re: #425, I think, in a way, that we have been meeting halfway and that my ideas have become richer for reading some of the links posted on this site and this has been reflected in my attempts at explaining things.
What you say in #425 resonates with my way of thinking and it is nice to hear it voiced from your perspective.
Yes, meeting halfway between the perspectives of analytical POM and phenomenology concerning consciousness and mind. I think my response above is clearly moving in a direction you're not yet ready to commit to. Your ship might be temporarily stalled in the cross currents of those approaches, and that might be why the last reviewer felt that you added 'nothing new about consciousness'. I do think the seeds of what is new in this version of HCT still lie semi-dormant in, for example, your use of the term 'proto-concept' and in note 19 in which you write re Searle's approach that "
Notably, Searle admits, ‘Perhaps there might be more biologically primitive Intentional states which do not require a Network, or perhaps not even a Background.’" Panksepp clarifies the required direction to be taken -- through the thick of the evolution of consciousness -- in this paper: "A Synopsis of Affective Neuroscience — Naturalizing the Mammalian Mind" introducing three additional papers under the heading of "The Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience," presented at a Cognitive Science Society conference in 2010.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/109303/jcs-articlefinal.pdf
Here are the concluding paragraphs of the Panksepp paper in which the subjects of the following three papers are described:
". . . In sum, many of the scientific dilemmas of the twentieth century, including the Computational Theory of Mind advocated by many cognitive scientists, were created by situating all of consciousness (i.e. the capacity of have ‘awareness’ of experiences) just at the very top of the brain, especially the sensory-perceptual and executive regions of the brain. The instinctual-emotional action apparatus, the source of raw emotional experiences, that helps weave together a foundational form of organismic coherence (perhaps a core-SELF: Panksepp, 1998b) was provided no role in consciousness. That view prevailed, and was well-tolerated, in preference to the ever increasing empirical evidence during the second half of the twentieth century that affective consciousness (Panksepp, 2007) — perhaps the primal form of ‘coreconsciousness’ (Panksepp, 2010) — had evolutionarily ripened into experiential states within the ancient subcortical brain networks. These foundational basic emotional and motivational urges of all mammals, which monitor vital life qualities, are the foundation of mind. If destroyed, the rest collapses (Bailey and Davis, 1942; 1943).
The tragedy of twentieth-century behaviourism — penetrating deeply into the psychological, cognitive, and social sciences — lies in a disciplinary failure to confront the deeper evolutionary psychological nature of organisms. Without an empirically justifiable vision of their affective lives, we cannot have a coherent understanding of the higher reaches of our own minds. It is now clear that modern brain imaging has seen the glimmers of basic emotions in PET and fMRI images (Damasio et al., 2000; Vytal and Hamann, 2010), even though those tools, especially fMRI, are typically not well suited to visualizing the more ancient primal emotional networks coursing through upper brainstem (mesencephalic and diencephalic) regions. We should also recall that tools like fMRI detect small percentage changes of overall brain activity, with most of it remaining unseen, almost as if it were ‘dark energy’ (Raichle, 2010a,b; Zhang and Raichle, 2010). We will need better Hubble-type mind scopes before we can metabolically envision the more ancient recesses of brain functions that evolved much longer ago. The marginalization of affective states in the shared origins of human mental life in other organisms, when reversed by better evolutionary epistemologies (Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000; Panksepp, 2009; 2011a,b), will give us more accurate visions of our own nature.
The consequences of such a vision were explored in the following symposium: Rami Gabriel focusing on the consequences of such knowledge for cognitive science, Glennon Curran and Rami Gabriel focusing on the legal implications of the use of neuroscience data in courtroom testimony, and Stephen Asma and Thomas Greif discussing the philosophical implications for our emerging understanding of the ‘core self’ structures deep within the brain. They share visions of how an understanding of ancient regions of our minds may profoundly influence higher cognitive processes in humans.
An appreciation of the relevance of affective neuroscience could steer the course of cognitive science toward more naturalistic visions of the foundations of human mind."
I did first start with Hegel TPoS and dumped it for Heidegger BaT. But what has engaged me most is MP; TSoB is up there on my reading list.
I am glad to hear that you're finding MP to be engaging. I do think replacing reference to Heidegger with reference to Hegel's phenomenology of mind (Geist/Spirit) would be a better and more accessible fit, along with presentations of Varela's thinking and of course MP's, which inspired Varela.
I still have problems with your strict categorical separation of levels 2 and 3. The passage from preconceptual, prereflective, consciousness to reflective consciousness enabling linguistic 'conceptualization' is not a sudden leap but a gradual evolution, in our species and in the history of consciousness in our species' forebears. MP, Varela and Thompson, Panksepp, Akins, and others are the thinkers who can be your guides in developing this point (. . . if you do decide to develop it; it's presently implicit but not explicit in what you are writing.)
