Jason W.

Brown

Neuropsychological
Foundations of
Conscious Experience
 “The leaf does not see
that the root is everywhere”.

Goethe

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 Table of Contents

Foreword ............................................................................................................9
Chapter 1 Perception, Memory and Subjective Time............................. 25
Chapter 2 Simultaneity and Serial Order...................................................51
Chapter 3 Theory of the Symptom............................................................. 79
Chapter 4 Inner Speech............................................................................... 103
Chapter 5 Genetic Psychology and Process Philosophy....................... 123
Chapter 6 Foundations of the Self............................................................ 143
Chapter 7 Solipsism and Other Minds......................................................173
Chapter 8 Microgenetic Theory of the Unconscious
1. Philosophy, Psychology and Psychoanalysis................... 197
Chapter 9 Microgenetic Theory of the Unconscious
2. Categories and the Unconscious........................................ 231
Chapter 10 Psychology of Intentionality.................................................... 265
Chapter 11 Subjectivity and Truth.............................................................. 301
Chapter 12 The Inward Path: Mysticism and Creativity......................... 321
References ....................................................................................................... 347
 Foreword

“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world.

Through the years he peoples a space with images…
Shortly before his death, he discovers that that
patient labyrinth
Of lines traces the image of his face.”

Borges, Dreamtigers

The theory described in this book, the outcome of over thirty years
of clinical study and philosophical speculation, gradually devel-
oped in relation to clinical research and evolutionary anatomy.
I would refer the reader to updated papers on microgenesis in
Pachalska and Weber (2008), particularly chapters on anatomy by
Don Tucker, and physiological studies by Talis Bachmann in that
volume. A central theme of my writings has been the subject-ob-
ject relation, which in various guises is the relation of self to world,
mind to nature, experience to reality, memory to perception and
feeling to mechanism. Every philosophy takes a stance on this
problem but it is no less fundamental to psychology, though in
the latter epistemology tends to be implicit in method and bias. I
could say my early work in neuropsychology led me to a subjec-
tivist or internalist approach but it may be closer to the truth to
say the approach realized trends in my own thinking that were
not apparent as the theory took shape. As with the Prelude to Das
Rheingold, what is first came last, leaving the impression that the
conclusions of a lengthy study are its final achievements when in
fact, they were there in the beginning, little by little extracted or
uncovered as the work went on.

Science and psychology take an objectivist or externalist view

of the same material as the subjectivism of the following chapters,
so that some comment is needed to orient the reader to the op-
posing interpretations. Externalism imports objects into the mind
and isolates them from their spatial and temporal context, achiev-
ing an account of mind at the cost of its most essential features.
10 Jason W. Brown
The direct or realist view tends to pronounce the objects of per-
ception the constituents of reality, first extracting the subjective
from nature, then from mind. Internalism works with the same
data but leads to an account that retains more of the richness
of its topic even if it often seems untestable and too speculative.
Both accounts have ontological implications. For externalism, it is
simply that objects, mental or external, are substance-like, either
physical or logical solids. For the internalism of microgenesis, a
becoming over the temporal extensibility of an object or an entity
— a rock or a mental state — deposits the being that the thing be-
comes. There is much truth in the comment of William James that
the basic problems of psychology — mind and brain, thought and
nature, knowledge and reality — are ultimately metaphysical.
There is one reality but many doors through which it is appre-
hended, and each doorway is a perspective that takes the reality it
perceives as the true one. Some of these perspectives, especially
those shared by many observers, are taken for a direct view of the
one, others are dismissed as perspectival. For most people, the
world of perception is the real world. For some, the question is the
degree to which mind encroaches on the physical or the degree to
which the physical is installed in the mind. The debate is whether
the perspective is direct, subjective appearance, a model or repre-
sentation, an illusion or false belief.
For the author, knowledge of reality is inferred from its copy or
representation. This takes the subjective to its limits. A long tradi-
tion of such thinking includes a negation of the real by denying its
existence, creating an alternate reality in art or mystical contem-
plation, or retreating to dream and fantasy, even psychosis. The
turn from the world to the mind can rest on dis-illusionment, but it
can be a choice as to the kind of life one wishes to live. A life lived
resolutely in the mind is no less vibrant than one in the world. In
my view, the inner life, or an intuition of the primacy of the sub-
jective, is the starting point of philosophy. In an echo of Descartes,
Schelling (1800/1978; p. 31) wrote that “the science of knowledge
cannot proceed from anything objective, since it actually begins
with a general doubt about the reality of the objective.”
Transitional phenomena help us to understand that the divi-
sion of mind and world is not as stark as at first it appears. There
Foreword 11
was a time before the universe was purged of subjectivity or divin-
ity and mind was pervasive that nature was replete with spirit and
mentality. This animistic mode of thinking is still found in dream,
primitive cultures and pathological states. I think it is embedded
in preliminary stages of waking thought. At present, except for
symptoms or experiences that display a continuum from inner
to outer, there is a bifurcation of nature into two portions, one
mental, one physical, a way of thinking that derives from, and in
turn supports, the distinction of self and other, past and present,
feeling and mechanism. The bifurcation dissolves in all-mind or
all-nature by eliminating one of its limbs, the physical in idealism,
the mental in materialism, the replacement of nature by mind, or
the gradual removal of mind from nature and brain, restricting
subjectivity to pains, after-images and other qualia, or assuming
that consciousness is the last remaining problem before mind can
be fully reduced to material brain function.
It is essential to regain the full scope and character of subjectiv-
ity to understand the relation of mind to nature. The first step, it
seems to me, is to account for the origin of the bifurcation, the
belief in an independent world and the felt boundaries of mind in-
side the head, or at the surface of the sensory organs. Why do we
believe that mind stops at the ears and eyes and the world outside
is independent? It seems inconceivable that this marvelous uni-
verse, which has existed for billions of years before we were born,
and will continue well after we are gone, is merely an image of a
true reality from which we are forever screened, a reality we will
never know. Yet everything we see and hear and feel and think
and believe — mind in its entirety — is brain activity. This does not
mean there is no external reality, only that it is known through
its model in the mind. The reasons for the belief that the world of
sight and sound is independent of the observer are manifold but
they bear enumeration and discussion.
12 Jason W. Brown
1. Development
In a capsule, the paradigm for mental development is mitosis,
division within a membrane. In mind, the first division is subject
and object, which is a psychological mitosis within the subjective
field of the organism. The object, or objective world, does not so
much confront the subject as it draws outward and objectifies a
portion of a subjective ground. This creates an objective and sub-
jective segment within the same subjective field. The subject ap-
prehends and responds to an outside world that is an extension
of its subjectivity. This is likely the mode of cognition in animals
and young children.
The individuation of subject and object in a subjective ground
is the initial phase. Gradually, within the subject-portion, a self
individuates in opposition to the world and in relation to its own
subjective content. At the same time, the object-portion undergoes
further articulation. The appearance of proto-intentional, then
intentional, goals still remain within the mind’s outer garment.
The separation of object from subject is a transition from mind
to world over a continuous sheet of mentation. This occurs in a
recurrent sequence from a subjective core to an objective surface
that is constrained by sensation at successive points. It leads to an
objectified image that represents or models a world that results
from the pruning of maladaptive form driven by the impact of
sensory data on an endogenous process of image-formation.
2. The impact of sense data
After activation to a phase of vigilance or arousal, a construct of
the act- and object-to-be that is organized about the body sets
the process in motion, keeps it on track and shapes unconscious
precursors to their outcomes. Sensory data orient the incipient
act-object at archaic formations in brain to an outcome in rational
thought, veridical perception and adaptive behavior. After the ini-
tial phase, there is a relative suspension of sense data as the con-
struct passes to a space of dream, symbolic imagery and thought.
This phase is then propelled to conscious reason and adaptation.
Foreword 13
The gaining of reality, or the detachment of perception from the
mind, requires sensory data at the endpoint of this microtempo-
ral development.
When sensory constraints are in abeyance and the world is
still present, say when we close our eyes and the visual data that
impinge on the brain are reduced, earlier phases in thought-de-
velopment come to the fore. So long as there are auditory or other
sense data to maintain an external world, these phases are ratio-
nal and adaptive, as in contemplation, deliberation or sustained
concentration. With a persistent relaxation of constraints, thought
can range from creative imagination to daydream and fantasy.
With sensory data markedly reduced or eliminated, as in sleep or
sensory deprivation, there is dream, hallucination or psychosis.
Sensation at the neocortical phase of the traversal is the final con-
straint on the emerging pre-object. Sensation is essential to the
analysis and externalization of the pre-object. Otherwise, there is
premature termination or an improbable route of actualization.
Personal need must adapt to impersonal reality.
The final effect on primary neocortex is to model cognition
to mirror the outer world. In pathological conditions, a veridical
object can be achieved while preliminary phases are derailed.
In normal perception, the application of sensation through the
geniculo-striate pathways partitions the holistic pre-object and its
space to a fully objectified image that appears distinct from its
antecedent process in the mind of the observer. The foreshort-
ened, palpable subject-centered space of imagery that underlies a
proximate space of object relations — the perimeter of limb action
or the world of the infant — becomes the open-ended, infinite ex-
panse of waking perception. The transition is so abrupt, the model
so accurate, the passivity and detachment so complete that we
believe the outer world to be the source, not the product, of the
perception. The restriction of the analysis and exteriorization to
the distal segment of the mental state cleaves the object from the
self, from private thought and feeling, to create an external rim of
mind filled with seemingly extra-psychic objects. But all it takes is
a brief spell of vertigo as the world spins around the observer to
remind one that the world before us is an image in the mind.
14 Jason W. Brown
3. Stages in memory and perception
The initial phases of the mental state arise out of an instinctual
core — the inherited repertoire of drive categories — then pass
through a phase of affective and experiential memories that shape
conceptual feeling in the direction of perception. Early phases
are felt as memorial, later ones as perceptual, but a memory is
an incomplete perception, and a perception is a memory speci-
fied to an object. The image transports the experiential past to
the occurrent present. The same transition occurs in all domains
of cognition, for example, when a word individuates a semantic
category. At successive phases and with sensory guidance, whole-
part shifts eliminate the potential irrelevance or maladaption of
possible objects to outer conditions. The transition from a percep-
tion that is like a memory to a memory that is like a perception
delivers the present of ongoing experience out of the past of its
own infrastructure.
The traversal of a pre-perception from phases of distant to
recent memory embeds conceptual, experiential and affective
knowledge within what appears to be a naked object. The conven-
tional belief that perception precedes memory merely translates
common sense to theory of mind. The natural impulse is to ask,
how can we recall something before we perceive it? But if object-
formation is parsed to a model of reality over an endogenous
phase-transition, the object incorporates as its trace the memo-
rial sequence through which the world is realized. In forgetting,
earlier phases in the object are recaptured. Memory is thinking to
the extent it departs from perception, and perception is memory
to the extent it fails to reach a veridical endpoint.
4. Feeling in opposition to objects
We seem to attach and direct feeling to an object. The feeling is
felt inside the person as an interior phenomenon communicated
in speech and action but largely inaccessible to others, as their
feelings are to us. Most people believe that feeling is associated to
objects, or derives from them, or that there is an external connec-
Foreword 15
tion from self to object or other, but feeling in the object is part
of what the object is, part of its becoming or the process through
which it is realized. The impression of an external relation to ob-
jects comes from their outward movement and loss. This splits
the object off as something external, leaving its affective tonality
behind. The effect is to reinforce the separation of mind and ob-
ject and support the belief that the world is not ours to create but
is out there to observe, react to and experience, which of course
it is, but not in the manner most people believe it to be. If we
ponder how object-worth or value is generated — the feelings we
have for others, for animals, for things, possessions, memories
— we come to understand that feeling is not applied to objects but
develops into them. The intensity of feeling for memory, dream,
the savoring of the past, the concept of memory as incomplete
perception, all conform to the idea that as the memorial becomes
the perceptual, the affect that accompanies the image distributes
as value into objects.
Generally, feeling is more intense at early phases of drive
and desire, less so at distal ones of object and word-production.
Moreover, feeling is felt as a pressure behind or directed to the ob-
ject, not in it. In states of love or fear, emotion concentrates in one
object that fills attention rather than being distributed evenly over
the field. The process that leads outward from categories to ob-
jects accompanies a specification of drive to desire, to affect ideas,
feelings of interest and then outward in the externalization of the
object, as value or worth. The qualitative change over successive
phases is continuous from activation to termination. Feeling is the
vitality and becoming of the object and the mark of its realness.
5. Mind arises in experience of the world
The mind is not a tabula rasa, but to the extent it is so conceived,
it is a tablet on which letters are carved in relief by chipping away
at mal-adaption or redundancy. Mind is endowed with instincts
and other primitive categories of knowledge that form part of the
animal endowment. The enrichment of mind through instruction
and experience seems inserted from outside. The diversity of the
16 Jason W. Brown
world is not felt to be created by the observer but exists for enjoy-
ment or suffering, in any event, to be perceived, absorbed, felt,
stored and digested. There is a powerful impression of mind as a
container filled by experience rather than sensation shaping the
mind to conform or adapt to what is experienced. The reflection
of the physical world is taken for the real. The creativity trimmed
away in each cycle of world-creation is attributed to the internal
portion of mind before the world appears. The incessant novelty
that is the work of nature — the astonishing creativity of life — in
the novelty of each perception is a tributary of creativity in the
mind.
6. Extension and causality: space and time
One of the earliest objections to a conflation of the mental and
physical concerns the extension of external space. We know there
are levels of space formation in the mental state, such as the space
of dream, the space of the body, that of the newborn and congeni-
tally-blind, so that an extended three-dimensional space, along
with its objects, is achieved out of earlier space-forms. External
space is elaborated over a transition in which an initial non-spatial
field of insubstantial mind is set in opposition to the extensive
space of a substantial world.
Subjective time, duration and the virtual present, which pre-
clude instantaneity, differ from objective time-order and the
causal sequence of world events (Bohm, 1980). The causal inter-
action of external objects is observed but not felt, unless there is
impact by an external cause, while in agent-causation, an action
willed by the self is strongly felt but not observed. Specifically, we
perceive the cause-effect relation in the world and we feel it in the
mind. If we act on a decision, it is not the decision that instigates
the action, but the self that makes the decision and feels an agent
to the act. A decision is not the cause of an action, no more than
options that are blocked, abandoned or exhausted are the cause
of inaction. In conscious thought we are informed of acts that are
instigated at unconscious phases.
Foreword 17
For the most part, the direction of world events is from cause
to effect, that of mental events is from possibility to commitment.
In the world, fact is primary and mind-independent, though in-
fluenced by probability and contingency. In the mind, possibility
is the ground of freedom and fact is the final stage of belief. In
mind, the progression is from potential to actual, in the world,
from cause to effect. Consciousness involves a trajectory from self
to object, and thus mediates a transition from the simultaneity
of the unconscious to the temporal order of world events. The
discovery of transitional phases in the creation of temporal order
undermines a sharp opposition of these two frames of time-expe-
rience.
7. Transience and permanence
The inner perception of time and the outer perception of space,
the feeling of transience in the mind, the coming and going of
mental phenomena, the evanescence of life generally, the passing
of things mental and the endurance of things physical, the stability
of objects, the insubstantiality of thought, all combine to set one
world against the other. All things are in change, indeed, it is in-
trinsic to them, but the tree in my garden will outlast my thoughts
about it, the telephone will be there long after my conversation
is over, and the generic cows in the meadow will replicate them-
selves long after my individuality is lost. Stability is the iteration of
like-objects; impermanence is the iteration of dissimilar ones. It
is a matter of the perceptibility of change and the repeatability of
occasions. But, the tendency of mind to apprehend the extremes
rather than the gradations accentuates these distinctions and
makes overcoming them all the more difficult.
8. Evolution and cognition
The pillars of evolutionary thought are abundance of form and
elimination of the unfit as the environment trims away and pre-
vents the reproduction of less-fit organisms. Adaptation entails a
18 Jason W. Brown
pruning of organism so only those best-fitted to the environment
will survive. The population dynamic of evolution is realized in
the micro-transition of the mental state. The environment in the
form of sensation trims away irrelevant or maladaptive possibili-
ties so what survives — an act, a thought, an object — is best suited
to its social or physical habitat. The world of the organism, like
that of object-formation, is a limiting point on degrees of freedom.
The aim of evolution to produce and reproduce an organism best
adapted to some niche in the physical world is the same as the
aim of thought to produce and reproduce (replicate) an object
best adapted to a momentary niche in the physical world. Both
processes lead to an objectification and a continual re-testing of
fitness.
9. Agency and recipience
An essential aspect of the indifference of the world to individual
mind, and the feeling that the objects that grow out of us are, like
the children we bear, independent of their conception, is the tran-
sition from agency to recipience in the outward-going flow. The
feeling of agency is that of the self willing an action. This feeling
is conveyed into an action to give it a volitional character. This is
because agentive feeling deposits in the body, not the world. I do
not raise the glass — that would be telekinesis — rather, I move my
hand which then raises the glass. An action belongs to the agent
because it remains in the body and does not fully externalize. In
object-development, intermediate phases prior to detachment
may have a volitional quality. I can will a mental image to occur
and manipulate it as I like. The image is my image. It has not fully
separated. In instances of incomplete object-development, agency
can be carried outward with the image, as in hallucinatory voices
that command actions by the percipient observer.
As the endogenous phases that actualize an image are guided
by sensory data to veridical objects, there is a progressive loss
of voluntary control, which is ceded to terminal sensory con-
straints, finally to the world. As the image detaches and is felt to
be independent of the perceiver, the agent becomes passive to
Foreword 19
the outcomes of his own image formation. The feeling of passivity
to objects is an essential element in the detachment, but agency
is dependent on the nature and the phase of the content it ac-
companies. Agency can be lost or regained in pathology, as when
an individual feels that objectified thoughts are transmitted to
others. The differing modes of agency in various forms of mental
imagery — after-images, eidetic images, memory images, and so
on — illustrate a transition from the voluntary to the involuntary
in the passage outward to objects.
10. Knowledge and insight
We are constantly guided by knowledge of the world, especially
the pragmatics of life, much of which is attributed to the cu-
mulative wisdom of common sense. Common sense draws its
considerable authority as a tactic for coping and survival that, by
genetic or cultural transmission, has passed down over the ages.
The perils attached to ignoring common sense have, no doubt,
eradicated most of the outliers who raised questions about it or
acted in a way as to deny what seem to be obvious truths. When
applied to behavior in the world, common sense is a reasonable
strategy. The difficulty arises when such beliefs are transferred to
a theory of the mind, or become a standard against which theory
is judged.
Much of microgenetic theory is a challenge to common sense
beliefs, though the theory can explicate their origins. The problem
occurs when a common sense theory of the world is interiorized
as a theory of mind, or of antecedent phases in the mental state,
or when early phases or constituents in perception are described
in terms of final ones, or the flux of brain activity is depicted from
the standpoint of external solids, or when memorial or uncon-
scious contents are held to be copies of what is selected by con-
sciousness. That a model of the real should grow out of fantasy,
that objects are recognized before they are consciously perceived,
that the world is an extension of the mind, that succession in time
is generated out of simultaneity, or that the pathology of cogni-
20 Jason W. Brown
tion displays preliminary normal phases, is not common sense
dogma.
Conclusions
This introduction describes some of the phenomena that account
for our experience of reality, and the bases for believing, indeed,
rarely questioning, the naive view that the real world is just as it
appears before us. We have learned that fact in the world is ap-
pearance in the mind, and that the phase-transition in the actu-
alization of the world, as revealed by pathological conditions and
altered states, is a continuum over neural and psychic substrates,
not a sudden break from mind to nature. As in object-formation,
feeling goes into objects as interest, value or worth, seeks reciproc-
ity in friendship or in love and suffers grief in loss. Love is feeling
that is sequestered in one object of inestimable value, the loss of
that object being an excision of its conceptual precursors in the
self. The notion of the unconscious and the perceptible world as
physical spheres surrounding a psychic arena of consciousness
is refuted by the perturbations of neuropsychology that expose
phases that fill the process from unconscious to conscious and
from consciousness to the world.
The psychic landscape before me is not, I believe, an hallucina-
tory vision but a representation of reality, though not the reality it
represents. This changes little for me unless, like a schizophrenic, I
feel the phenomenal basis of conscious experience, in which case
the model, in its incompleteness or distortion, is exposed for what
it is and life becomes intolerable. To know the real is inaccessible
is an intellectual challenge or limitation, but to feel it is unreal is to
live in the transition from dream to wakefulness.
Apart from an entrapment in the mind, the temporal extensi-
bility of physical entities, as inferred from that of the mental state,
entails that knowledge of a thing is knowledge of the change by
which the thing exists. This means that being is not a frozen sub-
stance or slice but a becoming, a before and an after, that brings
the thing into existence. It is probable that uncertainties at the
Foreword 21
quantum level in physics, or ambiguities that cannot be resolved
by calculation, or do not obey some of the laws that underlie pre-
diction, can be attributed to the temporal extensibility of nature,
compounded in the mind, and the inability to escape the psyche
regardless of the instrumentalities that are employed. A slight but
significant error will occur owing to the approximation of mind to
reality, or to the psychic process through which reality is encoun-
tered. We study the reality given in mind, not a reality mind can
perfectly measure, for even in the most accurate representation
there is inevitably some immeasurable disparity.
Acknowledgements
Those chapters published in other sources have been substan-
tially revised for this book. The sources are:
Chapter 1, in: Brown, J.W. (2008) In: M. Weber and P. Basile (Eds)
Chromatikon IV: Yearbook of Philosophy in Process.
Presses universitaires de Louvain, Belgium.
Chapter 2, in: Brown, J.W. (2010) Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 17: 7-40.
Chapter 3, in: Brown J.W., Pachalska M. (2003) “The nature of the
symptom and its relevance for neuropsychology”.
Acta Neuropsychologica. 1 (1):1-11.
Chapter 4, in: Brown, J.W. (2009) Aphasiology, 23:531-543.
Chapter 5, in: Brown, J.W. (2005) Process Studies 34:33-44.
Chapter 6, in: Brown, J.W. (2008) Psychoscience,
Vol. http://psychoscience.com (electronic).
Chapter 7, in: Brown, J.W. (2008) Riffert, F. and Sander, H.-J. (Eds)
Researching with Whitehead: System and Adventure. Karl Alber
Verlag.
Chapter 9, in: Brown, J.W. (2010) “Microgenetic theory of the
unconscious”. In: Andersson, S., Carlsson, I. and Johnsson, P.
(Eds) Creativity and Maturity: A Volume Dedicated to Professor
Gudmind Smith on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday, January 29,
2010. p. 103-127, Wallin and Dalholm, Lund.
22 Jason W. Brown

Chapter 11, in: Brown, J.W. (2009) Tattva Journal of Philosophy

1:84-99.
Chapter 12, in: Brown, J.W. (2008) Creativity Research Journal, 20
(4) 365 - 375.
I want to express my continuing gratitude to those friends who
have patiently heard me out on many of these topics and offered
their own often conflicting but ever insightful opinions. They
include David Bradford, John Cobb, Marcel Kinsbourne, Bruce
Duncan MacQueen, Bob Rieber, Gudmund Smith and Michael
Trupp. This is also an opportunity to mention those teachers
around the world with whom, in the past, I have been fortunate
to work and from whom, by example or contrast, I have learned
so much. These men, directors of the most important laboratories
of their day, now mostly forgotten, include Norman Geschwind
in Boston, Henri Hecaen in Paris, Gudmund Smith in Lund, A. R.
Luria in Moscow, Alexander Fradis in Bucharest, Anton Leischner
in Bonn, and George Miller in New York.

I especially want to express my gratitude to my dear friend

Maria Pachalska for editing this book, creating many new figures
and her advice, support and inspiration over the years.

Finally, I offer this book to my darling wife, Carine, for the quiet
passion she brought into my life of detachment, for giving herself
to be loved and for teaching me the intensity of a life in the pres-
ent that I could only write about.

Jason W. Brown
66 E. 79th. Street, New York, NY 10075
drjbrown@hotmail.com;
www.centerforcognition.org
 Chapter 1
Perception, Memory and Subjective Time

“In the sphere of phantasy

we have uncovered the origins of ideas of time.”

Brentano

“It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of

the creative passage of nature without an overwhelming emotion
at the limitations of human intelligence.”

Whitehead

1.1. Introduction
This study describes a theory of time, or subjective duration, in
relation to the microgenetic theory of memory and perception.
The theory, presented here only in summary form, developed out
of the study of neuropsychological cases (Brown 1988), and has
been expounded in many other publications (e.g. Brown 1991;
2000; 2005). It would not be an exaggeration to say that the con-
cept of perception that grew out of work in aphasia is the linchpin
of all subsequent theory. Since it was first proposed in the 70’s,
and even to this day, it has met with strong resistance, even ridi-
cule. In those days, there was an overwhelming consensus that
sensory data were processed in the primary cortices, transmitted
to secondary and tertiary areas for the construction of the data
into auditory, tactile or visual objects by way of association-chains,
and projected into external space for perception. This idea of cor-
tical feature detection and object assembly, which has dominated
research in psychology and neuroscience, entails that objects are
composites of sensory data in relation to conceptual mechanisms
for memory and recognition. The naïve realism of direct percep-
tion simply ignores the micro-structure of object formation.
26 Jason W. Brown
In microgenetic theory, a conscious object is the outcome of
an endogenous process of progressive individuation, in which
sensation acts to prune or delimit alternative possibilities, rather
than being ingredient in the object construction. The object is not
assembled from sense data but individuates or specifies over a
transition of phases from “core” to “surface”. This account pro-
vides a radical and also a liberating departure from conventional
theory and the association anatomy (Flechsig, Meynert, Hubel and
Weisel) on which it depends. The concept that perception is pro-
ductive, not receptive—as first fully drawn out by Bergson—made
possible a new, internally coherent interpretation of a variety of
perceptual disorders in relation to problems of action and motor
speech. The features of an object are the end-result of the object
formation, much as finger movements are the outcome of the
action development. The analysis of pre-object wholes into their
featural detail reverses the inferred direction of the perceptual
process. This theory is the explicit or tacit underpinning of all my
writings in neuropsychology, as well as in its extension to topics
in the philosophy of mind. If the theory of perception falters, so
does all the rest. Conversely, if the theory is shown to be accurate,
as recent studies seem to indicate, the enterprise to which it is
secured should be worth a closer look.
The starting point of the theory is the notion that an object-
formation begins with conceptual primitives that lay down the
core self and its drive-representations, which are then derived
to an empirical self and its conceptual feelings, then to images,
and to objects and external space. Each phase is transformed to
an ensuing phase until the final one actualizes. In the normal
waking state, the endpoint is that of a conscious object world. In
pathology, an intermediate phase can actualize as a premature
endpoint, or it can serve as the nucleus of an error. The derivation
occurs as a succession of context-item or whole-part shifts that is
constrained at various points. The internal constraints are those
of habit and the just-preceding state. The external constraints are
those of sensory data. The transition from unconscious core to
conscious surface follows the pattern of growth from the archaic
to the recent in brain evolution. Prior writings have taken up the
fine structure and anatomical correlations of this system and the
relation of the evolutionary and maturational growth process to
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 27
cognition. It turns out that mind/brain process is a continuation of
fetal patterns of growth; put differently, microgenesis exhibits and
extends to cognition the pattern of growth in morphogenesis.
Some key points for discussion in this study are the duration of
the present, the nature of change, the occurrence of stability for
objects and for mental contents, as well as the stability required for
the repeatability of the self. The microgenetic concept of memory
follows the perception theory in reversing the standard direction
of process. The transition from self to world is from contents that
are memory-like to those that are perception-like, from the per-
sonal past to the impersonal present. The theory of memory is
aligned with that of perception. Within the momentary “structure”
of the mind/brain state, an object actualizes over phases in decay.
The concept of decay, however, supposes a trace that gradually
degrades. This is a transposition to memory of substance-thought
in psychology. In contrast, microgenetic theory maintains that de-
cay is incomplete revival, i.e. memory is realized at successively
earlier phases in the recurrence of the present state.
The stages of memory that standard theory treats as separate
components are, for microgenesis, phases uncovered in this “de-
cay” (incomplete revival). These phases are the same as those
traversed in the original perception. If perception does not begin
but ends at primary cortex, memorial phases in the perception
will be prior to the consciousness of the object. The developing
object is not first perceived and then conveyed to short and long
term stores, but traverses phases in memory on the way to con-
scious perception. It seems counter-intuitive that an object should
be recognized before it is seen, but on reflection, how could it be
otherwise? If we do not know what we are looking at until after we
see it, mind is passive to every new perception, dragged along by
whatever object enters the field.
The temporal lag in perception allows adequate time for a
preliminary extraction of meaning from stimuli. The passage of
a forming object through a phase of meaning-relations gives the
final object as an item that exemplifies a background category. An
object, say a chair, is not consciously perceived and then relayed
to a field of object concepts for recognition, but is specified out
of a hierarchic system of categories. The temporal lag entails that
28 Jason W. Brown
perception is not “on-line” with physical world events, that every
object is an image and that direct perception is a myth. It cor-
responds with the lag in the consciousness of voluntary action.
The early decision in a voluntary action, prior to consciousness
of making the decision, implies that the recognition of an object
and action on the object are in synch antecedent to conscious-
ness. Finally, the theory of perception and memory leads to an
interpretation of the minimal or absolute mind/brain state and
the nature of the immediate present. An overlap of mental states
gives stability and continuity to the experience of self and world.
However, this overlap introduces problems of some complexity
(see below) having to do with the paradox that things exist as ep-
ochs, and that incomplete epochs do not have partial existence.
It should be noted that the theoretical approach of microgen-
esis, or process-theory more generally, is gaining new adherents
in cognitive psychology, while its initial formulation and ground-
ing in clinical studies have received scant attention. This chapter
is intended to acquaint the reader with some implications of the
approach for philosophy of mind. Hopefully, it will also stimulate
a closer examination of some claims in the current literature for
the originality, even the “revolutionary” status, of “new” concepts
of self, perception and consciousness, while their priority and
greater specificity in microgenetic theory have been largely over-
looked.
1.2. Time
In microgenetic theory, subjective time, memory and perception
are all intertwined with the account of the mind/brain state. A
theory of perception entails a theory of memory: both require a
concept of the mind/brain state, and time or duration is an essen-
tial ingredient. For most people, time is a medium for the self to
travel in physical spacetime, a kind of line along which we move
and grow and age. Generally, time is viewed as a succession of
discrete instants that are imagined in relation to clock-time. This
gives the instantaneous or atomic theory. Others think of time as
continuous, flowing like a river. Bergson (1988 ed.) wrote that we
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 29
tend to imagine that we are standing above looking at ourselves
moving along a line. This “spatialization” of time conforms to the
time-elimination of space-time of relativity theory. Cognitive sci-
ence has also eliminated time in the isolation of separate cogni-
tive and brain modules.
Bergson argued that time (duration) is an iterated point. His
account resembles that of the Buddhist theory of ksana, the aris-
ing and perishing of point-instants in a causal series (Stcherbatsky
1930/1992; Brown 1999). In my view, subjective time is neither
particle nor wave, but in some sense both; wave-like in an actu-
alization over the temporal extensibility of elementary physical
entities or brain states, and particle-like in the modularity of the
state once it actualizes. The metaphor that captures this way of
thinking is not a river, but a fountain that recurs over the collaps-
ing flow of the previous surge. The final spray of the fountain can
be likened to the perception of the object world. It too arises from
a core and perishes at its surface, then recedes (decays) or is in-
completely revived in the ensuing burst. The fountain does not
move in space but constantly replaces itself.
Similarly, there is no movement in subjective time; rather a
continuous iteration of actualizing states. The sequence of ac-
tualizations can be interpreted as a progression “in time”, with
change from one moment (now) to the next. However, to pursue
the metaphor a little further, in a fountain the change is in the
transition from depth to surface, or from onset to offset, not from
one terminus to the next, nor from one entire sequence (men-
tal state) to the next. We can distinguish the genuine change that
occurs within the mental state, and the apparent change that
seems to occur—the causal sequence of world events—from one
perception to the next. The approach to time has some relation to
Whitehead’s ideas on the topic (Brown 1998), though he appeared
to believe that time-series was not within an act of concrescence
but in successive acts of thought.
The concept of two modes of time—an A and B series—is well
established in philosophy (McTaggart 1934/1968). The before/af-
ter or earlier/later series of physical passage is distinguished from
the past/present/future series of mental states. In the former,
one can say that some events are earlier than others and some
30 Jason W. Brown
later, but not when they occur. The latter requires a perspective in
which the past and future are conceptualized in relation to a pres-
ent. Human time-awareness is organized about a now. In this now,
and essential to its occurrence, the past is realized or revived as
the state unfolds. The better part of a present object is its memo-
rial infrastructure. The idea of the future develops in the forward
direction of the intentional, the drive from past to present, the
uni-directional becoming of the state or its subjective aim, as well
as the conviction that the present moment is not the last. In some
respects, microgenetic theory gives the psychological weight of
clinical data to the insight of Husserl (1905/1964), in that each
moment includes the past (retention), present (presentation) and
future (protention). However, while the past is revived in every
present, and exists as recurrence, futurity is not-yet-existing and
dependent on the feeling of a surge in each state in the transition
from the self to the world.
St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds to tackle this prob-
lem, would have liked René Magritte’s painting, “The Bridge of
Heraclitus,” which portrays the tension in the before/after series of
Parmenidean and Heraclitean time. Time is flowing in the famous
river of Heraclitus or instantaneous as argued by Parmenides and
subsequent thinkers. The former view, represented by the com-
pleted shadow of the broken bridge, asks if continuous time is il-
lusory. The latter view, represented by the bridge partly concealed
by clouds, fractures time into instants, and asks if instantaneous
time is an artifact. The obscuration of the bridge raises the pos-
sibility that instantaneous time is no less illusory than continuous
time, and supports St. Augustine’s uncertainty. For microgenetic
theory, the metaphor is a fountain, rising again and again and
reviving antecedent states. Subjective time is continuous within
a mental state, while the modularity of the state (see below), or
the jump from one state to the next, is consistent with the instan-
taneous theory. The feeling of duration, as will be discussed, is
created in the actualization process. It is of interest that the gaps,
or “intervals”, between states are timeless for an individual mind,
and thus do not exist, though one cannot exclude the possibility
of a multiplicity of other minds in the interstices of our own.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 31
A fundamental problem in psychology is the nature of the now,
the virtual or specious present (James 1890), that arches over the
physical passage of the before/after series. The present, as a feeling
of duration, is the basis of the stability of mind and object world.
In physical passage, past and future do not exist, only the knife-
edge of change in a presumed causal succession. The microge-
netic concept is that a simultaneous, unconscious core, organized
about ancestral formations in the brain and conceptual primitives
in the mind, distributes into, and creates, temporal order in the
world. This implies that a perceived sequence of events develops
out of phases in which those events are co-temporal, rather like a
composer “hearing” the entirety of a work all at once in his mind
before he commits it to paper or performance. Even if the present
is specious or phenomenal, an understanding of its origin is criti-
cal to a facile mind-brain reduction. Cognitive psychology, having
thrown time out of the window in the isolation of discrete neural
and mental components, now attempts to bring time in through
the back door in an ad hoc device, a “binding mechanism” that
supposedly unites the manifold of isolated entities, the temporal
relations of which should not have been severed in the first place.
If we return to the metaphor of a fountain, or a tree, it would be
like viewing from above the myriad drops of water, or leaves, and
imagining a mechanism that binds them together without consid-
ering the momentary genesis of their appearance.
Most people think of time in objective terms. William James es-
timated the duration of the specious present as up to ten seconds,
which falls within the range of immediate and short-term memo-
ry. Ernst Pöppel (1988) argued that it is about two seconds, based
on pause analysis of speech, phrase durations in poetry, even Noh
drama, and the reversal time for Necker cube and other illusions.
This way of thinking about time, especially the phenomenal pres-
ent, tends to put subjective time into an external container.
It may seem surprising that a neuropsychology of time barely
exists. While there is a large corpus on the psychology of time dis-
crimination, fine temporal judgments, fusion thresholds and so
on, the literature on brain-damaged subjects is very small; indeed,
it could be read in one afternoon. Hoff and Pötzl (1936/1988), in-
ter alia, described time acceleration and deceleration, in which
32 Jason W. Brown Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 33

time seems speeded up or slowed down, with a posterior brain 1.3. Perception
lesion. Schilder (1936) gave anecdotal reports of time estimation
in Korsakoff patients with severe memory deficits. The patients First I want to point out that the microgenetic model of perception
might claim they were in the hospital for two weeks when they was proposed over 25 years ago from clinical case material (sum-
had been there for three months. One experimental study of in- marized in Brown 1988).
terest was by Richards (1973) on the bi-temporal amnesic, H.M.,
At the time, and for many years after, for most researchers
with a near total loss of memory subsequent to surgery, except for
the theory seemed preposterous. There was little support in the
some procedural skills and affect memory. Richards studied the
experimental literature and there were many seminars and con-
ability of H.M. to make judgments of short durations, extrapolat-
ferences where my presentations were subjected to scathing criti-
ing them to longer durations. He argued that in H.M., a year might
cism. This was true not only for the reversal of flow, but for the role
be experienced as a month or so. This seems plausible in that
of sensation as constraining (sculpting) an endogenous develop-
we do not normally have a sense of one or five years of duration,
ment rather than going into the object construction. However, in
but once we recall the events that occurred during that time, we
the last few years, a number of prominent researchers, though fa-
punctuate the “unfilled” interval and the feeling of duration then
miliar with my work ignore it and claim to have “discovered” what
seems to fill out, so that we have some feeling for its “length”. The
they describe as a radically new, even “revolutionary” concept of
amnesic is unable to articulate duration with remembered events,
perception that is basically the same as the microgenetic account.
so the feeling of duration collapses to a brief interval. However, if
The theory was quite radical when it was first proposed, while
judgments of the duration of a sleep in which the subject does not
the “revolutionary” model that is now bandied about is merely a
awaken are accurate, and if people, as they often do, can awake
gathering consensus on the microgenetic account that has been
just before the alarm clock goes off, duration can be estimated
re-formulated in an experimental vocabulary. What, then, is the
even with a lack of memory for sleep, suggesting there are some
microgenetic theory of perception?
limitations to this interpretation.
The standard connectionist model (Fig. 1a) describes how sen-
The problem of the specious present is clearly related to mem-
sory data are thought to arrive in visual cortex, where specialized
ory, but memory is closely linked to perception, so that an under-
cells, or feature detectors, receive information regarding lines and
standing of these problems is attendant on a theory of the percep-
angles. A preliminary construct is then assembled to a three-di-
tual process. The microgenetic account of perception can help to
mensional object in a transition from V-1 to V-4, where the re-
solve some of these problems, but it does require a suspension of
sultant construct is associated to systems in limbic-temporal lobe
belief in the up-to-now received wisdom of neuropsychology and
for recognition, i.e. matching to memory images, and to parietal
cognitive science, and an openness to another way of thinking
lobes for updating the object in relation to its changing spatial en-
about the perceptual process.
vironment.
34 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 1. Two models of how visual perception occurs in the mon-
key brain (after Deacon 1992). In the standard assembly model
(a), there is a “forward” progression from primary visual cortex
to association areas, as the object is constructed. In contrast, the
microgenetic account (b) reverses this direction, with the per-
ception developing from upper brainstem (not shown) through
limbic regions and from V-4 towards V-1. The standard model is
a construction theory. The microgenetic model is a specification
theory. In (a), sensation provides the building blocks of percep-
tion. In (b), sensation serves to constrain, delimit or sculpt an
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 35
endogenous process of whole-part transition to form a model of
the world. The standard account (a) is linear and concatenated
and unrelated to evolutionary growth trends. The microgenetic
account (b) is recurrent, and reflects the direction of evolutionary
growth of the forebrain.
Color and motion detectors add to the mix. This is standard
theory. Basically, the seen properties of an object, its shape, color,
movement, etc., are inserted in the brain as mechanisms or com-
ponents that extract those same properties from the object, and
then reassemble it from the elements into which it has been de-
composed. The object is then projected into external space.
It is important to recognize that connections from V-1 to V-4
are all reciprocal. In fact, there is some evidence that the corti-
cal connectivity in a direction from V-4 to V-1 is much heavier,
possibly ten times as heavy, as that from V-1 to V-4. This suggests
that the processing direction is from V-4 to V-1, not the other way
around. Moreover, the connectivity from V-4 to V-1 with respect
to neocortical layers is similar to that from pre-frontal to pre-mo-
tor to motor cortex, also consistent with an efferent flow from
V-4 to V-1. Microgenetic theory (Fig. 1b) reverses the perceptual
process that has been dogma in neurology for over a century. It
argues that a perception begins in the upper brainstem with a
two-dimensional construct organized about the space of the body.
About one third of the fibers of the optic nerve go to the upper
brain stem, a substantial connection that was formerly thought to
mediate the pupillary reflex. The claim is that this input fashions
an initial configuration, in which action and perception are part
of the same construct, which is then transmitted, in the direction
of forebrain evolution, to successive planes of limbic growth. (The
evolution from the cyclical structure of a sensory-motor reflex arc
to a simultaneous act-object, which distributes into action and
perception over levels surrounded by physical tiers of sensory
constraints and motor keyboards is described in Brown, 1991;
cf. Weiszaecker, 1939/1958.)
From the clinical standpoint, in the passage through limbic for-
mation there is a relative suspension of input, so that the emerg-
36 Jason W. Brown
ing pre-object can pass through systems of affective relations
and experiential and personal meaning. At this phase, there is an
egocentric or volumetric space. The image is fluid, dreamlike and
hallucinatory. Space is foreshortened with a palpable quality. The
image is extra-personal yet felt as intra-psychic. The image and its
space then pass to systems in the parietal lobe where, perhaps by
way of thalamo-cortical projections, the configuration is further
constrained to a three-dimensional object-centered Euclidean
space. The gestalt-like object is external but not yet detached, and
is still experienced as part of personal space. In some respects,
the phase of a proximate space of the arm’s reach is similar to
action space, which deposits in the body. The relation of the limb
to the object is important. Hallucinations tend to disappear when
the person reaches for them. Typically, we ask parietal cases to
draw or manipulate objects to bring out the defect. This space is
also that of the action-perimeter of the congenitally blind. Finally,
the object receives the massive input at V-1, with analysis of the
gestalt into its featural detail, full exteriorization, and detachment
from the self.
According to this model, the perceptible world is realized
through V-1. It is lost when V-1 is destroyed, as in cortical blind-
ness or hemianopia, though earlier phases in the perception are
still preserved. This was first shown by Bender and Krieger (1951)
in what came to be called blindsight. Semantic information can
be extracted from blind fields by priming techniques. In highly
original work, Tony Marcel demonstrated the ability to access
word meanings with presentations to the blind field. It should
be noted that from the beginning the theory claimed that sensa-
tion did not go into the assembly of an object, but constrained
(sculpted) a process that is wholly endogenous. An external object
is an image at the outermost reach of the mind. While in the stan-
dard model, archaic structures come into play at a post-perceptual
stage, microgenetic theory is consistent with the direction of brain
evolution. The mind/brain state consists of a rapid transition from
core to surface with multiple tiers of physical sensation acting to
delimit the process so that the object that actualizes is the only
one possible, given the limits on its development by sensation as
the object adapts to its niche in the external world.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 37
The classical model entails a construction or assembly of sen-
sory bits into larger complexes, while microgenesis is a specifica-
tion model in which sensation acts to constrain an endogenous
image. One is a bricolage of elements, the other an elimination
of the irrelevant in the service of adaptation. The former is a syn-
thesis of multiplicity as parts as assembled into wholes. The latter
analyses wholes (potential) into parts, leading from unity to diver-
sity. As in evolution, where exuberant form is trimmed away by
the environment so only the fittest survive, the final object is real-
ized by the elimination (failure to individuate) of all other routes
of development save that which occurs. The classical cortical in-
processing approach can be compared to modeling with clay, as
opposed to the microgenetic account, which is like sculpting out
of marble, as Michelangelo said, to chip away what is unnecessary
to expose the form hidden in the block. This account developed
from studies of normal and pathological language, which were
then extended to action, memory, feeling, and other aspects of
cognition. A strength of the model is its coherence across cogni-
tive domains. It is also consistent with, indeed it has inspired, an
account of subjective time, change, agency, the derivation of drive
to value, and many other topics in theory of mind.
Regarding the model in Fig. 2, in going from limbic forma-
tions to V-1, one also goes from long-term to short-term to iconic
memory (see below), from potential to actual, from past to pres-
ent, from subject to object—or self to other—and from mind to
world. On this view, the world is like the skin of the mind. Like
multi-layered skin in which cells at the surface die off to be re-
placed by those from below, mind also sheds its surface objects.
An act of cognition that is mediated by brain tissue derived from
primitive ectoderm creates objects that perish for the next round
of actualization. V-1 realizes the final phase of an object, but em-
bedded within that object are antecedent phases, including the
limbic space of dream.
38 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 2. The microgenesis of visual perception, showing levels of
object and space realization with corresponding stages of sensory
constraint (Brown 1988, for anatomical details). The constraints
are physical, and do not enter the object-formation. The process is
wholly internal or endogenous.
An object is not the endpoint of a conveyer belt or assembly
line, but is a mental state, or act of thought, that incorporates all
of the phases in its generation. These phases—antecedent to the
object, not secondary to it after it has been perceived—account for
the context, memory, feeling and experience that stand behind
and are part of the perception.
In this process, which occurs in a fraction of a second, there
is also a transition from context to item or from whole to part.
Sculpting involves the elimination or inhibition of cells and con-
nections, while whole-part transitions involve the delimitation of
actualities. There is continuity from patterns in evolution to those
in morphogenesis, and from the latter to the microgenetic pro-
cess. The morphogenetic processes of parcellation and neoteny
lay down “force lines” that become the process of cognition. This
implies that mental process is a form of growth (Brown 1996). The
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 39
analysis goes from wholes to parts, in which the parts become
wholes for another whole-part transition. The wholes are not mere
sums, and the parts differ qualitatively at each phase. The whole-
part transition is the fundamental algorithm of the mind/brain
state.
The mental state is a bottom-up surge in milliseconds over
evolutionary growth planes. An object has a certain temporal
thickness that incorporates these phases; it takes some “time”
for the object to develop from base to surface or from mind to
world in the system, though subjective time does not exist until
the process is completed. (See Brown, 2005 for discussion of the
temporal extensibility that evolves from elementary entities to the
mind/brain, and the relation of process over this extensibility (be-
coming) to the entity (being) it creates.) It is questionable whether
the before/after of the succession of phases exists before the tra-
versal is complete and the entity becomes what it is in a minimal
duration of existence. The “temporal lag” in perception, like the
readiness potential and other studies in action, or even the image
resulting from binocular disparity, indicate that acts and objects
are not “on-line” with the physical world. The transition from
limbic planes toward V-1 is also the transition from hallucination,
to illusion, to perception. Pathology at the limbic phase exposes
constructs that are mediated by this segment, i.e. hallucinatory
phenomena in perception, affective experience and meaning-re-
lations in errors that occur with focal brain lesions. At the parietal
phase, there are illusory phenomena, with distortions of objects.
The distinction of hallucination and illusion—ostensibly between
an endogenous image and the distortion of a real object—reflects
the phase in the process where the disruption has its maximum
impact. Hallucination refers to a proximal phase, illusion a dis-
tal one. The closer the disruption to the perceptual endpoint the
more “physical” the properties of the image. The earlier in the
process the disruption, the more psychic, dream-like or fantastic
the image. This reflects the degree to which sensory constraints
delimit the emerging image to model what is “out there” in the
physical world. On the microgenetic view, the distinction refers to
the degree to which the image objectifies.
40 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 3. Microgenetic levels in object formation with reduction of
sensory constraint: normal and pathological imagery.
At the level of primary (visual) cortex, pathology gives rise to
phenomena that resemble after-images, e.g. palinopsia, where
there is a physical quality to the image, such as increasing size
with projection distance, lack of constancies, or the image appears
as a film over an object rather than replacing it. It is important to
note that one cannot hallucinate and perceive in the same locus
of space at the same time. The reason for this is that hallucinatory
space is the precursor of object space. An object is a fully real-
ized, fully-constrained, sculpted or adapted hallucination, while
hallucination is a disruption within the object-development that
reveals experientially-driven phases in the formative process. Fig.
3 is a schematic representation of the progression from dreamless
sleep (upper brainstem) through limbic and ensuing stages of hal-
lucination, illusion and other forms of imagery. The normal series
of images is on the left side, the pathological series on the right.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 41
1.4. Time, perception and the mental state
As mentioned, the model of perception was an outgrowth of work
in aphasia. When it became clear that the aphasia model applied
to perception, action, memory, feeling and so on, it was evident
that the theory involved an Urprocess or Bauplan, such that all
aspects of cognition could be explained on a common basis. The
theory also gave flesh to the concept of the mind or brain state.
Philosophers readily discuss mental states, by which they mean
perceptions, propositions, moods, and so on, but the process
over which the state develops or its microstructure is studiously
ignored. Wittgenstein (1953) famously wrote that to “talk of pro-
cesses and states and leave their nature undecided [is …] the deci-
sive movement in the conjuring trick.” The microgenetic account
of the mind/brain state contrasts with the philosophical usage,
in which a mental state can refer to some content in the state di-
vorced from its antecedent phases or concurrent context, such
as an image, a proposition, and so on. Microgenetic theory is the
first account of the structure of a mental state in relation to brain
activity. The theory offers a detailed account of the uni-directional
process of becoming that lays down the state, and specifies the re-
lation of the phase-sequence to evolutionary and morphogenetic
growth patterns in the structure of the forebrain. The transition is
that from an unconscious core through a private mental space to
the external world in a continuous sheet of mentation. We live in a
bubble of personal experience in which successive mental states
are constantly being replaced. The theory of the mind/brain
state and its replacement entails a novel account of perception
in relation to evolutionary growth trends. The theory is the basis
for understanding the duration of the present and the nature of
subjective time.
Fig. 4. The overlapping of pulses of consciousness (after James
1890). Each successive pulse develops over the preceding one.
This gives the continuity and identity of the self.
42 Jason W. Brown
In his Principles, William James took up the Humean problem
of how one can account for the repeatability or identity of the self.
As is well known, Hume failed to uncover a self on introspection,
but he admitted that he could not explain the sense of identity,
choosing to leave this problem to others. James described what he
termed “pulses of cognitive consciousness,” which appear to be
equivalent to mental states. In Fig. 4, A represents such a pulse of
consciousness. At B, the next moment, A is a residue over which
the new state, B, develops. C unfolds over states A and B. James
believed that the overlap of iterated mental states might explain
the feeling of identity. While James limited his discussion to the
identity of the self, an account of the stability of the self is also an
account of the stability of objects. Just as the self is replicated in
each overlapping state, so do (visual) objects achieve stability in
the recurrence of the state and the effects on the state of external
and internal constraints.
As far as I am aware, James did not relate this model to the spe-
cious present. In an interesting paper in 1923, Wolfgang Köhler
suggested that the duration of the present develops in the com-
parison of a fresh impression with the fading trace of the prior
one. It may seem obvious that the duration of the present is a
comparison between the immediacy of present experience and
some point in the recent past, but that past point must be in the
present, for as a point in the past it no longer exists. Köhler did not
explain how this phenomenon might occur.
Fig. 5. The absolute Now and the phenomenal Now. T1 is the
absolute minimal duration of a mind/brain state. This T1 state
decays, or is incompletely revived, in T2. The disparity between T1
and T2 is experienced as the duration of the present.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 43
In Fig. 5, one sees the mind/brain state at a given time, T1.
If we conceive the mental state as a bottom-up derivation that
is replicated with slight deviation, T1 represents the absolute or
minimal duration of a perception, a cognitive moment, a pulse of
consciousness or a mental state. In line with the account of James,
T1 is embedded within the state at T2. The argument is that as
the trace of T1 fades in state T2, or is incompletely revived, the
“vertical” disparity between the perception at T2 and the fading
image of T1 is extracted as a “linear” duration. In other words, the
outermost reach of the perceptual process at T2 is compared with
the lapse of the previous state, T1, within T2, and the disparity is
felt as duration over lived time. This duration is experienced as a
virtual span over the unfelt passage of physical instants.
Conceivably, the disparity between T2 and T1 is similar to the
perception of depth in the spatial sphere that results from binocu-
lar disparity, as a virtual object resolves the different monocular
images. Depth perception is created as an illusory image of space
analogous to the illusion of duration. One is created by a dispar-
ity in spatial images, the other by a disparity in temporal images.
Along these lines, Whitehead wrote that the third dimension of
space is the ghost of transition. A two-dimensional slice without
depth has no temporal thickness. In some sense, the third dimen-
sion has to have duration or temporal extension. Indeed, I believe
there is a profound relation between the psychology of depth per-
ception and that of duration. The perspectival quality of the sub-
jective present that is the illusory bridge across sequential objects
corresponds to the perspective of depth in the illusory resolution
of simultaneous visual objects.
Before each mental state terminates the next begins, i.e. states
overlap. The overlap underlies the identity and continuity of the
self. This is obligated if the prior state is to survive as the ground
of the present one. If a state arises before the preceding state has
terminated, the initial phases of both states will collapse to a sin-
gle transition before the distal phase of the initial state actualizes
and perishes. How this works depends on a paradoxical feature
of the temporal extensibility of entities, including the mind/brain
state. A mental state is not a temporal entity until it actualizes; it
does not yet exist as a thing in the world. The paradox is that the
44 Jason W. Brown
sequence of phases achieves existence retroactively once the final
phase occurs. In the course of its actualization, a state that has
not yet terminated has not yet actualized, and thus has not yet
perished. The lack of perishing enables early phases in the state to
constrain equivalent phases in the next recurrence.
A present state (T-2) that overlaps a preceding one (T-1) is con-
strained inter alia by activity patterns of T-1. These patterns are
still active in the forming present even if the present state does
not exist (Fig. 5). The actualization of the final phase actualizes
the entire state, which exists momentarily before it dissolves to
a timeless past. (In prior writings this feature of the overlap was
not sufficiently appreciated and the seamlessness or continuity
of states was attributed to the timeless gap between successive
phase-transitions. Since genuine change occurs within the state,
not across states, the changeless “interval” would not exist for
the individual and states would collapse into their predecessors.)
As soon as a state T-2 exists it perishes and is lost as a ground
for ensuing traversals, though the immediately following state is
nearing actuality when the prior state perishes. Early phases in
the state, not having perished, are not lost until the final phase,
at which point the early phase has melted into the ensuing one.
The completed state continues to exist in some sense in that state
even though it has vanished as a past occasion. In this way earlier
phases in the just-preceding state provide a seamless ground for
the ensuing state.
The difference in the “persistence” of memory for deep or ear-
ly phases in the state (LTM) and the fleeting occurrence of phases
closer to the surface (iconic and STM) is generally attributed to the
consolidation of the former and the rapid fading of the latter. In
the framework of microgenetic theory, however, “persistence” is
recurrence. A state that persists is one that recurs with little change.
This is especially so for the early phases in the mental state that
are mediated by upper brainstem, hypothalamus and archaic lim-
bic structures, the latter associated with the core self, drives and
long term memory. The rapid fading of the terminal phases that
are mediated by the perceptual cortices occurs because the state,
having actualized, perishes for the next recurrence. The perishing
of the state is the disappearance of a present entity into a past one,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 45
or the passage from temporality and existence to a past entity that
no longer exists and is out of time. The more superficial phases
linked to neocortex achieve subjective time order out of the rela-
tive simultaneity of the core.
As noted, the overlap of states, in engaging the earlier phases,
allows a degree of constancy at the base that is essential to iden-
tity (character) and continuity. The perishing at the endpoint of
the actualization, as the object externalizes by way of primary
neocortex, permits novel objects to appear in the rapid shift
from one perception to another. This novelty is merely the shift
from one percept to another; it is not the conceptual novelty that
derives from branching, fusion and propagation at earlier form-
building, meaning-laden phases. The continuance of the core
due to the overlap of initial phases explains the “persistence”, i.e.
recurrence, of implicit beliefs and values, or character, while the
rapid vanishing at the perceptual surface “clears the slate” for the
next perception. On this view decay is not gradual forgetting but
incomplete revival.
1.5. Time and memory
Referring to Fig. 6, think of the mental state as having a dura-
tion of about 50 to 100 milliseconds. For purposes of clarity in
the illustration, the process is depicted as a line, but it should be
recalled that the state is a point that recurs. At point T1 the state
arises and fades, i.e. is incompletely revived. The state is replaced
each moment, the new state overlapping the previous one. We
speak of the recession of a state—say the state T1—as its decay
“over time”, but each ensuing state revives some aspects of the
T1 depth. The duration of the present is extracted from the floor
of the T1 decay at a subsequent state, T2 or T3. The forward edge
of the process is fixed by an actual object, but the floor beneath
this edge, the decay of T1, to which the forward edge is compared,
may be flexible. The present does not have a fixed duration. James
wrote of fuzzy boundaries. In meditation, the present may ex-
pand. In states of confusion, it may contract.
46 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 6. The decay and revival of successive mental states. The
overlap of each revival over the immediately prior state makes
past experience available to present cognition. Perception devel-
ops out of phases in memory. Components of memory reflect
decay levels in the occurrent state. At T2, the T1 state has decayed
to short-term memory, preserving some (physical) features of the
original perception. At T3, T1 has faded even more, perhaps be-
neath the floor of the conscious present, to long-term memory,
which shows relations of affect, personal experience and mean-
ing. The central point illustrated by this figure is that the present
at T1 is derived out of long-term, through short-term, to iconic
(pre-attentive buffer) memory, and then into perception, so that
in the subsequent decay, or incomplete revival, of T1, these previ-
ously buried phases are exposed. Specifically, the original “input”
is not, as required by standard theory, secondarily conveyed to
short- and long-term stores. Rather, levels in short-term and long-
term memory recur in the course of the perceptual decay, i.e as
incompletely revived phases.
One needs to keep in mind the preceding discussion as we
move to a consideration of memory. Initially, the fading of the
trace is minimal, to the point where its revival can be almost com-
plete. One can speak of iconic memory or eidetic imagery when
the antecedent state is revived to an almost veridical object. As
the T1 state continues to fade, its revival still retains some physi-
cal features of the initial perception. Put differently, the revival
achieves a level of realization that is closer to the properties of an
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 47
external object. The revival of T1 at this point, say at T2 (Fig. 6),
is referred to as short-term memory. Short-term memory retains
many of the “physical” characteristics of the original perception.
At a subsequent state, say at T3, the trace has decayed to a phase
beneath the floor of the present, so that only the “gist” of the
original perception, its semantic or conceptual properties, can be
revived. This phase is referred to as long-term memory.
Since all experience occurs within a single mental state, one
does not go from iconic, to short-term, to long-term memory com-
ponents. What is actually occurring is that as the trace fades, its in-
complete revival by ensuing states recaptures phases in the origi-
nal transit. Specifically, when a state such as T1 relapses to LTM,
the state is peeled away to uncover early memorial phases that
were traversed in the original perception. The presumed transfer
of a perception to iconic, short and long term stores is actually an
uncovering of those phases in the original perception. It will be
recalled from the above discussion (Fig. 2) that the perception is
derived out of phases associated with affective, experiential and
conceptual relations, i.e. long-term memory, through intermedi-
ate phases closer to adaptation, i.e. short-term memory, finally
to an external object. The phases traversed in the original object-
formation are recovered, or uncovered, in the reverse order when
the state decays (Brown and Pachalska 2003).
According to this theory, in which an object develops out of
phases associated with long-term memory to those associated
with short-term memory, the phase of object-meaning is traversed
before the object appears in consciousness. One recognizes an
object before it is consciously perceived. This contrasts with the
classical model, indeed, with common sense, which supposes
that an object is consciously perceived before a person knows
what it is. However, this is inconsistent with directed perception,
and probably incompatible with survival. By the time the organ-
ism sees and recognizes the object it is probably too late to react.
An implicit recognition must accompany a preparation for action
before the object is consciously perceived.
Another aspect of this model worth emphasizing is the concept
of a progression from a spatial or simultaneous core to temporal
order. Though in the past I have written of the core as timeless, I
48 Jason W. Brown

now prefer to speak of it as simultaneous rather than non-tempo-

ral. This is partly a function of the fact that temporality does not
exist until the state actualizes, i.e. until one has an entity, whether
a particle or a mental state. The temporal extensibility or duration
of becoming is required for the thing to become what it is, and
it must first become what it is before it can exist. In this process
of becoming, one goes from wholeness or unity to seriality and
diversity. The diversity takes on temporal order as the state mate-
rializes, creating serial order out of the “timelessness” of the un-
conscious (Hartmann 1868). This is also consistent with Freud’s
account of the unconscious. Whether or not the unconscious is
truly timeless—whether it even has psychic correlates—the point
is that change occurs in the microgenetic traversal as the phase-
transition is derived to an object (act, thought, etc.), not in the
shift from one state to the next. We think of change as a causal
transition from one object to another in the world, but that is ap-
parent or illusory change. The genuine or authentic change is the
laying down of the state. The Buddhists write of an arising and
perishing of each flashing moment of life or nature (Brown 1999).
Whitehead proposed an actualization (concrescence), a perishing
and a re-actualization. Studies in neuropsychology, on which mi-
crogenetic theory is based, give clinical and anatomical weight to
these speculations.
 Chapter 2
Simultaneity and Serial Order

2.1. Introduction
To common sense, the perception of serial order is not a prob-
lem, since we have a direct perception of the changing sights and
sounds of the world, which simply impinge on the mind/brain
in the order of their occurrence. For many cognitive scientists,
serial order is just the causal sequence of events in the world mir-
rored by events in the mind. From the standpoint of movement,
serial order is explained by associative chains, just one thing after
another, whether a person playing a game of basketball or chess,
or a computer playing a sonata. What chaining does not explain is
the memory of antecedents and the anticipation of consequents,
which is no less essential to perception as to memory. The theory
of causal chains applied to actions and (perceptible) events in the
world extends, by implication, to memory, which is conceived
as recurrent perception. However, chaining cannot explain the
chunking of serial wholes prior to their sequential enactment, the
apprehension of the whole of an event, from beginning to end in
vision or audition, hearing stretches of language or music, phrases
and melodies, even an entire work, a poem or piece of music in
the mind.

