My
earliest relatives were bacteria!
I sat there on a rainy winter’s
afternoon, a seven-year-old kid in Ireland, truly amazed at the revelation.
Daydreaming out the window, I imagined the vast panorama of evolution:
From humblest beginnings, life had grown and developed and produced all
this—including me!
I remember becoming fascinated
with consciousness that day. The trigger was discovering an entry on “evolution”
in my father’s tattered encyclopedia. A drawing of a dinosaur caught
my attention: Not only was I descended from my parents, grandparents,
great-grandparents, and so on, but the entire human race had evolved from
some ape-like ancestors, who came from even more primitive mammals, who
came from reptiles, who came from amphibians, who came from fishes, who
came from jellyfishes, who came from clumps of cells, all the way down
to bacteria-like single-celled “infusoria,” as they were called
in that old encyclopedia.
I spoke the word aloud, enjoying
the onomatopoeia—“e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n.” It sounded like a
great unfolding, a rolling out of hidden forms, now mimicked in the way
my tongue uncurled from the roof of my mouth.
But something else even more
astounding grabbed me. Not only was I mesmerized by images of descending
species culminating in this young fella sitting there reading a big, dusty
old book. Somehow, that stupendous unfolding managed to produce the ability
to look back and contemplate the process of evolution itself.
Somehow, somewhere along the
line, evolution had become aware of itself. But just where did
mind first appear?
I grew up puzzled. Not that
this question burned in my thoughts every day; but from time to time I
would think back on those dinosaurs and infusoria and wonder about evolution,
wonder about the feelings and thoughts pulsing through me and other creatures.
Years later, after failing
to find answers in either science or religion, I turned to the philosophical
texts of the West, particularly those specifically focused on the precise
questions that had come to trouble me: the nature of mind, the nature
of matter, and how one was related to the other. I went back to college
and, through perseverance and determination, cracked the code of Western
philosophical jargon—I began to understand what philosophers were
saying about the “mind-body problem.”
I
dissected all competing views on the mind-body problem...but was still
looking for an answer.
I came to appreciate, and then
love, the rigor and precision that philosophers applied to language, to
hone and dissect distinctions that lay buried beneath superficial assumptions.
I learned to use the surgical skills of logic and analysis to cut through
linguistic and conceptual confusions surrounding the “great questions.”
I learned to use and value the philosopher’s gift of reason.
In debates, discussions, and
arguments, I wielded saber and scalpel to slash away at incautious and
“sloppy” thinking about the nature of consciousness and its
emergence from matter. I enjoyed diving into the academic fray, pursuing
the “no mercy” approach to the search for truth. If others were
bemused, cornered, or offended by the
sharpness of my philosopher’s tongue that was an acceptable—even
necessary—price to pay for truth (See
Footnote).
Single-mindedly, I dissected
all the competing views on the mind-body problem—slicing through
the conceptual knots befuddling dualism, materialism, and idealizm, finding
serious flaws in all of them. But I was still looking for an answer.
Shortly after my fortieth birthday
the “eureka” arrived like a thunderbolt when I rediscovered
the work of Alfred North Whitehead—one of the twentieth century’s
greatest philosophers, a thinker who recognized the profound importance
of feeling at all levels of reality (Reference
1). After all this time, the answer to my lifelong question “Where
in the great unfolding of evolution did consciousness first appear?”
was simple—nowhere! Consciousness was always there,
no matter how far back along the path of evolution you went. Back beyond
the fishes and jellyfishes, back beyond even the bacteria and infusoria—further
still, back beyond the organic chemicals of life, DNA and proteins, back
beyond the molecules and their constituent atoms, back to the elementary
particles, and back to the quarks or quanta or whatever the fundamental
constituents of the entire cosmos of matter and energy might be.
Where the worldviews of dualism,
materialism, and idealizm failed me, I now had a rational and coherent
story of consciousness and evolution in the worldview called panpsychism—where
all matter possesses some form of mind. Consciousness, I now could
see, must go all the way down.
COMPETING
WORLDVIEWS
Of
all the worldviews attempting to account for the mind-body relation, this
was the most controversial, and the least academically respectable. Few
philosophical books or articles gave even passing notice to the ideas
of panpsychism. And those that did mention it tended to dismiss it as
unworthy of serious consideration. Throwaway comments such as “panpsychism
asks us to believe that rocks and trees have thoughts” implied we
were being asked to accept that lowly clumps of matter could think like
humans: “How absurd to believe rocks could spin out sonnets like
Shakespeare’s or equations like Einstein’s.” But such criticisms
completely misrepresented panpsychism—and consciousness. Its critics
rarely, if ever, took the trouble to find out first-hand just what Whitehead
and other panpsychist philosophers were actually saying.
