The Act of Creation (91 page)

 

 

 

Degrees of Self-Awareness

 

 

The above was related to degrees of awareness on the continuous,
'linear' gradient. The second addendum relates to the hierarchic levels
of consciousness. At any moment of our existence, we carry on activities
on various levels, simultaneously and more or less independently from
each: we breathe, metabolize, drive the car, and talk to the passengers
all at the same time, 'in parallel' as it were.

 

 

But there are moments when a person perceives what he is doing from a
bird's eye view as it were; from a 'parallel' level of consciousness which
is not at all involved in the activity in hand. Take a simple example:
you are absorbed in a game of chess; you concentrate on a stratagem to
defeat your opponent. You look up for a moment to light a cigarette, and
at that moment your awareness jumps to another plane, as it were; you say
to yourself 'what fun I am having playing chess with old Henry on a Sunday
afternoon'. Then you go back to your game. It was a brief break-through
from the activity in hand to the contemplation of that activity from
an upstairs balcony -- a vertical shift of awareness which enabled you
to look down at the top of your own head. To put it in a different way,
attention has been displaced from the object of the ongoing activity to
the subject engaged in carrying it out -- that elusive entity, the self.

 

 

It is a paradox as old as Achilles and the Tortoise, that the subject who
is aware can never become the object of his awareness; at best he can,
if so inclined, achieve successive approximations which form a convergent
series. One may call this the paradox of the dog at dinner. The dog is
eating his dinner; the wagging of his tail indicates that he is enjoying
himself; but does he
know
that he is enjoying himself? . . . A
little boy is watching a Western on the TV screen. He is enjoying
himself. He knows perhaps that he is enjoying himself. Does he know
that he knows? . . . The philosopher is thinking of a problem. He is
aware that he is thinking of this problem. Is he aware that he is aware,
etc. . . .? The known is always one step ahead of the knower, and they
chase each other up a spiral staircase, as it were. In Craik's terminology
one might say that the model can never make a complete model of itself.*
Regarding
verbal
models in particular, we have seen
(
pp. 592
ff.) that verbal statements are initiated
by unverbalized intentions on higher levels, so that we again arrive at
a receding series. This seems to indicate that the mind-body problem is
not amenable to any solution in explicit, verbal terms.

 

 

On the other hand, the fact that the subject who is aware can nevertheless
become,
to some extent
, the object of his own awareness, is of
course of outstanding importance in mental life. Animals, apparently
from planaria onwards, display attention and expectancy which indicate
varying degrees of 'linear' awareness; primates, as well as domestic pets,
may also have some rudiments of self-awareness. But the many-layered
hierarchies of man, and particularly his symbolic hierarchies, place
him on a lonely peak, and impose on him the impossible command to
'know thyself'. Awareness of awareness is a tantalizing gift; and
'I think therefore I exist' is a hopeful beginning. But the end, the
identification of the knower and the known, which alone would constitute
complete conscionsness of existence, though always in sight, is never
achieved. The successive forms of self-identification, starting from the
child's fluid world of experience which knows as yet no firm boundary
between self and not-self, can be likened to a mathematical series
converging towards unity, or to a spiral curve converging towards a
centre which it will only reach after an infinite number of involutions.

 

 

The aim of certain mystic practices -- such as Hatha Yoga -- is to
permeate the self with awareness of itself by gaining voluntary control
over visceral processes and isolated muscles. It would seem that this
focussing of consciousness on the self, the inward core of the contracting
spiral, is the direct opposite of the self-transcending aspirations
of other schools of mysticism -- the expansion of consciousness in an
unfolding spiral, and its final dissolution in the 'oceanic, feeling'. In
fact, however, the Yogi's effort to gain conscious mastery of the body is
considered as merely a detour towards attaining 'pure consciousness' --
that is, 'consciousness without object or content other than consciousness
itself'. Thus turned upon itself, pure consciousness is supposed to
penetrate the Real Self -- which, unlike the transient self, is part and
parcel of the Atman, the universal spirit. [1] Both methods, therefore,
each with a long historical ancestry, share the same ultimate aim --
situated at the point where opposites meet; after all, as the bright
little boy said, 'the infinite is where things happen which don't'.

 

 

'Self-awareness', in the sense of the preceding paragraphs, has
of course nothing to do with 'self-consciousness' in the sense of
gauchery, stage-fright. The latter is our old friend, the paradox of
the centipede -- the disorganization of behaviour which results when
higher centres interfere with the autonomous functioning of parts on
lower levels. 'Self-consciousness', used in this sense, is a typically
English coinage; it provides an amusing and rather revealing contrast to
the equally malapropos German coinage
Selbstbewusstsein
-- meaning
self-confident, conscious of one's own value. As for the French,
faithful to the Cartesian spirit, they use
conscience
to designate
both consciousness and moral conscience.