Temporal chaining and spatial assembly derive from the same

theory. The concept of causal chains entails that the brain not
only directly perceives an object sequence but pieces the object
together from its perceptible features, such as color, size, shape
and movement. Functional components for such features are in-


The term, sense-data, is used for the data of sensation, extrinsic to perception,
i.e. sensory constraints, not as in philosophical texts ingredient in or equivalent to
perception. The term transition is used for process within the mind/brain state,
while passage is for process in a physical or mind-independent world. Phases in
the mind/brain state conform to the transitions that underlie the mind and to
passage in an entity, the brain, which is mind-independent in that brain activity
is extrinsic to consciousness. Objects are internal or external contents of mind.
Entities are mind-independent.
52 Jason W. Brown
ferred from what is observed in perception. Parts of objects are
internalized in the machinery of their construction, just as bricks
and mortar are the constituents of a wall. We see the wall put to-
gether from its parts, and assume that objects in perception, such
as the perception of the wall, are put together in the same way. We
see color and postulate a functional area or system that adds color
to the final object. We see motion and postulate that it is perceived
by way of detectors that add motion. The finding of brain cells that
detect motion leads to the assumption that change and serial order
are outcomes of the operations of functional units dedicated to
their detection. This implies that objects are aggregates of smaller
elements in the physical world, in the physical brain and, finally, in
the mind of the perceiver. The isolation of atomic solids in space
— wholes as sums of parts — is comparable to the isolation of solid
objects in time — duration as a compilation of instants.
An object moves or changes in relation to the world around it,
and at every moment there is a changing relatedness of the world.
The inter-locking motion of the totality is missed when interest
settles on one object or its features. If one postulates a brain area
or function for objects, is there such a correlation for the space
between them? The inability to study the entire field, and the in-
clination of science to ever-greater precision and analysis, explain
why the study of the mind/brain tends to isolate the simplest
psychic or neural elements and proceed from there to a theory
of the complex. But starting with elements conditions theory and
reinforces the notion that a field is an aggregate, or that the world-
manifold is a composite held together by external relations. All
these accounts are of a piece with the concept of succession as a
causal chain in mind or world, while the real questions are how
the mind/brain perceives succession, the nature of implicit and
explicit change and the relation of past to present.

More generally, the activation of neurons by external stimuli does not mean
the neurons are responsible for the perception of those stimuli. Levitan (2006)
gives the example of regions in left hemisphere shown to be active in the percep-
tion of musical structure that are also active in the perception of sign language.
If acoustic noise and silent motion activate the same regions, clearly the experi-
ment is tapping into something more general than the stimuli. This is no doubt
true for most, if not all, studies that purport to map brain areas to cognitive func-
tion.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 53
Categories individuate particulars that float in the soup of per-
ceptual space. An object is singled out by attention, the focus of
which can go from field to object, or from an object to a particular,
a feature or an attribute. The object is whatever is attended to, a
landscape, a horse or a fly on its back. Elements in perception
are contrasts at different levels of detail, not building blocks. The
space between objects is not a vacuum or void, at least not in vi-
sual perception, but is itself an object, albeit lacking in density. We
perceive an enormous gestalt in which figural elements specify
according to interest or value. This leads one to ask, is the pat-
tern of whole to part in mind, in its complexity, a microcosm of
universal law?
Conventional theory is at risk when objects are conceived as
events, for then change is prior to stability. When I close one eye,
then the other, or tap my eyeball and the world jumps to one side,
I do not think the world is moving. When my eyes flicker in mi-
crosaccades or move in voluntary gaze, and the world remains
motionless, I do not think the world is a static picture. When I lift
my hand to my eyes, it does not increase in size to the extent an-
ticipated in optical geometry. In such instances, motion or change
and its absence are attributed to the mind, to constancies, to cat-
egories, to the eyes or to feedback systems that control eye move-
ment, all of which have evolved to keep the world and the self as
stable as possible. This raises the question, does the dynamic of
actualization lead to a world that, even as it changes, is artificially
stabilized or is the changing image of the world a succession of
static pictures?
The capacity to arrest change and apprehend solids, or to
perceive change as something that happens to an object, or to
perceive objects as instigators of change, is fundamentally the
problem of change itself. The perception of objects as things, not
events, or the perception of an event as the change an object un-
dergoes, or the sequence of object occurrences, or the collection
of states of the same object (or self), is possible when a series of
actualities — or mental states — contracts to an object or expands
to an event. To perceive the momentary history of an event as a
whole, or as a collection of slices, entails that snapshots of vary-
ing thickness are perceived in a certain order. Every instant an
54 Jason W. Brown
object changes, inwardly, outwardly, in relation to the field and
the observer’s perspective. These snapshots, if that is what they
are, have to be summed or averaged over some duration just to
be perceived.
In order for an object to exist as a “solid”, or for a solid to be-
come an event, it must recur over successive durations. This is true
for all perceptions, though it is more emphatic in some modalities
than others. It may not be obvious that a tree, like any visual ob-
ject, must be perceived over a succession of occasions for it to be
perceived at all. To perceive a continuous series, not a succession
of flashes, and to be aware of the succession, temporal order must
be sustained by the recurrence of the object. As mentioned, this
is no less essential to visual perception than to audition. For vi-
sion, we usually say the object is just there and perceived as it is,
while in audition, the difficulty is finessed by saying that words or
tones are held in memory over a period of time. To hear language
or music supposes that temporal-order in memory accounts for
time-order in perception. The usual idea is that the order is first
perceived and then transferred to short-term or working memory.
But, since an “instant” no longer exists when the next occurs,
working memory is merely a technical term to mask explanation.
What does it mean for something to be held in memory if the im-
mediate past no longer exists in actuality? If the past must be re-
vived in the present, how is order maintained, revived, perceived?
If the past fully perished and could not be revived, every object
would be a momentary and unfamiliar novelty, as would the self
that perceives it. Without an implicit memory of antecedents
there would be a stroboscopic succession of disconnected selves
and worlds. Clearly, the past must be within the present — indeed,
the major part of the present — for both the stability of an object
and its change over time.

Whitehead (Cobb, 2008) is close to this idea when he writes of the first stage
of concrescence as the conformal inclusion of past occasions supplemented by
conceptual feelings.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 55
2.2. Conscious and unconscious
Change in the motion from one event to another in the observ-
er’s world reflects the temporal order of events as they actualize
in the mind. We know, inter alia, from the lag in perceiving an
object or from the image that results from binocular disparity,
that perception is not on-line with physical nature. We perceive
mental images that model physical events, not the physical events
themselves, which are inferred from the images. Object and space
are the outcome of the sculpting and externalization of phases
underlying image-formation. The transition to objects from the
intra-psychic and unconscious to the conscious and external is
so obvious and so often stated it should be accepted as a starting
point for speculation. Let us begin with the transition in the men-
tal state from depth to surface or onset to termination in relation
to time and change.
Many thinkers since von Hartmann (1868/1931) and Freud
have claimed a transition from timelessness to temporal order.
Since timelessness is non-existence, and the unconscious does
not have the instantaneity of a durationless slice, it is preferable to
speak of simultaneity, which has extension or thickness. If uncon-
scious process in a conscious person is conceived as a subliminal
transition, i.e. if the psychic unconscious is beneath or outside
consciousness though essential to it, and if the unconscious exists
when the mental state actualizes, what would be the form of an un-
conscious transition that actualized without becoming conscious
(chapters 9 and 10)? On the microgenetic account, consciousness
is always preceded by, and enfolds, an unconscious transition,
so that an attenuated mental state could exist without realizing
consciousness, For most psychologists it is the other way around,
i.e. experience first passes through consciousness in order to be
revived in the unconscious. A memory is the record of a percep-
tion, as the imagery of a dream is a memory (true or distorted) of
prior conscious experience. On this view, which is not uncommon
among those hostile to psychoanalytic excess, in which content
in the un-conscious is dependent on, is a copy of and secondary
56 Jason W. Brown
to consciousness, without which, qua unconscious, it would not
exist, the unconscious is merely a physiological storehouse of past
conscious experience.
For microgenetic theory a memorial unconscious underlies
and is antecedent to conscious experience (Fig. 2.1.). Consciousness
is an endpoint of unconscious process — actually, a relation of
early to late phases in this process (Brown, 2008a, Pachalska et
al 2009). An image develops out of memory to externalize as an
object, while a perception sinks or decays beneath consciousness.
Microgenetic theory holds that the perceptual rim is uncovered
to reveal underlying memory or dream, as pre-terminal phases
re-actualize to varying degrees of completeness and in conformity
with immediate experience. In brief, instead of perception laying
down memory, memory lays down perception. Further, it is neces-
sary to avoid a preoccupation with the contents of the unconscious
— memories, images, dreams — for it is the process of unconscious
mentation, not the content into which the process deposits, that
is common to organisms lacking human consciousness. Content
varies, process is uniform.
Fig. 2.1. The transition, or process of becoming, from core (self)
to perception (world) frames a mind/brain state. Consciousness
is the relation of early to late or depth to surface in this process.
Visual and verbal imagery, including conceptual or intentional
feeling, arise at intermediate phases so long as an external world
is realized. The arrow represents sensation acting on the phase of
imagery to externalize and adapt the state to the physical world.
The phase-transition is non-temporal until it terminates. The
mind/brain state and immediate present develop in a fraction of
a second, replaced by overlapping states.

The focus on content rather than process led researchers to prematurely
discard the regression hypothesis in early language and cognitive development
(Brown, 1996).
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 57
What is the status of the unconscious in the absence of con-
sciousness? Since a mental state is not conscious until its anteced-
ents are transformed, the unconscious achieves a retroactive exis-
tence on becoming conscious. Access to unconscious cognition in
conscious subjects is limited, for it is transformed by sensation to
adapt to conditions in the physical world. Symptom-formation in
cases of brain damage is helpful in this respect. So is dream, but
the paradox of dream is that the unconscious takes on existence
only when the individual awakens. If dream and REM dissociate
with no definite markers of dream in a sleeping person, certainly
not of its content, the only direct knowledge of the unconscious is
when it becomes conscious, at which point we can no longer say
it is unconscious. Does a dream that fails to achieve conscious-
ness exist in actuality? One would have to postulate “degrees” of
actuality, with acts and perceptions having more actuality than
thoughts, thoughts more than dreams, and dreams more than
dispositions.
Perhaps one should speak of differing states of actuality, or the
extent to which particulars are specified in a given mental state.
Existence is more readily applied to the external, the distinct and
specific, rather than the internal, non-specific and categorical.
Existence is being, but whatever becomes, i.e. actualizes, achieves
being for the moment of its existence. If we believe that thoughts,
images and dreams exist, a thing does not have to be real, substan-
tive and external to have existence. The transition from concept to
object is one of increasing clarity and actuality. Concepts seem
vague and impalpable, objects real and substantive, but we would
not want to say concepts do not exist. Here, the idea of existence
clashes with that of the real (Brown, 2004). We might not want to
say that dream images are real, but would we say a dream, even if
unreal, does not exist?

Behaviors such as sleep-talking, somnambulism, cries, laughter, which imply
mentation in the individual who is sleeping, challenge this argument. However,
in personal studies of sleep-talking, in which individuals are awakened and asked
about their dream, concordance to the dream report is inconsistent. Anecdotally,
this is also the case when someone is awakened during bouts of crying or laugh-
ter. This implies that on waking, the simultaneity of the imagery is retrofitted to a
linear narrative.
58 Jason W. Brown
A dream is an endogenous perception that lacks sensation to
carry it outward. If the difference between dream and waking per-
ception is degree of exteriorization, and if exteriorization occurs
when sensation is applied to endogenous images, is this sufficient
for objects to have greater existence than images or dreams? It is
also the case that the existence of a thing depends on the duration
over which it actualizes. If a non-conscious mental state can have
an animal, even vegetative, existence, the subjective duration of
the state depends on what is realized. If the actual is epochal and
if existence is existence in time, each actuality has a unique tem-
poral character.
2.3. The perception of change
The shift from cause to effect has usually been postulated as si-
multaneous, though for some it is successive. Causal sequence
in the world is perceived as a transition of a continuous event or
event series. If the process account of this shift is correct, i.e. as
the appearance of a transition from one conscious endpoint to
another, with change occurring in the derivation of the endpoint
in an epoch of consciousness, the causal shift would be simulta-
neous if occurring within an epoch and successive if occurring
across epochs.
Some writers have looked at the shift from the simultaneity
of spatial cognition to the successivity of the temporal in speech
or action. This has also been framed in terms of a shift from the
(spatial) right to the (temporal) left hemisphere (e.g. Teuber, 1956;
Luria, 1966), or from posterior to anterior brain processes in
language, as inferred from aphasia (e.g. Jakobson, 1968). There
may also be a transition from the simultaneous to the serial in
the microgeny of a mental state. If the inception of the mental
is simultaneous, and temporal order occurs at the conscious
endpoint, simultaneity and seriality refer to earlier and later in a
single epoch. While the shift from spatial to temporal, or simulta-
neous to successive, has been discussed in neuropsychology, the
philosophical difficulties and implications of such a shift, as well
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 59
as the nature of simultaneity and succession, have not received
sufficient attention.
Not just the simultaneity of the unconscious can be posited,
but that of the mind/brain state as a whole, which is simultaneous
over the epoch of its existence. Entities have a temporal extensibil-
ity over which they become what they are. In mind, late phases are
not the outputs of early ones which, having been traversed, disap-
pear, but rather early phases are embedded in late ones and all
phases actualize together on completion of the final phase. There
are conditions in which the core might be the endpoint of the state,
say when processes mediating subsequent phases are inactive or
destroyed, as perhaps in coma or dreamless sleep. There are cases
in which an intermediate phase actualizes briefly as a pathologi-
cal symptom, but a phase in transition does not exist in isolation.
A phase is not a temporal object. An object is the minimal cycle
of phases that constitutes one epoch. Thus, a hypothetical atom is
not a collection of slices in the orbit of an electron or the sum of its
positions at every slice, but is one complete revolution. Existence
is all or nothing, and the existence of the all is simultaneous when
an entity becomes the being that it is.
How is temporal order in consciousness achieved? Is it by un-
packing the spatiality of the unconscious to the seriality of its ter-
mination? Is it a result of the replacement of individual states? If
serial order derives from simultaneity or potentiality, simultaneity
would forecast succession in the derivation of a state. If a succes-
sion of states is required, experience is still confined to the virtual
present of a single state. The now, the present moment, arises in
the disparity between the endpoint of an actualization and a phase
to which the past is revived, so that successive states are required
to stratify the phase-transition as well as to sustain it.
If serial order in consciousness is coupled to the phase-tran-
sition leading to consciousness, as deduced from the state on
completion, with memories of recent events revived in the order
of their occurrence — the transition activating earlier, then later
phases in memory up to the final perception — the sequence of
activation could provide the basis for a line in time from the im-
mediate past to the present endpoint. When we listen to speech or
music, the words and tones continue to resonate for some period
60 Jason W. Brown
of time as each new sound is perceived. This is explained by the
strength (degree) of revival — usually cast as decay — of preceding
states in novel ones. The earlier events are incompletely revived
in relation to their pastness or, perhaps, the feeling of the relative
pastness owes to the degree of revival. A transition leading through
memory to perception that is apprehended as a horizontal se-
quence from past to present would explain sequencing in action,
music, language, in the world and in the mind (Fig. 2.2.). Since the
duration laid down by the phase-transition enfolds the memorial
remnants of prior states that provide the posterior boundary of
the now, both perceived and remembered event-series fall within
the present duration. In that this account explains order in both
memory and perception, it has a parsimony not found in rival
theories.
Fig. 2.2. The perception (P) at Tn is replaced at Tn+1 by another
perception (Q), which may resemble or differ from that at Tn.
Perceptual stability depends on resemblance; change depends on
difference. Within the perception (arrow, R), the mind/brain state
at Tn+2 revives Tn+1 almost completely, such that the image of P
at Tn+2 is prior to the object (Q), and so on. Over a brief succession
of mental states, P, Q and R represent images of past perceptions
revived to a decreasing extent in the oncoming present, and grad-
ed according to this revival. An eidetic image is a near-complete
revival. A memory image is a vague recurrence at some psychic
distance from a present object. At Tn+3, the series of images, P,
Q and R, forms an order antecedent to the perception (S). The
perception and memory of serial order depend on the perception
developing out of memory. Serial order occurs within the present,
but depends on succession for the layering of prior experience.
As mentioned, the mental state lays down serial order yet has
a spatial character, actualizing as an epochal whole. The simulta-
neity or spatial totality of the present epoch distributes into the
order it realizes. Regardless of whether temporal order in a men-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 61
tal state develops from the totality of an epoch or an iteration of
totalities, in the transition from initial simultaneity (core), through
the before and after of the phase-transition, to the now that arises
with a conscious endpoint, the state incorporates three modes of
time-discourse:
— Simultaneity, which entails temporal thickness or extensibil-
ity,
— Physical passage in the becoming of the mind/brain state,
which gives mind but is itself mind-independent, and
— A subjective present (past, future) that gives being or exis-
tence to the transition.
The simultaneity (1) that is the spatial whole of the core, or
the epoch it generates, leads to and embraces a transition over
phases (2) that is the bridge to temporal order. This transition, and
the duration of the present that is its outcome (3), correspond to
the two series of McTaggart (1927). Since the transition does not
exist until it is complete, at which point the entire transition actu-
alizes, every temporal moment or mind/brain state — whether a
static picture or an event-sequence — occurs against a backdrop
of simultaneity.
Ordering depends not on perceived succession but the implicit
role of succession in the layering of memory and the replacement
of one state by the next. But is it possible that serial order is just
the perception of linkage made fluid by the rapidity of shifts? This
assumes that a mental state, as an epochal whole, is simultaneous
through its phases, with change in the causal shift from one epoch
to the next, i.e. in the linkage of states, not their replacement or
overlap. We are conscious of the final contents of a state, not the
transition from state to state or depth to surface, nor are we aware
of interstices in the linkage. Even if temporal order is not disso-
ciable from oncoming and antecedent states, any account based
on rapid succession must return to events within the state itself.
Consider the phase-transition within the state in relation to re-
placement across states. If order is laid down in the distribution of
spatial objects, or if it is derived serially from the outpouring of the
62 Jason W. Brown
core, the array of objects in the world would be a static grouping
with a leading edge of change, i.e. micro-events fused to an event-
sequence in the overlap. An object would then be an incipient
event that becomes continuous when the next state appears. The
perishing of the state would support the anticipation of the next
and avoid a succession of pictures. If the clock duration of a mental
state of 50-100 milliseconds is insufficient to generate serial order
within the state, like the flash of a tachystoscope (stroboscope),
it might permit a perception of forward momentum. Order and
continuity would then depend on the overlap of recurrences.
Is conscious succession — the sequence of events in observa-
tion, or the motion of the world in perception — an illusion of
causal transition? Is it like the phi phenomenon, in which illusory
change results from the rapid replacement of static images? A se-
ries of causal pairs may explain fusion from one state to the next,
but not memory of preceding pairs to give a continuous event
or narrative. Some have noted differences between real and ap-
parent motion but others (e.g. Frisby, 1973, in Schiffman, 1976;
p. 262) have argued they “are mediated by the same movement
detecting mechanism”. There is an inter-dependence of intensity
of stimuli, distance between them and time (Schiffman, 1976).
In a movie, continuity requires a frequency of around 40 milli-
seconds per frame, which is close to the estimated duration of a
mental state, thus the rate postulated for the replacement. This
rate is likely governed by a pacemaker and is relatively constant,
but there are individuals with brain damage in whom events ap-
pear to be speeded up or slowed down (Hoff and Poetzl, 1988ed).
The acceleration and deceleration of events in pathological cases,
as in the speed of a film projector, might reflect the frequency of
replacement.
The conclusion of this line of thought is that states are not con-
catenations but superimpositions on the remnants of predeces-
sors that are embedded as memorial residues (Fig. 2.2. above).
The graded decay of memory is its graded revival in conformance
with the occurrent state. We see a tree as persistent because of
the similarity across recurrences. If the recurrence differs from its
predecessor, the object is perceived as changing. In psychology,
decay (revival) is assumed to account for serial order in memory,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 63
as in episodic tagging or stacking in forgetting, at least for short-
term memory. However, what accounts for serial recall in memory
must apply to perception.
2.4. Perception and memory
In order to understand temporal order in perception it is neces-
sary to understand the relation of perception to memory. An in-
complete perception has the character of a memory. The decay of
perception to short-term memory, which is dogma in psychology,
is ordinarily conceived as the transfer of perception to a store that
retains many of the physical features of the original stimulus. One
problem with this theory is that it posits a trace that is degraded
rather than one that is incompletely revived. The persistence of a
dead past is the heart of the problem under study. As soon as an
object is past, it no longer exists except as an echo in memory. The
concept of perception as externalized memory, or forgetting as
incomplete revival, puts the relation of memory and perception
in a different light. On this view, the transition is from long-term to
short-term memory to perception. The trajectory is the opposite
of that assumed in psychology. A perception grows out of phases
in memory uncovered as incomplete recurrences within a mo-
mentary actuality.
The greater part of perception is memorial, the endogenous
infrastructure of which is modeled by sensory data to represent
objects in the world. To understand subjective time and serial or-
der, it is necessary to conceive perception as a form of exteriorized
memory. Russell (1921) wrote of the relation of image to object,
but Whitehead (p. 69) pointed directly to the memorial basis of
perception: “there is no essential reason why memory should
not be raised to the vividness of the present fact; and thus from
the side of mind, what is the difference between the present and
the past”? Again, (p. 73): “what we perceive as present is the vivid
fringe of memory tinged with anticipation”. The difference owes
to the effects of sensation on an endogenous process of image
formation.
64 Jason W. Brown
The claim here is that serial order in memory underlies serial
order in perception. The recall of the order of past events, so-called
episodic memory, develops in a setting (some would say out of a
store) that is simultaneous until it partitions. Whether memories
are conceived as associative chains, circuits, networks or configur-
al potentials, whether they are localized or distributed, until they
are activated they are dormant possibilities, not actualities or exis-
tents. An event in memory is a potential for activation. The search
for the memory store, trace or engram, has a long disappointing
history. This is because the accuracy of recall is determined by
the extent to which the phase-sequence of the initial encounter
is revived. In what other sense can we even write of the existence
or temporal location of the memory of a long-forgotten face that
is suddenly revived in a chance encounter? In what sense is a
memory in the brain waiting to be activated? On the other hand,
how does something come into existence from non-existence?
A difference between episodic memory, in which an event is
ordered in time, and semantic memory, which is for knowledge
rather than events, that is, for thought or language rather than per-
ceptual experience, is that episodes become parts of categories,
shifting their allegiance from occurrence to family resemblance.
An event absorbed in a category, say by repeated exposure, loses
its exceptionality. The recurrence strips the event of episodic
context for the relational system of thought. If I travel a certain
route only once, I may remember it as an event in time. If I travel
the same route every day, it becomes part of my knowledge, and
is recalled as a specific occasion only if something unexpected
happens. The unexpected creates novelty by decontextualizing an
event from a family of like-occurrences.
The temporal locus of a memory can be accurate in immediate
recall, as in hearing and recalling a telephone number, but even
here it is imperfect, and it becomes more fallible over time. I can
say that my first trip to Paris preceded one to Barcelona, though
the revival of other events may be required to reconstruct the se-
quence and locate a specific event in the correct order, especially
if there are frequent visits to both cities. The specificity of encoun-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 65
ters is in tension with the generality of categories. Separation in
time is naturally important. I would probably not recall whether,
on a first visit to Paris, I went first to the 5th or 7th quarter. In am-
nesia with shrinkage of past (and present) duration, the inability
to revive events, even implicitly, fails to articulate and expand past
duration. Empty duration collapses on itself.
Do events in episodic memory have markers or relational in-
dices of the perceptual history of their occurrence? To assign a
temporal tag to events, or postulate a scanning device (Lashley,
1951) merely offers a mechanism as much in need of explana-
tion as what it purports to explain. In citing the Würzburg school,
Lashley implied, as is developed in this paper, an hierarchic sys-
tem of unconscious schema or constructs out of which serial order
develops. His example of the final word of a lengthy sentence dis-
ambiguating the meaning evoked the problem of languages such
as German, in which a sentence may not be understood until the
final verb. This suggests that an episodic sequence in memory, i.e.
the temporal order of past events in a mental state, or the basis
on which we say A came before B, and B before C in the past, is
the same problem as the temporal order — A,B,C — of ongoing
experience (Fig. 2.2.).
Lashley noted the problem of syntax and word order and
many subsequent accounts have focused on language production
and errors. The difficulties illustrated by such phenomena as co-
articulation, pronominal reference or Spoonerisms, and the vari-
ous computational models they have led to, may seem plausible,
but they make no attempt to relate the model to brain function
and neuropsychology, nor do they address the more fundamental
issues of a lost past that reappears in an actual present.
In perception, event-order is immediate, objective and exter-
nal, in memory it is fuzzy, often effortful, internal and imaginal.
This distinction, which is one of memory and perception, of in-
ner and outer, mind and world, not serial order, helps us to know
whether an experience is a memory or a perception. We get a
glimpse of its fragility in deja vu. A unified theory is obligatory if

There is discussion of the impact of Lashley’s paper in Bruce (1994). See
Houghton and Hartley (1995) for a cognitivist interpretation of Lashley’s ideas.
66 Jason W. Brown
perception, as Whitehead put it, always contains an element of
memory. Merleau-Ponty went further when he wrote that we re-
member events into perception. (See also, Bergson, 1896/1959).
Probably, the experience of an animal is closer to the percep-
tion of a succession of scenes, bodily adjustments and anticipa-
tions than an apprehension of order over an extended series. It is
doubtful that an animal is aware of a chase. Rather, there is a suc-
cession of acts and objects and a tacit computation of trajectories
that are positions in static pictures without an apprehension of the
ongoing sequence. We do not believe an animal has a past to com-
pare with a present for the recognition of serial order. Obviously,
animals learn from past experience, and there is implicit revival,
even to the conditioning of response bias, for the recognition of
danger and opportunity, as for the perception of change, but we
do not presume the animal is conscious of its past. There is sensi-
tivity to change even as the world is changing, e.g. the movement
of a mouse to a hawk, a deer to a lion. A sudden shift in the detail
of a static picture resonates more than overall change in the array.
Similarly, humans are more sensitive to difference than sameness
on experimental tests, possibly because sameness as a static pic-
ture is the background out of which difference resolves.
2.4.1. A note on dream report
The argument that memory and perception have a common ba-
sis entails that processes underlying serial recall are the same as
those for serial order in perception. If the awareness of a series of
recalled events is comparable to the awareness of ongoing events,
one approach to the resemblance is through the phenomenon
of dream recall, in which the memory of a dream appears to be
coupled to the dream sequence, especially in a lengthy and com-
plex dream. However, we also have the impression that the dream
is first apprehended as a whole, with the constituent events taking
on order as they fade. In dream and ordinary recall, as in percep-
tion, serial order is embedded in the present state, even if a suc-
cession of states is necessary for the embedding. For some, causal
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 67
relations between mental states are assumed to fill the eventless,
timeless gaps in succession and account for the continuity or
continuous identity of perceptual objects. In dream, similarity of
shape, function, signification and family resemblance appear to
conserve identity and serial relatedness. In a strong, Laplacean
causation, the world unfolds in time like a movie. Given a state of
the world at any moment, all ensuing states follow of necessity. If
the causal future of the world unfolds like a film from a reel, could
a temporal series in the mind unfold out of simultaneity?
At any moment we live in the bubble of the immediate mo-
ment. Preceding states are a past that no longer exists; ensuing
states are continuously becoming present (how the replacing
state retains patterns of the state it replaces is discussed below).
Serial order depends on succession, but mere correspondence is
not explanatory. The absence of a past in dream may absorb suc-
cession in the thickness of the state on waking but all images in
dream or perception, present or past, exist in the present.
Some might argue that the entire past of the individual is re-
vived in the present. The Lebensfilm phenomenon in near-death
experience, in which one’s life is said to pass before the eyes, sug-
gests this possibility (Schilder, 1950). McCulloch (1965) was lead
to similar conclusions based on hypnosis and other data. To what
extent is the seriality applied to dream an effort at meaning and
plausibility as the awakened self grasps at narrative? If passing im-
ages are immediate on waking, i.e. if the entire dream is within a
single mental state, how are images aligned in the order of their
occurrence?
The content of dream differs from ordinary recall in its novelty,
digression, derailment, substitution and symbolism, all features
of early cognition. Consider a dream of a past vacation in relation
to its conscious recollection. On the usual interpretation, recol-
lection is for events that were initially conscious, and thus, even if
spotty or incomplete, events are revived with a greater correspon-
dence to the objective sequence. In contrast, dream is a secondary

This notion is wonderfully evoked by Philip Roth in the depiction of a non-
sensory after-life with total recall of past experience for an eternity that is time-
less.
68 Jason W. Brown
elaboration of what was first in consciousness, with the quality
and order of events subsidiary to their meaning. The microge-
netic interpretation deepens this understanding in claiming that
conscious experience traverses a memorial infrastructure, which
is tapped in memory and recurs to a varying extent in dream.
Content beneath the original perception that is revived in memory
is uncovered in dream, with the lesser degree of realization and
lack of sensation giving the unreality and precarious recall.
This account of order in dream-recall is reminiscent of in-
spired thought in creativity, when a work is apprehended all at
once, then composed or worked out over time. The description of
Mozart hearing a work all at once in his mind, though disputed,
conforms to my experience (Brown, 2005) and that of other writ-
ers, composers and artists (Koestler, 1964). Composition occurs in
dream or transitional states, such as the Kublai Khan of Coleridge,
or Wagner’s Prelude to Das Rheingold. In fact, the ability to revive
a poem or piece of music composed in dream is perhaps the best
indication that waking recall preserves the order of visual and au-
ditory images.
In creative insight, in dream, trance or transitional states (Brown,
2008), the potential for order may occur in spatially-given parts.
An example can be found in studies of iconic imagery when, say,
a 3 X 3 matrix of 9 numbers is briefly presented and the subject
asked to recall them. Usually, a few are recalled each time as the
remainder fades, but it can be shown that in each exposure any
set at any location has the potential to be recalled. The numbers
are apprehended all at once but they cannot all be recalled in one
exposure. The necessity to report items in a series gives an order
to the report, but the order, not present in the stimulus, is chosen
by the subject. The relevance to dream would be that on waking,
the focus on a few images is at the expense of the many irrespec-
tive of where in the dream one begins. Any part of the dream
can be remembered, but recalling what is focal in consciousness
tends to occlude the remainder. In creative work as well, it is not
unusual that the Idea spills into portions irrespective of the final
order. Cut-and-paste revision sorts out order as composition is
renewed. The waking self is felt to impose order on the Idea and,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 69
to a lesser extent, the dream content, in contrast to perception, in
which order is felt to be independent of the observer.
The order of events in a dream, or in more distant memory,
is relatively inessential, while in perception it is inescapable.
Memories come and go in relation to current life experience but
the exact order or dating of a memory is less important than its
content or effect on current behavior. Order is prominent in dream
because the dream is closer to perception, but perception cannot
occur without implicit order. Serial order shows decreasing em-
phasis from perception to (very) short-term memory to working
memory to dream and to long-term memory.
Could one say that the order in dream on waking, or in mem-
ory, is reconstructed from the imagery, while in perception, order
is time-creating. Put differently, serial order in perception mir-
rors objective time consistent with its external locus, while in the
subjectivity of dream and memory, temporal order is less precise.
Again, this confirms the thesis that external images in perception
are realized out of internal images in memory, with serial order oc-
curring as an implicit thread — or explicit narrative — of change
from one image to another. There is a deep commonalty in the
ability to recall the event-series of a dream, the ability to recall a
series of events in memory, and the ability to perceive an ongoing
sequence of events in the world.
In perception and re-perception (memory), as one moves in-
ward, time gives way to space, succession to simultaneity, and se-
rial order becomes more elusive. The order of a subjective series
(dream, memory) is not the residue of a perception, rather, the
objective series is founded on the subjective one facilitated by
sensation. The absence of sensation permits the pre-perception
to develop along endogenous lines. The categories that prefigure
the object give rise to unexpected images mediated by shared at-
tributes, as in metaphor.
The memory of a face presupposes seeing the face before, but
a face is specified out of categories and is or is not recognized,
i,e, is familiar or not, before it is consciously perceived. In recall,
the image of the face, to a varying degree of clarity, recurs when
completion to an external object no longer is possible. This leads
70 Jason W. Brown
to the inference that the memory of the face is actually an un-
covering of its terminal layer in perception. The difficulty for the
perception-first account is that order is retained in short-term and
immediate memory when the effects of sensation are over, an
order that is essential to perceiving events in the first place. The
challenge to the memory-first account is that episodic recall and
temporal order in perception must arise out of a process of im-
plicit learning in which the present is influenced by the past with-
out awareness of the duration spanning the succession. In either
case, a more fundamental problem concerns the transition from
spatial to temporal and the realization of temporal order within a
mental state in relation to state-succession.
2.4.2. Unconscious categories and conscious parts
Causation is the engine of conscious succession, as meaning is
in dream. Serial order develops in the transition from relations of
meaning to those of causation, or from spatial relations to temporal
order, or from a position in a spatial pattern to a locus in a temporal
series. This transition passes through agency as an intermediate
phase. The categories and meaning-relations of unconscious pro-
cess have a spatial character — this is why the unconscious is said
to be timeless — while objects in the external world are tempo-
ral but largely devoid of meaning. Agent causation, deliberation,
reason, decision, choice, commitment, are psychic phenomena
midway in the conveyance of the psychic relations of meaning to
the physical relations of cause and effect.
From a psychological standpoint, the relation of self to action
in agency is the ground of object-causation, not the other way
around. We do not perceive order in the world and internalize it
as psychic causation. Instead, the impulse in voluntary action is
transferred to objects as they externalize. For Guyau (1988ed), the
child’s reach for an object is the seed of causation and the idea of
the future. The internal or psychic limb of this process is the self
and its intentional arc. The external limb is causal efficacy and
the implementation of the intentional aim. For some, causation
is mechanical passage. For others, it is guided by meaning, as in
destiny, fate or the hand of deity. The common belief that things
happen for a reason is, for externalists, the fiction of personal
meaning inserted in nature’s machine. For the internalist — to
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 71
the observer — the meaning and value of external objects is the
thread of feeling that accompanies their outward migration, while
the process through which an entity recurs has the rudiments of
psychic experience. This distinction is crucial in that the presumed
independence of external objects prevents a fuller understanding
of serial order as an exemplification of mind’s outward growth.
With regard to agency, which directs attention to an inten-
tional object and is thus an implementation of value in action, the
contrarian thesis and the kernel of truth in anthropomorphism
is that feeling arises as energy in elementary entities to reach its
apogee in human value (Brown, 2005). The seeds of meaning are
planted in mind-independent entities, in temporal extensibility,
whole-part relations and primordial sentience, which evolve over
millions of years to human modes of thought. In this process, na-
scent patterns of primitive existents are gradually transformed to
a high level of incursion in human mentation. We see this in the
genesis of meaning out of lower forms, its installation in objects
and, in causal necessity (Hume), in the outward transmission of
feeling and meaning.
The claim that unconscious wholes translate to the succession
of conscious parts, in memory, in perception, in dream-recall
and in creativity, can be reconciled by attributing the whole to a
category and the ordered items to its members or parts (sub-cat-
egories). An object is a final particular but also a category of parts,
as well as of the recurrences or snapshots buried in its stability
or fused into events. An action (or utterance) — in its derivation
over a hierarchy of rhythms from postural and axial systems to the
distal innervation — is equally a category, the parts of which are
phases in its derivation. The transition from spatial to temporal
parallels this fractionation, as virtual wholes elicit concrete mem-
bers or parts.
In any category, prototypical items exhibit the most salient
properties, e.g. chair, sparrow, while other items are atypical or
less familiar, e.g. ottoman, rhea. If the category furniture partitions
to chair, table, sofa and so on, the members are elicited in a tem-
poral order that seems arbitrary. However, the list is not arbitrary
in that it reflects word frequency, familiarity, emotional intensity,
associative strength and psychic distance. Asked to give items of
72 Jason W. Brown
furniture, one does not ordinarily begin with ottoman, so there
are constraints on the order of recall. If one takes a spontaneous
category such as a vacation, the sequence of events, or items in
the category, seems less arbitrary, such as planning the trip, pack-
ing a suitcase, the mode of travel, the voyage, the destination, and
so on, which have a causal or logical order. Does this sequence
exist in statu nascendi before the vacation begins?
We think of distance from the center to the periphery of a cat-
egory in abstract spatial terms, but eliciting members from typi-
cal to atypical to marginal or overlapping transforms the virtual
space of a category to relations of serial enactment or recitation.
When the images in a category such as that of a particular dream
are aligned on waking, the category or meaning is discovered in
the narrative. Often, it is only after the narrative occurs that we
begin to understand the categories of thought that were driving
the imagery.
2.5. Seriality and the store
If perception develops out of a non-temporal core, how is a se-
quence of events in the world maintained or forecast at an un-
conscious phase? The stacking of to-be-realized events in non-
temporal planes supposes that a mental state is layered like a tea
garden, with events peeling off in the order of their registration.
Otherwise, tones or words head in the past and revived in the pres-
ent would merge together in one discordant sound. We assume
the sequence of observed events in a single state corresponds to
that in reality. However, within a mental state, or with respect to
the actualities the state delivers, if the first in a brief series persists
until the last registers, the first will fade into memory when the
last is perceived. In this scenario, events are like pigeons on a wire,
in which the first flies off, then others, but none actually leave (ex-
ist) until the last in the series, i.e. the whole sequence, is traversed
(Fig. 2.2.).
Put differently, phases in a mental state exist when the state
terminates, the sequence assuming order when the final phase
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 73
is realized. If a single mental state encompasses an event or brief
succession, all phases in the state, early and late, actualize to-
gether before any phase is perceived. The state can be thought
of as a spatial whole parsed to succession on completion. Now,
if events are perceived in the order of their occurrence, and the
state is non-temporal until it actualizes, how is order preserved?
How is a melody heard if the preceding tones no longer exist the
moment of the present one? A melody is a good illustration of
this difficulty, since tones obviously perish, while visual objects
appear to persist unchanged, but it is the same problem.
Listening to speech or music is an example of holding an
ordered stretch of speech or musical sounds in memory. But to
explain serial recall by saying we remember the tones or words,
or that retrieval recurs over the path of the perception, merely de-
scribes the problem, since a memory of the past (tone, word) is a
memory in the present. Moreover, the process that accounts for
change also accounts for stability. Thus, the recurrence of a rela-
tively unchanging visual object such as a chair gives the impres-
sion of permanence in the world even if the object is imperma-
nent in the mind, i.e. the stability of the chair is sustained by the
similarity of its recurrences, while change in an auditory object,
which depends on the revival of past sounds, tones or words, gives
the impression of impermanence in the world and persistence in
the mind.
Knowledge plays a role in the perception of temporal order,
which points once more to the memorial or conceptual under-
pinnings of perception and serial time. A series of environmental
sounds does not stick in the mind like a melody, and a melody stays
with the listener inter alia in relation to its familiarity. In complex
music, the more the piece is understood, the more the listener
will recall what is heard. Less coherent music, the less a sequence
can be anticipated, the less revival is facilitated. Even the recall of
digits in a telephone number is accentuated if they are syncopated
or given rhythmically, or with familiarity in the sequence. Widely
separated tones are less easily revived. Intervening silence corre-
sponds to intervening states. Music lacking melody or continuity
is heard as a succession of rapidly fading sounds. Environmental
noises show even less recall. In language, a sentence persists (re-
74 Jason W. Brown
curs) in the mind in relation to fluency and meaning. Contents
are revived out of categories. The conceptual relatedness of ele-
ments or their semantic coherence enhances revival. Conceptual
structures, categories, meaning-relations, help to support serial
order which, in each modality, depends on antecedent states be-
ing revived to varying degrees of incompleteness.
The concept of a storehouse of innumerable memories, some
explicit, others implicit, some with the potential for activation
yet destined to be forgotten, others lost or irretrievable, is widely
accepted, though the nature of the store or trace eludes descrip-
tion. Even if a cell is re-activated by the same stimulus, most re-
searchers do not think that an event is located in a single neuron,
though in holographic theory the trace is everywhere (Pribram,
1991). We conceptualize the “to-be-realized” as encoded in wide-
spread systems of neurons and filaments that cohere according
to probabilities latent in the connectivity. Memories emerge in the
synaptic strength of configural possibilities occasioned by experi-
ence. A memory in the connectivity implies a circuit or configural
potential. In microgenetic theory the trace is the entire sequence
up to the penultimate phase through which the perception actual-
izes. If every mind/brain state in its entirety has the potential to
be revived, what is ingredient in the trace? Is it what was formerly
in consciousness, its unconscious precursors, the immediate and
remote context, related events, relevant thoughts, shared mean-
ings, feelings? Are billions of attenuated memories entrained in
every cognition or is the connectivity quiescent or virtual in the
latency of synaptic contacts?
2.6. Simultaneity and succession
Object-causation is a narrative of change in the external world
based on the replacement of internal episodes as one series of
events replaces another. World-events realized in the mind are
ordered into past and present. From a subjective point of view,
change (1) depends on the elaboration of temporal order in the
mind; (2) appears when simultaneity becomes actual, so that
order is spatially given in advance of perception; (3) depends,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 75
perceptually, on a past and future in relation to a phenomenal or
specious present (Brown, 1996 et seq.), while objective time is that
of earlier and later; and (4) derives from the unconscious succes-
sion of phases laying down temporal order, unlike the world that
is the ‘gathered-up’ outcome of this transition (passage).
Sprigge (1974), after Whitehead, argued that change from one
event to another is experienced in succession, that mental change
is not real change and that only the extra-psychic is changing.
Doubt about real change in the mind/brain comes from the fact
that a mental state, as an epochal whole, in a Platonic moving im-
age of eternity, cannot be divided into successive parts. The world
is a stationary image with the continuity of motion depending
on the rate of replacement. It is difficult to conceive that change
and multiplicity in the world are apprehended simultaneously in
the unconscious. This agrees with Sprigge’s argument that in real
change one experience gives way to another, and that an ensuing
content ‘takes up the story told by the first content’, or that serial
order is in the replacement, not the state. The problem with this
account is that, while it may work for perception, as in the phi phe-
nomenon, it does not adequately explain serial order in memory,
and there is no reason to think these are unrelated phenomena.
If order in the world successively comes into view, can non-
temporality at the onset be reconciled with successivity at the out-
come? In the epochal theory, temporal order is the unfolding into
time of spatial diversity as novel worlds recur in succession. Either
the core is partitioned to a seriality not anticipated at the onset,
or temporal order in consciousness is a copy of that in the core,
with unconscious events serialized in situ prior to actualization. A
temporal order embedded in a simultaneity, with the potential for
order at the surface, would yield a spectator who, in theory, could
intuit the order of events before they actualize. However, individu-
als who descend inwardly in meditative practice or mystical states
report unity or oneness, not serial order or multiplicity.
76 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 2.3. Phases in short-term or working memory are gener-
ally revived in ensuing states in the order of their registration, i.e.
in relation to their resemblance to the oncoming state and, thus,
their capacity for revival. Images closer to the current perception,
i.e. those in short-term memory that almost achieve re-perception,
are most likely to be revived in the current state. The mind/brain
state at T-1 is replaced by an overlapping state at T-2. The core of
T-1 is overlapped at T-2 before T-1 terminates, i.e. before the epoch
exists. This explains the recurrence of early phases in T-1 associ-
ated with individuality, self, character, dispositions, long-term and
experiential memory, and the “persistence” of core beliefs, values
and personality. Later phases perish on completion of the entire
state to make way for novel perceptions. The re-activation of ear-
lier phases by the overlapping state explains the sustained per-
sonhood behind succession. Early phases are ingredient across
states; later ones are malleable to a greater extent as endogenous
process is shaped by sensation.
William James (1890) was the first to postulate overlap in the
succession of mental states, which he termed pulses of cognitive
consciousness. If the overlap is for early phases, later ones will
perish before the tip of the oncoming state arrives (Fig. 2.3.). More
precisely, the early unconscious phases associated with long-term
memory, character and the self are revived in the oncoming state
before the present state concludes. Since the epoch does not exist
until the transition is complete, phases trailing in the derivation
would recur in the forward edge of the overlap; indeed, these
phases would be continuously modified by ensuing states before
they become actual. This is a solution to the non-existence of the
unconscious, for while unconscious phases never exist, they are
constantly being replaced before existence is possible, while con-
scious phases exist but are continuously perishing. The paradox
is that the non-existent survives and is perpetually transformed,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 77
while existents are novelties that do not mutate, for they are re-
placed as they arise.
The revival of proximal, unconscious phases before the state
actualizes — before those phases have existence and temporality
and, therefore, before they can perish — allows early cognition to
recur across states. On the other hand, the distal or world-close
phases vanish before they fully re-actualize. This, so to say, ‘wipes
the slate clean’ for oncoming objects, recalling Freud’s magic writ-
ing pad analogy. On this interpretation, the persistence of early
phases and the evanescence of late ones, i.e. the consolidation
of long-term memory and the transience of short-term memory
and perception, reflect the reinforcement of not-yet-existent con-
figural patterns at early phases and the perishing-on-termination
of late ones.
We are aware of change in the world, as well in ideas and feel-
ings, but unaware of the process through which inner and outer
develop. The experience of change lies in outcomes and replace-
ments. For the observer, the mental state is all there is. This means
that genuine change occurs within the state, even if the layering
of the past, in imagery and perception, requires a series of states.
If the outcome of a state is given at the onset, change within the
state would be prohibited by its epochal character. An external-
ized world enjoys novelty in delimiting the endogenous. There is
the novelty of the unexpected or creative, as in the departure from
world attachment. Observed events are outcomes of the becom-
ing through which they are generated, the changing physical sur-
round, and the individuality of response.
The changelessness of an epoch is a logical entailment of its
holistic character, but the outcome of the epoch cannot be or-
dained at the onset because the facts of the final world depend
on sculpting by incoming sensory data that guide the state to
completion. In addition to these effects, the transit of proximal
phases of endogenous process — less constrained by sensory data
— through experiential memory and intentional feeling — medi-
ated by limbic formation — are a source of spontaneity, originality
and the creative imagination.
 Chapter 3
Theory of the Symptom

3.1. Introduction
The brief outline of microgenetic theory and the nature of the
mental state described in the preceding chapters is further ex-
plored in the examination of the pathological errors that were the
original basis of the theory. If errors in language or perception can
be shown to arise from normal processes underlying the men-
tal state, i.e. if errors reveal normal cognitive process, the model
of pathological cognition is equally a model of cognition in the
normal state. This chapter offers an account of the origin of the
error, and shows how it arises from a brief retardation and incom-
plete specification, in the actualization process. The account of
symptoms, like that of microgenetic process generally, is related
to patterns of phylo- and onto-genetic growth. The argument is
that patterns of morphogenesis in the developing brain corre-
spond with the population dynamic of evolutionary speciation
and the dynamic of cognitive process in the mature individual.
Evolutionary and maturational growth patterns continue into
adult cognition as the process through which actualities in mind
and world are selected.

The symptom is essentially a fragment of preliminary cogni-

tion that is ordinarily transformed to an ensuing phase. In this
respect, the symptoms of brain pathology are fragments of un-
conscious phases that are usually inaccessible to waking cogni-
tion. The importance of the symptom is that it details the micro-
temporal process underlying surface performances, i.e. charting
the infrastructure of the unconscious, a topic taken up in a later
chapter.

Only a few common symptoms have been chosen to illus-

trate this theory, but a survey of the full range of local symptoms
from a microgenetic perspective (Brown, 1988) suggests that the
account is applicable to all pathological phenomena except, per-
80 Jason W. Brown
haps, those impairments resulting from massive brain injury. The
model began with the symptoms of language disorder in apha-
sia. When it became evident that an account of the aphasias was
similar to that for action, perception and other cognitive activities,
a general theory of mind, or the mind/brain state, became pos-
sible. Hopefully, the coherence of the model, its wide explanatory
power and relation to normal mentation will not fail to impress
the reader as a plausible basis for the later speculation on philo-
sophical topics that depend on these early descriptions in human
neuropsychology.
3.2. The symptom as a neuropsychological
problem
There are several problems in neuropsychology that are both fun-
damental and recurrent. One of these is the nature of the image,
such as the verbal image of inner speech (Chapter 4) or the visual
and auditory image of hallucination. This issue is fundamental
because the relation of image to object goes to the heart of the
transition from inner to outer. A demonstration that an object is
an externalized image, or that images are attenuations at different
points in the process of object-formation, would go far to settle the
epistemological debate over idealist and realist versions of percep-
tion. Another problem is the nature of the present discussed in
Chapters 1 and 2. The duration of the present is important for
many reasons, including a possible role in agency (Brown, 1996)
and because the virtual span over physical passage is a fundamen-
tal obstacle to a naive reduction of mind to brain.
Still another, and perhaps even more fundamental though
neglected problem is the origin and nature of the symptom. A
symptom is a pathological behavior that deviates from the ordi-
nary or expected. Even a transient disturbance such as forgetting
a name is a clue to the nature of pathology. While the symptom
points to a pathological condition, and in this respect would seem
remote from an understanding of normal thought and behavior,
in that it is a fragment of behavior pointing to a disrupted phase
in the mind/brain state, the relation of the psychic fragment to
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 81
brain activity is a capsule of the overall relation of mind to brain.
Specifically, the relation of symptom to an area in the brain or a
distributed system corresponds to the relation of an act or thought
to the brain state that generates it. The explanation of the frag-
ment in relation to a region of the brain is an explanation of brain
and behavior generally.
As will be shown, the symptom is not a bizarre occurrence
unrelated to the normal, but reveals preliminary or “pre-process-
ing” phases in the elaboration of normal function. We commonly
see links from normal to defective performance, such as halluci-
nation in dream, psychosis and focal brain lesion. In studies of
sleep-talking, normal individuals produce almost the entire range
of aphasic errors in the course of a night’s sleep (Arkin and Brown,
1971). The similarity of errors to stages in normal development
led to the regression concept of symptom formation, in which
symptoms were interpreted as the re-appearance of earlier stages
in language or thought development.
In neuropsychology, a symptom due to focal brain damage,
such as a language or perceptual error, is an opportunity to study
altered performance in an individual who in other respects is nor-
mal. The study of focal symptoms is essential to an understanding
of the brain correlates of mentation and behavior, which is not
usually possible in diffuse illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease
or in traumatic brain injury. Nor is it possible to correlate brain
region or functional system with maturational stages in child-
hood, for the brain develops as a whole and the lines of cleavage
between different formations are less precise than in adults.
If the study of symptoms were not instructive with regard to
the normal, clinical study would be a waste of time. Some psy-
chologists, invariably with little exposure to, or knowledge of,
the pathological cases, are dismissive of the value of symptoms,
often comparing them to the sparks that fly out of a damaged
machine, or at best, as approximations or guesses, But for those
who have studied the clinical material closely, and thoughtfully,
there is clearly a regularity, even a lawfulness, in the pattern of
symptom formation, as well as in the change of symptoms with
deterioration and recovery. Still, after many years of describing
symptoms, and the myriad symptoms that have been described,
82 Jason W. Brown
we do not have a coherent theory on their nature, how they arise
and change, and their relation to brain function. Without such a
theory, clinical work that concentrates on qualitative aspects of
brain and behavior remains in the realm of unscientific discourse.
This has been its fate over the past few decades, with error-analysis
relegated to the status of anecdote. Along with the rise of cognitive
“science”, psychology came to view symptoms as subjective, vari-
able, qualitative, fleeting and non-reproducible, perhaps a guide
to an experimental study but otherwise of little scientific value. It
is not difficult to trace the history of this idea.
When neuropsychology was in a descriptive phase, the inter-
pretation of symptoms tended to emphasize their entrainment in
a process-based theory of the mind/brain. One can point to the
genetic theories of Piaget, Werner and others, of Gestalt theory,
and the concept of a micro-temporal unfolding over stages ad-
vanced by clinicians such as Lotmar, Monakow, Pick, Bay, Conrad,
Goldstein and Schilder. These workers viewed the symptom as a
disruption in the transition from thought to speech or action, or
in the development of thought to imagery and perception. For
example, the different types of semantic error were shown to con-
form to phases in word selection, as disturbances in the transition
through fields of word-meaning relations. Goldstein (1948) argued
that the aphasias represented stages in the transition of thought to
speech, as did Pick (1931/1973), while Lange (1936) and Schilder
(1951) approached thought-development and percept-formation
from the same point of view. Tachystoscopic methods (Smith,
2001, for review) were employed to demonstrate micro-temporal
transitions in object-formation.
All this work has been largely forgotten, or is deliberately ne-
glected, in the rise of cognitive psychology. The shift from process
to substance theory was one from continuities, transitions and
internal relations to logical solids, discrete brain areas or compo-
nents, and the binding of functional units by external relations,
whether psychic or neural. In line with computational theory, a
profound shift occurred in psychological and brain models, from
the dynamic accounts of the early workers to the box and arrow
diagrams or circuit board models of contemporary theory, what
the philosopher Mario Bunge termed the “Lego” theory of the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 83
mind. The attempt to make psychology a “scientific” discipline
had the effect of discounting patterns of error formation and the
qualitative side of psychological change in favor of more quantita-
tive methods of assessment, whether batteries of tests or probes
of specific functions. Interest shifted from errors to deficits, from
mistakes to omissions, leading to a pre-occupation with disso-
ciations and atemporal slices of behavior averaged or summed
over samples. The various local models had little or no coherence
among them. For example, a model of font recognition could be
advanced without an attempt to explain the relation of the model
to phonology, lexical semantics, attention, or perception more
generally. Mental components were inferred ad hoc from the re-
quirements of cognitivist theory.
The argument was that deficits had the virtue of being re-
peatable and quantifiable in scores, and thus conformed to the
requirements of a scientific theory. Thus, a score of 9/10 on one
test implied a relatively intact mechanism, while a score of 2/10
implied that the mechanism or connections to or from it were
damaged. In case studies, the same method was used to explore
the structure of restricted performances, re-iterated at progres-
sively finer levels. Spurious methods of brain imaging, such as
that of subtraction in metabolic mapping, were used to support
the account of modular organization in brain and psyche. On this
view, there is no explanation of a symptom, only the destruction
or degrading of a function by damage to a site or its connectivity.
Once the brain area is “identified,” the problem is solved, and no
obligation is felt to account for the relation of brain to function.
We see a similar mindset in the rush to correlate psychological
phenomena, even complex ones such as love or the sense of right
and wrong, with a specific brain area, even a gene. This is merely
a reduction to a lower “physical” level without explanation of the
process by which the gene or brain area generates the phenom-
enon, not to mention the diachronic and synchronic relations of
the function in question.
This emphasis on quantity over quality is completely backwards.
The symptom is not an ancillary decoration to a scientific psychol-
ogy, but has direct import as a preliminary phase in language or
cognition. The symptom is itself the result of an experiment in
84 Jason W. Brown
nature, in no need of additional experimentation. Specifically,
the symptom points to an embedded phase in the generation of
a surface performance. In contrast, a deficit or omission tells us
little about brain process, though it provides some boundaries to
theoretical speculation based on symptom-analysis.
3.3. Some theories of the symptom
Many years ago during a stay in Moscow with A. R. Luria, he cited
Kurt Goldstein’s paper, “What is a symptom?”, as one of the most
important articles written in the field, and argued that a theory
of the symptom was a pressing need in neuropsychology. Luria
did not have a definitive theory, rather different perspectives ac-
cording to the problem under analysis. His ideas were mostly bor-
rowed from others. The account of paraphasia followed Pavlov,
who proposed an equalization of associative strengths, i.e. an
elimination of association biases, such that one word was as likely
to occur as another, though paraphasias are not random guesses.
At times he endorsed Wernicke’s view that paraphasia occurred
when the posterior lesion disinhibited Broca’s area and allowed it
to run on chaotically. Vygotsky’s hierarchic theory was also used
for certain conditions and, following Hughlings Jackson, regres-
sion played a role in the distinction of the automatic and volitional
in restitution, as well as in some clinical disorders, such as verbal
regulation. The symptom was also conceived as a disruption in a
functional system. This idea, first proposed by Anokhin, involved
not a loss of elements but a re-organization to a different level. In
some ways, the idea recalls Penfield’s analogy of the effects of a
brain lesion to removing a violin from the string section of an or-
chestra and listening for the change in the music. Luria’s concept
of qualitative reorganization has been greatly distorted in the idea
of the brain as a network of discrete and inter-connected compo-
nents, or a circuit board in which multiple areas or functions, each
separately vulnerable, contribute to a given task.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 85
3.4. Theory of symptom formation
Most accounts of the symptom are simple mechanical explana-
tions based on a combination of positive and negative effects, or
displacement and re-location, such as excitation, inhibition, re-
lease and compensation, or the assumption of the damaged func-
tion by intact remote or neighboring regions. The symptom has
been interpreted to represent a degraded function or an earlier
stage in acquisition. This idea has been most fully explored, and
refuted, in language pathology, where grammatical defects have
been examined in relation to stage of acquisition. In the percep-
tual domain, visual (auditory, etc.) hallucinations have been at-
tributed to the excitation (epilepsy) or release (damage) of centers
that store images. Or, the image is conceived as an earlier stage in
perception, released by damage to (visual) cortex. However, such
interpretations do not address the nature of the image, its con-
textual and historical quality, its meaning, its relation to dream,
waking experience and normal perception, nor to other types of
imagery and the transitions from one form to another. A theory
of hallucination is also a theory of illusion, of eidetic and memory
imagery, dream imagery, imagination or thought images and af-
ter-images, since one form can pass into the other.
These simplistic accounts of the symptom grope at a theory
without much thought of the essential nature of the alteration or
its relation to normal function. In this the symptom as a pathologi-
cal phenomenon is treated much like normal phenomena, i.e. as
a solid entity like a neuron with effects at the synapse, where the
thing-like nature of the event is associated with a neural substrate
and the excitatory or inhibitory forces that play upon it rather than
explored as a qualitative change in relation to spatial and temporal
context. None of these theories accounts for the common observa-
tion that many pathological symptoms occur as occasional events
in normal individuals, that is, the relation of normal to pathologi-
cal function, such as the relation of waking to dream hallucina-
tions, or the observation that normal people in states of fatigue
or distraction may forget a proper name or noun. The relation of
error to target is ignored, e.g. why an aphasic names a table as a
chair. This is also true for patterns of symptom-formation such as
why the word “chair” is produced and not the word “butterfly.” In
86 Jason W. Brown
contrast to the muddled view of locality and the effects of destruc-
tion or re-location, microgenetic theory centers on the symptom
as a disruption of a phase in the realization of an act, object or
utterance (Brown, 1988; 1996). It is a snapshot of a concealed or
submerged process with relations to antecedent and consequent
phases. On this view, a theory of the symptom is the first step in a
theory of normal cognition.
It might be noted that in certain respects microgenetic theory
has affinities with the interpretation of psychopathology. Freud
argued that symptoms were not additions to the repertoire of be-
havior but revelations of underlying structure. While this is easier
to accept in disorders such as the neuroses than in cases of brain
damage, the argument is similar. One simply has to get over the
simplistic idea that damage to the brain “knocks out,” destroys or
damages a function localized in that area. The concept of symp-
toms as destroyed components is closely linked to the concept
of the brain as a computational system with functions localized
to specific regions or circuits. The remedy is a concept of brain
and psyche in terms of fields or fractals instead of cities and high-
ways.
The symptom, then, is the link from the pathological to the
normal; it is a piece of preliminary cognition that surfaces, for that
moment, as a terminal product. With focal lesions, there is no ar-
rest of language (object, act) production, no blockage or obstruc-
tion; the derailment is carried through to subsequent phases. For
example, a lexical-semantic error (chair for table) that arises ear-
lier in the utterance undergoes normal phonological processing at
a later phase, e.g. the incorrect word (object) choice is articulated
in correct phonological form. Accordingly, an error is conceived as
a brief attenuation in normal mentation that is carried through to
a distal termination. When this theory was first proposed, it was
thought to be similar to the regression model. While the idea of
regression in its classical description by Hughlings Jackson and
Roman Jakobson, i.e. that pathology unpeels the onion-skin of
development in the reverse order of acquisition, has not survived
close scrutiny (Carramazza and Zurif, 1978), the kernel of truth
in the idea has been missed in its rudimentary formulation. As
will become clear in the discussion to follow, the point that was
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 87
missed is that patterns of symptom-formation can be understood
in relation to the micro-temporal development of an act of cogni-
tion. What is important is the process revealed by the symptom,
not the staged elements it deposits (see below).
3.5. Some representative types of errors
Consider the process of naming and its disruption in posterior
aphasia. An aphasic asked to name an object or picture may pro-
duce various types of errors depending on such factors as laterality,
age, lesion location and so on. Without going into details that have
been covered in other works (e.g. Brown, 1988), among the errors
that are observed are those of wide semantic distance or experi-
ential relatedness, e.g. bullfight for guitar, those in the object cat-
egory, e.g. piano for guitar, and those of a tip-of-the-tongue state,
where some features of the word are available, such as initial letter
or sound, and syllabic length. There are errors in which the correct
word is selected with impaired phonemic encoding, e.g. predisent
for president. Errors can represent blends of normal forms; there
can be combinations of error types, e.g. semantic plus phonemic
errors. In all these instances, there is a progressive zeroing in on
the target word or object over planes in forebrain evolution, i.e.
the actualization maps to stages in phylogeny. The disorders of
language were the basis for early ideas on this topic, in which the
process of language production, in its perceptual mode — and this
is true for all mental phenomena — is interpreted as a whole-part
or context-item transform that goes from fields of conceptual or
meaning relations to relations of form or morphology as targets
individuate out of lexical- or object-categories.
In the visual sphere, as in agnosia with lesions of older brain
areas such as mesial temporal neocortex, there are disorders of
object-meaning comparable to those of paraphasia, in which ob-
jects are mis-identified within the object category, such as calling
88 Jason W. Brown
a plate a cup. The error involves the object concept, not language.
The patient can name the object by touch, and can copy a drawing
or picture correctly but does not recognize it. With parieto-occipi-
tal lesions there are errors of object form in which the patient un-
derstands the object-concept and can describe from memory the
shape and function of the object, but cannot identify the object vi-
sually (or aurally, etc.). In this type of agnosia, there is a disruption
in the discrimination of form, e.g. a knife is called a screwdriver.
With lesions at late stages in microgeny and phylogeny, errors
point to an involvement of object features, in which even simple
line drawings cannot be copied in spite of good visual acuity. The
transition from object meaning to object form is also observed
in disorders of imagery, such as the distinction of hallucination
and illusion, which relate to disruptions at successive phases in
percept-formation. Disorders of object perception can be thought
of as the external or third-person aspect of the same process as
disorders of imagery, which concern an internal or first-person
perspective.
On this view, an image is a briefly attenuated object-develop-
ment, a perception is a fully externalized image. The derivation
of an object (action, utterance, etc.) is uni-directional, recurrent
and in the direction of evolutionary growth. In vision, the process
leads from a spatial construct in upper brainstem through fields
of affective, experiential and conceptual meaning, to those of ob-
ject form and feature. This sequence corresponds to, indeed, has
been reconstructed from, the effects of lesions on evolutionary
formations correlated with errors in image- and object-develop-
ment. The fundamental insight is that growth is or becomes the
process of cognition. Since every act of cognition retraces the
same course, the derivation of all cognitive functions, and errors
in the derivation, will follow the same pattern.
In action, involvement of older regions of anterior forebrain
gives akinesis and mutism or catatonic-like states. This complex,
or the normal construct inferred from its pathology, is organized
about the axis of the body. This phase fractionates to one of im-
paired initiation (inertia) of the legs, or (difficulty) initiating action
with the upper limbs or in vocalization. Lesions of more recent
structures display selective symptoms in lower or upper limb ac-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 89
tion and/or vocalization. The normal initiation of action that is
inferred from disorders of axial and proximal motility shifts to
(symptoms referring to) more recently evolved stages where the
act is adequately initiated but derailed in its implementation, as
in limb apraxia, or phonetic substitution. This passes to the final
realization (or disruption) of fine, rapid finger movement and ar-
ticulation. The development that goes from archaic to recent in
evolutionary structure corresponds with the transition from axial
to distal innervation, from bodily space to the external world, from
symmetry to asymmetry, from low frequency kinetic rhythms that
mediate inter alia walking and respiration, to higher frequency os-
cillators or harmonics that mediate selective kinetic patterns such
as those involved in prosody or asymmetric limb movement, to
the effectuation of action in the world, including articulation.
These symptoms and many others that occur with disordered
language, perception, memory, feeling and so on, also show a pro-
gression from simultaneity to succession, or from spatial to tem-
poral order, as acts and objects originating in midline bodily space
individuate outward into the world. The fundamental operation
is a cascade of context-item shifts, in which a single operation
is iterated at successive phases. This contrasts with the multiple
operations required by modular, localization and componential
theories. Put differently, unlike the multiple processes acting
on separate components in modularism, microgenesis entails a
single fractal-like process that is iterated over successive phases.
This, in outline, was the shape of the theory at an early stage.
The mapping was from pathological to normal performance
over evolutionary growth planes without reference to maturation
or ontogeny. Then, an insight as to the role of early ontogenetic
mechanisms clarified the process by which symptoms occurred
and their relation to regression theory.

