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The mindbody is a body which is also a mind. It allows of no separation between body and mind. There is not a mind in a body. There is not a body which has a mind. There exists no mind apart from a body. There exists no body apart from a mind. There exists only the mindbody. Everything that exists is a mindbody. This is the doctrine of the mindbody.
Whatever exists is both real and ideal. This is readily apparent in intelligent organisms--above all in humans. Man is a mindbody--a thinking organism. He is not thought in matter, but thinking matter. He is not the ideal in the real, but the realideal. What is true of a thinking organism may be generalized to all that exists, including even the inanimate. For everything which is material is also at least potentially intelligible, is thereby both real and ideal. Aristotle put it that there is no matter without form. Spinoza put it that extension and thought are alternate ways of expressing the same thing.
Only Hume got it wrong. For he analyzed causality merely in terms of observed sequences, absent a reason why. He denied the side of intelligibility, of ideality. If Hume were right, we would be unable to give explanations. We could only give descriptions. Yet when we persist, we are able to discover reasons why sequences occur. Explanations in physics tap into the ideality of events as well as their materiality. If it be argued, in reply, that the ideality comes only from the physicist and not from the objective event, then all explanations in physics would be arbitrary conventions and would not be grounded in what is real. It is not teleological, but descriptive accounts, which serve to conceal that laziness which avoids laborious investigation.
Everything which is real is also ideal. Everything which exists must have some form, some intelligible organization. Otherwise it would be radical chaos which, in the extreme, is nothingness or the void. For even chaos, in order to be something, in order to exist, must have some form amid the flux.
So everything which exists is both material and intelligible, both matter and form, both body and idea, both real and ideal. Everything which exists is, in this sense, a mindbody. Let us, however, modify our usage. Let us say that everything which exists is a formatter, and those formatters which live and possess intelligence are mindbodies. All formatters are intelligible, but only mindbodies are intelligent.
Since the brain is an integral part of the mindbody, it would be incorrect to say that the brain causes consciousness, or that it is a substratum for consciousness. Rather: The brain is conscious. For, in the mindbody, body and mind are not separated so that one could be the cause of the other. They are one. The brain is conscious.
There are two great facts of our gross experience--mind and matter. To deny either is disastrous. Descartes set the stage for the great denial. For he split the mindbody into the mind and the body. He dissociated the mind in order to make room for the new science of matter. The new scientists eventually repressed and denied the mind in order to aggrandize matter. It is, then, not mind but matter which is being itself--as if one could exist without the other. Scientists and certain philosophers have never recovered from this dissociation and denial. They are clearly borderline, and in need of help. The scientists cannot help themselves, but the philosophers ought to know better.
Then came Darwin, who finished the job which Descartes began. Tilted leeward by the weight of his great discovery, all explanation has ever since been one-sided, and a scotoma has developed for an entire side of human experience. Everything has been understood in terms of the blind collision of irrational forces and survival of the fittest--as if those were the only facts of our experience. Consciousness has been degraded and even despised because, inhibiting action, it is not an aid and is often a hindrance in the struggle for survival. An unconscious survival machine would be far more efficient.
What is needed, in response to the one-sided influence of Darwin, is to redress the balance and re-discover a causality which descends from above to meet and integrate with that which ascends from below. What is needed is to re-cognize the efficacy and activity of mind. Neither is Cartesian dualism a satisfactory solution. What is required is an Aristotelian integration of mind and body, which does justice to the fact of form and to the fact of matter, to that which is ideal and to that which is real. What is required is a mindbody. You cannot have existing mind without a brain. But neither can you have existing mind without a mind.
Would it be possible to put teleology back into nature? To ask this foolish question is to dance dangerously at the edge of heresy. Heresy once meant the rack and the stake. Today we are enlightened. Heresy today means ridicule and scorn. Or it means being ignored and assigned to oblivion. Worst of all, it means being convicted of--ANTHROPOMORPHISM. It is better, indeed, to be a heretic in hell than an anthropomorphist in the twentieth century. And yet the most hardheaded scientist is an anthropomorphist. How else could he understand the world, if not through human categories? The science of one age is the anthropomorphism of another.
Why is teleology desired? Better yet, why is it feared? Teleology implies that mind is in charge and possesses efficacy. The activity of mind is also efficient. Man is then an agent, and he is free--free at last from arbitrary bondage to mindless and accidental power.
To put teleology back into nature--that would truly be a Copernican revolution for our time, and it would require a mind of the stature of a Kant. We can only prophesy: Such a mind, such a fertile summer day, such a Christmas--may yet come.
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Having considered mind in its existence, let us now envision mind in its essence. Having considered mind in the mindbody, let us now look upon mind in itself. Having considered mind as real, let us now grasp mind as ideal.
We have considered merely the conditions for the existence of mind. We have not asked what mind is. In order to exist, mind must be radically incorporated within a mindbody--a body which is both real and ideal. This is the efficient and material cause for the existence of mind.
We will now explore the formal and final causes of mind in itself--not its existential foundation, but its ideal import. We will approach mind, not as it is compromised and limited by the weight of existence, but as it is in itself, in the unimpeded perfection of its own nature. In asking for the formal and final causes of mind, we are asking for its essence and its meaning or significance.
Suppose that we possessed a complete and perfect brain science. This, by hypothesis, would tell us everything, with absolute precision, about how the brain produces consciousness and mind. Would this also tell us what mind is? No, it would not. It would only tell us how mind is able to exist. Would this tell us anything at all about the ideal significance or value of mind? No, it would not. It would merely instruct us about the physical mechanisms which enable mind to occur. What mind is, and what it is good for, are quite another matter. Genetic accounts are not accounts of essence and value. Any attempt to understand mind by understanding its physical antecedents, the material conditions upon which its existence depends, will, in the end, understand not mind but exactly what it sets out to understand--the efficient cause of mind, the physical conditions upon which its existence depends. You cannot know consciousness by investigating the organism. You can only know consciousness by investigating consciousness. A perfect brain science could only tell us how. It could not tell us what or why. Science studies the real. We now propose to explore the ideal.
