| Consciousness and the World | ||
| O'Shaughnessy (Brian) | ||
| This Page provides (where held) the Abstract of the above Book and those of all the Papers contained in it. | ||
| Text Colour-Conventions | Disclaimer | Papers in this Book |
Clarendon Press, Oxford, paperback edition, 2002
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Consciousness and the World: Introduction"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Introduction
Author's AbstractThe aim is to provide a theory of consciousness, and of the relation of consciousness through perception with the World. Consciousness is not a mystery, being an internal state analysable into internal constituents. However, it is essentially directed to the World, and this necessitates some knowledge of the World. Certain epistemological powers are peculiar to it, but are they essential? It emerges that consciousness necessitates an accessible perceptual attentive capacity. This is demonstrated through appeal to the principle: the conscious are ‘in touch with’ Reality, and are of necessity oriented towards the truth. Part of the proof turns upon the theory that perception is the sheer presence to awareness of extensionally given phenomenal objects. It contacts objects (broadly understood), not propositions. This is accomplished through the mediation of perceptual ‘proxies’ like side, surface, and ultimately also in seeing through light and visual sensations. However, even prior to this encounter, a ‘The Visual Given’ is presented to consciousness, a causal posit necessitated by the presence of mental causation1 in the aetiology of the visual experience. This is where the ‘journey’ of the Attention begins, and it ends in Physical Reality, in a complex mental perceptual-cognitive phenomenon in which in humans the conceptual powers of the mind are engaged in constituting the physical object and its universal setting. Consciousness has from the start an appointment in the concrete with the World in its ultimate physical form, and the introduction sets out to explain how it is that it keeps that appointment.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Experience"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 1
Author's AbstractThe experience is the most direct manifestation of the state of waking consciousness. This emerges in that being awake entails having experience, and it is experiences that constitute the stream of consciousness. The concept experience is a genus-concept rather than a species-concept, and is indefinable. Unlike mental events that are changes of state, experiences are the change of nothing, for experiential processes are constituted purely of lesser stretches of process and never out of mental states (there being no experience states). Experiences are therefore pure mental flux. The conscious experiencing subject is experientially directly aware of the immediate past, and of the actively intended immediate future, so that in experience we encounter the passage of time. Experience is our primary access to the reality of time.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Anatomy of Consciousness"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 2
Author's AbstractThe topic is the state of wakeful consciousness. Of what kind is this state? It is the pre-eminent and ‘founding father’–species of the genus, state of consciousness, all other species (sleep1 etc.) being privative derivatives from the original. Consciousness, which is endowed with necessary properties, is constituted-by rather than the cause-of its necessary properties. These last include the negative properties of lacking an intentional object, of not being the perception of anything, and of being inexperiencable, together with the following positive properties: encompassing experience, accessibility of the perceptual attention, suitable mode of belief-formation, obligatory mental activeness together with immediate acquaintance with past and future, and conditional availability of the bodily will. This is a characterization of the consciousness of both rational and non-rational animals.
Paper Comment
Very similar to "O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Anatomy of Consciousness".
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Self-Consciousness and Self-Knowledge"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 3
Author's AbstractSelf-awareness — knowledge of self and of one's mental states — is of central importance in ensuring the properties constitutive of consciousness in rational beings. A modified Cartesian thesis is defended: that a well-formed state of self-conscious wakefulness is such that the present contents of that mind must be insightfully given to its owner. This is demonstrated through investigating four different states in which insight is diminished and consciousness absent or impaired: sleep1, trance, intoxication, and psychosis. These states are analytically explored, and the thesis proven in each case. It emerges that the very items that constitute consciousness in unthinking animals2, do the same in thinking animals3, only in a more developed form. The differentia of the state of self-conscious wakefulness is analysed into the co-presence of a syndrome of mutually necessitating properties : self-knowledge, rationality, freedom, thinking, etc. When this syndrome is conjoined with the availability of the perceptual attention, together with experience, the state is fully constituted. This is the answer to the fundamental question: what is consciousness?
