Is Consciousness Shrinking?

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Is Consciousness Shrinking?

What is the ratio of the conscious mind to the unconscious mind? Is the human unconscious half the size of the conscious or twice the size? What percentage of mental activity is carried out unconsciously and what consciously? Does this proportion vary between species? Which species has the largest unconscious mind relative to its conscious mind? If you are a believer in the Freudian unconscious, do you think other animals also have a Freudian unconscious, and is it as extensive as the human unconscious? So far as I know, such questions have never been broached. There must be a capacious linguistic unconscious in humans, given the nature of our linguistic competence, but do animals that employ various kinds of signal system likewise have a large signaling unconscious? Does the unconscious expand over the course of a lifetime? There is reason to think that it does, because it is common for tasks that begin with conscious mental activity to gradually become taken over by the unconscious. This is because of considerations of economy: the conscious mind is easily overloaded and it is more economical to shift the burden to unconscious processes; the machinery gets moved to the basement. Consciousness is notoriously slow compared to the unconscious. Just think how slow and cumbersome speech would be if it had to be figured out consciously—or walking, driving, throwing. The involvement of conscious activity in these skills shrinks as the skill is acquired; that part of the conscious mind falls away to take up residence in the unconscious mind. To that extent and in that sense the conscious mind gets smaller—less full. The ideal is to be able to perform the skill while your conscious mind is a blank, so that you can daydream and let your mind wander. Conscious activity is not required to perform the task in question, so it has a tendency to disappear, handing the responsibility over to the unconscious. It is no longer actively involved.

Suppose there was a mind that began with a zero unconscious and a jampacked consciousness, but then over time the process of shifting responsibility to the unconscious proceeded apace. More and more of mental functioning is delegated to the unconscious, leaving the conscious mind free for more agreeable occupations—listening to music, fantasizing about movie stars, meditating as vacantly as possible. There would be consciousness shrinkage and corresponding unconsciousness expansion. This might reach the point that consciousness had hardly anything to do, and nothing vital to the well-being of the conscious subject. It might exist only as a light buzz, or not at all. Suppose that is the normal course of the lifetime of an organism constructed like this: a childhood of brimming and taxing consciousness, followed by a middle age of relative conscious relaxation, ending in an old age of virtual unconsciousness. The unconscious has taken over all the jobs that used to be done by the conscious. There don’t seem to be any actual species that develop like this, but there could be, logically speaking. Such a species has a shrinking consciousness; it undergoes consciousness atrophy or downsizing. It was once big and now it is little. It slowly becomes unnecessary. Then, assuming all this, my question is: Could this happen to consciousness as it exists in the biological world? Could it gradually fade away over evolutionary time? Is it destined to disappear as the unconscious takes over its functions? Might consciousness be only a temporary feature of evolutionary history on this planet? Could natural selection eventually phase it out in favor of more efficient unconscious processes and mechanisms? Might the unconscious mind take over completely? It is, of course, extremely difficult to obtain evidence as to whether consciousness has been expanding or contracting over evolutionary time, and ditto for the unconscious. How could we empirically determine whether the conscious mind has been ceding territory to the unconscious mind? But it doesn’t seem wildly implausible to suppose that the dinosaur mind, say, was heavily tilted in the consciousness direction: most of what went on in it was conscious, with only a minimal unconscious (nothing Freudian or Chomskyan going on). The mind that evolved early on was largely a conscious mind; only after eons did it grow a subsidiary unconscious, so as to avoid the burden of a crammed consciousness. The unconscious is a fancy adaptation, developed rather late in the game, designed to relieve consciousness of too much responsibility for organizing behavior. First the conscious, then the unconscious—as with skill acquisition. It strikes me as very likely that the human unconscious is by far the largest in the animal world, but that our consciousness is relatively confined. Certainly, our sensory consciousness is more limited than that of many animals—just consider our relative poverty with respect to sounds, smells, eyesight, and possibly taste (though we seem pretty discriminating in this respect). The elephant’s consciousness might well be larger than ours, but I doubt there is much going on in the elephant’s unconscious. There has been a trend towards smaller animals since the time of the dinosaurs, and maybe the same is true of the size of consciousness (with a corresponding increase in the dimensions of the unconscious). Might this trend continue until consciousness is replaced by purely unconscious mental processing, or by some negligible remnant of consciousness as it exists today? Might consciousness become extinct like so many biological adaptations? Has the hominid line been slowly shedding its earlier glorious consciousness in favor of a more streamlined and efficient unconscious? Are we less conscious than we used to be, more zombie-like? Is there less that it’s like to be us? The hypothesis does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility.

One future scenario is that human technological ingenuity might hasten this progression—I mean AI. What if devices are invented that can slot into the brain to take over many of the tasks now executed by the conscious mind? We might well welcome these as reducing the tedium that consciousness regularly courts (tax forms etc.). What if we could vastly improve our efficiency by inserting these devices, creating a kind of machine-based unconscious? Wouldn’t people want that kind of advantage? The end result could be a massively reduced consciousness, or no consciousness at all. We might retain some remnants of conscious pleasure for old time’s sake, but otherwise we hand things over to our man-made unconscious. AI becomes the form that the new unconscious takes. After all, consciousness was always slow and glitchy, prone to breakdown and depression, so we might be better off without it. On some remote planet this might already have happened: the inhabitants were once conscious and fleshy, but now they have gone fully unconscious and partly mechanical. Consciousness just wasn’t cutting it for them, so they phased that junk out. They de-conscioused. In their history, consciousness came–and then it went. Consequently, they don’t see themselves as raising a difficult mind-body problem, since there is no consciousness to be puzzled about. There is nothing it is like for these robotic beings. And is it even correct to describe them as robotic? Maybe the unconscious mind that pulses within them is a sensitive and sophisticated thing, morally sound and peace-loving; it may be soulful, creative, family-oriented, and kind to animals. Who knows what evolution can bring? Consciousness may not be all that it’s cracked up to be when it comes to intelligence and moral behavior. People still operating with the old conscious brain might be looked down on as primitive and hidebound—they need to get with the program. Eventually consciousness becomes a distant memory, darkly spoken of in ancient texts; the universe has gone completely unconscious, though still mentally rich (the unconscious being a type of mind). In the history of the cosmos, consciousness was born, grew, and flourished; then it began to shrink, giving way to superior forms of mentality, eventually disappearing entirely—a mere blip in the cosmic drama. To us it seems central, crucial, infinitely valuable, but maybe it will turn out to be just another discarded evolutionary gimmick destined to be superseded. Even now it may be on its way out. It may follow the fate of the dodo.[1]

[1] Another possibility is that some species retain consciousness in some form while others discard it. Reptiles may stay conscious in their modest way, but mammals abandon consciousness in favor of a supercharged unconscious. The most advanced animals move on to the new biological reality while the more pedestrian types stick with the consciousness game. The most successful species are thus the unconscious ones. Or plants become conscious and animals cease to be. Evolution is nothing if not creative.

