Perception in the Mode of the Word: Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Perception in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams

A gift of a dollar for each article in the philosophy of perception and consciousness published since 1990 making reference, explicitly or implicitly, to Moore's discussion in the second half of Moore 19031 of an alleged ‘transparency’ and ‘diaphanousness’ pertaining to some aspect of perceptual experience would very likely cover the tab of a mid‐priced dinner for two.2 Moore's poetically expressed observations have captured the imagination of contemporary philosophers of perception and consciousness, and have served as the basis of much fruitful discussion in those areas.Still, despite all the attention these observations have received, the contemporary literature lacks a close reading of the second half of Moore's paper, without which it is impossible to understand Moore's observations in the context in which they were originally expressed. It is understandable that such a close reading is lacking: the second half of Moore's paper has been rightly described by one of his most sympathetic and dedicated interpreters as ‘extremely dense and opaque’ (Klemke 2000: 55).3 But despite the evident difficulties of the task, I aim here, with some trepidation, to provide the missing close reading.The main points of my interpretation will be these. The centerpiece of the anti‐idealist manoeuvrings of the second half of the paper is a phenomenological argument for what I will call a relational view of perceptual phenomenal character, on which, roughly, ‘that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact’ is a relation of conscious awareness, a view close to the opposite of the most characteristic contemporary view going under the transparency rubric.4 The discussion of transparency and diaphanousness is a sidelight, its principal purpose to shore up the main line of argumentation against criticism; in those passages all Moore argues is that the relation of conscious awareness is not transparent, while acknowledging that it can seem to be.My discussion will proceed as follows. In section 1, I will discuss some theses and elucidate some notions from the philosophy of perception and consciousness which will be central to my interpretation; having done so, I will be in a position to explain how an accurate understanding of Moore may contribute to theoretical advances in the philosophy of perception and consciousness. The next two sections contain the exegetical heart of the paper: section 2 provides an analysis of Moore's case for the relational view; section 3 attempts to explain the place of the relational view in the overall refutation of idealism. Section 4 critically discusses a pair of competing interpretations. Section 5 wraps things up, drawing concluding morals as to the campaigns on behalf of which Moore should and should not be enlisted.

The philosophical issues raised by perception make it one of the central topics in the philosophical tradition. Debate about the nature of perceptual knowledge and the objects of perception comprises a thread that runs through the history of philosophy. In some historical periods the major issues have been predominantly epistemological and related to scepticism, but an adequate understanding of perception is important more widely, especially for metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. For this reason Barry Maund provides an account of the major issues in the philosophy of perception that highlights the importance of a good theory of perception in a range of philosophical fields, while also seeking to be sensitive to the historical dimension of the subject. The work presents chapters on forms of natural realism; theories of perceptual experience; representationalism; the argument from illusion; phenomenological senses; types of perceptual content; the representationalist/intentionalist thesis; and adverbialist accounts of perceptual experience. The ideas of, among others, Austin, Dretske, Heidegger, Millikan, Putnam and Robinson are considered and the reader is given a philosophical framework within which to consider the issues.

Perception: History of the Concept

Witkacy on Drugs

With neuroscience and psychology making significant advances in contemporary brain research, fundamental questions concerning the nature of human life and activity will become evermore critical as we proceed further into the twenty-first century. Put simply, are we creatures who exercise some genuine degree of freedom and agency in the world or are we creatures whose actions are largely if not wholly determined by biological, neurological, and psychological factors far below the radar of our conscious awareness? This article explores this important and timely question by examining the views of Paul Sheldon Davies, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Alfred North Whitehead. Drawing on contemporary science, Davies dismisses Niebuhr’s existential analysis of human existence and any meaningful conception of human agency. Succinctly stated, can one take both the results of contemporary neuroscience seriously, as Davies does, and the affirmation of human agency seriously, as Niebuhr does? The thesis of this essay is that Whitehead offers a constructive bridge between Davies’ affirmation of science and Niebuhr’s existential account of human existence. In sum, it is argued that Whitehead’s process philosophy enables us to affirm the genuine influence of nonconscious factors in experience as well as the authenticity of human agency and subjectivity in the world.

Review: <i>Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology</i>, by Adam Nocek

In this article I argue that management accounting practices cause today’s business managers to commit what Alfred North Whitehead referred to as the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." These practices cause managers to drive operations with quantitative accounting abstractions and divert their attention from the concrete reality of what it means to run a business well so that it contributes to building a sustainable economy and a flourishing society.

During the 20th century, mainstream psychologists exhibited a dogmatic belief in the reality of the abstraction of human intelligence as a cluster of functional behaviours. In confusing this abstraction for the concrete totality of the human intellectual experience, psychologists have committed what Alfred North Whitehead calls a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" (1925/1967, p. 58). That is, they have mistaken a narrowly abstract conception of intelligence for concrete reality. This mistake has contributed to a dogmatic and naive ignorance of other possible explanations for intelligent human experience. If psychology truly desires to be a legitimate science in endeavouring to understand human intelligence, it must take into account concrete aesthetic experiences that are fundamental to the growth of creative consciousness and human knowledge.

