Beckett
Andreas Bjornerud on Joseph H. Smith,
ed, The World of Samuel Beckett (Johns Hopkins), in TLS, June 14
1991, p.p.23-4
"Thus certain of the contributions
clearly stem from that branch of psychoanalytic theory that is often termed
ego-psychology and that makes of psychoanalysis a new means to enable
self-expression: they therefore tend to read Beckett's works in terms of how
far they facilitate the cure that is complete self-expression. Other
contributors, however, clearly read from what could be called the Lacanian
perspective, seeking at any rate to stress that which radically destabilizes
a self-possessed subjectivity: namely, the unconscious. These critics read
Beckett's work as that of a fractured self exploring its own instability,
either in terms that are close to those of Trezise (the subject's failure to
constitute itself, the impossibility of self-presence), or which are both
more recognizably psychoanalytic and also distinctively Beckettian (the
Beckettian subject as mourning its lost wholeness, or investigating its
uncertain gender)."
The allusion is to Thomas Trezise, Into
the Breach: Samuel Beckett and the ends of literature (Princeton).
Malone meurt
"Je serais quand même bientôt tout à
fait mort."
This is the very first phrase in this
novel. It is one the meaning of which we all grasp because it is universally
true. But what consequences does this momentous truth bring to the speaker
in this work? What do we ourselves derive from this knowledge? The answer S.
Beckett gives is "none". Notice all the modifiers and conditionals in the
phrase, which all it says is really: "je vais mourir" or "je serai mort".
Malone is facing death. Does this affect
his conduct? He elaborates a program for the while, but understandably
enough, he does not follow it, though in general he does introduce some sort
of order into his "last" moments. Would he have done that anyway if he were
not going to die? Perhaps not. In any case he would have gone on with his
senseless talking and thinking. He would have done as he did in those
moments when he disregarded the program, which were quite frequent. The
point is that he fears death and sees no point in facing up to it. His
attitude towards death is incurably frivolous. But what attitude could he
take in the context of his existence?
L'innomable
If Proust achieved the highest
manifestation of the traditional psychological novel in A la recherche,
then it must be said that Beckett achieved in L'innomable the
ultimate form of the presence of philosophy in literature . In this work, a
voice exerting itself obsessively to avoid the world, finally manages the
feat of achieving the most coherent presentation of what existence, or being
in the world, is all about, which is primarily about the malaise of
awareness. This is revealed principally through fixation, as in the voice's
obsession with words, but it is also regret and the fear of temporality.
There are in this novel suggestions of strong links to specific
philosophers: to Sartre, for instance, in the concept of freedom as
nihilation, and especially to Wittgenstein, in the obsession with language
and in the avowed desire to cease talking, to put an end to questioning. But
fundamentally Beckett's achievement is to have written an accurate and
excruciating representation of the human condition. It could be argued that
it is a thoroughly contemporary representation, yet he explicitly refers to
Descartes and Geulincx, as well as to certain pre-modern philosophers, all
of which would indicate that he has found support for his ideas and images
in sources far distant from our times.
Living is a form of complicity with
people and things. This novel starts much as a new-born person would: by not
knowing the ordinary sense of people and things. Initially it portrays a
form of absolute disengagement. The only thing clear is that the narrator
must not stop, in fact, cannot stop. It is a mind that speaks in a world in
which there is no light but one can see, where a person treads always the
same ground and always in the same direction but not in a circle, where it
is not excluded that one might walk while sitting Since this happens only in
dreams and nightmares, what we have is a mind within a mind. All
abstractions lose meaning and objects appear piecemeal and impose themselves
in what seems like pure perception. The flow of sentences has no apparent
order and any purposeful statement produces an intellectual jolt.
Nevertheless, in places the narrator picks up threads. This is natural to
the mind, but in this work only paragraphs, or parts of paragraphs, isolated
sentences, have any coherence at all. The initial impressions are of a mind
wandering, yet eventually there appears an effort, a sort of fragmented,
objectless purposiveness.
The world exists but "it" is shut within
itself.
"Ceci nest pas un procéssus d'accumulation
mais de dépouillement.
Même le "je" s'estompe.
Language is self-perpetuating, but it is
of no use other than for talking and thinking for their own sakes.
Vivre, c'est faire beaucoup of choses
compliquées au même temps.
Passages brouillés auprès des narratives
insolites.
Liberté absolue de la pensée
Idées qui viennent d'où? Qui viennent,
c'est tout!
A search for identity, as one critic
said? I doubt it!
Il se voit, il vit dans sa propre pensée.
Consciousness is a matter of words.
Words "sanction" fixation.
Man's ability to get above himself ad
infinitum.
La conciencia en su estado puro.
Une conscience dans l'éternité.
Can we distinguish time from the things
we do?
There are references to the "world" of
the novel itself.
The attempt to define this world is
systematic and orderly.
There are references to the "world" of
Beckett's fiction.
The central "character" here, l'innomable,
refuses to be a pawn of the other "characters" in Beckett.
It is a refusal of language and of
individuality.
There are "realistic" references to the
real world.
There are allusions to God and to god.
And there are references to Kafka,
Descartes, and others.
The narrative changes from the first to
the third person and the other way around, but not haphazardly.
Some passages are coherent and rational,
some are fixated gibberish.
Some passages are incipient narratives,
others are circular, others are concatenated.
Some passages use language for reference,
but most are about language itself.