The theory is fully documented, with a wide range of symptoms in relation
to brain lesions, and from a clinical, pathological and anatomical standpoint, in
Brown (1988).
90 Jason W. Brown
3.6. Morphogenesis and symptom formation
The relation of symptom to normal function is best approached by
way of a detour into ontogeny; specifically, morphogenesis, which
is the growth process in the fetal brain that translates the genetic
code to structure and function. We know there is no simple corre-
spondence between the code and brain morphology. Even if 50%
of the human genome is devoted to the brain, this cannot account
in a 1:1 manner for the trillions of cells and connections. Thus,
developmental biologists tend to focus on correspondence rules
or algorithms that govern the translation of code to structure. At
the molecular level these are complex events involving the tim-
ing, rate and contextual effects of gene combination, as well as a
variety of epigenetic factors.
In neurology, growth and morphology have usually been con-
ceived as problems distinct from function or behavior. The com-
mon view is that developmental process lays down brain structure,
which then outputs function. For many psychologists, stages in
evolutionary growth are as irrelevant to cognition as stages in the
construction of a computer. The sequence of assembly or instal-
lation of components, in evolution or in manufacture, is deemed
unrelated to the operation of the mechanism, whether a brain or
a computer, whether carbon or silicon, mind or software. Clearly,
function is active and dynamic, so the concept of a fixed circuitry
requires a demarcation and solidification of the mental so that it
can be deposited in specific locations in a computation network
(brain), with the function then interpreted as the output of the cir-
cuitry. In fact, what is needed is a dynamic concept of both struc-
ture and function in relation to phyletic and ontogenetic growth
trends. Specifically, an organic theory is needed that relates brain
growth and cognitive function to trends in evolution and develop-
ment and the genesis of the mind/brain state.
If we consider morphology and behavior, structure and func-
tion, in relation to the growth process, and if we think of growth
in terms of a population dynamic and the cognitive process as
the configured properties of populations of cells, it may be pos-
sible to correlate growth and cognition. The first step is to consider
brain development not as antecedent to morphology, i.e. growth
does not lay down a fixed anatomy but rather, morphology is the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 91
behavior of a developing brain. The morphology of the brain at
any stage in development is an artificial slice through process,
with behavior its four-dimensional structure. In other words, mor-
phogenetic process lays down form qua morphology early in life,
and form qua behavior later in life. The similarity of the process
of growth to that of cognition becomes clear when we consider
morphogenesis not as an open-ended linear succession but as a
recurrent pattern, in which new form is laid down over antecedent
structure. This shift in perspective helps us to see how the same
process that is responsible for the growth of the brain continues
as the process that is responsible for behavior. Put differently, a
single reiterated process that deposits structure early in fetal life
continues in recurrent cycles to deposit behavior in post-natal life.
Behavior is four-dimensional morphology or structure over time.
Memory is the obvious link from structure to function. Early in
development, the persistence (recurrence) of brain structure is a
kind of organic or “physical” memory. The “memory” of experi-
ence then becomes the structure through which experience is
filtered. Experience develops out of categories — early memorial
processes — that are engraved in patterns that underlie mature
cognition. The “permanence” of a learned or remembered item is
the structural aspect of thought.
There have been prior speculations along these lines. Karl
Pribram (1991) alluded to this possibility from work suggesting
that patterns in embryogenesis persist as force lines that deter-
mine the nature and direction of processes in perception. Others
have commented on the possibility that ontogenetic sculpting re-
lates to learning and information processing. But when the theory
was first advanced (Brown, 1994), little more had been published
on the topic. In this chapter, I will consider two “mechanisms”
involved in morphogenetic growth that can account for both er-
rors and advances, failure and success, in human development.
These mechanisms, parcellation and heterochrony, can be related
to brain lesions and the process of symptom formation and more
importantly, illustrate patterns in the actualization of the mind/
brain state.
92 Jason W. Brown
3.7. Parcellation
Parcellation is the theory that early in fetal brain growth there is
exuberant proliferation and migration of cells, an initial over-abun-
dance with multiple overlapping connections that is followed by an
attrition of cells and connections through competitive interaction
to achieve synaptic specificity. In almost every area of the brain
that has been studied, exuberant cell growth is accompanied by
cell loss as structure takes on definition (Ebbeson, 1984). Initially,
the elimination pertains to cells, then to the connectivity. For
example, Changeux (1985) found in the juvenile mouse that the
multiple climbing fibers innervating the Purkinje cells drop out
as the cell arborizes, leaving a single innervation. One of the most
dramatic example of elimination in development was reported by
Rakic (1992) in macaque. Using electron microscopy, he found
that by the age of sexual maturity there is a loss of over 2 trillion
synapses in neocortex.
Fig. 3.1. Hypothesis of epigenesis by selective stabilization.
Spontaneous or evoked activity in the developing neuronal net-
work controls the elimination of excess synapses formed during the
stage of transient redundancy (adapted from Changeux,1985).
The process of parcellation is innately driven but is sustained
in the infant by sensory input at birth (see: fig. 3.1.). Studies have
shown that visually deprived animals do not develop the fine con-
nectivity typical of the normal visual system. A more diffuse or re-
dundant connectivity accompanies an ambient mode of percep-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 93
tion with loss of fine discrimination. Specification by elimination
is an innate characteristic of morphogenesis, but sensory experi-
ence drives the process into maturation without altering its fun-
damental properties. At some point in morphogenesis, perhaps
after the basic connectivity is established, specification continues
through inhibition in a connectivity that is relatively stable. That
is, inhibition plays the role in function that elimination played in
growth.
Inhibition leads to the same outcome as elimination, namely,
greater specificity of innervation, though unlike elimination, inhi-
bition is potentially reversible. There are many examples in nor-
mal development. Visual evoked potentials can be recorded over
a wide area of cortex in juveniles but gradually zero in on the vi-
sual cortex in the adult. In pathology, the potentials re-generalize.
Coghill (1964) described successive inhibition of spinal reflexes
in the differentiation of motility. In pathology, there is dis-inhibi-
tion and re-generalization with mass reflexes. Progressive inhibi-
tion may account for the concept of diffuse right and focal left
hemisphere function (Semmes 1968), as well as the progressive
specification of the left language areas (Brown and Jaffe, 1975).
Selective inhibition in childhood development individuates the
global movements of hands and face (the cherubic face of young
children). Wall (1988) noted that cortical cells with wide recep-
tive fields in juveniles undergo progressive inhibition to establish
specificity, and re-generalize in pathology with disinhibition of
latent synapses, perhaps as a mechanism of compensation by
intact areas.
The equivalent of parcellation in growth, or surround inhibition
in physiology, is the whole-to-part or context-to-item transforma-
tion in cognition, the specification of parts out of wholes by way of
constraints on developing form. Such a process in language, per-
ception and other modes of cognition is supported by the ubiquity
of terms such as individuation, differentiation, specification, fig-
ure-ground, holistic-analytic, surround-center and frame-content
theory. These are different ways of describing the whole-to-part
transform, where wholes are not sums but configured anteced-
ents, and parts are realizations, not constituents. This transform
is the basic pattern of the system, first by way of elimination, then
94 Jason W. Brown
inhibition, then by context-item specification. The sculpting by way
of constraints at successive phases in the transitional sequence is
the driving force of microgenetic process. A single process guides
evolution, development and cognition, not multiple processes
acting at different points. The argument is that parcellation by
elimination, specification by inhibition, and the elicitation of items
from contexts by constraints at successive phases in cognition are
all instances of a common process in which growth lays down the
patterns that drive cognition. Moreover, the concept that cognitive
form is trimmed by the elimination of maladaptive routes of ac-
tualization is consistent with the evolutionary principle that unfit
forms are pruned by the environment.
The thesis advanced here is that exuberant production of cells
and connections in fetal growth is constrained by elimination
early in life to achieve specificity in connectivity. Then inhibition
replaces elimination to achieve greater specificity on a relatively
settled morphology. The morphogenetic and physiological shift
from generality to specificity is gradually etched into the brain in
context-item or whole-part transitions from one category to an-
other in the specification of acts and objects. The trimming of ex-
cess to achieve anatomical specificity continues in the constraints
on form to achieve functional specificity. The shift from category
to member or whole to part repeats evolutionary and morpho-
genetic patterns. The parsing of excess for adaptive fitness in the
competition for environmental niche corresponds with the actu-
alization of mental objects to adaptive saliency by constraints on
alternative form. The mind/brain state concentrates in every act
of thought the population dynamic of evolutionary speciation.
3.8. Heterochrony
Parcellation is the pattern of process in development and behavior.
Heterochrony is the rate or timing of this process. Heterochrony
is the idea that different organ systems develop at different rates
in brain development or evolution, and that a difference in the
timing of development can lead to shifts in evolutionary out-
comes, including adaptations, errors and aberrations. Neoteny is
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 95
a selective retardation or prolongation of a juvenile stage that can
be a springboard of evolutionary growth. An example would be
the lengthening of the period of sexual maturity over the primate
series leading to man, from two years in the lemur, seven in the
great apes, to about twelve in humans. Delayed closure of the cra-
nial sutures is a neotenous feature that permits the expansion of
a similarly neotenous brain. In this instance, the prolongation of
a stage of growth in the fetus or juvenile is the basis for evolution-
ary advance. This also illustrates the evolutionary principle that
growth and innovation occur from earlier, more plastic, holistic
and homogeneous stages of potential, not as endpoints of speci-
fication. Gould (1982) put it nicely in writing that evolution is a
branching bush, not a ladder of progress.
Fig. 3.2. The juvenile chimpanzee (A) resembles the human in
the vertical alignment of the cervical spine, the rounded cranium,
high forehead, flattened muzzle, lack of supra-orbital ridges and
thinner skull bones. The figure illustrates the idea that the prolon-
gation of a juvenile stage can underlie an evolutionary advance.
Neoteny has both adaptive and maladaptive consequences
(see: fig. 3.2.). The former can be illustrated by expanding on a
little-noticed theory of dominance published many years ago
(Brown, 1978) that provides an alternative to the bigger-is-better
concept that is its sole anatomic rival. In pre-human primates
there is relative symmetry of function. One can rephrase this by
saying there is bilateral representation of many functions and
contralateral representation of others, such as motor function.
There is little or no asymmetric or lateral representation, i.e. dom-
96 Jason W. Brown
inance, as occurs in humans. There is some evidence for laterality
of hand movement in primates (McNeilage, Studdert-Kennedy
and Lindblom, 1987) but no bias to left or right hemisphere.
In microgenetic theory, the Wernicke and Broca zones that
mediate phonological processing individuate out of background
association or integration neocortex. The claim here is that in-
dividuation creates a phase in cognition intermediate between
integration and primary cortices (Fig. 3.3.). Lateral representation
results from a subtraction of the functional connectivity mediat-
ing bilateral representation. Dominance is not an addition to the
prior stage but an outcropping of an earlier one due to the prun-
ing of homologous regions. Specifically, new growth occurs not
by terminal addition, but by way of parcellation (inhibition) at
penultimate phases. The Wernicke and Broca zones arise in the
prolongation and specification of a juvenile phase in fetal growth.
In this instance, parcellation and neoteny combine to give lateral
asymmetry.
Fig. 3.3. The emergence of the Wernicke and Broca zones with-
in the «integration» neocortex is a neotenous expansion in brain
development giving cerebral asymmetry as an effect of parcella-
tion. The growth stage is prolonged (neoteny) and the connectivity
relating to right hemisphere is selectively inhibited (parcellation),
such that an asymmetric plane of left sided language representa-
tion, or lateral representation, develops between bilateral and con-
tralateral representation.
This is an example of a positive adaptation. Evolution and
development are double- edged swords. The same process that
gives a beneficial adaptation can produce one that is harmful or
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 97
maladaptive. This is where the symptom comes in. A symptom is
a kind of negative adaptation, a behavior that is maladaptive with
respect to the immediate surround. While many errors would
seem anomalous in any environment, the abnormality reflects a
lack of fit to the situation. The failure of performance to adapt to
external conditions is important. For example, hallucination and
language errors are normal in dream, not the waking state.
To understand the symptom, it is necessary to first consider
parcellation and neoteny in relation to errors of development.
Serres (1860, cited in Gould) described the neotenous origin of
anomalies when certain parts lag behind in development and
retain at birth the characteristics of earlier stages. He noted that
the anomaly pointed to the stage in development that was unduly
prolonged. In other words, a birth defect refers to the retardation
of a stage in fetal growth. The thesis of this paper is that an error
in cognition points to a brief neoteny, or retardation of microge-
netic process that is comparable to the retardation in fetal growth
responsible for errors in ontogenetic process.
For example, neoteny at a certain stage in limb bud develop-
ment would explain why the digits do not fully individuate and the
infant is born with a fist-like hand. The local process is retarded
just prior to the individuation of the digits, but the development of
the organism — including the defective limb — proceeds unabat-
ed. The defect points to a local segment of development where
the individuation of the digits should have occurred, but did not.
When foreshortened digits appear with webbing or syndactyly
and normal nail bed formation, the presumption is that the re-
tardation occurred at a stage after the initial partition, while the
ensuing phase of nail bed formation occurs normally on the distal
portion of fingers that are incompletely specified. The anomaly
and its continued development to birth indicate that a slowing of
development does not obstruct the process, but carries the defect
through to completion. The defect is a marker of the stage in de-
velopment where the retardation occurs. Put differently, an error
is the signature of an upstream segment in the growth process. In
this case, neoteny leads to a defect of development. Compare
this with the positive effects of a retardation in the closure of the
cranial sutures that allows for a greater expansion of the juvenile
98 Jason W. Brown
brain. The closure is prolonged but still occurs at a later stage. The
retardation of closure, or its prolongation, coincides with a period
of active brain growth, also a neotenous feature. The combination
of open sutures and sustained growth allow for the expansion of
the human brain after birth.
The claim is that the principle effect of a focal brain lesion is to
retard process, not destroy function. The lesion induces a change
in a configuration that is a type of traveling wave. If an act of cog-
nition is conceived in relation to evolutionary and maturational
growth, a symptom is a kind of micro-developmental error. A focal
lesion of the brain exposes pre-processing phases. The effect of
a brain lesion can be likened to that of a rock in a stream, which
delays, diverts or perturbs the flow but does not block it (Fig. 3.4.).
The relation of symptoms to eddy currents and whirlpools has
been explored mathematically in Hopfield simulations (Hoffman,
1987). The nature of the error is determined by the location of
the disruption in language, perception or action. A disparity in the
timing of a process that advances like a wave front leads to a local
delay that is “out of synch” with concurrent parallel streams.
Fig. 3.4. The lesion delays a segment of process (neoteny). The
delay accompanies an incomplete specification (parcellation) of
the lexical or phonological item (see text). The neotenous form
continues to a normal endpoint. The incompletely individu-
ated lexical item undergoes subsequent phonological process-
ing. Conversely, one can have phonological defects with normal
semantics. This shows how a double dissociation can occur in a
serial processing model.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 99
While the theory can explain most neuropsychological errors
(Brown, 1988; 1994; 2005), it can best be illustrated by the com-
monly observed effects of a lesion on an error of naming, such as
discussed earlier, say a patient with a left posterior lesion who calls
a table a “chair”. How can this be explained? On the microgenetic
account, the process of lexical realization, or the specification of
word meaning, develops to the point of the object category, e.g.
furniture, where the potential to specify the word table is equiva-
lent to that for the word chair. A momentary retardation at this
phase can be conceived as a brief neoteny. The result is incom-
plete specification of the developing content. The fractionation
to the target is prolonged at a phase just prior to full selection. If
there is selection of the word “chair”, i.e. the neural configuration
corresponding to that word, it then passes to an ensuing phase
of phonological realization. The wrong word emerges, but has
undergone normal phonological encoding. Subsequent phases
of phonological realization occur on deviant semantic form.
However, the word is not really deviant; it points back to a phase
where either chair or table might have been elicited. The error
samples the semantic context that has failed to achieve the requi-
site specificity in a word appropriate to (that fits or is adapted to)
the situation. On this theory, even the «correct» word, table, might
be construed as an error in certain contexts. The noun is holo-
phrastic; it does not have the referential or denotative specificity
of a fully individuated lexical item (Grober et al., 1980).
The aphasic error, chair for table, results from a focal retarda-
tion in process (neoteny) and an incomplete specification (parcel-
lation) of the lexical item, but the derailment undergoes normal
subsequent processing, showing that double dissociation can oc-
cur in a serial model (Brown and Pachalska 2003). However, a brain
lesion differs from a rock in a river in that — unlike a river, where
the current moves on — cognition is recurrent, more like a foun-
tain, so that the disruption is encountered on each new traversal.
This accounts for the variability of errors, as well as their regularity
or clustering within distinct categories. The aphasic error reflects
the prevailing context at the phase of disruption. The difference
between developmental errors in children and acquired errors
in adults is neoteny in the formation of a system as opposed to
neoteny in the reinstantiation of a system that is already formed.
100 Jason W. Brown

In children with errors of language development, the semantic

context is impoverished, so that errors tend to be simplifications
that are more predictable. Contextual cues are less effective. The
maturational aspect is evident when a three years old child is said
to be at the stage of a normal eighteen months old.

In sum, the individuation of parts (e.g. lexical items) out of

wholes (e.g. semantic categories) can be related to a concept of
errors in which a focal lesion induces a brief delay in one segment
of the stream of cognition, while parallel streams undergo normal
processing. The theory of the symptom is based on evolutionary
and ontogenetic principles and supports the microgenetic con-
cept. While speculative, it is coherent with a substantial body of
data and observation (Brown, 1988), and provides an explanation
for a variety of clinical errors that are often dismissed as meaning-
less guesses or random noise. This concept of the error in terms
of specification and timing, i.e. the pattern of process and its rate,
allows a reformulation of the regression hypothesis. Microgeny
does not retrace ontogeny; pathology does not recapitulate stages
in acquisition. It is not the stages that recur but the process leading
to the stages. In a word, the recapitulation pertains to the process,
not to the actualized elements it deposits.
 Chapter 4
Inner Speech

4.1. Introduction
The concept of an error as a brief attenuation and the relation of
errors to normal performances are a guide to an interpretation of
the inner life of thought. Introspection is usually conceived as a
higher or late stage in cognitive development, as the self begins to
examine itself, but to my knowledge there is no neural or psycho-
logical account of how introspection occurs, indeed, no account
of the mind/brain state, whether directly or in relation to internal
and external events. Introspection involves the self in relation to
verbal and perceptual imagery, so a theory of introspection re-
quires an account of imagery in relation to speech and perception.
For this reason, for the transition from inner to outer, the relation
of self to images and objects, indeed, for an understanding of the
process of visual and verbal thinking that is, or should be, the core
of a theory of mind, a neuropsychological model of inner speech
is of central importance.

For microgenesis, introspection is not a cognitive add-on but a

branching, a deviation or accentuation of preliminary phases in
the mental state. Specifically, introspection is the enhancement of
phases antecedent to objects. In this respect, it is like a symptom,
in which memory, thought and verbal imagery remain internal
rather than discharging into speech, perception or action. The final
act or object is present, but in abeyance. When a transient thought
or memory occurs, the outer world is still active in consciousness,
or in deep concentration, in sustained thought or meditation, or
in creative withdrawal. Without an external world, the phase of
visual or verbal imagery that underlies introspection takes on
the quality of dream. The inner world is accentuated to the ex-
tent that the impact of the outer world is diminished. Thought,
fantasy, reverie and the creative imagination represent different
aspects of this withdrawal; dream or hallucinatory psychosis oc-
curs when the outer world disappears. Waking hallucination is an
incomplete perception in a specific modality, i.e. the perception is
104 Jason W. Brown
lost in a specific locus or throughout the visual (or auditory) field.
Hallucination replaces the absent object, as dream occurs in the
suspension of percept-development in all modalities.
The symptom as a local coming-to-the-fore at a pre-terminal
phase in pathology is a capsule of inner speech or introspection
as a more generalized coming-to-the-fore of preliminary phases
in normal cognition. The distortion, fusion, metaphoric extension
and category-sampling that are evident in symptom-formation
are the nucleus of creative or productive thinking in introspection.
The following account of inner speech is a natural continuation of
the preceding chapters on perception and the genesis of novelty
(symptoms, adaptations) in the prolongation of early phases while
final ones still to actualize.
The interpretation of inner speech calls into play the relation to
perception, hallucination and aspects of speech production. The
active or agentive mode of inner speech in relation to a voluntary
utterance is contrasted with the passive or receptive mode of in-
ner speech in relation to auditory hallucination and perception. A
subtle shift in perception or action determines the active or pas-
sive quality and the relation to inner and outer objects. The shift
is a qualitative change that transforms one phenomenon to an-
other. An auditory image or hallucination that prefigures speech
perception, or arises when perception is disrupted, is a difference
of kind, not degree. This discussion of inner speech in relation to
self, image and object should assist the reader to follow the ra-
tionale of more speculative chapters on self, consciousness and
intentionality, all of which are derived from neuropsychological
studies such as those described in this chapter.
4.2. Historical Studies
In Wroclaw (Breslau), in 1874, working as a young assistant at
the university, Carl Wernicke published his first work on aphasia.
However, it was not until many years later that he developed the
notion of the Wortbegriff, or word-concept, as a combination of
acoustic and motor speech imagery. Wernicke pointed out that
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 105
his description of the word-concept was similar to the writings
by Charcot and other French authors on ‘‘inner speech’’. For
Dejerine (in Hecaen & Angelergues, 1965), interior language was
‘‘une veritable voix interieure’’, with a strong association to au-
ditory verbal hallucinations (Brown 2004b). Dejerine, who was
strongly associationist in his thinking, wrote that inner speech in-
volved an intimate union of motor and auditory images and that
true aphasia involved the loss of inner speech. For Wernicke, also
an associationist, the auditory and speech motor components of
the word-concept corresponded with the posterior and anterior
language areas, while the word-concept itself, or ‘‘inner speech’’,
was attributed to the arcuate fasciculus, a bundle of fibres that
connects these two areas (Eggert, 1977). This pathway has been
associated in connectionist theories with the transmission of lan-
guage from its formulation in the posterior portion of the brain
to its production in the frontal lobe, while an interruption of the
pathway has been thought to give rise to conduction aphasia.
Kurt Goldstein (1948; see also, Henderson, 1992), who was a
student of Wernicke with a more holistic view than his teacher,
was less convinced of the anatomical location of conduction apha-
sia, and referred the disorder to a phase in the transition from
thought to speech. He noted that the concept of inner speech
traced from both philosophical and psychological sources. In the
former, W. von Humboldt created the term ‘‘innere Sprachform’’
for the inner experiences of the individual who speaks or under-
stands language. This is in contrast to the use of inner speech in
the psychological literature to refer to experiential content elicited
by hearing speech that precedes speaking.
Goldstein modified Wernicke’s definition to include the total-
ity of processes and experiences that occur when we are going to
express our thoughts in external speech and when we perceive
heard sounds as language. Inner speech was of special impor-
tance to an understanding of the process through which thought
develops into speech. A disorder at the stage of the thought-
speech transition, which he termed ‘‘central’’ aphasia, was viewed
as intermediate between amnestic aphasia, a disorder of abstract
thinking, and motor aphasia, a disorder of the instrumentalities
of speech production. He attributed the primary symptom of the
106 Jason W. Brown
disorder, phonemic paraphasia, to a disruption midway between
word finding and articulation. Goldstein did not equate inner
speech with thinking (De Bleser & Marshall, 2005), which was pri-
marily identified with the abstract ability, such as that impaired
in amnestic aphasia, but he did argue that it was an important
aspect of central aphasia.
From the earliest days of Wernicke’s studies the auditory and
motor components related to what we now call the Wernicke
and Broca zones, but the auditory component of inner speech
was more strongly emphasized, and related by Goldstein and
the French neuropsychologists to auditory-verbal hallucinations.
There is considerable evidence that both the posterior (percep-
tual) and the anterior (motor) language areas are involved. The
great student of inner speech in relation to the motor speech com-
ponent was A. R. Luria, who was concerned with the relation of
internal to external or motor speech. Luria described a variety of
methods to investigate the role of inner speech in verbal regulation
of speech and behavior, including bite-block techniques, which
I witnessed during a stay in his laboratory, as well as EMG and
other clinical methods. Dynamic aphasia, and the controversial
afferent aphasia, were related to a disturbance in the regulatory
function of inner speech. Weigl (1964) also reported findings from
this perspective. Some writers have written of inner speech as un-
expressed speech, or speaking to one’s self without verbalizing;
that is, as a motor pre-verbitum plus the auditory image. In the
cognitivist literature (e.g., Baddeley, 1986), covert verbal rehearsal
is an essential part of working memory. However, Luria rejected
the view of the behaviorists that inner speech was merely an ut-
terance minus its articulation and emphasized, after Vygotsky, its
differences with overt speech, especially the self-referential and
predicative quality.
In this paper I will first present the microgenetic theory of in-
ner speech, then the evidence regarding the role of the anterior
component of inner speech, next the posterior component, then
the relation to the latter of imagery and perception. Finally, I will
attempt to demonstrate how both systems contribute to inner
speech and related phenomena. The role of the arcuate fasciculus
as postulated by Wernicke, as with other transcortical and inter-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 107
hemispheric pathways, is presumed to maintain synchrony in the
phase transitions across widely distributed systems, not to convey
linguistic content from one site in the brain to another. Arguments
against the role of the arcuate fasciculus in conduction aphasia or
inner speech (Brown, 1975) have yet to be refuted.
4.3. Theory of inner speech
More precisely, if the bias in the conjoined development of anterior
and posterior language areas is to the anterior zone, or to speech
(Figure 1), and the perceptual development is in the background,
i.e., the distal (perceptual) segment is not emphatic and the action
side is accentuated, there will be ordinary motor speech. The ac-
cent on speech, or the inattention to auditory perception, explains
why it is difficult to speak and listen at the same time.
If speech development is attenuated prior to vocalization, and
the posterior development is not constrained to perception by au-
ditory sensation, there will be motor and perceptual equivalence,
and the verbal imagery will be that of inner speech. The process
of language perception contributes the linguistic content; the pro-
cess of speech development contributes the feeling of agency.
If the anterior development is attenuated with a bias to the
posterior development there will be a receptive attitude to audi-
tory verbal imagery. This is the normal experience in reverie or
on falling asleep when we seem to be passive listeners to our own
internal monologue. It is also the basis on which verbal hallucina-
tion develops, when the passivity to one’s own speech imagery
reaches the point where the image is felt as alien or external. I
have frequently had the hypnagogic experience of an internal dis-
course, in which I felt the passivity of the verbal image undergo
‘‘detachment’’, with brief uncertainty as to whether the verbal
image was a subjective content or had objectified as a perceptual
equivalent, i.e., an hallucination.
108 Jason W. Brown
Fig. 4.1. A = speech (verbal action), P = language perception.
(1) A full derivation of A that discharges into motility gives normal
speech. (2) An incomplete development of A and P gives inner
speech. (3) The derivation of an endogenous content into percep-
tion gives auditory hallucination. (4) The substrate of a halluci-
nation becomes auditory perception when it is constrained by
acoustic sensation.
Finally, in speech perception, motor speech is in abeyance and
the auditory image is sculpted by auditory sense-data to an exter-
nal object.
4.4. Studies on the motor component
In neuropsychology, the association of inner speech with the fron-
tal lobes, and its disruption in motor aphasia, is largely due to the
work of Luria (1961), who conceived inner speech as ‘‘a special
stage involved with the transition from thought to the speech ut-
terance (in which) … the inner sense is transformed into a system
of expanded, syntactically organized speech meanings’’ (Luria,
1961). Luria was impressed by the failure of motor-aphasic patients
to regulate non-verbal motor activities as well as external speech.
He noted that merely suppressing the tongue, or having normal
participants or motor-aphasic patients hold their mouth open or
bite on a block, impairs speech as well as other motor tasks. This
suggested an impairment of inner speech in motor aphasia. The
disruption of inner speech in aphasia or in normal participants
supported the idea that inner speech has a regulative function on
overt speech and behavior.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 109
However, the involvement of non-speech motility could just as
well indicate that the motor speech area is part of a wider frontal
system for action, while the effect of a bite block could be a re-
sult of interference in the performance of competing dual tasks.
As mentioned, Luria based his thinking on the work of Vygotsky
(1962), who argued that inner speech is the interiorized ego-
centric speech of childhood, which externalizes again as an aid
in performance when children are given difficult tasks (see also
Flavell, Green, Flavell, & Grossman, 1997). Vygotsky described
inner speech as predicative, since the topic of a sentence would
already be known to the speaker. Luria’s claim that inner speech
is disrupted in agrammatism was taken as further evidence of a
link between inner speech and the Broca region.
It is said that Kurt Goldstein suffered a stroke with a global
aphasia for about a week before he died, giving him the oppor-
tunity to determine whether or not his theory was correct. While
I am not aware of any descriptions of Goldstein’s aphasia, some
signs of inner language can be found in other cases with total
aphasia. Studies of hemiplegic writing (Brown, Leader, & Blum,
1983; Friedland, 1990; Whurr & Lorch, 1991) suggest the presence
of inner language in cases of global aphasia or severe non-flu-
ency. With the use of a prosthesis for the right upper extremity,
and with some training, patients are able to write grammatical
phrases with their paralyzed arm, although unable to speak or to
write with the intact left hand. The performance is not accompa-
nied by a full awareness of accuracy. Patients are often surprised
at their performance, and have difficulty initiating written state-
ments or requests, in agreement with a loss of the ‘‘regulative’’ or
voluntary use of language. The finding does indicate the presence
of residual language in patients with extensive damage to the mo-
tor speech area. The source of this residual language is uncertain,
whether through the right brain or through posterior or neighbor-
ing systems in the damaged hemisphere.
In studies in my laboratory by Ross (1983) of letter cancellation
on reading tasks, non-fluent aphasic patients, unlike deaf people,
were shown to have the same pattern as normal participants. For
example, they were more likely to cancel the letter ‘‘h’’ in the
word horse than in the word the, and still less likely to cancel it
110 Jason W. Brown
when silent, as in the word ghost. This finding suggests that inner
phonology is to some extent preserved. The patients also showed
sensitivity to function words, inconsistent with accounts of a loss
of function words in the agrammatism of anterior aphasia. The
question of what is going on in the mind of the patient with mo-
tor aphasia is an old one, still unanswered. It does appear from
the limited research on this topic that inner language is available
in some form, even in severe motor-aphasic patients, but that its
volitional (and regulative) ‘‘use’’ is lost. To have inner speech pas-
sively, as a verbal image or hallucination, is close to not having it at
all. A motor-aphasic patient who experiences inner speech as pas-
sive would be unable to ‘‘use’’ it in behavior or to direct an active
vocal or motor performance. This interpretation is consistent with
the proposal offered in this paper that the linguistic content of
inner speech develops in relation to temporal lobe structures for
auditory perception, while the active or volitional quality of inner
speech is related to frontal lobe structures for speech production.
More recent PET and functional MRI studies suggest that the
left inferior frontal gyrus and temporal cortex are engaged in
tasks that involve self-monitoring, which has been associated with
inner speech (McGuire, Silbersweig, & Frith, 1996; Shergill et al.,
2001). A loss of inner speech in a case with lesion of this area has
been reported (Levine, Calvanio, & Popovics, 1982). Similar find-
ings were reported by Verstichel, Bourak, Font, and Crochet (1997)
in frontal-aphasic patients. Taken together such observations indi-
cate that inner speech is related to frontal lobe activity, especially
to the left hemispheric speech areas. This would account for the
loss of inner speech or its disruption in motor aphasia and the
importance of frontal areas in the regulation of speech and be-
havior.
4.5. Studies on the perceptual component
Research in patients with posterior aphasia is also relevant to in-
ner speech. We have known for some time from studies of the
tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon that the initial sound and
syllabic length of a word are available to patients with difficulty in
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 111
naming (Brown & McNeill, 1966). As in normal individuals who
search for a word, the aphasic patient with a temporo-parietal le-
sion who is unable to produce a noun can often give the initial let-
ter or sound and indicate whether it is a long or short word, often
giving the number of syllables in the word. This suggests that the
lexical frame and segmentation of the word are to some extent
preserved in spite of the errors in language production.
Other studies tend to confirm this observation. In unpub-
lished studies many years ago in my laboratory, we found strong
semantic priming in global aphasia, indicating a comprehension
of the meanings of words in patients who otherwise could give
no evidence they could understand them. Other studies of word-
meaning comprehension in aphasia with posterior brain damage,
including priming, masking, inference, and other techniques, re-
inforce the impression that cases with a disruption of speech and/
or comprehension still have some interior language, although the
nature and extent of the residual ability are difficult to assess. It
would be of interest, for example, to see the results in such cases
of rebus studies that sample internal naming, e.g., seeing a picture
of a cow and a boy and selecting a picture of a cowboy.
More recent studies have confirmed the association of inner
speech with the posterior language areas. The loss of self-moni-
toring in fluent jargon aphasia or severe semantic paraphasia is
consistent with its importance for self-awareness (Baars, Ramsey,
& Laureys, 2003). Vogely and Fink (2003) described fMRI activa-
tion in parietal areas when participants were asked to assume the
visual standpoint of another person, stressing the importance of
these areas to the first person perspective.
4.6. Verbal hallucination
Apart from arguments based on the symptoms of aphasia, an
important source of data concerning inner speech comes from
psychotic or brain-damaged cases with auditory hallucination
and presumed temporal lobe dysfunction. Verbal hallucinations
may occur as an aura in temporal lobe epileptic patients and they
112 Jason W. Brown
are common in word-deafness with damage to the auditory cor-
tex. Hoff and Silberman (1933) induced verbal hallucination and
‘‘echo’’ phenomena by applying ethyl chloride to an exposed au-
ditory area in the right superior temporal convolution. Ishibashi,
Hori, Endo, and Sato (1964) noted that stimulation of auditory cor-
tex in schizophrenic patients can induce auditory hallucination
and diminish chronic hallucinations. Burckhardt (1891) reported
that excision of auditory cortex in schizophrenic patients leads to
a reduction in auditory perception and in verbal hallucination.
Based on electromyographic studies, Inouye and Shimizu
(1970) emphasized the auditory aspect and its prominence in
dream and auditory hallucination. EMG studies have shown sub-
vocal articulatory movements during inner speech and auditory
hallucination (Lagache, 1934). Auditory hallucinations tend to be
suspended during respiratory pauses. De Morsier (1938) noted
that auditory hallucination and speech tend not to occur at the
same time, nor do patients hear external speech while they are
hallucinating. Audiometric studies show ‘‘lacunae’’ in patients
during bouts of auditory hallucination. In the so-called ‘‘echo of
reading’’ in psychotic patients, verbal hallucination follows read-
ing by a second or two as a kind of shadow. The patient reads
a passage, silently or aloud, then hears the passage read to him
in his own voice a moment later, perhaps similar to a delayed
auditory feedback experience. Lhermitte (1951) has described
cases of paraphasia with paraphasic auditory hallucinations, and
Hecaen and Ropaert (1959) described a case of palilalia with pali-
lalic hallucinations. Auditory verbal hallucinations are associated
with increased activity in both left and right temporal cortex (e.g.,
Bentaleb, Beauregard, Liddle, & Stip, 2003).
These observations show that: (1) inner speech is damaged in
posterior aphasia, (2) posterior-aphasic participants show evidence
of residual semantic and phonological capacity, (3) aphasic errors
can occur in auditory hallucination, (4) stimulation of auditory
cortex can produce verbal hallucination, (5) verbal hallucination
and speech perception are affected by stimulation or ablation of
auditory cortex and, as a conclusion, (6) inner speech and verbal
hallucination most likely have a common basis.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 113
It seems clear that verbal hallucination is related in some way
to inner speech, but there are important differences. First, un-
like the posterior aphasias, verbal hallucination does not show a
prominent left temporal asymmetry, although it is probable that
dominance in speech perception is less pronounced than in speech
production. The greater bilateral representation for semantic
than phonological processing may account for instances in which
metabolic studies have shown bilateral or asymmetric changes.
Then there is the passive quality, the feeling that the voices are
coming to the person from an external source. The receptive qual-
ity of auditory hallucinations is in contrast to the usual experience
of inner speech as active or volitional. In schizophrenia, verbal
hallucination often begins as inner speech. Gradually, there is a
waning of the active quality of talking to one’s self, with increas-
ing passivity to the voice, to which the person begins to respond.
Eventually, the voice externalizes in hallucinatory conversation,
and it may even take on an agency of its own in command hal-
lucinations. There is also the fact that verbal hallucinations may
occur with multiple voices of a different age, accent, or gender
from the person. Presumably, this is somehow explained by the
recall of voices previously heard, even if the voice quality is altered
or is unfamiliar. Such observations introduce the problem of how
memory relates to hallucination and speech perception.
In sum, since its earliest description inner speech has been
thought to have an auditory and a speech motor constituent. The
perceptual component provides the linguistic content; the ante-
rior component, inter alia, determines the degree of agency. The
auditory component has been explored in posterior aphasia and
hallucination. To more fully understand this phenomenon one
needs to examine (1) the relation of hallucination to memory and
to both speech and speech perception, (2) the relation of verbal
imagery to speech, (3) the passive character of hallucination, and
(4) the active character of inner speech.
114 Jason W. Brown
4.7. Memory, hallucination and perception
Since my early writings on perception (Brown, 1982, 1983, re-
printed in Brown, 1988, 2004), an essential component of the
theory was the idea that the structure of a perception consisted of
a transition over phases in memory (see chapter 1). The sequence
goes from long-term through short-term to iconic memory to ob-
ject perception, such that a perception is an objectified memory
constrained by extrinsic sensation, indeed, a dream shaped to a
vision of reality, with objects remembered into perception and
recognized before they are consciously perceived. The theory,
developed on the clinical material, is consistent with findings in
blind-sight, i.e., vision without a visual cortex, or those studies on
increased semantic priming in global aphasia.
For some time I assumed that verbal hallucination in dream did
not fully actualize to a phase of phonological processing through
the Wernicke zone, since phonology, as measured in studies of
rhyme and monitoring for initial or embedded syllables, is se-
verely disrupted in cases with damage to that area. Phonological
errors are common in sleep talking (Arkin & Brown, 1971). Word
meaning, not phonology, appears to dominate in the language
imagery of dream, just as visual imagery contains symbolic and
meaning-laden images. In a personal dream, I offered a room
(Zimmer) in a German hotel to an American editor with a German
publishing company whose name was Zimmar, and awoke quite
satisfied with the pun. More surprising, however, and consistent
with the idea that the Wernicke and Broca areas are functionally
active in dream, was a dream of a courtroom with a play on ‘‘dock-
et’’ and ‘‘pocket’’ money. This suggests that phonology is available
in the verbal hallucinations of dream, again unlike the pattern in
aphasia where phonology is usually disrupted. There have been
celebrated examples of poetic (musical, etc.) composition dur-
ing dream, although some have argued that this occurs chiefly
in transitional states. The Kubla Khan of Coleridge is perhaps the
most famous example (Lowes, 1927). Other examples are given in
Koestler (1964).
Another personal example illustrates that poetic composition
can occur in dream rather than in the transitional state. Some
years ago when I was working on a book on time and free will, I
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 115
dreamed of reading an old science text and, precisely at page 109,
found the next four pages separately bound and inserted in the
book. The pages were floral and quite different from the scientific
portion. They contained a poem of about eight lines, with only
a few words or lines in the middle of each page. In the ensuing
scene I was looking at a statue of the man who wrote the poem
(?myself), with the poem inscribed at the base. I awoke and could
only remember the first two lines of what seemed to be a wonder-
ful poem. The lines were:
Run thee a poem in thy time
Pay not a fare to the rhyme or the meter.
However brief, this was not at all a poem I could have written
awake. The symbolism, the felicity, and double meanings were
evident immediately on awakening. ‘‘Run thee a poem’’ meant
write a poem and live a beautiful life. ‘‘In thy time’’ meant in my
life and in my own way. ‘‘Pay not a fare’’ meant pay no attention
to others and do not be concerned with money, while the playful
avoidance of the obvious rhyme illustrates the theme of freedom
in the verse.
4.8. Agency and recipience
Let me turn to the difference between the passivity to auditory hal-
lucination and the feeling of voluntary control over inner speech,
a feeling that is less an intention applied to a performance than
an intrinsic feature that can change as the performance changes.
The point is that agency does not generate a thought or an ac-
tion but is generated by the act itself. Readers familiar with the
debate between Wundt and James as to the contribution of action
to consciousness will recall that it centered on the feeling of inner-
vation from the action discharge, which we now know depends
on re-afference or recurrent collaterals and distal feedback. An
individual deprived of sensory feedback without visual guidance
is unable to initiate an action or, if able to act, is unaware of the
action that occurs. I would agree with Wundt that the feeling of in-
116 Jason W. Brown
nervation is the principle contribution of action to awareness, the
rest being perceptual. But I would also agree with James, that this
is insufficient for the feeling of activity in the absence of sensory
feedback. If the individual is to have the feeling of self-initiation
and the ability to distinguish active and passive movement, both
the action discharge and the sensory recurrence are necessary,
indeed essential, for without discharge there is no re-afference.
Actual movement is not necessary, as shown by the feeling of
agency for a phantom limb. Of relevance to this argument is that
‘‘movement’’ of the phantom and its illusory control induce or are
associated with metabolic activation of contralateral motor cortex.
The phantom may also disappear with a stroke in that area.
In some instances a person is unsure whether an action is or is
not voluntary. This experience is common with nocturnal jerks of
the legs. We see it in chorea, when the person completes a spon-
taneous movement of the hand into what seems like a deliberate
action. This is not necessarily to camouflage an involuntary move-
ment, but because the individual may be unsure if the movement
is self-initiated. Uncertainty over the active or passive quality of
an action occurs with limb movement on stimulation of motor
cortex, which often is not felt as voluntary. With inner speech the
derivation over the frontal speech system and its feedback at suc-
cessive phases conveys the feeling of self-initiation.
If the mental content of an action and, by implication, the
consciousness of verbal imagery or inner speech, is largely per-
ceptual, one should be able to explore agency in perception as
well as action. In fact, all of the forms of agency and recipience are
seen in different types of visual imagery. A thought or imagination
image feels volitional. One can imagine an elephant standing on
a pin, or a mouse crawling over its back. One feels that the image
can be ‘‘manipulated’’ at will. Arguments over the propositional
nature of thought imagery inadvertently make the point that lan-
guage or sub-vocal speech is essential to the feeling of agency or
self-initiation.
Eidetic and memory images are less volitional but do have
the feeling of an active search. I can decide to recall a face or an
event and feel that I deliberately call up the memory image. The
transition from the eidetic to the memory image was discussed by
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 117
Klüver (1933). Hallucinations occur spontaneously with no feeling
of control. The hallucination externalizes when the constraints of
sense data are insufficient to transform the image to a veridical ob-
ject, as in sensory deprivation experiments. Like a hallucination,
an image that is driven by sense data to externalize as an object is
also accompanied by a feeling of passivity. It ‘‘detaches’’ and is felt
as independent of the observer. Agency is linked to image type,
but also depends on incipient speech without which the feeling of
agency is probably not possible. Critchley (1955) speculated that
the mental life of the patient with motor aphasia consisted largely
of passive imagery.
In sum, the full range of volitional feeling is displayed accord-
ing to type of image, from the deliberate quality of thought im-
agery, to the voluntary control of memory and eidetic images, to
spontaneous or involuntary hallucination, which may still be felt
as subjective, to perceptions that are fully external and seem to
come to an observer from outside. It is from such observations
that one can claim that intention does not stand behind a thought
or action but is bound up with a specific cognition. In experimen-
tal and clinical studies, auditory hallucinations are closely related
to auditory perceptions. Given the relation between inner speech,
hallucination and perception, the relative depth of realization in
perception and action, or the dominant segment of the actualiza-
tion, determines whether a verbal image is apprehended as volun-
tary, passive (hallucination), or mind-independent (perception).
4.9. What is inner speech?
The basic outline of the components and substrates of inner
speech was described a century ago and has not changed mark-
edly to the present time. Recent studies using imaging and other
techniques have served to reinforce the earlier findings, yet the
nature of inner speech remains as mysterious as ever. How in-
ner speech relates to overt speech or to auditory perception and
hallucination is still unsolved. The problem is important in that,
arguably, inner speech is essential for introspective awareness
(Kinsbourne, 2000), for awareness of error and for the conscious
118 Jason W. Brown
control, regulation, and monitoring of speech and behavior. In
my 1988 book, Life of the Mind, a theory was advanced to explain
these phenomena. To my knowledge, no one has since put for-
ward another account that is equally integrated and coherent, nor
one that brings together the diverse observations reviewed in this
and earlier papers and books, or the relation to brain areas that
mediate speech perception and production.
We know from research going back over 75 years, and con-
firmed in cognitivist studies, that imagery and perception share
common mechanisms. The stronger claim is that imagery devel-
ops over the same system as perception. An image is an attenuat-
ed perception, or an accentuation of penultimate segments in the
process of perception, while a perception is an exteriorized image
that is constrained by sensation to model the physical world. As
a visual image or hallucination is a phase in visual perception,
verbal imagery is a phase in speech perception. Verbal imagery
(inner speech) can focus on memory, meaning, or phonology; it
can be vague or explicit, metaphoric or rational according to the
degree of specification in the process of object formation. The dif-
ference between a verbal image and a speech perception is that
auditory sensation sculpts and so shapes the endogenous image
to a model of an auditory object. Perception is the extreme of the
passive attitude to one’s own memorial experience as it is ana-
lyzed and externalized by the shaping effect of sense data.
Specifically, inner speech develops as a perceptual series linked
to phases in the action development. The core of a combined act
and object, of speech and speech perception, can individuate with
an emphasis on either direction. An utterance has a perceptual
development leading to Wernicke’s area that elaborates the per-
ceptual content or mental experience of the utterance, and a par-
allel action development leading to the Broca area that elaborates
intentional feeling, motility, and speech. The phase transitions in
anterior and posterior regions are maintained in synch by cortico-
cortical pathways that keep the ‘‘bottom-up’’ derivation of phases
coupled within and across the hemispheres.
We see this with clarity in pathological states when the active
self becomes passive and responsive to the inner voice of obliga-
tion. In schizophrenia and other states, inner speech shifts from
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 119
a motor to a perceptual bias. The construct that prefigures both
acts and objects now discharges into the object development. The
verbal images that ordinarily precede action and contribute to the
feeling of agency, when action is attenuated, permit a perceptual
bias and are experienced as (hallucinatory) objects (see Chapter
1). In passing to a perceptual development, inner speech dissoci-
ates from the self of agency, and actualizes in voices distinct from
the patient. This may proceed to the point that the patient not
only hears but also obeys a (self-generated) command to injure
someone or to commit suicide. The fact that the voices are ac-
cusatory owes to the passive feeling of the self in relation to its
own verbal imagery. The passivity is similar to that in perception
or some forms of visual imagery, and complements the agentive
feeling of action. The content is incomplete, less fully analyzed,
and remains intrapsychic, accompanied by other fragments of
preliminary cognition, e.g., the dream-like sense of (paranoid)
victimization by hallucinatory voices.
In chronic cases the incompletely specified perception is ac-
companied by a propagation of delusions that can become en-
capsulated and systematized in symbolic or metaphoric modes
of thought. The feeling of passivity to images or ideas may lead
the person to perceive his inner voice as another person, a god, a
devil, who instructs him to carry out actions that he cannot refuse.
It is, after all, his own voice he hears, even if it does not sound like
his voice. For this reason, among others, it may be more difficult
to resist the command than if the voice arose in, or was referred
to, a ‘‘real’’ person. It is easier to say no to the other than to one’s
self. In hypnotic trance, the instructions of another person may
take on the status of obligations. Since it is perceived in a trance
state as an incomplete auditory object, the voice of the hypno-
tist is heard as an inner voice that does not fully externalize. The
perception remains an inner voice but since it is regulated by
sensation (the hypnotist’s voice) it is not apprehended as a hal-
lucination that arises endogenously. Command hallucinations
and hypnotic suggestions display the confusions that can occur
between auditory perception and inner speech. Many of us have
no doubt had the experience, on falling asleep, that a volitional
monologue of inner speech becomes passive, perceptual, and/or
hallucinatory. The fluid transition from image to object, and back
120 Jason W. Brown

again, corresponds to a fluctuation of the feeling of agency and

external reference. Such phenomena also show the basis of com-
mand hallucinations in the bias of inner speech to a perceptual
development or the usurpation of inner speech in the recurrence
of a hypnotically induced auditory command.
 Chapter 5
Genetic Psychology and Process
Philosophy

“Historically speaking, materialism and mechanistic metaphysics

— as distinct from mechanistic science — designate the doctrine
that matter is the efficient cause of life and mind, and that
‘cause’ occupies a position superior in reality to that of ‘effect’.
Both parts of this statement are contrary to fact. As far as the
conception of causation is to be introduced at all, not matter but
the natural events having matter as a character, ‘cause’ life and
mind. ‘Effects’, since they mark the release of potentialities,
are more adequate indications of the nature of nature than are
just ‘causes’.”
Dewey (p. 262, 1925)

