A brief definition of consciousness

Awareness of awareness

Making a living as an artist...

Do you teach because you don't sell enough paintings, or do you not sell enough paintings because you teach?

The bent oar illusion

Given that we categorise illusions (e.g. the oar bent in the water) as errors on the part of perception and therefore evidence that the mind is distinct from reality, how then can we verify the falsity of the illusion (that the oar is ‘really’ straight) with the very same perceptual apparatus that dealt us the illusion in the first place? The oar is ‘really’ straight only when viewed from certain angles, and not when viewed from the end on.

Existence and non-existence

If it is true that something neither exists nor does not exist then it is not true that it does exist and does not exist.

The difference between dreaming and waking

The main difference between dreaming and waking states seems to be that in my waking state I can reflect on my dreams, and think about them from an external point of view, whereas in my dreaming state I can’t reflect on my waking thoughts in the same way.

The perception of phenomenology

What would be the ‘perception of phenomenology’?

Predicting the future

There is one thing certain about attempts to predict the future — they are always wrong. Because we can predict that the future will be quite unlike how we predict it will be it will, to this extent at least, be predictable.

The language of contemporary art

If you don’t take the trouble to learn the language of contemporary art then you can’t complain if you don’t understand what it says. At the same time if you do take the trouble, indeed if you are something of a native speaker, then you are in a position to object when what is said is banal, derivative or sterile.

Writer as reader

When I write I am also hearing myself as my reader.

Accepting paintings as they are

With the distance afforded by time you can accept a painting as it is rather than as you wanted it to be.

Distinctions and consciousness

"Were it not for this perpetual process of differentiation of self from the world, of object from its scene, of attribute from object, no step of Abstraction could be taken; no qualities could fall under our notice; and had we ten thousand senses, they would all converge and meet in but one consciousness. But if this be so, it is an utter falsification of the order of nature to speak of sensations grouping themselves into aggregates, and so composing for us the objects of which we think; and the whole language of the theory, in regard to the field of synchronous existences, is a direct inversion of the truth. Experience proceeds and intellect is trained, not by Association, but by Dissociation, not by reduction of pluralities of impression to one, but by the opening out of one into many; and a true psychological history must expound itself in analytic rather than synthetic terms. Precisely those ideas -- of Substance, of Mind, of Cause, of Space -- which this system treats as infinitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent elements, are in truth the residuary simplicities of consciousness, whose stability the eddies and currents of phenomenal experience have left undisturbed."

Principles of Psychology by William James, 1890, p. 486.

Objects created by the mind

"That there are, in a sense, multiple objects, that one man is distinct from another man, tree from tree, stone from stone, is an indisputable fact; for each of these beings, each of these things, has characteristic properties and obeys a determined law of evolution. But the separation between a thing and its environment cannot be absolutely definite and clear cut; there is a passage by insensible gradations from the one to the other; the close solidarity which binds all the objects of the material universe, the perpetuity of their reciprocal actions and reactions, is sufficient to prove that they have not the precise limits which we attribute to them. Our perception outlines, so to speak, the form of their nucleus; it terminates them at the point where our possible action upon them ceases, where, consequently, they cease to interest our needs. Such is the primary and most apparent operation of the perceiving mind; it marks out divisions in the continuity of the extended, simply following the suggestions of our requirement and the needs of practical life. But in order to divide the real in this manner, we must first persuade ourselves that the real is divisible at will. Consequently we must throw beneath the continuity of sensible qualities, that is to say, beneath concrete extensity, a network, of which the meshes may be altered to any shape whatsoever and become as small as we please; this substratum which is merely conceived, this wholly ideal diagram of arbitrary and infinite divisibility, is homogeneous space."

Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson, p. 277 (Thanks to Alise Piebalga for the reference)

Seeing one thing

In seeing one thing (the dot above) we are required to see two things — the dot and the space around it, without which the dot would not be perceptible. To see two things we need to see three, and so on. To perceive objects in the world (visually at least) we must enter an automatic state of contradiction in which we detect both the thing and what it is not, simultaneously and separately.

The multiplicity of unity

Manchester United, the United States of America, the United Nations, the United Kingdom...each of these entities represents a unity, a coherent singularity. But each is made up of a multiplicity: many players, many states, many nations, many countries. The coming together of many things into a single thing does not erase the multiplicity of the components. Each unity consists in a multiplicity; unity and multiplicity co-exist as opposites.

Unthings

Consider the possibility that there are no distinct entities in reality, no particles or waves; that our perceptual and conceptual faculties constrain our understanding of observable phenomena as either particles or waves such that these properties are attributable to the operation of our cognitive apparatus rather than being intrinsic to the phenomena in themselves. For it seems to be the case that there are no phenomena 'in themselves' i.e. realities existing independently of our conception, and that the very appearance of reality is conditioned by the subjective experience of an observing agent. So what may appear to us as, say, a particle (that is, a discrete point in time and space) appears as such only by dint of the operation of our perceptual and conceptual apparatus. What appears as a single particle, in fact, extends indefinitely in time and space, becoming no longer a distinct entity, a thing, but an 'unthing'. Which is to say, the particle is an entity that has the appearance of — can be conceived — as a singular object but is in fact (and in ways we cannot adequately conceive or describe) not an entity at all but an extended, indeterminate, unbounded unthing.