PROUST AND
BECKETT
Proust and Beckett achieved the two most
finished literary representations of experience. Proust carried
psychological realism to its finest expression. With his long, intricate,
dense, sometimes impenetrable, ambiguous, or incoherent sentences, fraught
with qualifications, ironies, and antithesis, he depicted in a manner
unsurpassed our fugitive, coursing, complex, contradictory, often
exhilarating, apprehension of reality and of our relationship to it. He was
always on the qui vive for "glimpses of perfection" and for the
interpretation and reinterpretation of life: of social mores, of individual
thought and behaviour, of the aesthetic experience. For Proust, the meaning
of life was to be found in the fusion of life and art. It is seldom that we
agree wholeheartedly with Proust's judgements, or that we empathize with his
feelings and his sensibility, but in the end we have to surrender to the
veracity of his representation of the texture of thought. We may not
understand his detailed depiction of romantic passion or of its meandering
course, we may not share in its obsessiveness and irrationality, but we have
to admit that what he describes is what it feels like to love, that
somewhere in the thick and variegated juxtaposition of emotions we find
ourselves inextricably, dumbly, unequivocally entangled.
Beckett exhausted another aspect of our
inner being, perhaps the central core of our psychology: the experience
itself of consciousness, the knowledge that we are aware, that we are not
animals or machines, whether this experience is gratuituous and unavailing,
hence inexplicable, or whether it is the proof of some reality beyond
ourselves, some meaning beyond the circularity and futility of thought. His
sentences are brief and simple, deliberately tainted with clichés and
ready-made phrases. His logic is primitive, his processes of thought
disconnected, bunched into discrete, pointless, frequently unabashedly
irrational excursions. His connection to the external world, by contrast
with Proust's easeful grasp of a certain social life and its subtleties, is
tenuous, episodic, conjunctural. What Beckett is constantly seeking is not
some explanation, not some rightness about existence, but the expressibility,
the elusiveness ordinariness of conscious experience, around which he seems
to discover the constant stalking presence of anxiety.
Being
and knowing (provisional)
Our objective is an answer to the
problem of dualism, which we characterize typically in the knowing/being
duality. If we can show that knowing and being are equivalent, then we
will have struck at the root of dualism. For this we must show that
cognition, which is the concrete form of knowing, is reliable. This is not
the same as claiming that being is knowing. But knowing must be of being,
and if cognition is reliable, then knowing corresponds to being. It may
not be possible to say that things are to the extent that we know, but it
is perfectly reasonable to say that we know things and to the extent that
things are potentially knowable, then knowledge of things is equivalent to
the being of things.
However, cognitive processes are not
universally reliable. Much of what we consider knowledge is probabilistic.
Certain areas of knowledge admit only of interpretations. It is, therefore,
also possible to deny the cognitive denial of dualism. The final solution we
propose is that we can at least delimit the area of controversial
propositions, in which it is possible to apply cognitive criteria derived
from history.
There are various ways of putting this.
One, the least susceptible to consensus, is that if philosophy is about
knowledge, then it is about history. Closer to a consensual position would
be that there is no perfect solution to the problem of dualism. This could
be read as meaning that there is no solution at all. But it can also be read
as meaning that knowledge is relative reliable and that this is sufficient
to sustain the equivalence between knowing and being. The fit between our
type duality may not be perfect, but it is close enough to validate a
relation of equivalence.
Mind/matter constitute a "subspecies" of
the duality knowing/being. It is often considered the fundamental embodiment
of the problem of dualism. Whether it is or not, any project that pretends
to address knowing/being as the essence of dualism, cannot leave mind/matter
dualism to one side. Mind is constituted by propositions. The
propositionality of mind entails rule-governed cognitive processes. These
rules can be called basic cognitive propositions (basic-cog's). Their yields
are inferences. The fundamental cognitive processes are intuitive logic,
sensation, memory, and perception. Formal logic is the result of the
exploration of intuitive logic by itself. Knowledge ultimately is the
ability to use basic-cog's.
The temporality of mind entails that
cognition is basically subconscious. All cognitive processes involve an
innate system for representing and manipulating symbols. Awareness is
nothing more than the "tip" of cognition. Consciousness is the recall of the
yields of cognition, i.e., an awareness of awareness, and as such it is
epiphenomenal.
The system for representing and
manipulating mental symbols--the latter could be called "squiggles" on an
analogy with the monitoring of program files in computers--has its own rules
comparable to a grammar, although not at all like a public, communicative
language. Squiggles can be expressed as basic-cog's, which mainly describe
the interactiveness of all other basic-cog's, although these rules need not
be the only ones that determine the way the system functions.
As a solution to the mind/matter
problem, we propose an analogy between squiggles and neurons. The basis of
our claim is the inevitability that no matter how much we can deduce about
cognition from a disciplined and "restricted" use of the awareness of
cognition, we will always in the end have to take our claims back to the
neurological level. We call this analogous monism, for its fundamental claim
is that no hypothesis about mind can be productive unless it can be squared
with what is known conclusively about the functioning of the brain and its
cells. By making our knowledge of thought reliant on hypothesized cognitive
entities which are conceptually as close as possible to neurons, then it
might be possible to advance the knowledge of mind from the awareness of our
cognitive processes.
It is possible to make certain
deductions about mind as such, rather than as cognition. According to the
principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, all propositions are
specific. The self is constituted by specific propositions, which however do
not stray decisively from their types. Volition and affects can be explained
in terms of "propositional clash", and this can be defined as any
propositional threat to the specificity of self.
There are three possible types of
inferences: apodictic, necessary, and probabilistic. To these correspond,
respectively, logical and mathematical, factual and inductive, and
interpretative or controversial propositions. In order to solve the problem
of probabilistic inferences and interpretative propositions it is ultimately
necessary to appeal to history and to the concept of vox historiae.