I did take the trouble, and
I found what seemed to me to be the most coherent and sensible philosophical
position on the mind-body problem. And because panpsychism was so controversial
and misunderstood, I took extra trouble to make sure I could offer a respectable
defense against inevitable attacks. The best line of defense I came to
believe—typical of academic philosophy—was to be rigorous and
ruthless in attack. So I spent years mastering and dissecting the opposing
views of dualism, materialism, and idealizm. The bottom-line failures
of each of these worldviews could be expressed simply: They all require
a supernatural intervention.
| Major
Worldviews on Mind and Body
Dualism:
The metaphysical view that both mind and matter are real, but separate.
Here, the core problem is interaction. Dualism requires a
miracle to "explain" how two utterly different and separate substances
could ever interact. Yet, plainly, mind and body do interact moment
by moment in our own experience.
Dualism makes
no sense if we cannot explain how the "ghost enters the machine." It
asks us to accept that supernatural soul or spirit "somehow" interacts
with the natural world of matter. Dualism defends the position that
half of reality is supernatural.
Materialism:
The view that only matter (or physical energy) is ultimately real.
Here, the core problem is emergence. Materialism faces the
insuperable problem of explaining how mind could emerge from mindless
matter. It asks us to accept not only that mind is wholly natural,
but that it is also wholly physical and objective—which completely
leaves the undeniable subjectivity of consciousness wholly unaccounted
for.
Materialism,
thus, also requires a miracle to "explain" how sentient, subjective
minds could ever evolve or emerge out of matter that was wholly
insentient and objective to begin with. For mind to emerge from
matter, for consciousness to appear in the natural world, would
require some kind of miraculous intervention. Materialism defends
the paradoxical position that everything real is natural, physical,
and objective—including mind, which is undeniably subjective. But
in a world made up wholly of objective physical stuff the
appearance of subjective mind could not happen naturally. Such emergence
would require an inexplicable ontological jump—a miracle. In
a purely physical world, the appearance of mind would be a supernatural
event.
idealizm:
The view that only mind or consciousness is real. Here, the core
problem is realizm. idealizm denies that the physical world
has any reality of its own, independent of a perceiving mind.
idealizm, too,
requires a miracle of one kind or another: either the unreality
of physical reality, or the creation of real matter from pure spirit.
It asks us to believe either that all matter is ultimately illusion
(maya), or that matter emanates from pure mind or spirit.
The first option leaves unresolved the pragmatic problem of living
in the world if we do not treat matter as real. Matter forces us
to acknowledge its reality, despite the claims of idealizts. The
second option is merely the flipside of materialism: It asks us
to believe physical matter could evolve or emerge or emanate from
wholly nonphysical mind or spirit.
idealizm, then,
asks us to reject the natural world as having any substantial reality
in its own right. According to this position everything is
ultimately supernatural—all physical manifestation, the entire panorama
of nature, derives all its reality from the mind that creates
it. What we call the natural world is merely appearance or illusion
generated by pure mind. In idealizm, nature is merely an epiphenomenon
of mind.
Pansychism:
The view that consciousness and matter are inseparable, and both
go all the way down—so that even single cells, molecules, atoms,
or electrons are bundles of sentient energy. In panpsychism,
matter (or energy) itself intrinsically feels.
Panpsychism
requires no miracles or supernaturalism. It takes the position:
1) Both mind and matter are real and natural (neither one has ontological
priority over the other); and 2) it is inconceivable that subjectivity
and sentience could ever evolve or emerge from wholly objective
and insentient matter-energy (likewise, objectivity and physicality
could never emerge from wholly nonobjective and nonphysical mind).
|
The more I investigated
the various worldviews, the more I became convinced that the only
rational explanation for the existence of both mind and matter is
some form of panpsychism. Nature itself is sentient all the way
down —and that explains the common-sense
experience of a world where both consciousness and matter-energy
are obviously real.
I delighted in responding
to critics of panpsychism by pointing out flaws in all the other
positions. I felt like a warrior for truth, a defender of a philosophical
underdog and outcast. I crusaded for rational coherence in any attempt
to solve the mind-body problem—and, very simply, that meant:
“no miracles.”