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Reality and Appearance

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Reality and Appearance

Appearances are part of reality, even when they are illusions; they are real things, no less so when not representing reality correctly. But is reality part of appearance? Certainly, not all reality is presented in appearances, since some parts of reality have appeared to no one (unless we include God). But is reality everpart of appearance—does reality ever appear? I will argue that reality never appears as it is in itself. In its actual nature it never appears; it never appears as it is. No aspect of it ever appears as it really is. This means that we never experience reality as it is in itself in any respect. It would be widely agreed that some of its appearance is foreign to it as it is in itself (e.g., secondary qualities); I am suggesting that all of it is strictly outside the scope of appearance. For example, no one has ever seen an object as it is in reality, though it is a certain way in reality. The reason for this is simple, indeed truistic: appearances are always viewpoint-relative, but reality is not. The way the physical world is in itself is independent of any viewpoint; no viewpoint is built into it. But viewpoint is always built into appearance, necessarily. The easiest case is spatial perspective: we sense things from a position in space, but things in space don’t themselves have any spatial perspective. Perspective belongs to the appearances but not to the reality that appears. In other words, perspective is subjective (subject-relative) while reality is objective (not subject-relative). Appearance contains a point of view; reality does not. There is no point of view in reality, just brute existence—being in space is not a matter of being perceived to be in space. This is a fact about reality—a metaphysical fact—but it is a fact that cannot be represented in perceptual appearances. Thus, reality could never be perceived just as it is: the way it is for no one cannot be captured in an appearance to someone. Nor could it be captured by the universe itself, since the universe does not appear to itself. If it did, it would have a point of view, thus undermining its claim to complete objectivity. To put it differently, sense-data cannot represent objective states of affairs objectively. Sense-data may be caused by objective states of affairs (no doubt they are), and in that sense may be said to be de re objects of experience, but they cannot represent how the states of affairs are in themselves and only in themselves. That, indeed, is a conceptual truth.

At this point questions crowd in. Is this conclusion true only for perceptual experience but not for appearance in thought? What does it imply about human knowledge? What about Berkeley? Is it true for numbers and mental states? I will consider each question in turn. The first question is answered by observing that thought and perception are not unconnected: to the degree that our thoughts reflect our perceptions, they too are incapable of representing reality as it intrinsically is. Even a mild version of empiricism will generate this result. Certainly, we can’t imagine the real world without any tincture of our world of subjective appearance, because imagination tracks the senses. And isn’t it true that if we try to focus on our thoughts about the physical world, we find that we are forced back to a perspectival conception of reality? If I try to think of the world from noperspective, I find that I don’t know what I am thinking—my own self keeps intruding (hence the temptations of solipsism). Every conception of things is a type of view, but there is no such thing as a view from nowhere. We ask about someone’s views, tacitly conceding that they are locked into a certain perspective, even if it is just the human (or mammalian) perspective. Reality does not come to us neat but diluted by our own sensibility, sensory or intellectual. The phenomenal world is our world; we can’t grasp reality noumenally. So, thought cannot escape the tyranny of the appearances. At the limit we are subject to the tyranny of intelligence (reason, intellect) in that we see things from our cognitive vantage point—our concepts, our logical faculties. The subject cannot escape himself altogether. But reality is under no such constraint, simply possessing being itself, knowing subjects be damned. Thought, by contrast, cannot escape its status as thought: thought is always present to itself, intrusively so. Thought is not transparent. There is no such thing as a fact being embedded in thought just as it is, neither more nor less. Thought always adds and subtracts, because thought is a form of appearance (the intellectual form). A physical fact thought about is always thought about under a mode of presentation, but facts themselves have no mode of presentation—they are pure reference, so to speak. Being is not being for anyone. There is thus a fundamental mismatch at the heart of all mental representation. The mind never encompasses reality just as it is in itself. The idea is contradictory.

Does that mean that human knowledge of reality is impossible? No, because knowledge does not require complete objectivity; it requires, rather, a type of tracking. The knowing mind must correspond to reality, reliably, deeply, but it need not be reality—as if only the object itself can truly know its own nature. Knowledge does not require identity between subject and object, only correlation. Knowledge is true justified belief—a type of mapping—not the upload of world into mind. Scientific knowledge is not compromised by the admission that it cannot describe the world in completely unadulterated objective terms, as if the knowing subject has somehow disappeared. The knowing mind never collapses into the world; it parallels it. Maybe we have a fantastic ideal of knowledge in which the mind is invaded by the world as it objectively is, setting up camp in it as it were; but realistically, knowledge cannot aspire to such an encounter–it must be content to provide an atlas of reality, a guide. No one ever contended that x knows that p if and only if x’s mind apprehends reality as it objectively and intrinsically is: that is far too strong a requirement. Scientific realism does not require that reality should enter wholly and directly into the scientific mind, like a shoe in a box. It does not require an epistemology of containment.

What about Berkeley? It might be supposed that a Berkeleyan metaphysics could prevent reality from eluding the clutches of appearance. If reality is appearance (idealism), then it cannot lie outside of appearance; it must be a type of appearance, viewpoint and all. And surely, we can grasp appearances! But remember that reality for Berkeley is appearance in God’s mind not just any old mind (yours, your neighbor’s); and therefore, the kind of appearance that constitutes reality is not like ordinary human appearance. Do we really grasp what it would be for something to appear thus-and-so to God? Do we grasp the full reality of divine appearances, and not from our own limited perspective on them? Doubtful: so, we don’t have a conception of reality in Berkeley’s system that allows it to be captured by our human appearances—it transcends them. It probably transcends them even more than material substance—it is further from our natural modes of comprehension. At any rate, such a metaphysics doesn’t render reality one whit closer to what can enter into human representations; we are not acquainted with a reality so conceived, as we are not acquainted with ordinary objects under metaphysical materialism (i.e., the doctrine that physical objects are material not mental).

I just said that we know our own appearances—that they appear to us just as they are in themselves. But is that really true? This raises the broader question of whether any elements of reality appear to us just as they are, neither more nor less. Does pain, for example, appear just as it is intrinsically? That certainly seems like a more appealing proposition than it does for physical objects outside the mind, but on closer inspection it too comes to seem questionable. For it is arguable that pain also has dimensions that don’t show up in its appearance to us: it may have an underside that escapes our introspective awareness. What about its functional and cerebral properties? These don’t reveal themselves to our powers of introspection, so the first-person appearance of pain is not a mirror of the full nature of pain. And when we include these physical features by taking the brain and behavior into account we are back with elusive physical facts. Is it even clear that we have a complete picture of the phenomenology of pain just from our ordinary introspective awareness? Maybe there are details and similarities that are not immediately apparent to us: the reality of pain’s phenomenology might exceed the appearances it presents to us. After all, first-person introspection is just one perspective on pain, though doubtless a central one; pain itself might have a subjective reality that goes beyond such a perspective. It is a constituent of objective reality as well as a conspicuous presence in my subjective image of the world. It has being-in-itself as well as being-for-me.