5.1. Introduction
Microgenesis, like ontogeny and evolution, is a theory on the
origins of present events, not a predictive theory as to future
outcomes. The origins of events — whether over evolutionary,
maturational or psychological time — are inferred from present
occurrences. In this respect, they deviate from the scientific para-
digm in which effects are postulated from causes. This does not
necessarily make genetic theory non-causal or non-scientific. The
prediction of effect from cause is not logically so different from
the retrodiction of cause from effect though there are important
psychological differences. In the first instance, the future effect
does not yet, and may never, exist; in the latter, the putative cause
is past; it has occurred but no longer exists. Predictive theories
branch outward from causes to multiple possible effects, whereas
retrodictive causes converge to the present effect.
124 Jason W. Brown
Predictive theories tend to be tightly controlled and limited to im-
mediate data, as in a scientific experiment. One can forecast a fu-
ture vacation, or predict that a strong hurricane will cause flooding
on the coast, but the temporal window must be relatively narrow
for one to predict with accuracy. The greater the duration between
cause and effect, the weaker the cause and/or the more contingent
the effect. In contrast, retrodictive theories look to a more distant
past in which an attempt is made to isolate a specific event or a
more complex pre-history. The effect in question, i.e. the present
state, is the outcome of a convergence of prior causes — accidents,
contingencies — distributed over a greater duration. There is also
the question of how and why a particular state developed out of
past states, especially with a lengthy series of intervening events.
For these reasons, because complexity devolves to specificity, or
proclivity becomes actuality, the past of a retrospective theory is
often conceived less as a cause than as a potential that gives one
of a multiplicity of possible actualities.
The shift to a theory in which a specific cause has many possible
antecedents to one in which a specific cause has many possible
consequents is the shift from a hermeneutic of coherence to a sci-
ence of correspondence. The transition from potential and actual
to cause and effect collapses the past into the present as possibil-
ity becomes fact. The specification of potential to a given actuality
replaces the branching of a given cause to some future possibil-
ity. Put differently, the shift from unknown possibility to known
fact in retrodictive theories is the opposite of predictive ones that
go from known fact to unknown but hypothesized possibility. In
contrast to ordinary causation, where a cause causes an effect,
in retrospective theories the rumination on duration instead of
immediate consequence conceives an effect not as the result of
a cause but its replacement over a series of intervening states.
We see this strikingly in ontogeny, where an organism changes
each moment imperceptibly, causing itself to become the next
moment in its existence. The same phenomenon appears in the
replacement of mental states. The causal factor in genetic theories
is that of causal persistence, i.e. replacement, which is not a linear
sequence of cause-effect pairs.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 125
With this distinction in mind, which is the primary difference
between genetic and scientific theory, this chapter takes up the
relation of process philosophy to genetic psychologies, including
microgenesis, as exemplified in the writings of Werner, Smith and
Piaget, and the mutual enrichment that might follow on a closer
union of the philosophical and psychological accounts. First, I will
consider some further aspects of the relation of causality and po-
tential that impact both fields of inquiry with the hope that deeper
study will lead to a more precise formulation of basic principles
that can ground a theory of becoming in psyche and nature, one
that if not scientific in the usual sense, is concordant with the data
of experience. However, if process philosophy is to truly be an
“adventure of ideas”, it must invite the novelty that was the creed
of its founder even if this entails a revision of principles that have
become almost axiomatic. It should also, where it can, seek em-
pirical grounds without succumbing to the simplistic agenda of
mechanical psychology. On the other hand, genetic psychology is
a diverse field with little cross-talk among its members. The field
is in some disarray and lacks an essential, i.e. unitary, philosophi-
cal framework.
Subjectivist claims in philosophy can begin with either physical
or psychological universals. Whitehead approached psychology
from the world of physics. Microgenesis began with psychology
and reached a limit in fractal mathematics. A subjectivity of the
inorganic that is continuous with human mind is a theory of mind
continuous with physical nature. A coherent philosophy that be-
gins with nature or human mind builds on theory of cognition or
nature, whether mechanical or subjective. A “mechanical” nature
leaves quantum features unexplained, not to mention psychic
states, while subjectivism grapples with the theory of substance
and causation. The path that leads from nature to mind can im-
port causal objects to the mind, or export duration and potential
to nature. The appeal to process thinking of a genetic psychol-
ogy rooted in subjectivity is that patterns in the actualization or
becoming of the mental state can be mapped to features in the
concrescence of physical entities that would otherwise be opaque
to causal science.
126 Jason W. Brown
Causation is accepted for the most part unquestioningly as the
basis of all scientific work. The causal relation inheres in the ob-
jects of the science, as well as in their relation to the observer.
For process theory, causation is a fundamental difficulty that
must be confronted, no less for philosophical speculation than
for genetic psychology. The growth of the child cannot be easily
formulated in a causal discourse; mechanisms come into play at
successive stages or are occluded or vanish as new ones appear.
In the growth process, the child gradually becomes an adult by
continuously replacing itself with a novel version of what it was
a moment earlier. The causality most appropriate to the genetic
model is that of “causal persistence”, defined as replication with
minimal novelty between replicates.
Whitehead’s understanding of causality is relevant here. In a hu-
man psyche, each momentary occasion prehends or absorbs pre-
ceding occasions. What a person becomes moment by moment is
largely conformal to the personal past. However, the new occasion
also prehends other events in the ever changing environment
and integrates these prehensions with those of the personal past.
Much remains the same, but there is always change as well.
5.2. Causation
The two basic ways that causation is understood are object and
agent causation. The doctrine of cause and effect between objects
that is fundamental to much of science, e.g. billiard-ball causation,
has given the philosophy of mechanism. The causal interaction
of solids in the world is imported to the mind in the interaction
of brain areas or mental components. This notion of causality is
deeply rooted and felt to be intuitively true but it has proved dif-
ficult to pin down.
One strategy for resolving the difference between object and agent
causation entails a distinction of acts of will as “eventuations” or
conclusions of thought that are preceded by deliberation, dissoci-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 127
ated from prior states and discontinuous with a causal continua-
tion in nature. Rescher (2006) writes that “acts of will are mental
eventuations that mark the completion of a process of which they
do not constitute a part…”, though the force of the distinction is
mitigated in that it is labeled as conceptual, not ontological. The ap-
proach uses object causation as a model for agent causation, even
in distinguishing the latter as leading to a stoppage independent
of its predecessors and not part of an ensuing series. However, a
different picture emerges if instead of taking object-causation as a
model of the mind one begins with a theory of agency as founda-
tional. On this view, physical events are like mental states in that
they have a subjective (intrinsic) aim to completion, with the final
effectuation conceived as internal to the process through which
it unfolds. The “eventuation” is not, as Rescher would have it, the
end-product of a production line. An act that is the outcome of a
period of deliberation is one in a series of mind/brain states that
a self or observer takes to be a termination. Since events have no
clear boundaries and states overlap, the point of termination is
arbitrary.
One can say the froth of a fountain cannot exist, or can only exist
artificially, without the surge of which it is part. The ending is part
of the story, the last word part of a sentence, and that part of a
thought. Closing the cover is an act of cognition just as reading the
last word. Every act or object — and every physical entity — is part
of the whole of its development. This is not so clear when events
are stretched out over time such as positing that deliberation is
separate from the decision it leads to. But each outcome has a
genetic undersurface, states develop and are replaced. An end-
point does not differ from a prior state, since every entity is an
epoch replaced by another epoch, including inaction and silence.
What is fractured is a logical, not ontological sequence. Physical
events or mental eventuations are surface appearances of micro-
temporal process, phase-transitions of internal relations of which
outcomes are superficial marks.
Consistent with this view, the psychic precursor of (the feeling
of) object causation is an ingrained sense of agent causation that
precedes the feeling of transition in object causation. The agent-
128 Jason W. Brown Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 129

causation that embraces the micro-temporal structure of the in the distinction of cause and effect, a strategy that cannot regain
mind/brain state should be the basis of a theory of object causa- the complexity lost when the elements were dismembered. In
tion, not the reverse. The infant’s control of its limbs and action revealing the fundamental properties of the stage out of which it
on objects gives the feeling of causal power. The infant seizes a evolved, the complex better informs a theory of the simple than
moving object or one that is displaced. To follow a trajectory is the reverse.
to anticipate. The primitive motion is to the future. The sense of
causal power in the infant who reaches for a rubber ball is perhaps
no more than the behavior of a cat that reaches for a rolling ball
Further individuation of self and object leads to greater au-
of wool, but with the individuation of the self, consciousness of
tonomy and a feeling of a self opposed to inner and outer con-
this power develops to awareness of agency, or self-initiation, with
tents. The direction of this relation promotes intentional feeling.
its roots in organic process. The necessity in causation (Hume)
Purposefulness achieves its aim when it terminates. The aim, not
that arises in infancy recurs as a psychic residue that informs and
given beforehand, incorporates the potential it actualizes. As feel-
empowers agency in mature cognition. The grasp and control of
ing takes on direction, what is implicit in drive becomes explicit
an object that is the seed of agency is less a projection of human
in desire. In human thought, the derivation of affects and ideas
thought onto nature than a delimitation of unconscious potential
out of conceptual-feeling gives intention its direction. The im-
into conscious actuality, just as indeterminateness in physical na-
mediate action of simple purposefulness transforms to conscious
ture resolves into material fact. The momentary genesis of an act
intention when an idea individuates in the self, and the external
of cognition — or genetic process in general — is a model for the
world abides in the background. The interposition of conscious
actualization of a physical entity. Mental state and physical entity
ideas, verbal images and feelings when the outgoing stream is ab-
develop over and actualize a temporal extensibility or minimal
breviated is obligatory for a conscious self. Unthinking action on
duration of existence.
objects involves a subject-object relation, not a self. Intention is
awareness of goal or the “aboutness” of this direction, an attempt
to mark off a closure that was satisfied in the immediacy of direct
The importation of simple causation to the mind is a classical in- action. In sum, agency in organism is the basis of object-causa-
stance of explaining complexity as a compounding of the simple. tion. Intentionality in organism is the basis of a theory of (con-
This is, for example, the strategy of those who argue that mind is a scious, but incipient) agent-causation. In all these matters, natural
collection of reflex operations, basically cause-effect pairs. But one process insinuates itself into human thought.
does not easily go from the simple to the complex. The simple is
never as simple as it seems, and the assumed simplicity obscures
the process through which complexity develops. A reconstruction
As the self individuates, it perceives a world of particulars distribut-
of the complex after it has been reduced to its elements — or from
ed in space and time, and interprets the particulars as a succession
elements postulated to be constituent — is usually not possible. A
of causes and effects when, in fact, temporal order individuates
pile of bricks is no more or less complex than one brick, though
in consciousness from unconscious simultaneity (chapter 2). The
an artwork of a pile of bricks, or a wall, is a conceptual pattern
distinction of cause and effect in object-causation complements
distinct from an arbitrary assortment. The artwork or wall is a
the distinction of self and world in agent-causation. Each mode
unitary whole in which separate elements are bound together
of thought reflects a different metaphysic, one of mechanism, the
contextually by the intrinsic relations of the mental state. The as-
other, of organism. In the latter, objects are categories of “events-
sumption of elements in the psyche bound by external relations
with-meanings”, in the former, demarcations to which meanings
in the mind as in the world generates and severs those elements
130 Jason W. Brown Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 131

are added. It is an error to dismiss the latter as pre-scientific, for it effect and moves backward to the cause, since the effect is evident
displays psychic qualities not evident to scientific thought. and can be identified. Another way of saying this is that an actual
object, an actuality, entails a cause, and that even if the cause is
multi-factorial (XYZ in the above example), its components are as
discrete as the effect, so that the transition from cause to effect is
Consider Piaget’s demonstration to Einstein that relativity theory
like that from one actual object to another.
is closer to the common space-time of young children rather than
the separate space and time of the adult. Similarly, the felt curva-
ture of dream-space that differs from the open expanse and exten-
sion of waking perception foreshadows theory in modern physics.
The irrational, even mystical, has a significance in its proximity to 5.3. The Actualization of Potential
organism. The need for an awareness of the unconscious struc-
When potential is thought of as the “cause” of the actual, no such
ture of mature theory was expressed by Dewey (1925, p. 317): “as
precision of antecedent cause is forthcoming. This way of think-
long as our own fundamental psycho-physical attitudes in dealing
ing entails that definite effects are not the outcomes of discrim-
with external things are subconscious, or attention going only to
inable causes. Definiteness is in the effect, not the cause. In the
the relations of external things, so long will our perception of the
transition from potential to actual, the presumed specificity of a
external situations be subject at its root to perversion and vitia-
present object is exchanged for the uncertainty of the potential in
tion.”
past ones. The efficacy of potential coincides with the priority of
whole to part, or on a larger scale, in the relation of community to
individual or of nature to individual organism.
Nevertheless, there are acute difficulties with both object and
agent causation; in the former, the demarcation of cause, the doc-
trine of external relations, the transition to effect or the role of
However, the doctrine of potential has its own difficulties, chiefly
contingency and accidental causation. These problems resist solu-
that potential is unspecifiable. In the mental life, potential corre-
tion because they are analyzed by the very methods of the theory
sponds (after Dewey) to the fringe of feeling-qualities, premoni-
they subtend. A theory that cannot explain its core assumptions is
tions and inchoate meanings — the stuff of intuitions — that guide
vacuous, not merely incomplete. Persistent incoherence is close
the selection of acts. Those processes in the natural world that
to unacknowledged refutation. Similar problems bedevil agent-
are the antecedents of these unconscious phenomena are no less
causation but here contingency embraces freedom, and the rela-
inscrutable. For Whitehead the “cause” as the real potential for
tion of cause and effect is still more obscure.
the new actual occasion is the entire “actual world.” But cause in
this sense does not determine what the effect will be, since the
effect is also causa sui.
Object causation and agent causation give priority to the cause,
whether going from cause to effect, or inferring effect from cause.
In the conventional account, specific causes bring about specific
Genetic psychology is a subjective record of individual self-realiza-
effects. In medical science a certain disease is caused by virus X,
tion generalized to and across others. For genetic psychology, the
or by X in combination with gene Y, or by X and Y with a pre-exist-
past is revived in the present, which is felt as the outward crust of
ing constitution Z. The specificity of the cause is taken as equiva-
an inward history. The future is not what the present moves into,
lent to the specificity of the effect, especially if one begins with the
it is another present that the past deposits. There is a natural in-
132 Jason W. Brown
clusion of the past, which makes up the major portion of the pres-
ent, a past that is as important for the present as what the present
holds for the future. An orientation to the past gives an inward
focus on genuine change as reflection and retrospection take pre-
cedence over anticipation and prediction. Each approach involves
an implicit theory of (subjective) time. The excavation of the an-
tecedents of known effects, or the consequents of known causes,
takes the present as an actual datum in relation to an anterior or
posterior extension. There is an infinite regress in the uncovering
of earlier causes that are more like possibilities or probabilities
than discrete occurrences. The retrospective approach is linked to
the transition from potential to actual, the prospective approach to
a transition from cause to effect.
The introductory citation implies that effects are the concrete
facts we actually know while causes are their anticipations or the
potentials behind them inferred or vaguely sensed. The actual is
describable, but its antecedents are uncertain unless viewed as
collections of outcomes. If an actuality were the cause of a subse-
quent actuality as in linear or chain theory, it would be ingredient
in the potential for the next round of actualization.
In some forms of process thought, such as for Whitehead, an ac-
tual object, on perishing, becomes part of the real potentiality for
the next round of actualization. The world at state B actualizes
out of the world at state A. This view entails that the actual occa-
sion in one moment — with all other actualities at that moment
— constitutes a potential for the ensuing occasion. On this inter-
pretation, potential consists of perishing actualities and the actual
has causal efficacy. A potential comprised of perished actualities
gives new actualities that integrate elements of real potentiality in
diverse ways. If the potential for a new occasion were exhausted
by the real potential provided by past occasions, the novelty in
new actualities would be limited to the reordering of elements in
the past. Whitehead did not think this accounted for novelty in the
world. In his view, every entity actualizes by its own “decision” out
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 133
of the inclusive potentiality, which includes pure potentials not
derived from its actual world.
A past entity can be considered a causal point. Microgenesis is
a theory of becoming in which the final phase is not pre-pack-
aged or forecast at its onset. Actualities do not provide surface
templates for ensuing actualizations but are cleared away (perish)
for novel objects, while the entire process traversed in the actual-
ization, but especially the initial segments, provides the ground
for the next traversal. I look to one side and see a house, then
the other side and see a tree. The actual object has changed. The
perception must be erased so a novel one can ensue. What recurs
is the conceptual and experiential ground common to the series
of actualities. This ground is part of the potential of the state as of
the actuality. Since the scope of potential is wider than that of the
actual, the actual object as an endpoint, i.e. the world as perceived,
delimits possibility and cannot form a comprehensive ground for
the ensuing potential.
A consideration of the causal role of constraints on the actualiza-
tion or concrescence of the mental state suggests the need for a
different way to think about potential and actual in relation to
cause and effect, namely, that the former are phases in a single
existent, as opposed to elements in causal succession, in which
cause and effect are distinct existents. Potential does not exist until
it becomes actual, and it is then not causal but ingredient. The
transition from potential to actual can be construed as causal if
it is divisible into intervening phases, but this would not apply if
potential and actual are part of a single entity. Potential perishes
in actuality, not successively at each phase in a path to the actual.
At each phase, potential is part of the actuality it leads to, i.e., part
of the epoch of actualization, or successive phases in a single mo-
mentary existence.
134 Jason W. Brown
5.4. Genetic psychology
With the foregoing by way of prologue, we can proceed to a con-
sideration of genetic psychology in relation to process theory. In
both, process is prior to substance, becoming to being, change
to stability. An ontology of becoming emphasizes the sub-surface
change through which substance (being) actualizes rather than
substances that change. As flux and non-repeatability were es-
sential to the metaphysics of Heraclitus, duration and continuity
were fundamental to that of Bergson (1923; also, see Capek, 1976),
while concrescence, prehension and subjective aim were, inter
alia, essential to Whitehead’s system of thought. In a process ap-
proach, objects are states of flux that only appear to be solids. The
flux is not random or chaotic but has a direction. The direction of
the flux is its becoming or the genetic history of the object, which
is the concealed dynamic through which the object is generated.
As momentary centers of flux, objects are unstable. As soon as
an object exists, it is past. A this, an is, becomes a was, a that.
Transition leaves objects in its wake but is not itself grasped like an
object, for the act of grasping cancels the transition. The direction
of the transition gives the feeling of momentum. Unconscious
becoming in a forward motion actualizes the felt present, but the
dynamic feels like a striving into the future. The feeling of striv-
ing, which is a manifestation of the loss of present objects as the
next set is created, is what remains of creation after perishing
takes its toll. Objects come and go but the process of creation
recurs. Dewey alludes to the incessant striving, though he does
not provide details of its infrastructure. He writes, “unless there
were something problematic, undecided, still going-on and as yet
unfinished and indeterminate, in nature, there could be no such
events as perceptions”. An event, he argues, implies “a system
of meanings focused at a point of stress, uncertainty and need
of regulation. It sums up history, and at the same time opens a
new page; it is record and promise in one; a fulfillment and an
opportunity.” Objects are events that crystallize perceptual mean-
ings. An event has its own dynamic, which Dewey thinks is the
openness and creativity of passage, but there is also the intrinsic
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 135
dynamic that precipitates the event. This internal, forward-going
dynamic is an essential feature of “genetic” thought.
The transitive in process philosophy is iterated in epochs (Wallack,
1980). The novelty in recurrence corresponds in genetic psychol-
ogy with the creative in mind and organism. At a macro-level,
the evolution of species by proliferation, competition for survival
and elimination is a model for growth in fetal brain develop-
ment, where exuberance is competitively trimmed to specificity.
The population dynamic of evolutionary change is internalized
as the parcellation (see: Brown, 2003) or “neuronal Darwinism”
(Edelman, 1987) of morphogenesis and specialization or individu-
ation. These patterns or force-lines of development become the
context-item transformations that actualize a cognitive world.
Adaptation in phylo-ontogeny is the basis of microgenesis in cog-
nition. An act, a thought, arises out of a multitude of possibilities
that are progressively limited (sculpted) by internal and external
constraints, e.g. by the antecedent microgeny over which the
occurrent state develops, and by the selective pressures on that
developing state of sense-data arriving from the environment.
Constraints limit the developing object to the fittest object for that
moment in the perceptual field, as analogous constraints in evolu-
tion result in organisms adapted to their surrounds.
The similar patterns of morpho- and microgenetic process are
clear. In a mature cognition, the endogenous constraints of the
just-prior act are comparable to genetic influences on growth,
while the exogenous constraints of the external world (sense-data)
are comparable to the effects of the micro-environment on gene
expression. A perception survives a brief evolution in a journey to
actuality. The connectivity of an embryonic cell survives a compe-
tition for binding sites with other neurons. The organism survives
an environment bent on its destruction. All acts are adaptive,
even maladaptive ones. Thus, while dreams do not conform to
the world, they are adaptive in sleep to the exigencies of the psy-
chic life. In psychotics, waking dreams, i.e. hallucinations, serve
subjective needs as in sleep, but resist the extrinsic constraints of
136 Jason W. Brown
the surrounding world. They are adaptive to the psyche but not
the world.
In all genetic process, at the level of the cell, the organism, a popu-
lation, or the derivation of an act of thought, there is a uniform
process of arising and perishing, creation and destruction, actual-
ization and recurrence. This process, beginning with an epoch of
‘energic feeling’ in an elementary particle (Brown, 2003), and re-
garded over different time scales, gives the evolution of organism
and societies, the life-history of the individual and the deposition
of the mind/brain state.
To speak of the “mechanisms” guiding this process tends to en-
dorse a mechanical view of nature. The putative mechanisms are
the regularities extracted from recurrent patterns of change. The
genetic code is not a detailed blueprint for the construction of an
organism but governs the unfolding of organic form. The num-
ber of genes is insufficient for a one-to-one correspondence that
could determine an exact phenotypic feature, much less a spe-
cific cell and its connections. Polygenes and timing mechanisms
limit the degrees of freedom in the growth process, increasing the
likelihood of a given outcome. Growth is guided by regularities
that keep the process on track. An explanatory reduction to gene
or gene combinations tends to avoid an account of the transition
from a base sequence of amino acids to a final morphology or be-
havior. The same conjuring trick is used to collapse the symptoms
of brain damage to lesion sites, or to reduce a normal behavior,
e.g. a syntactic rule, face recognition, etc., to local or distributed
brain areas. The reduction of an outward form to a gene or brain
area gives a weak correlation in the vain expectation that to-be-
discovered inter-level causal mechanisms will account for what is
lost in the reduction.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 137
5.5. Studies in psychology
Genetic psychology is the study of micro- or macro- trends in the
development of the mind. The genetic approach provides a back-
ground for microgenetic theory. I will briefly consider the work of
three schools of psychology that have made important contribu-
tions in different populations and with different methodologies.
The best known of these schools is that of Piaget (e.g. 1969), who
has described the growth of knowledge in a transition of develop-
mental stages, each an obligatory transit in the growth of mind.
For example, around the age of 7-11, there is a shift from the ego-
centric to the concrete-operational view of the relation of the self
to the world. The child is able to incorporate the perspective of
the other into his own point of view. There is also a shift from a
syncretic and intuitive phase to one of deduction and reasoning.
Judgments of value have more influence on the earlier egocentric
phase than on the later one of communicable thought (Piaget,
1955). Such stages in the growth of mind or intelligence form the
bases for the investigation of the maturation of specific functional
domains, such as perception, language, logic etc. When a novel
response appears, its underlying operations are studied. When
the response diminishes in importance with age, antagonistic fac-
tors are assumed to intervene. A response that is invariant across
age is said to reflect innate factors, though the sequence of stages
must itself be governed by innate forces, even if there is consider-
able variation according to learning and experience.
Piaget conceived intelligence as a continuation of perception, or
obeying the same laws as perception. While Piaget accepted the
genetic notion of a progression from whole to part and the prior-
ity of process over substance, he did not resolve process theory
with substantive modes of thought. Nor was there a coherent ac-
count of objects and relations. He wrote, “elements are not given
from the beginning because they do not exist independently of
the relations which unite them… (and that the relational method
is a) striving towards the construction or composition of a whole,
not starting with elements but with the relations between them,
which is not the same thing.” The more profound problems of
internal and external relations, or of wholes and parts, did not
138 Jason W. Brown
achieve an adequate analysis. Piaget distinguished causal expla-
nation in physiological science from psychological explanation,
which deals with “systems of significations” or of significant ac-
tions which are inter-related by ‘implications” in the broad sense
of the term
There have been attempts to relate Piagetian stages to the pat-
tern of myelinogenesis (e.g. Lecours, 1975), but the correlations
are imprecise. The brain matures as a whole, and specific func-
tions cannot be related to the development of anatomical systems
with great accuracy. The relation to pathological breakdown
(e.g. Ajuriaguerra et al, 1963) supposes that functional stages are
stacked in the acquisitional sequence and unpeel in the reverse
order in pathology. In cases with posterior brain damage, I tried
many years ago, without success, to demonstrate a destructura-
tion according to Piagetian stage-theory. Such an effect, were it to
be confirmed, as postulated by Heinz Werner, Hughlings Jackson,
Roman Jakobson and many others, is referred to as the regres-
sion hypothesis. This concept was for many years a mainstay in
the study of development, but it has been called into question
(Caramazza and Zurif, 1978), at least in its simple form (Brown,
1996).
In contrast to Piagetian accounts, which deal with the whole
child and its relation to the world, perceptgenetic research (e.g.
Smith, 2001) has focused on the fine microtemporal processing
of a perceptual object. Smith and his colleagues have employed a
host of innovative methods, many involving rapid tachistoscopic
exposure, to explore otherwise concealed stages in the perceptual
process. These techniques are thought to expose early stages of
affect and meaning that are ordinarily buried in the final object.
The implication is that phases of meaning, emotion and memory
are enjoined early in the object formation, with the final object
being the outcome of a rapid traversal over layers in cognition
which, in some way, correspond with the maturational history of
the individual. The perceptgenetic approach has close affinities
with microgenesis, in which the symptoms of focal brain lesion
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 139
are used to reconstruct the neural and psychological process of
percept formation.
A third approach to genetic psychology places emphasis on the
relation of developmental stage in maturation and perceptgenesis
to its attenuation in mental retardation, in pathology and primi-
tive thought. Heinz Werner (e.g. 1945; 1957) is most closely as-
sociated with this school. As with other genetic thinkers, Werner
asserted the primacy of process over substance. He argued that
development proceeds in an orderly manner from a state of glo-
bality and lack of specification to one of increasing differentiation,
articulation and hierarchical integration or “genetic” stratification.
Werner disclaimed an association with evolutionary psychology,
for the latter deals with the history of mankind and what is early
and late in the historical scale, while the former deals with the pat-
tern from low to high mentality. He listed several features charac-
teristic of developmental psychology, specifically, the progression
from the syncretic to the discrete, the diffuse to the articulated,
the indefinite to the definite, the rigid to the flexible and the labile
to the stable.
Werner’s importance has receded with the cognitive shift in psy-
chology, but there has also been a caricature of his thesis that
comes of taking too literally the comparison across different
populations. The savage, the child, the psychotic and the brain-
damaged are not equivalent in terms of the thought content. One
cannot compare a child with an imaginary playmate, the native
with his crocodile gods, the schizophrenic with his visions to
performance errors in the brain-damaged. The similarity is not
in preliminary contents as endpoints, or those that surface, or
remain submerged or transformed in normative cognition, nor
do such phenomena re-appear in pathological breakdown. What
these diverse populations do have in common, in some if not all
respects, is a pattern or mode of thought, one that is pre-rational,
paralogical, or syncretic. The prominence of metaphoric, magical
or animistic thinking points to a phase traversed in every ratio-
nal thought. The commonalties in patterns of mental process are
140 Jason W. Brown
guides to regularities in the process of self-realization. They help
us to understand the fundamental “laws” of thought, irrespective
of the contents which the process deposits.
In sum, these varied approaches — over different time scales —
share the concept of an action or perception as a derivation over
levels or stages in cognition. The derivation is the intra-psychic
phase of the object-formation, the object being the endpoint of a
formative (micro- or macro-developmental) process. The progres-
sion is uni-directional, like growth, and obligatory. It leads from
antecedent phases in conceptual, affective and memorial experi-
ence to the presentational immediacy of acts and objects in the
world. It goes from the wholeness and potential that originate the
process to the multiplicity of world objects and conscious images
in which it eventuates, i.e. from self to world, and from ego- to ob-
ject-centeredness. The momentary “growth” of a perception from
an intra- to extra-psychic locus is a microcosm of the maturation
of the mind in that it resembles process across other domains of
cognition. The microgenetic contribution to genetic psychology
is a more precise formulation of the phase-transitions underlying
this process, and their correlates in evolutionary brain structure.
Microgenesis distills the different time scales into repeatable ep-
ochs in the relation of patterns of forebrain evolution to patterns
in object-generation.
Microgenetic theory has demonstrated that too great a focus on
the content of a performance is detrimental to the understanding
of the process through which the content is deposited. The con-
tent of an action, an utterance or a perception is “thing-like” and
of a different order than the process through which it develops.
Genetic psychology gives a description of cognitive development
over the long or short term in terms of epochs that recur, but it
only provides a limited explanation of the contents that develop
out of this process. This is its strength and its weakness. For ex-
ample, the psychology can account for the process of form or
meaning-development in a perceptual or linguistic object, or the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 141
relation to stages in memory, but not the content of what is said
or remembered.
The one exception is psychoanalysis, which takes the actual (or
latent) content of an act of cognition and attempts to explain its
origins in unconscious process. However, the theory is not fully
process-based, since explanation is in terms of the interaction or
conflict of logical or mental solids, with the dynamic of feeling (ca-
thexis) injected as the glue of the varied elements. Psychoanalysis
is also problematic in that its constructs have not been successfully
related to those of other fields of psychology, much less process
thought. Some writers have tried to extract from psychoanalysis
a theory of perception or memory (e.g. Schilder, 1950; Rapaport;
in Gill, 1967) but these innovations have succumbed to orthodox
interpretations.
A psychology that begins with mental content takes for its starting
point an object that has completed its development. The object
is assumed to be the product of part-functions inferred from the
object itself. Additional elements, i.e. rules, operations, functional
mechanisms, are postulated to explain for the content. These
eventually reduce to the atomic elements from which the part-
functions, and from them the final contents, are assembled. The
entire process is content-like, with process inserted to string the
contents together like beads on a chain. The linguistic and analytic
schools of philosophy have generated, in cognitive psychology, a
veritable industry to support this teaching. In contrast, process
philosophy has not sought connections to genetic or process ap-
proaches in psychology, veering to metaphysics instead of empiri-
cal science. The conceptual overlap of process philosophy and ge-
netic psychology is such that a dialogue between the fields should
be mutually enriching. Genetic psychology provides a direction
and brake on philosophical speculation, which in turn provides
novel or renewed insights for psychological study.
 Chapter 6
Foundations of the Self

“And up and down did rolling swing

The all and one eternal Thing”
Goethe, Satyrs

6.1. Self and Consciousness

In this chapter and others, awareness is defined as the relation of
a subject to external objects and bodily states. A subject is the sub-
jective whole of the organism, excluding its external portion. An
object is the external portion of that whole, perceived as outside
the organism. An object is a perceived event. An entity is a physi-
cal event postulated to exist outside perception. The external or
objective world is defined as a segment of the subjective that has
objectified. In contrast, the physical world is the world of physical
entities.

A subject is antecedent to the object. The relation is the uni-

directional process of becoming through which subject and then
object actualize. Awareness is the waking state of small children,
not unknown to animals and the foundation of consciousness.
One can have awareness without consciousness, since the former,
from an evolutionary, maturational and microgenetic standpoint,
is the earlier state. But, one cannot have consciousness without
an implicit state of awareness, since consciousness arises on this
foundation.

Conscious perception differs from object-awareness. In the

latter, the subject-as-a-whole is aware of external objects. In the
former, a self is conscious of objects. The self is a segment in the
stream of outgoing subjectivity aware of its own priority and sub-


The original meaning was self-Csness; e.g. Locke wrote, “consciousness is the
perception of what passes in a man’s own mind” (Essay II, I, 19).
144 Jason W. Brown
jectivity. Consciousness is the relation of a self to inner and outer
objects.10 The relation arises in the process through which images
and objects objectify. The relation of the self to inner objects is
introspection or reflection. The relation of the self to outer objects
is exteroception or perception.
A perception by a subject differs from a perception by a self,
even if the ‘same’ object is perceived. Objects carve out the bound-
ary of a subject. There are no inner objects, only different states
of subjectivity, e.g. anger, hunger, etc. The subject is what is left
after its world is subtracted. In contrast, the self is buffered from
the world by a subjective field. The self withdraws into this field
in reflection, or remembrance. This field can be a private hell or
it can offer respite and sanctuary. Because the self is in relation to
its own subjectivity, it does not have the immediacy of action that
occurs in a subject. The self, along with images, thoughts, feel-
ings, etc. is most emphatic when a delay in behavior dilates the
automaticity of direct awareness.
An image or idea is a segment en route to a perception or an
utterance. In a rapid traversal, action and perception dominate
consciousness. If I am not thinking of anything in particular, I am
still conscious of the world as the circumference of my point of
view. When a thought or image comes into prominence as the
dominant focus of attention, external space recedes to an ambi-
ent field that grounds the inner figural content.11
For example, in writing this chapter, I am dimly aware of the
grassy knoll and trees around me as an endpoint of the men-
tal state. Even ‘lost in thought’, my world is implicitly there.
Otherwise, my thought would be the terminus of the state and
the world would disappear. At times lost in thought, I have walked,
even driven, some distance as if in a trance, when I suddenly real-
10
See note 9 supra
11
Consistent with Cobb (1973), who wrote, “conscious attention shades off by
degrees into unconscious inattention, the latter constituting by far the larger
part of the experience of the dominant occasion… (and that) backgrounds that
are vaguely discriminated consciously have as their backgrounds others that
are completely unconscious but which are also capable of so developing as to
become conscious.”
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 145
ized I had arrived at a point with no memory of the interval. Is this
like a hypnotic state? Is it an instance of a dissociation of self and
subject, of consciousness and awareness?
We ‘think up’ the world we perceive. This thought-up world is
a model of an inferred physical world that impacts on the brain.
The accuracy of our model of the world can be tested but it is still
a model. Walking, touching, tasting are kinds of tests. The model
of reality depends on the type of organism and the adequacy of
sensory data. The world may be thought-up, but without the con-
straints of sensation, thought alone cannot sustain the world. The
rationality of thought depends on its proximity to the world, i.e.
to the accuracy of the model. The approximation to an objective
world determines the content of the state, e.g. daydream, reverie,
fantasy, hallucination, delusion, etc., phenomena that actualize
at different points in the object-formation. Without an objective
world, thinking is dreaming; psychosis is an intermediate phase.
6.2. The Intuition of the Self
We all have a sense of our self as the center of gravity of char-
acter with a feeling of its continuity and repeatability over time.
We do not feel the existence of a self is problematic, nor that it is
an illusion or mix of momentary impressions. The self cannot be
isolated on introspection yet it grows and endures as a relatively
stable entity over all the changing acts, thoughts and desires of a
life. While we have many modes of self-expression according to
the occasion, each momentary self is felt to be a manifestation of
the one genuine self. The inability to identify or define the self as
it fluctuates with the situation does not persuade us of an absence
or lack of personal identity. Experience is “taken in” and respond-
ed to by a self that stands behind as observer or agent. A feeling
of identity, individuality or personhood, binds successive states of
consciousness together or, as I would prefer to say, the feeling of
self-identity is the ground for the succession, providing unity to
perceptions in the observer’s field. According to the modality, the
self feels “situated” at the center of its experience, as in pain, or at
the circumference, as in vision. The visual world is not a jumble of
146 Jason W. Brown
objects but a coherent picture. This is less so in dream, but then,
the dream-self differs from that of wakefulness. The self is host
and source of the varied thoughts and acts of a life, and except for
illness, in which it is threatened with loss, has a development that
is more or less continuous.
The self’s experiences are not felt as impersonal events that oc-
cur at the same time or in the same brain. Hume’s bundle of im-
ages is a cohesive whole each waking moment and over intervals,
such as sleep, intoxication or altered states. Events in the mind
and acts in the world, as well as external objects, are felt as my
events, or as happening in or to me. Even events that are distinct
from the self impact in a way that has consistency and organiza-
tion. We recognize the randomness of events and, to an extent,
their unpredictability, but at the same time we acknowledge a
lawfulness and causal order, even if it is obscured by contingency.
We say the self, through interpretation, gives meaning to random-
ness. However, meaning is not applied to events that impinge from
outside; events arise through planes of meaning-laden images. All
objects arise in this way, some felt as part of the observer, others as
its possessions, still others as extrinsic. Thought is an activity that
issues from the self, even as thought thinks up the thinker. The
same process that lays down the core and empirical self continues
into thought, act and object, the latter being a part of the self that
thinks them up.
Inner events and outer perceptions are generated with the
self of that occasion. This does not mean that a perception of a
green object evokes a green self, though severe pain is identified
with a self in which pain is pervasive. In perceiving an object, the
self, indeed the entire perception, is generated with the object.
Some phenomena seem to be produced by a self that voluntarily
summons them up, others confront the self or coalesce with it.
A feared or loved object can be identified with a fearful or loving
self. With intense feeling in pain, fear, panic, love, with a relax-
ation of boundaries, the self can become one with its perceptions.
Feeling may so dominate a self that it is replaced by the object
that seems to induce it. Severe pain fills the mind to the point that
other objects are scarcely noticed. Intense fear or love focuses on
the object or situation at the expense of other feelings, thoughts
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 147
or objects in the field. Feeling flows out of the self to concentrate
in the object, replacing other lines of development. When feel-
ing overwhelms the partition of the core to the empirical self, the
mental state may recede to foundational drive-categories.
All acts and objects develop out of a self that is laid down prior
to conscious action and perception. The priority is the antecedence
of earlier to later in the mental state. Objects are necessary for the
self to actualize; they depend on the self as their source. Equally,
the self degrades when objects disappear. We assume, falsely, that
the self, as observer, is an adjunct to an object, or that percep-
tion is an accessory. This entails that self and object are separate
entities with discrete brain loci or networks. To study perception,
language or action without including the observer (or agent)
leaves out the essential aspect, namely, the guiding or organizing
substrate and origin.
For a self to attend to its derivations is quite natural and remote
from attending to itself, which requires the agent to be the object
of the same mental state. This turns the initial phase of the mental
state into its terminus, or involves a regress from distal to proxi-
mal that occurs chiefly in meditative or mystical states, in which
the self is more intuited than examined. The bundle of percepts
accessible to Hume’s intuition is a manifestation of the earliest
phase in partition. The self that Hume could not describe is a
category prior to the images that were accessible to his introspec-
tion12. Moreover, such inner percepts or images are not random
assortments; they assume a direction and coherence by virtue of
the self that precedes them. Deeper than its implementations, the
self fractionates to images that then pass (are transformed) to acts
and objects.
The self feels it is an agent to objects that are its own ramifica-
tions, even an “owner” or possessor at the center of a personal
universe. Some states of mind and body are felt to belong to a
self that suffers or enjoys them. There is a powerful sense that all
An attempt to describe an imageless phase in thought was the program of the
12
Würzburg school of psychology.
148 Jason W. Brown
personal images, even occasions in the world, belong ab origo to
the self, even if they are shared with others. The sense of owner-
ship — my house, my car — expresses the value that flows distally
into inanimate objects as an accrual through an economic vetting
of what flows naturally into animate ones, such as in a person that
is loved. To attempt to possess an object is to affirm its belonging-
ness. The impression of a self as the owner of acts and images is
reinforced in the variance of the world and mental contents in the
face of the self’s relative stability.
In a normal brain, all mental phenomena or bodily events
are experienced as belonging to the self, a dependency seen in
pathological disorders. In psychosis, thought-possession and de-
lusion occur in an individual frightened by and subordinate to his
own image-productions. Thoughts seem to come from outside
like alien intrusions, or they objectify like objects, while objects
become thought-like. The once-sharp transition from concept
to object, or mind to world, is indistinct. The unity of self, image
and object is on display in that change in one entails change in
the other. Such disorders are not to be dismissed as meaningless
perturbations. The inner relations of phases in mental process are
observed in the terror that is experienced when the illusory sepa-
ration of mind and world is ruptured.
The sense of ownership is confirmed when the self feels de-
tached from its own thoughts. The voices that speak to the schizo-
phrenic, the thoughts that come to him from outside, the objects
that take on psychic properties all reinforce the observation that
inner and outer are outcomes of psychic process. In phantom limb,
as in some forms of body agnosia, or stimulation of brain areas for
movement and vocalization, bodily and psychic events may seem
detached. Limb movement on excitation of motor cortex does not
have volitional feeling. We have some idea of this experience from
nocturnal jerks of the legs, when we are uncertain if movement
is voluntary or spontaneous, i.e. self-generated or extrinsically in-
duced. Such movements are like objects in relation to the self. The
intermediate position of such phenomena — clearly endogenous
but neither image nor object — accounts for their unreality, or the
uncertainty of their psychic origin.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 149
Dreams can be experienced in this way, as images inserted
into the mind with the self a spectator. The passivity to dream
and to certain forms of imagery results from the lack of self-image
separation due to incomplete actualization and a loss of volitional
feeling. The sense of agency is the link from self to image in visual
and auditory imagery, as in the verbal imagery of inner speech.
The loss of agency in dream or hallucination deprives the self of
the feeling that it generates the image. The self is then assaulted
or possessed by the image instead of producing it. The agency
of inner speech or the preverbitum is transformed outward into
an hallucinatory voice. A subtle interplay of such attitudes and
feelings occurs in relation to image type and degree of objectifi-
cation. In the controversial state of multiple personality, which is
probably a factitious condition, personalities are neither distinct
nor uncoupled from the core self. A variety of conditions relat-
ing to the normal and pathological brain refute the non-self of
philosophical writings and the Anatman theory of Buddhism; as
Danto put it, the notion of cravings without a craver. In exposing
the fragility of belongingness, they erode arguments on external
relations to objects and are clues to the nature (of the illusion) of
the self.
Though some writers, e.g. McTaggart (1916), have argued that
“the self is a substance with attributes”, it is widely accepted that
the self is not a “thing” or substance, though this would explain its
relative stability. A substantial self grows by accretion with extrin-
sic relations to acts and ideas that can be severed without conse-
quence. While a self of internal relations seems anchorless, it has
the stability of a category even with a fluid relationality. Such a self
is not detached from objects but ingredient. For the former, the
feeling of ownership is problematic; for the latter, it is the feeling
of detachment. These difficulties are bound up with the psychol-
ogy of agency and receptiveness.
There are two categories of the self, a deep core or unconscious
self aligned with values, implicit beliefs and character, and a lim-
inal, conscious or empirical self that adapts to momentary needs
and future expectations. One hears a person say, I was not myself,
by which is meant the “I” or ego of a given situation did not reflect
150 Jason W. Brown
the underlying beliefs and values of the “me” or the core. That
many search for the genuine self or sense of identity speaks to the
intuition of an abiding core that underlies its varied manifesta-
tions. The distinction is embodied in the unconscious and time-
less self of the “me”, and the conditional or temporal self of the
“I”, one constant and authentic, another transient and adaptive;
one that endures changing events, another hostage to the passing
scene. Yet there is no accepted account of core and empirical self,
how they develop, their relation to mind or brain and the basis of
identity (Figure 6.1).
Fig. 6.1. The fine structure of the mental state. The core self
is derived to the empirical self, which in turn leads to objects in
the world. Corresponding with the object-development there is a
transition from drive through desire to object value. The affect-
charged category of the core self is the initial drive-representation.
This is derived to conceptual feeling, then to object value. The
transition from core to world is a continuum; the entire sequence
constitutes a momentary mental state or an act of cognition. The
correlation with forebrain anatomy has been discussed in prior
works (see Brown, 1988 et seq.).
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 151
6.3. Development
Mind divides into subject and object but separation is ubiquitous.
Every entity is a contrast. In organism there is mitosis, birth. Mitosis
is the model of individuation as complexity grows from within.
Germinal processes are the forerunners of the cognitive process.
The shedding of superficial layers of skin from multi-layered ec-
toderm is analogous to the actualization and perishing of percep-
tions over layers in the brain that are also derived from ectoderm.
The phyletic and morphogenetic pattern of exuberant growth, and
competitive elimination by sculpting or parcellation, continues in
the selection by way of inhibitory constraints on context-item or
whole-part transitions in the microgenesis of thoughts, objects
and feelings. This trimming of redundancy to achieve a specificity
of connectivity in the developing brain becomes the cascade of
whole-part shifts that, by inhibitory filtration through constraints
of habit and sense-data, is guided to specify potentiality at each
phase into the most adaptive resolution.
The origin of mind is postulated to begin with the minimal
duration of existence, or temporal extensibility (see discussion in
Sprigge, 1983), of a physical entity (Brown 2005). An expansion
within the temporal extensibility of complex entities eventuates
in a duration that enfolds feelings and concepts in a mental state.
I would argue that consciousness is the outcome of a continuous
series from inorganic to organic as complexity and organization
increase in an epoch of existence that expands to accommodate
it. The initial state of mind is a division of intrinsic relations in the
epoch to a subjective and objective moiety, an early segment giv-
ing the organism, a later segment the perceptible world, a parti-
tion that divides mind into subjective core and objective surface.
For the suckling, the world consists of a global object, the
breast. Action and perception are bound together in a single per-
formance. Sucking is enacted in the axial space of the body. An
external field close to the body, relatively undifferentiated and
incompletely detached, extends to the immediate surround. The
pre-object is gestalt-like; its features, e.g. the mother’s face, smile,
are not clearly articulated. The breast is grasped and sought for
— thus extrapersonal — but still within the sphere of organism.
The initial distinction of subject and object registers in behavior
152 Jason W. Brown Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 153

not thought. With a distinction in thought, there is a shift from linear time. Con­sciousness of time-order mirrors the perception
awareness to consciousness. of whole events. In contrast to the presumed instantaneity of
physical transition, the present subsumes events as temporally
Initially, the unconscious core is equivalent to the whole of the extended wholes. The world is laid down as the final in a series
subject. Gradually, an implicit core develops within the subjective of tiers in space formation. The transition from self to object is
field. The core, an early phase in the epoch, is the seed of per- continuous (Fig. 6.2.) though the mind/world boundary is felt as
sonality, the first sign of which is probably a delay before action. absolute. The gap from mind to world evolves as a coping or sur-
In higher mammals and young children, perhaps expressed in vival strategy that hardens into folk belief and ‘common sense’.
temperament or attachment, the core shows the first tendency to
individuality. Prior to its appearance, behavior seems regulated by
mechanism: instinctual drive, environmental signal, consumma-
tion. The core is unconscious mind, dependent on drive and the
immediate occasion. With an accentuation of the core in relation
to the object world, individuality and awareness show a gradual
advance over the mammalian series. At some point, one speaks
of the ‘personality’ of the animal, as that which distinguishes it
from others of its type. The human infant shows the seeds of in-
dividuality. Out of the core an empirical (explicit, conscious) self
is shaped by beliefs and values. The self, guided to actuality by Fig. 6.2. Self, image and object are phases in the trajectory of
sense data, is conscious of internal and external objects, fixed in the core to extra-personal space.
the present yet able to attend to events in the past and plan for
those in the future.

As partition continues, object- and lexical-concepts, images

and feelings, punctuate the subjective pole. At the objective pole,
value penetrates objects with greater specificity and refinement.
The present expands to encompass events of greater duration, en-
closing a perceptual narrative of self and ex­perience. The bodily
space of the core expands to the perimeter of the arm’s reach, i.e.
a ‘manipulation’ space, then beyond this perimeter to an exter-
nal world that ‘detaches’ from the observer. The action space of
young infants transforms to the independent space of the con-
scious adult.
The articulation of private (image) space by conceptual feel-
ings accounts for choice, decision and trial action. Feeling accom-
panies the object in its journey from core to world. A feeling in
the self such as desire fractionates to a feeling in (with) the object
such as worth. The core is unconscious simultaneity embedded
in bodily space. The end-point of the outward-going develop-
ment is non-self (other, object) in three-dimensional space and
6.4. Consciousness and the mental state
The unconscious, the self, mental contents and the perceptible
world are phases in the mental state. These phases and the se-
quence of their engagement, which are not readily accessible
to reflection, are a first order inference from patterns of mental
disorder. For example, an account of the structure of the uncon-
scious (von Hartmann 1893) was inferred by Freud (1957) from
‘neurotic’ and other alterations of everyday behavior. The self is
inferred from the preservation of identity over successive states
(e.g. James 1890) and its alteration in pathology (Brown 1999).
The transitional process that leads from unconscious precursors
to conscious objects is inferred from abnormalities of thought,
perception and behavior (Brown, 1988). Without the evidence
of pathology, speculation would be restricted to what the mind
knows of itself and would miss completely the micro-transition
that is its basis. The process of actualization or the relationality
154 Jason W. Brown
of change in duration that constitutes the mental state is imper-
ceptible. Self-knowledge is fixed on content, opaque to the process
through which content actualizes.
Accordingly, the initial construct arises in a brainstem or hypo-
thalamic pacemaker and passes to archaic planes of limbic cortex
that mediate the core self. Here are the configural correlates of
forgotten memories, the irretrievable residues of early experience,
‘drive representations’ and the core beliefs and values instilled
in childhood. This phase of personal memory, emotion, value
and belief establishes the biases, dispositions or presuppositions
that ground character and the fundamental traits of personality.
Intrinsic patterns of instinctual drive tempered by value in the de-
veloping configuration come into prominence with a relaxation of
sensory input in the transit to limbic formation. The core retains
the potential for diverse expressions of the personality, though in
time it, too, is restrained by habitual tendencies in thought and
behavior.
The physiological structure of the mind, i.e. the brain state, is
postulated to consist of a transition over successive stages in brain
activity. The succession follows the pattern of growth in forebrain
evolution, a single derivation constituting the minimal mind-brain
state (see below). Phases in the brain state are a second order infer-
ence on the origins of the mental state, an inference justified by
the generally lawful pattern in which mind and brain degrade.
Further, everything we know about the brain indicates that it is
the substrate of mind and the proximate source of experience.
The physical world that impacts on the brain would then be a
third order inference within the bubble of phenomenal immedi-
acy. This physical world is known indirectly, but it must resemble
the model elaborated in the mental state for we could not survive
in a radically different world. We further infer that we live in the
same physical world as bats, insects and microbes, a world we
can measure but not experience. However, the limits on human
knowledge are not just those of access to the world and the vari-
eties of experience and perspectives; they are built into the very
processes that make experience possible.
It is easier to deny the existence of the self than to explain
its nature, or the mass delusion of its existence. Yet apart from
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 155
psychological investigations of the development of the self in chil-
dren, e.g. self-recognition, knowledge of private states or those of
others, and apart from speculative treatises on self and subjec-
tivity (e.g. Schelling, 1800/1978), there is little or no study of the
intrinsic basis of self-development in relation to brain and other
aspects of mentation. The self is often conceived as a metaphor
for a unified collection of elements, reminiscent of Buddhist com-
mentary on the identity of a chair, which exists as the category
of parts that serve as categories for other parts. One property of
the self is unity of experience, yet current thinking in psychol-
ogy presumes a multiplicity of interconnected brain and psychic
elements with unity the result of an extrinsic device for binding
brain and mental events, such as a grandmother (command) cell
or brain rhythm. On this view, multiplicity is unified by a neuron
or set of neurons, or by a rhythm or oscillator entraining modules.
These are extrinsic mechanisms that, like the old pineal theory,
are presumed to bind a manifold of elements.
A process theory of the formative structure of the self in rela-
tion to categories in the mental state does not have the problem
of an extrinsic function or device. The realization of unconscious
core to a self conscious of images and the world occurs over a se-
ries of category-item or whole-part shifts, each partition providing
sub-categories for the next. The core arises as a simultaneous act-
object, an incipient action organized about the axial musculature
and a pre-object close to, or part of, the space of the body. This
construct is activated in upper brain stem, hypothalamus and/or
limbic system. The ethological concept of releaser captures the
immediacy of the core to instinctual drive. The template is aligned
with constructs inherited from animal mind, parsed by early
learning to individuality.
The onset of a simultaneous (pre) action/perception differs
from the sequential nature of reflex, as in a sensori-motor loop
(Weiszacker, 1939/58). The simultaneous construct arising in the
joints of brainstem reflex was proposed many years ago (Brown
1986), but the reflex model found a greater audience, even to
156 Jason W. Brown
the point of conceiving the mind as a complex reflex design.13
The fundamental step in the appearance of mind out of reflex is
replacement of seriality by simultaneity, with the core and its deri-
vations surrounded by sensori-motor tiers (Fig. 6.3). The arousal of
incipient mind in the internuncial pool of upper brainstem occurs
as a primitive drive-representation, and continues into acts and
objects in separate yet parallel and reciprocally-connected paths.
This entails that modalities of perception are specified out of a
synaesthetic multi-modal potential. The commonalty of action
and perception prior to individuation is the source of the unity of
later partitions. Consistent with the speciation of generic forms in
evolution, unity at the onset distributes to diversity, which is an
outcome, not a starting point.14
13
Since the seminal work on reflex by Sherrington, Cajal, Herrick and others,
the synaptic model, in which A connects to B, B to C, and back to A, has provided
a theoretic framework for the study of complex systems in mind/brain; even
now, it is a distant cousin to box and arrow diagrams and circuit boards. Yet some
of its most distinguished disciples, e.g. Eccles (1970) have argued that cognition
is more likely explained by field or wave effects than all-or-none excitation and
inhibition on the model of the synapse.
14
Does the uniformity of the core relate to still deeper Jungian archetypes from
which all individualities develop?
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 157
Fig. 6.3. The core develops in the internuncial pool of brainstem
reflex, shifting the closed loop of serial transition to simultaneous
phases in act and object formation. The core individuates in par-
allel over endogenous phases in mind, surrounded by external,
non-psychic tiers of sensory constraint and motor implementa-
tion.
6.5. “I” and “me”
The “me” is the initial separation from the other. There are in-
termediate phases from the unconscious or implicit “me” of
awareness to the “me” of conscious introspection. In the child,
the “me” precedes the “I”. Does the “me” announce a division of
child from world? Is the child’s “me” the whole of its subjectiv-
ity, i.e. the child as a person? Is it the beginnings of a self? The
self-referential behavior of apes seems to say, “give that to me!”
Before this, the subject is carved out to an increasing degree from
its environment. The “isolation cry” of infant monkeys, correlated
with mesial limbic-derived neocortex, a region associated in fMRI
studies with self-referential behavior, is the rudiment of a primi-
tive utterance… an ancestor of the self calling out, “help me”.
The distinction of “I” and “me” is more on the order of actual
and potential than knower and known (James, 1890). The knowing
self — the liminal “I” at the threshold of consciousness — knows
what it gives rise to. The subliminal “me” that remains beneath
as potential for the “I” , unconscious and inaccessible, is aligned
with the tacit knowledge or capacity (competence) to know. The
known self is not actually known, it is felt, intuited, sought after,
even as it participates covertly in thought.
In spite of the ubiquity of the “I” and its desires (needs, hopes,
fears, etc.), when one is asked what exactly is this “I”, the most
common reaction is puzzlement or a description of what the per-
son or others think the self is like. To say one is sad, conflicted,
etc., is to announce a feeling or state of mind at a given moment;
not describe the self. The statement, “I am sad”, means I have an
experience of sadness, not “I have a sad self”. At most it implies
158 Jason W. Brown
that one (ordinarily transient) property of the self is sadness. The
cogito has an agent and an action. It describes the agency and
the felt connection to the act, but the agent — the “I” — is inferred
from the activity of thinking. The point is, the “I” cannot be delved
into or adequately defined beyond a description of its states.
Does the core self of childhood inhabit the mature self, or is it
erased and forgotten? The forgotten experiences and ingrained
values of youth, the relation to others, animal knowledge and
instinctual tendencies grow to configurations that guide adult be-
havior. The child is truly father to the man, for the mature self is
latent in biases laid down in the juvenile brain. The healthy child
is aligned with its destiny when it is striving to be an adult. The
healthy adult feels what is authentic in character by not letting go
of the child.
When the child says “I”, a new world appears. Does the “I”
imply a self or is it a verbal gesture? The child needs no concept
of other minds to call people by their names, or use the “you”.
A person or an object seen in a “different light” — one says, with
“new eyes” — is not seen again the same way. Once the first-per-
son develops, it is not readily given up. Indeed, it grows stronger,
fortified against every assault.
The “me” can give rise to many possible “I”s but the “I” of that
moment is a commitment. We see a transition from the implicit
unconscious to the conscious explicit in all areas of cognition, e.g.
a word that individuates from the “mental lexicon”, a recollection
from the “memory store”. We see the correlates of this dissocia-
tion (transition) in pathology, e.g. procedural learning in amne-
sics, perception in hemianopia, semantic priming, preserved
inference in total aphasics. The transition from concept to object,
store to item, lexicon to word, or unconscious to conscious, is not
a transfer of like to like, as if the depth were a mere container. The
transition of category to instance, or whole to part, occurs over a
qualitative series of covert phases. Conscious particulars are not
dormant constituents waiting for activation; they become what
they are in a passage to the definite.
Thoughts come into the mind like objects, passively. Inner
speech (verbal imagery) is often conceived as the principle con-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 159
stituent or derivation of the self, and a medium of thought. It can
be experienced in relation to speech or speech perception, as
something that happens to the self like an auditory perception,
or as something the self does like a speech act (Chapter 4). In the
passive condition, inner speech is “heard” by the self rather than
produced by it. If the phenomenon intensifies, it leads to auditory
hallucination. In the active condition, inner speech seems like an
arrested utterance (preverbitum) that is a product of the “I”. This
“I”, identified with the conscious self or ego, is felt as an instru-
ment of its agency.
The silent, “I feel, I want.” of inner speech is experienced as a
unit. Like the “I” in “I think”, it does not fully convey the wholeness
of self. One could think one thing and say or feel another. For the
self, the “I” is prominent less in action than states of indecision.
Every action delimits the self’s potential. What one says, except in
states of strong belief or emotion, does not adequately satisfy the
possibilities of self-realization. Even in states of strong emotion,
when the self is not hindered by uncertainty, a person may apolo-
gize for an outburst, saying, “I don’t know what came over me”, as
if the self is distinct from, and overcome by, its own emotions.
If the “I” is obscure, the “me” is impenetrable. We get a sense
of the effort to access the unconscious when a dream, and the
self of that dream, fade on awakening. The dream lapses to the
shadows leaving a bare intuition of what it may have been like.
On waking, the person may say, “I was terrified (excited, happy,
etc.). He may offer that “such and such was happening to me”.
The “me” is not the self of the dream, which is passive. It is not the
knowledge base postulated by James; not an active self or agent
(see below). The existence of a core self, as with all unconscious
events, is inferred from what becomes conscious. The existence
of a core is based on the multiplicity of evanescent selves against
a backdrop of a more constant character, and the tacit or uncon-
scious beliefs and values that deposit the conscious self.
Such observations raise the question of the relation of psychic
events to the terms used to describe them. Do terms create events
or do events call up the terms? Do the terms point to events for
which language is inadequate? Are they markers of development
that help in the partition of the psyche? Do words such as “I”, “you”
160 Jason W. Brown
and “me” identify, label, reveal or delimit psychological states? Do
they just serve linguistic roles? Is the other specified perceptually
in the “you”, partitioned inferentially as a self with thoughts and
feelings?
Finally, one can ask if the “I” is agent or constituent. How is an
act or a statement “connected” to the self? A self that is strongly
felt when words are not its medium implies that it is not identical
with the inner flow of language. The self does not carry the whole
force of the personality, but is an occasion of its employment. It
is like asking, when I snap my fingers is my “whole self” behind
the act. Rilke put this quandary well when he wrote, “I want my
own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward
action”.
6.6. Self and non-self
Many a self that never materializes is latent in the core. One who
only contemplates suicide may yet have the inclination. Some
who have never contemplated suicide might kill themselves in
adversity. What is conceived, considered, rejected, whatever goes
into an idea, a feeling or a decision, issues from the “me” or core
self. The “not-me” is not what is outside the “me” but what is alien
to the “I”. The core self is grounded in the wholeness of organism.
It is undecided what is outside the “me” since, like the uncon-
scious, it has no posterior limit. The “I” partitions the core, setting
the explicit self against the “non-I”, including in its potential all
past and possible selves.
Much of the “non-I” is what is latent in the core. As the core crys-
tallizes into a conscious self, other possible selves are bypassed or
subdued. What survives is what is obligated by the situation. The
core does not deliver any conceivable self, only what is permis-
sible given the person’s habits, predispositions and experiences.
The conscious self arises each moment out of an implicit struggle.
At every phase in the transition to an object, alternative possi-
bilities are eliminated by intrinsic (habit) and extrinsic (sensation)
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 161
constraints on the actualization. The idea of a conscious veto is
merely consciousness of constraints close to the termination.
Selves that survive into consciousness, as well as those unborn,
have a share in the core. The share of a potential thought or feel-
ing that has not yet been experienced is the ground of creativity
and self-discovery. What are the limits of the unconscious self?
The non-actual contributes to the fringe of character behind the
self of the occasion. Does this background make contact with the
universal or a frontier with nature?
The ever-present “I” is the dominant element of discourse; I
think, I feel, and so on. Even a neutral statement such as “grass is
green” implies, “I profess, believe, claim etc., that grass is green”.
The self is the unacknowledged agent (or victim) for all personal
events, which are its predicates. Thought is predicative. The self,
or the topic of thought, is in the background since it is already
known to the thinker (Vygotsky, 1962). The “I” precedes its predi-
cate and is only included with it as a kind of endorsement. The
self is quietly enlisted as a substrate in the subject-property or
topic-action relation.
The self declares its individuality in carving out the person in
relation to others. A subject requires an object. Selves require oth-
ers for their own individuation. To be selfless is not to be without
a self, but to revive the other in the self before it individuates. The
reaching-out of genuine compassion begins with an exploration
of the underpinnings of autonomy. Cobb and Sherburne (1973)
write, after Whitehead (PR 288), that all real togetherness is de-
rived from the indefinable togetherness that is found in a single
experience. Self and other are generated within the now of the
present. In genuine compassion, the self is a predicate for the
other. This is pronounced in visionaries or in psychotics obeisant
to their own images. Probably, some commotion in a life is nec-
essary to give up striving and become the felt object of another
person’s need.
Except in pathological conditions, behavior “attached” to the
“I” can be cut off and the “I” remain intact. The “I”’s actions can
be prevented, many beliefs can be attacked or modified without
great sacrifice, the “I” can be disgraced, praised, condemned,
162 Jason W. Brown
undermined and undergo radical change, but it is not effaced un-
less its neural correlates are damaged. It is difficult to imagine a
person without an “I”, an ego. Even the most unselfish, broken or
compassionate of individuals begins a sentence with “I …”
Systems of praxis such as Buddhism are based on giving up
the “I”. Self-denial is a different order than dissolution. It is one
thing to argue there is no self and quite another not to have one.
Similarly, to think the world is illusion is one thing; to feel it is an-
other. The disappearance of the “I” that is the goal of meditation
(Brown, 2008a), could it be achieved, would leave a state of aware-
ness in non-conscious mind. Some claim this mind is one with
nature, and that the subject/world separation is lost. Loss of self
is a return to lack of specification. In meditation, the expansion
of the present accompanies a dilation of the “I”, with loss of the
consciousness of time-order. In a present without past or future,
events are simultaneous. The simultaneity of an expanded now
may recapture an awareness in which the self, external space and
time order are undifferentiated. In the retreat from consciousness
to awareness, concepts are said to be relinquished, but with no
self, there is no consciousness of oneness. Perhaps the state is
comparable to animal awareness.
To insist the self is illusory is to evoke the experience of non-
self, not feel the absence of self. What sort of experience would
this be? If I accept the illusion of self, what am I left with? A self
that believes it is an illusion? If I am convinced my self is an illu-
sion, what is there to take its place? The illusion of a self that is
conscious of being illusory would seem to arise on the intuition of
something deeper, more genuine or real. The origin of the illusion
of self has rarely been discussed, though along with the reality of
the world, it is the most powerful illusion we have.
The self distinguishes the illusory and the real by comparing
one illusory object with another, e.g. relating the self to objects
or brain physiology, and asserting one of them as real (Brown,
2004a). But the “real” is an object of consciousness. It is perverse
to treat the self as illusion and its objects as real. If an illusory self
could not have knowledge of the real, objects perceived by an illu-
sory self are also illusory (Vaihinger, 1924-1965). This depends on
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 163
whether the real is equivalent to the non-illusory and if so, what
reality takes the place of the illusion?
Consider brain and perception like a celluloid film and moving
picture. The celluloid is felt to be more real than the movie because
it does not represent something other than what it is, whereas
events in the film have no actual correlates. We might think a
documentary is more real than an ordinary film, but we are still
looking at images, not “real” objects. Since all films (and objects)
are images, it is not the imaginal or perceptual quality that counts
for the unreality. There is a presumption that some mental objects
— ideas more than dreams, words more than ideas, objects more
than words — are more real than others, independent of whether
or not the self is illusory.
6.7. The self in dream
The dream of the Brahma is interrupted every so many years by
brief episodes of awakening after which the Brahma again falls
asleep and a new world begins. Does life consist of two dreams
only one of which seems real? If a dream anticipates the wak-
ing perception of the other, am I foreshadowed in other people’s
dreams? William James wondered if his dreams were getting
mixed up with those of others. Freud also mentioned communi-
cation in dream. Sleep-talkers converse!
Dreams not only recur, they may have historical continuity
similar to waking life. The core self, and its derivation to the self
of dream, might be affected as much by events in the dream as
those of waking experience. However, the passivity of the dream
self does not usually allow for the interpretation of an event as
an external assault. Dream is not felt to endure the accidents of
life that make living so perilous. In waking, what others say or
do has an impact. In dream we do not hold others responsible. If
we are besieged by others in the dream it is not altogether clear
their actions are volitional. We infer intent to others in a dream
but if we are not ourselves agents, how can we dream that others
are acting volitionally? It may be that agency accompanies the im-
164 Jason W. Brown
age outward, as in psychotics who are passive to an hallucinatory
command. If one has no control over the events of a dream, how
can others in the dream exhibit such control? Here we are at the
boundary of purposefulness and intentionality (see below).
The dream self (see Revonsuo, 2005) differs from the waking
self as an image from a perception. The feeling of passivity to an
image shifts to a feeling of volition, and then to a fully indepen-
dent object. As the object individuates, the passive self of dream
transforms to the feeling of agency in wakefulness. The bifurca-
tion out of the self to a “detachment” of objects, and agency on
them, reflects a bias to perception or action. In the transition to
consciousness, there is also an elaboration of serial time. The
dream has no past or future. The self may resemble that of an
earlier time or a fantasy that is not temporally “tagged”. It is closer
to the imagery of waking consciousness than the unconscious but
it is not the “me” that underlies the conscious self. Unlike the self
of the dream, the “me” of the core is unknowable. The dream self
is closer to a conscious self but it lacks external objects to ground
the flow of images. The images are perceived as external and real
in the dream because there is no further exteriorization within
which they are bundled or to which they can be compared.
The recurrent imagery of dream and myth and their common
themes, symbols and modes of thought (e.g. Jung, 1928; Lévy-
Bruhl, 1985) imply the existence of unconscious archetypes. Does
the core rise out of a common ancestral pool or is the family re-
semblance in ancestral pattern driven by innate schemas active
to a varying degree in each person in the originating constructs?
The pattern suggests that the generality of the schemata adapts
to the locality of culture and experience in a journey from the
inheritance of the animal core to the uniqueness of individual
consciousness.
Without external objects, the self has a before and after, but
no past or future, no time order, no agency. The before is truly
past and no longer exists, while the past of memorial experience
is the present content of a dream. Hallucination tends to be more
vivid than waking objects. Similarly, the present of dream-imagi-
nation, in consequence of the lack of “real” objects, looms larger
than the present of ordinary wakefulness. The dream-present is
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 165
a knife-edge of change, lacking the duration that arches over suc-
cessive events in waking consciousness. The conscious present
has a revived past, or one in decay, to anchor the disparity be-
tween “memory” and “perception” that is essential to the virtual
duration of the now. The theoretical significance of the dream is
in showing how the simultaneity of the unconscious, and the be-
fore and after of the dream, anticipate the temporal order of the
world. Dream is an intermediate phase that, without a perceptual
surface, is a before and after or earlier and later, with a present
filled by, but not in relation to, a personal past.
More than in waking life, the dream self swims in a soup of
its own creation. We assume the content of dream reflects the
thoughts and feelings of the dreamer, even if we do not attribute
the character of the dream self to the core. The dream content and
the dream self are interpreted as distorted products of the psyche.
Like the dream image, the dream self is a content, not an agent
or source. Psychoanalysis depends very much on this assump-
tion. Fears, wishes and their symbolic distortions are thought to
reveal the hidden nature of the self, as participant or onlooker.
The self of the dream is equally conditioned by symbolic ances-
try. In contrast, what one consciously perceives would not appear
to tell us much, if anything, of the observer’s life. However, if the
dream self and its images are preliminary to the conscious self
and its objects, some thread of connectivity from imagination to
perception should be evident. The objects we choose to look at or
avoid are a guide to our interests and values, as is their meaning,
which is imported into objects from antecedent phases in their
formation. Creative imagery and aesthetic perception exploit this
continuum.
6.8. Self and person
To say, as Sartre did, by fiat rather than theory of mind, that a
person is the sum of his acts, ignores the zone of privacy that
underlies occasions of satisfaction. Even from the standpoint of
moral conduct the account is wanting. Though trivial, it is more
accurate to ascribe the core to a physiological ground from which
166 Jason W. Brown
the empirical self arises than to conceive it as the quantity of its
outcomes. Moreover, the person is not on immediate display. One
still has to infer the reasons, motives, feelings, conflicts, that lie
behind an act.
A person is his existence, and existence is more than action.
Existence embraces the becoming through which entities actual-
ize. Entity-formation is becoming. The category (duration) over
this formativeness is being. The objective or externalized segment
of the mental state — an act or sequence of muscular excitations
— is not the output of an assembly belt or production line. One
does not dispense with the preceding stages once the final one is
reached. Nor is an object assembled from the parts, which instead
are the result of analysis to an objective goal. An act of cognition
is an epoch with overt and covert phases, consisting of a formative
sequence of rhythmic levels constrained to “physicalize” an event.
Qualitative change in the dynamic of the act is no less part of the
act than its perceptible outcome. Similarly, the antecedent events
leading to the object are not causal phases that vanish when their
work is over, but are ingredient in the mental state of which the
object is an outcome.
We could say, a person is the sum of his states, the major por-
tion of which is inaccessible even to him. Is this like saying the
world is the sum of its states since the world began? Can we think
of the world like the mind as an overlap of epochs rather than an
accumulation of slices? To think otherwise reduces each slice to
the minimal duration of, say, a chronon (Whitrow, 1972), which
ignores the change within duration and the process it conceals.
The epoch of a state cannot be dissected to causal parts since the
“parts” exist as parts of the whole of the epoch.
The conscious self is still early in the mental state; motil-
ity, speech, objects, are later, yet the state is an indivisible whole
comprised of a totality of phases. The potential of the core, the
thoughts, feelings and images of the conscious self, the final com-
mitment in speech, action and perception, are “gathered together”
in a single traversal from tendencies or dispositions to concrete
particulars. The entire mental state is an atomic unit that includes
conduct, the inner life, and its antecedents in thought, dream and
the unconscious.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 167
6.9. Self and category
The description of states of the conscious self gives a narrative of
character and needs. The saga of a life is an irresistible tale, espe-
cially to the one who lives it. The personal history, the stacking of
episodes and their mutations, creates the category of a continu-
ous self. The repeatability of the category in overlapping pulses
(James, 1890; Brown, 2004) contributes to the self-identical nature
of personality across events. In this way the identity of a categori-
cal self is preserved over successive acts of cognition.
The relation of the “me” to the “I”, the core to the liminal
self, can also be compared to that of concept to object. A con-
cept gives rise to, and can be inferred from, the properties of an
object. Similarly, the attributes of the self are inferred from its
actions, as the properties of a horse constitute the defining fea-
tures of the concept of “horseness” The term horse makes explicit
the concept behind it, which becomes still more explicit with a
particular horse. A concept is derived from a category, ultimately
from categorical primes in the core. The self-concept, like other
concepts, incorporates experiential, perceptual and meaning rela-
tions. Concepts are richer and less factual than objects, and for the
ordinary person less real (e.g. Collingwood, 1924).
The category of the core delivers the self and conceptual feel-
ing as sub-categories. Consequent derivations are tributaries in
a categorical “structure”. Inner and outer events — thoughts and
acts/objects — are implementations of concepts that issue from
the core. Consider a table as an exemplary piece of furniture. A
lamp is in the same category (furniture) but a less familiar ex-
ample. The identity of the self is like that of a prototypical item
in a category of possible states. The habitual self recurs in this
wider category that “contains” potential archetypal (unconscious)
selves given the experiential history of the individual. The most
representative or prototypical (conscious) self is the most com-
mon derivative, or exemplar, for that individual. The habitual or
dominant self contrasts with its less familiar or atypical manifesta-
tions, as a table does with a lamp, including aggressive, romantic,
foolish, impulsive, spiritual, and other selves that are possible giv-
en the person’s capacities and experiences. The dominant self is
replaced by an atypical self at the category boundary in a state of
168 Jason W. Brown
intoxication, hypnosis, religious conversion or pathology. Should
an unfamiliar self recur at the expense of the prototypical self, it
gradually becomes an habitual mode of expression. The new self
then forms the nucleus of a novel category and can rightly be said
to be the self of a new person.
In a similar way, a peripheral member of a category (furniture)
such as a lamp can become the center of another category, such
as a source of illumination. The new category forms around the
boundary item and excludes members of the former category for
novel objects such as lightning and the sun. When the self under-
goes a radical shift, it incorporates attributes appropriate to the
new personality, retaining some vestiges of the prior self in over-
learned skills and traits of character.
6.10. Time, space and the self
Categories are not containers into which like items are placed, but
involve inter alia complex aspects of space and time. In one sense
a category can be said to be timeless, for it remains essentially
unchanged with respect to its inclusion criteria, even as novel
members are added. A new animal or plant that is discovered
or manufactured must respect the properties of membership to
remain in the category, or it will form another category at the
boundary of the old one.
While a category can be conceived as timeless, concrete ex-
istents in the category will vanish as do all particulars. However,
as tokens of those particulars, i.e. as sub-categories, they too can
be said to persist as timeless representatives of their types. If the
abstract category is timeless, the core and conscious self, as proto-
typical exemplars of the person, are conditioned on the time and
space they generate, and on which they depend. The categorical
self of a person might be construed as timeless, ideal or immortal
for those individuals whose attributes or accomplishments are re-
membered. Yet even for those innumerable others who are forgot-
ten, it is the timelessness of the category that inspires the belief
that individuals persist after death as souls, or as ideas in god’s
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 169
mind. Since the self undergoes natural and pathological change
and final extinction, it would seem that only in the realm of spirit
can it be construed as ideal or eternal.
Time and space are specified out of the core: space as objects
grow out of concepts, time as duration is incremented by events.
Time penetrates space in the virtual duration of events, space
penetrates time in the fiction of changeless existents. The unity
and tension of the temporal and spatial is the relation of the dy-
namic to the static. We also see this in the choice of an object or
event ontology (Brown, 2005a), in the contrast of duration and
instantaneity, or of change and stability.
Subjective time develops in a transition from the simultane-
ity of the core to temporal order in the world. Inwardly, time is
counted in duration, externally in increments. Temporal order
is realized as the unity of the core objectifies into the multiplic-
ity of the world. The simultaneity of duration is “unpacked” into
an event-manifold. A global pre-object distributes a succession
of perceptual events. The actualization of entities is the aim of a
unidirectional process of self-realization. In mind, self-actualiza-
tion realizes event-categories at the outer (external) pole of the
subjective.
In this temporal realization, space transforms outward over
levels on an axis from the body through the immediate surround
to an independent world. The intrapsychic space of the vegetative
life is preliminary to the extra-personal but intrapsychic, egocen-
tric space of dream, which itself is preliminary to an indepen-
dent Euclidean space of object-relations. The self cannot survive
without object-space and event-time. It rapidly degrades when
objects are lost, as in sensory deprivation or snow blindness. The
corollary of a loss of objects is a failure in self-realization. This is
striking in cases with destruction of the visual and auditory areas
of the brain, when the waking self regresses to that of dream or
psychosis (Brown, 1999). The duration required for events to be
perceived as stable objects is also the basis for the perception of
events. The persistence of an object over some minimal duration
to be perceived for what it is entails a recurrence within succes-
170 Jason W. Brown