Aspects of this indeterminate existence are partially available to us, aspects that we mistake for the object in its entirety. Because we apprehend only a partial, bounded, limited aspect we take this to be something that is in itself bounded and limited, we take it as a discrete entity (a point or a wave) when what we are actually witnessing is the operation of our perceptual and conceptual faculties, which can apprehend only a limited aspect of what is present.

When we come to talk of a single particle, or study the relationship between two individual particles and find they are connected in a way that seems (to use Einstein's word) 'spooky', what disturbs us is the intuition that single or multiple particles should be discrete yet do not behave as such. The violation of the intuition occurs because they are precisely not discrete, individual entities, but indefinitely extended unthings that already have aspects about which we are unaware — even when observing them. We can never observe all the features of an entity at once (we cannot see it from all sides, in all its energetic states, throughout all its history, with all its connections).

The unthing is something that appears as a specific state (something) to an observer but in fact has no discrete limits or boundaries, being both something and no-thing at the same time.

Can you draw pencil?

Quantum indeterminacy

It's not just that we can't measure the precise state of a particle at the quantum level but that the particle has no precise state — until it is observed.

Painting and paint

The artist painting an old woman, Aert de Gelder, 1685

You can paint paint but you can't paint painting.

Husserl's indeterminacy of perception

"If I apprehend a box, from the very outset it has for the apprehension a back side and an interior, though for the most part these are very undetermined. For example, it remains an open question whether the box is full or empty, whether the back is polished or not, etc. ... The indeterminateness is an immanent character of the apprehension, and we must note well that it is not at all identical everywhere and, as it were, of a monochrome character but instead has many tints and grades. Indeterminateness is never absolute or complete. Complete indeterminateness is nonsense; the indeterminateness is always delimited in this or that way. I may not know exactly what sort of form the back side has, yet it precisely has some form; the body is a body. I may not know how matters stand with the colour, the roughness or smoothness, the warmth or coldness, yet it pertains to the very sense of the apprehension of a thing that the thing possess a certain colour, a certain surface determination, etc. When I glance at the thing it stands there as a thing; the apprehension gives it, in a meaningful way, a form, a colour, etc., and does so not only with regard to the front side but also with regard to the unseen side. Yet it is only "a" colour, "a" form, etc. That is, these are not "determinately" predelineated in the apprehension...the apprehension has the character of "indeterminateness.""

Thing and Space, by Edmund Husserl, p. 50

Husserl's indeterminacy of attention

"But not even with the domain of this intuitionally clear or obscure, distinct or indistinct, co-present — which makes up a constant halo around the field of actual perception — is the world exhausted which is "on hand" for me in the manner peculiar to consciousness at every waking moment. On the contrary, in the fixed order of its being, it reaches into the unlimited. What is now perceived and what is more or less clearly co-present and determinate (or at least somewhat determinate), are penetrated and surrounded by an obscurely attended to horizon of indeterminate actuality. I can send the rays of the illuminative regard of attention into this horizon with varying results. Determining presentations, obscure at first and then becoming alive, haul something out for me; a chain of such quasi-memories is linked together; the sphere of determinateness becomes wider and wider, perhaps so wide that connection is made with the field of actual perception as my central surroundings. But generally the result is different: an empty mist of obscure indeterminateness is populated with intuited possibilities or likelihoods; and only the "form' of the world, precisely as the "the world", is predelineated. Moreover, my indeterminate surroundings are infinite, the misty and never fully determinable horizon is necessarily there."

Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology, by Edmund Husserl (p. 52).

Indian theories of determinate and indeterminate perception

"The Indian thinkers generally recognize two distinct stages of perception, indeterminate (nirvikalpa) and determinate (savikalpa). The former is the immediate apprehension of the mere form of an object, while the latter is the mediate perception of the object with its different properties and their relations to one another. The former is an undifferentiated and non-relational mode of consciousness devoid of assimilation and discrimination, analysis and synthesis. The latter is a differentiated and relational mode of consciousness involving assimilation and discrimination, analysis and synthesis. The former is purely sensory and presentative, while the latter is presentative-representative. The former is dumb and inarticulate — free from verbal images, The latter is vocal and articulate — dressed in the garb of verbal images. The former is abstract and indeterminate, while the latter is concrete and determinate. The former is what William James calls "knowledge of acquaintance", and the latter is what he calls "knowledge about".

Indian Psychology Perception by Jadunath Sinha, p. 31

Single particle interference on a large scale

"It is important to note that the interference pattern is built up from single, separate particles. There is no interference between two or more particles during their evolution in the apparatus. Single particle interference is evidenced in our case by two independent arguments...The chance of having two subsequent molecules in exactly the same state of all internal modes is vanishingly small. Therefore, interference in our experiments really is a single particle phenomenon!"

'Quantum interference experiments with large molecules'. American Association of Physics Teachers. Volume 71, No.4, April 2003, by Olaf Nairz, Marcus Arndt and Anton Zeilinger.

This, and other multi-slit experiments with much smaller entities, demonstrate that particles also display wave-like qualities, i.e. they are neither exclusively particles or waves but both, depending also on how they are measured. Thus, particles are non-local, and since matter on a larger scale is composed of countless entities which behave as both particles and waves, then we can assume that perceptible matter is also non-local and both particulate and wavy.