Lastly, what should we say about mathematics? When I think about numbers do I grasp their objective reality? I know truths about them, to be sure, but do they offer their whole being to my cognitive faculties? I don’t view them from a particular spatial perspective, so it isn’t as if I falsify their inner nature in the way I do with concrete objects. But do I really perceive (intellectually) their actual intrinsic nature? Is there no more to their intrinsic nature than what appears to my mind? That seems hard to maintain: we don’t even know whether they are abstract, mental, or notational! We are ontologically myopic with respect to numbers. What if they exist in Platonic heaven right next to the Form of the Good—is that any part of our normal encounters with numbers? Scarcely. We may have a very partial and biased picture of mathematical objects; their reality may differ significantly from their appearance to us. Thus, I am inclined to believe that number appearance does not fully disclose number reality, though our knowledge of truths about numbers is one of our stronger areas of knowledge. It is hard, then, to escape the conclusion that reality never coincides with appearance. Appearances always omit aspects of reality as well as impose aspects alien to the thing itself. Our very concept of reality is too rarified for comfort, though indispensable.[1]

[1] Hume would say that we have no impression of subject-independent reality corresponding to our putative idea of it. The idea is thus under suspicion of emptiness. That is no doubt too strong, but it is true that the idea is unnervingly abstract and disturbingly noumenal.

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Emotional Logic

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Emotional Logic

The idea that emotions are exempt from logic is widely received. Emotion is supposed to be where logic breaks down, where the mind eludes logic’s inexorable grip. It is the domain of the unruly, the irrational, the unprincipled—a kind of mental anarchy. This is wrong on several levels. Of course, emotions are subject to logic: it is not logically possible to both love and not love the same thing at the same time. We can reason logically about the emotions, as we can about anything. The emotions do not constitute an extra-logical domain. Nor is it true that emotions lack a rational basis: they arise from solid biological roots (supplemented by learning) and serve a biological function; they enable their possessor to survive better. Emotions are not anti-prudential or somehow self-destructive (pace Mr. Spock).  They are useful adaptations just like intelligence or the ability to think logically. Sure, they can misfire and be disruptive on occasion, but they are not glitches or gremlins in our psychological economy. But is there anything logic-like in their internal geography—do they exhibit logical behavior? One point, frequently remarked, is that the range of emotions exhibits a certain kind of logical structure: emotions come in opposed pairs, rather like assertion and denial. Thus, love and hate, delight and disgust, attraction and repulsion, security and fear, calm and agitation, admiration and contempt, like and dislike, interest and boredom, happiness and misery. There are opposed poles of emotion, not unlike truth and falsity. Hence, we speak of positive and negative emotions. Emotions form a pattern, an intelligible structure, a kind of matrix. The mind (heart, soul) moves around this matrix in intelligible ways; it dances to the music of the emotions. We all understand this structure; we have a basic competence in its categories. We grasp its grammar. We speak its language. It isn’t just a haphazard assemblage of arbitrary urgings having neither sense nor logic. It isn’t just mental chaos.

But is there an emotional logic as there is a propositional logic or a quantifier logic or a modal logic or a tense logic or a deontic logic or an epistemic logic? That may seem like a bridge too far in the quest to redeem emotion from its reputation as logically inept (or sublimely transcendent). Surely, there cannot be a formal logic of emotion! Emotion words cannot function as logical operators, logical constants in a formal system of deduction. None such exists, and with good reason. What would a logic of love even look like? Could the concept of disgust play the same kind of role as the concept of necessity in modal logic? Could there be a logic text, littered with logical symbols, for happiness? Actually, I don’t see why not; in fact, it is surprising that such a logic does not already exist, since it follows the same pattern as those other types of logical system. Affect logic is a thing; it merely awaits codification. First, we need some logically true axioms expressed in conditional form. I will consider a system that employs two basic operators (there could be other such systems): L and F, where L is intuitively love and F is fear. Think of these as analogous to necessity and possibility. Then we have this axiom: if LLp, then Lp, i.e., if x loves to love y, then x loves y. I write the axiom with a propositional variable so that L and F can be seen as sentence operators like logical negation—x loves to love that p. The converse will not be an axiom, since someone might love another without loving to love this other. Love, like necessity, can be iterated indefinitely (if pointlessly): x loves to love loving y. We get a similar axiom for F: if FFp, then Fp, i.e., if you fear to fear something you also fear it (if only dispositionally). Again, the converse does not hold. We can make the same points about sadness, happiness, delight, etc. We have recursive operators that generate logical axioms. Accordingly, we have logical deductions employing these operators.

Are there any logical axioms containing both L and F? These would be analogous to modal axioms containing necessity and possibility. There ought to be such axioms because of an incompatibility between love and fear: we don’t love what we fear or fear what we love (in the normal course of things). We want to be close to the loved object but not the feared object. Thus, we have the axioms: if Lp, then not Fp; and if Fp, then not Lp.  Can we fear to love something? If so, we could add the axiom: if FLp, then Fp—if we fear to love something, then we fear that thing. Is that a logical truth? Why would we fear to love something unless we already feared it (heroin, say)? I won’t try to adjudicate the issue, merely remarking that it resembles similar questions about iterations of other operators (if it’s possible that p is necessary, is p thereby necessary?). In any case, we do have some plausible-sounding necessary truths in the axioms mentioned above, since love and fear are natural opposites. We approach what we love and we avoid what we fear, as the psychologists say; and these two kinds of behavior are not compatible. So, the logic of emotion might have some interesting complexity aside from the truisms already cited in the previous section. There is enough logical structure in the concepts to permit a logical treatment of emotions. As I noted, this is not terribly surprising in the light of the standard examples of non-classical logics; it isn’t hard to get a logic off the ground, since concepts tend to cluster in logically connected groups and iteration is a common feature of language (“not”, “know”, “necessary”, etc.). If you can love to love and fear to fear, then you have the foundations for a logic of these emotions. Emotions are naturally logical in their possible combinations: some imply others and some imply the absence of others.[1]

[1] Emotions are rather like colors in this regard: colors too exhibit logical relations of implication and exclusion. This logic cannot be reduced to a classical logic of truth functions (as Wittgenstein discovered). I can imagine the same hostility to emotional logic as greeted modal logic in its early days. I look forward to a formal semantics of emotional logic.