But I wasn’t only
a philosopher: I was also, first and foremost, a human being. And
I knew very well from personal experience that the road to truth
was not only via reason. It was perfectly possible that, despite
the best efforts of reason, the deep nature of reality would elude
rational understanding. I knew I had at least three options: 1)
Reason could penetrate the mind-body mystery (the rationalist position);
2) reason could not comprehend that mystery (the position of so-called
mysterians); or 3) reason alone would be insufficient to solve the
mind-body problem, but supported by other ways of knowing, human
consciousness could indeed penetrate the mystery (the noetic position).
Nevertheless, as a
philospher, I
believed I had a duty to honor the gift of reason and pursue it
as far as it could take me.
I had developed the attitude:
“If you do not respect the rules of logic and rational coherence—and
take the trouble and effort to discover what others have said—you
have no business talking about philosophical topics such as consciousness
and the mind-body problem.” And if you did, I would show little
mercy in pointing out inconsistencies in your reasoning, try to
convince you of the errors in your thinking, and get you to give
up your fractured and incoherent beliefs.
If accused of being unnecessarily
harsh in my arguments, I would remind myself and my challengers
that what mattered was the search for truth. If, along the way,
we had to let go of cherished beliefs, and if this meant feeling
upset, anxious, or diminished, so be it. Such experiences should
be welcomed as valuable stages in the learning process. “No
pain, no gain”—as true in philosophy as anywhere else.
And although this attitude
may have been justified within its own limited context, it often felt
flat and one-dimensional. It left out something precious about human relationship.
TRUTH AT
ANY COST
This
realization came home to me with full force at a recent Tucson conference
on consciousness. At one of the sessions, a young materialist enthusiastically
presented his own defense of the emergence of mind from matter. He handled
his material well, spoke eloquently, and beamed in delight as he passionately
guided us through his insights. I could barely restrain myself as he spoke
because it was so clear to me he was completely missing the point. Whatever
he was talking about, it couldn’t have been consciousness.
As soon as he invited questions
I rose to my feet and proceeded to harangue him with a merciless critique.
Since consciousness is nothing if not subjective, how on Earth could his
model account for the emergence of subjectivity from wholly objective
matter? “Your whole thesis is built on shifting sands, mere castles
in the air, and doesn’t even begin to tell us anything about consciousness.
It is nothing more than tightly argued materialist supernaturalism—that
is, utter hogwash.”
These were not my exact words,
but they capture the essence of the tone and content of my response to
his lecture. He sat off to the side, visibly shaken, as the next speaker
took the podium. All the fire and enthusiasm had drained from his face.
Just a few short minutes ago, this young man was vital and vibrant, excited
by his ideas, putting forth something he passionately believed in. Now
he looked shattered. “Oh my God, I did that?” I said
to myself, burning with shame and guilt. If this was the price of truth,
at that moment it became clear to me it wasn’t worth it. There must
be another way to do philosophy.
And of course there is. Not
all philosophers are so insensitive, though many are trained to be. For
the rest of the day, and throughout the night, the image of that shaken
young philosopher haunted me. I resolved to no longer search for truth
“at all costs.” If the pursuit of truth leads to a bifurcation,
separating it from wisdom and compassion, something must be wrong. If
philosophy of mind produces fine, detailed, meticulous arguments but fails
to embrace the fact that feeling is central to the very nature
of consciousness—the “whatitfeelslike from within”—then,
I was beginning to realize, the discipline is moribund.
The study of consciousness
cannot rely exclusively on rational coherence—on connections between
concepts and ideas. It must involve the ineffable, preverbal, prerational
process I can best describe right now as “feeling our way into feeling,”
of experiencing experience. And the more I pay attention to this,
the more I come to realize that first-person exploration of experience
sooner or later comes with a message: We are not alone.
We are not isolated, solipsist bubbles of consciousness, experience,
or subjectivity (pick your favorite word), we exist in a world of relationships.
We are—consciousness is—intersubjective.
Any comprehensive investigation of consciousness must include the
second-person perspective of engaged presence, of
being-in-relationship.
The next day I looked around
for the young materialist, and when I found him the light had come back
into his eyes. I apologized, and he looked at me surprised. He hardly
remembered the incident, and he expected no apology (the philosopher’s
training!). Maybe my verbal attack did not, after all, faze him as I thought;
maybe I imagined, or projected, the whole thing. Real or imagined, the
encounter served up an important lesson nonetheless.
