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Reconstructing Consciousness, Mind and Being

The Ninth Annual Conference of the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society
St Anne’s College, Oxford, 16th-18th September 2005.

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell

Everyone who contributes to Consciousness Studies agrees there is something to study, but no one seems to quite agree what. This becomes apparent at conferences, where both finer points and fundamental issues are being debated simultaneously. Part of the problem, but also what makes the area so dynamic and invigorating, is the variety of disciplines that can stake a claim to the field. Ostensibly a meeting centred on Psychology (the CEP is a section of the British Psychological Society), this event attracted delegates from a wide range of practices and traditions, including psychiatrists, philosophers, physicists, and healers.


Unfortunately I was late arriving and so missed the first keynote by Thomas Metzinger, an important figure in contemporary philosophy, who addressed the conference theme of Reconstructing Consciousness, Mind and Being by tackling the most notorious problem in Consciousness Studies — the so-called ‘hard problem’ of first person perspective, phenomenal experience. His aim is to provide an "empirically plausible theory of mental representation" by positing a new theoretical entity: the "phenomenal self model" that, reading from the abstract, is generated by a "genetically determined neuromatrix whose activation patterns could be the basis of the body image and the subjective experience of embodiment." According to Metzinger, subjective experience from the first-person perspective only arises, however, when the biological system naively "confuses" itself with the internally generated model. It is an interesting idea that appears to be supported by recent neurological evidence about the ‘phantom limb’ syndrome, where amputees continue to experience sensation in limbs they no longer have. This suggests that we each have a tangible internal map of our bodies that can be experienced independently from the parts of the body to which it refers.

Richard Bentall is an eminent clinical psychiatrist whose recent book, Madness Explained, has been the subject of much heated discussion in mental health circles. He is challenging the foundational doctrines of his field, namely the taxonomy of psychosis established by Emil Kraepelin in the late nineteenth century, which is still largely in force today. Bentall argues not just that Kraeplelin’s claims (for instance, that there is a clear division between madness and sanity) are medically inaccurate but that they are positively injurious, leading to inappropriate and sometimes severely destructive medical treatments and social policies. His response is to advocate a form of diagnosis that concentrates on specific symptoms, that is, certain kinds of behaviour and experience, rather than pre-existing categories of clinical condition, such as schizophrenia. Using epidemiological and other data, he showed that boundaries between psychotic and non-psychotic mental functioning are much fuzzier than the discipline of Psychiatry formally allows, and that in fact psychotic behaviours and experiences are distributed much more widely through the general population than is normally recognised. His call was for a much more humane approach to diagnosis and treatment, including greater cognisance being taken of environmental factors such as racial and sexual abuse, which can be shown to have a dramatic influence on the occurrence and distribution of psychotic illnesses. He was also scathing of the role of pharmaceutical companies in distorting clinical trials in other to further their own interests.

The final keynote was delivered by Ravi Ravindra, former professor of Physics and currently Professor Emertitus at Dalhousie University. He offered thoughts on the comparison between (what are broadly categorised as) Western and Eastern traditions in their approach to mind, science, and philosophy. He argued that the cultures have more in common than is often supposed, but that this commonality is more evident in the spiritual traditions than the philosophical or scientific ones. While science and philosophy as modes of investigation seek to activate the mind by the generation of hypotheses and knowledge, spiritual practices strive to ‘quiet’ the mind through meditation or prayer. And while science and philosophy (certainly in the West) identify subjectivity with the subject, this is regarded as (in the Yoga tradition at least) as an illusion borne out of ignorance: "According to both the theory and practice of Yoga, the mind is not the knower. The real knower … is above the mind and knows through the mind and not with the mind." Using the analogy of the way in which inaudible radio waves can be converted into music with the right receiving apparatus, he suggested that mind be understood as a quality that pervades us but extends far beyond us — it is both universal and singular. Central to this is the idea of the opposition between the universal one-ness of the cosmos (a key insight to be found in many spiritual traditions) and the uniqueness of each thing in the cosmos — — an opposition that is fully acknowledged in Yoga. For Ravindra this co-presence of opposition is more than a mystical fancy. It is to be found at all levels of reality and is exemplified in the famous duality of wave and particle that the split light experiment demonstrates.

The notion of opposition, duality and complementarity seemed emerge as an underlying theme in several talks at the conference. Uziel Awret, for example, outlined the way in which the varying interpretations of quantum mechanics, and Bohr’s complementarity principle in particular, can both enrich and constrain our capacity to understand consciousness at a physical level. Citing Georges Bataille’s paradoxical principle of ‘general economy’, in which "representation always entails an irreducible and non-recouperable loss in representation and meaning", Awret suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics renders physicalist explanations of consciousness unavoidably incomplete. Complementarity of another kind — in terms of complementary approaches to medicine — was also the subject of several sessions, with much time and emphasis given to the theory and practice of meditation and the therapeutic value of ‘mindfulness’, an approach to self-awareness based on Eastern spiritual knowledge.

In keeping with this spirit of mindfulness and reflection, it was notable the extent to which various speakers addressed, what might be called, the ethical aspects of Consciousness Studies. In a panel discussion about the constructive applications of spiritual and philosophical endeavour, Metzinger asserted that the purpose of all publicly funded consciousness research should be to relieve human suffering. This was echoed in John Pickering’s talk, which called for a more humane turn in the study of mind, citing an openly Buddhist concern for our fellow humans. At certain points the underlying tension between the scientific materialist and contemplative spiritual approaches broke through, with one delegate questioning the scientific value of Ravindra’s theological statements. Ravindra seemed to sum up something about the conference when he replied that what is of value to science is less important than what is of value to humanity.

Both the conference organisers and St Anne’s College need to be thanked for hosting this stimulating event. Whatever Consciousness Studies might be, it still manages to frustrate, confound, confuse and inspire a whole generation of intellectuals and academics, each of who is wise enough to recognise their own specialty might not hold all the answers. Meeting in such congenial surroundings helps to generate the sense of a widely dispersed collegium that, despite the diversity of positions, carries the exciting sense of a shared enterprise.

 

 




Updated 1st November 2005


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