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - ‘Translucence’"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 4
Author's AbstractAre there some mental phenomena for which insight is necessarily inexistent? The Freudian ‘Id’, and Schopenhauerian ‘Will’, have been joined in latter days by certain cerebral phenomena, all of which have been claimed to be both necessarily inaccessible and mental. General principles of insight are sought whereby we may assess such claims. The main truth emerging is that all known mental phenomenal types are normally immediately insightable in states of proper waking consciousness, and that the only phenomenon that defies the rule is constituted out of insightables. While many mental causal relations are naturally and even necessarily inaccessible, it seems unlikely that any mental phenomenal processes could be. As a test case, the formation of the visual experience is investigated, to discover whether it includes such a mental process. No evidence for such is encountered. All mental processes seem in principle to be accessible to their owner, whether immediately qua experience or inferentially through their constituting state. The conditional-Cartesian thesis seems intact.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Consciousness and the Mental Will"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 5
Author's AbstractRationality of state is essential to consciousness, and depends both on self-knowledge and on mental activeness—and above all upon the mental activity of thinking. What contribution does the overall activeness of the stream of consciousness make to the obtaining of consciousness? It firstly contributes to the epistemological and perceptual function, through ordering perceptual process. But it secondly conditions the intelligibility of the stream of consciousness of the conscious. The least apparently active experiences of the conscious, such as daydreaming, are shown to be intentionally active, along with the others. This activeness makes possible rationality and explanatorial pellucidity in the development of that ‘stream’, which would otherwise be absent, because of the close link between activeness and rationality. This internal intelligibility has epistemological repercussions, for it is a necessary condition for making sense of the outer phenomenal world.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Interiority and Thinking"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 6
Author's AbstractThe stream of consciousness of the waking conscious manifests both meaningfulness and interiority as (say) the dream does not. The variety of meaning involved is spelt out. It emerges that it is a derivative of the overall mental activeness of consciousness together with the fact that the activeness pre-eminently includes the thinking process. This is the one active experiential line that carries its own rationale, for thinking is a mental willing, which par excellence knows where it is going, indeed is the meaning-giver par excellence in the mind. The nature of thinking is investigated, including the rationale of its close link with the use of language. Thinking is an active process of engendering phenomena in one's understanding, whose object is a changing entity expressed in the symbolism that encapsulates thought. It lies at the heart of consciousness, being the custodial agency responsible for the continuing state of rationality necessary for the state, and is coincident1 …
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Attention and Perception: Introduction to Part 2 of Consciousness and the World"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Introduction to Part 2
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Attention"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 7
Author's AbstractIn perception, objects come to the attention. Accordingly, one might come to believe that ‘The Attention’ names the capacity to harbour events of the specific idiosyncratic type, noticing. In fact it signifies an experiential mental space to which objects can come in perception and, which can contain experiences. After all, many mental phenomena other than perception require awareness if they are to so much as exist, e.g. emotion and thought, thanks to being experiences. That experiential space is of limited extent, for at any moment the mind can experience so much and no more. Indeed, the space is no more than the existence of such a limit, and has no autonomous existence other than the fact of that limit, and it is a dangerous illusion to hypostatize the limit as a real space, leading one to misunderstand what it is to experience an experience. Then there is reason for supposing that the experiences of the moment constitute a system. This circle or centre of awareness is the Attention. And it is to this Attention that perceived existents come—as object. This happens when a noticing or perceiving occurs.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Attention and Perception (1)"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 8
Author's AbstractThe two functions of the Attention—providing psychic space for experiences, and bringing phenomenal existents to consciousness—are diverse functions of a unitary phenomenon. And so perception simply is awareness or consciousness or experience of an existent object, and cannot be an idiosyncratic indefinable capacity, being explicated in universal a priori-given terms, viz. object and awareness. But why should not any intentionally directed experience that is directed onto a phenomenal reality be rated a perception? It is because ‘aware of’ has the same meaning in ‘Perception is awareness of an existent’ and ‘We are aware of the occupants of the Attention’, and a different meaning in ‘We are aware of any actually existing object of an intentionally directed experience’. For example, we are aware of sounds and anxiety as we are not aware of actual events that are at once unperceived-by-us but visualized or thought-of by us.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Attention and Perception (2): Assembling the Concept"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 9
