilty are identical enterprises.(P.300) Are they? We raise a doubt here because it seems as if even if it is difficult to separate these two aspects of this enterprise, the mere fact that the separation makes sense, indicates that there is a difference to be considered here. Aristotle would claim in relation to this case that two different powers or functions of the mind are involved: firstly, calculating whether evidence falls under the law in an act of conceptualisation of the evidence, and secondly, whether the juror is doing the right thing in voting guilty. This latter feature of the activity may involve knowledge of oneself and ones prejudices against the defendant. OS softens his position somewhat by referring to the two different aspects as “milestones” along the same road, because the completion of the calculation as to whether the defendant is guilty is the onset of an intention-state(P.301). The whole discussion becomes murkier when OS then claims that we ought to characterise deciding to do X as an activity. Deciding is a process. Processes have beginnings and endings where the end comes after the beginning in time. If there is one thing remaining the same at the beginning and at the end throughout the changing process, it is the presence ,namely, of the agent that is engaging in the process of deciding what is the argument against conceptualising this as an activity of the agent concerned. In the concrete case of the juror presented by OS it is difficult not to understand that what is at stake in this decision-process is the dignity and worth of both the juror and the defendant(even if he is guilty–he is still potentially rational). The moment of the forming of the intention after the completion of the process of deciding what to do, e.g. vote “Guilty”, is a mental “phenomenon” that is preparing to make an entrance into the physical world in the form of an action. This action will of course actualise the intention practically, and also make it true that one juror voted “guilty”. OS asks the aporetic question “What is an intention?”(P.305) and considers three alternatives: an un-analysable psychological entity, an analysable psychological entity, or a mere combination of psychological entities. OS asks in relation to these alternatives whether intention, for example, ought to be analysed into the components of belief and desire or whether these two entities are merely combinations in the complex of intention—the belief sorting under one heading and the desire sorting under another. Again, it is not clear whether this kind of substantive analysis is situated in the appropriate conceptual system. Is the forming of an intention by an agent a substantial event?— a qualitative transformation of a thought process, or is it rather the result of an actualisation of a potential connected to a number of powers of a rational animal capable of discourse? P.M.S. Hacker in his work “Human Nature:A Categorical Framework” would not necessarily agree to the above form of analysis because Agency and Powers for him are situated in a framework of potentiality best explained in terms of hylomorphic powers:
“To say that a human being moved his limb is to subsume behaviour under the category of action. It earmarks behaviour as being of a kind that is in general under voluntary control, as something of a kind which a sentient agent can choose to do or not to do ad hence indicates the propriety of asking whether there is an intentionalist explanation of the deed. The attribution of the movement to the agent is not causal.”(P.158)
Action, for Hacker, require teleological explanations situated in a web of ought judgements. He appeals to two-way powers in the account he gives. There is no doubt that the statement “his arm rose” is a statement about an event because the implication present is that he did not intentionally or voluntarily raise his arm. An action is not being referred to in this statement–rather it is something which happened that was not under his control–not within his power. The powers referred to in this example are not substantial, causal, functional forces, but rather related to purposes requiring teleological forms of explanation. Hacker clearly relates purposes and teleology:
“Only living beings and things related in various ways to living beings have a purpose. Teleology is accordingly at home in the sciences of life, a study of living beings and their forms of life, and in the study of man ad his works.”(P.169)
Both discourse and rationality as it occurs in discourse and the arena of judgement are, of course, primary purposes for the rational animal capable of discourse, in spite of the fact that the instinctive/reflexive behaviour of the animal part of our nature can also be actualised on occasions when rationality and the power of discourse fail to regulate or sublimate these tendencies. The goods involved with these primary purposes differ, of course, from the more biological “goods” of nutrition and reproduction. The telos of human nature involves so much more and reaches into the realms of both the psychological and the mental as conceived by OS. Rationality in the works of man requires cultivation in the soil of a Culture where knowledge of ones world and ones self are important and dignified achievements. The summum bonum of a life according to both Aristotle and Kant is connected to knowledge and the ideal of Reason that makes one worthy of the happiness one hopes will follow from leading a flourishing life. Asking of events, what they are good for, is likely to confuse many issues, simply because whilst Kant might agree that conceptualising actions as events is theoretically possible, the consequences of such an activity would never satisfy the completeness demanded by the principle of sufficient reason:
“As regards the absolute totality of the ground if explanation of a series of these causes, such totality need suggest no difficulty in respect of natural existents; since these existences are nothing but appearances, we need never look to them for any kind of completeness in the synthesis of the series of conditions.”(Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans Kemp Smith N, London, Macmillan, 1963, A 773, B801)
Kant goes on to argue that practical reason insofar as the idea of the freedom of the will is concerned does not seek for the laws of nature determining that which happens(events) but rather it:
“provides laws which are imperatives, that is, objective laws of freedom, which tell us what ought to happen–although perhaps it never does happen–therein differing from laws of nature which relate only to that which happens.”(A802, B830)
For Kant, then, there is a clear logical distinction to be drawn between the uses of reason that respectively answer the questions, “What can I know?” and “What ought I to do?”. Kant furthermore states that in relation to this latter question and the follow-up question “What can I hope for?”, knowledge is attributable to us. All hoping is directed at happiness, Kant argues, and is connected in turn to a law of morality that determines the dignity and worth of the agent concerned. This position refers back to the ancient Socratic account that demanded of justice that we ought to get what we deserve in our lives. Kant aligns himself with this position unequivocally. The formulation of maxims during ones life, whilst aiming at happiness, can only hope for thus consequence on the grounds of having done ones duty when it was required.