CONSCIOUSNESS
AND CONQUEST
The
lesson deepened that afternoon. Between lectures, I strolled around the
poster sessions, and was struck by one presentation in particular—“Preconquest
Consciousness” by a Stanford University anthropologist, E Richard
Sorenson. His paper was also a chapter in a just-published book Tribal
Epistemologies (Reference
2). I didn’t have time to read the entire piece, but what I saw
caught my attention. Sorenson distinguished between two very different
forms of consciousness: “preconquest,” characteristic of the
minds of indigenous peoples, and “postconquest,” typified by
modern rationalism. “Conquest” refers to what happened to indigenous
consciousness and ways of life when Spanish conquistadors
invaded the New World.
I picked up a copy of the book
to read on the flight back to San Francisco. Sorenson’s thesis, based
on many years of field study with numerous “isolates” or indigenous
cultures, shocked me. Preconquest consciousness is rooted in feeling,
a form of liminal awareness hardly recognized in modern scholarship.
Shaped by a “lush sensuality”—where from infancy primal
peoples grow up accustomed to a great deal of body-to-body contact—preconquest
consciousness aims not for abstract truth but for what feels good.
Individuals in such societies are highly sensitive to changes in muscle
tension in others indicating shifts in mood. If others feel good, they
feel good; if others feel bad, they feel bad—Sorenson calls it “sociosensual”
awareness. In other words, the entire thrust and motivation of this form
of consciousness is to optimize feelings of well-being in the community.
What is “real” or “right” (we might call it “true”)
is what feels good. In such cultures, the “right” or the “true”
or the “real” is a question of value not a correspondence
between some pattern of abstract concepts and empirical fact.
Significantly, postconquest
consciousness is radically different. Based on dialectical reasoning,
it intrinsically involves domination or conquest: A thesis is confronted
and “conquered” by its antithesis, which in turn is overcome
by a new synthesis. By its very nature, then, dialectic, rational, postconquest
consciousness is confrontational. This insight alone stopped me
in my tracks—particularly following my experience with the young
materialist philosopher.
But what I learned next shook
me to my core. Given the different dynamics and intrinsic motivations
underlying both forms of consciousness, when postconquest rationalism
meets preconquest feeling the result is outright suppression and conquest
of feeling by reason—inevitably.
In its search for truth, reason
operates via conquistadorial dialectic: One idea, or one person’s
“truth,” is confronted and overcome by an opposite idea or someone
else’s “truth.” The clash or struggle between them produces
the new synthesis—perceived as a creative advance in knowledge.
Reason
works very differently when we feel our thinking.
By contrast, liminal or preconquest
consciousness, in striving for what feels right for the collective, seeks
to accommodate differences. When confronted by reason, it naturally wants
to please the other, and so invariably yields. Reason strives to conquer,
feeling strives to please, and the result: obliteration or suppression
of liminal consciousness by reason.
Even more disturbing to me
was the realization that none of this implies malicious intent on the
part of reason. Simply encountering an epistemology of feeling, reason
will automatically overshadow it—even if its intent is honorable.
As I looked back on my own
career, I found plenty of confirming instances. In my work, I have had
many occasions to engage people interested in consciousness from perspectives
other than philosophy or science—mysticism, shamanism, aesthetics,
for example. More often than not—even if I was trying to be considerate
of their different ways of knowing—these people left the encounter
feeling abused or squashed by having to match accounts of their experiences
against the rigorous logic of rational analysis. When a search for truth
pits dialectic reason against dialogic experience the feeling component
of the other’s knowledge can rarely withstand the encounter. Feeling
feels invalidated. Wisdom is blocked by “truth.”
Sorenson’s thesis allowed
me to understand this dynamic in a way I hadn’t before. And his paper
didn’t leave me with merely an intellectual appreciation of the preconquest-postconquest
dynamic. He backed his thesis with a truly moving and shocking first-hand
account of the disintegration of an entire way of life of a New Guinea
tribe when their remote island was discovered by Western tourists after
World War II.
Before the “invasion,”
the Neolithic hunter-gatherer tribe lived with a “heart-felt rapprochement
based on integrated trust”—a sensual “intuitive rapport”
among the people. Their communication was spontaneous, open, and honest.