VH entails a theory of the movement of
history for this is the only means to put an end to epistemological regress,
even though we have to admit that any theory about history will eo ipso
be considered interpretative and debatable. Nevertheless, if VH is to work,
then history must somehow be rational and "progressive". At the very least,
we must have grounds for believing that it cannot be an exercise in
futility.
If history were constituted only by
public and collective events, then VH-validation would be leaving undecided
or untouched a host of issues. Since it is time and not history that
embraces everything, if we want to equate knowing and being, it can only be
from the perspective of time that we can fill the chasm of dualism. But we
cannot derive from time as we did from history the concept of VH unless we
can actually argue that history is time and time is history. And in fact,
the distinction between what is and what is not historical is rather blurry.
A sensible position would seem to be that all events are potentially
historical. We cannot exclude from history many things that appear not to be
but are ineluctably part of history. And this opens the way to argue for the
equivalence between history and time as a solution to the problem of
dualism. If history is time, then everything that was, is, or will be is
historical. History would have to include error, transiency, and "private
matters".
One important implication of this is
that knowledge comprises not only what VH sanctions as valid today but even
what it formerly sanctioned as valid and turned out to be invalid. The
discovery of error is itself a form of knowing. If VH licenses a reasonable
knowing/being equivalence, then such an equivalence must include error.
The knowing/being duality is not broken
by the imperfect fit of its two terms, but the relation that we are invoking
in these arguments is that of equivalence rather than that of identity. This
means that our conclusions, though logical, are only probable. It means
further that we have to recur to VH to make them valid. We cannot escape
this circularity.
The claim that being and knowledge are
equivalent does not entail that knowledge in some way makes being possible.
At most we could say that whatever is can be represented and that what is
actually represented does not include all that can be represented. It
follows from the previous arguments that we cannot make a coherent
distinction between what is and what is known, which includes knowing that
we do not know everything there is to know.
We can now go back for corroboration to
the argument that the bridging from mind to matter can be achieved through
an analogy between a system for mental representation and the nervous
system. Knowledge is the ontologically "privileged" representation of being.
The representation of being is being itself in the sense that nothing can
exist that cannot be represented. History as VH tends to correct any
possible waywardness in the representation of being. Since the
representation of being happens through the mediation of squiggles and being
includes neurons, the equivalence between being and its representation
reinforces the squiggles/neurons analogy, itself a corroboration of the
equivalence between knowing and being.
Belief
Not believing is not belief, but the
negation of a belief is a belief. If there is neither a yes or a no (or
the absence of a yes not equivalent to a no), then belief is not involved.
Believing or not believing are necessarily valid. But the direct reference
of propositions can be valid or invalid. Cognition is not always reliable.
Even when justification and validation coincide, the result is not always
belief. Belief is not necessarily the result of objective cognitive
processes. Only to the extent that cognition per se might determine
behaviour can it be said that cognition determines belief. The question
then is: what explains belief that is not caused by cognitive processes in
themselves?
Indirect reference is to propositional
attitudes (the belief-proposition). It also entails that all propositions
have causes. Hence, if I say that I believe this or that, even if what I
believe in is nonsense, it is a necessarily valid proposition, assuming I am
talking to myself.
When we grasp and accept as valid the
proposition that someone believes in his perception of rain--the indirect
reference of the proposition that "it is raining"--we are assuming that the
proposition refers indirectly to the basis of propositions in cognition. The
validity of the indirect reference to propositional bases does not mean that
every proposition that we make about cognitive processes is valid. That
cognition necessarily involves cognitive processes is a valid general
proposition, but specific theories of cognition fall in the area of
interpretation.
Propositional contents, or the direct
reference of propositions, are the yield of cognitive processes without the
belief-proposition. If we attach the belief-proposition to any proposition
we eo ipso make it valid. In the case of perception, we assume that
it is valid and this assumption is equivalent to the attachment to a
proposition of the belief-proposition. What is actually perceived is
propositional content. From a fleeting glance at a light on a mountain at
night, we suppose that it is a car coming down a road. This belief is
necessarily valid, yet the light may not correspond in reality to a car but
to a house on the road or to some other cause. Our belief is valid but what
we believe in need not be valid.
The proposition: "it is raining", is
valid if it is indeed raining. This is its direct reference. It can refer
indirectly to someone's belief in his perception of rain. The proposition:
"it is going to rain", is probabilistic. It will be valid only if it does
indeed rain. If the utterer of the proposition also believes that it is
going to rain, then the proposition is necessarily valid from its indirect
reference. In this case, the proposition is: "someone believes that it is
going to rain". This proposition cannot be denied insofar as it is a
statement of belief. It says nothing about the validity of the contents of
propositions.
Cognitive theory does not explain why
belief arises in the absence of reliably cognitive grounds. In addition,
cognitive theory contemplates propositions which do not necessarily justify
belief. Belief not only does not come up crucially in cognitive theory, but
when it does come up it is a problem it cannot solve. Cognitive theory does
not explain why we say yes or no to propositions. But in fact we constantly
do so.
(1) Cognition does not necessarily yield
valid propositions and (2) it does not per se determine belief. Are
these two separate, independent propositions, or is it that the first
proposition determines the second proposition. Does the fact that cognition
does not necessarily yield validity "cause" the fact that cognition does not
determine belief? Cognitive theory cannot but accept that cognition yields
(1) misperceptions of all sorts; (2) debatable or controversial
propositions; and (3) logical errors due to different cognitive abilities.
Even though cognitive theory is a derivation from experience which tries to
eliminate the specificities of cognition, it cannot lose touch with its base
in experience. It tries to minimize or to hold in abeyance the specificities
of experience, but it cannot entirely do so. Insofar as cognitive theory is
derivation, it must frequently return to the reality from which it springs.