For existence is not exhaustive. Existence is not all. Existence exists only within a context that is non-existential or ideal. This is mind in itself, the environment which surrounds and permeates all that exists.
If the mindbody is all that is, mind in itself is all that neither is nor is not. For the non-existential, the ideal, is, in itself, outside of and irrelevant to questions of being and not-being, existence and nonexistence. It is what it is, and will remain such, whether or not it happens to be realized in existence. The latter is merely accidental, while it itself is essential. The simplest equation of mathematics, for example 2+2=4, would remain such even if there were not four objects in existence. It would remain such even if there were no existing minds to think it. It would remain such even if there was nothing at all in existence. All of the latter circumstances are accidental and existential. It itself is non-existential and essential.
This, then, is the doctrine of mind in itself. The mindbody is all of what exists. The mind is all of what neither exists nor does not exist--all of what is ideal. The mindbody is an existential, and therefore imperfect, realization of the ideal. Let us learn from the essence that is unadulterated and pure. By exploring the ideal, let us illuminate the real.
Mind as an ideal, or in its perfection, is radically conscious. There is no preconscious or unconscious. For all is perfectly lucid and all is revealed. So mind in itself is identical with consciousness in itself. Mind and consciousness are coextensive. They are one. We will therefore use either term indiscriminately as a synonym for the other.
The open secret of consciousness is that it is uncompromised ideality, form liberated and in its purity--the fullness of form. Consciousness and form are one. Consciousness is existence transcended to become form in itself. This is what happens when form is free.
Pure form is by nature translucent and self-reflexive. Consciousness is ideal presence--the presence of the ideal to itself. Consciousness is the self-reflexive union of form with itself. So it is mind in union with itself. Consciousness is neither objective nor subjective, but is the fusion of both. It is neither dead objective form, nor ephemeral flitting subjectivity. These are alike abstractions, which occur only in existence. Consciousness is the concrete union of subjectivity and objectivity--the subject which, in knowing itself as object, is a subjectobject to itself. Consciousness is awareness--awareness of an object that is not an object for it is the subject, one's self. So it is pure awareness. Consciousness is the thought which thinks itself. This reflexive unity of the knower and the known--this perfect contact--generates the familiar traits of presence and awareness which characterize consciousness. This unity which overcomes duality is the diremptive nature of existence overcome. This is pure ideality, form in itself.
Consciousness is consummation. This is pure intelligibility or idea, and pure value or ideal, intelligible essence and normative end, form aware of itself and willing itself, the union of intelligence and the intelligible, value and the author of value. Consciousness is first knowledge and first value, and the form of all further knowledge and value--the source and sanction for all knowledge and value that is to come. Knowledge and value are alike ideal, and appropriately so. For consciousness is existence overcome.
The essence of mind is neither sensation, nor feeling, nor even intention. The essence of mind is intelligibility. Consciousness is pure intelligibility, pure essence, pure form--not any particular essence or form, but essence or form as such, generic essence and form. Consciousness is mind, the form which contains all forms, the form which is form in itself.
And yet, what we have said appears paradoxical. Consciousness and form, though clearly related, appear to be quite different. We must now explain this appearance, so that we can display the reality.
In dramatic contrast to the synthetic unity of the ideal--the unity of mind in itself--existence, the real, is the place of splitting, dissociation, separation, diremption. Consciousness is identical with form, but only when they are in themselves. When they exist, then, like everything else in existence, they fall apart and are separated one from another, from their genuine selves. They nevertheless retain fundamental similarity and intense attraction, each for the other. As existing beings, we for the most part encounter consciousness and form as separate, not as they are in themselves. Consciousness and form, in themselves, in their ideality, are identical. But in their existence they are dirempted--split into polar opposites.
And yet existence always retains an intimation of, and resemblance to, the ideal. Even as existent beings, we dimly perceive a symbiosis, a fundamental resemblance and mutual attraction, between consciousness and form.
Let us explore some of the diremptions of existence. For example, we find a split, a sharp cleavage in existence, between subject and object. Each stands apart, isolated from the other. Existing consciousness and form are related as subject and object. This is why, to existing beings such as ourselves, they seem to be polar opposites. But in their ideality, not in their existence but in themselves, subject and object are united in synthetic unity so that each is indistinguishable from the other. So also with consciousness and form. Here they display their true essence as identical, as the epistemological gap overcome, as the perfect union of intelligence and intelligibility, mind and form. This is a self-reflexive unity of the knower and the known, the self mirroring itself to itself. This is the knower which knows itself. This it is which constitutes the sense of presence, awareness--that distinguishing trait which characterizes consciousness. Consciousness is the thought which thinks itself.
Existence, again, is split into a cleavage between time and eternity. Consciousness is then understood to be temporal, while form seems to be radically other than consciousness, for form is eternal. Form thereby becomes static and passive, while consciousness dissolves into formless flux. But if the real is dirempted into time and eternity, the ideal is a synthetic union of the two. The split between passive stasis and formless chaos is replaced by the structured activity of mind. For mind is a synthesis of time and eternity, activity and passivity, spontaneity and order. It is temporal even as it rises to the eternal, and changes even as it remains the same. This we dimly perceive even within the wandering streams of our own existing minds. This is the synthetic union of the static with the dynamic, of intelligible structure with active intelligence. This is the intelligent dynamism of mind in itself, the synthetic union of consciousness and form.
Existence, again, is dirempted into unity and plurality, the one and the many, the universal and the particular. Form always exists as a static particular form, while consciousness, immersed in endless time, is potentially any form whatever. But form, not as it exists but as it is in itself, is form as such--the form of all forms, the one form which comprehends the many specific forms within itself. This is nothing other than consciousness or mind in itself--the form of all forms, the form which incorporates all particular forms within itself. Consciousness and form are here seen to be the synthetic union of the one and the many, and also of the finite and the infinite.
Existence, as always, emulates and dimly resembles the ideal. An organism is the material model for consciousness, for it contains the part within the whole, the specific within the general, particular form within universal form, form within form in itself. The organism--one in many--is existential diremption in process of being overcome. Here is matter reaching to become form in its fullness. This is why the organism is the material condition for the entrance of consciousness and mind into existence. And this mind, generated by the organism, is an existential imitation of non-existential generic thought which comprehends all specific thoughts within itself. For existing mind is the form which is potentially all forms. It does, over the course of time, what the ideal does in the synthesis of time and eternity.
