REFEREED PAPERS

Thomas J. Scheff   Abstract
Multipersonal Dialogue in Consciousness: An Incident in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

Arthur Versluis   Abstract
Western Esotericism and Consciousness

Monica Meijsing   Abstract
Self-Consciousness and the Body

Jonathan Cole
Short Commentary on Meijsing’s Paper

Anthony Rudd   Abstract
Phenomenal Judgment and Mental Causation

CONFERENCE REPORTS

Jacob Reimer   Full Text
Tucson 2000: A Whirlwind Tour

T. Murinbata and C. Whitehead    Full Text
Why Consciousness Conferences Are Not Really Getting Us Anywhere: A Stone-Age Anthropologist Explains

POETRY   Full text

Haiku (An Inscription)  Basho
Love Letter From the Abyss  Gary Schouborg
Where There’s No Will, There’s One Way  John Allsop
Dead-Ends  Ivo Mosley

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, SQ: Connecting with our Spiritual Intelligence, reviewd by Emilios Bouratinos
  • David Foulkes, Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness, reviewed by Thomas W. Draper
  • Christopher G. Langton (ed.), Artificial Life: An Overview, reviewed by Derek J. Smith
  • Colin Allen & Marc Bekoff, Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology, reviewed by Michael Corner
  • James J. DiCenso, The Other Freud: Religion, Culture and Psychoanalysis, reviewed by Nurit Schacham
  • Books received

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    ABSTRACTS

    Thomas J. Scheff

    Multipersonal Dialogue in Consciousness An Incident in Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’

    At present the humanities and the sciences constitute two different worlds, with virtually no intercourse between them. In this essay I suggest a way in which art might be of service to the social sciences, and social science, in turn, to literary criticism in efforts to understand the phenomenon of human consciousness.

    G.H. Mead’s theory of the origins and process of consciousness relates ‘mind, self and society’ (Mead, 1932). At the centre of his theory was the process he called ‘taking the role of the other’ by which humans are able to imaginatively enter the mind of the other. Mead’s theory has developed a substantial following within sociological social psychology, the school of thought known as ‘symbolic interaction’. However, because of the unrelenting abstractness of the theory, it has been difficult for Mead’s followers to develop an explicit theory and method that could be applied to actual episodes. Like most social theories, it has continued to be discussed at such an abstract level that it has never been clear how well it describes human conduct. My purpose in further analysing the incident in To The Lighthouse is to show how well Mead’s theory fits it, and how the concreteness of the interior monologue can be used to correct for the abstractness of the theory. Dialogue and theory together may prove mutually illuminating.

    Correspondence: Thomas J. Scheff, 3009 Lomita Road, Santa Barbara, CA, 93105, USA

    Arthur Versluis

    Western Esotericism and Consciousness

    This article introduces the relatively new field of religious studies devoted to Western esotericism, or Western esoteric traditions including alchemy, various magical traditions, Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism and other secret or semi-secret groups. In it Versluis also argues that Western esoteric traditions as a whole rely on the power of the written word or image in order to convey and perhaps generate changes in consciousness. Thus Western esotericism tends to see and use language in a fundamentally different way than many of us are familiar with — here language is used not for conventional designation in a subject–object relationship, but in order to transmute consciousness or to point towards the transmutation of consciousness through what Versluis terms hieroeidetic knowledge. Be it Kabbalism or alchemy, troubadours and chivalry, the Lullian art, magic or theosophy, pansophy or esoteric Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry, one finds a consistently recurrent theme of transmuting consciousness, which is to say, of awakening latent, profound connections between humanity, nature and the divine, and of restoring a paradisal union between them. Hieroeidetic knowledge can be understood in terms of a shift from an objectifying view of language based on self and other to a view of language as revelatory, as a via positiva leading towards transcendence of self–other divisions. It is here, in their emphasis on the initiatory, hieroeidetic power of language to reveal what transcends language, that the unique contribution of Western esoteric traditions to consciousness studies may well be found.

    Correspondence: Arthur Versluis, ATL Department, 235 Bessey, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Email: versluis@msu.edu

    Monica Meijsing

    Self-Consciousness and the Body

    Traditionally, what we are conscious of in self-consciousness is something non-corporeal. But anti-Cartesian philosophers argue that the self is as much corporeal as it is mental. Because we have the sense of proprioception, a kind of body awareness, we are immediately aware of ourselves as bodies in physical space. In this debate the case histories of patients who have lost their sense of proprioception are clearly relevant. These patients do retain an awareness of themselves as corporeal beings, although they hardly feel their bodies (they have normal sensation in the head, but from the neck downwards only sensations of pain and temperature, and of fatigue and deep touch). They can initiate movements, and with the help of visual feedback learn to control them. It is shown that the traditional view of the self as immaterial is not supported by these cases. But the argument against this view has to be amended. It relies too much on bodily sensations, and misses the importance of active self-movement.

    Followed by commentary by Jonathan Cole

    Correspondence: Monica Meijsing, Department of Philosophy, Section General Philosophy of Science, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Email: mmeijsing@phil.kun.nl

    Jonathan Cole, Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Clinical Neurophysiology, Poole Hospital Trust, Longfleet Road, Poole, BH15 2JB, U.K.

    Anthony Rudd

    Phenomenal Judgment and Mental Causation

    This paper defends and develops an argument against epiphenomenalism, broadly construed. I argue first for a definition of epiphenomenalism which includes ‘non-reductive’ materialism as well as classical dualistic epiphenomenalism. I then present an argument that if epiphenomenalism were true it would be impossible to know about or even refer to our conscious states — and therefore impossible even to formulate epiphenomenalism. David Chalmers has defended epiphenomenalism against such arguments; I consider this defence and attempt to show that it fails. I conclude that an adequate account of mental causation requires us to abandon the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and attempt to rebut charges that it would be ‘unscientific’ to do so.

    Correspondence: Dr A.J. Rudd, Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, Watford Campus, Wall Hall, Aldenham, Herts WD2 8AT, UK.


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