This uncertainty or iffiness in the cognitive model implies that it is
indeed the first of our propositions that determines the second of our
propositions.
We perceive without knowing the rules of
perception. Knowing something is acting efficaciously on such knowledge.
There are areas of cognition where disputation can arise. But there are also
fundamental principles that humanity is agreed upon. We can know when
something is false and no one can deliberately and honestly believe a
falsehood. But even such knowledge as we derive nomologically and on which
there exists universal agreement need not constrain belief.
Cognition implies belief, but it does not
explain the why of specific belief-propositions. Generally we believe in
what we see and we believe in the validity of logical and mathematical
derivations. But we need not believe in such propositions. Logical and
mathematical derivations are subject to doubts from the knowledge of our
cognitive limitations. We can doubt even the clearest of our perceptions.
Let us have again the proposition: "it is
raining". The indirect reference here is that someone believes that it is
raining. It need not be so. But if it is indeed raining, someone surely is
right in believing that it is raining. But suppose the same proposition is
based on what sounds like rain on the roof. Without visual or another sort
of verification, cognition cannot say for sure that it is raining. But
someone can conclude from the evidence that it is raining. What is it that
justifies the belief-proposition? Evidently, the same type of cognitive
propositions that would determine the validity of the direct reference of a
proposition. The difference is that, when visual verification is not
included, basic-cog's cannot actually determine conclusively that it is
raining. From the sound on the roof alone cognition can infer that it is
raining, but this inference is not inevitable. It may be that the sound is
not that of rain but of the humming of the air-conditioner fan. Yet the self
concludes that it is rain. Something is added to the objective cognitive
process.
Let us assume the cognitive self believes
that it is raining because it saw clouds and from their look it deduced that
such clouds portended rain. It also might have been hoping for rain and so
was inclined to believe that it was raining. Both of these propositions are
specific to the self. It is from its specificity that the cognitive self
concludes that it is raining and believes in this proposition. If the belief
depended on objective cognitive processes alone, the self could not have a
solid base for belief. It would have to say that it does not know. This
could be construed as "the self does not believe". Non-belief as the denial
of the validity of a propositional yield is a belief, but the question must
first be asked.
It could be the case that I conclude
something, but because of some lingering doubt I refuse to believe in my own
conclusion. Again, I do not believe. If the cognitive self simply cannot
decide, or is not interested in deciding, on the available evidence that
this is or is not the state of affairs, then it simply registers the
proposition, including its justification, but neither believes nor
disbelieves. In all cases it is not determined by cognition in itself, but
by the specificity of cognitive processes.
Because of the grounding of belief on the
specificity of cognition, belief as such cannot be gainsaid by
basic-cog's. It would be as if basic-cog's were in self-contradiction. Since
it cannot be gainsaid by basic-cog's, the indirect reference in a
proposition is necessarily valid. Basic-cog's underpin my belief, but
basic-cog's cannot refute my belief.
Even perception, reliable as it is,
cannot give a full account of belief. We only have the moment of awareness
or of perception. Currently, we might not doubt that a scene we witnessed an
instant ago actually took place. But the scene is no longer there. We do not
have the scene in front of our eyes. Even if we claimed that the rules of
perception necessarily induce belief, we cannot say that they induce belief
in anything other than the instant of perception.
For the continuity of perception, we have
to rely not on the principles of perception themselves but on the basic-cogs
of memory. Our belief in this scene is founded on memory, but memory is not
as reliable as perception. We cannot claim, as we could about the instant of
perception, that cognition makes belief inevitable. Memory covers the lag
between the instant of perception and the belief in the continuity of
perception. The specificity of perception is minimal. All normal-sighted
human beings will have the same process of visual recognition. But memory is
very specific. We can easily assume the continuity of perception from memory
but we cannot claim that our belief about the continuity of perception is
such that memory and memory alone as a cognitive process can induce belief.
What does induce belief is our specific knowledge of how memory functions
specifically in us. We trust our memory not because memory is reliable--we
know it isn't--but because of the specific knowledge that we have about the
reliability of our specific mnemonic abilities.
It is possible that it may be volition
that explains belief. The self could say: "between two possibilities, I
choose this one rather than the other one". But volition is a cognitive
process also. We can suspend belief. The suspension of belief leads nowhere.
But volition always leads somewhere. This is its essence. Belief determines
volition and not the other way around.
To ascribe belief in absurdities and
intangibles to an act of will is patently insufficient. We could as easily
claim to believe in anything and act as if we believed in nothing, which
would not make much sense. To explain belief we have to posit the specific
self. All our beliefs stem from a specific self. To make belief a function
of specific self is to express the claim that we believe what we need or
want or desire to believe in and that it is not cognition in itself that
induces belief.
The specific self is the context of ideas
and the possibility of belief. But the specific self is also the affect
which makes a certain belief not only possible but also probable. Are we
speaking here of two specific selves in one of which we entertain certain
possible beliefs and in another of which we can actually have such beliefs?
Specific affects are part of the specific self. Without the specific self
that has certain ideas there would not be the specific affects that
stimulate or encourage belief in certain ideas. The affects reinforce the
idea.
Cognition is determined by the
life-experience of the specific self, but it is fundamentally unaffected by
affects. And the affect itself, which is based on physical feelings, can
hardly be said to have done anything beyond providing a fillip for thought.
The affect, for instance, would have had no effect whatever on my idea if
the idea did not exist. And a fortiori the physical basis of the
affect would have been useless without other favorable propositions, which
have nothing specific to do with my physical state. In sum, we have to do
only with cognition and the specific self. We need not complicate matters
with specificities within the specific self. However, we know that the
specific self is suffused by propositional affects, that in fact one of the
fundamental specifications of the specific self are such affects, and
therefore we have to posit that such affects can also be determinant of
belief-propositions.