Author's AbstractThe definition of perception is defended by piecemeal assembling of the concept of perception. We begin with the assumption that some event is an intentionally directed experience; add that it is of a type that aspires to ‘success’-status, as seem-see and try-act aspire to status see and act ; and add that the object actually exists, and that the ‘aspiration’ is successful. Now this complex property fits both action and perception. Then to define action we have the need of a further and indefinable concept, that of will, whereas to define perception we have all the conceptual material we need, for we need no more than the concepts, experience, and object. Perception is unique in being the only experience that finds its identity under the concept of experience, for it is merely awareness or experience taking an extensional object. Then since consciousness and experience are universal to any account of mind, perception likewise must have a position of centrality in the mind. It is an a priori-given a priori-definable concept, built out of a priori-given concepts.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Perception and Truth"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 10
Author's AbstractPerception is here differentiated from the discovery-experience that we describe as ‘perceiving that . . .’, the claim being that perception is of things (broadly conceived) and not of propositions. Perceiving-that is shown to be a special case of perceptually acquired belief-acquisition. Whereas ‘wanted’ retains the one sense in ‘He wanted to shout’ and ‘He wanted his team to win’, ‘aware’ is ambiguous in ‘he was aware of a whistle’ and ‘he was aware that a whistle was occurring’. Perception is differentiated further from the thought-experience on the counts of object/content/constitution, and above all in its mode of agreement or disagreement with Reality. Thus, whereas thoughts are capable of truth and falsity, perceptions have no truth-value. This is confirmed through a discussion of negative experience, in which it is claimed that, unlike thoughts, perception cannot take negative objects. Perception is of ‘positivity’ all the way.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Imagination (1)"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 11
Author's AbstractPerception is here differentiated from perceptual imagining. To better understand the latter, the imagination was studied. Three different kinds of imaginative experience were characterized: propositional imagining (e.g. inventing a story), imaginative perception (e.g. looking at photos), and perceptual imagining (e.g. mental images). The origins of propositional imagining ensure that they cannot instantiate the cognitive prototype (knowledge). Meanwhile, both the origins and constitutive character ensure the same in the case both of imaginative perception and of perceptual imagining. The general conclusion is, that imaginings are imaginings neither through having a required constitution nor through origins, and not even through a combination of these factors. Rather, they are imaginings through satisfying the definition. Imagining is quasi a cognitive prototype, which represents Reality as endowed with a certain character, is of necessity not that prototype, and is merely quasi that prototype.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Imagination (2)"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 12
Author's AbstractIf imaginings are merely ‘quasi’ a cognitive prototype, what sense of ‘quasi’ is involved? To answer this question, and complete the analysis of the concept, a piecemeal constituting of the concept is undertaken. We begin with a cognitive prototype. Then imaginings are a second-order function of that prototype. This shows first in the fact that imaginings are intentionally directed to the imagined object rather than to the prototype, secondly in that imaginings find identity not under the concept ‘imagining’ but under that of (say) ‘visual imagining’. This has the implication that, in the case of perceptual imaginings, which are constitutively imaginings, imagining-of is nothing but a second-order being: it is pure ‘as if’it is its prototype. Thus, imagining is a second-order concept that applies, sometimes essentially, sometimes inessentially, to its instances. And it is unique in the mind in its radical analysability in terms of its prototype.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Imagination and Perception"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 13
Author's AbstractThe aim is to distinguish imagining-of from thought-of a phenomenal object, and ultimately to differentially distinguish perception-of a phenomenal object from these close experiential neighbours. Now there is a special negation of imagination, in that imaginings are of necessity not the prototype. This joins the identity-heading as a criterion for distinguishing the above three varieties of experience. Thus, perception takes direct objects and discovers its identity autonomously under ‘perceive’, but takes no negative objects and no negative propositional objects. The perceptual imagination takes direct objects, finds its identity non-autonomously under ‘imagine-of perceiving’, and takes no negative objects, while the propositional imagination takes both positive and negative propositional objects. Then whereas thought probably takes no direct objects, if it could do so such an event would autonomously discover its identity under ‘thought-of’, and in any case thought takes both positive and negative propositional objects. Finally, we can add to this list the perceptual discovery-experience, already demarcated in Ch. 10. This differentially demarcates perception.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Active Attending or a Theory of Mental Action"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 14