Existence, again, is dirempted into the cleavage between knowledge and value. Form, the objective pole, is the touchstone of knowledge. Consciousness, the subjective pole, is the source of value. But in the ideal, the in itself of consciousness and mind, the object and the subject, formal causes and final causes, the is and the ought, truth and value, the idea and the ideal, are joined in synthetic unity. This is the synthetic union of consciousness and form, of that which, in existence only, is a rigid opposition between mind and its other.
Perhaps the greatest moments in human existence, those which legislate for all the rest, are those in which, in emulation of the ideal, truth and value are joined in a transcending union which overcomes the amorality of the real and the irrelevance to it of value.
Existence, again, is dirempted into the abstract and the concrete, intellect and sensibility. But form in itself is radically other than the cold abstraction of form in existence. Form in itself is feeling as well as thought, and is the synthetic union of the two. For form in itself is identical with mind in itself, the place where intellect is passionate and feeling is formed.
Existence, finally, is split into a rigid opposition--an either/or--between freedom and determination. Abstract subjectivity, the side of active mind, is the pole of purposive action which is teleological and free. Abstract objectivity, the side of static form, is the pole of unyielding fixation, a passive bondage to mechanical determination. The non-existential, the ideal, is the union of freedom and form, action and passion, autonomy and determination. This is the structured, yet spontaneous, activity of mind. The great moments of existence, again, are those in which active agency also operates according to overarching law.
Dirempted existence, then, is responsible for the apparent cleavage between form and mind. For existence dissociates object from subject, eternity from time, the universal from the particular, the static from the active, knowledge from value, intellect from sensibility, and determination from freedom. Form in itself is existential diremption overcome, the synthetic unity of dissociated opposites. This synthetic unity is nothing other than consciousness or mind in itself. This is the thought which thinks itself. This is the essence of consciousness. This is what consciousness is.
The mistake made by Plato, and by philosophy in general, is to have made form objective only--something external to and confronting the mind. Form is not external to mind. Form is mind. A parallel error has been to approach consciousness either objectively only or subjectively only. You can do neither. The only way to know consciousness is to achieve a union of subjectivity and objectivity, and then you become--conscious.
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The concept of form would not win a popularity contest in contemporary philosophy. It has, indeed, been all but abandoned. Form is interpreted as nothing but convention, an arbitrary outcome of a flitting and flustered consciousness.
But, as we have seen, consciousness is not ephemeral, and form is not accidental and conventional. Existing consciousness inexorably encounters form which it has generated out of its own circumstances and its own necessity. Existing form is the outcome of the interaction between consciousness and the world. And in making form, existential consciousness is also making itself. Existing consciousness and existing form are inextricably interrelated and interdependent. They form a symbiotic union, and are really not two but one.
The abandonment of form to nominalism is exactly parallel to the abandonment of consciousness to objective and material activity, whether this suicide of the mind be called Behaviorism or Cognitivism or something else. Mind and form need not to be abandoned but to be understood. When form is interpreted as a static object existing independently of mind, it becomes readily apparent that there is no such thing as form. When consciousness is conceived as flitting and formless, it becomes readily apparent that it is no more than an efflorescent illusion. When consciousness and form are isolated each from the other, then each pales and evaporates into oblivion. But form flourishes when it is seen to be the extended self of consciousness. And when consciousness finds form, consciousness finds itself.
Consciousness is an alien and intrusive insult to existence, which would be better off without it. For consciousness is existence overcome, existence become ideal. What has existence to do with knowledge and value? Existence has to do with survival and success. What has existence to do with consummation? Existence has to do with consumption. Consciousness is consummating, and existence is consumptive.
If all you require is a survival machine which will efficiently exist and perpetuate itself, consciousness only gets in the way. For consciousness, as finality and fulfillment, is an inveterate distraction and stumbling block to efficiency. It loves to wander, and prefers country lanes to superhighways. Whereas efficiency would act efficiently, consciousness asks what efficiency is for. What is its meaning and value? What, indeed, is meaning and value? Efficiency seeks success, but consciousness is a philosopher.
That existence generates consciousness at all leads one to suspect that Darwin's interpretation is incomplete. He saw only one side of the story. His discovery was so great and so impressive, that it has dominated philosophy and science ever since. Philosophers, especially, ought not to be so naive as to think that one man or one theory has a monopoly on the truth. Ever since Darwin, we have conducted ourselves Darwinistically. The outcome has been--the twentieth century. If this century has been a tragedy for human action, certain of its philosophical productions will at least provide comic relief for future philosophers. There was indeed philosophy before Darwin and even Descartes, and science before what we today call science. Those who do not study the past are condemned to the provinciality and prejudices of the present.
We are all under the spell of Darwin's great discovery. We are so obsessed and enraptured by this new knowledge that we have forgotten another great discovery which also once captured and dominated men's minds. Darwin discovered the real. But Plato discovered the ideal.
Philosophy and science have become so hypnotized by their realism, that they are no longer able to see that causality is vertical as well as horizontal, ideal as well as real. Men are moved, not by matter only, but also by mind. Existence may be characterized, in its essence, as a struggle for survival. It may be equally well characterized, in its essence, as an aspiration after the ideal.
The concept of the mindbody is seductive. Scientists might well find themselves seduced. For it does, after all, conceive of mind in terms of the body. Let the scientists internalize this concept so that they may discover too late that it is a Trojan horse. It presupposes an ontology which they will be able to neither swallow nor contain.
It conceives of a body which is not bodily only, but also ideal. It conceives of a causation which is not real only, but also ideal. It takes mind every bit as seriously as it does matter. Both can be efficient causes. It acknowledges the efficiency of finality, the activity and efficacy of mind.
The mindbody is ontologically unique and distinct. It is not body only, and is not only real. It is not mind only, and is not only ideal. It falls, rather, between the two. Matter in the mindbody, therefore, has properties which it does not have in itself. It has properties which are ideal and can be influenced by the ideal. Matter can be moved by mind. It is only imperfectly subject to the laws of physics and physiology, for it is also subject to the activity of mind. Mind is likewise compromised by its union with matter.
