my mind on books

Sciousness, ed. by Jonathan Bricklin (Eirini Press, 2007), collects several essays and shorter passages by (or about) William James dealing with the concept of ‘sciousness’ or ‘pure experience,’ along with an essay by Bricklin titled “Sciousness and Con-sciousness: William James and the Prime Reality of Non-Dual Experience.” The book opens with the Zen work Hsin-Hsin-Ming (“On Believing in Mind”), introducing the Eastern expression of nondualism, while Bricklin’s essay brings Eastern thought to bear on James’s views.

William James coined the term ‘sciousness‘ to refer to experience before it is separated into subject and object. However, in the essays collected in this book, James doesn’t commonly use the term ‘sciousness’ but most often just speaks of ‘experience’ or ‘pure experience.’ James holds that an experience, often using a room or a building as an example, becomes mental or physical only by the relations it forms with other experiences:

In so far as experiences are prolonged in time, enter into relations of physical influence — breaking, warming, illuminating, etc., each other — we make of them a group apart which we call the physical world. On the other hand, in so far as they are fleeting, physically inert, with a succession which does not follow a determined order, but seems rather to obey emotional vagaries, we make of them another group which we call the psychical world. …

The two kinds of groups are made up of experiences, but the relations of the experiences among themselves differ from one group to the other. It is, therefore, by addition of other phenomena that a given phenomenon becomes conscious or known, and not by a splitting in two of an interior essence. (The Notion of Consciousness, p. 107-108)

In one of my favorite parts of Bricklin’s essay, he takes Basho’s famous poem

Old pond
Frog jumps in
Sound of the water

and rewrites it to show the effect of ordinary consciousness reacting to the bare succession of experiences:

Old pond!
Feels peaceful
What’s that?!
Wow, a frog!
There goes the silence! (p. 55)

Sciousness will appeal most to readers already interested in non-dual philosophy, who can now find a spiritual ancestor in William James, or to those interested in James’s philosophy, who may discover a new aspect of his thought.

Many of James’s essays can be found online:
The Notion of Consciousness is newly translated from the French by Jonathan Bricklin; this translation by Carl Manchester is available online.

Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?

A World of Pure of Experience

See also: review by Jerry Katz at Nonduality Blog

Conscious Entities on William James

Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood by Simon Evnine (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Product description:

Simon Evnine examines various epistemic aspects of what it is to be a person. Persons are defined as finite beings that have beliefs, including second-order beliefs about their own and others’ beliefs, and are agents, capable of making long-term plans. It is argued that for any being meeting these conditions, a number of epistemic consequences obtain. First, all such beings must have certain logical concepts and be able to use them in certain ways. Secondly, there are at least two principles governing belief that it is rational for persons to satisfy and are such that nothing can be a person at all unless it satisfies them to a large extent. These principles are that one believe the conjunction of one’s beliefs and that one treat one’s future beliefs as, by and large, better than one’s current beliefs. Thirdly, persons both occupy epistemic points of view on the world and show up within those views. This makes it impossible for them to be completely objective about their own beliefs. Ideals of rationality that require such objectivity, while not necessarily wrong, are intrinsically problematic for persons. This “aspectual dualism” is characteristic of treatments of persons in the Kantian tradition. In sum, these epistemic consequences support a traditional view of the nature of persons, one in opposition to much recent theorizing.

More from the publisher, including a sample chapter

Author’s webpage

The list of “best new summer reading of 2008” at the Telegraph (UK) includes The Baby in the Mirror: A Child’s World from Birth to Three by Charles Fernyhough (“the most poetic popular science book of the year” though more of a fall read in the US) and We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater (“brilliantly comprehensive guide to the revolutionary new era of IT”).

Dance-tech.net has produced this interview with philosopher Alva Noë. If you have any trouble playing the embedded video go here and try a different format.

Alva Noë’s most recent book is Action in Perception (MIT Press, 2005, pbk 2006)

The Case for Qualia (Bradford Books) edited by Edmond Wright (MIT Press, 2008)

Product description:

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists dismiss the notion of qualia, sensory experiences that are internal to the brain. Leading opponents of qualia (and of indirect realism, the philosophical position that has qualia as a central tenet) include Michael Tye, Daniel Dennett, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and even Frank Jackson, a former supporter. Qualiaphiles apparently face the difficulty of establishing philosophical contact with the real when their access to it is seen by qualiaphobes to be second-hand and, worse, hidden behind a “veil of sensation”–a position that would slide easily into relativism and solipsism, presenting an ethical dilemma. In The Case for Qualia, proponents of qualia defend the Indirect Realist position and mount detailed counterarguments against opposing views.

The book first presents philosophical defenses, with arguments propounding, variously, a new argument from illusion, a sense-datum theory, dualism, “qualia realism,” qualia as the “cement” of the experiential world, and “subjective physicalism.” Three scientific defenses follow, discussing color, heat, and the link between the external object and the internal representation. Finally, specific criticisms of opposing views include discussions of the Churchlands’ “neurophilosophy,” answers to Frank Jackson’s abandonment of qualia (one of which is titled, in a reference to Jackson’s famous thought experiment, “Why Frank Should Not Have Jilted Mary”), and refutations of transparency theory.

Contributors:
Torin Alter, Michel Bitbol, Harold I. Brown, Mark Crooks, George Graham, C. L. Hardin, Terence E. Horgan, Robert J. Howell, Amy Kind, E. J. Lowe, Riccardo Manzotti, Barry Maund, Martine Nida-Rümelin, John O’Dea, Isabelle Peschard, Matjaž Potr?, Diana Raffman, Howard Robinson, William S. Robinson, John Smythies, Edmond Wright.

MIT Press has the Table of Contents and samples

Qualia at Wikipedia