Merleau-Ponty & indeterminacy

"...one never manages to determine the instant when a stimulus once seen is no longer seen. There occurs here an indeterminate vision, a vision of something or other, and, to take the extreme case, what is behind my back is not without some element of visual presence. The two straight lines in Müller-Lyer's optical illusion are neither of equal nor unequal length; it is only in the objective world that this question arises. The visual field is that strange zone in which contradictory notions jostle each other because the objects — the straight lines of the Müller-Lyer — are not, in that field, assigned to the realm of being, in which a comparison would be possible, but each is taken in its private context as if it did not belong to the same universe as the other. Psychologists have for a long time taken great care to overlook these phenomena. In the world taken in itself everything is determined. There are many unclear sights, as for example a landscape on a misty day, but then we always say that no real landscape is in itself unclear. It is only so for us. The object, psychologists would assert, is never ambiguous, but becomes so only through our inattention. The bounds of the visual field are not themselves variable. and there is a moment when the approaching object begins absolutely to be seen, but we do not 'notice' it. But the notion of attention...is supported by no evidence provided by consciousness. It is no more than an auxiliary hypothesis, evolved to save the prejudice in favour of an objective world. We must recognise the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon. It is in this atmosphere that quality arises. Its meaning is an equivocal meaning; we are concerned with expressive value rather than logical signification. The determinate quality by which empiricism tried to define sensation is an object, not an element, of consciousness, indeed it is the very lately developed object of scientific consciousness. For these two reasons, it conceals rather than reveals subjectivity."

Phenomenology of Perception, by Merleau-Ponty (p. 6-7)

A judicious obscurity

"But painting, when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the images it presents; and even in painting a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in painting are exactly similar to those in nature, and in nature dark confused uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions than those have which are more clear and determinate...hardly any thing can strike the mind with its greatness which does not make some sort of approach toward infinity; which nothing can do while we are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, are one and the same thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a little idea."

A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, by Edmund Burke, 1757

Looking, but not seeing

I was looking for the hoover, which was not in its usual place in the cupboard under the stairs. and so had not been able to see it on the landing at the top of the stairs, even though I had looked at it countless times as I searched for it.

See inattentional blindness demo here

Does Xquisz exist?

Does Xquisz exist? Is there such a thing as Xquisz? Is Xquisz a bone fide constituent of the cosmos?

The immediate answer is 'no', there is no recognised constituent of the cosmos known as Xquisz.

Speculate that in 100 years time — due to advances in deep-space probe technology — a hitherto unknown property of the universe is discovered, and that it is named Xquisz. Clearly at this point Xquisz would then exist, and would be presumed to have existed all along.

Did Xquisz always exist? No and yes. It doesn't exist now because it is undetectable, so it didn't always exist. Yet once it is discovered and shown to have been an essential constituent of the universe since its formation it can be shown always to have existed.

In their book The Quantum Enigma, Rosenblum and Kuttner suggest (very tentatively) that consciousness creates reality, and that by thinking of something we cause it to be (p. 201):

"It has been wildly speculated that postulating a theory that is not in conflict with any previous observation actually creates a new reality"

In the above example, Xquisz only comes into being when it becomes part of the consciousness of those who conceive it. Prior to it being conceived of it has no existence.

The denial of pleasure and the pleasure of denial

Self-denial can be more pleasurable than self-indulgence.

The mark of thoughtfulness

An inability to answer the simplest questions can be a demonstration of the highest intelligence.

A definition of creativity

Imitation with variation

World embeddedness

Just as we are embedded in the world, so the world is embedded in us.

Uncognized speech

Hearing someone say something but not paying attention, then 'replaying' it in the mind to recognise what was said. This demonstrates the dissociation between 'pure' aural perception and cognition.

To be and not to be

Self-drawing man, ink on paper, 2008

If two things are connected then they are both one thing and two things.

If mind and reality are connected then they are both one thing and two things. If they are one thing then they are the same, if two things then they are different. Mind and reality are both identical with one another and distinct from each other.

In order for something to be it must both be and not be.

Painting paint

When painting paint (as in this 1670 Vermeer, The Guitar Player) the paint used to represent the painting ceases to be paint itself, but becomes instead the paint in the painting painted. In other words, we overlook its existence as one kind of paint in order to see it as another kind of paint; it becomes paint twice.

Multiple realities

There are as many realities as there are perceivers.

Painting medium

The medium of painting is not paint but light.

The function of the artist

The function of the artist seems to consist in entertaining the rich.

Create your own reality

"Though quantum mechanics seems to deny the existence of a physical reality independent of its conscious observation, if our observation creates everything, including ourselves, we are dealing with a concept that is logically self-referential — and mind boggling."
(The Quantum Enigma, Rosenblum and Kuttner, Duckworth & Co., 2007).