sive nows. A tree that exists for a millisecond is not perceived at

all. Sustained recurrence creates objects, novelty in the recurrence
creates events. All objects are events in which change (recurrence)
is more or less imperceptible.

Duration is the “glue” of continuity that carves events out of

flux. Time is not a uniform flow but a replacement of changing
objects across intervals, themselves changeless, thus non-existent.
The continuity of the self, of inner and outer, and the recognition
of sameness or difference, owes to the overlap in a succession of
present moments. Specifically, the overlap of the present (now) in
the replacement of a categorical self and its objects is the basis for
the near-identity of recurrences. The scenario of incessant change
with relative stability of inner and outer is comprehensible in
terms of categories sufficiently flexible to accommodate deviance
and sufficiently habitual to cancel brief atypical replications.
 Chapter 7
Solipsism and Other Minds

“We are still a long way from understanding

what it signifies that nothing has any existence unless
some small and oh, so transitory — consciousness has become
aware of it.”
Carl G. Jung (1961)

7.1. The case for solipsism

Solipsism is an extreme form of idealism in which the self or indi-
vidual mind is the whole of reality for the person, and the world
including the brain has no independent existence apart from its
mental representation. This position, referred to as physical nihil-
ism, of which there are several variants, is the logical conclusion
of an idealist framework in which the self can only know the inner
and outer contents of its mind. More precisely, only the conscious
focus is known, since unconscious or pre-conscious contents and
the unattended portion of the conscious field, as well as the cat-
egories and processes through which mind develops, are outside
this focus and do not exist for the individual. Solipsism maintains
the non-existence of a world outside personal mind, as well as the
non-existence of prior, as well as generative and fringe states of
the self and its world, indeed, all experience not in present con-
sciousness.

This would mean that the whole of a person’s mind and large
portions of personal experience and memory are non-existent un-
til they become conscious. While mental contents come and go in
consciousness, in a strict formulation of the theory, unconscious
events outside the conscious focus do not exist. This implies that
my kitchen table exists and does not exist according to my con-
sciousness of it at a given instant, indeed, that the self of this mo-
ment passes in and out of existence over intervals of dreamless
sleep. These difficulties arise in the tension of psychic objects with
material entities, or in the need for a self-identical personality and
174 Jason W. Brown
object-permanence when the flux of the mental life is posited
against the assumed substantiality of the physical world.
Naturally, past, future and material entities are implied in pres-
ent-consciousness. Events in the present that are unconscious or
incipiently conscious must also be implicit for the present to exist.
Every psychic experience is surmised to rest on a micro-temporal
process in which previous and ongoing events account for object
continuity and identity. The perception of a table entails implicit
knowledge of the object-concept for its recognition. A self does
not exist without the beliefs, values and traits of character or per-
sonality that make it what it is. Unconscious categories and prior
experience are incorporated implicitly in the momentary state.
The fact that an object exists at the instant of its perception rests
on a multitude of implicit events or dispositions of which only the
outer shell is evident.
The existence of objects in consciousness is not consciousness
of existing objects. In the more extreme claims of solipsism, in
which all that is exists in conscious experience, the paradox of liv-
ing in a subjective world is that knowledge limited to the psyche is
the cost of the ability to experience it. Only conscious objects have
immediate psychic existence. This begs the question of what it
means for psychic objects to exist. Do thoughts, dreams, fantasies
exist? Does every passing image exist? Could one say, the thought
of a unicorn exists even if what it refers to does not? Is this an
existence of the thought, the reference or the neural process it
presupposes? If the latter, existence applies to the inferred sub-
strate of a thought, i.e. the brain, rather than the thought, which is
inconsistent with solipsism, and comparable to the existence of a
material world, but not its mirror in mental objects.
The irony is that existence is claimed for an illusory world of
psychic experience and non-existence for the “real” world of exter-
nal entities, except as they fall within the field of perception. If we
deny the existence of mental objects, or claim that the mental is il-
lusory, on what grounds are material entities inferred? If the chair
before me is phenomenal — like a waking dream — how can a real
chair be inferred from its subjective image? The (presumed) sub-
stantiality of material entities is vitiated by their inferential status.
What reality corresponds to a specific image? Some images have
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 175
physical referents, others do not, though the direct knowledge of
psychic objects compensates for their phenomenal quality, even
if the greater part of this knowledge is unconscious. Another dif-
ficulty is that sanity is incompatible with a felt appreciation of the
psyche in objects.
If things exist only in ongoing consciousness, the nature of
present-consciousness is important. If the posterior boundary of
the present is an indiscernible fringe of a prior mental state in
decay, the present that encloses consciousness of self and objects
cannot be directly apprehended, much less seized on as direct
experience. We can experience events in the present but not the
present independent of events. Without events, there is no pres-
ent, the present being as much a creation of events as a “contain-
er” for them. The appearance of events in present-consciousness
is fundamental. Santayana (p. 14, 1923) wrote that “any solipsism
which is not a solipsism of the present moment is logically con-
temptible”. If existence applies to the objects of consciousness,
dreams and waking hallucinations can be said to exist, unlike un-
attended kitchen tables that do not exist until they are perceived
or thought about. The implication is that an appearance exists
while physical reality is imaginary, or that appearance is more real
than the physical events it portrays, or that to exist and to be real
are different states of affairs.
Cognitive studies distinguish the contents of mental states or
representations, or the relation of subject to representation, or of
representation to external object, e.g. “organism/environment
transactions” (Fodor, 1981). Such terms conceal an epistemology
that is thrown about incautiously, promoting an agenda in which
representations are manipulated by rules. But whether or not op-
erations on representations are psychologically real has little to do
with whether the perceived world is real. The construal that only
psychological states of intrinsic meaning are solipsistic ignores
the denotative meaning of external objects. It is mainly the exis-
tence of objects “outside the head” that is in question. Were the
solipsist to claim that only conscious intra-psychic events exist,
while external events of which the self is conscious do not, the
position would be incoherent. The reciprocal claim that external
objects exist while internal ones do not, is unacceptable but not
176 Jason W. Brown
incoherent. In spite of the break from concept to object, solipsism
entails that knowledge is not limited to concepts, but applies to
objects in the world, or that the transition from concept to object
is continuous.
Along these lines, the attempt to distinguish a computational
from a naturalistic psychology does not venture far from a com-
mon materialist base. To paraphrase Hans Jonas, because the
lifeless is now the knowable, it has become the true and only
foundation of reality. Life and mind are assumed to evolve out
of the dead universe of materialism. Yet unlike machine models,
biological theory has the potential to enlarge evolutionary natu-
ralism to incorporate a process dynamic that transforms the enti-
ties of materialism to a fuller conception of mind. The seeds of
the psychic are in physical entities at the most elementary level.
Foster (1994) put this well when he wrote that, “the idealist is not
committed to saying that there is no fundamental reality external
to the human mind. All he is committed to saying is that if there
is such a reality, it is not itself physical and only contributes to the
existence of the physical world through its actual and potential
influence on human experience.”
7.2. Knowledge of reality
Jung (1961) followed Kant in writing that, “…we are hopelessly
cooped up in an exclusively psychic world” though, like Kant, he
did not deny the existence of a noumenal or extra-psychic real-
ity. Inner and outer objects are a window to the real world, the
existence of which, were it demonstrable without psychic color-
ation, would still not refute the solipsistic premiss that we can
only know, directly, the contents of the present state. We may be
confined to psychic experience but knowledge and existence are
dissociable concepts. The existence of the objects of direct knowl-
edge can be split off from the presumed non-existence of things
indirectly known.
The problem of existence is tangential to the position that
only the self and the objects of present consciousness are directly
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 177
knowable. The direct knowledge of a thing is not equivalent to its
existence. We perceive and have immediate knowledge of sticks
bent in water and rainbows, which we do not think exist in the
way we perceive them, or in the manner of perceived tables. We
know, even if we do not perceive it to be the case, that sticks do
not bend in water, and we know that rainbows do not have mind-
independent physical correlates, such as we postulate for tables.
Conversely, while our knowledge of physical entities such as pri-
ons or sonar is indirect, they have a greater claim on existence
than a rainbow or bent stick in water. Yet, some personal images
such as spirits or ghosts, dreams and the objects of a delusional
consciousness, exist for the individual more vividly than shared
perceptions.
The argument that the directly perceived exists and the infer-
ential does not is unsustainable since even the directly perceived
follows a temporal lag, i.e. there is no direct perception. Moreover,
the present and its contents are supported by a host of implicit
processes without which they too cannot exist. The immediate
past must in some sense exist to explain the momentary pres-
ent. A perceived effect implies a prior cause, even if the cause
is a memory that does not exist outside present consciousness.
Similarly, a perceived cause that implies a future effect has no
meaning unless the not-yet-existing effect in some sense exists.
If I drop a ball, barring an intervening event it will impact on the
ground. If I die or faint before the ball hits the ground, for solip-
sism there would be no impact, as if I were to wake up from a
dream of a falling ball.
The central question concerns the nature of existence. Does it
differ for psychic and physical events? Does the immediate knowl-
edge of the mental, or access to it, have a greater claim on reality
than an indirect knowledge of its sources, causes or antecedents?
Does a passing thought, a mood, a dream or an illusion, have the
same quality of existence as a concept, a word or a perceptual
object? Do mental phenomena exist in the usual sense of self-suf-
ficiency and permanence as physical entities, or is their existence
dependent on the inferred brain activity with which the psychic is
correlated? That knowledge of mental contents differs according
to the conscious state does not readily translate to a difference in
178 Jason W. Brown
existence. Some phenomena appear more real than others, but
greater realness is not equivalent to greater existence; indeed, re-
alness admits of degrees, but reality and existence do not.
The adequacy of a perception to the entities it represents is
inferred from its adaptation, which is tested by action. Survival
alone is evidence that a physical world exists, in that objects are
shaped as copies of real entities. Life cannot be supported in a
psychic world that is indifferent to a real one. The reality (not real-
ness) of an image owes to the sensory data that delimit it to a
model of reality. This does not mean that the solipsist who jumps
to avoid an on-coming car must, in the action, renounce his belief
in a psychic world. The perception of the car has so adapted to its
inferred reality that the realness of the image is no less compelling
than if it were a material entity. A threatening image is avoided
whether or not it models a physical entity. We are frightened by
hallucinations and dreams because we infer, implicitly, that they
correspond to (are) something real. The difference between hal-
lucination and object perception is that while perception no less
than hallucination is fully endogenous, unlike hallucination, per-
ception is shaped by sense data. The perception models what is
“out there”. The psychotic reacts to hallucinations as normal sub-
jects do to perceptions, only more strongly, regardless of whether
or not they are “real”, i.e. map to a physical world. The ability to
distinguish a mental image from a perception, or to transform an
image to a perception, is critical to survival.
The veridicality of a perception is evidence for a physical world
to which acts and objects adapt, and to which they correspond.
The existence of a present in a “real” world points to a physical
reality to which the present has adapted. The objects of the pres-
ent are like successful organisms in evolution. They fit a niche
in the environment. A veridical perception is the outcome of a
micro-evolutionary process of perceptual fitness. Acts and objects
— James might say — are the outcomes of pragmatic (adaptive)
beliefs as in the animal faith of Santayana. The belief in a shared
world and the reality of others in that world, though not givens,
are adaptive strategies, the precursors of which are “wired” into
our brains.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 179
Implicit beliefs become explicit in psychopathology when
the supports of an external world are no longer tacitly accepted.
Pathology exposes the psychic underpinnings of a community of
shared beliefs. The psychotic feels privy to the thoughts of others,
and believes others can read his thoughts. The consciousness of
mind in others that is implicit in everyday discourse becomes ex-
plicit and emphatic, and the individual is vulnerable to lose what
hitherto he had not even thought about. To become conscious of
what was previously automatic brings the phenomenon into focus.
It also exposes the fragility of the world and how easily it decom-
poses. The person recognizes — or the experience is a reminder
— that mind as feeling accompanies the other in a migration out-
ward from self. The conveyance of personal mind into others is
acutely felt in its withdrawal, e.g. when the psychotic believes he
knows the thoughts of others. The belief that one can know what
others are thinking in psychotic or delusional cases is the coming-
into-consciousness of the buried flow of mind outward, that moves
into, and creates others, out of the self, i.e. others and other minds
are self-creations. In contrast to ordinary intuition, there is a felt
recognition that external mind is not external and exclusive to the
other, but is conveyed into the other from the self. The individual
feels that other minds are bound up with their perception, or that
other minds are as much a product of the self as other bodies.
This inference becomes emphatic when the animating spirit of
the other is threatened with loss. In depersonalization, the other
is perceived as a mindless puppet or mannequin. The withdrawal
of psyche (feeling) from objects is the first stage in a regression
back through the object-formation, from object (feeling, value) to
antecedent concept (desire, wish).
The other is an object and a process. The objective portion is
an externalized concept that flows out of the self. The processual
portion is the feeling that accompanies this externalization. This is
a becoming into being. From the standpoint of the self, the mind
of the other is elaborated on the feeling that flows into and invests
it. Feeling does not just animate objects; it is the basis of their ex-
istence and realness. The other, as an inferred physical entity, has
a separate life of feeling, which in compassion, anger or love, en-
livens the self. But from the self’s perspective, feeling transported
outward in perception actualizes the other and is the affect-founda-
180 Jason W. Brown
tion of the mind in the other on which conceptuality develops. The
other, as object and feeling, is derived from the conceptual feeling
generated by the self. In the primitive response, in the drives, in
pursuit, in fear or in love, we become aware of the shared feeling
that underlies subject and object, later self and other.15
An explanation for the psychotic perception of a depersonal-
ized other is that constraints on the distal portion of the object-
formation that shape the perception permit the object to be
seen as it is, but a brief retardation in the surge to definiteness
permits a mentality that is ordinarily submerged in this develop-
ment to become prominent. The external object is no longer felt
as detached but retains the mentality of its immediate ancestry.
The importance of psychosis is that it displays, in the suffering
of the afflicted, the true nature of mind. The onset of object- or
reality-loss, i.e. de-realization, with loss of feeling in the other, i.e.
de-personalization, may reflect the impact of a brief slowing (neo-
teny) at proximal segments in the object-formation. The adequate
perception of object form reflects the shaping-effect of sensory
constraints on the distal segment. Put differently, neoteny early
in the perceptual process (Brown, 1994) exposes phases of object-
meaning and accentuated thought-content, while constraints at
later phases drive the object to veridicality. The object is seen as
it is, but it is laden with meaning and drained of affect. The other
does not become inanimate like a tree, for even a tree is emptied
of feeling and deprived of realness. Once the realness of objects is
lost, even inanimate ones, the object becomes image-like and the
person begins to doubt its reality or existence.
Griffen (1989) writes, “… in conscious sensory perception the
emotional nature of the datum is largely lost. In seeing the tree
before me, for example, I have a clear idea of the image of the tree
15
The varied forms that feeling can take in desire, value, esteem, worth and so
on, and the relation to animate and inanimate objects and the evolutionary stage
of the organism, are discussed in Brown (2005). The energic process in all enti-
ties, from electrons to minds, traces a subjective path to an actuality that perishes
as an object for an ensuing occasion, whether the fraction of a second in the hu-
man mind or a billionth of a second for a sub-atomic particle (Griffin, 1989). This
process, which is the Creativity of Whitehead, the energy or feeling that flows
through and creates all things, evolves to the higher feelings of developed organ-
isms.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 181
but no feeling of any feelings enjoyed by the tree itself. This leads
me to, in Buber’s terms, a purely I-It relation to the tree”. While
there are those who are sensitive to the numinous quality of ordi-
nary things, this reflects the common attitude. For most people,
the affective tonality of a tree is left behind in its journey outward.
The tree exteriorizes the conceptual feeling of the observer but
for most observers, the concept is dominant and the object is per-
ceived as naked of intrinsic feeling. We sense this latent feeling
in the beauty of the tree, or in the feeling of the sublime. As with
trees, objects such as jewelry and clothing can be felt to have in-
trinsic value. Many people would be confused if asked whether a
jewel is intrinsically beautiful or valuable, or if its beauty and value
are attributes applied by the observer.16
In psychosis, the other recedes to its origins in the self.
Conversely, the self is felt to participate in the mind of the other,
which is no longer independent. Psychosis is the grief that comes
of true knowledge of the nature of things. Implicit phenomena
that normally pass unnoticed come to the fore. There is erosion
of instinctual feeling, loss of conviction in the realness of ordinary
experience, a conceptuality of the external and an objectification
of the conceptual, all of which are part of the true knowledge —
and horror — that the boundaries of mind and world are inexact.
The nature of our knowledge of mind in others is a topic of de-
bate in philosophy, but this awareness is tacitly in the background
of everyday discourse and behavior, only becoming explicit when
feeling in the other is removed. The retreat from other into self
awakens the individual to the loss of what hitherto had not even
been thought about. To become conscious of the automatic is to
bring the phenomenon into focus. The loss of an affective life in
others in the inward descent of feeling is a loss of their individuality
and realness. This alteration precedes or is the first stage of object-
loss. In this respect, it exposes the fragility of the world and how
easily it can decompose. The person also intuits that in the normal
16
Color may be intermediary. We feel the color red. It is a perception but closer
to feeling than its object. Since object boundaries are boundaries of hue, color
may signal the conceptual feeling that anticipates the object. In cortical blind-
ness, color returns, e.g. as a diffuse perception of redness, prior to objects.
182 Jason W. Brown
state, mind as feeling accompanies the other in an outward migra-
tion from the self. The withdrawal of feeling as the initial stage in
a passage down the object-formation, from value (realness) in the
other to desire (wish) in the self, elicits the image of a self as the
core of an orange gazing at the peel, with mind and world a “space
capsule” of personal imagery. As Whitehead (PR 45) wrote, “the
percipient occasion is its own standard of actuality”.
7.3. The grounds of solipsism
In its most extreme expression, that only the thoughts and objects
of the conscious self exist, solipsism is a clash of common sense
with speculative reason. In the less extreme form that we know
the objects of consciousness directly and those of physical nature
indirectly, the theory is less objectionable, though many are un-
comfortable with this formulation and seek a way out of what is
conceded to be logically coherent theory. If solipsism is tied to the
objects of consciousness, the notion, expressed by Santayana, that
it may characterize the mind of many animals misses the point
that the insularity of consciousness is the price of the individua-
tion necessary to its realization. Solipsism is the understanding,
following James and Whitehead, that we live in a drop or pulse
of conscious experience, and that this pulsation leads from the
general or uniform to the precise and specific, to an end-point
of progressive individuation that begins with the separation of
subject and object. The difficulty arises in the opposition of self
to world, even if one argues that the self is the outcome of an
individuation that traces to a ground of experiential relations in
which all potential others are embedded. The recognition of this
ground as the common source of individuality may be an antidote
to the solipsistic dilemma, but it lies beneath the individuation
that makes solipsism a problem.
There is a sense in which psychic confinement represents loss
of freedom, or that true freedom can ultimately break through the
veil of an imaginary world. The solipsistic quandary is largely re-
lated to perception and the receptiveness that accompanies lack
of agency. Hallucination and dream come unbidden. The world is
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 183
given to us as a manifestation of the self. Self and world are center
and periphery of an act of self-realization. Action is known largely
by its representation in perception. However, unlike perception,
which is a witness to change, action brings change about. In this
way, in making contact with others, it is a bridge to decisiveness.
In altering the world, action makes it real.
Freedom and effectuation seem to rupture the psychic bub-
ble. But a consciousness that is active or intentional implies the
recognition of limitations, not unfettered freedom, and the first
limitation is the shaping of perception to a verisimilitude that
trumps the unrestrained imagination. Action specifies one ac-
tuality among others. The world of perception is what remains
after reality carves up possibility. The numbing familiarity of the
world seems to impinge on the observer, who feels detached from
his own objects. In dream, though we are passive to images, we
are astonished by what we create. Without agency, the waking or
dreaming self is helpless to the products of its own imagination.
Agency is a phase of choice in the transition from dream to
object, from symbol to concept, from inner to outer, from the
fantastic to the real. Choice is the novelty in a consciousness that
strives to definiteness. It is positioned where the free-play of the
psyche conforms to the causal impersonality of the world. The si-
multaneity and thickness of dream confront the contingency and
serial order of wakefulness. Every act is conditioned by a past that
delivers novel possibilities, not settled facts. Novelty begins with
a deviation in replication or an inaccuracy in recall. Memory is
not exact repetition. Even an eidetic with “photographic memory”
has a mental image in recall, not an object. Thought is memory
to the degree it is reproductive; memory is thought to the extent
it brings forth new material. Memory is not merely incomplete;
it undergoes transformation (Betlheim and Hartmann, 1951).
Memories are re-shaped in the present, in the growth, decay and
assimilation of ancestral forms as they encounter sensory data.
The immutability of the past is an abstraction. To a greater or
lesser extent, the past conforms to the present as it is realized.
An implicit past is the major part of the present. In dream this is
especially apparent when the propagation of affective and sym-
184 Jason W. Brown
bolic forms actualizes categories that, in wakefulness, are shaped
to veridical objects.
For some, findings in microphysics suggest that choice is the
consciousness of a window into alternate universes of a multiplic-
ity of possible selves. Some have claimed that phenomena such as
déjà vu are intimations of divergent lines of existence. For such ac-
counts, the universe remains solipsistic, but each self and its world
are multiplied indefinitely, with all possible choices conceived as
copies of selves that follow a separate life path. Each instant the
psychic bubble partitions to a multitude of other selves, which
then fractionate to a manifold of similarly insular minds. This way
of thinking is compatible with microgenetic theory though not
necessitated by it.
The microgenetic concept of phase-transitions that re-actual-
ize self and world in epochs locates change in the laying down
of momentary states. The theory provides neuropsychological
detail to an idealist conception of overlapping surges of conscious
experience. Each transition creates a world. Between transitions,
timeless gaps — virtual intervals — are the potential domicile of in-
numerable non-penetrating universes (Rees, 2000). It is one thing
to hypothesize replications of the mind/brain each fraction of a
second, and quite another to suppose that the unrealized choices
in each replication multiply to billions of other lives in as many
alternate universes. This is an extreme of solipsism in which each
self and self-specific consciousness think up a separate universe
that otherwise would not exist. In contrast to microgenesis, per-
sonal reality would be unconditioned by the choices of others,
who are little more than simulacra that come and go in psychic
time and space.
Either the outside world exists or it does not. If it exists, and if
the act of observation occasions the existence of an object, the in-
determinateness of physical process would materialize an object
in consciousness as a definite outcome. For example, if perceiving
a chair creates the chair, the wave-like flux of an unobserved chair
is transformed in perception to a particle-like substance one can
sit on. The dynamic possibilities in the career of a chair crystal-
lize to a palpable solid in the perceptual imagination. If mind is
an engine of category-formation, in which being is created by the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 185
processual dynamic, and the feeling of reality is guaranteed by
cross-modal coherence, in dream as in waking, physical entities
might well become mental solids in the act of their perception.
The theory holds that all entities including the brain are becom-
ings-into-being, dynamic in their actualization and substantive in
their actuality.
The micro-temporal recurrence from core to surface in the
actualization of the mental state and the shift from unconscious
to conscious perception or from dream to wakefulness, and the
reverse, the retreat back to the self and its antecedents in creative
and mystical states (Chapter 12), is an evolutionary model of the
mind in which abundance is trimmed to precision. The coherence
of the account depends on the impress of an inferential reality
in relation to which the mind is a model or representation. This
coherence is itself a powerful argument for the existence of real-
ity, not to mention that not even in the wildest dream could one
create a world of such surprise and complexity. Searle (1980) has
written, “It is the operation of the brain and not the impact of the
outside world that matters for the content of our internal states.”
However, cutting all sensory input in animals results in loss of
awareness. The free operation of the human brain deprived of
sensory data from the outside world, e.g. in sensory-deprivation
studies, results in dream-like, even psychotic, states. Without sen-
sation, mind would not develop at all, and dream, should it occur,
would be devoid of imagery. The question for solipsism is not the
existence of a world beyond the psyche or the encapsulation of
a mind through which a world is imagined, but the way mind is
shaped by sensation and the true nature of reality outside of psy-
chic experience.
186 Jason W. Brown
7.4. From here, where?
The case for solipsism is an example of philosophy arguing the
self-evident. Yet for those seeking a crack in the psychic module,
i.e. to escape the fate of even a neutral17 solipsism, there would
seem to be (at least) two possibilities. The first involves grasping an
externality that is antecedent to individuality, both in the growth
of mind and its momentary realization. In ceding the perceptible
world and withdrawing to a ground of primitive engagement, one
finds au fond an underlying commonalty with the precursors of
those objects to which one formerly was a spectator. This is the
absolute or ultimate ground of things, what Sprigge has called the
“deep ground of connectedness”. In the language of physics, it
conforms to the implicate order of Bohm and Hiley (1993).
When such relatedness occurs with full absorption and aboli-
tion of self and a disappearance of concepts and psychic bound-
aries, the knowledge of the true nature of individual mind, as
Schiller wrote, is a kind of death from which a return to life and
consciousness is possible. Conceivably, the loss of self is equiva-
lent to animal mind at one with its Umwelt, though a deliberate
retreat to passivity accompanied by a mode of awareness that
can be transported back to consciousness, even if it remains in-
effable, might distinguish the oneness of human descent from
the minds of lower organisms. The metaphysical relatedness that
underlies the contrasts, dissociations and analyses of conscious
thought is a oneness that nullifies individuality, small consolation
for avoiding solipsism. An escape from solipsism that abandons
consciousness is less a refuge from autonomy than an affirmation
that consciousness is an iron-clad cage. To lose the self for union
with the extra-psychic is to achieve a cure by eliminating an illness
but in this case the malady is consciousness, and the retreat to an
objectless non-self, a state of existence unified with the physical
surround, is an abdication of personhood. It is the emptiness of a
death-like state, or a dreamless sleep, in exchange for an illusion
that is a shroud of the unreal. In the depths of the unconscious,
17
A neutral solipsism, unlike an extreme form, accepts insularity but does not
deny the existence of an extra-psychic reality; indeed, it presumes an external
world as the basis for its illusory representation.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 187
embryonic mind is part of the process of nature that is modeled
in waking consciousness.
Thought, self and perception originate in a deeper mutuality,
such that progressive individuation and a movement to autonomy
reinforce the solipsistic impulse in life and thought. Unless the
problem is evaded by direct or naïve realism — justly naïve for
there is overwhelming evidence that perception is indirect — so-
lipsism is an unavoidable byproduct of the capacity of selves to
think and act. The lament that in spite of our social bonds with
others, we live and die alone is a deep philosophical truth trans-
muted to a common emotion. It is little wonder that the alienation
of autonomy is a driving force behind the universal search for in-
timacy and contact.
A second path involves a monism at all phases in the brain
state. On this view, mind and brain are manifestations of a funda-
mental process that flows through all reality, an all-in-all of mind
and nature. This path takes a different route to the same relation-
ality as the prior option. The mental state is one with the brain
state, which in turn is grounded in natural process. Brain activity
is second-hand knowledge filtered through the psyche. There is
little distance between the immediacy of thought and feeling and
the subjectivity of the objects that are felt and thought about. The
gap is from mind and its objects to the physical process they ex-
emplify. A reduction of mind to brain is merely a replacement of
subjective experience by its objectified contents.
If we keep in mind that the identification of the mental state
with the brain state does not apply just to its vegetative core but
to every phase in transition, i.e. that mental activity is mediated
by neocortex as well as by brain stem, a retreat to the core is not
a closer approach to the physical than an absorption with the
neural correlates of the final object. The only difference is that,
in the former, the dissolution of consciousness results in a loss
of knowledge of the encapsulation of psyche. If the mental state
arises in rhythmic oscillators in hypothalamus or upper brain
stem as a complexly individuated portion of natural process, i.e.
a physiological node in the absolute, further individuation would
not distance consciousness from nature, but only elaborate a
consciousness that apprehends the distance it has created. The
188 Jason W. Brown
correlates of organism that lead from immersion to refinement or
from unconscious integration to conscious autonomy are bound
to physical process at every phase.
Like the leaves of a tree, objects in the mind are no less part
of nature than the root. As the root is the origin and source of the
canopy, conscious mind develops out of an unconscious that, like
the root, seems embedded in nature while the leaves, like ideas,
seem to ascend heavenward in abandon. The transition from un-
conscious core to conscious surface is not a journey from nature
to mind, but from unconscious mind to conscious nature. If the
onset of the state in the physiological unconscious seems to have
a proximity to non-conscious nature, so too does its conscious
termination in the objects of the world. The mid-segment of the
process is associated with the conscious self as a unique psychic
phenomenon that apprehends the sources, outcomes and choic-
es — the posterior unconscious and the anterior world — from a
midway point in this transition.
The whole-to-part pattern of the process is, for me, reminiscent
of arguments by Whitehead and Santayana (Sprigge, 1974) that
“the nature of a particular thing consists wholly in the universals
which it exemplifies (and therefore cannot contain intrinsic refer-
ence to any other particular things)”. The universal is the back-
ground of its exemplifications and conveys into them its essence,
i.e. the particulars convey or express the ‘stuff” of the universals
they instantiate, and do not relate to other particulars by way of
internal relations. Like the arbor of a tree, particulars in the mind
seem to reach out into space from a buried core of connected-
ness; but the transition in process monism from root to leaf, from
core to object, or from generality to individuality, points to differ-
ing manifestations of the physical patterns that underlie material
entities and psychic phenomena.
In mapping the microgenetic model of the mind/brain to
cerebral infrastructure, one might suppose that a universal cor-
responds with the potential of a core and a particular with its
realization at the cortical surface. If the mental state collapses
without remainder to the brain state, how are we to characterize
universals other than as ancestral categories from which sub-cat-
egories (particulars) of greater specificity emanate? The universal
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 189
is a categorical prime antecedent to its exemplifications, either to
sub-categories or concrete facts, which are categories that actual-
ize objects. We think of ideals as the conscious goals toward which
we are striving. But if ideals play a role in mental life they must be
coordinate with the categorical primes that enfold and generate
their exemplifications. The particulars realize and exhaust the po-
tential subsumed in the universal as approximations to an ideal.
If we strive for beauty or loyalty, these values generate the striv-
ing, while the acts to which they lead are their exemplifications.
The ideal or universal is not before us beckoning us onward but
behind or within us pressing us forward. Thus, particulars satisfy
ideals but do not achieve them. The relation of ideal or universal
to particular or exemplification is that of potential to actual, of
concept to object, or idea to implementation. This way of thinking
informs an account of intentionality as the trajectory of an act of
thought over its temporal extensibility.
The brain is an organism of extraordinary complexity, a com-
plexity that does not increase to allow for cognitive advance but
is generated by a progression to greater articulation combined
with expansion of antecedent form, i.e. the growth of parts out
of wholes. The adaptation drives the complexity necessary for its
realization, not the reverse. An increase in complexity without
pattern does not account for novel formations. The challenge of
an evolutionary materialism is not to reduce the complexity of
mind and behavior to physical cause and effect but to enlarge the
scope of a process-based materialism as a foundation for increas-
ing complexity.
The thesis of process monism is that mind and brain emanate
from a universal process of evolutionary change. Brain activity
underlying mental events is generated by patterns continuous
with those in evolution. The population dynamic of evolution is
replicated in the pattern of individual cognition. In evolutionary
advance, the mind/brain articulates categories that fit and adapt
to, and thus are determined or shaped by, a given physical reality.
The concept of evolution is not just a theory; it is a pre-condition of
all theory in physics, biology, cognition and theology. The transi-
tion from pre-atomic, to atomic, to molecular and more complex
unities corresponds with the transition from energy to simple
190 Jason W. Brown
feelings, tropisms, drives and, eventually, consciousness and in-
tentionality. The evolutionary pattern is apparent at all stages and
in all spheres of physical and psychic activity.
7.5. Solipsism and reality
The logic of solipsism contradicts the ordinary belief that exter-
nal reality is identical with the facts of perception, and that we
interact with objects and others in a mind-independent world.
The argument that we are locked in a mental chamber, perceiving
and acting on our own mental images challenges the ingrained
belief that the outside world exists much as we perceive it, that
it continues to exist during sleep and will continue long after we
are gone. It is said that one ought not deny in philosophy what
is affirmed in the heart, but the claims of idealism and the rep-
resentational theory of the mind go against the common sense
presumption of direct perception and a world of real objects. An
extreme solipsism — not the neutral form — asks us to deny the
belief that we act on, perceive and engage a world of real physical
entities. Such beliefs are acts of faith that trace to mechanisms
related to survival, which are then conditioned by early-acquired
values, dispositions and the inheritance of the drives.
One should not confuse illusion with delusion. We may be
deluded in thinking that an illusory world is real, but the illusion
of the world is not itself a delusion, only the belief in its reality. In
the dream of an ordinary life we are in the grip of many illusions
that we take as established facts (Vaihinger, 1924; Brown, 2004).
Illusion refers to appearance, or to the non-real or non-physical. It
can also apply to indirect knowledge of the world. Even a perfect
adaptation — because it is pruned to fitness — is not a substitute
for the real but a Rorschach or negative of the entity to which it
refers. Illusion is often contrasted with truth; but a deeper truth
can be missed when truth is conceived as pragmatic or empirical
utility in adaptation (James). One should not think of illusion only
as distortion, though it may be, or as error or false perception,
which is also a definition, but as a point of limitation. The truths
of psychic experience may correspond to those of physical real-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 191
ity, but all we can know is whether experience fits the subjective
ecology in which it occurs; in theory, in the environment or in a
scientific model. We know this by adaptive success, i.e. survival,
not by correspondence.
The gap from psychic representation to physical reality is a zone
of mystery that is the ground of creativity and religious imagina-
tion. Spirit flourishes in the shadow of the real. There will always be
incompleteness in scientific truth, since the psychic only approxi-
mates the real. The deepest aesthetic is not the creativity within
this virtual space but an uncovering of its laws. Whitehead (1933)
wrote, “the type of truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is
a discovery and not a recapitulation.” This stretch leads from con-
cepts to the reality toward which they are groping. The gap from
dream to perception is like that from perception to the real. The
limit of what is knowable has dream and the unconscious on one
side and noumenal reality on the other. Unconscious precursors
of conscious objects are infused with feeling and imagination, but
the real is always one step beyond our reach.
Soul and other forms of spirit are not of mind or matter. They
may be conceived as products of the imagination or as real enti-
ties in nature, but in truth they inhabit a nether world between
the cognitive and the physical. The belief in spirits is not to be
dismissed as superstitious thinking that will fade as scientific data
accumulates. The persistence of such beliefs in spite of scientific
advance is a sign that materialism has not absorbed the full im-
pact of an evolutionary continuity of form. Uncertainty as to the
existence or exact nature of the real is the lure of scientific effort,
but it also adds numinous quality to the cycle of personal exis-
tence.
7.6. Other minds
The logic and consequence of solipsism imply an inability to know
the external world; they do not exclude the presumption that an
external world exists. The postulate that only immediate thought
and perception are knowable, or the claim that to exist is to be per-
192 Jason W. Brown
ceived, asserts that only occurrent thought and perception exist
and that reality is an idea in the mind (Berkeley). The conclusion
that the observed world is psychic does not strike down indirect
knowledge of the physical nor lead to the isolation of self and the
annihilation of others. A neutral solipsism accepts that knowledge
of the physical world is inferential, or rather substitutive, in that
veridical objects or concepts stand for real entities, since objects in
normal perception mirror physical entities. It can be argued that
as the physical is modeled in the psychic, the psychic is modeled
in the physical; i.e. physical entities have psychic or proto-psychic
properties. The psychic veil that obscures a vision of the physical
is then the source of a panpsychism in metaphysical speculation.
We assume or are conscious of the fact that mind is present in
others. In the perceptions of psychotics, people without a mind
are automatons. This implies that automatons are perceived di-
rectly, whereas minds are inferred, say by analogy with our own.
The existence of another person is comparable to that of any ob-
ject, but the existence of a mind in that person is presumed to be
secondary. An inference is involved in philosophical accounts or
uncertain cases such as whether a computer can be said to have a
mind. In everyday life, this is less an inference than an implicit act
of faith that depends not on reason but on “coping mechanisms”
that arise in the animal inheritance. The belief in an external
world is an example of what Santayana called animal faith. The
belief in god is an example of human faith. Many acquired beliefs
such as those of religion, depend on primitive modes of thought,
e.g. animism, that develop on an instinctual basis.
Innate belief in the existence of the world underlies the belief
in other minds, which depends on or is secondary to the belief in
an external world. First, there is the reality of other people, then
other minds. Animal faith includes the implicit belief that other
objects exist. Human faith includes the implicit (and explicit)
belief that other minds exist. The belief in other minds probably
develops out of primate social behavior, in which “intentions”
are read off facial expressions and other gestures. Psychologists
claim this inference appears in children around age 5, but my son
Ilya, at 3, liked to tease other people. Teasing in a child suggests a
“theory” of mind. The belief in other minds is probably allied to
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 193
the belief in spirits, ghosts, demons and gods, most of which do
not inhabit bodies. If the belief in spirits is an accentuation, exten-
sion or precursor of the belief in other minds, a belief in other
minds may not be predicated on the existence of other people.
Put differently, we assume a person is required before a mind can
be inferred, but the common belief in spirits indicates that it is not
necessary to have a body (or any substrate) to infer a mind.
Malcolm (1958) wrote that a rigorous solipsism ought to hold
that the thought there is “thinking or pain other than my own is
unintelligible”. A solipsism of this type is autistic or psychotic. The
argument that we cannot know the external world does not imply
its non-existence. Indeed, it insures this fact as an explanation of
the sources of individual mind. Thought is trial action. We hypoth-
esize all sorts of imaginary objects, scenarios, and n-dimensional
spaces, constantly testing the reality of the imperceptible.
When psychic experience does not conform to the physical
world, survival is in danger. Pain misidentified or mislabeled is as
dangerous as the misidentification of a snake. As a signal of inter-
nal or external danger, pain leads to adaptive behavior: external
pain to avoidance and action; internal pain to immobility. Malcolm
wrote that correct and incorrect have no application to inner iden-
tification. It is true that a judgment of the truth of an internal state
is not the currency on which the state is decided, but someone
who confuses pain and hunger would not survive unattended.
Children with congenital insensitivity to pain must be carefully
watched. The argument (of Malcolm, after Wittgenstein) rests on
an external standard, but the “external standard” is coping and
survival. The only “standard” is successful adaptation when the
maladaptive has been eliminated.
Wittgenstein’s critique hinges less on the existence, than the
inability to guarantee the correctness of, inner states. Inner states
do not have a character sufficient for assessment until they ex-
ternalize. Is this mere consensus, and if so, is consensus not the
same problem multiplied? Is it possible that a mental phenom-
enon such as pain could be misidentified? In rare brain disorders,
patients do not recognize pain as painful, or they acknowledge
pain but ignore its noxious quality. This is not misidentification
but a separation of painful feeling (and affective response) from
194 Jason W. Brown

the feeling of pain. Similar responses occur in hypnosis. One can

harbor wrong beliefs about intra-psychic phenomena so long as
one does not act on them. The problem of verification for inner
states is of the same type as for objects. Concepts become objects
in a process of objectification. Coherence shifts to correspondence
as the object moves outward, a difference only in the degree of
externalization.
 Chapter 8
Microgenetic Theory of the Unconscious
1. Philosophy, Psychology and
Psychoanalysis

“Consciousness is not a quiescent state, but a process

— a continual becoming-conscious.”
E. von Hartmann (1868)

This chapter discusses the basis for the idea of the Ucs and its
implications for theory of mind, as well as accounts of the Ucs in
philosophical psychology. 18 The chapter also reviews the concept
of the atomic trace, the notion of cathexis and repression, the
searchlight theory, the copy theory of memory and its relation to
current accounts of focal attention. It concludes with the assertion
that the psychoanalytic model and other accounts of the Ucs are
inconsistent with studies in clinical research and case pathology.
Instead, Ucs cognition is characterized by a sequence of catego-
ries (wholes) that partition to instances (parts), which then serve
as wholes for the next wave of whole-part transformation. This
argument is taken up in detail in the ensuing chapter.

After some period of neglect, the topic of Csness is back in

fashion as each discipline — physics, molecular biology, computa-
tional psychology, and so on — offers a theory unique to its field.
While Csness would seem to presuppose an Ucs, as what is not yet
conscious Cs) or its underpinnings, there has been little discussion
of the philosophy of the Ucs, its relation to Csness in human mind
and that of other organisms. Although the philosophical roots of
the concept are early, the first systematic study of the Ucs was the
treatise of Hartmann (1868/1931).