This article develops a media philosophical framework for addressing the intersection of epigenetics and complex dynamical systems in theoretical biology. In particular, it argues that the theoretical humanities (and especially media philosophy) need to think critically about the computability of epigenomic regulation (proposed by the complexity sciences), as well as speculatively about the possibility of an epigenomics beyond complexity. The fact that such a conceptual framework does not exist suggests not only a failure to engage with the mathematics of complexity, but also a failure to engage with its history. Both epigenetics and the application of complex dynamical systems to biology originate in the mid-twentieth-century work of Conrad Hal Waddington. The article demonstrates how this genealogy of epigenetic complexity (which passes through Waddington’s epigenetic landscape, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, molecular epigenetics, and the limitations of nonlinear differential equations for biological modeling) reveals the need for a speculative conception of epigenomic mediation beyond mathematical complexity. Using Whitehead’s philosophy as a conceptual anchor, the “epimedial landscape” serves as a first pass at a media philosophical revision of the complex dynamical systems view of the epigenetic landscape.

Thom Gunn’s “The Annihilation of Nothing” and the Negative Capability of Dream Poetry

Brenner [1] has published a logical characterization of Nature in which &lsquo;A&rsquo; and &lsquo;non-A&rsquo;&nbsp;are non-separable, where 'A' and 'non-A' are not the terms of standard bivalent logics but refer to elements of evolving processes or systems, and where&nbsp;a third &lsquo;T-state&rsquo; can or will emerge from their interaction in terms of actual and potential. This leads also to the non-separability of ontology and epistemology. We accept that Brenner&rsquo;s characterization is valid, and have previously addressed [2] its relationship to the representation of hierarchical structure, following the insistence of Havel [3] that scale should be presumed to be a necessary constituent of all theory. In this paper we extend our treatment to the domain of information, which we picture as a coupling between structure and process. Hierarchy is naturally partially birational, between entity and context, and we find that this duality matches Brenner&rsquo;s characterization. The directly-inaccessible duality of scaled data and its scaled context presents itself as the precursor of a partial hyperscalar duality which is &lsquo;the real contextual nature&rsquo; [4] of the entity in its temporal and spatial context. These two partial hyperscales self-re-integrate resulting in a singular metascalar T-state which is information. Representation is then the abductive metascalar interpretation of the unification of the dual partial hyperscales which constitutes information. Metascalar information is both objective and subjective, in indivision. The first, entity partial hierarchy is of individual subjective scales of data, while the second is of individual subjective scales of context; a scaled form of von Uexk&uuml;ll&rsquo;s [5] umwelts. Havel [3] has presented the notion that scientific &lsquo;objectivity&rsquo; is in fact societal group subjectivity. The two partial hyperscales are &lsquo;objective&rsquo; in Havel&rsquo;s group-subjective sense. We hypothesize that this duality is at the roots of the real and imaginary parts of evolved complex algebra, in a manner similar to the way that inter-scale data-loss is at the roots of the evolved hierarchical nature of mathematical equations. This assembly of ideas is at this level of description purely abstract: if we now look at an embodied form we find that intelligence is the tool which enables inter-scalar transitions; that sapience permits conclusions from complete scale-assemblies (the construction of hyperscale); and that embodied metascalar information is metamorphosed into the high-level informational construct of wisdom. We have described in [6] how inter-viewing between the two hyperscales generates the unified high level awareness of consciousness. This phenomenon is concurrent with the development of wisdom: the one (wisdom) is a simplistic integration of the characters and contents of the two hyperscales [2]; the other (consciousness) is a less direct integration [6] whose character depends on the interpretation of observation as a mutual measurement [7] and whose content is restricted to rapidly-changing effects by stasis neglect [6] and habituation [8]. The one is not possible without the other, and their intertwining depends on the metascalar integration of information. References Brenner, J.E. Logic in Reality; Berlin: Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2008. Cottam R.; Ranson W.; Vounckx R. A framework for computing like Nature. In Computing Nature; Dodig-Crnkovic, G., Giovagnoli, R., Eds.; Springer SAPERE series: Berlin, Germany, 2013; pp. 23-60. Havel, I.M. Scale dimensions in nature. International Journal of General Systems 1995, 23, 303-332. Cottam, R.; Ranson, W.; Vounckx, R. Autocreative hierarchy II: dynamics - self-organization, emergence and level-changing. In International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems; Hexmoor, H., Ed.; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2003, pp. 766-773. von Uexk&uuml;ll, T. Introduction: The sign theory of Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll. Semiotica 1992, 89, 279-315. Cottam, R. and Ranson, W. A biosemiotic view on consciousness derived from system hierarchy. In The Unity of Mind, Brain and World: Current Perspectives on a Science of Consciousness; Pereira Jr., A.; Lehmann, D., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2013, pp. 77-112. Matsuno, K. The internalist stance: a linguistic practice enclosing dynamics. Proc NY Acad Sci 2000, 901, 322-349. Sokolov, Y.N. Higher nervous functions: the orienting reflex. Annu Rev Physiol 1963, 25, 545-580.