There is no self apart from each specific
thought. There are circumstances in which we actually think of our thought.
One evident case is when we are philosophizing. Another case is when
cognitive processes, for any number of possible reasons, bring our
experience into view of our thought. A third instance is when
affectivity-charged propositions clamber into awareness. This third case is
not really different from the second case, except that the propositions that
enter awareness do so with the force of affects. We cannot disclaim the
self-specificity of any of our thoughts, but their specificity becomes
strong when they are accompanied by affects. Theoretically, we could have
doubts as to whether an argument is specifically ours, but it is impossible
to have doubts about the self-specificity of a recalled proposition
involving pain or pleasure. If all else fails, affects are proof positive of
the specificity and unity of self.
VERSION TWO
Not believing is not belief, but the
negation of a belief is a belief. If there is neither a yes or a no (or the
absence of a yes not equivalent to a no), then belief is not involved.
Believing or not believing are necessarily valid. But the direct reference
of propositions can be valid or invalid. Cognition is not always reliable.
Even when justification and validation coincide, the result is not always
belief. Belief is not necessarily the result of objective cognitive
processes. Only to the extent that cognition per se might determine
behaviour can it be said that cognition determines belief. The question then
is: what explains belief that is not caused by cognitive processes in
themselves?
Indirect reference is to propositional
attitudes (the belief-proposition). It also entails that all propositions
have causes. Hence, if I say that I believe this or that, even if what I
believe in is nonsense, it is a necessarily valid proposition, assuming I am
talking to myself.
When we grasp and accept as valid the
proposition that someone believes in his perception of rain--the indirect
reference of the proposition that "it is raining"--we are assuming that the
proposition refers indirectly to the basis of propositions in cognition. The
validity of the indirect reference to propositional bases does not mean that
every proposition that we make about cognitive processes is valid. That
cognition necessarily involves cognitive processes is a valid general
proposition, but specific theories of cognition fall in the area of
interpretation.
Propositional contents, or the direct
reference of propositions, are the yield of cognitive processes without the
belief-proposition. If we attach the belief-proposition to any proposition
we eo ipso make it valid. In the case of perception, we assume that
it is valid and this assumption is equivalent to the attachment to a
proposition of the belief-proposition. What is actually perceived is
propositional content. From a fleeting glance at a light on a mountain at
night, we suppose that it is a car coming down a road. This belief is
necessarily valid, yet the light may not correspond in reality to a car but
to a house on the road or to some other cause. Our belief is valid but what
we believe in need not be valid.
The proposition: "it is raining", is
valid if it is indeed raining. This is its direct reference. It can refer
indirectly to someone's belief in his perception of rain. The proposition:
"it is going to rain", is probabilistic. It will be valid only if it does
indeed rain. If the utterer of the proposition also believes that it is
going to rain, then the proposition is necessarily valid from its indirect
reference. In this case, the proposition is: "someone believes that it is
going to rain". This proposition cannot be denied insofar as it is a
statement of belief. It says nothing about the validity of the contents of
propositions.
Cognitive theory does not explain why
belief arises in the absence of reliably cognitive grounds. In addition,
cognitive theory contemplates propositions which do not necessarily justify
belief. Belief not only does not come up crucially in cognitive theory, but
when it does come up it is a problem it cannot solve. Cognitive theory does
not explain why we say yes or no to propositions. But in fact we constantly
do so.
(1) Cognition does not necessarily yield
valid propositions and (2) it does not per se determine belief. Are
these two separate, independent propositions, or is it that the first
proposition determines the second proposition. Does the fact that cognition
does not necessarily yield validity "cause" the fact that cognition does not
determine belief? Cognitive theory cannot but accept that cognition yields
(1) misperceptions of all sorts; (2) debatable or controversial
propositions; and (3) logical errors due to different cognitive abilities.
Even though cognitive theory is a derivation from experience which tries to
eliminate the specificities of cognition, it cannot lose touch with its base
in experience. It tries to minimize or to hold in abeyance the specificities
of experience, but it cannot entirely do so. Insofar as cognitive theory is
derivation, it must frequently return to the reality from which it springs.
This uncertainty or iffiness in the cognitive model implies that it is
indeed the first of our propositions that determines the second of our
propositions.
We perceive without knowing the rules of
perception. Knowing something is acting efficaciously on such knowledge.
There are areas of cognition where disputation can arise. But there are also
fundamental principles that humanity is agreed upon. We can know when
something is false and no one can deliberately and honestly believe a
falsehood. But even such knowledge as we derive nomologically and on which
there exists universal agreement need not constrain belief.
Cognition implies belief, but it does not
explain the why of specific belief-propositions. Generally we believe in
what we see and we believe in the validity of logical and mathematical
derivations. But we need not believe in such propositions. Logical and
mathematical derivations are subject to doubts from the knowledge of our
cognitive limitations. We can doubt even the clearest of our perceptions.
Let us have again the proposition: "it is
raining". The indirect reference here is that someone believes that it is
raining. It need not be so. But if it is indeed raining, someone surely is
right in believing that it is raining. But suppose the same proposition is
based on what sounds like rain on the roof. Without visual or another sort
of verification, cognition cannot say for sure that it is raining. But
someone can conclude from the evidence that it is raining. What is it that
justifies the belief-proposition? Evidently, the same type of cognitive
propositions that would determine the validity of the direct reference of a
proposition. The difference is that, when visual verification is not
included, basic-cog's cannot actually determine conclusively that it is
raining. From the sound on the roof alone cognition can infer that it is
raining, but this inference is not inevitable. It may be that the sound is
not that of rain but of the humming of the air-conditioner fan. Yet the self
concludes that it is rain. Something is added to the objective cognitive
process.