18
The abbreviations in this paper are: Conscious(ness) = Cs(ness), Unconscious
= Ucs
198 Jason W. Brown
Prior to Freud, the Ucs19 was characterized in fairly general and
non-psychic terms, but since the Project, the paper on the Ucs, and
the Interpretation of Dreams, mechanisms such as cathexis and
repression, operations such as the dreamwork, and contents such
as hallucination and symbolic imagery, have been postulated as
ingredient in Ucs structure. Mechanisms and processes constitute
one — physical — level of explanation; Ucs ideas, representations
or symbols another. The notion of psychic events in the Ucs is tak-
en by some as a valid description of actual phenomena; for others,
the Ucs is a literary invention of causal relations — originating or
intermediate — by which otherwise inexplicable wake and sleep
happenings can be interpreted. Others argue for Ucs “presenta-
tions” on the basis of psychophysical theory.
The writer on the Ucs labors under the burden that the topic is,
by definition, outside the scope of Cs thought. Many philosophers
since Descartes have believed that while Csness is knowable expe-
rience, the non-Cs, as in animal mind, is mechanism. Mill wrote
that Csness involves psycho-physical structure, the Ucs only physi-
cal structure. Searle similarly argues that the Ucs is mere physiol-
ogy. For some philosophers, the Ucs does not even exist. If the Ucs
is timeless, as Hartmann (1868) and Freud claimed, it could not
exist, for excepting the speculation on timeless or eternal objects
or ideas, timeless entities are changeless, thus non-existent.20 The
central problems are whether the Ucs consists of neural process
with or without psychic correlates, the nature of such correlates if
they exist and, if not, an account of phenomena that point to an
Ucs origin, and the transition from simultaneity to temporal order
as Ucs phases pass to Cs ones.
19
The Ucs merges into the subconscious and preconscious. These terms have
varied meanings, that include: the ambient fringe of Csness, the subliminal prior
to Csness, the storehouse of memory, etc., an organized self and personality
beneath Csness, and so on (e.g. Munsterberg et al, 1910). Each of these “planes”
of cognition can find a place in a theory of becoming.
20
The timelessness of an eternal truth is that it is always true, not that it exists
timelessly. An entity that becomes timeless as it perishes also becomes non-ex-
istent. The passage to and from timelessness requires an existent to develop into
and out of non-existence.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 199
The discovery of the Ucs is in some ways the transfer to mind of
the invisible in nature, extending the Platonic tradition that seen
things are temporal, those unseen are eternal, or that an unseen
world of unchanging reality lies behind the flux of conscious phe-
nomena. When this unseen, non-temporal world is displaced to
mind from its relation to object-Csness, one has the timelessness
and universality of the physical Ucs. The shift is from a physical
world beyond perception to a psychic world inside its objects. To
the extent this hidden world is the sphere of spirit, it is transitional
from physical nature to mind. The effort to penetrate the physical
ground of Cs phenomena took a great step in Freud’s chart of Ucs
experience.
There is such overwhelming evidence of Ucs cognition inferred
from its Cs products that to deny its occurrence is either a refusal
to address the origins of Cs thought, or taking the indefensible
position that all thought arises in Csness. Every Cs thought has im-
mediate precursors that are not prior Cs contents. Apart from the
antecedents of Cs thought, this includes the problem of dream,
hypnotic and mystical states, waking and Ucs creativity, creativity
during dream and/or transitional states21, myth, non-intentional
moods or objectless states such as anxiety, unresolved conflict,
drive, motivation, as well as sleepwalking and other dissociative
states, “slips of the tongue”22, obsessions and compulsions, not
to mention the whole “storehouse” of grammar, memory, beliefs
and values that account for Cs thought, acts, objects and language.
There are also experimental probes of non-Cs processes, such as
masking (e.g. Marcel, 1983), tachistoscopic presentation (percept-
genetic and related studies, e.g. Smith, 1989), priming, learning
during anesthesia, split-brain cases, incidental and procedural
learning, conditioning, habit and skill formation. To dismiss the
Ucs as physiology is a mere negation that sidesteps an account of
the transition to Csness, immediate precursors and evolutionary
21
See Lowes’ (1927) account of Ucs work in the poetry of Coleridge (Koestler,
1964 and other examples).
22
Of note in relation to the ensuing discussion of errors in brain damage, the
idea of slips of the tongue developed on Freud’s observation of aphasic errors,
though he considered the account of aphasic errors irrelevant to the more color-
ful interpretations of the slips.
200 Jason W. Brown
ancestry. However, if the Ucs is known only on becoming Cs, and
if every description of the Ucs is an inference on the predecessors
of Cs experience, what can be said non-inferentially of a psychic
Ucs? The first step, it seems to me, is a decision as to how the Ucs
is to be conceptualized.
What I mean by this is whether there are such things as Ucs
ideas or representations. The question is not dissimilar from that
of animal awareness, in which the matter of psychic experience
is unresolved. While animals in the same class — dogs, bears, etc.
— may show different “personalities” with respect to characteris-
tics such as shyness or aggressiveness and exhibit behavior that is
purposeful, there is no evidence for the occurrence of inner states
resembling those of humans. We assume that the “loyalty” of dogs
or their “grief” on loss of their master, like the “isolation” cry of a
separated baby monkey is a physical reaction based on instinctual
attachments. The inferred mental correlates of such behaviors are
symptoms of anthropomorphic distress when reason is trumped
by empathy. The use of tools by animals, the findings of imitation,
expectancy, even inference, though perhaps on an evolutionary
continuum with human cognition, do not establish the presence
of psychic events no more than the search by a dog for a buried
bone, or a monarch butterfly migrating to the tree of its birth, is
evidence of an intentional state in which the dog or butterfly is Cs
of the bone or the branch it is searching for.
In humans, Cs ideation supposes Ucs forerunners that are in-
ferred to have psychic correlates. Even if Ucs forerunners are as-
sumed to be strictly physiological, the differences and specificities
of states that are causally relevant to Cs outcomes from those that
are not cry out for psychic labels. Thoughts and memories resist
explanation in terms of a causal chain from one idea in Csness to
the next. When Cs idea A leads to Cs idea B, we attribute psychic
correlates to the neural states underlying the sequence, but when
Cs idea B does not have a definite Cs antecedent, the Ucs physiol-
ogy that is evoked merely strips off the psychic and muddies the
explanatory step.
In animals, except for sleep and/or dream, there is no obvious
gap between Cs and Ucs experience, so all experience — correctly
or not — is inferred to lack awareness of self, of subjectivity and
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 201
of inner objects. Though objects independent of the organism are
feared, devoured or enjoyed, it is unlikely there is awareness of a
subject-object relation. It is more likely that higher mammals per-
ceive a world much as we do, each with its own object categories,
yet they do not gaze in wonder at the evening sky or, so far as we
know, have aesthetic responses to sunsets and flowers. Except for
play in juveniles, which is instinct-driven trial and error learning,
the expression of subtler emotions, such as grief, is probably an
instinctual reaction, e.g. to separation, that bears a superficial re-
semblance to human experience. Animals do not appear to enjoy
objects that are not targets of immediate utility or preparations for
action. Perhaps animal awareness is similar to what Piaget called
the object- and activity-awareness of small children.
A distinction can be made between grades of animal aware-
ness up to a certain threshold, but human Csness can have animal
awareness as its object. An Ucs that has awareness as a goal but
not Csness as an outcome is impoverished and likely character-
ized by object-categories that are the aims of drives. The lack of
complexity in categorical structure is confirmed by the stimulus-
boundness and predictability of behavior, as well as in the patho-
logical data. For example, errors in children with developmental
language disorders show simplifications that are repeated within
a narrow range.
Among the questions that impact on the concept of the Ucs,
one is continuity or discontinuity in the growth of mind. Selves
have knowledge of subjective states of ongoing Csness but in-
ner experience is inferred by other selves, or in animal behavior.
Mentality in animals would seem to be required in the evolution
of mind from the primitive to the developed, or a progression
from the automatic to the voluntary. If Csness emerges from com-
plexity, is this true for the Ucs? If there is continuity, how far down
does it go and, if not to the foundational constructs, at what point
do psychic features appear? Microgenetic theory takes a position
consistent with that of Ward (1933), who wrote that mental pro-
cess is “a partial segmentation of what is originally continuous
rather than an aggregation of elements at first independent and
distinct… (a) totum objectivum or objective continuum which is
gradually differentiated”.
202 Jason W. Brown
8.1. Some philosophical problems in the
psychology of the Ucs
The idea of the Ucs and its transition to Csness has many philo-
sophical ancestors, notably Leibnitz, who introduced the notion
of strength or intensity in the capacity of petites perceptions or
slumbering ideas to become Cs. The idea of the Ucs is also found
in the German Idealists, notably Kant. Eduard Von Hartmann
(1868/1931) began his great study of the topic with a citation
from Kant (Anthropology, sec. 5): “To have ideas, and yet not be
conscious of them, — there seems to be a contradiction in that;
for how can we know that we have them, if we are not conscious
of them? Nevertheless, we may become aware indirectly that we
have an idea, although we be not directly cognizant of the same”.
Hegel believed Csness to be a modified form of Ucs structure with
psychic experience. He wrote of a “nightlike abyss within which
a world of infinitely numerous images and presentations is pre-
served without being in Csness (Mills, 2002).”
The philosophy of the Ucs, to the extent there is one, is an
offshoot of a theory of Csness. The problem of a psychic Ucs is
secondary to that of psyche generally; how mental phenomena
and Csness arise in relation to brain and evolution. Ucs experi-
ence supposes mind without Csness, and raises the more general
question of psychic properties in physical matter, or panpsychism,
which entails a world of mind or spirit or proto-psychic proper-
ties in basic entities. If the psychic is not a compounding of the
physical to some threshold where Csness is possible, it must be an
incipient feature, ab origo. The description of proto-psychic prop-
erties in elementary particles is an alternative to all-mind and all-
matter. So is emergentism. But if emergents are genuine novelties
they defy causal laws, constitute a break in the evolution of the
mental from the physical, rupture physics and mind and provide
an entry point for soul and spirit.
For materialism, the evolution of the brain is physical; mind
is an insider’s view of an objective description of brain function.
First-person or subjective accounts are untestable, thus incoher-
ent from a scientific point of view. An account of the brain events
involved in an act of cognition exhausts the description of the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 203
state. Alternatively, if psyche is non-reducible, mind appears ei-
ther when neural systems evolve to support it or there is a psy-
chic aspect to physical elements at the earliest pre-organic stages.
Simply put, the sequence from particle to brain is all physical, all
psychic, or the physical possesses proto-psychic features, with
Csness appearing at some point in the physical sequence, by a
gradual or radical emergence.
While pan-psychism is consistent with an evolutionary pro-
gression from preliminary to advanced states of Csness, the pre-
ponderant opinion is that the precursors of Csness do not extend
“all the way down” but that Csness arises at some level of neuro-
nal complexity. This assumes a lack of complexity or order to ac-
count for marginal states or degrees of Csness, from sleep, dream,
diffuse awareness, distractibility and fatigue to full lucidity. The
presumption is: (1) that Ucs states inter alia are insufficiently
complex to generate Csness; (2) and/or that psychic accompani-
ments in the transition to Csness dissolve in the transformation
to ensuing phases; (3) and/or that Ucs psychic experience cannot
be remembered; i.e. as in dream, it is a fugitive experience forgot-
ten on its occurrence; and/or (4) Ucs categories do not specify an
identifiable content. The question for materialism is if Csness is
physiology, like the Ucs, what features of Cs and Ucs physiology
explain the occurrence of psychic phenomena in the former but
not the latter?
The philosopher of zombie-mind reduces mentation to brain
process; we behave as if (or have the delusion that) we are Cs.
Zombies or robots are not Cs in the usual sense; in a robot, apart
from the distinction of output and material elements, there is no
difference in Cs and Ucs experience. Indeed, there is no experi-
ence, only information, though some would conflate the two.
Zombie-mind is the terminus of a materialism that collapses
mental phenomena to brain as an expedient in physicalist theory.
For microgenesis and process theory, the mental evolves with the
physical by an expansion of proto-psychic features.
One consequence of a continuity of psychic experience in a
transition from the Ucs to Csness, or a continuum to human mind
from lower forms, is panpsychism (Clarke, 2004) with a continu-
ous development of mind over the organic series, arising in the
204 Jason W. Brown
most elementary “bits” of matter. The possibility of degrees of
Csness in plants, insects and animals entails the incorporation of
proto-psychic features in physical entities that are fundamental
to nature. If Csness evolves out of stages of Ucs experience, and a
transition over Ucs phases is necessary for Csness, the Ucs, or the
primitive Csness of animals, would provide a forecast of human
Csness. Is the Ucs an active process in the human mind that gen-
erates Csness or an inactive storehouse of automatic procedures?
Is there Ucs assimilation and growth of once-Cs perceptual traces?
Is the Ucs a collection of mechanisms for language, perception
and so on, or a mode of cognition antecedent to Cs thought? Is
the Ucs prior to or derived from, i.e. secondary to, Csness, or do
Cs and Ucs develop together? Some would have it that the Ucs is
created by Csness, for what is “in the Ucs” must first pass through
Csness. On this way of thinking, memorial contents in Csness are
copies of Ucs traces deposited in Cs perception.
There are more questions than answers in this area and each
question is the seed of new theory. If animals are not Cs in the hu-
man sense, are they, in the human sense, Ucs? Are there similari-
ties between Ucs human mind and waking animal awareness? If
contents in the Ucs are derived from Cs experience, and animals
are not Cs in the human sense, how would we compare their Ucs
to that of humans? If animals have an Ucs or its equivalent, as
is likely if they dream, does it arise, as assumed by the continu-
ity thesis, from the “psychic potential” of instincts and tropisms
in lower life forms? For microgenetic theory, the forming object
traverses planes of long-term memory and, with forgetting, lapses
into the imagery revived in dream. On this view, a Cs perception
does not deposit Ucs memory but individuates archaic configura-
tions of past experience in becoming an object, i.e. we remember
an object into perception.
The machine-view of animal awareness entails continuation
to human Csness as an extension of brain physiology. If the Ucs
(or automatic) in animals or a waking state of animal awareness
lacks the potential for Csness in the animal, but anticipates hu-
man Csness, the arousal or awareness of animal Ucs would be the
ground of human Csness. The argument that human Csness is
created in the acquisition of language, or conversely, that without
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 205
language the human mind resembles animal awareness, assumes
that pre-Cs human awareness and animal awareness are equiva-
lent.
If animals without human Csness can be said to have psychic
experience — a dog in pain, a worm on a hook — is this a mode of
Cs or Ucs experience? Are Cs and Ucs distinguished by features
other than wakefulness and verbalization? If one dreams one is in
pain, is this Csness of pain? Is dream a mode of Csness? The same
question arises in humans as in animals, e.g. a person in a vegeta-
tive state who withdraws and grimaces with painful stimulation.
How does one determine the occurrence of inner feeling or pain-
Csness, indeed, of any internal content that does not in some way
manifest itself? The behavioral manifestations suggest the animal
is in pain, but this cannot be said of a person who is in a vegeta-
tive state.23 Most neurologists assume the reactions are reflexes
without subjective experience. If one claims a lower organism is
in pain but not that it is Cs, what is the nature of Ucs or non-Cs
pain? If the pain of a dog is a psychic experience, e.g. a feeling, and
the dog is not Cs in the human sense, would one say the psychic
experience of pain is Ucs or just not Cs? In the transition from the
deep Ucs of dreamless sleep and coma to acute Csness, are the
Cs and Ucs contingent on each other? Presumably, Cs mind could
not exist without the Ucs, but what is the difference between the
obligatory activity of the Ucs during a state of Csness and Ucs ac-
tivity when Csness is lacking? Are there transitional states from
Ucs to Cs mind, such as a pre-Cs phase?
8.2. The Ucs and human mind
The problem of pain illustrates a wider problem with theories of
the Ucs, especially psychoanalysis (see below), in that the account
of the Ucs is modeled after that of Csness so that Ucs pain or, if
23
Evidence of meaning detection in cases of vegetative states using evoked
potential methods (Kotchoubey, 2005) are comparable to other techniques, such
as priming, masking, blindsight, conditioning, split-brain studies, and so on, that
access Ucs meaning. If there is Ucs meaning, can there be Ucs pain, and if so,
what would it be like?
206 Jason W. Brown
one considers this an oxymoron, Ucs thought, memory, etc., are
assumed to be qualitatively identical to what is in Csness except
that they are Ucs. The inability to describe what may be Ucs pain
(idea, image) is evident in certain forms of pathology. There are
cases of brain lesion in humans in which pain is experienced
but not responded to, such as “pain asymbolia”. This applies to
somatic pain but also loud noises and annoying visual stimuli.
A person with frontal lobotomy for chronic pain may have pain
that has lost its noxious quality. He says he is in pain but has
none of the behavioral criteria associated with a painful state. A
similar reaction occurs in hypnotic states. Painless surgery can
be performed in people under hypnosis. Patients have told me
of dreams they had pain that, months later, became Cs signs of
illness. It is possible to be Cs of pain but not bothered by it. It is
possible to display emotion without having it, and possible to have
emotion without being able to display it. Assuming that pathology
does not cleave apart phenomena that are inextricably bound,
if Csness and behavior dissociate, as they do in other situations,
such as pathological laughing and crying, sham rage, implicit and
explicit memory, the dissociation of knowing and doing in frontal
cases, etc., what does this mean for inferring a state of feeling, or
any inner state, from behavior? The subjective is too rich and the
mind too complex for externalist theories.
While it is unsettled as to whether the human Ucs, apart from
language, is comparable to that of animals, there are major dif-
ferences between human and animal cognition that may not be
uniquely dependent on language. These include the occurrence
of a now or present moment that creates a theater for the Csness
of inner and outer events, and a past in relation to a memory that
can be revived in present Csness, not just implemented in learn-
ing. The immediacy of the knife-edge present of dream may pre-
figure the waking now or be a residue of its duration. Humans are
likely the only animals with a Cs present, a self and a remembered
past. Unlike animals, the human Ucs elaborates a dream self in
relation to images (Brown, 2005; 2008). An Ucs defined in relation
to Csness, as what is not Cs, is conceived as a furnace for Cs idea
and emotion, or its infrastructure and preparatory stage.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 207
Presumably, the Ucs in an animal without human-like Csness
would not have a subterranean character. There would be no un-
Cs or sub-Cs in animal awareness, which would be Ucs only in
relation to human Csness. The awareness of animals conceived as
the equivalent of the human Ucs is an artifice, if the Ucs is defined
in relation to Csness, though the mental states of animals, e.g.
primates, may resemble the waking object- and activity-aware-
ness of infants and young children. In higher animals, with brains
similar to those of humans, a behavior or an act of cognition must
involve a traversal of categories. If so, the Ucs of animals is not
sheer mechanism, since patterns of category-formation, even if
the categories differ, should not depart markedly from those of
human thought.
In man, Csness depends on the separation of subject and ob-
ject, then self and other. The detachment of an independent world
leaves a subjective world behind for the psychic accompaniments
of Cs and Ucs thought. An animal without a subject-object distinc-
tion is embedded like a plant in its Umwelt. Insects, fish, reptiles
and birds are like this. There is little sign of autonomy or subjec-
tive boundaries. When this boundary first appears is uncertain.
We do not know how to characterize the subject-object relation in
animals, but this distinction is a critical first step in the evolution
of object-Csness. A subject is distinct from the objects of percep-
tion, but a self is Cs of both inner and outer objects.
8.3. Psychic “properties” of inorganic entities
One critique of the continuity thesis is that physical entities do
not have properties of the type associated with mental states.
Increasing complexity in a physical system does not alone explain
Csness. Subjectivity expands in the temporal extensibility of enti-
ties and complexity increases to fill it. Increasing complexity in
brain activity as the basis of Csness is no more than a platitude
unless the configural properties of processes underlying the com-
plexity are clarified. It is often assumed that complexity reaches
a point where novel behaviors emerge, but the concept of emer-
gence, like that of complexity, lacks explanatory power without
208 Jason W. Brown
an account of the pattern and fine structure of the emergent step.
Still, the notion of emergence is in synch with holism and process
theory. How mind arises in a physical brain is not comprehensible
if the physical (or mental) is conceived as the sum of its parts. To
add up the inventory of parts for a car and the plan for its assem-
bly might satisfy its description but one does not go for a drive in
a plan or inventory. The same is true for a brain, which unlike a
car is a coherent whole. Penfield once remarked that alteration
of function with brain damage is like trying to determine what
is missing from a symphony when a violin is removed from the
string section. Holistic systems are unified, adaptive and self-orga-
nizing, not piecemeal constructions.
A compilation of proto-psychic properties of basic elements in
a complex system such as a brain cannot explain human menta-
tion. Even if a brain vastly multiples the proto-psychic features of
single particles or monadic isolates, this might just give more of
the same “stuff”. A pile of marbles is still a pile of marbles. Csness
may or may not obligate emergence, but it does require a coher-
ence of organic wholes not predicted by properties of elementary
units. Indeed, the very concept of an atomic unit negates growth
and change. Most of what transpires in life and mind — in dream
and waking imagery as in happiness and love — is outside the
province of logic, so it would be premature to enthrone a logic
of solid entities as the lord of observation when logic itself is
opaque to novelty and the elements on which it works may be
wrongly decided. A re-combination of atoms is not inconsistent
with evolutionary theory but incomplete as an explanation of the
appearance of novel systems, especially when they are more com-
plex than the units of which they are composed. One molecule of
H20 is not liquid, nor can liquidity readily be predicted from the
properties of a molecule. In organic entities, societies of particu-
lars enjoy a unity that cannot be grasped by an accumulation of
external bonds.
The “mind dust” theory, in which complex entities are ex-
plained by the multiplication of psychic features in basic ones, is
comparable to the copy theory of memory (see below), in which
Ucs traces are revived into Cs thought. The atoms of mind-dust
and the static traces of copy theory are logical solids of the same
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 209
type. The evolution of atom to brain is conceptually similar to the
transition from physiological trace to Cs memory. In both, parts
(atoms, traces) expand to wholes in which the nature of the whole
is not forecast in the parts. Csness does not arise from the contri-
butions in miniature of a multiplicity of static constituents, but
evolves out of an interior dynamic.
The transition from physical matter to brain viewed as a physi-
cal system is, from an evolutionary standpoint, equivalent to the
“transition” from brain to Csness. In the former, the progression
from the primitive to the complex remains within the physical. In
the latter, there is a gap in the passage to (and from) the mental.
This gap can be avoided by positing psychic features at all stages,
with a compounding of the proto-psychic to a progressively wider
sphere. One proto-psychic feature with the potential to evolve is
energy as the process-ground of feeling, which is the process (be-
coming) that lays down the substance (being) of entities in recur-
rent cycles.
Wholes are created in the coming-together of quanta that rep-
licate the activity of parts. This is the graded outcome of feeling
as it expands intrinsic relations within the temporal extensibility
of entities. A qualitative transformation of feeling underlies the
quantities of physical science. Feeling is the “glue” of unity. At each
stage, unity in a complex system such as a mind/brain can no
more be decomposed to elements than predicted from them. The
becoming of an element evolves to “societies” as feeling expands
the duration of individualities and pushes complexity ever further.
A beginning with physics and a science of material entities cannot
reach (explain) Csness without an emergent step. However, to be-
gin with Csness and descend to particles retains mind all the way
through and recovers the proto-psychic in patterns unimaginable
from a purely physical, i.e. quantitative, point of view.
210 Jason W. Brown
8.4. The psychoanalytic Ucs: preliminary remarks
To my mind it is principally Hartmann, in a work widely read in
his day though rarely cited now, to whom we are indebted for a
general theory of the Ucs. Though metaphysical and discursive,
the work attempts to establish the biological and neurological cor-
relates of the Ucs, and postulates a wide range of Ucs modes of
thought, such as creativity, intuition, inference, mystical insight,
will, purposefulness and timelessness, or the instantaneity of pro-
cess, e.g. a “compression into the timeless instant” (p. 272). The
emphasis on Ucs instinct, and the importance of sexuality and
shame anticipate the account of repression and the Ucs apparatus
by Freud, whose 1915 essay on the Ucs borrows from Hartmann
the notion of Ucs ideas, instincts and emotions. Hartmann also
wrote of a second personality in the Ucs that, presaging Freud,
is comparable to Csness in its structure and function. In spite of
the criticism of Hartmann’s work, mainly for the wide range of
functions posited in the Ucs, so inclusive that, as Hoffding wrote,
“it explains nothing because it explains everything,” the transi-
tion from Hartmann to Freud is one from comprehensiveness to
limitation, from possibility to dogmatism and from richness to
closure. Bouveresse (1995) remarked that the effect of Freud’s
discovery was “to lock us into a predetermined possibility which
now appears to be the only one that merits attention.”
Psychoanalysis postulates elements in the psyche that inter-
act by way of energy. In the substantialism and determinism of
his doctrine, Freud’s Ucs is a thing or a place filled with psychic
entities that interact in causal space. MacIntyre (1958) wrote,
“the conception of unconscious ideas as non-physical entities is
an odd one, largely because the conception of ideas as entities
is odd.” The metapsychology is the indispensable foundation of
the entire theory, in which an idea or drive-representation results
from the cathexis of memory traces. Freud sought a dynamic al-
ternative to the static association model in neurology critiqued in
his aphasia book, but instead, he substituted psychic associations
for anatomical ones and put the dynamic into energy, leaving the
traces on which it operates inert (Brown, 1998).
Perhaps because of the atomism of the trace, its aggregation
to ideas and the “push-pull” thinking of repression and defense
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 211
in neurosis and dream interpretation, Wittgenstein thought there
was no “dynamic theory of dreams”. What began as a descrip-
tion, uncovered a correlation and ended in causal explanation.
Reasons deduced from neurotic symptoms were inserted as mo-
tives that instigated the behaviors they were invoked to explain.
But reasons are verbal acts, i.e. Cs outcomes and, like other con-
tents in Csness, lack causal force (Brown, 1996; 2005). A reason is
a surrogate, a bit like a translation in this respect, where the space
between languages is an obscurity one seeks to diminish but can
never overcome.
In the Ucs, psychoanalysis has found its most congenial home,
but it is less a workplace of novel ideas than a graveyard of mid-
night rumblings with imaginary ghosts doing the work left over
from the preceding day. An analytic interpretation can be a spell-
binding tale, the persuasiveness of which belies its shaky founda-
tions in the metapsychology. The affirmation of the interpretation
by the analysand in collusion with the analyst is taken as “proof” of
the correctness of the theory and validation of the clinical model
(Grunbaum, 1984; after Wittgenstein). Links from psychoanalysis
to psychology are unconvincing, while attempts to correlate psy-
choanalysis with neuroscience, which are meant to rehabilitate
the scientific credentials of a theory bereft of innovation, remain
tenuous and forced (see Brown and Stremler, 2008).
To reduce the psyche to brain parts, machine components or
genes transfers mental phenomena to a physical level of descrip-
tion. For example, the claim that hallucination or dream arises
from — or is associated with — activity in cingulate gyrus, or visual
cortex or orbito-frontal region, even if partly true, is trivial without
a qualitative neuropsychology of imagery, an account of the tran-
sition of image to object and the relation of imagery to memory,
agency, feeling, and so on. Though psychoanalysis fancies itself
a science, in the Nibelungenheim of dream interpretation it takes
allegory to analogy, analogy to reason, and reason to cause and is
more closely allied to mythology than science or psychology.
In his commentary, MacIntyre notes that Freud’s Ucs, as a
link from infancy to adult life, is largely a repository of repressed
wish-fulfillments, though wishes (desires, intentions) character-
ize Cs behavior as well. Except for dream or neurosis, the Ucs is
212 Jason W. Brown
unknowable and comparable to Kant’s noumenal reality. Terms
such as wish, idea and resistance that describe Ucs process are
derived from a Cs vocabulary. In Freud’s materialism, the shift of
Cs entities to an Ucs locus fixes them in the physiological matrix
denied to them when Cs. MacIntyre writes, Freud’s unconscious
“is the ghost of the Cartesian consciousness”, though a very solid,
material ghost it is, and with neural underpinnings.
We see the Cs vocabulary in the description of Ucs ideas and
emotions. What does it mean to have an Ucs idea? Ideas crystal-
lize out of thoughts, and thoughts individuate categories that are
even less specific. The prototypical Ucs idea is creative intuition,
but this is hardly a sum of smaller ideas bundled together waiting
to be unpacked. How can one discern an Ucs wish (or desire) until
its ends are known? A wish is intentional. Is the Ucs intentional?
The Ucs may drive to an end, but the object of the wish is not
in sight when Ucs process is active. To construe Ucs process as a
wish implants the object of the wish before it is decided. The drive
that is antecedent to desire shapes and configures the wish in
specifying an aim. Ucs motivation presumes a goal that becomes
clear as the act materializes.
Dreams are conceived as “night memories” rather than pre-
terminal phases in thought and perception. Ucs repression selects
ideas for the dreamwork to fashion into symbolic representations
of unfulfilled wishes. In microgenetic theory, every act is a memo-
ry sculpted to an object, the dream content actualizing categories
that are the bearers of Ucs process. The antecedent pre-object
or word-category is not identical to its outcome but undergoes
individuation to a waking object. The reasons given for neurotic
behavior seem compelling because everyday language with its
sexual preoccupation is employed to convert a puzzling act or
thought into its Ucs precursors. But, even the most convincing
interpretation blocks a true understanding of the Ucs on its own
terms.
Freud considered the interpretation to be a translation of the
language of the dream into waking speech. But the ground of both
dream and waking language remains covert in the translation
process. The strategy is to go from one language to the other, en-
larging the dream report with implicit content and restricting the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 213
waking interpretation to the one explanation that makes sense,
i.e. satisfies the analyst and the client. Interpretation furthers the
coherence of the narrative by filling in missing elements, not by
extracting causes or motives. Features absent in the dream report
turn up in the interpretation to empty the underlying categories
from which the dream arises. Like a mysterious painting with
blank spaces on the canvas, the analyst adds content to disambig-
uate the meaning. But is there only one interpretation, as Freud
thought, or many interpretations that could be adapted to a dream
or analytic situation? The problem is that there is no method to
determine which interpretation, if any, is correct (Farrell. 1964).
Take a brief actual recurring dream described to me by a wom-
an that began at age 10. In the dream, she tries to grab a needle
that is floating over a yellow river. She is anxious and confused.
Could the needle represent the straight path in life and the river
one that is winding and uncertain? Could the needle represent
the present or now, and could the river represent continuity or
eternity? Might the contrast lie in the fixed and immutable op-
posed to the fluid and changing? Is there reference to a choice
between staying home, e.g. the needle as sewing, and leaving
home, e.g. the river as travel. Perhaps she had been sewing some
time before, or received a knitted sweater, or thought of a boat,
or looked at a picture with a river in the background. Pötzl (1960)
described instances in which unnoticed fragments of daytime
perception recurred in dream imagery. The juxtaposition of the
two main images is not a conflict between psychic entities. River
and needle do not stand for opposing objects, but are at most,
incidental precipitates at a phase of uncertainty or irresolution.
If every mental event has a meaning, as Freud thought, and as
well may be the case, there are any number of possible meanings,
each as convincing as the next.
Other interpretations — banal, extravagant, mythic — are pos-
sible, as is the deflating possibility that the dream has no interpre-
tation, or that, for various reasons, the vivid imagery of the dream
cries out for meaning and interpretation when there is none. If
I imagine the face of a friend, what is the “meaning”? Is it the
feeling for or about him, his absence, an old encounter, a passing
disposition, a preceding thought? When I imagine my friend I do
214 Jason W. Brown
not ask why I am thinking of him but rather, what is it that I am
thinking about when he is imagined. To apply this to dream, the
needle and river are markers of categories, possibly one category,
or an incipient thought. We feel there must be a hidden meaning,
and we may be disappointed not to discern one, but this might
point to the incompleteness of the picture, and the impact of
meaning-selection at a pre-object phase that leaves the dreamer
asking what the dream was about?
Let us take a psychoanalytic approach, and assume the inter-
pretation to be the proximity of male and female symbols at a
stage of sexual awakening. The grabbing, the anxiety and urinary
color are signs of desire, fear and disgust. Let us also assume that
the symbols of needle and river are figurative images in which
disparate objects are fused by predicative relations instead of a lit-
eral visualization (discussion in Brown, 2006). Needle could have
actualized from a category of instruments or clothing, or it could
have replaced another image related in shape or function, such as
a body part (eye, phallus) or weapon (dagger). Does a verbal trans-
lation of the dream contribute something to the visual picture that
would not be satisfied by adding another picture? A clock would
complete one narrative, a boy another. Suppose the dream were
to be reported by an adult with a sexual neurosis. What does it
add to the understanding? By what method is the neurosis linked
to the dream? The interpretation rounds out a story and satisfies
the need for closure. The analytic interpretation is an engrossing
tale that captures the imagination, like all good stories, whether
true or fictitious. The question is whether it has psychological va-
lidity, i.e. accurately represents psychic process.
Suppose the girl, when young, witnessed the primal scene,
or has memories or fantasies of sexual abuse. Is this enough to
explain the dream or the neurosis? Is neurosis the cause or the
reason for the dream, i.e. do neurosis and dream inhabit the same
psychic complex or is one the cause of the other? What of girls
who have similar experiences, even siblings, without such dreams
and without, or with different, neuroses? A similar outcome might
occur with abandonment, jealousy, parental excessiveness or
indifference. Is the fantasy or experience of early childhood just
another — albeit traumatic — event in the experiential narrative
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 215
that strings together the saga of a life? Are these the critical events
that shape character, or are they given as reasons why the person
turned out a certain way, as a kind of negotiation of interpretation
with causal explanation? When and why are any mental events
to be resuscitated as causes? Is there justification for treating rea-
sons as causes? Is there a well-reasoned theory in psychoanalysis,
or for that matter in philosophy, on psychic causation (see Brown,
1996)?24
In waking life, we sense that the meaning of an idea is its refer-
ence or context, not usually why the idea came to mind. Awake,
one does not so much wonder where an idea came from but what
it signifies, its utility and where it will lead. Waking Csness presses
to the future. In dream, there is context, but no reference or futu-
rity. Desire (fear, etc.) is for the immediate image or its surrogate,
not for an absent or future object. The “aboutness” of intentional-
ity is less pronounced and the referential meaning in the world
turns back on itself to the genesis of the image. Awake, we feel
a perceptual object comes into contact with meaning as a sec-
ondary event. There is a link from mind to object, or the reverse.
In dream, the image is extra-personal but still intra-psychic. On
waking, the events of the dream are felt to be the objects of still
deeper thought. The meaning of the dream seems to reside in
inaccessible layers of Ucs thought, of which the image is a sym-
bolic transcript. The retrospective search for underlying sources,
reasons or causes of the dream replaces the prospective attitude
to waking objects, which appear independent of mind, though
still mental images adapted to the world and “detached” from the
psyche. In the waking state, a mental image precedes the external
object that is its referential aim. In the dream, with no external
object, the image is the final phase, so we ask what precedes it
and the response is, the motive, the wish or the need.
24
If Cs thought begins with Ucs process, reasons cannot be the causes of acts or
images. It is common to confuse these in ordinary language, e.g. I reported him
to the police because he stole my money. The sequence seems to justify the rea-
son as a cause, but another person might respond in a different way, e.g. by not
reporting or attacking the thief. The response depends on the sources of an act in
values, beliefs and character rather than on preceding events that are reasons in
the sense of interpretation or explanation.
216 Jason W. Brown
8.5. An alternative to repression
I want to make the stronger claim that the concept of repression
makes a mechanism out of normal properties in the derivation
of the mental state, which include inhibitory constraints at each
phase in the whole-part transition, the effects of intense emotions
bound to conceptual form, and the potential of early categories.
Freud happened on an intermediate phase of image-selection
as the focus of “psychic conflict”, but selection pressure in mi-
crogeny, like that in evolution, occurs at all phases. Ucs material
is not suppressed or de-innervated in repression or resistance.
There is no decathexis or inhibition of ideas or experiences, which
are postulated as a kind of mortar to fill in the cracks in theory.
Psychoanalysis is a work of great complexity, but the complexity
is less in the process of mind than its interpretation.
The truth is simpler. Ideas, acts and memories, develop or fail
to develop according to the constraints of sensation, habit and the
immediate inner and outer context. The object (act, idea, etc.) that
survives the transition and ideas that recur in a series of mental
states, in Cs or Ucs thought, reflect the dominant trends at dif-
ferent segments in the actualization. At each segment, categories
give rise to instances that become categories for the next transi-
tion. The continuous parsing of wholes-to-parts is the “vehicle” of
process. One can think of parsing as inhibition or elimination, or a
veto on instances that fail to materialize. Repression is Ucs veto. Cs
“veto”, as Libet (1999) described in action-development, is Csness
of the Cs segment of implicit veto, i.e. constraint, as alternate pos-
sibilities are sacrificed for the one path that develops.
Repression is one instance of the constraints that occur over the
entire transition. The difference from other phases is that repres-
sion involves constraints on a phase associated with a primitive
mentality that is transitional to rational thought. A relaxation at
this phase allows images and symbolic forms to appear in dream,
reverie and creative thinking, while an application of constraints
gives behaviors that can imply selective repression or resistance.
However, constraints on developing configurations occur at all
phases. When a phoneme or word actualizes a phonological or
lexical category, we do not say other speech sounds or words are
repressed, only the potential to develop those alternate possibili-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 217
ties. When a sculptor chips away at marble to reveal a figure, we
do not think the unrealized is a repressed entity. The partitions
reflect implicit or Ucs choices at every phase, not the conflict be-
tween the distinct ideas of Cs indecision.
Psychoanalysis asks why particular ideas or feelings develop
and others do not and argues that certain of them, say the painful
ones, are repressed. But this just points to a phase early in the ac-
tualization of meaning-relations and affective intensity. The same
constraints on form, i.e. sculpting, parcellation, pruning, account
for the selection of one item instead of others. The unrealized
does not rise up in protest but remains unborn, though active in
the potential for forthcoming states. There may be tension among
configural possibilities at the core of each category, but possibili-
ties are not entities or psychic contents. In sum, the individuation
of parts from wholes is not a competition among psychic objects
or mechanisms but a cascade of whole-part shifts in the micro-
temporal structure of the mind/brain state. In this process, the
virtual becomes real, the category becomes an instance, figures
develop out of grounds and potential becomes actual, all by way
of constraints on the recurrent specification of form.
The transition from possibility to fact in the passage to Csness
does not entail a defense against unwanted ideas. Some ideas that
are “repressed”, i.e. fail to reach Csness, are related to juvenile or
syncretic modes of thought. Their elicitation is specific to that
mode. Because of the depth they can influence the derivation
process, but they may well be skeletal in the personality, unable
to individuate. It is a truism that much of what we have forgotten
of early childhood is what we have become or, conversely, that of
which we are Cs tends to be in a more superficial relation to the
personality. Emotionally-charged configurations bound to catego-
ries of experiential memory and linked to Ucs drive are not fully
derived to individuated feelings. Like the proverbial camel through
the eye of a needle, the failure to become Cs may owe to an in-
tensity of emotion that impedes individuation to a partial affect.
Strong emotions linked to inchoate ideas are trapped in the Ucs.
The totality of the drive-representation develops to the particulari-
ties of idea and feeling having left behind their antecedents. The
powerful feeling of meaningfulness of dream does not signify the
218 Jason W. Brown
dream has a meaning. We feel the dream has meaning because it
is irrational though familiar in some ways and not incoherent, or
because it lacks outer reference, is affect-laden, incomplete, and
most importantly, actualizes at a phase of meaning-relations.
Since experimental data on brain and Ucs process tend to be
fitted to psychoanalytic theory rather than the latter modified to
adapt to the data, an understanding of the Ucs does not entail
minor adjustments to psychoanalysis but major revisions of the
entire edifice, beginning with the core concepts of repression,
conflict and resistance that are the linchpins of theory and the
pillars of clinical practice. Conflict reifies the selectional process
through which figural contents individuate. Anxiety is a symp-
tom of irresolution, easily demonstrated for affect-neutral mate-
rial, e.g. the Zeigarnik effect on incomplete tasks, percept-genetic
studies (Smith et al, 1989), as well as configurations that are af-
fectively-charged. The conflict is not between opposing mental
objects but alternate developments that are virtual in the potential
of the field. These are not definite paths but possibilities in the
specification process. Ucs ideas are virtual. There is no conflict
between virtual possibilities and unrealized potential. Conflict is
the analyst’s interpretation of the normal pruning of non-adaptive
possibilities prior to the elicitation of the most adaptive or least
hurtful resolution. The conflict is between what reason dictates
and need demands. This is a matter of sculpting the personal to
the exigent. If Cs actualization is aided by therapy, it is probably
not due to the addition of context, or to insight, but to suggestibil-
ity. In general, modes of therapy are forms of cueing, facilitation
or empathic fusion, i.e. identification with the other, not the lifting
of repression or a breaking through of resistance.25
25
Consistent with the microgenetic interpretation, it may be that just “discharg-
ing” Ucs process, e.g. as in creative writing, has a therapeutic effect independent
of the content that is verbalized. To empty a creative thought even in abstract
material gives concrete form to categories that are barely felt or intuited.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 219
8.6. Csness as a searchlight
We owe to Freud not just one but several theories of the Ucs,
though each account recognizes the fundamental operations of
condensation and displacement, which relate to metaphoric ex-
tension and predicate-driven fusions of disparate topics. Freud’s
Ucs is timeless, though its plurality is inconsistent with the unity
that timelessness obligates, since occurrences that are simultane-
ous should be ingredient in the same temporal point or undif-
ferentiated in a non-temporal occasion. Probably, timelessness is
simultaneity or lack of serial order rather than non-temporality.
There is an elaboration of an internal reality, more like a parallel
universe than segments in the continuity of inner and outer, and
there is a lack of contradiction or negation, which is consistent
with a potential for multiplicity prior to specification and actual-
ity. Freud thought the lack of the negative in dream could be a
sign of conceptual ambivalence or the unification of discrepant
meanings. This also occurs in myth, in schizophrenic thinking
and in primitive mentation. The simultaneity of potential leads to
a definiteness of aim, finally through choice to actuality. Every act
or object is an Ucs “decision” that arises through phases of incipi-
ent struggle. The elimination of alternatives for the survival of one
instead of innumerable others re-enacts an evolutionary drama in
the adaptation of redundancy to necessity. The general character
of Ucs ideation in dream and pathology and the more detailed
account in the metapsychology (Brown, 1998; 2000) resonate in
all of Freud’s later papers.
Among Freud’s more interesting if fruitless ideas is that of a
Cs searchlight. Searchlight theory rests on the assumption that Cs
and Ucs contents differ only in the degree of attention directed to
them, a premise that survives in the copy theory of memory (be-
low) and the idea of retrieval from a store. In this theory, the Ucs
trace is neither relocated to Csness nor undergoes a development.
The trace becomes Cs when attention is directed to it. This was
Freud’s later view, which differed from that of the metapsychol-
ogy, in which there was transfer from Ucs to Cs compartments.
Still, he maintained that transfer was a form of retrieval, not trans-
formation. The searchlight brings the trace to varying degrees
220 Jason W. Brown
of Cs attention.26 The theory gains simplicity in maintaining the
trace as a static entity, eliminating the transition or relocation to
Csness, and in the idea that energy (libido, cathexis, attention) is
decisive. However, collapsing “retrieval” into a searchlight inters
the complexity of revival in a single mechanism and introduces
an ad hoc device no less in need of explanation than the process
it purports to explain.
In searchlight theory, the transition to Csness is a gradual il-
lumination or increasing intensity of the trace, not a passage of
Ucs content through successive phases or modes of cognition.
The dream is not an obligatory phase of primitive mentation, but
a distortion of an uncorrupted trace. While the attributes of Ucs
cognition differ, in my view, from those of Cs thought, they were
described largely in terms of Cs experience, beginning with traces
and an affect-pool. Traces are either permanently Ucs and not
subject to the searchlight or actively subdued and waiting for ac-
tivation (de-repression). Wittgenstein and others contended that
the Ucs grammar differs from that of Csness. Freud also noted
that the language of dream differs from that of wakefulness, for
example, in the absence of negation, or the symbolism and fusion
of disparate concepts. The unique language of the Ucs in neurosis
and dream may lie in the narrative of recall. However, in psycho-
analytic theory, dream is not a manifestation of the Ucs but its
distortion due to repression. The actual Ucs and its “grammar” are
modeled after Csness and can be reconstructed by decoding the
dream to access the Ucs directly.
The concept of Cs cathexis of Ucs traces assigns a derivative
of libido to Csness in what seems a radical departure from drive
theory. The theory goes beyond the metapsychology, shifting the
primary mechanisms of activation to Cs derivatives. The notion
of a static trace contrasts with a transformative process through
which memorial contents are derived into acts, percepts and
thoughts. A qualitative transformation from Ucs to Csness in-
formed a more scientific branch of psychoanalysis (Schilder, 1951;
26
Searle (1991), for example, not only accepts the searchlight but adds an
adjustable dimmer for altered states! His account of the Ucs admits only those
mental states that are potentially Cs.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 221
Rapaport, 1951), which failed to survive the scrutiny of the priests
of orthodoxy.
The cathectic charge attributed to libidinal drive is responsible
for trace arousal, its withdrawal for de-activation or repression. In
the metapsychology, trace-cathexis was Ucs, with the drive-rep-
resentation becoming Cs by virtue of the intensity of the charge.
Now, the arousal is divided between compartments. Cathexis is
detached from the trace and aligned with Cs attention. How the
searchlight locates the trace or the trace attracts cathexis is un-
certain, though in fairness the inability to explain or even address
this point, a major failing in the metapsychology, has not yet been
resolved. Ideas and emotions are still conceived as distinct psycho-
logical and/or neural phenomena, with no theory on how their
association comes about. This differs from microgenetic theory, in
which drive-categories are constructs of affect-laden concepts, i.e.
conceptual-feelings. These constructs undergo further individua-
tion to feelings that appear non-conceptual, and concepts that ap-
pear affect-free, though every feeling or emotion has a conceptual
framework and every concept has an affective tonality.
If one dispenses with the Ucs, non-Cs brain process would be
irrelevant to Csness, though few would argue that the Ucs por-
tion of the mind/brain state can be eliminated and the Cs por-
tion remain intact, i.e. that Csness has a specific mechanism that
operates independent of other brain activity. If Csness is not an
autonomous system with a unique apparatus but rests on Ucs
process, Cs experience must develop on events ingredient in its
micro-temporal structure. If this much is granted, a Cs searchlight
would require, at the minimum, some degree of motivation or
interest to explain the choice of a target. One also must consider
the largely Ucs presuppositions, core beliefs and values that guide
the activation of the trace. It then follows that an act of thought
begins with an Ucs bias, predisposition or motivation that chan-
nels the Cs searchlight, which then retro-activates the Ucs trace to
a focus of attention.
Given that the Ucs is outside awareness, it is unclear how Cs
attention could select, much less locate or even think of, and then
activate, an Ucs trace. If motivation or interest corresponds with
the bias to an action or an object of thought, assigning motivation
222 Jason W. Brown
to the Ucs, where it largely belongs, displaces the antecedents of
the searchlight back to Ucs cognition. Whether interest arises in
Cs or Ucs process leaves undecided why one idea develops instead
of another. In the metapsychology, the activation of the trace only
postulates a source of energy. It does not address why one trace
and not another is aroused, or whether the trace specifies or is
specified by the drive, i.e. whether the selectivity is in the drive
or the trace. This is the question of how drive energy locates and
innervates an appropriate trace. The argument is circular, i.e. the
activation of a trace is proportional to its quanta of energy, while
the greater the energy the more active the trace.
Any theory of attention should apply equally to inner and
outer objects. The older terms for this are intero- and extero-cep-
tion, where interoception refers to the perception of inner objects,
comparable to the perception of outer ones. This is distinguished
from thinking about such objects, which is introspection. The
notion that we deliberately attend to images and ideas in Csness
is extended in searchlight theory to Ucs traces or ideas. The Cs
locus of the attentional mechanism is a derivative of the largely
Ucs apparatus that was formerly the explanation of the transition
from perception to trace, and from trace to thought and recollec-
tion. Apart from the psychological difficulties with a “top-down”
cathexis, there are anatomical problems as well. It is probable
that Cs experience depends to a great extent on neocortical re-
gions, and that memory depends on limbic regions. This gives
the problem that a neocortical searchlight arouses a limbic trace
that remains in the older system even as it is engaged by the more
recent one. The transition from limbic to neocortical formation is
the forward direction of microgenesis; the process generates and
replaces states of Csness, it does not requires Cs instigation.
The absence of a shift in location or qualitative transition as
the trace becomes Cs is also inconsistent with the argument that
every Ucs trace was previously Cs, as well as with the stages of
memory through which traces are assumed to pass in forgetting
and retrieval. Is a perceptual trace deposited in systems or net-
works that register shape, size, color, movement, depth, mean-
ing? Is the trace distributed over all the components entrained in
its perception, including long and short term stores, buffers and
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 223
so on? When the searchlight activates the trace does it activate
all these components? The process corresponding to repression
filters products of the Ucs, but do Cs perceptions retreat to be-
come the underpinnings of Cs ideas? Even if the difficulties can
be sorted out, the bi-directionality of trace-reception, storage and
arousal, i.e. a trace that is first Cs, then Ucs, then Cs again, is a
rather untidy picture.
If the searchlight is under Cs control it is voluntary; if not, it
is part of the Ucs, and there is no advance in theory. If an idea
in Csness was previously Ucs, its ”becoming-Cs” could occur by
several routes: by the causal propagation of Cs ideas, which re-
quires that a Cs idea evokes an Ucs trace into Csnes; by deliberate
thought or attention, in which an act of volition locates and high-
lights an Ucs idea; or by the microgenetic route of a progression to
increasing definiteness.
Attention to an object or memory by way of a searchlight is an-
other way of describing a state of focal perception. The difference,
and it is considerable, is that attention directed to a Cs object is
now directed to an Ucs trace. Is the focal attention to an object in
the world or an image in the mind the same as that which focuses
on Ucs ideas? Is the Cs searchlight identical with focal attention?
It is likely that a state of attention retraces a common path for
all objects. Attention to an external object should be the same
as that to an image; there is no reason to postulate an additional
system for Ucs traces. The problem is that attention to an image
or object involves successive points on the same trajectory, while
to dip into, explore and find an Ucs trace reverses the direction of
actualization.
8.7. Arousal and attention
We have the intuition that an exertion of will brings a mental ob-
ject into a sustained focus and that this is a fully Cs activity. An act
of will, the choice of an image, and the ability to concentrate on it,
are felt as Cs prerogatives. If one is asked, why did you say (think,
remember) such and such an idea, the person might respond, “I
224 Jason W. Brown
wanted to”, but if then asked, why did you want to, there is no
good response other than to repeat the previous answer or admit
an inclination, and what is an inclination other than an Ucs bias?
It can be argued that the term disposition covers our ignorance of
the mind/brain divide, but we simply have no way at present of
characterizing initial phases of bias, belief or value that underlie
the core self, nor can we describe in more precise neural or cogni-
tive terms the intermediate phases, e.g. lexical or object-concepts.
The mind/brain problem applies not just to the instigation of the
mental state but at every point in its development. Nonetheless,
there is ample evidence that preparatory stages anticipate Cs acts.
The widely-cited studies on the readiness potential are one dem-
onstration. A simpler observation is that a voluntary movement
such as lifting the finger develops at the cyclical peaks of normal
resting “tremor”. This indicates that Ucs rhythms or oscillators
underlie voluntary action, as in the respiratory timing that frames
an utterance.
Moreover, the capacity for willed attention can be perturbed by
brain disorder, which may lead to increased attention to ideation-
al or motor details, e.g. perseveration, or to obsessional thinking,
where there is an exaggerated preoccupation with a behavior or
an idea. This heightened focus of attention in pathology raises the
question of how truly voluntary an act of attention is, i.e. whether
Cs attention is the result of Cs decision or Ucs bias. Does a persis-
tence of attention reflect the maintenance of a set or the recur-
rence of similar sets over a series of states? Is the appearance of
sustained or excessive attention to an idea the result of voluntary
or involuntary fixation on the idea or are similar mental states iter-
ated so that the idea is continuously renewed? More importantly,
in the standard theory of perception, which begins with input to
(visual) cortex that is assembled to an object, the individual does
not know what an object is and, by implication, whether to look
at it, until after it is consciously perceived. On this view, which the
microgenetic account rejects, attention follows perception, it does
not guide it.
Ordinarily, we assume that focal attention resolves in Csness
out of a diffuse or ambient field. In microgenetic theory, atten-
tion is postulated to begin with categorical primitives in the Ucs,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 225
continue to the mental image, then the external object. On this
view, attention has an Ucs onset, and merely describes phases of
the coming-into-Csness of the trace. If this is the case, focal atten-
tion (searchlight theory) postulates an unnecessary mechanism
for the recurrence, in each mental state, of the progression to a
definite object, i.e. the successive analysis of wholes. The drive to
individuation is simply the pattern of the transition. The direction
of mental process toward Csness is obligated by a large volume of
observation and not refuted by a single datum. It is necessitated
by the temporal lag in perception, by phases in the generation
of voluntary acts, and by the Ucs precursors of words, acts and
objects.
With one exception (see below), a Cs mechanism of attention
(searchlight) has, to my knowledge, not been described with re-
spect to temporal order. In the arousal of traces or the transition
to Csness the trace assumes temporal order in relation to other
mental contents and ongoing experience. An Ucs storehouse of
static traces would be non-temporal. What else could a trace be
but the potential strengths of the innumerable synapses that give
rise to the configurations from which memories are derived? The
storehouse of potential memories may be stacked in episodic se-
quence, but not all memories are episodic, while the stacking is a
simultaneous virtual array of potential recollections that are not
in play until the episode materializes. The temporality of memory
is achieved on activation as the trace takes on Cs time-order not
present in the store.
This problem was alluded to in a celebrated paper by Karl
Lashley (1951) who postulated a scanning device for temporal or-
der as thoughts develop out of co-temporal Ucs or Pre-Cs phases.
Lashley cited the undifferentiated precursors of thought, i.e. the
initial sign of a thought or utterance, in the “determining tenden-
cy” of the Wurzburg school. He discussed at some length clinical
observations by Pick (1913; Brown, 1972), as well as instances of
temporal order in the Cs realization of co-temporal phases, e.g.
anticipation in language production, holistic effects in translation,
errors in aphasia and Spoonerisms, to which, inter alia, he could
have added pronominal reference, co-articulation and other such
phenomena. The concept of a scanner adds a mechanism to bol-
226 Jason W. Brown
ster the inadequacy of existing theory but contributes little to its
advance. Moreover, a scanning device is no less in need of expla-
nation than the serial order it attempts to explain (chapter 2).
8.8. The copy theory of the trace
The twin of the searchlight is the copy theory of memory, first dis-
cussed by Berkeley, and Reid. Contemporary psychology, which
is modeled on the design of a computer, implies the retrieval of
informational bits stored in a bank that recombine in thought. If
Ucs traces are stored percepts, and Cs memories are illuminated
copies, there is no obligation to explain retrieval, i.e. the trace just
becomes Cs. The difference between the original perception,
which is of photographic quality, and the memory of that percep-
tion, reflects the imprecision of memory and the degrading of
the trace. False or inaccurate memories are deflections of a more
or less automatic retrieval. The simplest way to characterize Ucs
memory is that it is identical to, or a degraded version of, what
was once in Csness. Most writers have agreed with Freud that
traces are stored perceptions, and that alteration over time points
to a degrading, not a re-working. For example, Ellis (1995) argued
that since Ucs processes are mostly derived from Cs ones, there is
little difference between them.27 On this view, Cs and Ucs traces
are identical, the only problem being how the trace comes into
Csness. The copy theory dominates contemporary psychology,
but conditions such as false memory, confabulation and amnesic
disorders have chipped away at the model.
In its regress, what was once Cs, like learning a piece on the
piano, becomes less Cs and more automatic. Ucs phenomena that
at one time were Cs are postulated to be mediated in the Ucs by
automatic mechanisms or “processors”. Baars (1988), in a compu-
tational approach, notes the extraordinary range of Ucs processes
underlying language, action, memory and perception. He argues
27
There are processes that support the generation of Csness, but no such thing
as a Cs process. One grasps the stabilities that process creates; ideas, images,
words. Process and representation refer to the transitive and substantive aspect
of the Ucs. The question is whether there is a “substantive” or “contentive” Ucs.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 227
that Ucs representations are theoretical objects isomorphic to, i.e.
copies of, something else and defines at least three classes of Ucs
“stimulus representations”: stored episodic memories, linguistic
knowledge and habituated stimulus representations.
The copy theory is implicit in retrieval, in which a memory bit
or informational unit is looked up and revived by Cs attention.
The concept is employed with little dissent even if it is riddled
with problems: e.g. how agency retrieves the trace; how agency
knows what trace to retrieve if it is Ucs; what accounts for success
or failure in retrieval; how a naked trace is associated with context
and feeling; how retrieval accounts for the “physical” relations
of short-term memory, the semantic or conceptual relations of
long-term memory, the pathology of memory, the creative or pro-
ductive aspect of memory and its boundary with thought. Copy
theory cannot account for studies of implicit or subliminal cogni-
tion. It tends to avoid study of subjective phases in recall and the
relation of perception to memory, in that trace-Csness is a matter
of quantity (of activation), not qualitative transition.28
Trace theory is part of a package of ideas, in which percep-
tions are autonomous units, like the traces they leave behind, that
sense data are assembled to objects and that recognition is post-
perceptual. The traces of cortical sensation are rapidly lost; those
of short-term memory fade, while the long-term trace persists.
But if the long-term trace preserves conceptual features in the
perception, i.e. the gist rather than the detail, how does Ucs gist
translate to a specific item in Csness?
In microgenetic theory, the trace consists of all of the phases
activated in its elicitation. The actualization of a memory leads
from past to present, from phases that are “memory-like” to
phases that are “perception-like”, with stages in memory — long-
term, short-term, iconic — traversed, in that order, and uncovered
in forgetting or incomplete revival. There is no transfer from
short- to long-term stores; indeed, there is no store. Rather, these
28
Freud was conflicted, as was his theory, on the relation of process and sub-
stance, or quality and quantity. He went half-way to a fully processual theory,
retaining the static traces of association psychology and adding energy as the
dynamic factor (Brown, 1998).
228 Jason W. Brown

transitional phases are uncovered in an order that is the reverse of

their entrainment in the original perception. In the development
of memory from long-term through short-term and iconic stages
to perception, the endogenous substrate of memory is sculpted to
an external object.

In sum, the pre-suppositions, biases, tendencies, dispositions,

beliefs and values that underlie Cs acts, general knowledge and
personal memory, specific knowledge such as that of a grammar,
perceptual and motor skills including pre-perceptual processes
and preparatory stages in action, reflect the configural patterns of
myriad neurons or networks that become active in the occurrent
state. A mental state or act of cognition consists of spontaneous
arisings over the decaying structure of just-prior states that adapt
to the inner and outer conditions at the moment. The context and
knowledge that are trimmed away as entities materialize are not
abandoned residues but the context of the occurrent state, and a
foundation for the next. Phases left behind participate in the final
content constitute the subjective portion of the state and form a
ground for its renewal. Context in an epoch is a co-temporal po-
tential incremented in the completion of an act. Phases of experi-
ential memory and meaning are initial segments, those of objects,
images and words are later segments, but all phases concur in
the now of the final object. A mind/brain state enfolds the transi-
tion or sequence of configurations, as each partition save the last
serves as a whole for a further derivation. The memory trace is
the diachronic matrix of the complete set of phases that gives the
final actuality.
 Chapter 9
Microgenetic Theory of the Unconscious
2. Categories and the Unconscious

9.1. Dream
In humans, the understanding of Ucs cognition has historically
depended heavily on the interpretation of dream, which provides
a compelling story of the meaning-relations that “connect” or ex-
plain what are otherwise fragmentary and puzzling events. The
dream can be taken as a representation of experience in the past,
a commentary on the day’s events or a portent of the future, but
in each instance it creates a parallel universe that is symbolically
linked to the Cs life. The Freudian key to unlocking this symbolism,
though controversial, opens the way to an explanation of what is
inchoate or inexplicable in Cs thought. The dream is traditionally
conceived as a distorted representation, or working-out, of situa-
tions in everyday life, but it can also actualize a mode of cognition
that prefigures Csness.