The vexed question of whether the world exists independently of the conscious mind seems to have settled by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. It seems there is no collapse of potential without observation. It is the act of observation that brings reality into existence — causing an infinite array of possibilities to take up one state or another

There is even the suggestion that new realities can be created by different acts of observation. This may seem far-fetched, but perhaps is not so far from the truth. For we know that we each experience reality differently, each of us has a unique take on the world. And given that different people at different times will see the world in vastly different ways, even ways that are completely incompatible, we could say that there is a valid sense in which we each create our own reality; we each observe a distinct set of probabilities collapsing.

The location of truths

The mistake perhaps is to imagine truth is sought from outside the mind, as though it were to be discovered externally — an independent property. But what we are really discovering are truths about the mind. We project truths into the world, just as we project our perceptions into the world.

Art and the fractured unity of consciousness

(Abstract submitted to Consciousness Reframed 2008)

Much recent scientific discussion of consciousness takes the view that it is unified, i.e. our perceptions, memories, thoughts and beliefs come together in a singular phenomenal experience. This has led many researchers to seek a singular neural correlate of consciousness in the human brain, or some other mechanism to account for this unity. At the same time it is frequently assumed this unified experience is essentially rational — that the perceptions, thoughts and beliefs of which we are aware must be logically coherent in order for our mental life to make sense.

In this paper I will question both of these views. Using an example of my experience when studying a painting, I will argue that my perceptions and beliefs are as much fragmentary and contradictory as they are unified and rational, consisting of quite distinct percepts and often incompatible thoughts. I will suggest that this multiplicity and inconsistency contribute in some way to the peculiar vibratory sense of lived experience, and that the conscious mind might be better characterised as a ‘fractured unity’ — to use a contradictory term.

I envisage two main objections: First, it could be argued that although our minds may contain numerous percepts, thoughts and beliefs it is their co-occurrence that creates a unity, without which our experience would be incoherent. Second, that we cannot entertain contradictory thoughts while retaining a rational mind because this would conflict with the basic rules of logic.

In countering these objections I will suggest that the concept of unity as normally defined is at best ambiguous, perhaps even itself contradictory. Moreover, despite intensive searches as yet no evidence has been found of a unifying mechanism for consciousness in the brain.

I will also point out that the European philosophic tradition is ideologically biased towards the search for singular explanations of phenomena and against contradictions. This is less so in other traditions, such as those of India and China, where there is greater willingness to accept the explanatory potential of diverse and conflicting propositions. Learning from these traditions may help us to build a more universal model of mind and arrive at a deeper understanding of consciousness.

Finally, I will show that many works of art are particularly rich in fragmentary associations and conceptual contradictions, and so may offer profound insights into the nature of human mind.

Nested views of reality

Disputes about mind and world etc. can be avoided if we adopt the following stance:

[1] Common realism, in which there is a world of material objects that we partially perceive through our senses, is fine as a daily utilitarian view of being. It has widespread support and is perfectly applicable in most daily situations, including most scientific investigations. However, it is insufficient where one is seeking a more refined or high-resolution view of reality, in the same way low-resolution images are fine for day-to-day snapshots but inadequate for close scrutiny.

[2] A more subtle and finely grained view recognises that common realism is insufficient to account for the ubiquity of mind in forming our view of reality. The fact that everything we know, and can ever know, is through the mind — idealism in one form or other — is acknowledged, and that external objects, while they may well exist and give cause for sensation, cannot be known ‘in themselves’. In other words, we know the appearance, but not the essence of the world. The common realist view [1] is nested within this idealist view [2].

[3] I would propose a further level of resolution, within which idealism [2] is nested: That the mind is ubiquitous, and identical with reality. There neither is or is not anything outside the mind; prior to or beyond minds things neither do or do not exist. What is real is mind, and what is mind is real. This view approaches the limits of our capacity for conception.

Part of the whole

The world is unlike the mind that perceives it.
— Mind and world are distinct.
The world as we perceive it is the mind.
— Mind and world are the same.
Rationally, we are able to accept each separate premise and outcome as valid, yet we cannot hold both simultaneously.

The world can feel itself, and think about itself. When we reflect upon the world it is the world reflecting upon itself.

We are at once part of and the whole of the world.

The ants on the cake

Why is it that people presented with a common world arrive at such drastically different worldviews? Like ants studying a cake: some will see it as hard and icy, some as soft and crumbly, and others as sticky and creamy, although they are looking at the same cake.

(See the story about the blind men and the elephant)

Mind, matter, objects

Can we conceive a situation in which mind exists without matter, or where matter exists without mind?

For Descartes the mind was indivisible and the extended world was divisible, whereas if anything it is the other way round.

The objects of the world partake in the mind that begets them. It’s not that the mind represents an apple that is external to it, but that the mind is the apple, just as the apple is the mind (at least in part). The apple is no less real for this.

The plane and the stone

To address the jibe about the idealist philosopher forced to chose whether the parachute they are given when ejected from a plane exists or not: Doubting existence in this case is not taken to mean that objects lack being, form or capacity for behaviour, but that these qualities correlates with our mental view of the world. To a flea that clings to the harness, no doubt the parachute has no existence, even though it will be brought to earth just as safely as the philosopher.

I don’t doubt that kicking a stone will hurt the toe, despite what we now know: that the stone is almost entirely made of empty space and that the atoms of the toe and the stone never actually make contact. This demonstrates, as much as anything could, that the stone, the toe and the pain are products of our mental processing, and therefore entirely real.