Paul Ricoeur using a hermenutic/phenomenological approach, defines human existence in terms of a desire to be and an effort to exist, and here too, we encounter a refusal to reduce mental phenomena to mental events. In a work entitled “Memory, History, Forgetting”(trans Blamey, K., and Pellauer, D.,Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004) Ricoeur analyses mental phenomena into the act(the noesis) and the intentional correlate(the noema)(P.3). Ricoeur points out that the Greeks had two words for memory correlated with firstly, passively remembering something(mneme) and secondly actively recalling, recollecting(anamnesis). In this latter case a necessary question relating to an agent(Who?) must be answered. This follows the Kantian line in the conceptualisation of action in the light of practical reasoning. The key question for Kant related to whether the agent involved is a worthy man, an end-in-himself.
For Aristotle aitia, or “cause” was a formal kind of explanation that responded to the question as to why something is as it is. Sometimes the cause of the change being explained is a physical mover or a substance–but even in such situations the context is one of explanation/justification and not a more concrete context of exploration/discovery. When, on the other hand, the question “Why?” is directed at human activity, what is being asked for, is instead “that for the sake of which” the activity in question occurred. It is also clear insofar as Aristotle is concerned that one and the same phenomenon will have several different complementary explanations. If a mental event is categorically a state of mind then Hacker would claim that neither belief nor desire are states and he would also maintain that neither of these items could be identified with brain states.
OS persists on his physicalist course when he insists that the intending of something “causes” the belief in that something. Certainly there is a sense in which the intending of X entails the belief in this X. The defence of his causal claim appeals to the Cartesian cogito and OS states that were it not for the state of mind I am in here and now I would not here and now know that I exist. The appeal is to facts such as that the state of consciousness I find myself in here and now, could in fact be removed by the blow of a hammer to the head.
When Freud spoke of Consciousness as a Vicissitude of Instinct he is, of course, not implying that consciousness is a particular concrete event but is rather attempting to provide us with part of an essence-specifying definition. The question also arises in this context as to whether Descartes was attempting to give an account of consciousness as experienced here and now at a particular moment or whether he was attempting to characterise it in more universal terms. It would appear that Descartes must be committed to the proposition “everything that thinks knows that it exists”. Kant too, in his account of the “I think” is not referring to a particular “I” but rather the universal act of apperception which is a power all rational animals capable of discourse possess: a power moreover that will play an important role in actualising the potentiality of rationality in such a being.
Now nothing that has been said contains an objection to the relation of mutual entailment that OS insists holds between action, intention, desire, and belief. What has been claimed is that this logical relation requires a practical architectonic of concepts and principles that orbit about the basic term “Action”. The premises of arguments generated in this architectonic are, of course, ought-premises(in the major premise and the conclusion). Later in Volume two of his work on the Will OS specifically denies that intention is an event and claims that it is a state which endures and is directed towards performing a particular act–although he also later maintains that this “enduring intention can be replaced by another intention”(P.310). What is missing from the above architectonic account is the necessary attribution of the intention to an agent: for surely if one intention can evolve into another that is not logically or conceptually connected, the only enduring thing in this process of change must be the agent. The language of causation is still present on P.318 when OS maintains that it is the agents reasons that cause him to intend to do X. It is also clear from the above reasoning that OS reifies the intention into a substantialised supervising agency and in this context he once again declares the intention to be a higher order mental state that is caused by its reasons. For OS it is this agency, rather than the “person”(Hacker) that is endowed with the power of reason to cause action(P.320). Hacker would claim this reasoning to be an example of what he called the mereological fallacy–the fallacy of attributing to a part a property that is only true of the whole.
OS, in some respects, shares the concerns of Ricoeur’s account of existence, defined in terms of the desire to be and the effort to exist:
“Therefore both the “active) genus of which intentional action is a species and the very forces (of desire) which bring them into being, on the final analysis owe their being to the item they encompass and engender, viz, intentional action…it is only because such a life-enhancing phenomenon as intentional action came to be that desire and will came to be, i.e. “selection” reveals their roles in nature.”(P.323)
OS goes on to argue that the having of needs and the organisms response to these needs is a primary phenomenon and will and desire are the psychic representations of these life-fulfilling needs. He also argues that the use of knowledge is what lifted will and desire out of the matrix of primitive need and elaborated need as a higher order phenomenon. Consciousness also played a role standing as it does at the threshold of higher order psychological phenomena. In his “causal” discussion of these phenomena OS resorts to the idea of statistical significance. This discussion is only possible on the condition of events becoming once again the focus of the discussion: intention, it s argued is a statistically given power” , whatever that is.
At the end of Volume two OS presents himself less as a physicalist and more as a dualist in his discussion of the mind-body problem and its relation to two levels of being. This context permits the mind-body relation to become a causal relation(P.332). Two domains are tied together via a nomic bond that somehow forms an entailment relation.
OS discusses the phenomenon of “paralysis of the will” and claims that we have no reason for believing in the phenomenon but we do know that anxiety can have curious effects on the Will. He speaks of anxiety affecting both the will and the spirit of a man. Anxiety causes us to abandon projects(P.338) but it does not directly effect the will. It affects the will via affecting desire(a chain reaction). Self determination is also discussed in relation to agency and OS insists that desire cannot alone play a role in this state of affairs since desires happen to one–one suffers from ones appetites and primitive passions. This is the reason why desire is characterised as both an event and a force. Desires can however be what Freud called ego-enhancing(P.345) but it is on OS’s account part of a causal event chain running from one end of a continuum to another across several domains.