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Emotion and Logic

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Emotion and Logic

Are they compatible? Is it possible to be an emotional being and a logical being? More exactly, is it possible to be perfectly logical but also emotional? Is emotion always the enemy of logic? In Star Trek we find a defense of the thesis that emotion and logic are incompatible, or an assumption of that thesis. Mr. Spock is the epitome of the logical, but he also lacks all emotion—the latter being a necessary condition of the former, allegedly. Meanwhile, alongside this exemplary Vulcan, we have the humans Captain James T. Kirk and Dr. McCoy, both emotionally charged and not always logical—Kirk being capable of “intuitive” inspirations, McCoy often lapsing into well-meaning blather. The idea is that Spock represents pure logic at the cost of a lack of affect: you can’t be entirely logical in your thinking if you are prone to emotional outbursts (or inbursts). The thought behind this idea is that emotion is like a wind that blows you off the logical course: logic points you in a certain direction, but emotion deflects you from this course, with no good result. Thus, an incompatibilism obtains in the human psyche: between our logical nature and our emotional nature. You can’t have both (like free will and determinism, supposedly). The logical person is thought emotionally cold, even dead; the emotional person is deemed irrational and foolish. We are at psychological war with ourselves, pulled in opposing directions. I think this conception is completely mistaken: there is no incompatibility, or no deep incompatibility. Granted, emotion can be the enemy of logic—it can play a deflecting role—but it is false that it must be. It is perfectly possible to be a person of emotion, even strong deep emotion, and still be flawlessly logical. There could be highly affective Vulcans (but none on Star Trek alas).

Consider love (hate would make the same point): it is not inherently irrational or anti-logical. It might be rationally warranted by its object and it can lead to desirable consequences. Many a marriage is prompted by rational love and leads to a happy relationship. Doing what makes you (and others) happy because of an emotion of love is not an illogical way of proceeding. It is true that love (more likely hate) can make people act irrationally (“illogically”), but that is hardly a necessary truth. Similarly, the emotion of fear can lead to irrational actions, but fear is not itself irrational—indeed, it is a rational way to build an organism that avoids danger. Fear is like pain; and pain is not irrational. Aesthetic emotions are not somehow illogical, though they may be non-logical, i.e., not the result of logical reasoning. If you find a sunset beautiful, you are not thereby irrational; there is nothing wrong with your reasoning. If you thrill to the taste of blackberries, you are not being illogical (is everything tasteless to Spock?). Needs and desires are not illogical just because they are not the result of logical reasoning—any more than bodily traits are. This is obvious, though contrary to the incompatibilist thesis. To be sure, emotions may interfere with logical reasoning, but it is not true that they necessarily do—they are not inherently contra-logical. Love and logic can happily coexist (as can hate and logic). No one aboard the Enterprise ever makes this point to Spock—why not?

But a stronger thesis can also be defended: logic requires emotion (as free will, properly understood, requires determinism). You can’t be a logical being without also being an emotional being. Spock is thus either logically impossible or covertly emotional (as he is often suspected of being by his shipmates). Perhaps Spock is really just differently emotional—alienly emotional. Emotional make-ups don’t come in a single form; it is anthropocentric to suppose otherwise. Why do I say this? Couldn’t there be a completely unemotional logic machine? But a machine is not a man: the question is whether a conscious living being could be both logical and devoid of emotion. Could someone be capable of logical reasoning but not capable of any kind of emotion? I doubt it, because reasoning is a goal-directed mental action and hence requires motivation—a point, an end. It needs a reason. Nor is it hard to see what kind of reason might motivate logical thought: the desire to arrive at the truth, the pleasure of reasoning skillfully, a love of logic itself. We are not emotionally dead when we reason logically, any more than when we do mathematics or science. Spock clearly loves science, in his quiet undemonstrative way. He enjoys solving problems (he plays a lot of vertical chess). There are intellectual emotions—emotions of reason. These emotions may not rage and torment, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist—they are simply another type of emotion. Without them logical reasoning would not be reasoning as we know it; indeed, it is unclear whether it would be any kind of reasoning. Even a disembodied mind employed only about logical problems would feel something, even if it is just a mild feeling of interest or occasional frustration. The idea of the soulless scientist or logician, completely devoid of emotion of any kind, is a myth—though his or her emotion may not much resemble those of a warrior or street vendor. I wouldn’t be surprised if Spock has quite a rich emotional life, though one markedly different from his human comrades. He is on the emotional spectrum, albeit at the far end. It is possible to be passionately logical, as Spock apparently is (compare Bertrand Russell).

The case may be compared with morality. Suppose you are a convinced moral cognitivist. That doesn’t mean you believe that moral reasoning is a dry desiccated business; emotion may suffuse or surround the mental acts involved. Kant spoke of his emotion of awe in contemplation of the moral law (and the starry heavens), and that emotion no doubt clung to his moral thinking, despite its rationalist cast. The same kind of feeling may attach itself to logical thinking—just think of Frege’s reverential attitude to logic or Wittgenstein’s logical mysticism. Morality and logic both stimulate emotions of reverence and exhilaration, respect and elation. Both involve the normative and non-natural, the sense of transcendence (the “sublime”). There is also the simple emotion of being pleased with a piece of moral or logical reasoning. These are not affect-free zones despite their “cognitive” status. You don’t have to be a card-carrying emotivist to believe in moral and logical emotions. Clearly, too, prudential reasoning has its affective dimension: you can’t be rationally prudent and not experience emotions proper to the subject at hand (disappointment, satisfaction). We can’t detach affect from intellect; the reasoning faculty is not cut off from the feeling faculty. Nor is this to its detriment, but rather to its point and possibility: there is no thinking without feeling. These are not separate non-interacting compartments of the mind, but mutually supporting, organically joined. It is perhaps conceivable that an organism might have insulated emotional and logical faculties, rather like the insulation (“encapsulation” in Fodor’s word) of perceptual from cognitive faculties, but it is not easy to imagine and is not the normal human (or animal) condition). We are logical-emotional beings not radically divided beings.

What are the sources of illogicality if not the emotions? We have accepted that emotions can sometimes derail logic, especially the emotions of hate, anger, jealousy, and envy. You would not think watching Star Trek that anything else could be the cause of logical error, but it isn’t hard to come up with other culprits. Being logical isn’t easy; it takes effort and training. Prejudice and laziness are obvious factors, along with inattention and simple distraction. It takes time to be logical, and peace and quiet, and these are sometimes in short supply. Some people are better at it than others (I mention no names). There is a certain hatred of logic, too, because of its power to fly in the face of wish fulfilment. So, there are plenty of reasons for the breakdown of the logical faculties—we don’t need to make a blanket appeal to the mere presence of emotion. Logic has many enemies in the human mind (and outside it). I suspect the focus on emotion stems from the puritan tradition—love and lust as the chief sources of logical malfunction. And it is true that Captain Kirk’s main area of weakness judgment-wise is his penchant for the ladies (often alien ladies): he is a notably romantic starship captain. Spock is often puzzled by his commander’s romantic follies and deplores their effect on his powers of logical reasoning. Still, there is more to emotion than romantic love, and many emotions are quite compatible with a firm adherence to logical principles. Spock’s emotional life revolves around his science and his chess; Kirk’s gravitates towards the winsome charms of alien beauties: both manage to be logical most of the time (even Spock has his moments of weakness, generally because of nefarious chemical infusions). What we may call “the Star Trek fallacy” is in both cases wrong: emotion and logic are not incompatible. [1]

[1] The original (and best) Star Trek series was produced in the late 1960s when there was a lot of discussion about how best to live (hippies etc.). The Beatles released “All You need Is Love”, an anthem for the period. We can only imagine Spock’s sharply raised Vulcan eyebrow. His motto would be “All You Need Is Logic”. Of course, the correct motto is “Love Logic and Logically Love”. You may cavil at the second conjunct, but all it means is that love should be guided by reality not by popular opinion or arbitrary whim. And not all love is of persons; ideas can be objects of love too.