The mind is real

It would be just as valid, and possibly more so, to invert the standard realist-idealist formulation and say: It is in the mind that experience is most real, while the hypothetical world beyond is imaginary.

It is in the conceptual domain where all the qualities usually associated with ‘realness’ reside: solidity, resistance, tactility, behavioural consistency, causal relations, verifiability, and the like. These are properties of our perceptual activity, our memory and learned experience, our capacity to make associations, to see construct patterns, to organise what our senses detect. It is we who give the world its realness.

Rather than asking how it is that the material world can give rise to the conscious mind, we should ask how the conscious mind gives rise to the material world.

The universe discrete and continuous

Is space-time discrete or continuous? Opinion among experts seems to be divided or uncertain. It could be either, both (or neither!).

Prior to the capacity to experience time and space is the capacity to experience distinction and continuum, simultaneously.

Even if reality turns out to be discrete, each discrete part will form a continuum of its own. Reality will always be both.

The dispute about whether the universe is really discrete or continuous reflects the limits of our capacity for conceptualisation. It is really a dispute about the nature of our own minds.

When describing the universe at its deepest levels we tend to use the same kinds of approach that we use when looking at nature at our the human level; we tend to pitch ourselves as external observers, looking at the universe as though it were a rock on a table or lizard in a jar, and make observations or measurements about it from the outside looking in. But this is not a position we can take with respect to the cosmos. Not only are we inside it, we are synonymous with it on the grounds that it is formed in our own mental image.

Thought and matter

Thought is not immaterial, any more than matter is solid.

True contradictions

Accepting that contradictions can be true does not mean accepting that all contradictions are true.

Matter, mind and energy

The material world (objects, things, actions) and the mental world (thoughts, ideas, wishes) are unified in that they are both processes of energetic formation and transformation. On this level, at least, they are indistinguishable. This is consistent with scientific materialism.

The world is your mind

Look at an object or listen to a sound: that object or sound is your mind. The world is your mind.

This is not crude idealism. No claim is made about the status of one domain over another; the world is no less real than it appears to a materialist. The proposal is that material reality and mental experience are the same thing, not two sides of a coin or two expressions of a deeper underlying reality. They are co-existent and identical.

They form, as it were, a fractured unity.

At the present point in time

Just as there can never exist an actual point in space (see this entry) — only an imaginary one — so I can't see how we can have a present point in time. There can be no immediate moment of any duration; if it is infinitely short then it has no span, and presumably doesn't occur. If it has some duration, however short, then it spans more than a single point and so cannot be a precise moment.

For similar reasons a unit of time — say a second — cannot have an absolute start or end; it is indeterminate in length, or it could even be said it has no length at all, though it has an unspecified duration.

Marx's assumption

Karl Marx remarked that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it.’ This assumes an essential distinction between the world and the ways it can be represented.

Where's the matter?

It might be asked, 'what then happens to matter, if everything is mental?"

Matter, like any other kind of object, must be brought into being by the mind, since mind precedes existence. It does not follow from this, though, that matter is not 'real' just because it depends for its existence on the operation of the mind.

If we take it that the mind is real, and that what we experience of the world with our minds is real (after all we could not have experiences of the world without a mind) then the materials we confront within that world are clearly also real.

Where confusion might occur is in those distinctions we make between objects of imagination and those of corporeality (such as between forests conjured up in our dreams and physical forests). A dreamt forest feels just as real as a physical forest during the dream, but we cease to regard it as such when we wake up. Likewise, we might vividly imagine unicorns, without committing ourselves to the belief that they exist outside of our imagination.

The distinction between the imaginary and the corporeal is a valid and useful one (and indeed necessary if we are to socially integrate), but it is also a product of the self-same mental processes that allow us to distinguish between, say, a memory and a fantasy (although not infallibly), or between yesterday and now.

In other words, although the distinction between the 'real physical' world and the 'imaginary mental' world is habitual, valid and necessary it does not point to some deeper underlying bifurcation within the universe. Rather it is but one of the many distinctions we make as part of our moment to moment operation, a conventional way of organising our beliefs and behaviours — one that is so conventional that we find it very hard to think of ourselves and the world without it.

The known universe is the extent of the mind

This galaxy, located in the constellation Pegasus, is 4 billion light years from Earth. UCLA, Department of Physics and Astronomy: T. Glassman & J. Larkin.

The release comes when we no longer think of the mind as isolated within the frame of our body, when we recognise it extends into the world; when the distinction between ourselves and the world is overcome, and the experiences we have of the 'out there' do actually occur 'out there', as well as 'in here'.

Then it is less hard to see how our minds, our imaginations, reach out into deepest space to 'create' distant galaxies, as we find some means of conceiving them using the 'extended senses' of space probes and telescopes. Such galactic entities literally 'come into being' as they are discovered, being oblivious prior to that point.

We still need to imagine them, reconstruct them in our own minds from the blurry data our astronomical devices send back. They remain objects that are sensed and conceived like any other, no matter how old or distant. But in being imagined they become our minds. The known universe is the extent of the mind.

It's not that there's nothing, but neither is there something.