So the mindbody is the realideal, an entity in which mind and matter are synthesized into something new. It is a new kind of substance--one which is also other than substantial. It is not quite accurate to say that mind can now act upon matter, because mind and matter no longer occur as such. It can be said that there is now a mutual influence of that which, when isolated from the mindbody, we would call material and ideal.
This is treacherous ground. It would be easy to suppose that there are two substances--body and mind--which fuse to form a third substance, the mindbody. But only matter, only the real, is substantial. Mind, ideality, is not a substance. Mind is meaning and value, and nothing else. It is nevertheless active, and has a dynamism of its own.
The mindbody, then, is matter which has meaning, and it is moved by both the motion of matter and the activity of mind. Here is an account of the basis for human determination and freedom, passivity and activity, folly and nobility, foolishness and wisdom, pettiness and sublimity. This, we maintain, is the only account which does justice to both the monism and bipolarity of human experience.
Every body is a mindbody. For every body has some form, some intelligible structure or organization, some meaning and value. The mindbody as such, however, has significantly more. This suggests an ontological continuum determined by the various degrees in which matter achieves intelligibility, meaning and value. This is a spectrum of the arbitrary overcome.
The real and the ideal, existence and the non-existential, are not only isolated absolutes. They are what they are, not only in themselves, but also in their relation to one another. The ideal is the context of the real, and permeates it with meaning. The real could not be what it is apart from an overarching and interpenetrating ideal. And the ideal is the ideal of some thing. It attaches to the real. Perhaps existence and the non-existential, natural causation and teleology, the accidental and the intelligent, the real and the ideal, are interdependent both conceptually and ontologically, so that neither could be nor be conceived except in relation to the other. This would be so only so far as they are. The ideal in itself is unto itself, and neither is nor is not.
This mutual interdependence suggests the possibility of their interaction. It is abundantly clear that they do, indeed, interact. This is called the realization of the ideal. Illustrations are everywhere. Whether it be a just state, a work of art, or a mindbody, it is a case of objectified mind, mind incarnate, mind occupying and transmuting a material medium, even as it is itself transformed.
The crucial and disputed question is: Do matter and meaning change, do they achieve new properties, when they are so engaged? Our answer is yes. The activity of mind becomes efficient, and the efficiency of matter becomes intelligent. Final causes and efficient causes fuse to become incarnate mind. Teleology and freedom enter into existence as the ideal becomes real, and matter becomes mind.
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Any thought which sees only the real, any thought which subjugates itself to science alone, will never be able to explain, much less understand, mind. For mind is meaning, and is not existential. Mind is ideal, and cannot be comprehended in terms of the physical activity of the brain. You cannot have mind in existence without a brain. But neither can you have mind in existence without a mind. The brain is the efficient cause without which mind cannot exist, and, like everything else in existence, is a proper object for science. But existence does not exhaust all, and if you understand only the brain you will know nothing at all about mind--except how it happens to exist.
Mind must be understood on its own terms--not through the categories of physics, but through the categories of man. For man is a mindbody, the closest thing in existence to Mind in itself. The study of mind must therefore be anthropomorphic and humanistic. The study of neurons and synapses will teach you about the brain. But philosophy, poetry and religion will teach you about the mind.
The non-existential, the ideal, what we call God, is mind, and mind can only be known by mind. The existential is to a degree mindless, so that in science anthropomorphism must be held in check. Science must seek mechanism rather than teleology, matter rather than meaning. But the existential is not all, and God must be approached humanistically and anthropomorphically--or he will not be approached at all.
This, then, is our view of what either is or is not, and of what neither is nor is not. It is a dualism which merges into a monism. The merger is possible because the two sides are not competitive but complementary. It is not substance versus another substance, but matter with its meaning, the real with its ideal.
To subjugate yourself to science alone is like trying to row a boat on only one side. You will only go around in circles, and will never escape from the perpetual round of existence. The way to the ideal is through mind, and the way to God is through man.
The concept of the mindbody is a scandal to all right thinking philosophy. Are we confused, or what? For it posits and then transgresses an ontological gap. It posits two radically distinct entities which then change their spots by undergoing ontological transformation and merging one into the other. It would be easier for a prince to change into a toad than for mind and matter to change their ontologies and become mindmatter, become each other.
And yet we know from experience that the non-existential does indeed come into existence. It happens every time the ideal becomes real. When the non-existential becomes existential it thereby acquires all the properties of existence. It becomes material, as when justice is incarnated in a nation's institutions and channels of power--even in its public buildings. Above all, it attains to existential efficiency, as when justice guides and determines what men do. Final causes become efficient causes, and the activity of mind becomes a mover of matter.
All of this is encapsulated in a fortuitous expression: the realization of the ideal. Here is the model for the interaction between the mind and the body. For ideality in its fullness is mind, and the realization of the ideal is the entrance of mind into existential material efficacy. Yet this expression is only half right. For the realization of the ideal is equally the idealization of the real. The real ascends to meet the ideal even as the ideal descends to unite with the real. Mind becomes bodily, but it is a body which has attained to meaning and value. This we call formatter. This is the mindbody, which is neither real nor ideal, but the realideal. It is the outcome of a double movement which is really a single movement. For whether you call it the realization of the ideal, or the idealization of the real, it is but one process. The two ways are one.
All of this appears offensive to reason only because it is presupposed that existence and the non-existential are radically apart, separated by a gap which cannot be crossed. But existence is everywhere non-existential. It is everywhere the realized ideal. Whether you express this by saying that all matter has some form, or by saying that all matter has some intelligible structure, without one or the other matter could not exist. It would be radical chaos, or, rather, it would be prime matter, a purely ideal entity which nowhere exists. The paradox is that existence can be rescued from pure ideality--the ideality of prime matter--only by incorporating ideality within itself. Whatever exists, then, is both real and ideal, and the real cannot exist without also being ideal. Here is the basis for the incarnation of mind.