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My Secret Garden

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My Secret Garden

I live in South Miami, just outside Coral Gables. I have an extensive garden, with much tropical vegetation. My study has a door onto this garden; I go out there a fair amount. It has a jungle feel. In this garden I have a full-size competition-level trampoline shaded by trees. I also have an archery range, including a knife-throwing set-up. I have three slices of a large tree trunk that used to be in my garden but had to be cut down; they are my targets. As reported earlier, I throw knives (really spikes) lefthanded, though I am righthanded, specializing in the no-spin throw from varying distances. This activity interacts with my tennis (as well as drumming and guitar). But I just added another activity: shot-put. I now have a designated shot-put area where I throw (toss?) the steel ball lefthanded. My garden isn’t big enough to accommodate my discus throwing (lefthanded), so I need to take that activity to a local park, where I also throw lefthanded frisbee. I am now a “lefthanded man”, a new type of human: a righthanded lefthander. I am hoping and expecting that the shot-put discipline will help with my tennis; indeed, I think it already has. Is it for everybody? I won’t go that far (same for discus), but for me it is a valuable addition. Now my garden feels like a place I like to hang out in as my own personal sports arena. I don’t garden much but I do enjoy playing in my garden.[1]

[1] Let me add that I like to play guitar while I watch television. They are showing old episodes of the original Star Trek six nights a week, which hold up amazingly well, so I play guitar while watching Kirk and Spock. But I am now watching a lot of Olympic coverage and playing guitar then too; this means that I am playing guitar for many hours at a time. I was struck by how much this lengthy playing has improved my guitar technique. So, I suggest that guitar teachers recommend long hours of guitar playing in front of the television. It takes the boredom out of practice and it justifies watching too much television. It’s also quite pleasant.

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Four Ways of Studying Language

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Four Ways of Studying Language

What is the linguist or philosopher of language studying? It will be useful to distinguish four different (but overlapping) areas of study: ontological, epistemological, behavioral, and phenomenological. By “ontological” I mean the study of language as a formal object: its nature, structure, and inner workings. What is it composed of? How is it structured? How does it work? Here we will find discussions of the nature of propositions, grammar, logical form, sense and reference, objects and facts, Platonism and anti-Platonism. We will find proposals about what meaning is and what words refer to (if anything). The subject is language itself not our psychological relation to it. The case is like the ontological study of mathematics—what it is in itself not how it relates to the human mind. By “epistemological” I mean (predictably) our knowledge of language—what is variously called linguistic competence, mastery, understanding, grasp. This is analogous to our knowledge of mathematics. This kind of study is clearly dependent on the first kind, since how something is known depends on what it is. What kind of knowledge is this and how is it possible? Third, we have behavioral studies—what is called linguistic performance, use, action, utterance. This will involve how linguistic knowledge is related to actual speech—the cognition-action nexus. Fourth, we have the phenomenological investigation of language—its expression in consciousness. This takes in all the ways in which language finds its way into our subjective experience: the felt character of language, its mode of seeming. Thus, we have what language constitutively is, our mode of knowing it, how it manifests itself in behavior, and what it is like to have it. These should not be confused or run together, though there will no doubt be plenty of overlap. The totality of these ways forms the subject matter of the study of language. We might also add the social psychology of language, or the politics of language, or its relation to human emotion; but these may be subsumed under the categories already listed, being concerned with the psychology of language generally. Epistemology is part of psychology, broadly construed—one department of the human mind, the knowing part. In practice, such non-epistemological psychological studies are seldom encountered in theoretical linguistics treatises.

I will make some remarks about the nature of linguistic knowledge, which seems to me in need of fresh insights. There is the much-debated question of whether linguistic knowledge is similar to other kinds of knowledge, in particular, knowledge-how and knowledge-that. When a speaker knows what a sentence means, does he or she have a true justified belief about that sentence, or is it more akin to an ability?  Is unconscious knowledge of the syntactic rules of a language a type of true justified belief? Is knowledge of language simply the application of a general faculty for knowledge to a particular subject matter, viz. language, or is it a special type of knowledge? Do we know language in the same sense in which we know geography and history? Then there is the question of how innate our knowledge of language is—completely, partially, or not at all. The question I want to focus on is whether linguistic knowledge is a priori, and if so how. The other questions have been widely debated, if not resolved, but this question has received little or no attention. It also strikes me as hard. I incline to the view that knowledge of language is special and sui generis; it is not just one application of a general knowledge faculty. That idea has already been cast into doubt by the existence of a priori knowledge, but linguistic knowledge puts a new wrinkle on it. Suppose I know what “Tom is bald” means: I know that the sentence in question means that Tom is bald. Is this knowledge a priori or a posteriori? My knowledge that Tom is bald is clearly a posteriori (I saw his bald head yesterday), but what about my knowledge of the meaning of the sentence? Well, how do I know its meaning? You might say I know it by learning certain empirical facts about the sounds or marks composing the sentence—facts of a conventional nature. That is no doubt true and to that extent my knowledge is a posteriori: but is it all there is to my knowledge of the sentence’s meaning? No, because I have to grasp how the sentence is put together, its grammatical structure. This involves knowledge of how nouns and verbs combine to produce sentences, i.e., form predicative propositions. So, do I know a posteriori how nouns and verbs work together to produce sentences? Have I seen this happen a number of times in the past and thereby infer that it will go on happening in the future—is it a case of empirical inductive knowledge? Apparently not: I know it without needing to undertake empirical investigations of this type. I know it a priori, just by knowing what nouns and verbs are and how their combination produces whole sentences; arguably, this depends on my knowing what reference and predication are and how they generate true propositions. That is, my knowledge of the meaning of the sentence “Tom is bald” incorporates an a priori component in addition to an a posteriori component. We could put this by saying that our knowledge of grammar is a priori, i.e., the combinatorial principles of sentence formation are known a priori.[1] When I know (empirically) the meaning of individual words, I know without further empirical input the meaning of phrases and sentences composed of those words. I know a priori that “Tom is bald” is grammatically correct and “Bald Tom is” is not, given knowledge of the conventional meaning of those words. Thus, linguistic knowledge has an a priori component, like geometrical and arithmetical knowledge. It isn’t entirely a posteriori. It may also be that this kind of knowledge is innate, as a matter of fact, but it is in any case an example of a priori knowledge. Is it knowledge of analytic truths? I won’t pronounce on this question, but that may also be so, pending an account of the scope of analytic truth and its epistemology. If we know what “noun” means and what “verb” means, then we know that noun-verb conjunctions produce sentences; there is an analytic necessity at work here.