It is not even sufficient to say that what lies beyond perception is the 'unknown' since this implies there is something 'there', albeit something we can know nothing about. In the absence of a mind, the function of which is to impose discrete boundaries on a boundless ***, categories such as 'knowability' and 'unknowability' can have no purchase. It's not that there's nothing, but neither is there something.

Unfamiliarity and validity

We habitually take existence to be such a fundamental condition, in fact the fundamental condition, so that we cannot accept its negation. To say planets and stars 'did not exist' prior to human minds is taken to mean, in some vulgar sense, that they evaporate or vanish when we don't think about them, or that they suddenly sprang out of the void at the point in history when human minds were first 'switched on'.

In other words, we try to apply our daily experiential criteria to that which is before or beyond it. This is akin to the way we have trouble applying criteria of macro-level behaviours to the quantum level, or conceiving relativistic space-time distortions in relation to the standard domestic environment. But in each case the fact that it is difficult (some say impossible) to conceive these behaviours in familiar terms cannot be used as grounds for denying their validity.

Different kinds of minds

To other kinds of minds the laws of physics might appear entirely different, because to them the cosmos would appear entirely different. Our notion of existence might be entirely absent to them, as might the notions of 'appearance', 'reality', or even 'mind'.

We should not be so conceited as to believe that the way brains, bodies and behaviours have evolved on Earth are the only ways in which minds, intelligences and consciousnesses might emerge. Laws that we take to be universal may be limited in application to our level of perception and capacity for thought. To the man who spends his whole life upside down the action of gravity appears inverted.

Mind precedes existence

Despite the scientific credibility of the claim that all that exists of the world is what we can perceive, we remain unsatisfied. There is an irresistible sense of an independent world made of solid things that truly exist, obey physical laws, and have integral properties that are reflected in our sensations. To deny their existence seems like folly.

Furthermore, to deny we can know anything more about them than our perceptual apparatus permits — that they are forever immune to being known 'in themselves' — seems to ignore the vast progress made by science in recent centuries in probing, understanding and controlling natural phenomena at ever deeper levels. Our abstract descriptions of the world (e.g. e=mc2) are empirically verifiable, which suggests that they way we represent reality in our minds is an accurate depiction of how it really is 'out there', and we continue to find out ever more about the brain, the sub-atomic world, the cosmos, which we can investigate at levels of resolution barely imaginable to those working in, say, the 18th century.

Does all this not mean we are digging behind perceptual appearances into the hidden realm of the 'things-in-themselves', the obscure levels of reality we may not be able to sense with our own apparatus, but which we can divine through powerful calculations or sophisticated measuring devices? Does this not show these things exist in a world of their own, whether we perceive them or not?

What is disputed is not that any of these objects exist, but that they do not exist in the way they are apparent to us without our particular mental processes.

Mind precedes existence.

Schopenhauer and the thing in itself

"Thing in itself signifies that which exists independently of our perception, that which actually is." Schopenhauer

The error here (mainly attributable to Kant) is to bestow qualities onto the 'thing in itself' that do not apply, i.e. the quality of 'thingness' and 'selfness'. Nothing exists, or does not exist, independently of our perception. 'Things' do not count without minds, nor do 'selves' — in the sense of self-contained, discreet objects — count.

The best that can be said (possibly) is that prior to or beyond the scope of perception lies a teeming cosmos of fluctuating energy that with the right biological apparatus can be rendered as discrete 'things' (perhaps Schopenhauer's 'will'). Even saying this is not sufficient, but may be as close as we can get with ideas, which in themselves are products of this process.

The practical questions are: how does the perceptual apparatus convert this teeming cosmos (which is not a 'mind-independent' thing, and neither does nor does not exist) into the things we perceive as existing, and how do we then become aware of them?

Artists' reputations

Artists must make a reputation for their work before it can make a reputation for them.

Studying painting

Students of painting need to learn to see their work not as they would like it to appear, but as it appears to others.

The mind in action

All distinctions seem to be contingent on the mind, including that which distinguishes the mind itself.

Objects actually exist in the mind, although they appear to exist in the world. However, there is no conflict here since the world is the mind in action.

Access to minds

If we cannot have access to our own minds then we can at least observe the minds of others, which in effect then become part of our own minds — to which we cannot have access.

Painting and the mind

Using the mind to try and understand the mind is like trying to paint painting.

The contradictory nature of consciousness

We perceive the world as simultaneously fragmented and unified, full of parts and wholes, differences and associations. To be conscious is to experience neither unity nor fragmentation alone, but the co-presence of these opposing qualities.

Peoples' faults

In general, a person’s strength is also their weakness.

Inhumanity

Nothing characterises humans more than inhumanity. We can never accuse animals of behaving as badly as humans.

Descartes' certainty

Descartes holds that to think is to be certain of one’s existence. But do we still exist if we stop thinking?

Reputation through print

It’s not being published or even read that counts, but being quoted.

Locating consciousness

Trying to locate consciousness is like looking for a needle in a needle-stack .

What is mind?

It would only make sense to ask ‘what is mind?’ if there were something that was not.

Funniness

Something is funny when the unexpected coincides with the expected.

Confirming what we believe

If we want support for our opinions we should read those with whom we disagree.

Ideas

Great ideas are free. It’s waiting around for them that’s expensive.

On mis-management

Good wood rots in wet ground.