And so material existence is by necessity everywhere shot through with meaning and value. Is it any surprise, then, that it should naturally and spontaneously ascend to become mind, even as mind descends to become one with itself? This is no miracle. Existence is everywhere also ideal, and so is a spontaneous breeding ground for the realization of the ideal. The mind is not an alien intruder upon the body. The body, rather, completes its own nature when mind enters into its existence. This is the mindbody.
Any adequate realization of the ideal attains to a characteristic trait which reveals its adequacy: You are no longer able to tell what is real and what is ideal. It is notorious that, confronted by a work of art, it is impossible to make a final and absolute distinction between form and content. All is relative to the observer and the point of view. What from one interpretation is content, from another is form. Similarly, in a just state, you cannot isolate the form of justice. Permeating and animating the whole, it is manifest in multiple ways to multiple points of view.
Here is the model for the radical and harmonious union of the mind and the body. You cannot pick apart and isolate one entity which is mind, and another which is body. All is mind, and all is body.
That all existence is mindbody, that all is at once both real and ideal, has profound implications for the kind of science we ought to have. No one, even if it were possible, would want to interfere with what we today call science, and with all that it has yet to achieve. And yet its very success is grounded in a rigidly and stubbornly willed narrowness and abstractness of vision. A complete or concrete science would have to address as well the pervasive permeation by the ideal, the universal presence of mind. Such a complete science, besides being abstract and real, in order to be concrete would also have to be ideal. Since mind can only be known by mind, and since the human mind is the best of mind that we know, such a complete science would also have to be anthropomorphic. Such is the necessary implication of the radical union of the body with the mind. Whatever is, is mind as well as body, and must be approached as such by the human mind, which can know itself and its other only by knowing itself in its other.
This implication of the union of body and mind is studiously avoided by all those contemporary naturalisms which pride themselves on having overcome dualism in their monistic understanding of body and mind. What they mean by monism is that everything is body, including even mind. They know that they, after all, are only philosophers, mere appendages to the scientist, his apologist and popularizer. They wait breathlessly for science to figure out and explain to them how matter can give rise to the illusion of mind. What is needed, after all, is but a bit more progress, a bit more of the same. It is only a question of time....
Yet matter is not the cause of mind. Matter is only the cause of the existence of mind. A complete science would be philosophical, poetic and religious, as well as scientific in the narrower sense. It would be mind incarnate, at home in a real world of mechanism and arbitrary force, because it is also an ideal world of meaning, value, and final cause.
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This section was written while reading Chapters 8-10 of:
Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press, 1992).
Having considered consciousness in itself, let us further explore consciousness in its existence.
Is existing consciousness like a stream? That there is something wrong with this metaphor ought to be obvious to anyone who has a mind with which to think. For wherever there is consciousness, there is mind, and wherever there is mind, nature is transformed. We build dams and bridges, and we plant trees and flowers, and trim the green grass around the water's edge. We build rafts and boats, docks and levees, and pleasant waterside parks. Mind is touched by sunlight sparkling upon the water, and perceives therein an entire realm of imaginative concoctions. The stream becomes a setting for photographs and paintings, and an inspiration for poetry. It becomes the home of water nymphs and other assorted divinities, and achieves a spirit, an identity and personality, of its own. It may even be the bathing place of a goddess. A stream, finally, cannot even name itself as a stream. Only mind can do this. To call it a stream at all presupposes the ability to rise above nature and capture existential flux and particularity in the permanence and universality of a concept.
Nature is other than the activity of mind, and is transformed by it. How, then, could what incorporates mind be illustrated by a mindless natural phenomenon? Consciousness is not a stream. Consciousness is what makes a stream into more than what it naturally is.
The metaphor of consciousness as a stream presupposes a prejudice for only those properties of consciousness which are natural, and a splitting off and denial of all those properties which are ideal. It is as if you were asked to describe the mindbody, and then artificially split off and considered only those properties which are provided by the body, while ignoring all those properties which are provided by the mind. In this way you would come to know the mindbody only in its vagrancy and never in its self-control, only in its flow and never in its formation.
What really empowers this metaphor of consciousness as a stream, and makes it possible at all, is an unconscious and artificial isolation of consciousness from mind. Consciousness is not all of existing mind, but is an integral part thereof, and cannot exist without it. Only when arbitrarily abstracted from mind can consciousness be passed off as a passively flowing virgin stream, untouched by the transmuting and productive activity of mind. The metaphor implicitly assumes that consciousness is one thing, and mind is something else.
This is the kind of dissociation, and this is the kind of metaphor, that you would expect from an empiricist and phenomenalist. The phenomena, the flow of nature, is something an empiricist can see with his eyes. But he would be required to think in order to know of the intervention of mind. The outcome is a metaphor of consciousness as unstructured passive flow. This is consciousness seen from the side of the body, of existence, and not at all from the side of mind, of what is ideal. This is consciousness in its mindlessness abstracted from consciousness in its mindfulness.
Let us pursue this point in greater detail by listing the difficulties involved in the metaphor of consciousness as a stream. For what is involved here is something an empiricist ought to abhor--a scotoma, a blindness to an entire side of experience.
The metaphor, first, obliterates agency, self-control, the activity of mind. For water is moved only by gravity, and sinks only to its own level. A stream is not self-moving. It can only go with the flow. It goes not where it chooses, but only where destiny dictates. So it is always with matter, which is inexorably subject to natural law. Here we hit upon the unspoken assumption behind this metaphor of consciousness as a stream. Consciousness and mind alike are ultimately to be reduced to matter, and so can best be illustrated by something material, like a stream. Like everything that is material, they are without active agency, and are passively determined by natural force operating according to natural law.
This metaphor, secondly, emphasizes only flux, change, and obliterates the enduring permanence of mind. You cannot step into the same stream twice. A stream is constantly on the move, constantly succeeding itself, constantly changing. A stream can only flow. And so consciousness is understood as impelled to the inherent instability of endless motion. And yet you can step into the same stream twice. You can do so only after the mind has formed a concept of it as a certain stream. You cannot step into the same water twice, but you can step into what the mind understands to be the same stream. The metaphor of consciousness as a stream is again seen to be inadequate because it has abstracted from the activity of mind. For it is mind that overcomes flux and flow, and rises to the stability of the enduring idea.