Author's AbstractTypically our perceptions occur in the setting of an active perceptual process. This chapter attempts to analyse active attending, and in particular, active perceptual attending. The exemplar phenomenon discussed is listening, which is a mental activity. Now mental actions fall into three different structural kinds, exemplified in soliloquy/recollecting/active attending, and the aim is the structural analysis of the latter. Theories as to the relation between listening and hearing are examined, and the conclusion reached is that listening encompasses that part of the co-present hearing that owes its existence to the will, a sector that inevitably has no more than a probabilistic measure. But how could hearing (of realities) immediately derive from willing? This puzzle finds its resolution in the character of the special causal situation realized in listening. While will and sound are distinct existents with non-identical causal powers, they are token-identical causal agencies in the generation of the hearing sector of listening. This strange analysis vindicates the concept of active attending.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Seeing: Introduction to Part 3 of Consciousness and the World"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Introduction to Part 3
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - ‘Blindsight’ and the Essence of Seeing"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 15
Author's AbstractDoes ‘blindsight’ show that seeing is only inessentially an experience? The data is examined, and difficulties raised. Why always low-key examples? How do we know it is not a borderline example of seeing (since they are theoretically guaranteed)? The argument pro the view that seeing occurs and experience does not is examined. The likelihood of these twin possibilities is counterbalanced against alternative interpretations of the data, and on the whole found wanting. But assuming that they are both realized, what theoretical account of seeing is open to one? That it is a cerebral phenomenon endowed with suitable input and output causal properties? But is this a statement of real essence? If so, it is not a viable theory. Presumably, it is a functionalist statement of nominal essence. However, while seeing has necessary origin properties, the cognitive effects of seeing are inessential. Then why believe that ‘seeing’ names any phenomenon at all? And why neglect its actual experiential function? The conclusion is that the experiential status of seeing is part of its essence, and that the standard interpretation of ‘blindsight’ is tantamount to jettisoning the very concept.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Seeing the Light"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 16
Author's AbstractIn visual perception, the Attention reaches its final object-goal through the mediation of more proximate visibilia. How to discover their existence? The answer is by philosophical argument. The present claim is that we see the environment through seeing the light reflected by it. This discussion has a close bearing upon the sense–datum theory, since much of the counter-intuitiveness of the one theory is shared by the other. Arguments are presented for the claim, one of which is that if sound is heard why is light not seen? It shares all the relevant properties. A light-representationalist theory of the perception of material object is advanced, such that light at the retina is merely directionally seen and is one and the same thing as the directional seeing of objects at a distance in space. This is made possible by the ‘Transitivity of the Attention’, whereby non-deviant causal relations ensure the multiplication of objects given to the Attention in the one visual experience. This theory is proposed as a model via which one may suitably amend G.E. Moore's instructions for singling out sense-data. If the theory is correct, it undercuts the usual objections to the sense-datum theory completely, and disproves Direct Realism along with it.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Sense-Data (1) or the Ways of the Attention"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 17
Author's AbstractA theory of sense-data is defended, which takes its cue from light. It is that the (monocular) visual perception of outer physical objects is noticing visual sensations set in two-dimensional body-relative physical space, which stands in non-deviant causal relation to outer phenomenal causes. The first leg of the argument is that there exist regular causally sufficient bodily conditions for the existence of a visual field of given colour-bright spatial character, quite irrespective of the outer causes of those bodily causes. Now if those bodily conditions were caused by piecemeal scientific intervention we would deem the resulting visual field a psychological existent of type, visual sensations. Since they are also satisfied when the bodily conditions are caused by outer visibles, the same set of sensations must occur in perception of outer items. The theory is defended against the claim that the visual field has no separate existence from our awareness of it, through showing that the criteria for the content of visual field and of visual impression ensure divergence of content. Finally, an explanatorial argument is proposed for the view that sensations generally are psychological individuals, and are not to be understood as merely the internal objects of awareness-experiences.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Sense-Data (2): Additional Arguments"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 18