Keeping secrets

Some people can’t conceal the fact that they know a secret.

The impossibility of knowing our own mind

It is impossible to know our own mind in the same way it is impossible for a camera to photograph itself. Of course, the camera can always be pointed at a mirror, and in essence that's what we do to establish our own sense of self.

But what is seen in the mirror is remote and inverted — an external rather than internal view. The camera cannot turn upon itself and photograph itself from its own point of view, and we cannot think about what we are thinking about, except to render our thoughts as remote and temporally displaced.

Humanism vs. posthumanism

Humanists regard humans as distinct beings, in an antagonistic relationship with their surroundings. Posthumanists, on the other hand, regard humans as embodied in an extended technological world.

Un-desire

Indifference towards what you desire will significantly increase your chances of getting it.

Aim high...

...lie low

Self-deprecation

Self-deprecation sucks in vanity to make room for flattery.

Thinking beyond the mind

It is impossible to think of that which cannot be thought, except to think of it as that which cannot be thought.

What is not part of the mind? Nothing that can be thought.

Jokes and the irrational

So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?" He said, "How flexible are you?" I said,"I can't make Tuesdays."
Tommy Cooper

Jokes (like puns and double entendres) frequently exploit the dual meanings of words, in this case two senses of the word 'flexible', but do so in such a way that we have to hold both senses at once. It is the simultaneous appreciation of two conflicting ideas bound together by a single word that gives rise to the psychic discharge we experience as funny.

Jokes are a cardinal case of irrational conception: we conceive two conflicting, incompatible states of mind at once, without one canceling out the other. If this were to happen, or if the meanings were to occur sequentially, then the psychic disturbance would not happen. For example, if the joke was rendered as:

So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?"
He said, "How flexible are your limbs?"
I said,"My work schedule is not flexible and I can't make Tuesdays."

...little humour is evident, because the two meaning of flexible are not made to co-exist but to follow sequentially. Rationality (if not conversational convention) at this level is preserved.

Jokes are not funny when explained, probably because explanations neutralise the conflict by drawing the sense back into the realms of the rational.

Jokes seem to provide evidence that normal conscious states can accommodate distinct and irrational thoughts, and so resists the widely-held assumption that consciousness is unitary and rational.

See Koestler's 'bisocation' or 'double-minded' theory. He defined humour as: 'the perceiving of a situation or idea in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference or associative contexts."

"D'you know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.'"
Tommy Cooper

Conceptual dissonance

Cotán, Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber, 1602

Art frequently exploits the conceptual dissonance between what is present and what is absent. The degree of similarity between the painted surface and what it depicts is proportional to the degree of dissonance.

The excitatory potential of vivid representations (trompe l’oeil, etc.) lies not in the fact we see something that could really be there, but that we see something that is there and not there at the same time.

Perceptual dissonance

Art frequently exploits the perceptual dissonance between what is seen and what is recognised. The degree of disparity between the form and what it suggests determines the degree of dissonance.

State Art

After Mark Wallinger, State Britain, 2007

"Mark Wallinger was shortlisted for State Britain at Tate Britain, a direct representation of the banners and paraphernalia of Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square. The jury commended its immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance. The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths."
Extract from Tate press release, 3rd December 2007

If one of the purposes of art is to present the world back to us in surprising or extraordinary ways then too often in practice it amounts trying to find surprising and extraordinary ways to present art back to us. But the strategies and moves in this game are becoming increasingly circular, and so less effective.

The objection is not that the form of the art deviates too far from what is expected, but that it deviates too little.

By drawing a visible and embarrassing totem of political dissent into the arms of state patronage, Wallinger has conspired to more effectively neutralise this oppositional act than those who sought to impose a crude ban on the protest in the first place.

Hanging art(ists)

Hanging a painting is like hooking an artist's mind to the wall.

The trouble with unified theories

The goal of much contemporary research in physics is to discover a 'grand unifying theory' of the structure of the universe, which unites theories about the behaviour of particles at very small scales (quantum physics) with the behaviour of objects at large levels (classical physics).

But why is such a 'GUT' sought? Why is it believed it is 'there' to be discovered?

I once heard Ravi Ravindra talk about the comparison between western and some asiatic approaches to science. Western culture is largely monotheistic: one God, whereas some asiatic religions are polytheistic: many Gods. He noted that western scientists tended to seek singular solutions to problems: the singularity and big bang, the grand unified theory of the universe, a unifying theory of consciousness. Scientists brought up in the Hindu tradition, however, were more likely to accept multiple solutions to problems.

Why can there not be many overlapping and co-existent theories of reality that apply in different contexts or to different aspects of phenomena?

The trouble with dimensions

We are used to thinking about reality as a 3-dimensional space, perhaps with an added 4th dimension of time. But is this realistic?

3-dimensional space is commonly assumed to be composed from lower-dimensional spaces, consisting of 0, 1 and 2 dimensions. So a 0-dimensional space is a singular point that does not extend in any direction. Extend this point along one axis as you get a 1-dimensional space — a line. Extend this line at right angles to its length and you create a 2-dimensional space — a plane. Extend this plane at right angles to its surface and you get a 3-dimensional space — a cube. The process can continue, by extending the cube across all of its surfaces you get a 4-dimensional space — a tesseract.