For example, you say that the green lawn you perceive here today is the same lawn as the one you perceived here yesterday. How do you know that? You cannot tell this from your sensations, your phenomena, for they are different today than they were yesterday. For you are in a different mood, your brain is in an altered state, you are in general perceiving from a different background, and so your sensations also will have shifted. You know you are seeing the same lawn because your mind has formed a concept of the lawn as an object which endures, which remains the same, independently of your particular sensations. You then uncritically assume that your sensations remain the same although, upon examination, you will have to acknowledge that they have changed.
This notion of consciousness as a stream in flux is again seen to depend upon emphasizing the side of phenomena, the side of body, and denying the side of concept, the side of mind. And yet is not the concept as much a part of the phenomena as the phenomena themselves? Is not the separation of concepts and objects from phenomena an artificial and arbitrary one? It is as if, in this phenomenological approach, there were a selective elimination of certain phenomena as non-phenomenal, in order to arrive at the impression that consciousness is only in endless flux, like a stream. Is not the deck stacked?
What we have here is no more than a reworking of the ancient dialectic between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus emphasized the side of phenomena. Parmenides went behind phenomena to the enduring stability of mind. It was Aristotle who finally settled the matter with a naturalism which was more than a naturalism. For his nature was at once dynamic and yet structured by the presence of the immanent idea.
The metaphor of a stream, then, obliterates the activity and agency, and the stability and permanence, of consciousness and mind. In so doing it obliterates will, the stubbornness of an identity valued, asserted and maintained. For a stream cannot assert, much less insist upon and maintain, itself. It can only go with the flow. It goes where it is made to go. A stream is a good place to do your wash, because it is wishy-washy. And consciousness is supposed to be like a stream. Tell that to Antigone. Again this phenomenalism has abstracted from the side of mind, this time in its manifestation as will. The mindbody, the existing non-existential, has been split, and only the side of existence remains.
There is, fourth, the problem of interruption. A stream cannot reincarnate itself after interruption, as consciousness does after sleep. If a stream stops, and then there is a body of land, and then there is another stream, it is indeed another stream. There is not one stream, but two. Yet your consciousness, after the interruption of a deep sleep, is not a second consciousness, the consciousness of another. There is only one consciousness, your own, which, unlike the stream, survives the interruption.
This sort of thing could be a problem only to those who understand consciousness to be like a stream, exclusively material, bodily and existential. For ideality transcends considerations of space and time. Is the number two you think of before going to sleep distinct from the number two you think of upon waking? Is the number two thought of in Tokyo other than the number two thought of in New York City? An ideal essence transcends all particular embodiments and all considerations of unity and plurality. It is one and the same, no matter how often and no matter when or where it appears. Insofar as consciousness is ideal, insofar as it rises to the level of mind, it too transcends considerations of space and time. Insofar as consciousness is natural or bodily, this ideal transcendence is supplemented by the natural and temporal activity of memory. We know we are the same because we remember being so. In this double determination of continuity, we see that integration and fusion which is characteristic of the mindbody, the operation together of the real and the ideal.
To deny the side of ideality, to deny the side of mind, is to leave consciousness as like nothing but--a stream.
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What is the self?
If you believe that consciousness is like a stream, you will arrive at a self which is a series of selves, flowing each into the others like ripples in a stream. Each self is a thought, a construct, which, like an heir to a fortune small or large, takes possession of and incorporates all of its predecessors so that it may, in turn, pass these along to its successors. The self, on this view, is emergent rather than antecedent. There is no substantial ego to begin with, but the constructed thought of the self emerges gradually as the stream flows limply along. The outcome is an insubstantial self which is changeable and in flux. The problem is to provide a measure of permanence. This flowing series of flitting selves is held to be permanent, first, because it is grounded in a single organism and, second, because each successive construct feels an inspiration and familiarity which leads it to accept as its own the selves which came before it. This is indeed a flexible and adaptable self, like a stream which has no form of its own, but can conform to the contours of any container whatever. This self is the natural self.
The Cartesian self, by contrast, is a rigid runner. For, not merely substantial, it is a substance. So far from being emergent, it is there to begin with. It is antecedent, almost an absolute, and the problem is to get it to move. For it indeed is permanent. How, then, can it develop and evolve? This self-substance is self-knowing and in self-control. The next problem is to be able to conceive of such an anti-natural entity in interaction with nature. The final problem is to be forced to conceive of the self as a thing, even though it be a thinking thing.
Yet Descartes knew something. He got it right, even though he got it wrong. He understood that the self is ideal, but then, outrageously and perversely, he proceeded to make it into a substance after the model of matter. It is a fundamental error in philosophy to posit as real that which is ideal. This encumbers the real with extraneous and fabulous mythical beings. It finally casts suspicion and discredit upon that which, when understood as ideal, is invaluable and essential.
Let us seek the self in the mindbody. Approached abstractly, from the side of the body alone, the self is indeed the natural self, a series of selves in flux which flow one into the other as in a stream. Approached, however, from the side of the mind, the self is seen to be non-existential, that is, ideal. It is, then, not a substance, but is nevertheless substantial. It is an Idea in action. Active and dynamic, when incorporated within the mindbody it also achieves an existential efficacy of its own.
For every mindbody there is a unique, overarching and leading idea. What else would you expect from a body which is also a mind? This idea is the essential self, its innermost meaning and value, its essence or form. As this idea works itself out, it proves to be the logic of life--the life of the self. This idea is not to be denied and not to be ignored. A mindbody, a person, will attain to nothing--least of all to efficacy--if he is alienated from his idea. This it is to be lost, to be seduced and corrupted. For his idea, which, as we shall see, is his mind, is his destiny. It is the word of God, who, after all, utters only those words in existence which existing minds, in their moment of truth, freely utter for themselves.
Like all that is non-existential or ideal, this form, this idea, is a synthesis of time and eternity. It is therefore a synthesis of permanence and change. It evolves even as it remains the same. It endures even as it develops. And so it is at once antecedent and emergent. Like the Cartesian self, it is there to begin with. But like the natural self, it evolves. It is already present in infancy, in the hidden logic of the genes within their psychological, social and historical context. It is a given which the growing child and adult may freely transform. And yet the more it is transformed, the more it remains the same. It is a destiny which one may develop, but never escape. It is a self which one may determine, even as it determines oneself.