We can now say something about the special character of linguistic knowledge (knowledge of meaning, in particular): it is a type of mixed knowledge. It has a base component that ranks as a priori, and it has a surface component that is a posteriori. When I speak and know that my words are meaningful, and know also whatthey mean, my knowledge has two components: an empirical component corresponding to certain contingent conventions of use, and an a priori component corresponding to the underlying grammar of language (a linguistic universal). As it were, I know the logic of my language a priori and I know its manifestation in speech a posteriori; my knowledge is a hybrid of disparate elements. Moreover, the a priori component is peculiar to language, not shared by other domains of a priori knowledge (geometry, arithmetic, ethics). It is knowledge of (universal) grammar. So, there is something unique about our knowledge of language; it has a sui generisinner complexity. In speaking and understanding, the mind is combining its a priori faculty and its a posteriorifaculty, to produce a special species of knowledge. Linguistic knowledge is a synthesis of these two types of knowledge. Thus, what is called linguistic competence is a synthesis of the a priori and the a posteriori. The work of Frege and the early Wittgenstein illustrates nicely how the element of a priori knowledge enters the picture (they didn’t think they were dealing in contingent empirical facts but rather in a priori necessary truths). Knowing a language isn’t just knowing empirical truths about that particular language.

Circling back to the four ways, we can draw some conclusions about the other three. First, the ontology of language: it must have an a priori structure, indeed a necessary structure, given that this structure is known a priori (just as Frege and early Wittgenstein maintained). Second, linguistic performance must stem from a dual competence: speech and understanding must be (partially) controlled by a priori and a posteriori knowledge working together. There is a kind of double causation at work (no doubt reflected in the relevant brain mechanisms). This is a far cry from old-fashioned stimulus-response psychology. Third, the phenomenology of linguistic activity will surely reflect its epistemic underpinnings; in particular, the phenomenology of a prioricognition will show up in consciousness. What it is like to speak and understand will bear the marks of this type of knowledge, as well as the more humdrum type of knowledge deployed in knowing sound-meaning associations; we will be conscious of the deep a priori knowledge involved in mastering a natural language grammar. In this respect, linguistic phenomenology belongs in the same camp as mathematical phenomenology (as well as ethical phenomenology, if we adopt a rationalist view of ethical knowledge). Perhaps this helps to explain the rather enigmatic and tantalizing nature of linguistic knowledge: it partakes of the puzzle of the a priori, going back to Plato and shaping the rationalist tradition in philosophy. Knowledge of language is not the most pellucid of things, which is why not much is said about it beyond the superficial.[2]

[1] I mean here the basic principles of universal grammar, not the idiosyncratic rules of particular languages, e.g., adjective placement or whether it is “good grammar” to split one’s infinitives. These latter are a posteriori.

[2] Knowledge of mathematics is notoriously problematic, as is knowledge of ethics. Knowledge of language, likewise, incorporates a problematic a priori component, and so inherits that source of puzzlement. How exactly do we come to know that nouns and verbs combine to form whole sentences? It isn’t like knowing that fish and chips go nicely together. It certainly doesn’t seem to be based on sensory experience, or to have a causal basis. It is, in some sense, “intuitive”. Rationalist epistemology may be true (I think it is) but it isn’t free of mystery.

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Phenomenology of Language

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Phenomenology of Language

Suppose we undertake a phenomenological investigation of human speech (we leave Vulcan speech to the Vulcans). What distinctions will we need to make? What categories must we adopt? What methods should we use? What precedents should we cite? Obviously, we will need a speaker-hearer distinction, as well as distinctions between inner speech and outer speech, written speech and vocal speech, sign language and sound language. But we will also need to distinguish levels of phenomenology corresponding to articulatory facts, syntactic facts, semantic facts, and pragmatic facts. An Italian speaker will differ in his articulatory phenomenology from an English speaker, because of the different sounds produced and received; but his syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic phenomenology may coincide with those of the English speaker. The same goes for the deaf speaker: signs are not identical to sounds, so there is a difference in articulatory phenomenology, but there need not be any difference at the other levels. In other words, there may be phenomenological universals at the deeper levels, rather like the grammatical universals postulated by Chomsky and others (these universals will likely have phenomenological counterparts). With respect to categories, we may expect that the usual categories of word, phrase, and sentence will map onto phenomenological categories—for example, there may be a sense of completeness corresponding to whole sentences but not to individual words. As to methods, the obvious method will be first-person and introspective, but we cannot rule out more “objective” methods such as brain scans and behavioral studies, and also evolutionary theory. Precedents may include other human traits and activities that bear on linguistic activity such as perception, memory, and motor skills. All in all, the subject of language phenomenology will have all the complexity and variety of other studies of language, scientific and philosophical. In particular, I expect that we will need to recognize deep and surface linguistic phenomenology, as well as syntactic and semantic phenomenology. Do not expect to limit consideration to data traditionally associated with language studies; we may need to take in other aspects of human biology and psychology, including evolutionary history and human cognition generally.

At the articulatory level, we should acknowledge that sound is only part of what goes into speech production and hence into consciousness of what we call speech acts. In addition, and importantly, there are various kinds of motor activity—elaborate sign language centered on the hands, paralinguistic gestures of many kinds (notably pointing), and small movements of the vocal apparatus (larynx, tongue, and lips). There is a whole lot of shaking (moving) going on. This has a phenomenological impact–proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and visual. Call all this sensorimotor phenomenology. It interacts with other types of movement and awareness thereof, such as approach and avoidance behavior. Commands illustrate the point perfectly (“Bring me a biscuit!”). Language is clearly one component of our total behavioral output and is experienced as such. At the syntactic level, we have the much-celebrated creativity of language, combined with its rule-governed nature and abhorrence of grammatical nonsense. We have the feeling of creativity whenever we put a new sentence together, which we take for granted, so familiar is it. We are consciously, knowingly, creative creatures, syntactically speaking. We are also creative in other ways that parallel and interact with our linguistic creativity—as in dreaming, imagining, producing art and science. We are phenomenologically original and ground-breaking, unlike the majority of animals. Thus, we experience ourselves as undetermined, free, unfettered, almost godlike (outside of nature anyway). We have a naturally bigheaded phenomenology, encouraging us to look down on the rest of nature. Because we speak, and seem to ourselves to speak, we think we are a cut above, natural biological aristocrats, a superior species. Our morality is shaped by this (you see what I mean about linguistic phenomenology reaching into other areas of human life). Is our species supremacism a result of our felt syntactic virtuosity? Our ability to generate novel sentences taps into our identity as constructivecreatures: not only do we construct dwellings, cities, and technology, we also construct sentences—wholes made up of functional parts. We are natural builders—of linguistic edifices: and not just sentences but also speeches, essays, books, encyclopedias. We are verbal architects and artisans, forever constructing new linguistic structures: we are self-conscious language producers and consumers, the bigger the better. We accordingly pride ourselves on our verbal felicity and productivity, some speakers achieving immortality this way. It is part of our species identity, our lived human experience. We construct pyramids of words. Verbosity is our pride and joy.