Let us assume the cognitive self believes
that it is raining because it saw clouds and from their look it deduced that
such clouds portended rain. It also might have been hoping for rain and so
was inclined to believe that it was raining. Both of these propositions are
specific to the self. It is from its specificity that the cognitive self
concludes that it is raining and believes in this proposition. If the belief
depended on objective cognitive processes alone, the self could not have a
solid base for belief. It would have to say that it does not know. This
could be construed as "the self does not believe". Non-belief as the denial
of the validity of a propositional yield is a belief, but the question must
first be asked.
It could be the case that I conclude
something, but because of some lingering doubt I refuse to believe in my own
conclusion. Again, I do not believe. If the cognitive self simply cannot
decide, or is not interested in deciding, on the available evidence that
this is or is not the state of affairs, then it simply registers the
proposition, including its justification, but neither believes nor
disbelieves. In all cases it is not determined by cognition in itself, but
by the specificity of cognitive processes.
Because of the grounding of belief on the
specificity of cognition, belief as such cannot be gainsaid by
basic-cog's. It would be as if basic-cog's were in self-contradiction. Since
it cannot be gainsaid by basic-cog's, the indirect reference in a
proposition is necessarily valid. Basic-cog's underpin my belief, but
basic-cog's cannot refute my belief.
Even perception, reliable as it is,
cannot give a full account of belief. We only have the moment of awareness
or of perception. Currently, we might not doubt that a scene we witnessed an
instant ago actually took place. But the scene is no longer there. We do not
have the scene in front of our eyes. Even if we claimed that the rules of
perception necessarily induce belief, we cannot say that they induce belief
in anything other than the instant of perception.
For the continuity of perception, we have
to rely not on the principles of perception themselves but on the basic-cogs
of memory. Our belief in this scene is founded on memory, but memory is not
as reliable as perception. We cannot claim, as we could about the instant of
perception, that cognition makes belief inevitable. Memory covers the lag
between the instant of perception and the belief in the continuity of
perception. The specificity of perception is minimal. All normal-sighted
human beings will have the same process of visual recognition. But memory is
very specific. We can easily assume the continuity of perception from memory
but we cannot claim that our belief about the continuity of perception is
such that memory and memory alone as a cognitive process can induce belief.
What does induce belief is our specific knowledge of how memory functions
specifically in us. We trust our memory not because memory is reliable--we
know it isn't--but because of the specific knowledge that we have about the
reliability of our specific mnemonic abilities.
It is possible that it may be volition,
which see, that explains belief. The self could say: "between two
possibilities, I choose this one rather than the other one". But volition is
a cognitive process also. We can suspend belief. The suspension of belief
leads nowhere. But volition always leads somewhere. This is its essence.
Belief determines volition and not the other way around.
To ascribe belief in absurdities and
intangibles to an act of will is patently insufficient. We could as easily
claim to believe in anything and act as if we believed in nothing, which
would not make much sense. To explain belief we have to posit the specific
self. All our beliefs stem from a specific self. To make belief a function
of specific self is to express the claim that we believe what we need or
want or desire to believe in and that it is not cognition in itself that
induces belief.
The specific self is the context of ideas
and the possibility of belief. But the specific self is also the affect
which makes a certain belief not only possible but also probable. Are we
speaking here of two specific selves in one of which we entertain certain
possible beliefs and in another of which we can actually have such beliefs?
Specific affects are part of the specific self. Without the specific self
that has certain ideas there would not be the specific affects that
stimulate or encourage belief in certain ideas. The affects reinforce the
idea.
Cognition is determined by the
life-experience of the specific self, but it is fundamentally unaffected by
affects. And the affect itself, which is based on physical feelings, can
hardly be said to have done anything beyond providing a fillip for thought.
The affect, for instance, would have had no effect whatever on my idea if
the idea did not exist. And a fortiori the physical basis of the
affect would have been useless without other favorable propositions, which
have nothing specific to do with my physical state. In sum, we have to do
only with cognition and the specific self. We need not complicate matters
with specificities within the specific self. However, we know that the
specific self is suffused by propositional affects, that in fact one of the
fundamental specifications of the specific self are such affects, and
therefore we have to posit that such affects can also be determinant of
belief-propositions.
There is no self apart from each specific
thought. There are circumstances in which we actually think of our thought.
One evident case is when we are philosophizing. Another case is when
cognitive processes, for any number of possible reasons, bring our
experience into view of our thought. A third instance is when
affectivity-charged propositions clamber into awareness. This third case is
not really different from the second case, except that the propositions that
enter awareness do so with the force of affects. We cannot disclaim the
self-specificity of any of our thoughts, but their specificity becomes
strong when they are accompanied by affects. Theoretically, we could have
doubts as to whether an argument is specifically ours, but it is impossible
to have doubts about the self-specificity of a recalled proposition
involving pain or pleasure. If all else fails, affects are proof positive of
the specificity and unity of self.
Schiffer on meaning (1972)
"It has long been recognized that belief can't be explicated independently of desire, and vice versa, and a great merit of functionalism is its ability to show how the pair might be non-circularly defined together, each with respect to the other, via their interlocking roles in some theory in which they both occur as theoretical constructs"
Strawson on Schiffer
"What, in Schiffer's view, are we left with? We are left with true and irreducible sentences about meanings and about propositional attitudes, ie, sentences which can be used to say truly what certain linguistic expressions mean or what people mean by them, and sentences which can be used to say truly what people believe or what they intend. But the question of the contents of these truths, the question of what items, apart from people themselves, the sentences in use are about and what they say about these items, are questions which are left unanswered and, in Schieffer's view, unanswerable"
"Human beliefs are the outputs of natural psychological processes. Some such processes are reliable for producing true beliefs, others are not. People who take pains to ensure that their beliefs come from reliable processes will succeed in avoiding error."