For them, “truth-talk” was talk” because it worked only
when “personal feelings were above board and accurately expressed,
which required transparency in aspirations, interests, and desires. .
. . What mattered was the magnitude of collective joy produced.”
In the real life of these
preconquest people, feeling and awareness are focused on at-the-moment,
point-blank sensory experience—as if the nub of life lay within that
complex flux of collective sentient immediacy. Into that flux individuals
thrust their inner thoughts and aspirations for all to see, appreciate,
and relate to. This unabashed open honesty is the foundation on which
their highly honed integrative empathy and rapport become possible. When
that openness gives way, empathy and rapport shrivel. Where deceit becomes
a common practice, they disintegrate.(Reference
2)
Within a week of the tourists’
arrival on the island, a way of life and a form of consciousness that
had lasted for hundreds, if not thousands, of years collapsed—irreversibly.
Sorenson describes a “grand cultural amnesia” where whole populations
forgot even recent past events, and made “gross factual errors in
reporting them. In some cases, they even forgot what type and style of
garment they had worn a few years earlier or (in New Guinea) that they
had been using stone axes and eating their dead close relatives a few
years back. . . . The selfless unity that seemed so firm and self-repairing
in their isolated enclaves vanished like a summer breeze as a truth-based
type of consciousness gave way to one that lied to live.”
Thirty thousand feet up, Sorenson’s
account of the crisis point in this people’s cultural collapse brought
tears to my eyes:
In a single crucial week
a spirit that all the world would want, not just for themselves but for
all others, was lost, one that had taken millennia to create. It was suddenly
just gone.
Epidemic sleeplessness,
frenzied dance throughout the night, reddening burned-out eyes getting
narrower and more vacant as the days and nights wore on, dysphasias of
various sorts, sudden mini-epidemics of spontaneous estrangement, lacunae
in perception, hyperkinesis, loss of sensuality, collapse of love, impotence,
bewildered frantic looks like those on buffalo in India just as they’re
clubbed to death; 14 year olds (and others) collapsing on the beach. .
. . Such was the general scene that week, a week that no imagination could
have forewarned, the week in which the subtle sociosensual glue of the
island’s traditional way-of-life became unstuck.(Reference
2)
I had gone to that Tucson conference
to present a detailed paper calling for the inclusion of intersubjectivity,
for a relational-based approach to understanding the nature and dynamics
of consciousness. I was moved to include the second-person perspective
because for years I felt something important was being left out in the
debate between first-person (subjective/experiential) and third-person
(objective) investigations of consciousness. Since most of our day-to-day
experiences involve relationships of one sort or another, it seemed to
me that overlooking this common aspect of consciousness remains a conspicuous
gap in philosophy of mind and consciousness studies in general.
The paradox or irony of my
situation did not escape me. I was there to champion the primacy of relationship
in consciousness—implying a mutuality of shared feeling—yet
the contrast between my intellectual analysis of intersubjectivity and
my lack of experienced relational consciousness was
stark. Not only in my relationships with others, but within myself, I
had been using reason to the virtual exclusion of any real depth of feeling.
My own professional life was a microcosm of the encounter between postconquest
and preconquest consciousness—between the modern rational mind and
the traditional intuitive mind. I was accumulating philosophical knowledge
about consciousness,
but losing touch with the living roots of wisdom.
DIFFERENT
WAYS OF KNOWING
If
Sorenson’s analysis of the fateful clash between postconquest and
preconquest consciousness is correct, the prospect for nonrational ways
of knowing seems bleak—but only if we accept the (rather unlikely)
premise that rationality is the epistemological endgame. Clearly, we have
abundant evidence from the perennial philosophy and from modern spiritual
teachers and practitioners that mystical experience transcends reason.
We can evolve beyond reason, and when we do so we do not obliterate the
benefits we’ve gained from reason over the past four or five thousand
years.
Put another way: Even though
historically—as Sorenson’s work documents—when primal feeling-based
knowing meets modern reason-based knowing, the encounter invariably decimates
the former, this need not be the end of the story
Beyond reason, we all have the potential to develop transmodern
spiritual or mystical intuition—and this way of knowing includes
and integrates all the others.
From
below, reason is grounded in preverbal feelings and intuitions; above,
reason projects imagination toward transverbal and transrational experiences.