While all this is mathematically consistent, how does is relate to reality, i.e. the world beyond our mathematical conception? In the first place, there can be no real (non-imaginary) 0-dimensional space. If the point has any existence at all (other than as an imaginary proposition) then it will have some spatial dimension — however small. The same would be true of the line and plane, which, however thin, would still have to have some depth and width, and therefore would really be 3-dimensional.

So there are no 'real', substantial objects that exist solely in 0, 1 or 2 dimensions. It would seem obvious, though, that substantial things really do exist in 3-dimensional space, but is this so? If the 0, 1, or 2 dimensions are useful conceptual conventions but ultimately insubstantial why should the 3rd-dimension be any different? Could it be that the 3rd dimension has only conceptual existence too? I would argue yes, that what we take to be the 'realness' of 3-dimensional space is just as conceptual as 0, 1 or 2-dimensional space, which is to say it does not really exist outside of our conception.

To look at it in one way: in order to establish 3-dimensional space you need axes in fixed relation to one another. You need a 1-dimensional x-axis, a 1-dimensional y-axis and a 1-dimensional z-axis (using the standard notation). Since none of these 1-dimensional axes have any substantial existence outside conception (as already shown) then we can say 3 insubstantial things added together cannot produce something substantial: three zeros make zero.

To look at it another way: a line cannot be extruded from a point with no extension; a plane cannot be extruded from a line with no extension; a cube cannot be extruded from a plane with no extension, and so on.

To look at it another way: The traditional 3-axes of space require a fixed viewing position. Each moves away from a fixed origin, and in fixed relation to the observer. In order to see a cube in the way we are used to we adopt a particular viewing position which looks at it from one angle, the spatial co-ordinates being fixed in relation to that. But this singular viewing position is a very limited view of the cube, which in fact can potentially be viewed from all angles at once, including all internal as well as external viewpoints. When considered from all its potential viewpoints simultaneously the standard axes no longer apply since there is no fixed viewing position to which they relate. When viewed from all directions at once there is no 'up', 'down', 'forward' or 'back'.

Consequently I would argue that 3-dimensional space is just as much an ideal conception of reality conceived from a single viewpoint as the lower dimensions. It has no more substance than these.

Brought into being by the mind

Stars and gases are ideas, just as existence is an idea, and ideas are an idea; they are all products of human conception (itself an idea) and as such only come into being with the evolution of the human mind.

Arriving at the truth

It is usually possible to arrive at the truth by inverting what is most widely held to be true (including this proposition).

Starting a painting

It's often said a painting is never really finished, but it's just as true to say it's never really started.

Painting unknown

Still from What is A Picture? (16 mm film, 1986)

The Impressionists wanted to paint what they saw, not what they knew. The Cubists wanted to paint what they knew, not what they saw. I want to paint what we know we don't know.

Art and wrongness

Cézanne, Bathers at Rest, 1875.
Great art needs sufficient wrongness — what Picasso called Cézanne's "anxiety."

Another kind of consciousness

One can imagine another kind of consciousness that perceives the world not as made of bounded material objects but of continuous, variegated flows of energy.

Video of paintings

Video of the paintings in the 'Three Painters' exhibition at Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff, UK, 17th November to 11th December 2007.

3-in-1

Triptych (Eke, Crusifixus, The Spirit of Modernism), 2005-7. Oil on canvas.

The paintings should be landscape, still-life and figure composition at the same time.

Artist's statement

Aphoria, 2005, Oil on canvas.

Extract from my artist's statement for the "Three Painters" exhibition at Howard Gardens gallery, CSAD, Cardiff, November 17th to December 11th 2007.

...Pepperell’s paintings form part of a wider philosophical challenge to a western metaphysics that has dominated our thinking on key philosophical problems but which he argues is now subject to fundamental revision because of new ideas emerging in the sciences and humanities. For example, we have to abandon the notion that anything has a beginning, or end; we have to recognise there are no objects in the world; we must discard the division between the mind and world (while simultaneously acknowledging it); we must accept that it is in the mind where all qualities and properties exist while also recognising that the mind is in the world.

By adopting some of the primary visual languages of western metaphysics (baroque, romantic and rococo painting) to generate images that are both visceral and spiritual, and in which objects are both present and absent, he asks the viewer to perceive the world as essentially contradictory and indeterminate. This is in opposition to the dominant western tradition, sustained by the ethos of empiricist science, which holds that reality is rational and deterministic.

Despite his scepticism about the scientific ethos, Pepperell’s work has recently been the subject of a number of scientific investigations by laboratories in vision and brain research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany. Samples of Pepperell’s paintings were tested against a sample of art historical works, and audience responses to certain perceptual tasks were measured. A number of significant findings emerged, which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Comparison in fragmented perception

The qualities we are aware of in the perceptual field - in objects we experience - arise from our simultaneous cognizance of conflicting attributes (e.g. smallness/largeness, redness/blueness, forward/back, loudness/quietness). We are aware (to some extent semi-consciously/sub-consciously) of the multiple perceptual attributes as distinct cognitive moments, as separate strands of perception that do not get merged into a singularity, but bump and clash with each other to generate the vibrant diversity of our conscious experience.