The teachings and practices of Buddhism are becoming popular today in Western countries. Its non-theistic nature and scientific method, focusing on the individual's independence in learning practice, appeal to many. Buddhism contains some effective and unique learning techniques that could be applied to lifelong learning. Within a notion of lifelong learning defined in terms of the conscious learning taking place throughout the life span, Buddhist meditation, contemplation and mindfulness practice are ideally suited to conscious life experience awareness. The philosophical framework for lifelong learning discourse, particularly that which is outlined by Richard Bagnall as drawing on the three progressive sentiments, matches the Buddhist ideals for the individual and society. Just as Bagnall calls for a re-evaluation of the direction for lifelong learning discourse away from economic determinism, back towards the framework of the three sentiments, the emphasis of this paper argues that lifelong learning discourse and strategies might also usefully be informed by ancient Buddhist ideas and methods. To do so might require a broader perspective on what constitutes lifelong learning and what its motivations and goals should be.

First published in hardback in 2007, Cinema and Sensation rapidly established itself as a major intervention in contemporary French cinema studies. Its theorizations of the technologies and materialities of recent film-making in France have become as invaluable a resource to film scholars working on tactility, embodiment, affect, and the sensorium, as the work of Laura U. Marks, Vivian Sobchack, and Emma Wilson. The volume's publication in paperback attests its scholarly popularity and will prove a relief to the many scholars who have been profoundly influenced by it. Beugnet offers a deep critical perspective on the current cultural and political dynamics of France, via a perspicacious study of contemporary French art cinema. She was one of the first to analyse with full scholarly rigour the period in the late 2000s that saw the rise of pornocratic and hyperviolent film-making in France, named pejoratively by James Quandt as ‘The New Extremism’ (in ‘Flesh and Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema’, Artforum International, 42.6 (2004), 126–32). In Cinema and Sensation Beugnet explores the implicit and explicit cultural imaginaries that subtended that moment in image-making, uncovering geopolitical critiques of the gendered, sexualized, degraded, and eviscerated bodies on screen in films by Catherine Breillat, Bruno Dumont, Philippe Grandrieux, Vincent Dieutre, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, and others. A detailed and culturally specific philosophical framework of contemporary French thought, which also gestures beyond a purely French or francophone remit, informs Beugnet's critique. She intertwines readings of Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille with contemporary art theory from October Group critics Rosalind Krauss, Yves-Alain Bois, and Hal Foster on formlessness. Incisive readings of Gilles Deleuze's concepts of becoming, visagéité, hapticity, and (with Félix Guattari) immanence are united with recent scholarship from Laura U. Marks, Barbara M. Kennedy, and Rosi Braidotti. Psychoanalytic theory informs the hinterland of Beugnet's conceptual frameworks, yet beyond Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva she also integrates post-Lacanian scholarship from Nicole Brenez and Stephen Shaviro. Phenomenology, too, is a structuring signpost for the complex relationships between embodiment and disembodiment, subjecthood and objecthood, world and body that unfold in Beugnet's delicate negotiations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's writing with more recent film-phenomenological discourses from Vivian Sobchack and Stanley Cavell. The most striking and eloquent aspect of this volume, however, is the evocative manner in which Beugnet writes about the films themselves. Her senses are attuned — invested even — in the intimate, otherworldly proximity of filmic images and sound; this she communicates with grace as she winds sinuously through a labyrinth of non-dualistic thinking, and hybrid, materially self-aware cinema. Drawing on Jean Epstein's claim that the image thinks, she writes: ‘Films do not just provide life-like testimonies on their contemporary world; as flowing, embodied forms of thought, they can help us imagine ways out of the dead ends down which dual thinking leads us’ (p. 17). Artaud's ‘third path’ (p. 22) between cinematic abstraction and psychological realism is precisely the location of Cinema and Sensation: it is both a way out and a way forward for film theory and cultural critique.

Metaphysical revolt arises from conscious awareness of the divorce between the experience of life and the emptiness of reason for it. To explore this, the play Insular is situated within the philosophical framework of Albert Camus’ approach of atheistic absurdism. The first part of this volume is an exegesis of qualitative practice-led research that applies a hybrid methodology of performative, bricolage and hermeneutic praxes. It includes a literary review of Islam, tragicomedy, metaphysics and Camus. This study demonstrates distinct correlations in applying tragicomedy to investigate the experience of the absurd in a twenty-first century Australian context with theatrical conventions of Brecht’s twentieth-century Epic Theatre. The creative practice of writing the play Insular (the second part of this volume), explores metaphysical revolt through framing a tragicomic narrative around experiences of an Australian Muslim character living in a contemporary Australian context. This volume undertakes a comparative examination of the contrast between the concepts of the ideal of God and hegemonic corruptions of versions of the ideal by all too human societal and theological practices.