What about semantics? I have written elsewhere on the role of the hand in providing the groundwork for the emergence of reference, particularly prehension and ostension (gripping and pointing).[1] It is obvious on reflection that the hands are integral to human speech—it is probable that the original human language was a sign language. Granted this point, we can observe that the phenomenology of speaking will allude to our hands and their place in our life, which is pervasive and indispensable. We are a manual species as well as a verbal species. Our hands have their own complex phenomenology, which lies adjacent to our verbal phenomenology—as when we gesture while speaking, or resort to the hands when language won’t do the communicative trick (as in a foreign land). We use our hands to communicate just as we use our mouths. In the beginning was the hand, which begot the word. The human brain has large areas dedicated to the hand and mouth; and these are linked organs in many ways. The distinction between noun and verb may owe its origins to our hand activities, gripping and acting. In addition to this, language taps into our conceptual capacities—our thinking faculty. Accordingly, speaking and thinking are never far apart (though one sometimes doubts the necessity of the connection): the phenomenology of thinking shapes the phenomenology of talking. Propositions enter the sphere of the linguistic—hence logic, scientific thought, books. Speaking is phenomenologically propositional (at least much of the time). Theories of propositions thus bear on linguistic phenomenology: for example, Frege’s function-argument theory of the proposition can be adapted into a phenomenological description of the act of speaking. Functions take consciousness from an object as argument to another object (possibly a truth-value) as value, thus bringing the concept of truth into our thought and speech. According to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, using a sentence involves us in thoughts of the whole world and the totality of facts that composes it. Metaphysics and logic come to shape what it is like consciously to speak a language. In Wittgenstein’s later work, the phenomenology will include language games, family resemblance, rule following, other people, forms of life, and so on. Choose your phenomenological poison: metaphysics has phenomenological implications. The point I would make is that the phenomenology is likely to be complex and multilayered, not admitting of summary formulation: semantic phenomenology is as complex as the human mind. It is also fleeting, hard to pin down, and resistant to literal expression. There could be a whole academic journal devoted to it.

Here is a thought experiment designed to highlight the distinctive character of linguistic phenomenology. We are extremely familiar with the experience of speaking and hearing; we take it completely for granted. We have forgotten what it was like to be introduced to language as young children—what that felt like. Also, it was fairly gradual, protracted enough to habituate to it. But suppose you were born without a language faculty and had no knowledge of language until well into your teenage years; then an operation is performed on your brain that installs linguistic mastery in its mature form. Suddenly you can speak and understand! That would be like acquiring sight one day after being blind your whole life. I venture to suggest that that would be a remarkable experience, a phenomenological revelation. Your entire consciousness would be put into a new configuration—a Wow moment. You had been missing so much! The combinatorial power alone would astound you. Your self-esteem would shoot up. Your life would become a lot more interesting. Your consciousness would buzz with new and exciting experiences. You might dread going back to your old pre-linguistic state. You had no idea that meaning could be so…meaningful. So, wouldn’t it be great to have a perspicuous description of this newfound condition of consciousness? A good book on the phenomenology of language would be well worth reading. Language is a remarkable phenomenon, as has often been remarked; but so is our consciousness of that phenomenon.[2]

[1] See my Prehension (2015) and also “Consciousness and Language”.

[2] Why then has it been so persistently ignored in linguistic studies? Is it because consciousness is deemed “subjective” and therefore not scientific? It is true that consciousness is a subjective phenomenon, but it doesn’t follow that studying it is “merely subjective”, i.e., not an objective form of study. That is a non sequitur based on a bad pun. But the hold of behaviorism has been strong in studies of the mind, objectivity being the mark of the serious. In fact, of course, studying the subjective (ontological) can be perfectly objective (epistemological). I recommend beginning with an inquiry into the phenomenology of “not”: surely this word brims with phenomenological content and some work has already been done on it in the phenomenological tradition (see Sartre’s Being and Nothingness). Let it be noted that such a study is no form of psychologism, i.e., reduction of the logical to the psychological; rather, it is ancillary to logic, a separate area of study. Of course, we may expect contributions from one discipline to the other (it is the same with mathematics). Does the truth function corresponding to “not” have phenomenological reality?

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Consciousness and Language

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Consciousness and Language

Consciousness science has not yet penetrated the field of linguistics, but clearly consciousness and language have a lot to do with each other. How are the two related? They are salient features of the human animal and we would expect to see significant interactions between them. Yet linguistics and philosophy of language largely proceed as if they had little to do with each other; rarely is one mentioned in the same breath as the other. Are they quite distinct theoretical domains capable of separate development? On the face of it no, because we speak consciously and language suffuses our consciousness. What it is like to be human must include centrally our linguistic capacities, and our linguistic capacities must recruit our conscious capacities (as well as our unconscious capacities). So extensive is the entanglement that we might wonder whether one can be analyzed in terms of the other: is consciousness in humans reducible to human language capacity, and might language capacity consist in the ability to perform conscious mental acts? I don’t think either of these reductive aspirations is likely to succeed, but I don’t think the connection is contingent either. We will not get far in the project of explaining perception, pain, emotions, and desires in linguistic terms; and we will limit the field of language studies unduly if we insist solely on studying conscious manifestations of language. Someconsciousness is non-linguistic and some language use is non-conscious: but much of each intersects with the other. The most obvious area of intersection is thought: thought is typically conscious and thought arguably relies on a language of thought.[1] Thought is thus characteristically a conscious linguistic act—the conscious “tokening” of words and sentences inwardly. Therefore, the study of conscious thought will take in the study of language, and linguistic studies will require attention to the role of language in conscious thought. What it is like to think will include reference to language, and studying language will involve us in its role in enabling thought. These are not insulated areas of investigation.

Is human consciousness different from other forms of consciousness in virtue of its linguistic involvements? Do we have a distinctive type of subjectivity because of our linguistic nature? Is language to us what echolocation is to bats? I think this is very plausible, but it is not easy to spell out the character of this linguistic subjectivity. It depends on your prior conception of language. First, we need to divide language into the phonological, syntactic, and semantic (also pragmatic): each component will have its own manifestation in consciousness—what it’s like to hear and produce meaningful sounds, what it’s like to engage in syntactic manipulations, and what it’s like to mean something by one’s words. We will need a three-pronged phenomenology. Then too, we must settle on a theory of meaning: pictorial, intention-dependent, use-based, etc. Is linguistic consciousness a type of picturing, or intending, or using? Could it be all three (and more—e.g., truth conditions)? The important point for now is that all such theories have consequences for the character of our linguistic phenomenology—our description of what it “feels like” to exercise linguistic mastery. These questions unavoidably involve us in the consideration of similarities and analogies with other types of human activity. Is speaking like painting a picture? Is it like intending to mow the lawn? Is it like using a tool? Answering such questions will determine how we conceive linguistic phenomenology: do we have a pictorial phenomenology, or a volitional phenomenology, or a practical phenomenology? You will not find a discussion of such questions in Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (this is not meant as a criticism). I won’t attempt to adjudicate such questions here, merely to indicate what our new discipline of linguistic phenomenology will look like.