 

 

 

Master-Switches and Releasers

 

 

Motivation has been discussed in
Chapter VIII
.
It determines what kind of game the subject will engage in, and
activates the proper codes. If he feels the need to build castles in
Spain, day-dreaming will replace the routines of planning ahead. The
rules of day-dreaming impose a minimum of restraints and leave a vast
choice of strategies to reach the desired goal, wish-fulfilment. Thus
even day-dreaming is 'goal-directed', but the direction of thought is
determined by emotional gradients, not by a concrete target.

 

 

At the opposite end of the motivational spectrum are activities
like problem-solving, governed by complex and precise rules. The
goal to be reached is sharply defined, but has in itself no emotional
significance; the reward is not contained in the target but in the act
of reaching it. Some textbooks make a distinction between 'associative'
and 'directive' thinking; but directiveness in the sense described is
present even in the daydream, and controlled association enters into
problem-solving; the difference is one of degree. Similar considerations
apply to other classifications: abstract -- concrete, realistic --
autistic, etc.

 

 

Most ordinary thinking is of a mixed kind; it may pursue a set
directional course for a while, according to strict rules, then go off at
a tangent and drift along, until some higher centre enters into action,
and discipline is restored. We have discussed these general aspects of
ideation before; it remains to consider briefly some specific patterns
of verbal thought.

 

 

At the base of all hierarchies which enter into our universes of discourse
operate the implicit sub-codes of grammar and syntax; 'implicit' becanse
they are automatized and we are not aware of their functioning. Lashley's
dictum on perception is equally applicable to speaking and listening:
'We are aware of an organized structure; the organizing is never
experienced.' The rules which determine how thoughts are put into words
cannot themselves be put into words -- except by the patient labours of
logicians and semanticists to 'break the code'.

 

 

Next come the rules of common sense or common-or-garden logic, which
are also empirically acquired, abstracted relations -- codified modus
operandi which the majority of people are no more able to define than they
can define how they ride a bicycle. But as we move upward, towards more
specific universes of discourse, the codes, too, become more explicit.

 

 

The simplest examples of explicit codes are the verbal commands in
word-association tests, e.g.: 'name opposites!'. The experimenter then
says 'dark', and the answer 'light' pops out promptly, as if produced
by a slot-machine -- although in a free-association test the subject
would probably associate 'dark' with 'night' rather than with 'light',
and 'hot' with 'Italy' rather than with 'cold'. Thus the verbal command
'opposites' has acted as a master-switch, as it were, which changed the
entire pattern of verbal organization. Even more striking is what happens
to my verbal matrices
si je continue de developer ma pensée
en français
-- if I continue to develop my argument, but use
French words and French grammar to express it. My line of thinking has
remained the same (or almost entirely so) but that single command-word
'French' has triggered off an instant reorganization affecting millions
of neurons and their mode of inter-action. Not only has the vocabulary
been changed, but also the method of converting ideas into syntactic
language-units according to the sub-codes of French grammar.

 

 

I do not want to go into neuro-physiology, but let us note that the
model of the telephone-switchboard plugging into another localized
'language-area' simply will not do. Let us return for a moment to
word-association tests. 'Light-dark', 'hot-cold' are primitive examples
of matrices governed by codes with a single parameter in semantic
space. Even so, are we to assign, by analogy with the 'language-areas',
different cortical territories to operations controlled by the commands
'opposites', 'synonyms', 'super-ordinate class', etc.; not to mention
'inter-polation', 'extra-polation', and the mighty hierarchies of symbolic
logic or of mathematical operations? Moreover, if the command is again
'opposites', and the stimulus-word 'Napoleon'; or if the command is
'supraordinate class' in the species-genus game, and the stimulus-word
'nail' or 'birth' -- what is the 'correct' response? Semantic space is
multi-dimensional and cannot be represented by purely spatial connections
activated by all-or-nothing signals in the three-dimensional rind of the
brain; a model must include at least specific signals (e.g. frequency
modulation pulses) and chemical (RNA) changes in the neurons to account
for selectivity of response. [2]

 

 