The space and time of dream sample preliminary cognition,

just as waking hallucination. Space is foreshortened, volumetric,
lacking in depth, curved, fluid and “palpable”. The space of hal-
lucination is extra-personal but still image-like and not indepen-
dent of the viewer. The passive self of dream is fixed in a present,
without a past or a future and lacking in duration. The self is car-
ried along on the edge of change, as the before passes into the
after in a subjective time experience that is intermediate between
physical succession and a present or now that is the axis of a con-
sciousness of past and future. We assume a dream recounted on
waking is an accurate rendition of the dream while asleep, but
dream content may undergo rapid change in the transition to
Csness. In REM studies, dreams seem to unfold over time, but
many psychoanalysts believe they occur in milliseconds (Trupp,
2006). Freud recognized this possibility, and wrote “how can one
picture to oneself the psychical condition during sleep? Do all the
dream thoughts (subsequently elicited by analysis) actually exist
232 Jason W. Brown
together, or after one another, or do they constitute different con-
temporaneous streams finally coalescing (Die Traumdeutung, p.
205; cited in Munsterberg et al, 1910)?” If the Ucs is non-temporal,
dream events would be simultaneous and achieve temporal order
on awakening. The serial order of the events in the dream, thus
its narrative, is retrofitted to a simultaneous efflux of imagery
(see below). The celebrated dream of Maury discussed by Freud
(SE IV:26-27, V:495-497) is an instance in which such an account
seems plausible (discussion in Brown, 1991; 2002).29
Along these lines, some physiologists maintain that dreams are
the conscious interpretation of random neuronal firings in brain-
stem (Hobson, 1988). This position recalls the argument that the
symptoms of brain damage are guesses or the sparks that fly out
of a damaged machine. On this view, the Cs self attempts to make
sense of otherwise meaningless images. However, the dream is a
symptom of preliminary thought or perception that engages the
personality, which is where we look for its meaning. In contrast,
the symptoms of brain damage are interpreted in relation to the
“instrumentalities”30 of language, action, perception or thought. A
symptom such as a waking hallucination or speech error tends to
be interpreted as a disruption without meaning in the life of the
individual, whereas hallucination in dream and, since Kraepelin,
speech errors are presumed to relate to past or present experi-
ence. A delusion is intermediate between the pathological symp-
tom with its delimited interpretation and the dream as a natural
phenomenon relating to one’s life. A delusion is abnormal but
often without demonstrable pathology, so it is approached from
29
Maury described an extended dream sequence that eventuated in the
dreamer being escorted to a guillotine with the beheading coinciding with a
headboard falling on his neck. There are many descriptions in which events
around a sleeping person are incorporated in the dream, e.g. responding to oth-
ers in sleep-speech, transforming an alarm clock to a church bell, etc. The latter
change suggests a recasting or revision of the dream or its invention on waking.
More problematic are those artists who have imagined works in dream or tran-
sitional states, e.g. Coleridge in poetry, Stevenson in literature, Wagner in music,
Kekule in scientific experiments (see Koestler, 1964). Some personal experiences
are described in Brown (2005).
30
Kurt Goldstein’s term to distinguish the more superficial symptoms of brain
damage from thought disorders in psychopathology.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 233
both standpoints, as a focal disorder of thought or perception and
in relation to the personality.
The need to interpret dreams is an expression of the natural
pressure toward meaning in all experience. The brain is an engine
of meaning-creation. It is difficult to accept that some dreams,
however outré or banal, do not have a coherent meaning, like
some delusions in this respect. The delusion that there are rob-
bers under the bed is a concrete representation of anxiety, con-
ditioned perhaps by the insecurities of modern life. The delusion
one is Jesus Christ can be interpreted in terms of religiosity and
megalomania, but it can as well represent a paralogical syllogism
in which the fusion is based on a partial resemblance (see discus-
sion below).
The pressure to interpret the dream can lead some to think the
narrative of the dream is itself an interpretation, i.e. that the dream
is a symbolic representation of one’s needs, fears, etc., thus an
interpretation of experience in the vocabulary of Ucs thought. The
Cs self attempts to describe the experiences to which the dream
refers. This supposes that the dream is a revision of Ucs content
that is more or less realistic. The symbolism is the window into
this content before it submits to the dreamwork. On this view,
Ucs content is a copy of content in Csness that has been derailed
on its way to expression. The dream is not transformed to Csness
but distorts traces that in Cs states are retrieved without corrup-
tion. Simply put, the Ucs memories to which distortion is applied
are identical to those in Csness.31 Once the distortion is lifted by
dream interpretation, the film between Cs and Ucs memory dis-
solves (see below).
An alternative way of thinking about the Ucs is that dream rep-
resents the incomplete actualization of a thought or perception,
and that “dreamwork mechanisms” are the normal operations
that come into play at pre-logical or syncretic phases in any act of
thought. These “mechanisms” are prominent in dream because
the realization of the thought or perception is incomplete. The
31
Consistent with Freud’s theory of Csness as a searchlight (discussion above)
that alights on traces and brings them into Csness, i.e. that Cs and Ucs memory
traces are identical.
234 Jason W. Brown
incompleteness is not a partial satisfaction that is lacking in ele-
ments. Dream approximates the goal of Csness but is attenuated
in its actualization. On this view, the dream is not a perturbation
or recombination of traces but a phase in the transformation from
the deep Ucs to waking thought and perception. The degree of
distortion in dream or waking hallucination, or in the fantasy of
the dream narrative, reflects the “psychological distance” of the
content to the waking endstage and the sensory constraints that
drive the content to a veridical perception. Whether a dream is
mundane or bizarre, whether one takes a trip to the market or is
eaten alive by goats, depends on the attitudes, dispositions and
trends in thought that impact on the developing process, and the
degree of objectification or level of reality the image achieves (see:
Fig. 6.1., chapter 6).
9.2. The becoming-Cs of a dream
A dream becomes a Cs thought when the dreamer awakens and
then infers, retroactively, that the memory of the dream corre-
sponds to its Ucs version. The argument here is that awakening
brings dream events into existence. The sequence of the narrative
is realized in Csness as the content assumes a serial order. While
the unfolding of dream events on Cs recollection is strongly felt to
represent the actual sequence during sleep, it is likely that events
in the dream are simultaneous or nearly so and aligned in the
most plausible sequence on recall. The absence of duration for
dream events and for the dream self is consistent with their simul-
taneous occurrence. Perhaps this is also an explanation for the
fluidity and melting of dream images that would not be clearly
demarcated in a contracted duration.
Usually, when we awake, we first apprehend the dream as
a whole. Then, we recount to ourselves or others the history of
events in the dream. The initial Csness of the dream takes in all or
most of the events for which recall is possible, though missing de-
tails may be filled in later. Once we grasp the whole of the dream,
we struggle to revive the main events even as they slip away. It
does seem that the dream is apprehended all at once on awaken-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 235
ing, and that the ordering occurs after the whole is perceived. As
discrete events are recalled, duration is parsed by temporal order
to create a narrative that gives the dream progression. Most likely,
the Cs self generates, facilitates or provides a framework for the
event-order.
The creation of a narrative for dream images recalls interpreta-
tions — fabrications, confabulations — in various neurological dis-
orders, such as amnestic states and alterations of the body-image,
as well as cases with section of the corpus callosum who are asked
to account for situations of conflict. For example, if a snowy scene
is presented to the right hemisphere of a split-brain patient, and a
chicken claw to the left, and the patient is asked to choose an ob-
ject with left or right hand, the left hand may choose a shovel, the
right, a rooster. Asked to explain this behavior, the patient might
say he chose the shovel to clean out the chicken coop (Gazzaniga,
2005). The patient elaborates a narrative to account for unrelated
acts.
This behavior is not limited to pathology. A normal person
given a random set of words or images and asked to make sense
of them can easily do this. It is a common exercise in memory
training to give a patient a set of unrelated pictures or words, such
as chair, fish, clown and baseball, and ask him to create a context,
such as “a clown with a baseball sat on a chair looking at a fish”. It
is not far-fetched to suppose that if the waking self is conscious of
five or six dream images, mundane or bizarre, it would be natural
to order the images in such a way as to form a story that explains
them. The mind strives for meaning and closure. The argument
is that the dream images that actualize on waking under the pres-
sure for meaning combine in a story that seems reasonable or
fulfils or conveys a meaning or points to one. On this view, the
temporal order not apparent in the dream on awakening is elabo-
rated in or by the Cs self out of the thickness of the memory or
thought that is the dream experience.
A second point is that a content or event that is attributed to Ucs
cognition — a dream, a language error, a pathological image — can
be understood as referring to a category of thought, language or
perception out of which the image materializes. The category, not
its incidental content, the image, is the key to a description of the
236 Jason W. Brown
Ucs. If one focuses only on the image, the Ucs seems populated
by a variety of symbols, representations, mechanisms, agencies,
faculties, not a succession of categories that individuate as they
actualize, on waking from sleep, or in lesion-effects.
It is hypothesized that categories traversed in the succession of
states congeal, or are suspended, in the simultaneity of the dream,
or the state on waking. The fact that categories are often conceived
as timeless may add to their collective simultaneity. This means
that the categories that underlie the dream images, not the im-
ages themselves, are the true bearers of the process and the textual
underpinnings of what becomes Cs. Pathological symptoms (see
below) show that an image samples a category that could deposit
any one of a number of possible items. This may be the case in
dream as well.
9.3. Probing the Ucs
Conventional methods of exploring Cs or Ucs brain function, in
which regions of the brain are connected by fibre pathways, are
for the most part based on the synaptic model (Cajal, 1954), i.e.
firings of single neurons or bundles of neurons in columns or
brain regions. Distributed systems or networks are imagined as
compilations of linked atomic units. Alternative methods to inves-
tigate field or wave effects, fractal, chaos or oscillatory systems, or
population dynamics, are neither widely employed nor fully devel-
oped. Most imaging studies localize functions rather than display
mental or neural process. Older studies of mica gel or aluminum
foil in neocortex, or cortical under-cuttings, appeared to refute
the concept of cortical fields, and dissuaded many from research
in this area, even to the point of eliminating Gestalt psychology.32
The microgenetic postulate of a wave-like transition over distrib-
uted evolutionary growth planes has not yet been submitted to
experimental test.
32
Wertheimer attributed the demise of the Gestalt to the “piecemeal thinking”
of the Americans.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 237
Specifically, Ucs events are recurrent transitions of configured
phases that, in dream, terminate prematurely or, in waking cogni-
tion, continue to a Cs actuality. Except for symptom formation,
there is no direct access to Ucs cognition, but special methods
allow us to infer covert phases of concept, feeling and meaning.
Such phases are not easily transposed to the dreamwork, since
experimental methods that rely on differential speed and accu-
racy tend to show the contribution of the phase to final cognition,
not actual contents referable to the phase. The dream image is
an instance, a singularity, from which a variety of mechanisms
are inferred, while experimental studies use instances to sample
categories. An example follows.
Semantic priming33 demonstrates Ucs effects of lexical catego-
ries on word recognition. Activating the category facilitates the
elicitation of member items. The Ucs category is preferentially
activated by words related in meaning or sharing properties with
the preceding item. The individual is not Cs that semantic prim-
ing occurs. Global aphasics show enhanced priming but give no
evidence they comprehend the stimulus words. How does the
experimental technique of priming relate to dream? In dream,
word-images are related in novel ways to other words or situa-
tions. The dream engages the same phase, e.g. lexical-semantics,
but instead of showing the influence of common properties on
rapid activation, the common properties blend words from dispa-
rate categories to evoke the word spontaneously.
For example, in a dream I offered a room in a German hotel
to my American editor of a German company (Springer-Verlag),
whose surname was Zimmar. I recall saying something like,
“Would you like ein Zimmer, Mr. Zimmar?”, and on waking was
amused at the play of words. The pun on Zimmer/Zimmar com-
bines disparate categories — room, person — that have the same
property (name). The pun derives from the explicit recognition
of this relation. The cross-language effect and the German pub-
lisher may be relevant. I would argue that the same phase that
33
In brief, subjects are required to make decisions as to word or non-word
when preceded by a related or non-related item that is flashed too quickly to be
recognized. Other methods include masking and metacontrast. The relation of
the technique to microgenesis (perceptgenesis) is described in Smith et al, (1989)
238 Jason W. Brown
is entrained in priming is elicited in the dream. Semantic prim-
ing activates words in the same class or that belong to multiple
categories, e.g. the word shovel might prime the words snow
and rake. The shared attributes may link separate categories of
which the prime is a member. In dream, shared attributes result
in the fusion of words or objects across different classes, as in this
example, where the word Zimmar as a surname, and the word
Zimmer as a common noun, underlie the association of person
and room. Were I to simply dream of entering a room in a German
hotel, a relation to my editor would be implicit. The room might,
on analysis, be found to symbolize the editor, but this interpreta-
tion would depend on a knowledge of my prior experience, not a
play of word-categories of (hotel) room, German (book, publisher,
room) and so on (see: Fig. 9.1.).
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 239
Fig. 9.1. Top: In dream or schizophrenia, a word like “throne”
might individuate the category of furniture based on properties
shared with other members. Or, the category might be evoked
by items from another category, e.g. parents. Here, the overlap of
attributes determines the replacement. Thus, ruler might serve as
a bridge across the disparate categories of furniture and parents,
or “father” might be the link to “king”, or the image of a throne.
Bottom: Shared properties are the basis of resemblance and
category membership. Asked to name a chair, an aphasic might
say “table”. Either word — chair or table — could individuate the
category as both share properties of the class. The lesion causes
retardation in process at a phase of word specification where chair
and table are covalent. If the patient says, “chair”, though correct,
the word tends not to have the precision of reference of normal
subjects. It is more holophrastic, like the “daddy” of a child for all
men, or doggy for animals. Functional or experiential properties
can determine errors, as when a patient says “sit” for chair. The
patient with paraphasic errors, e.g. “table” for chair, is often un-
aware that naming is erroneous (see text below et seq.).
The phase transition that explains such phenomena has the
character of a whole-part relation governed by intrinsic regulari-
ties. Whether a thought takes the form of logic or paralogic de-
pends on what segment of the individuation dominates the final
actuality. When preliminary whole/part relations involve subject
and predicate there is paralogic. When they concern objects and
properties, there is dream symbolism, animism or creative think-
ing. An example of paralogic is given below34 (see Fig. 9.1.). Dream
symbols exhibit this relation (von Domarus, 1944) when different
objects (wholes) are identified through an overlap in properties
(parts), e.g., a penis visualized as a knife owing to the shared attri-
butes of shape, penetration, etc. It is possible that the word knife
could prime the word penis, but in dream one image replaces the
34
The syllogism, Jesus Christ had a beard/I have a beard/I am Jesus Christ, or
I am a virgin/Mary is a virgin/ I am the Virgin Mary, are such examples. This
relates to animistic fusions, such as: Akiba is swift/tigers are swift/Akiba is (has
the living spirit of) a tiger (Lévy-Bruhl, 1935/1983).
240 Jason W. Brown
other based on common attributes. The image represents a cat-
egory (whole) and the exchange of categories depends on shared
properties (parts). At a phase of logical relations, shared parts
underlie similarity, not sameness. The whole/part relations that
guide the developing pattern have a different expression accord-
ing to the changing “substrate” on which they operate. A central
thesis of microgenetic theory is that a single process is iterated at
multiple phases rather than multiple processes acting at different
loci.
Most thinking is relational and not easily forced into a logi-
cal framework. The statement, John is virtuous (handsome, etc.)
is neither true nor false, but related to context, perspective and
circumstance. The transition from whole to part gives the ap-
pearance of operations that conform to modes of logic, but the
shift from Ucs to Cs thought involves increasing discrimination,
partition and specificity of reference, and a diminished emphasis
on predication that is not reducible to a change from primitive to
rational logic, as in the analysis of myth (Lévi-Strauss, 1962/1966).
One can describe some aspects of Ucs thought in terms of logic
(e.g. Blanco, see Rayner, 1995), e.g. the account of the paralogical
syllogism, but this does not imply that thought is driven by the
logic. The logic reflects the dominant patterns, trends or regulari-
ties extracted from the thought content, not rules that determine
what that content will be. Studies in logic reveal a tendency for
dichotomies, which arise from the fact that the mind is oblivious
to process or transition, thus more sensitive to oppositions than
continuities, with the result that polarities become artificial sta-
bilities that anchor the continua.
The “logic” of the dream and recurrent patterns of symbolism
imply intrinsic lawfulness or regularity. The feeling of lawfulness
and an intuition of the transition from meaning to form impel a
search for meaning in dream events. In waking life we do not ask
if every event has a meaning. We accept the contingencies of life,
accidents, illness, and so on, without having to assign each event a
meaning. Of course, there are people who say that someone who
suffers a misfortune got what he deserved, or that evil is eventu-
ally punished, if not in this life, the next, or that natural disasters,
earthquakes, tsunamis, are god’s will. The fact that such events
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 241
are given meanings instead of being perceived as random or
probabilistic indicates how difficult it is for most people to accept
that the greater number of life’s events are contingent rather than
meaningful. The tendency to project meaning on to impersonal
events is nearly irresistible, because all objects individuate out of
meaning-laden phases in the mind. The material world may have
meaning for us but it is not, or does not appear to be, intrinsically
meaningful. The intuition that perceptual objects realize inchoate
meanings in the mind of the observer motivates a search for mean-
ing in the world, in the Ucs, or in a transposition of personal mean-
ing to nature, spirit or deity.
What is the relation of the subjectivity of dream to the “objec-
tivity” of other life events that do not necessarily possess meaning
but manifest it in the endogenous trends of the visual and verbal
imagination? Dreams express the mind of the dreamer. After all,
what else could they express? But do events in dream have in-
trinsic meaning? Do they conform to a meaning or arise out of
interpretation? If I spend a day in the park and then dream of
bears, the dream can be explained by the revival of the category
of forest, of which a wooded park might be an instance, along
with the animals that live in a forest. This is a banal occurrence,
since a walk in the park could as well evoke the image of a bear
in Cs thought. Other events are explained by metaphoric exten-
sion. A bear calls up a pet cat in the category of animals, which
in turn calls up events relating to that animal, e.g., people who
have come in contact with the pet, loss, death, and so on. As in
the Zimmer example, the word “bear” may call up the homonym,
“bare”, which then arouses other contexts, memories, desires.
The propagation of images is driven by trends in thought, and the
experience and personality of the dreamer, as well as by general
categories, such as childhood, sexuality and death which, though
universal experiences, are not necessarily universal symbols or
archetypes. Dreams in psychoanalysis are the currency of clinical
insight and treatment, though not every dream affords a penetrat-
ing interpretation. Analysis fills in a narrative by adding to its co-
herence in a way that resonates with needs in the subjective life
as well as in the world.
242 Jason W. Brown
The degree of distortion in dream points to the phase in mi-
crogenetic process that is accentuated. It is likely that the more
bizarre the symbolism, the more archaic the phase, while lucid
dreams are close to waking cognition. The individual has a run-
ning Csness of the dream. This might suggest that dreams have
psychic attributes rather than taking them on in Cs thought. In
lucid dreams, the self appears not to be fully passive, and may
achieve the detachment, even the agency, of the waking self that
spans a succession of images. In daydreams and reveries, there is
also a flow of images, at times coherent, at other times not. The
proximity of these states to an empirical or Cs self may explain the
actualization of the categories. That is, the lucidity corresponds
with a Cs self that accounts for the occurrence of images instead
of categories. Indeed, a flow of categories would give no content
to the dream, and a self without objects would disappear.
The dream is a mode of Csness conditioned by early phases
in space, time, language, perception and self, organized accord-
ing to metaphoric and other pre-rational relations. Phases buried
in waking mentation that come to the fore in primitive thought,
psychosis and the creative imagination are continuous with Cs
thought, as the Ucs category transports the forming object to a
final actuality. The importance of dream to theory of mind is that
the relations exhibited in the dream content, not the content it-
self, like the symptoms of brain injury, are clues to the categorical
precursors of waking objects. On this theory, dream images retain
their importance as representatives of categories of thought that ex-
press personal meaning. However, the meaning is interpreted along
the lines of primitive cognition and whole/part relations at succes-
sive points in the trajectory of a thought, regardless of the narrative
achieved on waking. Dream is a mode of cognition that prefigures
Cs thought. The narrative has meaning for the dreamer, but the
categories behind the narrative are of greater significance for
theory of mind.
The idea that Csness interprets images that actualize on waking
does not entail that images are random, since psychic categories
are prioritized thoughts. The attempt to prolong a pleasant dream
that is interrupted by an awakening, or any incomplete dream,
indicates that dream is not a set of random images combined in a
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 243
retroactive interpretation. Why should a set of random images be
felt to have a lack of closure in Cs interpretation? These observa-
tions imply that one should avoid over-interpreting a given image,
or treating it too literally, since it reveals the category that is the
true conveyer of meaning, in addition to the narrative supplied by
the subject. The dreamer can take what he wants from the imag-
ery, but its import is what it points to, or derives from, namely the
categorical structure of an individual mind.
Such an account of dream does not, of course, retain the Ucs
agencies and distorted traces of psychoanalysis, nor does it make
too much of the significance of a specific image. Dream is not a
recombination of affectively-charged (cathected) memory traces
(drive-representations). The interpretation of the dream tells us
more about the dreamer than the content that is interpreted. For
microgenetic theory there is no uncorrupted trace, no store and
no retrieval. The “trace” is the full transition over neural configu-
rations or psychic categories that participate in its actualization.
The personality determines, and is determined by, this categori-
cal structure. Every act, object and thought passes through an
infrastructure that begins with the core self, leads through dream
cognition, to rational thought. The entire process of transition is
the trace.
9.4. Dream recall
Parenthetically, the account of dream as a narrative that articu-
lates the simultaneous apprehension of the dream content in the
temporal order of waking cognition, is similar to descriptions of
the creative process, in which a work is sensed or imaged as a
whole prior to being worked out in detail (Chapters 2 and 12). This
process applies not only to the rare event of having the whole of
a symphony or literary work in the mind at once, but to the more
common experience of an inchoate thought as a totality that, over
time, is realized, serially, in composition. As in the progression
from the whole of the dream to the events in its recall, or from Ucs
to Cs thought, the category is depleted in the art work as potential
achieves existence in actual fact.
244 Jason W. Brown
The paralogical, animistic, mythic, magical or supernatural
character of dream is typical of subsurface cognition. The promi-
nence of long-term memory and rapid forgetting imply cognitive
“depth”. The forgetting may be related to state-specificity. It may
also be impelled by the memorial quality of the events to be re-
membered, since actual experience is ordinarily more durable
than reflection. But the principle explanation of dream-forgetting
is the realization of sequential order on waking. In this respect,
there is a similarity with iconic memory, which is the immediate,
Ucs, ephemeral apprehension of the whole of a presentation. In
iconic memory, experimental probes indicate a capacity well be-
yond that implied by the recall of constituent items. The effort to
specify the contents corresponds with, and perhaps is responsible
for, the loss of the memorial whole. This suggests one account of
the forgetting of dream, namely, that the attempt to revive and se-
rially order the contents partly explains their loss. The “all at once”
of an iconic gestalt is fractionated to a serial order of episodes with
only those images revived that serve the narrative, while the shift
from simultaneity to succession alone entails loss of elements.
Presumably, the more rational or commonplace the dream,
the less the disparity between depth and surface and the more
likely it is recalled though bizarre dreams may leave such an
impression they are never forgotten. If so, this suggests that the
dream state itself figures more importantly in recall than the con-
tent. Specifically, the microgenetic characteristics of the dream
state, independent of the contents, determine the potential for Cs
realization. In addition, the frequent occurrence of events that di-
rectly or symbolically point to the remote past argues that dream
is not a mere re-working or consolidation of the previous day’s
occurrences. Were the dream to consolidate the memories of the
preceding day, it would take the length of the day for all percep-
tions to be consolidated, though the simultaneous nature of the
dream does open the possibility that a multiplicity of events can
be compressed in a minimal thickness of subjective time.
If one awakens a dreamer after each of the six or more dreams
in a night, one could, in principle, record events pertaining to the
preceding day, and find that most of the day’s events have not
been dreamt of, or that, even in the most liberal interpretation of
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 245
symbolism, did not occur in the dream, so it is not the dream, but
sleep that relates, if it does, to consolidation, with the dream aris-
ing for reasons other than memory storage or assimilation. This is
not to say dream is unnecessary, but to raise a question as to its
role in the “consolidation” of memory. If the dream, as some ar-
gue, consists of the least-noticed fragments of the day, one might
predict such fragments would be the best-recalled. The memory
of events early in life more likely reflects the elaboration of early
phases in long-term and experiential memory that were implicit
in the waking experience to which the symbolism of the dream
refers (Brown, 1988; 1996).
The process of dreaming is embedded in every waking
thought. Dream is endogenous infrastructure liberated from the
constraints of sense data. The gaining of reality in the transition to
wakefulness is occasioned by sensory limitations on pre-percep-
tual phases. A dream hallucination, like hallucination in the wak-
ing state, is an incomplete object (Brown, 1988). The gradations
of visual imagery from the near-veridical (eidetic) to the fantastic
retrace the development of an object outward to the world. A simi-
lar phenomenon occurs in verbal imagery. Errors in sleep-talking
(Arkin and Brown, 1971), in REM and NREM sleep, are like those
in aphasia, in that they expose early phases in language produc-
tion (see below).
9.5. Ucs imagery and the unremembered dream
This interpretation suggests an account of Ucs phases while they
are Ucs, i.e. before they actualize as dream or as symptoms of pa-
thology. In this account, the Ucs consists of phase-transitions like
those of waking cognition, in which neural configurations that
correspond with categories of incipient thoughts arise, perish and
recur. In dreams that are not recalled, the categories are abstract
potentials not embodied in actual contents. What is the role of, or
need for, imagery without a self as witness? It is likely that the self
of dream, which makes a brief appearance on waking, arises as
an intra-psychic segment necessitated by its extra-personal exten-
sion in the image. Dream images or events may be apprehended
246 Jason W. Brown
by a self that is vivid or in the background. Usually, such events are
“perceived” as actual happenings in the world, but the self is felt
to flow with the dream, changing with the changing content. Such
observations imply that the self, like its images, is also a category
in the process of image-formation, a necessary category if the im-
ages arise from it, as postulated in waking imagery and perception.
Put differently, the dream self is necessitated by the subject-object
divide as images develop to an extra-personal locus.
In the waking state, thought is more likely preceded by cat-
egories than specific contents or Ucs representations. If I say the
word “chair”, or see a chair, one supposes a background lexical
category or object-concept out of which the word or object is
specified. The difference between dream and wakefulness is that,
in dream, there is premature specification of the categories. If the
specification results on waking, the status of an unseen image or
Ucs phase in waking thought would be comparable to that of an
unrecollected dream. Though a sequence of categories is likely,
its demonstration may not be possible. Thus, it is conceivable that
the ordinary view of dream is correct, that categories decant into
visual or verbal images prior to becoming Cs (see below). The con-
cordance of laughter, crying, orgasm or sleep talking with later-re-
called dream events suggests psychic correlates, as the occasional
description of animals grasping at what appear to be imaginary
objects suggests hallucinatory, i.e. dream-like, experience in ani-
mals without human Csness, thus phenomenal experience in the
aware, but non-Cs, organism.
With some exceptions, the weight of evidence supports a
transition of categories without definite psychic correlates, unless
something happens to collapse the category to an image. For ex-
ample, the headboard in the dream of Maury provided the sense
data to actualize an image of a guillotine. A similar effect occurs
when one dreams of church bells and awakens to the ring of an
alarm clock. Such categories do not need labels, e.g. things that
strike your neck or morning noises. Though we speak of catego-
ries such as food or furniture, it is not clear how a mental category
is to be characterized. The progressive zeroing-in on the lexical
concept arrives at a phase — the word — where the content can be
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 247
experienced and described. What is it like to experience a mental
category independent of its constituent items?
We all have the experience of searching for a word with some
idea of its category. If I am trying to remember the word vicuna,
I can have a more or less vivid picture of the animal. Here, the
visual image actualizes in place of the verbal one. If I could neither
picture the animal, nor its size or shape, what kind of experience
would this be like? In Ucs thought that never achieves Csness, a
transition of categories might leave a unique trace according to
the kinds of categories that are generated, e.g. animals, vacations,
haunted houses, etc. However, it is unlikely that the imprint of
this transition on thought would have the same effect for dreams
that are recalled as for those not remembered, for the latter do not
have the same quality of existence. A ghost takes on greater reality
as an image than as a category of spirits.
Only a fraction of life is lived in actuality. A good part is spent
in non-productive sleep and in dreams that are not remembered.
What is the fate of such dreams? The short story by Garcia Marquez,
“Eyes of a blue dog”, ends with a woman’s accusation, “You’re the
only man who doesn’t remember anything of what he’s dreamed
when he wakes up.” Is he any the worse for this? Is this a blessing
or a curse? How does he differ from someone — Jung is the great
example — who remembers his dreams, analyzes and talks about
them?
Suppose a person awakens from a nightmare that leaves him
shaking for days. There is often a powerful effect on a person of a
terrifying dream. This is especially true for the classical nightmare
(Jones, 1949) with paralysis and suffocation. But if the person
sleeps through the dream without awakening, there seems to be
a negligible effect on subsequent thought. It may be that a night
of troublesome but unremembered dream accounts for being
out of sorts the following day, but to my knowledge, this has not
been demonstrated, perhaps not even investigated. How could it
be without waking the person to determine if the dreams were
upsetting? What is the difference between sleeping through a bad
dream and waking to it? The “night terrors” of children do not ap-
pear to leave lasting effects unless the child wakes up. Waking trig-
gers the panic. What does it mean to sleep through a nightmare?
248 Jason W. Brown
“Ucs terror” is terrifying but only in relation to Csness. A person
can be more frightened by the not-known than the known. The
objects of anxiety are unresolved. Panic attacks often arise for
reasons of which the person is unaware. This does not show the
existence of Ucs content in Cs thought; rather, the emphasis on
an Ucs segment of thought that has not fully resolved. In effect,
it points to the tension within or across categories rather than an
elicitation of definite Ucs content.
We see people who are agitated in sleep. We hear them cry
out; we say they are having a restless sleep or unsettling dream.
If we wake them, they may describe a frightening dream. Once I
was awakened from sleep when I was heard gasping for breath,
and on being awakened, I recounted, trembling, that a giant clam
had my leg in its grip and I was drowning. Of course, the possibil-
ity exists that, as in the Maury dream, a narrative was invented
on waking to explain the difficulty in breathing, which may have
had a very different cause. I have also laughed in sleep and, when
awakened, have not necessarily related a funny experience.
Similar anecdotes with variable concordance are reported in
Arkin (1981). There is the poet who dreamt what seemed of earth-
shaking import. She awoke and wrote it down, then returned to
sleep and, in the morning, read what she had written, which as
I recall was: hogamus, higamus, men are polygamous, higamus,
hogamus, women monogamous.
Sleep-talking studies are not conclusive on the concordance
of verbalization with dream content, which differs with REM and
NREM dreams (Arkin, 1981). At least half the time, there is con-
cordance, whether literal, symbolic or interpretive, but one could
maintain that sleep speech actualizes categories of verbal imagery
that, on being awakened, determine the corresponding categories
of visualization. My wife talks in her sleep and when asked, on
waking, about her dream, she usually reports either not dream-
ing or a thought unrelated to the speech content. If vocalization
in sleep shows unpredictable concordance with dream it may be
because content is unsettled, i.e. indefinite (or categorical), at the
moment of vocalization. If there is concordance, it may be driven
by the vocalization. Verbalizing in sleep is like an aphasic symp-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 249
tom (below) in that it specifies a semantic category into a distinct
item.
The difference in sleep talking or other motor reactions in REM
or NREM sleep would seem moot now that evidence has accrued
for a two-way dissociation of REM and dream. The more interest-
ing, if unanswerable, question is, what does it mean for a person
to sleep through a nightmare or any dream? In what sense does
(did) it exist? What is the impact, if any, on subsequent waking
thought and behavior? Something exists for us directly when we
are Cs of it; indirectly, because of effects that can be felt, measured
or experienced in other ways. Do unrecollected dreams that are
never Cs and without demonstrable effects, even if others witness
outward manifestations, exist for that person as experience, i.e.
other than as brain activity, and if so, how can that mode of exis-
tence be described? If waking gives dream its character, content
and affect, the lack of recollection of a dream, or any event that is
not experienced, known, demonstrated or derived, lends uncer-
tainty to its existence.
9.6. Dream and memory
One could also ask why waking experience tends to be remem-
bered and dream interpreted? Waking images affect or constitute
one’s life; dream images have meanings to the dreamer and may
have some slight relevance to one’s life but they are not constitu-
tive or ingredient. One says, my life consisted of such and such ex-
periences, but dreams are usually not among them.35 Perceptual
objects arouse categories in their voyage to external space, but the
constraints on this transit are strong, and it is mainly reflection,
when the self withdraws to an introspective mode that revives
those categories out of which the object developed. If dream con-
sists of categories that incidentally become images, the categories
or context will prevail over the image. This partly promotes the
search for meaning. Were dream to consist of a clear sequence of
Jung (1961) is an extreme case, where his own dreams served as data for
35
much of his theory.
250 Jason W. Brown
images, their experiential quality, even if apprehended as personal
or hallucinatory, would have a greater impact.
We know that a primary feature of many dreams is novelty.
Yet in spite of its inventiveness, a dream is felt to be a kind of
memory, and the dream report is felt to be a memory (recall) of a
memory (dream). The dream itself is not of an actual experience,
while its recall is an immediate memory of a slightly less-immedi-
ate memory, or thought, according to its novelty. The feeling of
realness and actuality of a dream is an element in recall, or the
dream may be felt to be a thought or recollection. The memorial
quality derives from the subjectivity and uncoupling from direct
sensation. The distinction of memory and thought reflects the
productive or reproductive character, i.e. the extent to which the
dream brings forth new content. The distinction of dream-recall
and waking perception is less sharp when one realizes that even
waking experience has a memorial quality.
The explanation of this phenomenon probably lies in the dif-
ference between the dream self and the Cs self in relation to the
present moment. The Cs present is a span over physical passage
within which successive events are perceived. In contrast, the
dream present is a knife-edge of change, without past or future.
When we recall a dream, we sense that the feeling of duration is
not possible in the dream, only on its waking articulation.36 The
self, swept along by the dream events, is itself an image along with
others in the dream. In all likelihood, the self is an image depos-
ited as an intra-psychic category out of which the dream image
develops. On waking, a Cs self spans the apparent progression
of the dream-events, an overview of which is not possible for the
dream self, which does not reflect on past events, nor have them
available in the present of the dream. There is usually no feeling of
agency for ongoing events, no prediction, no anticipation and no
expectancy. This is not surprising if the dream self, like the wak-
ing self, occurs as an early category in a simultaneous state
36
Even in waking experience the sense of past duration depends on the recall
of events during the interval. In amnesics, the estimation of duration is markedly
contracted.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 251
9.7. Forgetting in dream and amnesia
An unrecollected dream resembles a period of retrograde amne-
sia after head injury, in which the amnesia for recent events is like
that for the events of a dream. There may be an awareness of the
amnesic interval as an unfilled duration, as one has an awareness
of the interval of a sleep.37 When I awake during the night, before
looking at the clock, I often try to guess what time it is, and find my
estimates are usually close. If I try to guess the duration of sleep
to that point, the estimates are also fairly accurate. Many people
also have the experience of waking just before the alarm clock
goes off. The feeling of duration probably does not depend on the
sense of too much or too little sleep. If estimates of sleep interval
are accurate, this would differ from a period of amnesia, which
is markedly under-estimated, e.g. three months of post-traumatic
amnesia is estimated as three weeks. One possible explanation for
the under-estimation is the inability to recall events in the interval,
thus punctuate and so “stretch out” duration. “Unfilled” durations
are felt as shorter. This should apply as well to uninterrupted sleep.
If what passes in continuous sleep is non-psychic, its felt duration
should follow the pattern of amnesia, namely, a marked collapse
to a briefer period. Conversely, if estimates of sleep duration are
accurate, it would argue for Ucs psychic experience.
Another resemblance of sleep and post-traumatic amnesia
concerns some aspects of the quality of recall. When confabula-
tory amnesics are given emotionally-laden stories to remember,
the content is transformed according to the “laws of the dream-
work” (Betlheim and Hartmann, 1951), e.g., a rape is recalled as
a woman perishing in a fire. There is also amnesia for the period
just prior to losing Csness, in concussion and in sleep. Are dreams
37
Many years ago, using a Zeigarnik technique of incomplete (interrupted)
tasks on falling asleep and questioning the subject in the morning, I attempted to
determine whether “sleeping on a problem” helps in its solution. The results of a
pilot study were unclear, but the problem deserves to be revisited, for a positive
result would indicate that thought occurs during a night when a subject does not
awake. The demonstration of learning during anesthesia is suggestive in this re-
gard, but this does not show spontaneous cognition, only that verbal material can
be introduced and saved in some sense during a non-Cs state, perhaps analogous
in some ways to hypnotic trance. Learning occurs in all organisms irrespective of
Csness.
252 Jason W. Brown
that do not rise to Csness similar to memories that sink beneath
it? That is, are dreams that are not recalled like events that were
once Cs but have since been forgotten? Such events can be ac-
cessed, if at all, by a retreat into subjectivity, by re-dreaming the
same dream, or a progression over successive nights in a dream
narrative. This was described by William James, who also won-
dered if he was getting mixed up in other people’s dreams. Access
may be aided by hypnosis or other forms of regression. Aural phe-
nomena just prior to seizures that are not recalled can be revived
by stimulating the epileptogenic area in the brain. Most of us have
moments of uncertainty as to whether a past event was a “real”
experience or a dream. There are (rare) patients with brain injury
who say they do not know if they are awake or dreaming (Luria,
1972). Uncertainty as to the actual and the memorial are sweetly
recorded in the ode of Keats:
Was it a vision or a waking dream?
Fled is that music — do I wake or sleep?
There are instances in which a nightmare announces the im-
minent recall of amnesic events in the interval prior to an accident.
A patient of mine with a retrograde amnesia did not recall being
in an accident in which his fiancé was killed, nor did he show an
affective reaction when he was repeatedly told what happened.
As recall improved, he developed nightmares for some days prior
to the return of sufficient recall to ask what occurred in the ac-
cident, at which point, when told, he was overcome with grief. The
nightmares, however, were not directly about the accident; they
reflected the anxiety that forecasted the recall. That dreams revive
forgotten material or affective tonalities that cannot otherwise be
derived to Csness raises questions as to how Cs and Ucs “experi-
ence” is to be understood; specifically, if what is inaccessible to
Csness and indiscernible in its effects counts as personal experi-
ence (see below).
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 253
9.8. The symptom as a clue to Ucs cognition
One of Freud’s more important insights was the recognition that
psychopathological symptoms are not additions but uncoverings.
Microgenetic theory extends this principle to the symptoms of fo-
cal brain damage. A symptom such as a word-substitution, e.g.
saying table when asked to name a chair, or an error of the object-
concept, e.g. confusing a fork with a cup, or a derailment of action,
or a phenomenon such as hallucination or delusion, represents
a momentary incompleteness and/or derailment in the normal
process of language or percept formation. Instead of a full trans-
formation leading to an object adapted to the external situation,
phases that bear the maximal brunt of pathology either actualize
directly, say in hallucination, or as nested substitutions, as in ag-
nosia, that are carried through to the terminal phase. Recognition
and recall of errors are less adept than successful performances.
To a varying degree, the different forms of normal and pathologi-
cal imagery are embryonic perceptions.
The relevance of the symptom to a theory of the Ucs is two-fold:
(1) As images that are meaningful to the dreamer are arbitrary
members of categories, symptoms are similarly arbitrary, but
they do reveal phases that are otherwise opaque to observation by
the self or others. The invisible process displayed in a symptom
illuminates the phase to which it refers. Symptoms are signposts
of categories in brain process when injury deposits a member
item. The same reasoning applies to dream. Withdrawal to ear-
lier segments in object-formation deposits images as markers of
categories. (2) the interpretation of the symptom in relation to its
ambient context reinforces the concept of dream as a “collection”
of categories. Dream arises in closer proximity to experiential
memories. Focal symptoms tend to be superficial and delimited,
yet one could readily string them together in a narrative related to
the personality. The symptom has value as a counterweight to the
everyday notion that dream images are the subjective equivalent
of objects, i.e. components of “real” episodes. The ordinary view
is powerful and its vocabulary ingrained. The idea of categories
that undergo specification seems at odds with commonsense. But
this interpretation gains strength on a closer look at the process of
symptom-formation.
254 Jason W. Brown
9.9. The symptom in imagery, perception and
language
A symptom of brain damage, such as an abnormal image or
wrong word, arises when an object or lexical category actualizes
prematurely. Symptoms refer to normal but earlier phases in
mental process, when the phase (category of language, percep-
tion, etc.) is disrupted. Categories that are normally transformed
leave symptoms as markers of the upstream disruption. The
whole-part relation, i.e. the context-to-item or category-to-mem-
ber transition, actualizes an exemplar that might otherwise serve
as a potential for ensuing phases. The theory of a symptom as
an exposed category is a theory of mind, not just an argument
about neurological patients. The origin of symptoms as signatures
of phases in relation to the phase-sequence is also a description
of the mind/brain state, thus a description of an act of thought.
The various contents that actualize in this transition — feelings,
thoughts, words, images — are outcomes of Ucs process that come
into Cs relief.38 Some examples may help illustrate this idea.
Consider imagery and hallucination. The fundamental miscon-
ception that has plagued neuropsychology for over a century is
that sensory data, after input to visual cortex, are assembled to
objects that are mapped to memory images for recognition. The
images are stored in secondary visual areas, adjacent to primary
cortex or in regions of the temporal lobe. Apart from its pernicious
effect on all aspects of neuropsychology, as well as epistemology,
the assembly/store/retrieval model entails that hallucination oc-
curs when the center or storehouse of images is activated or dis-
inhibited, or when damage to visual and auditory areas “releases”
memory-image centers, or when seizure activity evokes halluci-
nation by exciting the centers. In this theory, an image is a dis-
inhibited memory. There is no account of novelty. The psychology
is tied to the neurology of association, i.e. damage to areas and
pathway interruption. In spite of their resemblance on research
38
Introspection occurs when a self that is Cs of images is embedded in a Csness
of objects. This represents a coming-to-the-fore of earlier phases in a full object-
development. The symptom is not a ceiling on this development, except when
the object world is lost. Then one has dream or psychosis.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 255
studies, image and object are usually attributed to different sys-
tems with overlapping mechanisms.
In contrast, the microgenetic claim is that hallucination devel-
ops over the same substrate as perception; objects are externalized
images, images are attenuated objects. Early studies demonstrat-
ing the identity of the substrate for image and object39 have been
ignored, partly because of disinterest in historical research, but
also because the research was mostly descriptive. When images
are conceived as phases in perception, an account of the charac-
teristics of the phase from which the image arises is possible.
Damage to perceptual cortex does not “release” an image but ex-
poses it before it objectifies. Epileptic irritation arouses pre-object,
e.g. hallucinatory, phases in a developing modality.40 The psychol-
ogy is tied to a dynamic neurology, with the image an instance in
a category exposed in its transition. Novelty is continuous, and
lies in the potential of the category, and its transformation over
phases when sensory constraints are relaxed. In sum, the argu-
ment is that Ucs or sub-surface phases are categories, not images,
the image arising when the category discharges or is disrupted.
The lifting of sensory constraints in dream, in pathology, or in
sensory deprivation, reinforces the sense of a fully endogenous
development. According to the locus of the disruption, the result
can range from a fantastic hallucination to an eidetic image of pic-
torial quality that is nearly veridical. Hallucination tends to arise at
early formative phases of personal memory and feeling. At a phase
closer to the world, a disruption gives illusion. The difference is
not that hallucination is a mental image and illusion a distortion
of a physical object, but the elicitation of an image at successive
points in the object-formation. Whether there is hallucination or
illusion is determined by the proximity of the disruption to early
or late cognition. Hallucination is early and psychic, and usually
39
Lhermitte (1951), Morel (1936), De Morsier (1938), Ey (1973), inter alia
(Brown, 1988).
40
Horowitz and Adams (1970) argue that images on temporal lobe stimulation
are not discrete elements but arise in the context of a dream-like state induced
by the excitation.
256 Jason W. Brown
appears as an intrusion into private space; illusion is late, “physi-
cal” and usually appears as a distortion of “public” space.
Organic and drug-induced hallucinations may unfold in a
dream-like progression yet the patient does not seek meaning
as he does for dream. Perhaps this is because waking hallucina-
tions seem arbitrary and, unlike dreams, are sustained in Csness.
They may be frightening or entertaining, bizarre or conventional,
familiar or unrecognizable, but they do not usually evoke a psy-
chological interpretation, except for verbal hallucinations in
schizophrenia, where the persecutory nature can be analyzed
in terms, say, of the sources of paranoid delusion. The Ucs origin
of dreams, their compression in a brief duration and need for
serialization, motivate the need for interpretation. The ordering
of dream images into a narrative is already an interpretation, so
that the ordering, more than the images, promotes a further drive
to meaning-analysis. The temporal order of the Cs experience of
scenic hallucination tends to mitigate the need for interpretation.
Organic hallucinations are often distorted snapshots, less like the
symbolic images of dreams.
If hallucination is the productive or phenomenal aspect of
pathology in the perceptual system, agnosia is the negative or de-
ficiency aspect. Agnosia, a term thought to be first used by Freud,
involves the object perception, not the image, but the image is the
subjective side of a perceptual defect, and the types of agnosia are
similar to those of pathological imagery. Defective phases that are
exposed in hallucination and illusion are buried in agnosia. The
two major forms of agnosia — disorders of concept (meaning) and
discrimination (form) — can be distinguished on testing. In the
conceptual variety, usually with bilateral mesial temporal lesions,
the patient sees a fork and calls it a cup. The object is misidenti-
fied but can be copied, and named correctly by touch. The error
is limited to the modality: visual, auditory, tactual. The accurate
perception of the fork, inferred from the ability to copy it, owes
to the sensory constraints, i.e. sculpting, on subsequent phases in
object-development, while the conceptual derailment that arises
at an antecedent phase is sustained into the endpoint. The patient
sees a fork, copies it and names it by touch, but still calls it a cup,
because the conceptual substitution — the category sampled in
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 257
the error — is conveyed into the final phase of the object-develop-
ment, that of featural detail. The agnosia involves the selection
of an object in an array of objects in the same category, i.e. the
wrong exemplar in the category. The counterpart of the symptom
in aphasia is a wrong word arising in the same lexical category as
the target.
In the second type of agnosia, usually with occipito-parietal le-
sions, a fork may be called a chisel or screwdriver. Here, the prob-
lem is the perception of form, not meaning. This variety involves
the specification of (the category of) object shape, size, etc., after
meaning has been established. The difficulty selecting the object
in an array of perceptually similar objects is independent of the
object-concept. Again, the problem, now in the domain of form, is
in eliciting the part, i.e. the figural detail, from a background whole,
or gestalt, or in giving evidence the whole is perceived when the
perception of the parts appears to be defective. This type of agno-
sia is important in showing that the whole is not constructed from
the parts but is antecedent to them. We see the preservation of the
whole in the presence of object-meaning even though the object
does not appear to be adequately perceived. This is demonstrated
by having the patient select the category of the object, or a con-
ceptually-related object, on a forced choice test.41
This “dissociation” can also be seen in ordinary behavior. One
of my patients could not copy a triangle or count a small number
of lines or dots on a paper, or discriminate simple shapes, but he
was able to take the elevator to the hospital cafeteria, order and
pay for a meal, and find his way back to the ward, walking with
confidence, not groping like a blind man.42 The involvement of ob-
ject form or featural detail with preservation of the object-concept
or meaning, and the reverse, points to a two-way or double dis-
sociation. While this dissociation has suggested to psychologists
the existence of separate centers for the different functions, it is
41
The patient is given only two choices, e.g. two object drawings or pictures,
and is “forced” to choose one, even though he may say that he cannot make out
what he has been shown. A score better than chance suggests an access to the
object-concept or its realization prior to the analysis into features at a Cs end-
point.
42
I have observed the same behavior in cases of “total” cortical blindness.
258 Jason W. Brown
compatible with a continuum from meaning to form, as predicted
by microgenetic theory. This is because focal lesions do not de-
stroy function; they expose the process mediated by the damaged
area.
There are agnosic syndromes with comparable disturbances
of recognition and discrimination for faces, routes, etc. An impor-
tant point is that the distinction of meaning and form in agnosia
parallels that in the sphere of imagery, e.g. hallucination (meaning)
and illusion (form). Agnosic errors of form are the objective cor-
relates of illusion. Those of meaning are the objective correlates
of hallucination. The progression is from the core constructs of
value, belief and personal meaning to word or object concept,
then to form and featural detail (Fig. 9.2.). A disruption is an un-
covering, not an interruption. The phase uncovered goes through
normal subsequent processing. These disorders illustrate the fact
that each phase in the cascade of whole/part relations has the
potential for a multiplicity of contents, themselves categories for
another wave of partition.
Fig. 9.2. The derivation goes from meaning to form — self to
world — in perception, imagery and language. Imagery reveals the
phase directly in errors. Such errors in aphasia and agnosia occur
spontaneously but can also be elicited on testing.
Errors of imagery and perception actualize categories of Ucs
process, sampling context that would ordinarily morph into the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 259
forthcoming phase. One moment there is normal perception, the
next, hallucination. One moment an object is misidentified, the
next, identified correctly. The symptom depends on the segment
in the microgeny where, at that moment, the pathology has maxi-
mum impact. Such observations imply a series of categories, not a
destruction of psychic entities or lack of access to them. The symp-
tom links pathological to normal behavior, uncovering processes
ordinarily hidden from self and observer. Because the exposed
process is Ucs, the person often has limited or no insight to the
error. Indeed, “error awareness” and self-correction are generally
signs of more superficial involvement.
The findings are more compelling in disorders of language,
i.e. aphasia. The patient who names a chair a “table” samples
the background category, i.e. furniture, out of which both words
arise (Fig. 9.1. bottom). He can usually point correctly to a chair
when asked to do so, though some patients can neither name the
object nor, when asked to point to it, understand its name. Most
naming errors are within category: red for blue, coat for shirt, arm
for hand, and so on. There can also be errors of experiential or
functional relations, e.g. glove for hand, tomato for red, bullfight
for guitar. Familiarity, word-frequency and concreteness play a
role as well as contrast and metaphor, e.g. black evoking white,
night, death. Category errors tend to reflect “typicality” effects43,
e.g. table is more commonly substituted for chair than lamp. The
“distance” of error from target is a sign of conceptual depth. This
is not greater inclusiveness but qualitative change, initially a shift
from abstract to experiential relations. In general, the more ab-
stract the relations, the more superficial the disruption; the less
abstract the relations, the more dream-like or delusional the sub-
stitution. Such errors occasionally occur in aphasia, but are often
seen in schizophrenia.
In confabulation and delusion, derailment is inter-sentential,
i.e., involves context at the level of the concept or phrase. In apha-
sia, substitution is intra-sentential, limited to the word or word-
concept. In the derivation of an utterance, the transition is from
43
The core or prototypical item in a category, e.g. canary for bird, is a more
common substitution, though there is a class of patients that tend to use less
familiar words, e.g. ostrich for bird, spectacles for glasses.
260 Jason W. Brown
affective, personal and experiential relations to lexical category,
then the elicitation of a “word frame”, then a similar — wide to
narrow — process of phoneme selection in the realization of the
syllables of the word. As in the relation of hallucination to agnosia,
errors in language often parallel difficulty in the assignment of
category membership. For example, words like fireplace, window
and piano may be grouped with chair and table in the category of
furniture (Grober, Kellar, Perecman and Brown, 1980). The more
elastic the boundaries the less specificity there is in word-use. This
corresponds in word production, to sampling errors in naming,
where denotation is less precise.
Just as organic hallucinations can be related to schizophrenic
hallucinations, and both to normal perception, errors in aphasia can
be related to language errors in dream and schizophrenia as well as
to phases in normal language (Figs. 9.1.). The comparison rests on
the understanding of whole/part relations. In abstract thought, a
property is a part of the whole. In the paralogic of schizophrenia
or dream, the part (property) becomes a whole in relation to other
wholes. The part-as-whole enlists other categories in relation to it,
which then function as parts, e.g. when a schizophrenic woman
thinks she is the Virgin Mary based on the shared property of vir-
ginity. The predication that underlies category membership be-
comes a category to which items in other categories are wedded.
In the above example, virginity no longer modifies a woman, but
is a category to which they belong, or more precisely are iden-
tified. The same fusion occurs in primitive thought (and in the
metaphor of creative imagery), for example when ferocity serves
to unite a tiger with an individual.
In aphasia, when experiential properties determine word er-
rors they tend to be within the word category. Substitutions such
as “sit” for chair or “eat” for table are not unusual. The charac-
teristic or defining properties of the objects commonly occur in
substitution, or circumlocution, in word-finding difficulty, in nor-
mal states of distraction, fatigue, and so on, e.g. “you drink coffee
from it”, when a person cannot find the word “mug”. A normal
individual or aphasic is generally aware of the search and effort,
since knowledge of the properties of the object implies that the
noun and abstract reasoning are to some extent available.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 261
In dream, experiential properties form novel categories within
which otherwise unrelated items are identified; or, one item re-
places another through the implicit mediation of the attribute.
Thus, coffee might be the basis of a fusion of mug and Brazil. An
unpleasant experience in Brazil might lead to a dream of coffee
or a mug. A “coffee date” might result in a dream of Brazil. The
fusion of dream imagery and language is comparable to that of
schizophrenics. A schizophrenic patient gave his name as “foot-
ball”, possibly because he felt he had been “kicked around” in his
life. The word was not used as a pun or a Cs metaphor, but as if it
were his given name. The priority of the attribute or predicate is
prominent in paralogic. The prominence of predication44 indicates
that object-properties are laid down before the object is realized,
i.e. the predicate develops before the noun or object. Predicative
relations are the context out of which objects arise. The genuine
dynamic of predication is antecedent to the artificial demarcation
of objects. Similarly, the attributes of a noun are the dynamic out
of which it develops. They constitute a potential for other nouns.
Once a noun appears it is static, “thing-like”; its contextual under-
pinnings can only be recaptured in a descent to earlier phases in
noun generation.
In sum, an iterated specification of wholes (categories, con-
texts) into parts (properties, items), from earlier (past, intra-psy-
chic) to later (present, extra-personal) phases, characterizes the
transitional series that constitutes the mind/brain state. Each
phase in this transition is a category that “contains” innumerable
virtual members. Each category is itself in transition, individuat-
ing parts or sub-categories that continue the transformational
sequence. Normally, the succession of categories, or whole-part
transformations, is an Ucs process that leads to a Cs endpoint. The
Cs endpoint incorporates the self and inner and outer segments.
Pathology exposes phases in this transition. The particular form
of the pathology determines the phase that is disrupted and the
symptom that follows. The symptom is an instance in the category
that happens to actualize when the phase is disrupted.
44
Vygotsky (1962) wrote that inner speech was largely predicative since the
topic is known to the speaker.
262 Jason W. Brown

Thus, the symptom exposes the category behind it, of which

it is a potential outcome. The key to understanding the Ucs is the
succession of category-shifts. This is also the basis for an inter-
pretation of dream imagery in relation to pathological symptoms.
Microgenetic theory provides a coherent account of alterations in
perception and language in brain-damaged cases, schizophrenia
and normal dream, alterations that do not point to deviant brain
function, but illustrate the process that underlies the mind/brain
state. In this, the theory of the symptom — in language, percep-
tion, dream — is a theory of the mind.
 Chapter 10
Psychology of Intentionality

10.1. Intention and intentionality

Intentionality (intentional) is a description of the directionality of
relations between phases in an act of thought or, more specifi-
cally, between the self and some internal or external content in
consciousness. Intention has a different meaning, and refers to a
feeling of agency that is specific to action or volition. Intention has
both a conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) reference,
while intentionality is tied to states of consciousness. Except when
the unconscious reference for intention is marked implicit or Ucs,
the term will mean conscious intention, or intent. The conscious
perception of an object or the desire for an object is intentional,
but we do not ordinarily think that we have an intention to per-
ceive an object. An intention may cause an object to be perceived
in averting the eyes to the intended target, but consciousness of
the object is usually held to be passive or receptive, i.e. object per-
ception is intentional but not intended. The idea of perception as
active or productive (e.g. Bergson, 1944ed) has gained little trac-
tion over the years, but it would permit one to think of an external
object as the outcome of an intention.