I will now lay out what I think the phenomenology of language involves, according to my own theoretical predilections. This can only be exploratory and suggestive in the current state of inquiry. We can begin by mentioning music and game playing: is conscious language use like hearing or producing music, and is it like playing chess or cards? Both ideas are suggestive: for both involve the rule-governed combination of discrete elements, with infinite potential. Spoken language is like music in being itself proto-musical, with rhythm and melody built into utterance. It is also like game playing in being goal-directed, rule-governed, and skill-involving. Not for nothing does song develop from language, and language use has been compared to playing games: speaking is a bit like playing a musical game. But this characterization is too restrictive; we need a more abstract account of the underlying phenomenology. I trust I will be saying nothing novel or shocking if I suggest that language use is a combinatorial pairing of sound and meaning (or gesture and meaning in the case of sign language). Thus, the phenomenology of language consists of consciously following rules that generate novel sentences of arbitrary complexity and infinite scope. That is what it is like, consciously, to speak (not just what it is). This covers what it is normally thought of as the syntactic aspect of language not the semantic aspect—how the grammatical structure of sentences is represented in the mind (conscious and unconscious). But what about the semantic aspect? Here we must descend to the level of nouns and verbs and the nature of predication. At a first pass we might reach for the concept of pointing—to use a noun involves the feeling of pointing. Ostension is the primitive form of the referential relation as it is represented in consciousness. To use a verb is consciously to entertain something on the order of applying one thing to another, as it might be putting one thing on top of another. Predication is an applicative act. These are both activities of the human hand and arm; so, we may as well make it explicit that nouns and verbs are associated in the conscious mind with activities of the hand and arm.[2] I believe this reflects their evolutionary origin: our language capacities evolved (partly) from pre-adaptations incorporating the motor abilities of hand and arm. Accordingly, the biological origins of referring and predicating go back to actions of gripping and grasping and also manual application and operation. You grip with one hand (noun), then you do something to the gripped object with that hand or the other hand (verb)—throwing or hitting the object, say. If this is a correct theory of origins (suitably supplemented), then we can expect that remnants of these origins will be preserved in the brain and hence seep into the corresponding phenomenology. In short, the use of nouns will feel like gripping (grasping, holding, pointing) and the use of verbs will feel like moving (swinging, hitting, propelling). This is a biological-cum-psychological hypothesis not an analysis of the concepts of noun and verb: it situates our linguistic phenomenology in our evolutionary past, where it surely belongs. Our conscious minds (brains) evolved over many millennia and our current subjectivity reflects this evolution. The linguistic science of natural language phenomenology will thus bring together the study of language as a formal object, the biological evolution of the language capacity, and the way it feels consciously to speak and understand language. Putting this together with the syntactic aspect of language mastery, we can say that conscious language use involves creative rule-governed construction and primitive bodily actions going back many thousands of years. The hand and arm figure in the phenomenology, perhaps schematized and streamlined, alongside the more computational syntactic processes of sentence construction. If we follow Chomsky, we can say that linguistic consciousness is a combination of Merge and manual action.[3]

Now we can add some further elements to this picture. Chomsky emphasizes transformations, ambiguity, word order, nonsense, degrees of grammaticalness, hierarchical structure, and more: all these can be incorporated into phenomenology with sufficient subtlety and sensitivity. Each linguistic phenomenon will have a counterpart in the stream of consciousness—there will be something it is like to experience ambiguity and nonsense, say. I leave this for further research (hint: ambiguity will feel like uncertainty and nonsense will feel like delinquency—or some such). What matters is that the linguistic phenomena will perforce have a conscious correlate of some sort or other, granted that they reach the level of consciousness at all. Moreover, linguistic consciousness will be coupled with consciousness of the unconscious—we are conscious that our conscious mind is not all there is to it. We know (perhaps only tacitly) that we have a linguistic unconscious that interacts with our linguistic consciousness; we are aware that a lot happens behind the scenes. We can also extend these observations to the more pragmatic aspects of language, as in speech acts: there is something it is like to assert, to question, to command, to promise, etc. Speech acts are conscious acts, so they possess a distinctive phenomenology. Writing is clearly a highly conscious activity, requiring the writer’s full attention, so it will have a distinctive presence in the conscious mind (no doubt with some unconscious underpinnings): there is definitely something specific that it is like to write. Consciousness of the infinite will attend language use in any reasonably intelligent speaker, since it is so obviously the case in language. We experience language as infinite in scope. Taken together, these features define the distinctively human subjectivity that goes with linguistic competence. Echolocation feels a certain (complex) way to bats and speech feels a certain (complex) way to humans. Apparently only humans experience this form of subjectivity, at least in its full complexity (whales and dolphins may experience hints of it). If a bat were writing an essay about the mind-body problem, she might cite humans as alien forms of consciousness due to their ability to speak. Lastly, language is obviously connected to human culture—the arts, the sciences, entertainment—so its presence in consciousness is bound up with the existence of human culture. There is no culture to speak of without language and consciousness, indeed language in consciousness. It is time we recognized that language and consciousness belong together, requiring integrated treatment. We can now look forward to a phenomenological linguistics to be set beside regular psycho-linguistics. Language is primarily (dare I say it?) an activity of consciousness.[4]              

[1] The following have advocated a linguistic theory of thought: P.T. Geach, G. Harman, and J. Fodor.

[2] I discuss this in some depth in my book Prehension (2015), particularly chapter 6. I should emphasize that the general project of linguistic phenomenology is not committed to this particular theory of predication, but the theory at least provides us with something concrete in the way of phenomenological proposals. Other ideas may be considered, perhaps involving objects of desire and actions of satisfying desire—the field is wide open. We might even invoke some mathematical phenomenology, e.g., concerning functions and arguments (Frege-style linguistic phenomenology).

[3] For Chomsky’s Merge operation see his What Kind of Creatures Are We? (2016), especially chapter 1. Of course, we are dealing here with only the simplest kinds of sentences.

[4] Hence not primarily an activity of the body (verbal behavior). Chomsky has long urged the psychological reality of linguistic theories; I am urging the phenomenological reality of linguistic theories. Linguistic categories and operations have not only a reality in the mind and brain but also in the subjective consciousness of the language user. Thus, linguistics (including philosophy of language) merges with consciousness studies.

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