Prior to reason, interconnected feelings and altered states of consciousness
appear to reason as magic—the undefinable domain of the shaman. Beyond
reason, unities and communions of experiences and higher states of consciousness
appear to reason as ineffable and noetic—the infinite domain of the
mystic.
Whereas reason dominates feeling,
mystical knowing does not “conquer” reason—it envelops
it, embraces it, transcends it.
Thus, mystical or spiritual intuition is integrative: It includes, while
transcending, both reason and somatic feeling.
Furthermore, reason doesn’t
have to decimate feeling—it does so only when unplugged from
its roots in the deep wisdom of the body. Reason is optimally effective
when it retains or regains contact with its preverbal, somatic roots.
Reason works very differently when we feel our
thinking.
THE DILEMMA
OF REASON
Clearly, I had developed an over-reliance on reason, and I had failed to see that
that is not at all rational. It is a distortion of reason.
This is not a new insight.
Some of our best philosophers have recognized this imbalance between what
we may call “clear reason” and “distorted reason.”
Right back at the dawn of Western philosophy, Socrates and Plato knew
that reason was limited, and that before anyone could know what those
limits were they had to master reason to get there. Only then could they
move to the next stage. In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant took
on this challenge as his life’s major project and demonstrated the
imbalance in his great work Critique of Pure Reason(Reference
3). Whitehead, too, was a master of reason, perhaps the best, because
he moved far enough along to know that clear reason is rooted in feeling.
Clear reason knows that the
limits of reason are not the limits of knowledge—and certainly not
the limits of reality. And failing to recognize this is a major part of
the problem—not just my problem, but a dilemma for the modern
world in general.
Here’s the dilemma: On
the one hand, we have lost touch with the deep foundation of reason in
the feelings of the body, and the network of feelings in nature. On the
other hand, we have not made full use of the gift of reason we already
have. This second problem is rooted in the first. But both must be worked
on together. Our problem, then, is not really too much, but not enough,
reason—not enough of the right kind: clear reason rooted
in the feelings of the body and open to transcendental shafts of wisdom.
So much of academic philosophy
of mind is about finding flaws in the other guy’s logic, and taking
no prisoners. It operates from the assumption that progress is built on
discovering what is wrong and putting it right. We might even call it
a “via negativa”—except that would distort the meaning
of that phrase in spiritual practice.
But philosophy need not be
built on conflict, on clashing worldviews, as John Stuart Mill noted when
he said (paraphrased): “Philosophers tend to be right in what they
affirm, and tend to be wrong in what they deny.” Perceptive and wise
insights like that show that philosophy can live up to its name.
Imagine practicing philosophy
by looking for what is right about the other's position. That
kind of attitudinal shift begins to pull philosophy and spirituality closer,
and truth approaches wisdom. My own variation on this insight is:
Every worldview expresses
some deep truth—and is in error only if it claims possession of the
whole truth. . . . That is, there is probably some deep kernel of uncommon
truth in every worldview—whether scientific materialism, spiritual
idealizm, mind-body dualism, or panpsychism—and the task of honest
philosophers is to uncover such truths. The task of great philosophers
is to find how these uncommon truths cohere in a common reality.(Reference
4).
Footnote:
By "truth" I mean: i) propositional truth where language
is rigorously self-consistent and noncontradictory; and ii) correspondence
truth where propositional truth (expressed in ideas/words) is confirmed
by empirical evidence. The kind of awareness needed to pursue logical
and rational rigor is frequently incompatible with the kind of awareness
essential to spiritual wisdom. By "wisdom" I mean an often ineffable
knowing born of direct experience, a kind of intuitive pragmatism
that works to the extent it takes account of the whole. It is inclusive
and integrative, and invariably involves empathy and compassion. (Return
to main text)
References
for this article:
1. A. N. Whitehead, Process
and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected edition, ed. David Ray
Griffin & Donald Sherburne. Free Press (1979).
2.
E R. Sorenson, “Preconquest Consciousness,” in Tribal Epistimologies,
ed. Helmut Wautischer. Ashgate (1998).
3. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.
Modern Library. (1977. First published 1780).
4.
C. de Quincey, “Past Matter, Present Mind,” Journal of Consciousness
Studies (1999 6(1), 91-106).
Christian
de Quincey, managing editor of IONS Review,
also teaches philosophy of mind and consciousness studies at John F. Kennedy
University. He is co-author with Willis Harman of The
Scientific Exploration of Consciousness, available from IONS.