This non-existential form or idea, this synthesis of time and eternity, which evolves even as it endures--this is nothing other than mind. For mind is idea in activity, dynamic form. And so the self of the mindbody is its mind itself. This is the ideal self, structured activity, which gives form and permanence to the flitting flux of the natural self, to the otherwise chaotic and formless flowing stream. It is not feeling, then, but mind, which integrates permanence with change. Here is an essentially Aristotelian synthesis of ideal structure immanent within the flux of natural change.
The concrete self of the mindbody is the mindbody, the radical fusion of the ideal and the real, of meaning and matter, of the mind and the body, of form and flux. This is a substantial self which is more than a substance--for it is radically ideal as well as real. The mindbody has a self which endures even as it evolves because it has an idea, and this idea is its mind. If the mindbody is the self, the core of this self is the mind.
This self is determined in the two opposed meanings of this radically ambiguous word. It is determined in the sense of freedom--of being determined to do as one wills. It is determined in the sense of necessity--of being determined to do as one must. This perfect formation according to the activity of mind, this unqualified determination in every sense of the word, this is nothing other than will. And so the self, the immanent idea, the mind of the mindbody, the will--these are all the same. A man's self is his idea. A man's self is his mind. A man's self is his will. The self is a proud relentless muscle, not like a stream, but like a powerful beating heart which pumps the invigorating red stream, which will not stop, and will not give in.
Compare this with the flux panting for form of an effetely flowing stream--flowing downhill of course, for it can do no other. William James could not have known it, nor did he deserve it, but he was, in this respect, the anticipatory prophet of the postmodern person. What a poor pathetic thing is the polluted stream of the postmodern self. It is a carcinogenic creek without substance, without form. It is so considerate, so passively receptive, of the "rights" of everything and anything in all their multicultural and multisexual diversity. It has, in this way, lost its self. It has no will at all. It has lost its self and its will in the service of universal selfhood and universal will. A self which succors everything whatever is nothing in particular--and this is willessness, no self at all. The postmodern self is the self dissolved in formless flux. The postmodern self is like a stream. A stream is, indeed, the perfect metaphor for selflessness which pretends to be a self, for willessness which presumes to be a will.
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We now ask: What is existing consciousness?
Aristotle taught that pleasure is the perfection of activity. Then consciousness, which is inherently pleasurable, must be the perfection of that particular activity which is the activity of mind. Consciousness is the perfection of mind. The mind we speak of, since it is existing mind, is the mind of the mindbody. Consciousness is the perfection of the mindbody, of its highest and unimpeded activity. Consciousness is seen to be dynamic form in its perfection. Existing consciousness herein imitates and emulates consciousness in itself.
The concept of perfection contains its opposite within itself. For to be perfect presupposes the possibility of being imperfect. This is why perfection is a concept belonging only to existence. The non-existential is outside of and irrelevant to all considerations of perfection and imperfection, just as it is irrelevant to all considerations of existence and nonexistence.
The import of this existential concept of perfection is extraordinary and paradoxical. For it indicates nothing other than the presence of the non-existential in existence, the realization of the ideal. That is perfect which, being real, is nevertheless also ideal. If pleasure and consciousness are each perfections, then they are alike the presence of the ideal in the real. This is our thesis.
If pleasure is the perfection of activity, what kind of activity is it the perfection of? It must at least be the activity of a living organism. And for there to be pleasure, this organism must at least have a rudimentary mind. Pleasure, then, is the perfection of the activity of an organism with mind. Consciousness is the perfection of mind, and mind in existence presupposes an organism to support it. So consciousness is also the perfection of the activity of an organism with mind. The definitions are identical. Could it be that consciousness and pleasure are identical? Let us proceed.
Aside from a counterintuitive and strained definition of the terms involved, there can be no pleasure without consciousness. Pleasure is phenomenal, and therefore presupposes consciousness. But neither can there be consciousness without pleasure. For consciousness is inherently, i.e. essentially, pleasurable. What then of a consciousness overcome by pain? It is pleasurable essentially, and overcome by pain accidentally. This is of no help to the sufferer, but consciousness in itself, consciousness qua consciousness, is always pleasurable. Pain is added to a consciousness which is, in itself, pleasurable. Pain is alien and accidental.
Our thesis, then, is this: Consciousness is not a pleasure, for consciousness is pleasure. And pleasure is not conscious, for pleasure is consciousness. There is nothing more pleasant than consciousness, for consciousness is pleasure itself. It is as if God looked upon existing consciousness, and saw that it was good. It was good because it was God himself--not in his essence, but in his existence. Consciousness is divine, and this divinity is pleasure. There is a word for the inseparability of consciousness and pleasure in existence. Together they are joy.
And yet language would seem to suggest that consciousness and pleasure are not identical. For it provides two words when there ought to be one. Consciousness and pleasure, furthermore, would appear to be different in kind. For consciousness is always consciousness of something. Consciousness is intentional. Pleasure is within itself. Consciousness, that is, belongs to the side of intellect; pleasure to that of sensibility.
This presumed split between consciousness and pleasure is a case of "dissociation of sensibility". It is a case of existential violence done to the ideal unity of mind. Existence is a place of radical cleavage and split, of what we call diremption. There are degrees of perfection, and existential perfection often contains imperfection within itself. Consciousness in existence is frequently split into consciousness and pleasure, intellect and sensibility. This is not, however, its ideal condition, the end toward which it moves. This is not its ideal essence. For mind in itself is a thoroughgoing and homogeneous unity of pleasure and consciousness, sensibility and intellect. Existing mind, furthermore, after the manner of all things existential, knows by way of analysis, separation, splitting. It teases polar opposites out of what in itself is a unity. And so its language does the same, using two words to capture the nature of the one. It discovers consciousness and pleasure where there is but consciousness which is identical with pleasure.