In all controlled associations and symbolic operations we again find a
principle confirmed which we found operating on all levels -- namely, that
a relatively simple 'releaser' signal from higher quarters ('opposites',
'speak French', 'find the square root of . . .') triggers off the
operation of a complex code -- a whole universe of discourse in fact,
with a hierarchy of implicit sub-codes, and a flexible strategy. (Even
to find an 'opposite' to the word hairpin requires complex operations
governed by individual 'strategies', perhaps involving visual images --
a process continuous with problem-solving). The trigger-releaser may
be a verbal or visual, or even chemical command -- a tumblerful of gin
or an amphetamin tablet: yet look what remarkably new rules of the game
are triggered off by them.*
Explicit Rules and Implicit Codes
The implicit codes of grammar and syntax were, as we saw, acquired
empirically 'as the gypsy learns to fiddle'. But the rules which
govern more advanced symbolic skills -- mathematics or chemistry,
or Law -- are learned in explicit verbal form. They may be acquired
by rote-learning, or by guided learning, but at some stage they must
be stated in explicit form. Take an example from elementary algebra:
the average student learning the rule for solving quadratic equations:
x[1,2] = -p/2 ± SQRT(p²/4-q). For the next few days or weeks,
every time he has to use the formula, he must look it up in his textbook
(or, if he is very brilliant, derive it afresh). At this stage of the
learning process the formula is not yet an automatically functioning rule
of the game; it is not yet a 'code' impressed on his nervous system. But
after some practice, a single glance at an expression of the form
x² + px + q = 0
will tell him that it is a member of the
matrix of quadratic equations and trigger off the rule -- by now an
automatized code -- for solving it.
Thus rules which at first have to be looked up, or reconstructed by
a conscious effort, become codified and automatized by routine. It is
irrelevant in this particular context whether the student has by now
forgotten the derivation of the formula and merely uses it as a mechanical
gimmick; or whether he is aware of its binomial ancestry. This makes
a vast difference in terms of understanding, but need not affect the
process of automatization.
I have emphasized before that the term 'code' is used in this book not in
the metaphorical way in which Freud, for instance, used the word 'censor',
but to refer to concrete processes or patterns of organization in the
central nervous system. However, it sounds somehow more plausible to
attribute physiological reality to codes on lower levels of the organic
hierarchy -- the genetic code, the codes of instinct-behaviour and
sensory-motor skills -- than to claim that the rules of such esoteric
games as non-Euclidean geometry or quantum mechanics are physiologically
represented, by appropriate coding methods, in the nervous system, and
can be triggered off by simple releasers (such as the command 'let's
talk shop'). I must therefore underline once more that the term 'code' is
meant to apply only to those rules of behaviour which govern established
routines and function automatically without conscious effort. In the
initial stages of learning a complex symbolic skill, the rules of the game
(laws, theorems, mathematical or chemical formulae) must be constantly
memorized, looked up, or consciously recalled; so long as this is the
case they are not yet incorporated into the physico-mental organization
and are not to be called 'codes'. Codes are only those fixed stable rules
which, once switched on, automatically govern the thinking routine. The
problem in problem-solving consists firstly in discovering which routine
is appropriate to the problem -- what type of game is to be played;
and secondly, how to play it -- i.e. which strategy to follow, which
members of the flexible matrix are to be brought into play according to
the lie of the land.
We learn, or discover, with strenuous effort, a new method of thinking;
after a while, with practice, the novelty changes into semi-automatized
routine, based on an invariant code with an adaptable matrix, and is
incorporated into our repertory of habits. It is astonishing how soon,
once a new railroad is built across desert and mountains, the
passenger-trains start running on schedule.
But the process of habit-formation does not stop there: not only the
rules
of the newly learnt game become soon automatized to
such an extent that it becomes increasingly difficult to go against
them, but strategy, too, tends to become stereotyped and incorporated
into the code. Take progress in chess, an example I have mentioned
before. The beginner is uncertain about the rules; then the rules become
automatic codes and it becomes almost impossible for him to move his
men in impermissible ways; after protracted practice certain tactical
principles, which are no longer 'rules' in the formal sense, also begin
to operate automatically in his mind -- e.g. to avoid pins, to seek
open rook-files. But this reification of tactical pseudo-rules into
automatized sub-codes contains a mortal danger, because considerations
of strategy on a higher level demand that each of these tactical rules
should be broken if the occasion warrants it. Sacrifices in material, and
moves which look cockeyed (that is: positionally unsound), are signs of
combinative power, i.e. originality; the mediocre player always remains
a slave of habit and cautious orthodoxy.
At this point the argument merges into that of Book One
(