Quine says approximately the same thing: that we should strive to improve the means towards belief, that this is the closest we can get to truth
Papineau
"Most recent thinking about beliefs, however, takes beliefs to be identified with their causal roles, not by norms governing their proper use. But causal roles will include situations in which beliefs ought not to be held (that is, where the beliefs are false) as well as cases where beliefs ought to be held (and are true). So something--the teleological theory--needs to be added to a purely causal role conception of belief if it is to account for the relationship between belief and their truth conditions."
"In chapter 4 I put forward a positive theory of how beliefs represent, which I call `the teleological theory of representation'. This is a fully `naturalized' theory: it takes beliefs to be functionally identified states of natural beings, and analyses their representational powers in terms of their biological purposes."
[First, I cannot see how "beliefs" can represent anything. At most words and meanings represent, but beliefs are "holistic" mental events. Unless by beliefs he means even perceptions and assumptions about the world, beyond which representation is complex and abstract. Second, I cannot relate "beliefs" to "biological purposes"]
"[Malcolm] ascribes to Wittgenstein the view that the concept of following a rule implies the concept of a community of rule-followers in which there is agreement about which actions conform with the rule: someone can truly be said to follow a rule only if he is a member of such a community...he miscontrues Wittgenstein's rejection of the idea of a rule that is essentially unshareable as the assertion that it is impossible for a socially isolated individual to follow a rule."
I Belief is to know something. I know someone just told me a Tsunami hit the coast. But do I really believe it? I believe I have this proposition in my mind, but I do not necessarily believe that its contents are valid. It is possible to know many things without believing in them, even to know things beyond having them in the mind. This is a common experience of apprentice pilots. They are told that certain instruments provide reliable information, but they will often not believe until they test them in practice. I recently read that Chinese pilots, used to old model fighters, did not trust new electronic gear.
Another poser about belief, related to the previous one, is that impeccable cognitive processes, such as logical inferences, do not necessarily induce belief.
The expression "I cannot believe my eyes" alludes to the possibility of doubting or suspending belief even in face of strong empirical evidence.
If we include behaviour such as writing or reasoning, then the test of whether we believe or not is whether we use a proposition, be it an argument or a perception, as a basis on which to act.
Since there is no escaping that just knowing something is in a certain way believing in something, yet such knowledge need not constrain behaviour, which is the test of a belief, L.Jonathan Cohen, in
An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (1993), tries to make a distinction between belief and acceptance. He defines belief as non-voluntary and as a matter of feeling, something of which infants and animals are capable, and acceptance as deliberate motivation or cause of action and of thought.
But I do not find the distinction very convincing. Is acceptance a real psychological event? Do we actually "accept" propositions? We have propositions and we can believe or disbelieve or be indifferent to them. If we believe we can act on them. But there is not a precise moment when we say "I accept so-and-so".
Every proposition entails a propositional attitude. These are not necessarily motivating or causative. But if we believe the contents of a proposition we are willing to act upon such contents. Hence, the distinction Cohen tries to make is between just knowing something and actually believing something. But the distance between them is not covered by a deliberate mental act call acceptance. Belief happens in respect to certain contents because of our specific selves and our specific selves operate subconsciously to determine our attitudes.
Quine defines belief in two ways: as dispositions and as sentences with the "adapter that ". "That" is more like a link between the belief attitude and the proposition, hence a conjunction. But whatever, both definitions are defective.
Belief is a mental content or state of mind. I can't offhand discover any substantial difference between content and state of mind. Content connotes occupation of capacity. State implies transitoriness. Given the temporal nature of existence, state is more apt. All mental states are meaningful.
Belief has propositions as its object, but some belief is non-propositional, e.g. physical pain. Also, not all propositions and not all sensations are objects of belief. Belief includes the denial of some propositions as well as doubts about sensations. There can be propositions and sensations that do not elicit belief: to which mind is indifferent. Belief arises through the epistemic qualification of mental states as either believable or not believable. Mind does not always and necessarily epistemically qualify propositional states, although of course it cannot disbelieve pain. The qualification of mental states self-evidently means that we believe or do not believe that all our thoughts are true, probable, or valid. But we need not believe that our beliefs are eternal, or that our beliefs may not be subject to modifications or even disqualification. We definitely do not believe that some of our beliefs are false.
Can our belief be characterized as
propositional attitudes? Only on the assumption of the Cartesian metaphor of some central knower and decider, some intangible self which relates to propositions and sensations as knower and decider, which, despite its dualistic and other implications, analytical philosophers appear to accept without qualms. In fact there are no propositional attitudes: there are propositions and beliefs. The distinction between propositions and propositional attitudes is unsustainable. There are no orphan propositions. Epistemic qualification is done by cognition without the intervention of a central knower and decider. But on reflection I am also capable of discovering an implicit self. Awareness is the explicitness of self
Pascal Engel on J. Christopher Maloney, The Mundane Matter of Mental Language
(Cambridge University Press), TLS, August 17-23 1990, p. 880
"The beliefs an agent actually has are those necessary best to explain the agent's behaviour."
Brentano
"Every mental phenomenon is
characterized by what the scholastics in the Middle Ages called the
intentional (and also mental) inexistence of an object, and what we would
call, although in not entirely unambiguous terms, the reference to a
content, a direction upon an object (by which we are not to understand a
reality in this case), or an immanent objectivity. Each one includes
something as object within itself, although not always in the same way. In
presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or
denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, etc."
Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom
empirischen Standpunkt (1874)
DUMMETT ON THE BRENTANO DILEMMA
"Intentionality is naturally to be taken
to be a relation between the mental act, or its subject, to the object of
the act: but how can there be a relation when the second term of the
relation does not exist?"
[Self-evidently, the characterization of
mind as relational implies a self. Self-evidently too, this characterization
of mind is at the root of the definition of self as propositional attitudes. Apparently it was Russell that took this
step, and if so, it is from Russell that much of contemporary philosophy of
mind, including Fodor, derives.]
"This was, then, the problem Brentano
bequeathed to his successors."
[If the self is implicit in awareness,
then mind cannot be characterized as relational and there is no problem.
Brentano characterized mind as
intentionality. All thought is about something, hence the
equivalence between intentionality and aboutness. Aboutness implies relation: thought is
relational. Brentano had difficulties with the being
of thought, because presumably thought can include propositions that are
false and propositions that are neither true nor false, although all are
meaningful (Dummett, p. 127). For the same reason, Brentano fell into
the paradox of thought being relational about propositions which are false,
which meant that mind/thought was a relation to itself, as in awareness of
awareness, which is not possible.
Frege solved the problem of the being of
thought (if he actually considered it as such) by distinguishing between
thought and ideas, and positing that the access to thought is given by
language.
Husserl solved the problem of the
"extrusion of thought" by separating sense from language and making noesis
the source of meaning. The knowledge of meaning is attained
through epoché. Since noesis applies to all thought,
regardless of whether it has an object or not, then thought is always
relational: it is a relation between noesis and the contents of mind. Awareness and meaning are exactly the
same phenomenon.
Meaning is something that mind does,
similar to willing and remembering. It is not necessary to posit a relation
to content. In awareness the self is always implicit. Consciousness, as in the awareness of
affects, makes the self explicit to mind, but the self is always there, at
every instant of thought/mind. Does consciousness, therefore, imply a
relation? The explicitness of self does not mean
that the self stands apart from awareness. Consciousness is a type of awareness in
which the self is explicit, but it is in awareness. So what then is the self? It is the totality of mind. There is no relation involved. The self is always there in the totality
of mental contents. The explicitness of self in awareness
refers to certain types of propositions to which awareness alone has no
access, just as machines have no access to them and just as they cannot be
accessed from language.]
It is impossible to distinguish between
awareness and the objects of awareness. It is not possible to identify will in
the stream of mind. It is impossible to conceive of an empty
consciousness. It is like trying to distinguish between
memory and reason or like trying to pin down the present.
SUMMARY FROM BRENTANO TO HUSSERL
Brentano starts from the proposition that
mind is intentional. If it is intentional it is relational. Intentional means that it is meaningful:
that all its contents have meaning. This means that mind establishes a
relation of meaning with its objects. But its objects are not real: this could
mean either that some objects are fictitious or that all its objects are
mental. The relation falls. But mind is intentional: a palpable
contradiction. Husserl's solution to the contradiction
was that the objects of the intentional acts of mind are real too: they are
noemata, on which he arbitrarily confers reality in the sense of not being
mere psychological entities.
Macann/CRF
Brentano took the concept of
intentionality to characterize consciousness. Intentionality entails meaning. The equivalence between consciousness and
meaning is Husserl's main theme. As I see it awareness is internal and
external. This is what it comes down to: perception
and introspection. The real issue is what exactly underlies
awareness. I claim that it is cognitive processes
directed by basic cognitive propositions mentally represented by symbols. All of this, however, can only be
expressed in a public language. Hence, representation is and can only be
expression.
From Brentano to Husserl, the equivalence
between consciousness and meaning is an act, hence a dual relation in which
one part gives and another receives meaning. Russell found the essence of this
relation in what he called propositional attitudes. Fodor retains the concept of the
relational character of mind. I find that dual-relationship does not
reflect how mind works. Mind is cognition and all cognition is "multirelational". Functionalism as the mind/computer
analogy should have at least made this clear. Multirelatedness implies a refutation of
Brentano, Husserl, and Fodor. Let us nonetheless look closer at Husserl,
not because we think his approach is fruitful, but to make our ideas quite
clear. The relation between the self and the
world is a "natural" attitude. Phenomenology is the pretentious name for
the realization of the philosophico-psychological act of epochê. Epochê reveals a distinction between mind
and a reality which is not mind and is not the world. Mind itself entails a relation within the
meaning-function: between noesis, as the meaning-giving part, and noemata,
as the meaning-receiving. In my own terminology, noesis comprehends
the cognitive processes that result in noemata or awareness. Assuming the propositionality of mind,
noesis refers to propositional bases and noemata to propositional contents. Alternatively: noesis is perception and
noemata the acts of perceiving. In Husserl, noesis remains unexplored. And is this relation between two events
justified? Is there any real difference between
meaning-giving and meaning-receiving? There are of course basic cognitive
propositions and there are the mental representations that these
propositions make possible. But both are expressed in the same mental
language and the act of perceiving is not tied only to the specific
basic-cog's of perception but to a multiple, inter-active relationship
between these and other basic-cog's, so that, even though the noesis/noemata
distinction is formally plausible, in practice it is very hard to sustain,
because there is nothing that specifically confers meaning to acts of
perception. The Husserlian distinction implies the
self/world relation, which cannot be carried lock stock and barrel to mind.
Other dual concepts that Husserl uses are
hyle and morphe. Morphe is type and hyle is token. Hence, morphe must be noetic and hyle
must be noematic.