Author's AbstractAdditional arguments for sense-data begin by defending the claim that perceptual sensations are psychological individuals, examples being phosphenes, after-images, and the ‘ringings’ of ‘tinnitus’. Five arguments for sense-data follow. First, that since corresponding to every veridical visual field is a possible non-veridical visual field of sensations, the latter merely needs a different and regular outer cause to be deemed veridical. Second, since bodily sensation experience is extremely strong evidence for the existence of a matching sensation cause, the experience of ‘ringing’ must be strong evidence that a ‘ringing’ sensation is its cause, and this holds in the veridical hearing of a ringing sound. Third, that it is inconceivable that one has a truly visual experience of a red visual field, and absolutely nothing red-looking be there before one had noticed. Fourth, that the experience of sound might have had a different developmental history, in which first there was merely experience of auditory sensation, and then over millennia such experience gradually found itself caused by regular outer phenomena, thereby constituting the hearing of sound. And a fifth argument that resembles the first argument.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Secondary Qualities"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 19
Author's AbstractSecondary qualities are essential to sight, hearing, smell, and taste, and correspond to the sensations definitive of each sense. They are relative, first to which beings they appear to, secondly to the conditions under which they do so. Dispositionist analyses are examined, along with materialist, and rejected: the former because colour is predicable of after-images, the latter because a (open-ended) disjunct of material properties in principle ‘found’ any (determinate) secondary quality. While attributions to physical objects are relative, attribution to sensations are absolute: sensations of red are absolutely, intrinsically, essentially red. ‘Red’ names the look predicable necessarily of the sensation of red and contingently and derivatively of much else. What is of central importance to the secondary quality, indeed the rationale behind the very concept, is that it is the only psychological phenomenon that can be an immediate material or external object of noticing. From this unique property, compounded with the psycho-physical nomic situation governing its objectification, flows the special utility of the secondary quality. Namely, to take its place as material object for the Attention in an experience in which it simultaneously qualifies a whole string of causally interrelated items: sensation, light, surface, side, and object.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The ‘Perceptual Given’ and ‘Perceptual Mediators’ Or The Formation of the Visual Experience"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 20
Author's AbstractWhen outer objects are seen, it is through mediation by the epistemologically more immediate items, ‘the visual given’ and ‘the visual mediators’. There is reason for thinking that seeing is the result of a two-stage causal transaction, the first is the psycho-physical causation1 of a sensuous array in body-relative physical space, the second the psycho-psycho causing by the latter of a mental process that subjects that array to organizing/interpreting in the forming of the visual experience. ‘The given’ names the psychological product of the first transaction: it is the hypothesized middle term in a hypothesized causal triple. Then since the order/meaning in the content of visual experience is wholly determined by the susceptibility of the perceiving mind, ‘The given’ must single out the sensuous array under its minimum (‘pointillist’) description. Meanwhile ‘the visual mediators’ names a set of perceptual go-betweens, which are proxy for the object, such as light/surface/colour. Their perception is at once that through which object-perception occurs, and the form taken by it. Finally, it is proposed that the formation of the internal object of the visual experience takes the following form: the mind constitutes out of the ‘given’ a two-dimensionally ordered internal object, which in turn explanatorily precedes and causes the acquisition of the more ambitious internal visual objects.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Appearances"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 21
Author's AbstractThe concept of an appearance is bona fide and rule-governed. It is such that appearances can be shared, which suggests that a visual appearance is a complex universal, compounded out of colour and spatial appearance. The only appearance material objects have is their look, because uniquely in the case of sight when the Attention lands upon its colour it lands upon the object, and it lands upon the object through landing upon its secondary quality. We experience the visual appearance when we perceive the bearer to be endowed with those visible qualities that visually individuate it for us. Now the primary appearance in Physical Reality is the look of a material object, a ‘look in the round’, upon which aspect-appearance is dependent. The relation between the two is charted, together with the vital role of the understanding in experiencing ‘looks in the round’, an experience that depends upon knowledge of the objective physical situation in which it occurs. Finally, the criteria of visibility are spelt out.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Perceptually Constituting the Material Object"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 22