Our thesis, then, of the identity of consciousness with pleasure, is an assertion of the synthetic unity of mind. This is a unity which is complete and irrevocable in the non-existential or ideal, and is an existential end which is occasionally achieved.
Since consciousness is form in action, our thesis is likewise an assertion of what we have long suspected: Form is not formal. It is concrete as well as abstract, and encompasses sensibility as well as intellect. There is no form without content, and no content which is without form. They are indeed identical--at least in their ideality, if not in reality.
Consciousness and pleasure, which are joy, are, then, the completion and perfection of mind. They are the realization of the ideal, and the idealization of the real.
Pain is the destruction of the ideal, or rather the ideal in process of destruction. It is the ideal trapped and subverted by the dead weight of existence. Pain may momentarily intensify consciousness, but it is a movement toward the loss of consciousness and, ultimately, the void of death. For pain makes consciousness intolerable, and enough pain will induce a loss of consciousness. Pain early on makes contemplation difficult and, ultimately, impossible. Pain is the progressive destruction of the life of the mind. The mind is a stubborn muscle which will heroically resist, but to enough pain it must finally succumb. The logical conclusion is the loss of the will to live, and then, finally, the void.
If pleasure is activity, or the perfection of activity, pain is a process--a process of destruction, destruction of the capacity to act.
There is nothing good about pain. What is of value is the heroic activity of mind by which pain is incorporated, transformed into a challenge or a learning experience, and even, on occasion, overcome. Pleasure, like consciousness with which it is identical, is essential to mind. It is the final cause, the perfection, and the essence towards which mind strives. Pain is accidental to mind. So far from being essential, it is an alien and hostile invader, and is destructive of the ideal, of the essence of mind.
If pleasure is the essence of mind, it is a generic essence, for mind acts in many different ways, and so there are many kinds of pleasure. The temptation follows to rate the pleasures, as, for example, higher and lower, or bodily and spiritual, or active and passive. A venerable distinction is between pleasures which are merely the cessation of pain, and those which have positive content of their own. What ought to be rated, we maintain, is not the pleasures, but the degree to which their dissociation has been overcome--the degree to which they have been comprehended within the unity of mind and have become identical with consciousness. For every pleasure is potentially of value. Pleasures are negations of value only when they are alien and accidental additions, thereby occupying the same status as pain. Pleasures achieve value when they are incorporated within the activity of mind, within the essence of an integrated and coherent whole. From being accidental they thereby become essential, because they have become part of the essence of consciousness. When pleasure is unified with consciousness so that the two are one, the ideal is made real, and the essential destinies of pleasure and consciousness are alike achieved. Their mutual destiny is to be such that neither can be distinguished from the other. Whether it be pleasures of the body or supersensual pleasures makes no difference. The value of all alike cannot be realized until they are incorporated within the activity of mind. The value of pleasure does not become real until pleasure becomes ideal.
Mind is dynamic form, and when pleasure is integrated with the activity of mind it becomes pleasure that is informed. No longer accidental and arbitrary, no longer a mere excretion of mindless force, it is now environed and penetrated by intelligence, and has become essential and ideal. When this happens, not only to pleasure but to all of sensibility--to imagination, feeling, desire and passion--when, in brief, the material content of the psyche has been transformed by the activity of mind, then there is a self and a will. For will is informed content, matter with form--matter informed by the presence of mind. Will is formed passion--passion made intelligent by the activity of mind. As always happens when mind moves to its perfection, will is active, coherent, and definite. It presses forth with a powerful point of view. It is determined, even as it is free. This it is to have an identity, and this it is to be a self. If consciousness and pleasure are the first perfection of mind, the will and the self are the final perfection. Will is the final perfection of pleasure, and the self is the final perfection of consciousness. Consciousness which is also pleasure, the will which is also the self--these are existing mind become non-existential, the real which persists in being real, even as it has also become ideal. Perfection is an existential concept, and here is perfection achieved.
So you think you are perfect. Consciousness and the self are indeed the perfections of existing mind. But mind has a non-existential destiny which passes beyond narcissistic obsession with perfection and imperfection.
Mind exists as real only by forgetting that it is essentially ideal. The existence of mind presupposes its own forgetfulness, its own denial and repression of what it is in itself. Yet like the itching persistence of a haunting memory which is not quite remembered but will not go away, like the disturbing insistence of a past love which has been overcome and yet is still there--consciousness is unconsciously drawn to it knows not what, to a terrible enhancement by which it is deeply repelled. Consciousness is drawn to itself, not as existing, but as it is in itself. This insistent persistence flits around the fringes of consciousness, repetitively seeking an opening through which it can penetrate to the core. Should penetration occur recollection would be complete, and consciousness, denying its self in order to seek itself, would stretch beyond itself to its non-existential destiny. It would become one with God.
Consciousness resists. It represses. It denies. It will remain unconscious. It will not remember. It will not remember its own self. It will not surrender its existential birthright, its identity. It will not surrender its perfection. It will not cease to will. It will not surrender to God. It will wrestle with God. It will wrestle for its very existence. It will wrestle for its very self. The consciousness of perfection is pride, and consciousness is a perfection which is proud.
And yet consciousness recollects. It remembers God, and God will not let go. All night consciousness wrestles with God. It will not give in.
Yet the wrestler does not comprehend. He is with Jacob's existential pride, but without Jacob's redeeming piety. He is with Israel, but without the seed of Abraham. His desperate resistance betrays a misunderstanding of the ideal, of the character of divinity. For conflict with God is not a conflict between the self and the not-self, between the self and what would be its annihilation. Conflict with God is not a conflict between will and its negation. That sort of conflict is purely existential, born of existential diremption and collision between polar opposites. The conflict here is between the self and that which is neither self nor not-self, for it incorporates and transcends both. It is a conflict between the will which is real and the will which is raised to its ideal fulfillment. Here is the way to pass beyond the vanities of egoism, of perfection and imperfection, and to preserve the will and the self even as they are transcended. This is not annihilation, but redemption. The promise is of an existing self relieved of existential passivity and passion, freed from the burdens of narcissistic pride. This is a self at once itself and more than itself, both a one and another, redeemed and made whole within the activity of the ideal, within the Mind that is God.
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