Author's AbstractWhat is implicit in a typically human perception of a material object? First, perceivability is a contingent property of its bearer, relative to perceiver and conditions. Typically, human perception is special in involving the use of concepts and an awareness of object-structures. When we visually recognize a material object, an almost limitless array of properties and procedures are by implication condensed into an instant: one entertains multiple beliefs, and posits at a distance, multiple properties. Then the experiential integration of the almost limitless visual evidence of a material object is dubbed ‘constituting the material object out of experience’. Central concepts in doing so are those of side, outside, surface, interior, and part. The most important of these experiential syntheses is the spatial, whose unit is the 3D-seeing of object-sides, a concept that depends upon those of 2D/3D and 2D/2D seeing. Two vitally important elements in this procedure are, first, the work of the understanding, second, an awareness of the objective physical situation of perceiver and object.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Perception and the Body: Introduction to Part 4 of Consciousness and the World"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Introduction to Part 4
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Proprioception and the Body Image"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 23
Author's AbstractProprioception is true perceiving. It and touch form a closely linked mutually dependent yet diverse pair. The puzzle whereby the demands upon the Attention of proprioception are no distraction in instrumental action is resoluble through the fact that the internal active content within an instrumental deed is a harmonious hierarchy. The ‘long-term body image’ is a causally posited something whose content encompasses body shape, which is a necessary but insufficient condition of proprioception of body shape and posture. It is distinct from the ‘short-term body image’, which designates the internal content of the proprioceptive perception of the body at any moment. The main philosophical problem consists in assembling a bona fide veridical concept of the long-term image. Reasons for positing it begin with the common content in the short-term images over lengthy periods. But they must be supplemented by the fact that bodily sensations do not represent body shape, being already dependent on body-awareness for both individuation1 and position. Only through hypothesizing a long-term image can one make sense of proprioception. Reasons are given for believing (1) the body image is a dispositional psychological phenomenon, (2) it is one and the same when explaining proprioception and sensation-location, (3) it is an empirical postulate, and (4) even though it falls short of being an a priori necessity, it is as deeply embedded in animal existence as proprioception.
Paper Comment
Very similar to "O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Proprioception and the Body Image".
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - The Sense of Touch"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Chapter 24
Author's AbstractIn a way this is the most fundamental of the senses, being as necessary to animality as the capacity for bodily action. It is of central import for this sense that bodily sensations do not represent bodily or tactile space. The varieties of touch, which range from point-contact to exploration across space and time of the shape of objects, are characterized. Since we perceive simple object shapes through awareness of the shape of bodily movements, space-representationalism must be true in simple cases, and while more complex cases differ they are yet constituted out of such representational relations. Then both the shape one seems to perceive, and what one actually perceives and discovers, depend on what one knows and assumes concerning the shape and stability of one's body and the object. This dependence of perceptual inquiry and discovery upon a fund of knowledge is found throughout the senses. It points to the existence of a measure of innate knowledge concerning the environment. The mutual dependence of proprioception and the sense of touch is demonstrated, and disposes of the theory that body-awareness precedes all other awareness.
"O'Shaughnessy (Brian) - Consciousness and the World: Conclusion"
Source: O'Shaughnessy - Consciousness and the World, 2000, Conclusion
Author's AbstractWhy is consciousness so closely linked to perception? It is because consciousness is directed to the World, and perception our ultimate mode of access to the World. Thus, the most fundamental of the empirical relations of consciousness to the World is the perceptual. Through it the mind acquires both the content necessary for intentionality, and an awareness of the setting in which to lead a life. What does consciousness bring to this situation? Apart from availability of the perceptual Attention, the most important property is the rationality of the state. Two mental conditions of rationality were explored: self-knowledge, and an overall mental activeness and pre-eminently the active process of thinking. Then in the state of consciousness thus constituted we typically encounter the phenomenon of perception, set in the stream of experience, the unique experience, which is of the species-type, experience-of. Here we have the original epistemological relation between consciousness and the World, and the basis of all more developed or thought-mediated intentional consciousnesses. Then, sight has a multitude of assets that make it the most effective example to demonstrate how in the perceptions of the conscious we encounter the fully constituted object in its universal setting. At that point, consciousness fufils an appointed destiny.
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