The intention implicit in a perception is recaptured in its sub-

jective antecedents when we move back one step to the prefigur-
ing concepts, images or feelings. When consciousness is directed
to its internal antecedents, the self becomes conscious of the in-
tention or volitional feeling and choice that underlie the passivity
of object-perception. A thought-image can be altered in the imagi-
nation. We have the feeling of a voluntary effect on the image, as
well as choice in the image type. Under certain conditions, such as
expectancy and hallucination, the image can externalize, but then
it is apprehended as independent of the observer. The interpreta-
tion of such phenomena is that the volitional feeling (intention)
in a thought image becomes passive to an hallucinatory image
and is finally lost in perception when the image detaches as an
external object.
266 Jason W. Brown
One might say the desire for (fear of, etc.) an object causes
the person to act on it, but a more accurate depiction is that the
intentionality of the mental state, which includes the feeling of
desire (fear), incorporates a direction toward or away from the
target object. Desire, like fear, is not a definitive preliminary to
action. A desire that immediately captures an object or a fear that
escapes one is more like a drive. Desire has the object in thought.
The desire for an object, like the fear of it, leads to an implicit or
explicit phase of choice. Fear may lead to uncertainty or paralysis.
The desire for another person may not rise to the level of action
because of shyness, timidity or other circumstances. Satisfaction
may be avoided to prolong desire. A delicious yet painful longing
for an unobtainable other is a theme of romantic poetry. Desire
marks off an intentional state but does not signal an impulse to
act. It anticipates a decision as to whether or not to act, which then
may lead to the intention to satisfy the desire. A desire to visit the
Grand Canyon is not a desire to obtain, possess or even perceive
an object, e.g. a vista, but to have the experience of that perception.
It is an experiential and intentional state the goal of which is for
the individual to be in another experiential and intentional state.
The intention in intentionality would seem to cause or instigate
the action. To say, I intend to lift my arm, or that I have the idea
to lift my arm, and then lift the arm, assumes a causal link from
the intention to the action. However, the association of intention
and action merely points to separate and not necessarily consecu-
tive, acts of cognition. In one mental state, the self is conscious of
the intention, or the conceptual feeling directed to action. In the
other, an action occurs, but this does not indicate the intention
causes the action no more than it assigns causal efficacy to any
preceding state of thought or memory. One can say the intention
is superseded by the action, but the initial state can be followed by
many intervening states that are unrelated or tangential to the ac-
tion, or the action may not occur. Intention occurs with and with-
out an action, and with an action, it can be immediate or delayed.
This is true for the intentional aspect of certain visual images, less
so for imagery in other modalities.
The succession of intention and action, or idea and act, implies
a psychic cause for the action, or that the mind (self) wants to act
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 267
in such a way as to cause the act to occur. However, the intrinsic
change that results in each content, i.e., the process of its becom-
ing, or actualization, passes from unconscious to conscious phas-
es. Contents in consciousness are outcomes of the unconscious
processes leading to them, not starting points for novel occurrenc-
es. Physiological studies support this account in showing that the
consciousness of an intention follows its onset (Libet, 1999). The
interpretation of this phenomenon (Brown, 1991) is that a concept
discharges first into an idea (of the desired object), later into an
action (to obtain it). In spite of the common sense notion that a
conscious idea leads to action, here is no causal bridge from idea
to act. Rather, a single concept serially actualizes or exhausts its
potential (Fig. 10.1), first into the conscious idea, desire (or inten-
tion), then into the action.
Fig 10.1. Successive overlapping mental states. In the initial
state, a concept delivers an idea (perception, image, etc.). In the
ensuing state, which may occur immediately or after a delay,
the same concept delivers another act, object or mental content.
When a conscious idea (or intention) is followed by an action, the
succession is interpreted as a causal sequence when, in fact, both
contents arise out of the same ground of conceptual feeling.
In perception, intentionality is a state of consciousness of an
object with or without an overt intention. Every act of thought
begins with some orientation. The orientation, bias, disposition,
presupposition, etc. develops to interest, desire or intention. Any
content can suffice as an object of interest. An object provokes
interest by arousing unconscious constructs in the mind that are
predisposed to attend to it. In this sense, interest finds its object.
268 Jason W. Brown
Put differently, for an object to arouse interest is for the pre-object
to tap an existing bias or valuation. The will may find objects it
seeks, and then we say the object stimulated the search, but all
along, intention, implicit in the percept, guides and chooses ob-
jects on the path to the one it is seeking, which then surfaces as a
feeling that the object is an incentive for the action.
For example, as I revise this paper, I am on a train to Warsaw. I
can see the compartment, fully scrutinize the passengers, gaze at
the snowy landscape or peruse the manuscript. Does each object
continuously register in my cortex to be constructed into a three-
dimensional shape and color, then recognized and assigned a
value? Were this the case, I would be passively drawn to whatever
comes into my visual field since I do not even know what I wish
to see until after I consciously perceive it. Do I choose to perceive
an object in this array to the neglect of others, say focusing on
the manuscript oblivious to all else? Interest not only drives but
generates my perceptions, as each momentary object actualizes
out of (with) unconscious value.
Intention in object perception comes to the fore in delibera-
tion when preparatory phases in the object-development actual-
ize as endpoints. A car is approaching; we step out of its path.
The sighting seems the natural stimulus of the avoidance. The
conscious content, the car, is presumed to trigger a bodily (axial)
reaction of escape, and the surface content is presumed to arouse
an archaic motor reaction. I would say the external object incites
action through a system common to both action and perception.
The core of the forming percept activates the core of the act, and
both develop into awareness, consciousness and/or behavior. If
we are some distance from the car, we decide whether to wait
until it passes or quickly cross the road. In one instance, the ac-
tion is immediate, in another there is a delay. In the latter state,
we are aware of the deliberative, decisional or intentional phase
in perception and action that is rapidly traversed in the former
state. Here too we see unconscious or implicit intention pass into
conscious or explicit intention.
While intentionality does not obligate a conscious intention,
having a conscious intention presumes an intentional state into
which an implicit intention develops. The feeling of intention is
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 269
vested in a more preliminary phase, closer to the self, to will and
desire. The desire to act is the experience of an intention that has
transitioned from an implicit to an explicit phase. Intentionality is
closer to the object toward which the mental state is directed, or to
a content that itself points to an object. The desire for an object is
the experience of intentionality. The direction of intentionality is
aimed at the content the state is about. One could say that inten-
tion is most obviously is based in will or feeling and the direction
to action, and largely hidden in perception, while intentionality
is based in the direction to an object-content or its direction to
something else. This hidden intention in object-formation makes
the direction of intentionality explicit, turning agency into per-
ceptual aboutness, or aboutness into agency and preparedness.
Intention can be conscious or unconscious. The intentional is
always conscious. The difference between conscious and uncon-
scious intention is like that between volition and purposefulness,
or the deliberative and the automatic, or choice and impulse.
10.2. Consciousness and intentionality
What has not been demonstrated is the uniqueness of inten-
tionality or its dissociation from consciousness. Historically, the
intentional has designated what a mental state is about, while
consciousness has designated what it feels like to be in that state
(Kriegel, 2003), a distinction of conscious object and inner feeling
that splits content from its antecedents (see below). The differ-
ence reflects a focus on interior process that is inaccessible, or
on a superficial content that is conceived as independent of its
precursors.
Consciousness is always consciousness-of-something, and
the “of-something” is its intentional quality. Consciousness of an
object or a goal implies the presence of a self, a state of interest,
and an object that is the object of this interest. This object is what
the intentional state is about, while the orientation to the object is
its aboutness. Intention is like an accentuation of the perceptual
line of the intentional as it veers to action. Object-awareness is not
passive enjoyment, but readiness for action. Readiness is prepara-
270 Jason W. Brown
tion for purposefulness in behavior. Probably, intentionality de-
velops out of implicit intention in the same way that conscious
agency arises out of the purposefulness of awareness. Specifically,
the purposefulness of awareness leads in action to the agency of
consciousness, and in perception to the intentional relation to ob-
jects. Explicit intention is consciousness of goal-orientation that
discharges implicit intention into action. When implicit intention
becomes explicit choice, action is attenuated and its antecedent
concepts come to the fore. Options buried in potential are ac-
centuated. This heightening of the preliminary is the ground of
introspection.
Intention develops in the context of action and spreads to per-
ception or other mental phenomena. The first step in the appear-
ance of conscious intention is a delay in action, say, in the child’s
hesitation before reaching. This delay, when filled by thought,
reveals the intentionality of interest or value that is the source of
aboutness. Hesitation that points to uncertainty is the kernel of
possibility, of goals and paths not imminent in consciousness. A
conscious intention has absent objects in the imagination. Trial
action is a form of mental play that unites intention with delibera-
tion. More fundamentally, intentionality derives from abstracting
the purposefulness of action and turning its end into an object
of interest. The outcome of a purposeful act, or the aim of the
act, objectifies as the goal toward which the conscious intention
is directed.
Aboutness or directionality must be differentiated from focal
attention. The difference between anxiety and fear is a differ-
ence of generalized/diffuse and focal/individuated attention.
Consciousness is always of-something irrespective of what the
something is. However, focal attention in states of awareness must
differ in some way from focal attention in conscious states. It may
be that the gazelle seen by a lion is the same gazelle seen by a con-
scious person, but the person sees it in a different way. As soon
as one is conscious of attending to an object, the subject-object
relation becomes explicit and the self acquires a volitional atti-
tude. The becoming-conscious of what is singled out in awareness
accompanies a feeling of deliberate perception. This volitional
quality in focal attention may well be the essence of intentionality.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 271
Pascal was said to get rid of a toothache by concentrating on a
mathematical problem. Is this a shift in the object of attention or
the intentional state? The problem of diffuse and focal attention in
both awareness and in consciousness is a doorway into psychol-
ogy that philosophy must cross for intentionality to be more than
a mode of literary discourse.
The question, what is intentionality for, is like the question,
what does intention do? To the extent the directedness of the
intentional is like a scanner or focus on a content, it has an ac-
tive or agentive character. To the extent the agency of intention is
applied to objects or images, it merges with the intentional. The
question, is the aboutness of the intentional a volitional direc-
tion, is like the question, does intention have causal power? This
comes of shifting a set of intrinsic relations that are ingredient in
a state to a set of external relations among seemingly arbitrary
components. Intentionality implies a self, a vector and an object
to which the vector is directed, all of which inhere in the mental
state. These phases evolve one out of the other; they do not occur
independently. The state is not divisible into a self, an object and
a direction. Without the object, there is no self. Without a self,
there is no consciousness of the object. The becoming of the state
is not arrested when the self crystallizes, for the self exists in the
demarcation from ensuing phases. A self does not occur without
a tacit predication. The “I” is always “I am (think, want, etc.)”. The
“I” does not exist without a verb or relation. The relation estab-
lishes the “I” as a figural contrast in relation to something else,
minimally to the ambient field in which it develops.
Every entity has a direction of becoming over the temporal
extensibility of its minimal existence. In organic systems, the be-
coming of the organism is uni-directional. In basic or elementary
physical entities, the becoming may be reversible or isotropic. The
becoming or directionality of the mental state is fundamental to
its existence, its being. The Würzburg school of psychology dis-
cerned a vague feeling of directedness (Bewüsstheit) before the
appearance of a content. The direction is the forward surge of the
state and its aim to actualization. This feeling can be felt before the
state terminates, as a presentiment, a tendency or a disposition.
272 Jason W. Brown
This feeling of direction without an object is discussed in mystical
writings and is common in creative discovery.
Generally, the mental state is said to be intentional when the
self is conscious of an object (content), and purposeful when there
is object-awareness without consciousness. Explicit intention is
intentional consciousness in relation to action. Implicit intention
is purposefulness in awareness. The former is built on and pre-
sumes the latter. The latter precedes the former and can occur
in its absence. Both states, awareness and consciousness, have an
object as subjective aim but only consciousness has a self and a
mental (intrapsychic) object. According to this way of thinking,
all conscious states are intentional and all intentional states are
conscious, regardless of whether or not the content is intentional,
though an intention can be conscious or unconscious.
Once the logical implications of the concept of intentionality
are exhausted, and the properties of intentional objects are fully
mined for their complexities, the fundamental problem that re-
mains, which led to the description of intentionality in the first
place, is how mental states can be about something, a problem still
untouched by the many arguments that swirl around it. Analyses
of the conditions and varieties of aboutness swamp the few pa-
pers on its psychological basis. One gets mired in distinctions and
ignores the relation. It is as if one set out to explain gravity by
elaborating and analyzing all instances of the phenomena with-
out ever explaining it. The fact of aboutness is that it is essential
to consciousness, without which conscious states would not oc-
cur, since consciousness is the relation of self to inner and outer
objects. The agentive feeling in consciousness is a combination
of this relation with the anisotropy of actualization. This gives the
direction or aboutness that is the justification for the “problem” of
intentionality.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 273
10.3. The scope of the subjective
The idea of intentionality, especially of psychic causation, the dis-
tinction of primary and secondary qualities, inner and outer, and
the relation of sense phenomena to objects divides consciousness
into components beginning with the self and its acts/objects. This
division is reinforced by the common belief that the objects we
perceive are mind-independent, and that acts are implemented
by, and thus distinct from, the psyche. The variety of possible ob-
jects includes “pure sensory” qualities (colors, sounds), feelings,
intra-psychic objects (beliefs, desires), extra-psychic objects (trees),
and phenomena that have psychic qualities but are extra-personal
(rainbows, illusions). The intentional is most assuredly grounded
in the direction to the extra-psychic, which is the satisfaction of the
subjective aim of the state, or its intentional goal. The distinction
of the self “inside” the mind and the action or object “outside” it
is central to Brentano’s (1874/1973) argument that intentionality
gives existence to physical phenomena, i.e. qualia, that otherwise
are presentations with no real existence (see Chisholm, 1952;
McAlister 1982 ). Intentional existence is a halfway house between
real existence and the imagination. But do we want to say that
such entities exist only as objects of attention? A color and a tree
are both objects of attention, or intentionality, and are both brain
events. What insures the reality or existence of one object over
another?
An external object or phenomenon such as a “sensory qual-
ity” is not about anything and is not intrinsically intentional, in
contrast to certain mental phenomena, e.g. beliefs, desires, which
seem to refer beyond themselves. Since sensory qualia are not
directed to something, they take on existence through an invest-
ment of intentionality, whereas beliefs are intrinsically inten-
tional in pointing to something else, or so the argument goes.
The distinction depends, in part, on the contrast of primary and
secondary qualities, i.e., secondary qualities lack real existence as
psychic additions to physical nature. It can be asked, what is the
critical difference in perception between seeing an object and see-
ing its color, or seeing the colored after-image of the object? What
are the grounds for dividing objects into those with sensory quali-
ties only and those with sensory plus mental qualities? Sensory
274 Jason W. Brown
impressions are mediated by cortical and sub-cortical areas; they
impinge on pre-perceptual regions in the brain and, because they
are pre-perceptual, are inaccessible to consciousness. Objects come
to us whole. We are not conscious of their constituents, their “as-
sembly” or their actualization. Sensory qualities such as color or
pain are private modalities of perception that, it is assumed take
on spatial properties through visualization. For example, in the
sighted, the localization of sound is parasitic on, and disrupted by
alterations of, visual space.
In addition to qualities, we are conscious of contents that are,
in themselves, considered non-intentional, such as moods. A
mood does not have an object, even if it is what the mental state
is about. The self is conscious of being anxious or depressed. The
feeling of pain or anxiety is what a state of anxiety or pain is about.
If the self wonders why it is anxious or depressed, is wonder over
a non-intentional content intentional? Take the shift from anxiety
to fear. In one state, anxiety is the content of consciousness; in
the other it is fear, along with the object of the fear. The differ-
ence is the degree to which the aim specifies, or the delimitation
of a generalized state of conceptual feeling as an object resolves
within a category. The world is a necessary backdrop for a self
and its objects, whether incipient or formed, whether directed to
inner or outer events. When the affective state is anxiety, the self is
related to the content of mind as a whole. When the affective state
is fear, the feared object is specified. Yet in both instances, one
could equally say that the true object of the state of intentionality
is not anxiety or fear but to be rid of them and replace them with
a state of tranquility.
As long as there is a self, there is consciousness, even of vacan-
cy or meditation on emptiness, or absent-mindedly gazing at the
sea. Even a person in a state of mystical absorption in god or the
absolute is conscious of, and exhilarated by, the oneness of the ob-
ject (Hughes, 1937). Intentionality is not the direction to an object
beyond the immediate content, for the future is an idea within the
present that is a target of attention. Content actualizes the future
as its own intrinsic aim. Implication and reference are not addi-
tions to content but remain part of the total state. Aboutness is
still within-ness, ingredient, not extrinsic or supplemental. When
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 275
anxiety becomes fear and takes on an object, the present mental
object is now fear, not anxiety. The content actualizes as or near
the outcome of the mental state; the self is close to its onset, the
world its endpoint. Aboutness is the direction from self to object,
or the relation between polarities in a transition from the activa-
tion of the state to its terminus.
The difference between anxiety and fear may correspond to a
difference in perception and behavior but there is little impact on
consciousness. If consciousness does change as the object clari-
fies, what is the difference? The resolution of the field would seem
inconsequential, for the self is conscious of being anxious in the
same way that it is conscious of being fearful. That a state such
as anxiety is non-intentional until the person knows what he is
anxious about, at which point the state becomes intentional, is
the slender thread on which intentional theory rests. What is the
value of this concept? Brentano appears to have believed that in-
tentionality and consciousness-of were identical, though he raised
the issue of the intentional quality of unconscious ideas. If con-
sciousness is always consciousness-of something, and conscious-
ness that is not consciousness-of is awareness, intentionality is a
superfluous concept.
If intentionality is about something, what is the class of states
that are not exactly moods in which the self is leaning to some-
thing that is not yet clear? As fear differentiates out of anxiety, or
a morbid depression resolves to one in which a cause or reason
is identified, so one searches for a memory or a word that is not
forthcoming. A writer holds a pen waiting for a thought to come.
What object is the state about? If one tries without success to recall
something, is the state intentional? What of an expectation that
does not yet have an object? Is the not-yet one is waiting for still an
object of consciousness? A state of dynamic tension, perhaps like
that described by Zeigarnik (Kurt Lewin, 1948), is sufficient for an
intentional content.
276 Jason W. Brown
10.4. Process and content
The discussion has exposed the fundamental difference between
a theory based on mental content as opposed to one of process
generating the content, or between a descriptive and a genetic
psychology. This descriptive approach follows the experience of
everyday life, in which interest is fixed on thoughts, memories,
ideas, hopes, struggles and fears. Most fields of psychology and phi-
losophy begin and end with the analysis of content. For Brentano
and others, philosophy is essentially descriptive psychology, the
mind revisiting its own thought. Clinical psychology also begins
with content and works backwards to cause, postulating needs,
attitudes, motivations, early experience, as determining events in
the occurrent state. The prior sequence gives a cursory explana-
tion of the present but is not deeply genetic; it merely aligns sur-
face contents in a series that makes plausible the occurrent state.
The inter-connectedness of the contents of conscious thought and
perception, both past and present, produces a narrative that feels
explanatory.
Cognitive psychology, which for the most part is also descrip-
tive, with its modularity and animosity to evolutionary gradualism,
introduces quantitative methods that are largely antithetical to a
genetic interpretation. The temporal is secondary to the spatial;
substance and quantity replace process and quality. The origin of
the content is reduced to the spatial interaction of rules on con-
stituent elements, e.g. representations, propositions, strategies,
etc. The philosophy of intentionality and its correlates in cognitive
science are a mode of descriptive psychology in which the imme-
diate object is primary, while its formative history is collapsed to a
reconstitution of its assumed constituents. The dissociation from
genetic process gives content as an externalized solid indepen-
dent of its source. The content takes on a life that is independent
of the mind, and consciousness is left with little to do other than
feel what it is like to be in a particular mental state.
Contents are the settled endpoints of an unconscious creative
process opaque to thought that is reconstructed from the felt con-
nectivity between endpoints. Logical solids interact by causal links
that can be direct, as when an idea leads to action or to another
idea, or indirect, as when the association of ideas is mediated by
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 277
metaphor or symbolism. Intentional content is a kind of outer
representation of the self along with an echo of agency pointing
to objects in the future, in short, a starting point of thought with
reference to external objects. The surface of the state is the floor of
the philosophical imagination. One reminisces on a vacation last
year to Barcelona and a set of experiences recurs in memory as a
source of pleasure or disappointment. One plans a vacation next
year to Madrid, because it is inexpensive or sunny, for a profes-
sional opportunity, an invitation, interest in bullfights or to see
the Bosch triptychs at the Prado. The plan or the reminiscence
— the forward or backward glance — is, for substance theory, part
of a network of associations that accounts for its occurrence while
for process theory, these contents are endpoints in consciousness
that severally exhaust the series of overlapping source concepts.
A phenomenon such as a belief is a typical intentional object.
But an explicit or conscious belief is the realization — outcome, fi-
nal content — of an unconscious or implicit belief, value or dispo-
sition in the core self. The conscious belief is the terminal content
of an unconscious presupposition. The intentional relation lies
in the trajectory from the presupposition to the conscious belief,
not from the content of the conscious belief to what the belief is
about. The belief is the outcome of the mental state. Its content
may be true or false, rational or irrational, but to make the con-
tent of the belief the intentional object of the state rather than the
belief itself displaces the aboutness of the self/object relation to
relations within the content of what the belief is about, effectively
removing the content from its psychological antecedents.
Similarly, a desire is the individuation and outcome of a drive,
and a sufficient object of consciousness. The desire may be for an
apple or an orange, but the intentional process is the desire for the
object, not the analysis of the object for which one has the desire.
Indeed, a person might prefer to remain in a state of desire, which
is then the goal of the state. Others may wish for happiness or
success without a particular object or plan to achieve it. The fact
that belief and desire point to a pending object in the same way
that a reminiscence points to a memory image, is irrelevant to the
intentionality of the state, for it is the state that is intentional, not
its content.
278 Jason W. Brown
On this account, the intentionality of the content is not what
makes the state intentional; a conscious state is intentional no
matter what its content. The direction to an object is the subjec-
tive aim to actuality. This actuality can be intra- or extra-psychic,
diffuse or focal, means or end. What matters is the transition from
unconscious to conscious, from self to content, not the nature of
the content. Every conscious state is about something. The some-
thing the state is about is its momentary content. This content
does not lead to something else but gives way to, or is replaced
by, other contents. The trajectory of the state, the course of its actu-
alization, gives the state its intentional quality, regardless of what
content actualizes.
While the aboutness of the intentional is a relation to content,
a shift from the relation-to-the-thing, to the thing-the-relation-is-
about, displaces the temporal dynamic of becoming to the spa-
tial immediacy of being. Even in reminiscence, the progression
from past to present is treated as subordinate, for a memory is
interpreted as a present object to which thought is directed. As
in memory, so in belief, a statement is a product to which belief
gives rise. But the outward reference of a proposition or belief,
the intentionality in the statement, shifts a completed subjective
aim to an incomplete intentional content. The objectification of
process that severs intentional content from mind even gives rise
to arguments over whether non-cognitive entities “represent” or
point to something, perhaps not surprising in that physical enti-
ties, having been imported to the mind to fill it with causal units,
are then exported back to the world as atomic entities carrying
intentionality with them as a psychic residue.
Intentionality would be an innocuous topic for psychological
study if its description were restricted to parsing beliefs and de-
sires instead of driving an account of mental states. For process
theory, the solids of spatial content are replaced by temporal
phases that deposit evanescent actualities. A brain state is that
configuration of neuronal activity generating a mental state. A
mental state is a virtual duration that corresponds with an epoch
of brain activity. The epoch is the minimal duration necessary
for the state to actualize. The mental state enfolds embedded or
transformed and actual (deposited) events or contents within its
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 279
duration. For substance theory, the mental state does not incorpo-
rate a direction to content; rather the intentionality of the content
describes the state. This content, which is argued to be the basis
of an intentional state is, in fact, the object toward which the state
is directed. Turning the content into the state is an example of
what Wittgenstein, in a slightly different context, referred to as the
conjurer’s trick of arguing mental states and events before their
nature is decided.
Wittgenstein (1969ed) seemed to have an uncertain under-
standing of the mental state in relation to its content. On the one
hand, he wrote (38) that in mathematics, “one has to keep on
reminding one’s self of the unimportance of the ‘inner process’
or ‘state’ and ask, ‘why should it be important?” Yet even math-
ematic propositions depend, as do other propositions, on a co-
herent system of conscious and unconscious knowledge. On the
other hand, he says (42) that to think different states correspond
to the words ‘believe’ and ‘know’ is like believing different people
correspond to the word ‘I’ and the name ‘Ludwig’. But believing
and knowing are different concepts, and different concepts are,
strictly speaking, different states, while different states can have
more or less the same referent. One cannot go from identity of
referent to identity of state. Methuselah and ‘the oldest man who
ever lived’ involve very different concepts, thus states, though the
referent is the same. One is merely a name, the other, a relational
concept. Wittgenstein (410) acknowledged that “our knowledge
forms an enormous system. And, only within this system has a
particular act the value we give it”. What is this system other than
the context (transition) through which a particular act develops?
The transition is the mental state, while value is not given but
arises with the act itself. The point is, contents do not decide the
state; the state determines the contents.
Still, in the sleight of hand that excises a proposition from its
antecedents to analyze it in relation to its consequents, the distal
phase in a process of form-creation becomes the product of an
assembly line, encapsulated, detached and examined as an inde-
pendent entity. This is like dissecting a leaf from a tree to analyze
it as a distinct object, when the leaf only exists in relation to the
whole of its organic process. Without a tree, a leaf is a dead object.
280 Jason W. Brown
The spray of a fountain is inseparable from the stream beneath
it. In the mental state, phases leading to the distal portion do
not evaporate when the final content is achieved but inhere as
constituents. Recognition, meaning and experiential relations are
sub-surface phases without which perceptual objects do not ex-
ist. Imagine a fluid as an aggregate of discrete molecules, or such
molecules as the building blocks of a system in flux, like a river
reconstructed from bricks.
The impact on theory of mind of externalizing mental content
spills into studies of brain activity underlying mental phenomena,
in conceiving units of thought, e.g. a proposition or perception, or
elements in their assembly, as isolates in a formative sequence.
The mental content is not, as in process theory, a momentary
emphasis in a field of intrinsic relations, but is an artificial solid in
external relation to other solids, none of which can be reduced to
the dynamic of brain activity. The common technique of subtrac-
tion in studies of brain metabolism or the elimination of contex-
tual variables in psychological performance treats psychic process
as a combination of logical solids that can be added or subtracted.
The demonstration of different patterns of metabolic activation
for widely divergent phenomena, such as vision or language, still
does not allow one to go from brain region or activation pattern to
a specific visual or linguistic experience.
Instead of accepting inconsistent findings as a critique, varia-
tion is taken as evidence that function is multi-componential, so
that every activation is part of an aggregated system or network.
Such findings are common in most psychological domains. The
non-repeatability and questionable methodology are not indict-
ments of brain correlation, but of what is being correlated to what
and the theory behind the correlative techniques. Thus, the per-
ception of a fruit (banana, apple, orange) may activate a different
part of the brain — even a single cell on unit recording — than the
perception of a person, as may the thought of fruit trees, orange
juice or breakfast, or the names or pictures of fruits, though when
the relevant brain areas (cells) are active one could not say the
person is thinking of fruit, much less anything else. The areas of
active metabolism depend on subtle differences in stimuli, timing
and experimental technique. The findings may not be duplicated
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 281
in other brains or in the same person at different times. The same
brain areas (cells) are activated by different stimuli, tasks and re-
sponse measures. Surgical removal of the active brain area would
probably not affect performance on the task eliciting the activa-
tion, while the brain area active on the task will not, were it to
be otherwise activated, reproduce that functional state. A brain
area associated with a task can be stimulated with or without the
occurrence of the mental content which, on a given task, caused
that area to be active, and the area can be ablated and the perfor-
mance left unaffected. What, then, has been demonstrated?
Substance theory builds on the atomicity and locality of par-
ticulars. The modularity of psychic elements is presumed to cor-
respond with discrete brain areas, with brain process and func-
tion assigned to their connectivity. The philosopher Mario Bunge
referred to this way of thinking as the Lego theory of the mind.
With mental contents divorced from their psychic antecedents,
analysis tends to a formal (linguistic, logical) explication that is
only compatible with a static neuroscience. Process theory cannot
yet account for specific contents within a category, e.g. an apple
or banana, but has the potential to give the sequence of phases
underlying the derivation of categories, which in principle can be
mapped to dynamic neuroscience. In brief, for substance theory,
being is the source of becoming. For process theory, becoming is
the source of being. In truth, an epoch of being consists of phases
of becoming that, on completion, deposit being in each recur-
rence.
10.5. Existence and intentionality
A curious aspect of the writing on intentionality, and a sign of its
importance to philosophy, is the relation of intentionality to exis-
tence (McAllister, 1982). It can be said that an intentional object
exists intentionally, i.e. has intentional but not real existence, or
that it exists from the standpoint of the intentional, but not that
otherwise it is non-existent in the sense one thinks an imaginary
object, e.g. a centaur, is non-existent. These concerns were central
to Brentano’s distinction of real and imaginary, as of physical and
282 Jason W. Brown
mental phenomena, and more recently, that of intrinsic and de-
rived intentionality. Physical phenomena include sensory qualia
but also, for some writers, images and objects, while mental phe-
nomena include these physical entities with intentional reference.
Thinking of an object, real or imaginary, turns a physical existent
(or non-existent) into an intentionally existing phenomenon. The
perception of a physical tree becomes a mental phenomenon
when consciousness is directed to it, incorporating the entity into
an act of thought.
Brentano wrote of intentional inexistence, by which he meant
existence by virtue of being an intentional object. The difference
between an object in perception and the same object as intentional
would seem to correspond with the distinction between an object
of awareness and an object of consciousness. We tend to assume
that an object of consciousness is identical to one in immediate
perception, or that the addition of consciousness to perception
does not alter the object, e.g. the gazelle spotted by a lion and the
gazelle in human perception. If consciousness creates or accom-
panies a difference in the perceptual object, it is probably small,
though not to say insignificant, in comparison with the shift from
awareness to consciousness, for example, in the volitional quality
of focal attention. Being conscious that we look at a gazelle, we
think we choose to look at it. The feeling of intention in perception
is the initial phase of deliberation. The degree to which conscious-
ness affects the object depends on the degree to which the object
saturates the field of attention, as in love, or the more it gives way
to reflection. The more an object is contemplated, the more in-
ward and thought-like it becomes until it is eventually replaced by
thought. The particular drowns in the whole or, put differently, the
conceptual root of the object is progressively unearthed until the
object finally disappears.
The separation of the physical and the mental hinges partly on
the account of reality and existence. It may be that, to introspec-
tion, the real is derivative on existence, but psychologically, we
tend to think that unreal phenomena do not “really” exist and that
those internal and external phenomena that seem real, such as
feelings and trees, indubitably do exist, though trees differ in be-
ing substantially real. Moreover, the real, unlike existence, is less
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 283
a judgment than a feeling to which intentionality is secondarily
related. This is evident in the observation that the very concept
of intentionality weakens as objects depart from the intuitively
“real”. Hallucination, imagery and dreams are not non-controver-
sially intentional. The intentionality of “unconscious ideas” and
covert motivations is uncertain. Moods and attitudes are in ques-
tion. A slight change in content can transform a non-intentional
state to an intentional one, e.g. when fear and hope emerge from
anxiety or elation.
If an object takes on existence when it is invested with inten-
tional interest, there would be a transition from non-existence to
existence or from physical to mental existence, according to the
degree of object resolution. It seems odd to say that a mood is a
physical state while its object is mental, especially given the stages
in the individuation of the object as the mood resolves, or intensi-
fies, e.g. when anxiety passes to fear, then to panic or terror, as a
frightening situation clarifies. Why is one stage in this transition
physical and another mental when the self is conscious of every
stage?
It seems natural to think, with Aristotle, that such things as
centaurs exist only as objects of thought. It would then also be
true that propositions and concepts exist as thoughts. A propo-
sition has an existence like that of the idea of a centaur regard-
less of whether it is true or false, or refers to something real or
imaginary. The thought or statement, “snow is red” exists even if
red snow does not. The object referred to exists or does not exist,
but its existence is a different existence than that of the idea that
refers to it. But if percepts are derived from concepts, and if both
are objects and realizations of thought, what is the difference in
existence? The object, red snow, might exist in some conceivable
universe. Would we say snow is red if we perceived it with red-
tinged glasses? How can we determine snow is white other than
be consensus? If we rely on our perceptions, such as the percep-
tion of a tree, for a judgment of existence, how can we affirm that
illusions do not exist? Illusory and non-illusory objects are equally
objects of perception.
All psychic and perceptual phenomena develop through
endogenous brain process. What object develops depends on
284 Jason W. Brown
physical constraints on the process. Without constraints, there
are hallucinations. With them, there are objects (or illusions). The
corollary to this is that perceptions are hallucinations that are
adapted to the physical world. The concept of a centaur does not
become an external perception because there are no sensory con-
straints or physical manifestations to drive belief and imagination
to perception, nor is there certain knowledge that centaurs exist,
or have existed, as external objects. The concept of a centaur is
that of an imaginary or mythological beast that entails the shared
knowledge that no one has ever seen one and that it is an ana-
tomical impossibility. Yet one may never have seen an okapi or the
Gobi desert but know they exist. If the knowledge of the existence
of a thing, even something that is inferred and has never been
perceived, is vital to the existence of the thing, what part does
perception play in this determination? The existence of scientific
facts can be hypothesized, but we would not say an entity exists
until it is verified by experiment, if not perception. The difference
between no-longer-existing objects, like dinosaurs, or ones that
take on existence when they are discovered, like coelacanths, is
of peripheral importance to the concept of existence, when exis-
tence is conceived in relation to brain and experience.
Whitehead wrote that apart from experience there is nothing,
bare nothing. James, Bradley and many others held similar views.
But what is experience? If psychic events have brain existence,
where is the line between the intentional existence of an object
and its conscious or unconscious field or, in Whitehead’s termi-
nology, prehensions? In what sense does a “stored”, unconscious
or forgotten memory exist, or automated skills, passive vocabulary
or the knowledge of a grammar as opposed to these capacities
when employed or “activated”? When I perceive a tree, does its ex-
istence include the tacit memory and knowledge of all other trees
in my experience, or the concept through which this or any tree
is named and/or recognized? If a pain has intentional existence,
what about the processes giving the pain, its obscuration of other
perceptions, the response to the pain and its effect on a person’s
life? Does everything in the auditory, visual, tactile, etc. field have
psychic existence? Is experience the totality of what is in the mind
at a given moment, the life history of that experience, or only an
object of momentary interest? If consciousness is not essential
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 285
to experience and the deep unconscious is physiology, there is a
continuum through animal mind to the lowest life forms. Merely
placing an intentional spotlight on an object does not do the nec-
essary work. This is still apart from the actual nature of existence.
Concepts have existence independent of their exemplifications
as concrete particulars, at which point their existence becomes
more or less “real”. One would say a tree in perception is real, or
that red snow is not real, based on knowledge of trees and snow
and the feeling of realness in the object, i.e. that it is not a ho-
logram or hallucination. This way of thinking is compatible with
transitional cases such as illusions, in which the feeling of realness
depends on the object-experience. An endogenous illusion such
as seeing insects on the wall in the delirium tremens of alcohol
withdrawal has a feeling of reality (and fear) that does not occur
with external illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer or bent-stick-in-wa-
ter. Yet even here the boundaries are often vague.
Most people would deny the Loch Ness monster exists or they
would be uncertain. Those who believe it exists may have so strong
a belief they “see” it swimming in the lake. Visions of god and
angels occur in those with an intense belief. The psychotic hears
and at times sees the objects of his beliefs. A strong belief can give
rise to a perception. We have all had the experience of imagining
the distant sounds of a train or the illusory chimes of a far off
church bell and some of us have even seen a mirage. The fact that
there is a “real” train and church, but not an oasis, is irrelevant to
the auditory or visual image. In each, an affectively-charged idea,
driven by need or expectation, externalizes as a perception with-
out the sensory constraints that are ordinarily necessary for this
transition.
Each moment, various individualities appear, some real, some
illusory, some fictitious, some factual, but each participates in a
common process of specification. The generation of objects in the
transition from mind to world is a micro-evolutionary adaptation
in which unfit exemplars are ordinarily eliminated before they
become actual. As in evolution or ontogeny, maladaptive objects
do occur, either to be marginalized or eliminated. To ask what is
the nature of the unrealized world that is pruned in every act of
thought so the actual world can come into existence is to inquire
286 Jason W. Brown
into the range of possibilities latent in untapped potential. We
have an intuition of what is possible as the sum of our acts and
thoughts, even our dreams, but we also know what is not possible
given the knowledge of human activities, our own and others, and
their limitations.
If one can say unreal objects — external (rainbows) or intra-
psychic (dreams) — exist as experiences that correspond to brain
events, one can say the same for all perceived objects such as
trees, though trees are felt to be real in a way that dreams and
rainbows are not. Why are trees felt to be “more real” than dreams
or rainbows? A tree is perceived by several modalities each con-
firming the other, a concordance that also makes the dream, dur-
ing the dream seem real, while rainbows are purely visual. The
image of a tree externalizes in an adaptation to the environment
as thought is delimited by sensation. Trees persist, while dreams
and rainbows come and go, even if the tree also changes, more
or less slowly. A rainbow occurs with effects in the atmosphere in
relation to the position of an observer, but the shape, size, color,
etc., of a tree also depend on light, distance and perspective. A
tree is judged to be a solid existent independent of perception.
A rainbow is a transient mental phenomenon that does not have
objective existence. So too for a dream, though many believe the
dream has a reality in the mental life, as a meaning, a forecast or a
symbolic representation. The tree is real. The rainbow and dream
are illusory.
Illusion is not distinguished from reality by mind-dependence
but is recognized and felt in the comparison to other perceptions
and to a base of knowledge. The rainbow is seen one moment,
from one point of view, then disappears, so its perception can be
compared to preceding and succeeding mental states. Knowledge
brought to bear on object-judgment is immediate in perception,
not prior to it. The object is perceived in the limitation of its prefig-
uring concepts. This is most clear in primitive thought when a tree
is a totem or a rainbow is a sign from god. Thunder, clouds and
fog are transitional cases. To what object does thunder refer when
lightning occurred moments earlier? Clouds and fog are coales-
cences or densities of moisture? What sort of objects are these? Is
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 287
the perception of my breath on a winter day an object? If so, what
of my breath at other times when it is not perceptible?
In psychosis or other brain disorders, the “rock-bottom” belief
in the reality of perception breaks down. Self, body and world exist
for the person but they are no longer securely real. There are rare
brain disorders in which a person believes he is no longer alive.
Who, then, is this non-existent person who claims to be dead?
Like non-existence, death is impossible to fully contemplate, not
the least because the very existence of the thinker contaminates
the thought of nothingness. The opposite of existence is non-ex-
istence; the opposite of real is unreal or illusory. Since existence
and reality are linked concepts, grades of existence and degrees of
reality are transitional, up to the point where entities vanish and
thoughts can no longer follow them.
Realness in perception, as in dream, develops on the inability
to disconfirm its authenticity. An object, the reality of which is un-
challenged, is accepted as real. To question reality or, especially,
to feel an object as unreal is already to lose one’s grip. Illusion and
reality are relational phenomena. Delusion and hallucination are
not distortions of the real that can be summarily dismissed in a
description of what the real is, for it is a short step from the feel-
ing that a perception is real to one, as in vertigo, of an uncertain
reality. For the observer, things are more or less real depending
on some standard of reality. For most, this standard is the habitual
world of perception; for others, it is the abstract world of phys-
ics; for still others, it is a noumenal world that is impenetrable to
knowledge.
The distinction of illusion and reality is less problematic when
perceptions are all conceived as brain images, with the brain the
proximate physical reality that is the unknowable ground of object-
appearances. The reality of perception is then secondary to the
feeling that one object seems more real than another. Ordinarily,
concrete reality is the image through which physical reality is in-
ferred. We see the tree and infer the physical entity on the other
side of the perception. But again we come back to rainbows, bent
sticks, vertigo, and duck/rabbit figures. If all internal and external
images are phases in object-formation, the distinction of inner
and outer, physical and mental, qualia, objects and thoughts, will
288 Jason W. Brown
be settled by the locus and context of the image in a single process
of object-formation.
Fig. 10.2. All direct knowledge is in the mental state. Phases
that correspond to the generation of the perception are inferred to
have their correlates in the physical brain state. Perception adapts
to the physical world but its proximate correlate is the brain state.
Physical stages are outside the mental state, as are early Ucs phas-
es in the mental state.
Externality and verifiability are common to objects and many
illusions. Externality, privacy and non-verifiability occur in hal-
lucination and endogenous illusions, e.g. delirium tremens,
metamorphopsias (Brown, 1988). Privacy and non-verifiability
characterize dreams and many concepts. The consensus of those
who see rainbows or sticks-bent-in-water does not lead them to
suppose they have objective existence. The externality of halluci-
nation does not initially lead an individual to believe the image is
real, or that it exists like other objects. Brain activity is the existent
to which these diverse phenomena refer. Next to brain activity, the
sensation that guides the object-formation is its proximate physi-
cal existent. The physical reality of brain events, inferred from
phenomenal experience, is closer to experience than the physi-
cal correlates of the perceived object, i.e. the physical tree as the
source of its perception (Fig. 10.2). In everyday life we think the
objects before us are real physical entities, not veils that obscure a
hidden physical realm. We have no intuition of a mediating brain
process. The phenomenal is immediate and identified with the
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 289
physical though, on reflection, the latter is clearly inferred from
the phenomenal.
One would not want to deny that physical entities have exis-
tence other than as objects of thought. The fact that we cannot
experience superstrings makes them hypothetical, not non-exis-
tent. We know there is a difference between hypothetical objects
that cannot (or never) be experienced and witches or goblins,
but it is difficult to say what this difference is other than agree-
ment among observers. If everyone believes that witches exist
and only a handful believes that superstrings exist, an intelligent
and impartial observer would turn to the coherence of the belief
with other facts. But the circularity is precisely the problem. The
accumulation of facts out of beliefs reinforces the discovery (cre-
ation) of new fact, and fact is what most people accept as real or
existing. Beliefs become facts that are supported by coherence
with other facts, which themselves are the products of beliefs. A
phenomenon that is more than belief but not yet fact, such as a
superstring, does not half-exist. Does a fact exist until it is refuted,
at which point it ceases to exist?
Locke wrote that everything real is individual. Most philoso-
phers have agreed that individuality is what exists and is real.
This supposes that individuality is independent of mind or that
individualities once discovered are facts distinct from the mind
that discovers them. But, within experience, individuality is an
achievement. There is an invisible filament from potential to
actual, whether the temporal extensibility of physical entities or
the mind as a medium in which particulars are realized. For a
particular to exist, it must recur, and in the recurrence, particulars
individuate as they traverse layers in becoming. The existence of
any individuality is the minimal duration over which it becomes
what it is, and the being it becomes over that duration. The poten-
tial of a particle is that process prior to the completion of one cycle
of existence. In mind, potential is a phase in the mental state prior
to, but inherent in, its diverse particularities.
Consider entities that cannot be experienced and objects not
in immediate perception. A footprint in the sand exists; it is an
object no less than the sand or sea into which it vanishes. The
recognition of a footprint does not imply a different process than
290 Jason W. Brown
the recognition of the sea. The pattern of the footprint, the pattern
of sand and sea around the footprint, the name for these objects,
are all secondary to their existence. Sand and sea are objects we
recognize. A depression in the sand that resembles a footprint ex-
ists as does the actual footprint, differing only in the cause of its
occurrence. If we refer to the former as a footprint, we are in error
— we should say, it has the shape of a footprint — but this does not
alter or eliminate the existence of the perceived shape as a mental
event. The point is, naming a thing individuates an object-concept
and a lexical-semantic field, but reference is not existence. The
difference between the configuration of the sand and that of the
footprint is one of scale and duration. There is also the space of ob-
ject-contrast. A footprint may be defined by the absence of sand in
the space it occupies. In this sense, it is like a shadow, which is an
absence of light within a certain contour. Is absence something?
Is the fact that I am here but not there part of where I am? Can a
tree be defined by everything it is not? If the via negativa cannot
describe the color green, how can it describe a tree? Yet, in some
sense, all things can be defined by what they are and are not. A
featherless biped satisfies one, rather impoverished, description
of man. There are those who believe, not without reason, that be-
cause a privative does not invoke a fictitious limitation, it can be a
higher order of description.
All objects are points of view. A point of view is not a lens float-
ing in space but an act of thought supported by myriad uncon-
scious and biological processes. It does little injury to the idea
of existence to embrace all phenomena in a wider ground of
existence including contents in the imagination, shapes, noises,
odors, pains, hallucinations, concepts and dreams. Whatever one
perceives or thinks about, any object of thought, as well as the
covert process through which it develops, and the unconscious
background it evokes, exist as patterns of brain activity, as do all
the physical constituents — cells, molecules, etc. — ingredient in
those patterns. The pattern of existence of every atom in the brain
is similar to the pattern of activity through which the brain-state
exists, which in turn has affinities with the pattern of the mental-
state as a psychic manifestation of brain activity.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 291
Such an account of existence is continuous with an account
of physical nature. A perspective is merely a particular momen-
tary existence, but theory derived from study of the mental state,
i.e. from an intra-psychic or subjective point of view, can be pre-
sumed to apply to entities inaccessible to human cognition. To
infer a physical tree from its mental image is no less a stretch than
to infer, from concepts, any other physical entity. This is a logical
extension of microgenetic theory. However, from the limitations
of a human framework, the nature of existence is closely tied to a
theory of appearance and reality. To hold that perceptual events
such as trees exist, while others such as rainbows do not, or that
true propositions have greater reality or existence than fictitious
objects like unicorns, is to conflate existence and reality, or con-
fuse physical and mental existence, or existence as a brain event
with existence as a mental phenomenon. A tree as an (external)
image generated by the brain is assumed to exist independent
of the observer. Yet the tree is an image, no matter how real and
independent it seems. One has only to close one eye, then the
other, and see the tree jump from side to side to realize that the
perceived tree is an image extracted from monocular disparity.
If brain activity is common to all human experience and if
apart from experience in the widest sense there is bare nothing
or non-existence, one image does not differ from another with
respect to existence, only with respect to realness. The occurrence
of trees and rainbows can be verified by others, yet we say the
rainbow does not really exist, or that it exists as an illusion, or in
physical relation to perception, while the tree is independent of
an observer. The duration of existence enters this judgment, since
a tree that vanishes in a second, without an explosion or some
other explanation, might be judged as illusory or unreal and thus
non-existent. To say an object exists independent of perception, or
that external objects have greater existence than thoughts, is not
to say that some objects are more real, or that real objects have
more existence than unreal ones, but to say that some objects are
more conceptual than others.
The theory of existents is foundational to physical entities,
including the brain. The difficulties occur with psychic existence
and the distinction of the illusory and the real, concept and fact,
292 Jason W. Brown
and so on. The mental state is a psychic object that corresponds
with a physical existent, i.e. the brain state. its actualization and
that of its constituents. The psychic correlates of the state, inter-
nal, external, conscious, unconscious, etc. distribute into real,
unreal, intentional, illusory, fact etc. But taking a mental state as
a complete occasion of human experience, whatever occurs in
the state exists in a derived mode of existence (dream, concept,
object), whether or not that mode satisfies a judgment and feeling
of reality.
A complete theory of such phenomena is a theory of change
in nature, in which some events are transient, others glacial. The
rate of change reflects the frequency of the repeatability of the
event. Persistence is continuous recurrence. An object that exists
for a second differs from one that lasts for years in that the latter
recurs with inconspicuous change. Such an entity does not have
“more existence”, for each moment all things perish. The longer
a thing exists, the greater the number of recurrences. Existence
is becoming into being over the minimal temporal extensibility
for an entity to become what it is. Being is created in a process
of momentary becoming. The thread of becoming in mind is a
complex exemplification of the arising of entities in nature. Every
entity, from a sub-atomic particle to a fully developed brain, is a
momentary discrimination of the deep underlying unity of nature.
This pruning of the irrelevant as a world individuates in the mind
resonates with the metaphysical principle of “limitation” through
which individualities arise out of the Absolute or universal being
(e.g. Hawkins, 1954).
10.6. Qualia and space
The fictitious division of mind into a physical and a mental por-
tion infects the concept of the intentional. The physical is wholly
outside mind, though mind objectifies objects that appear to be
non-mental. Apart from sensory qualia, the contrast between
extended and unextended objects that, for Brentano as for oth-
ers, was central in the distinction of the physical and mental is a
continuum from the subjective to the objective in microgenetic
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 293
theory. The objective refers to the externalized or objectified por-
tion of the mental state, while the subjective refers to the internal
or psychic portion. In the specification of a subjective aim, the
unextended segment is transported to one that has extension in a
continuous wave. Mind and world, inner and outer, are phases in
a single process of objectification.
Given the controversy on the nature and significance of qualia
and their relation to intentional states (e.g. Tye, 2000), it is useful
to examine concepts prior to a materialism in which “sensory”
qualia have become the last refuge of the subjective. Brentano
bundled external objects with internal qualia as physical or non-
intentional entities that took on intentional existence when they
became momentary targets of thought. The approach rightly ex-
tended the problem of qualia to external objects as elements in a
common field, even as it placed physical elements in opposition
to the intentional. But what fundamental difference between the
perception of pain and the perception of an external object could
bring about a radical alteration of a theory of the physical and the
mental if these phenomena merely refer to different modalities
of perception?
The first-person “what-is-it-like” experience is a fragile entreaty
that justifies much theory of mind. More generally, the inacces-
sibility to others of putative sensory experiences or uncorrupted
“raw feels” can readily be extended beyond interior phenomena
to the entire spectrum of personal experience. The tendency to
define qualia as inwardly experienced sensorial phenomena is an
unnecessary retreat since qualia include outwardly experienced
phenomena in the perceptible world. Apparent differences in
the mental and physical reflect the degree of spatial realization
or objectification for a given modality. To limit qualia to sensorial
experience gives a spurious division of the subjective into psychic
and physical portions. There is no consciousness of sensation,
only what are imagined to be sensorial or sensory-like experi-
ences. Sensorial consciousness is an intra-psychic perception, like
a mental image in one modality.
Moreover, “sensory” data such as color, after-images and pain
are not apprehended in a pure state but as part of a spatial field.
The fracture lines of pathology reveal the contextual bases of
294 Jason W. Brown
such phenomena. In frontal lobotomy, pain may be felt without
its affective or signaling qualities. The patient admits to having
pain and states that the pain is painful, but is not bothered by it.
There is no sign of a painful experience. What sort of pain is this?
Perhaps there is a relation to relaxation or meditative treatments
of pain, or post-hypnotic suggestion, in which, one might say, the
pain is not attended to or does not enter consciousness. In pain
“agnosia” or “asymbolia” with parietal lesions, the meaning or sig-
nificance of felt pain is lost, not only somatic pain but shrill sound
and light. The contrast of pain and pleasure is asymmetric in that
pleasure is complex while pain, especially physical pain, is fairly
straightforward. We may not agree on our pleasures but we do
understand the quality of pain. Yet the pathological cases make us
ask, what is a pain without its noxious quality? Pain is not a simple
sensation but a conceptual, affective experience.
The occurrence of pain without a painful experience recalls ar-
guments of Rosenthal (1993) that the intentional focus on a state
of pain gives the painful feeling. One can be distracted and notice
a mitigation of pain. But patients who have had a lobotomy are still
conscious of pain or can be reminded of it, so it would seem that
what is decisive is an indifference to pain, or a loss or suppression
of affect, or a lack of access of the affect to consciousness rather
than an intentional focus that makes unconscious pain painful.
It is tempting to explain such instances by saying that an unfelt
pain is like an ambient perception in awareness without access
to conscious mind. However, animals certainly feel pain without
states of human-like consciousness or intentionality.
Pain is considered a pure sensation, i.e. perception, but exclud-
ing “emotional pain”, there is spatial extension in its body loca-
tion. A pain may be focal or diffuse, deep or superficial, strongly
or weakly localized, but it is never “unattached”. One knows, in
general, where the pain is located. The transition from the inte-
rior of the body to its surface accompanies a shift from a more
primitive non-specific pain to one that is more acute and local-
ized. The primitive quality of pain is consistent with its distribu-
tion in a more archaic stratum of body-space, as well as the light
myelination of “pain fibres”, the largely sub-cortical representa-
tion, the association with aggressive and defensive reactions and
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 295
its presumed universality in sentient organisms. Pain is a primi-
tive psychic experience in an incipient spatial field in contrast to
perceptions that develop out of body space into visual objects.
As there is no pure pain, there is no pure color experience.
Color and form are inseparable. The contours of objects are carved
out by differences in color or hue. In hallucinogenic experience,
colors melt into the viscosity of “empty” space as object bound-
aries dissolve. Early in the recovery of cortical blindness there is
a diffuse color experience, usually a red field (erythopsia) with
little or no depth perception, rather like the visual gray of the eyes
closed (Katz, 1935). One does not regain the redness (greenness,
etc.) of a tomato without the tomato. Color assumes or defines
shape with a return of form perception. The “flight of colors” in
the after-image shows spatial extension in the increase in size in
relation to “projection” surface (Emmert’s law). The character of
the after-image is similar to pathological illusion in being closer
to the geometry of visual space. The after image lacks object
constancies, which would suggest a lack of transit through earlier
segments in object-formation. The features of the after-image are
those of an image arising at the apex of the visualization process,
the aim of which is an external, i.e. “physical”, object.
In infants, visual space tends to be limited to the perimeter of
limb action. This is also the space of the congenitally blind. The
intra-psychic space of pain does not develop to an extra-personal
field. This is because pain is mediated by sub-cortical structures,
but also because it is tied to the body. There are cases (autotop-
agnosia) where body parts are referred to external locations. The
parts are presumably seen but not felt by the self. I am not familiar
with cases where pain is externalized, though the tortured expres-
sions of hypnagogic faces and autoscopy suggest that at least the
appearance of pain can objectify. Of course, objectification is one
way of getting rid of the pain. The axial space of the deep body is
the initial stage in the derivation of all later modes of space per-
ception. Visual space begins with a construct of bodily space that
is also the field of pain but, unlike pain, it undergoes an outward
development. The body space of pain, the kinesthetic space of the
congenitally blind, the object-space of visual perception, are suc-
cessive levels of space realization. The progression from archaic
296 Jason W. Brown
to recent, or somatic to external, is a continuous transformation.
This fact is overlooked, as early and late segments solidify into
opposing mental and physical polarities.
Theories of the world heavily depend on the visual modality.
Epistemology is the field of inquiry that seeks to account for the
extensive character of visual space in relation to interior mind.
Patterns of pathological breakdown reveal the external world of
visual perception to be the most superficial layer in a multi-tiered
process of space-formation. This process begins with a two-di-
mensional space of the body in upper brainstem and transitions
to external objects through a fluid, extra-personal but still viewer-
centered space of dream. The object space of ordinary perception
has to be renewed and revived each moment in the imagination
as sensation guides the forming pre-object to adapt to the imme-
diate surround. Without sensation, the mind would not achieve a
veridical representation of the world and we would live in a private
sphere of imagery and pre-rational thought, like that of dream.
10.7. Direct and indirect knowledge
Pols (1993) writes, with equivocation, “that our hold on the real,
if it is to be effective, must in some cases be direct”, implying that
direct knowledge of the real is possible for some things, which
then can serve as a basis for the knowledge of other things that
cannot be directly known. Searle (1983) speaks more forcefully
and for much of philosophy, when he accepts direct perception,
and proclaims he is a naïve realist. Like Pols, he offers no argu-
ments for this position, which is apparently justified by its utility
and, one has to assume, as an attempt to eliminate psychology
from philosophy. Whitehead is more honest about the psychologi-
cal issues, noting that the temporal lag in perception alone refutes
direct perception. He maintained that the duration separating a
perceptual object from its inferred physical datum reveals a com-
ponent of memory in every perception.
The commitment to direct perception goes directly from con-
scious belief to conscious object, circumventing the antecedent
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 297
process, similar to that of idea and act. Searle’s “conditions of
satisfaction” refer to the fit of belief to world as the “truth” or ve-
ridicality of an object-perception. This permits a judgment of the
truth in correspondence, e.g., of concept to fact, in which mind
maps to a physical entity. Obviously a “correspondence” of mind
to world is important for survival and the empirical grounds of
concepts. But correspondence implies a match, not a transition,
and finesses the intermediate phases in becoming through which
the world actualizes, a move assumed to avoid skepticism and
solipsism to which phenomenalism leads by creating an artificial
gap out of what are early and late segments in a single process, a
gap the intentional has been invented to fill.
A critical issue for direct perception is that if objects are directly
known, what is the status of the concepts that prefigure them?
The object tree has a greater sense of reality than the concept uni-
corn, though the concept can be said to be real and exist even if
its referent is imaginary. Conversely, if we deny direct perception
for external objects, what are we to make of the felt immediacy of
concepts and other conscious contents? If there is direct knowl-
edge of the concepts that give rise to objects, what is the implica-
tion for object knowledge? Are objects phenomenal and concepts
real, or the reverse? Are both real, neither? The thread that binds
the contents of mind together, concepts, images, objects, proposi-
tions, etc. is the underlying activity of which they are manifesta-
tions.
In the path from concept to object, sensation delimits the
potential of the concept to individuate particulars. The delimita-
tion gives objects as inverse mirrors, Rorschachs, of the physical
world. The derived nature of the external owes to a shaping effect
outside the mind of the perceiver. Every “sensorial” experience
is a perceptual endpoint. The shaping effect of sensation and the
intrinsic constraints of habit determine how a concept develops in
a given act of thought. Object and concept are phenomenal, but in
a different way. The phenomenal character of objects is the rela-
tion to a model of the physical world. The phenomenal character
of concepts comes of their need for the concrete particulars that
make thought real or empirical.
298 Jason W. Brown
10.8. Purposefulness: dream and wakefulness
Purposefulness without intention occurs in awareness without a
conscious self, possibly in “altered states”, such as hypnotic trance
or sleepwalking. The externalist treats action as physical output
that has left the agent and is part of the material world, in the
same way that sensation is conceived as physical input that can be
seized as an intentional content. Perception, action and content
are all split from the invisible process behind them. From this (ex-
ternal) perspective, and on an empirical basis, consciousness and
awareness — the intentional and the purposeful — cannot be read-
ily distinguished. We apprehend this difference in our own mind,
as when we reach without thinking for a cup of coffee as opposed
to a conscious decision, but the inability to confidently ascertain
in another person the presence or absence of a self engaged in a
particular action is no excuse to conflate the two states. The child
who, for verisimilitude and lack of knowledge, takes a mechani-
cal crocodile as a real one is not so distant from the philosopher
who, for the same reasons, or through indolence or weakness of
thought, claims identity in a mere surface resemblance.
In dream, is the thought or feeling of action without the possi-
bility of acting sufficient for purposefulness? One can dream one
is acting with an intention to act, but dreaming of an intention
and having an intention are subtly different experiences. The thin
line that separates the passive intention of dream from the active
volition of agency is a point in the passage of internal to external
mind. One does not have true agency until commitment follows
into action. The antecedent feeling of choice, in concepts or in
images, leads in two directions: to agency, when it passes to the
feeling of activity for action; and to detachment, when it passes to
the feeling of receptiveness for objects.
Is the aboutness of a dream image sufficient for the state to
qualify as intentional? Dream as “wish fulfillment” can be con-
strued as intentional. The self of the dream “sees” the object (im-
age) it desires (fears, etc.) or its symbolic representation. The self
of dream lacks agency, its objects have limited spatial extension
and its beliefs and wishes are obscured by distortions. But still,
the dream is an intentional mode of consciousness, transitional
between belief and object, in which the actualization is for inter-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 299
mediate forms. The limited intentionality and pre-agentive feeling
in dream expose the vulnerability of certain arguments on the
relation of intentionality to consciousness.
The agency that accompanies some forms of thought imagery
is key to understanding the agency that accompanies voluntary
action. One can say that the aim to a definiteness not fully speci-
fied in a concept or image is comparable to the agency in thought-
imagery that aligns intention for a thought image with that for an
overt action. The sense of volition for certain images and concepts
refers to phases in thought-development in common with the
intention for a given action. Intention is intentionality with a fo-
cus on action rather than objects. When the dynamic of action
stabilizes as a content, intention becomes intentional. When in-
terest condenses into action, the intentional becomes intention.
Intention is buried in the intentional like an action that is attenu-
ated in its aim. This attenuation is the aboutness of intentionality
at a phase prior to action when goals, not acts, are targets. This is
also the phase of choice or decision in action.
In sum, intentionality signifies a consciousness-of (about)
something that is descriptive of consciousness but is not a unique
state of mind. The question is moot, which came first, intentional-
ity or consciousness, or which depends on the other. The trace of
the intentional in the actualization of every physical and organic
entity is the aim to definiteness in its becoming-into-being. If con-
sciousness is always about something, intentionality disappears
in the general problem of consciousness. A consciousness that is
not about something is awareness. Aboutness excludes contents
without distinct objects. Intentionality narrows consciousness to
the self-object relation; consciousness expands this relation to
include, inter alia, the present, identity, remembrance and the
mediating phases through which contents actualize.
 Chapter 11
Subjectivity and Truth

“The task of philosophy is

to recover the totality obscured by the selection”.

Whitehead (PR 15)

11.1. Introduction
The interpretation of mental content in philosophy differs from
that in process thought, particularly microgenesis, where the
theory of the mental state is fundamental. In microgenesis, the
direction of development and iteration of the mental state is from
the core self to conscious mental content and external objects.
Ideas, images, objects and feelings are individuations of the self
that perish as momentary endpoints in a single act of thought or
perception. Mental contents expose phases in the actualization.
They do not lead to future acts but are replaced by ensuing ones.
The relation of image to object, or of proposition to fact, is that of
an intermediate to a distal phase in the same state, with interme-
diate and distal phases emanating from an antecedent phase of
self. A fact is an outcome of conceptual-feeling, a mental object.
Contents in the mental state are not themselves states. A proposi-
tion or image is not a mental state. The mental (mind/brain) state
is the full process of actualization from core to content, from self
to object. In clinical studies, symptoms are transiently exposed
segments in mental process. The study of symptoms permits a
reconstruction of the mental state that can serve as an anchor for
speculation in neuroscience and psychology (see: Fig. 7.1.).

Externalism is outside the mental state, thus non-psychological.

The primary relation is from a developed mental content, such as
a proposition, to an objective fact. There is no mental thread from
self to proposition, nor from proposition to fact, or if there is, it is
conceived as inconsequential. The psychic antecedents of surface
contents have no bearing on their interpretation. A proposition
302 Jason W. Brown
is distinct from its formative history, perceptions are “out there”
in the world and reality is independent of thought. The truth of
a proposition turns on the adequacy of the relation of mental to
world events, but the mental events have already, in many instanc-
es, assumed the properties of external solids. Externalism uproots
mental content from the psyche, displaces it to an abstract theater
in external space, and finally re-inserts it into mind as a functional
component. In the case of propositions, they are severed from
mind, examined as to their truth-value, then transferred back into
mind as instrumental in action. Externalism fabricates a theory of
mind from the exposed objects of ordinary experience, whether
logical solids such as propositions, or the constituents of concepts
and perceptions, which are presumed ingredient in the objects
into which they are assembled.
These differences between process and substance stem from
such foundational issues as: (1) how do objects, as segments of
events, precipitate in the mind (images, ideas) and in the world
(objects), i.e., how are objects or mental contents carved out of
flux, (2) why do we perceive objects, not the change that lays them
down, including the transition from the self to its objects, and (3)
how, in substance theory, does change occur across the sharp
edges of object demarcations?
Microgenetic theory requires an intuitive leap beyond direct ex-
perience. We see objects that change, not the change that deposits
them. Objects are everywhere, motion is seamless, and change
is invisible. The concepts of atomic or irreducible substance,
instantaneous time and external relations, postulate change in
the causal connectivity from one perceptual or logical solid to
another. In process thought, objects arise in the replacement of
epochs. Change is in the transition from potential to actual. The
philosophy of becoming posits qualities; quantities, in contrast,
are the currency of a philosophy of being. The accounts depend
on competing theories of time and space. Are they irreconcilable,
or can a substance ontology of being and external change be re-
solved with an event-ontology of becoming and intrinsic change?
Process theory appeals to its adherents for its subjectivism and
tendency to idealism, while substance theory enlists support for
its realism and objectivity. This is also a way of saying that exter-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 303
nalism conforms to common sense, as in the idea of mind as a
storehouse of feelings, memories and ideas, or the world as a col-
lection of objects in causal interaction. The assembly model of
perception and the copy theory of memory are derived from this
way of thinking. The burden on process theory is to demonstrate
the fiction of common sense beliefs when applied to the mind/
brain, i.e. how such beliefs deceive us into thinking the mind is
organized as a mirror of the world it displays. This burden is com-
mon to substance theory when mental objects, which are phases
in actualization, such as the self, are deemed illusory. If one holds
that an object-like self that persists over time is an illusion — one
of the most powerful we have — an account is needed of how it
comes about, though it is probable that a thoughtful account of
this problem would undermine the ordinary view of external ob-
jects. If the self is a category, so too are its derivations. If the self
is an illusion, so are the mental and external objects to which it
gives rise.
Not all distinctions are important, but importance can be given
to any distinction. Once a distinction is made, it sheds its attach-
ment to the ground from which it separated, and objectifies as
an element or building block in the thought behind it. Organic
wholes once divided are recombined as aggregates. Hume wrote
that things distinguished are as separate as if there were no man-
ner of connection between them. A distinction justifies and prop-
agates arguments on its behalf. With increasing definiteness and
multiplication, inessential partitions obscure the deeper reality of
antecedent wholeness. Artificial entities take on life in an artificial
world, a parallel psychology or sphere of philosophical discourse.
A computational model of the mind is the most obvious fiction,
the main rationale for which, its presumed heuristic value, has a
negative impact on direct study of the mind/brain.
All internal and external objects are contrasts that achieve
specificity at each phase in their derivation. Most of these phases
are transitional and the contents are virtual; others are final and
definite. All contents individuate out of neural configurations that
have the potential to specify a number of alternative paths. The
phase-transition is a series of whole-to-part shifts. At each phase,
the configuration is a matrix of possibilities. The succession of
304 Jason W. Brown
whole-part shifts exemplifies a fundamental law of the mind/brain
that characterizes the transition from one phase to the next. The
transition can also be described as a shift from potential to actual,
but this is more aptly characterized as the trajectory of the entire
process. This tendency to ever-greater individuation or analysis
is the natural direction of thought, which leads ever further from
the unity out of which partitions develop. In process theory, the
individuation of objects in the mind/brain state illustrates the law-
fulness of mental process. In substance theory, this lawfulness is
replaced by entities in ad hoc relations dictated not by psychologi-
cal necessity but by gaps in philosophical argumentation.
11.2. Microgenesis and pragmatism
William James (1912) was close to the microgenetic concept of the
mind/brain state in writing that:
“whenever certain intermediaries are given, such that, as they
develop towards their terminus, there is experience from point to
point of one direction followed, and finally of one process fulfilled,
the result is that their starting point thereby becomes a knower and
their terminus an object meant or known”.
In the description of overlapping pulses of consciousness he
was also close to the microgenetic account of recurrence. The
analogy would have been greater had he included the sculpting
of phases by intrinsic habit and extrinsic sensations that shape the
whole-part or context-item shifts to adapt personal need to condi-
tions in the world. Put differently, the sensory environment con-
strains the mind/brain state to eliminate maladaptive form. In art
or poetry, truth rests on symbol, metaphor or allusion. This mode
of truth-seeking has an affinity with the microgenetic account of
intermediate phases in fact-creation. Shaping is incomplete; the
greater subjectivity and interioricity of early cognition come to the
fore. In ordinary thinking, the content of a thought is achieved at
the conclusion of the mental act. The object of the thought and
the agreement of thought with object, are outcomes of the state
not evident at its inception.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 305
There is a strong tendency, in the privacy and subjectivity of
knowledge, for pragmatism and microgenesis to lead to Idealism.
The adaptive nature of truth-seeking implies the primacy of an in-
dividual perspective. The externalist links pragmatism to the opin-
ion of a solitary thinker, rather than one who adjusts thought to an
external standard. However, matching inner to outer or adjusting
personal truth to an external judgment is preconditioned on the
existence of an external truth to which individual truth appeals,
as well as the absolute or irrevocable nature of a truth that results
from, or points to, a consensual judgment. External validation is
the sum of individual judgments each of which is adaptive. Even
if consensus is closer to “the truth”, it is still provisional. To step
outside all individual minds and compare an individual concept
with god’s perspective would entail a correspondence between
individual or collective mind and mind-independent reality. It as-
sumes access to the absolute reality of a physical world that is
inaccessible to individual mind, which in any case would infect
it with subjectivity. Put otherwise, if mind could know the physi-
cal world directly, that world would be altered in the very act of
knowing it.
From an adaptive standpoint, individual truth is matched to
the external by continuous revision. This occurs not by correspon-
dence but the success in fitness and adjustment to the considered
views of others. Except for states such as dream or hallucination,
the world of perception is the only world we can perceive. Sensory
data coming from the world prevent alternative, often maladap-
tive, possibilities. Thoughts and propositions that are realized in
acts and statements are shaped to the world by reaction and con-
versation, in response to outer conditions and the behaviors of
others. These influences are not resolutely “out there”; they affect
individual mind by sculpting cognition to conditions to which it
must adapt for the organism to survive and flourish.
The pragmatic or microgenetic theory of truth holds for ob-
servers up to the limit of evidence and a consensus beyond which,
it is supposed, an absolute truth, outside consciousness and inde-
pendent of human thought, is waiting to be discovered. Individual
or consensual truth may resemble final truth, but unable to know
the latter, it is a best approximation to the conditions to which
306 Jason W. Brown
it is applied. The locked-in mental world of a solitary mind, or a
comparison to an external but unknowable physical world, im-
plies Idealism at one extreme and/or an absolute reality at the
other. Idealism does not obligate an absence of the external, but
rather, a world that can only be known through a model, even if it
is shaped so exactly that mind perceives its own product as “the
real thing”.
In microgenesis, every mind/brain state, every thought, per-
cept or action, begins with implicit (unconscious) beliefs. When we
perceive an object, the implicit belief inter alia is that an external
world exists. When we have a thought or image, the implicit belief
is a self that is thinking. An unconscious belief is the progenitor
and guide to thought or action. The core self is derived from im-
plicit belief and then specified to the conscious or empirical self,
ideas, feelings and objects. A belief is not isolable from the self
that believes.
Belief is neither true nor false. It is the agreement of belief with
“reality” that determines truth. In having an internal and external
segment, value is similar to belief. A perceived object selected by
interest (Perry, 1926) is midway between implicit and explicit val-
ue. The internal aspect of value is desire; the external aspect is ob-
ject worth. Beliefs and values are unconscious determinants that
can become conscious in thought or imagery, but the conscious
belief is not a replica of that in the unconscious; it is an endpoint
in a transition to consciousness in which proximal categories are
linked to distal ones by symbolic, metaphoric, experiential and
affective relations.
11.3. Conviction and belief
Errors are acts that do not adapt to the external and are correctible
in ensuing revisions. An external standpoint is implied from
the revision of an internal one. If error is thought to undermine
pragmatism, trial-and-error resurrects it. The account of truth is
weakened if the standard or standpoint outside the individual is
absolute and independent of all thinkers. Each thinker undergoes
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 307
a similar revision, carving out ideas to reach a consensus that a
majority of like-minded thinkers endorse. Truth is a matter of
dispelling error to make room for fact. False beliefs are aides in
coping, resilient, often magnets for reinforcement. The belief in
god grows out of affective need, instilled values, early education,
life-experience, the search for meaning, other phenomena, largely
inexplicable, together with the complexity, obscurity and lack of
signification of the everyday, as well as in reaction to scientific
fact, which seems empty of personal value. A powerful emotional
experience, or one instilled by trauma or “brainwashing”, can in-
duce conviction in false belief. False beliefs such as the Capgras
delusion (see below) or the beliefs of a primitive mentality are
unshakeable. For example, Lévy-Bruhl (1975) described a tribe,
the Bororo that cannot be convinced by arguments that another
tribe, the Trumai, do not pass the night under water.
Such fixed beliefs have adaptive value in serving to explicate
unknown realms of psychic or natural experience into which
observation and objectivity have not yet ventured. A false belief
that a person can outrun a tiger — or is imbued with tiger-spirit
— might help him to escape, while a rational acceptance that the
belief is untrue entails waiting to be devoured. One acts according
to conviction regardless of its truth. To believe is not the same as
to know. One says, I believe there is a god, not I know there is a
god. One can say, I do not know but I believe. True knowledge is
the unacknowledged subtext of thought, but belief is its engine.
In a false belief or delusion such as the Capgras syndrome, a
spouse, close friend or relative is misidentified.45 This disorder is
“modularized” by cognitivists who, ignoring the context and full
description of the disorder, maintain that it points to an isolated
belief system. But a false belief is not an island of mentation. Such
cases often have other reduplications, e.g. their home, altered feel-
ing in the double, e.g. a seducer, age regression, e.g. the double
may be younger, and the belief is not resistant to manipulation
by the examiner. Even psychotic delusions can be altered by sug-
gestion. In conversion hysteria, correcting one false belief, e.g. a
limb paralysis, may lead to another even worse, e.g. blindness.
45
See my description of a Capgras case (Franklin, Brown and Freedman, 1982).
308 Jason W. Brown
The claim of modularity follows from the divisibility or logical
substantiality of encapsulated psychic phenomena, which are
postulated as autonomous so as to conform abnormal psychol-
ogy to philosophy and to models of normal cognition, when such
perturbations should be the data from which a robust philosophy
could be extracted.
Russell distinguished the psychological question, what makes
us hold a belief is true, from the philosophical question, what is it
for a belief to be true. What makes us hold a belief is true can be
construed as the capacity to distinguish true and false belief. This
reflects the structure of a belief and the reasons why we believe
it to be true. Action is driven by conviction, certainty is hesitant.
I can be certain that pastrami will give me indigestion or that a
certain movie will cause a headache, yet I eat the pastrami and see
the film. Someone who believes a house is haunted will probably
not enter it. Superstition and magical belief are manifestations of
a preliminary phase of syncretic thinking in normal people. The
conviction in false belief, in myth, delusion and primitive mental-
ity, are not distortions of the normal but markers of the paralogi-
cal thinking that underlies rational thought.
Conviction leads to action, certainty tends to be provisional.
Certainty implies knowledge supported by reason with openness
to refutation, and has an impersonality that conviction rejects.
One can be certain of a thing, but then realize that you were mis-
taken. Conviction does not depend on proof or demonstration,
but on values that underlie belief and the coherence with other
beliefs and past experience. Moore wrote of rock-bottom beliefs
such as this is my hand, yet amputees with phantoms have a hard
time believing, with the eyes closed, that the hand is not there.
Patients with autotopagnosia with a lesion in the parietal lobe and
intact limbs may locate their hand on the wall! Pathological case
study reminds us of the vulnerability of so-called rock bottom be-
liefs based on certain knowledge, of the self, of the existence of
the world, even that one is alive.
What makes a person hold a belief is true involves factors oth-
er than its truth. Strong conviction is absolute in its truth; it may
coincide with truth but does not require it. A belief in heaven and
hell, angels and devils, obsessions and delusions, with no evidence
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 309
of truth and much to deny it, exert a powerful effect on reason.
Unlike conviction, certainty does not tolerate an incompatibility
of belief. When conviction conflicts with fact or other beliefs, true
or false, or when, from an objective standpoint, one belief con-
tradicts another, the opposing beliefs retain their force through
shared attributes or conjoined properties that override incompat-
ibilities. A shared property or predicate leads to the identification
of disparate topics instead of a resemblance of topics in respect of
that property.
What gives a belief conviction is not whether it is right or true,
since conviction is often stronger for beliefs that are evidently
false or untestable. The strength of conviction accompanies a re-
sistance to falsification. Conviction replaces the need for choice
and decision. It is closer to drive, desire and the core self, often
bound up with the self-concept, rooted in unconscious bias and
the seeds of action. Truth for the psyche is the adaptation of need
to circumstance. The transition from deeper, more personal
concepts and feelings to rational ones depends on the degree to
which the sensory environment shapes the emerging thought, i.e.
the strength of endogenous concepts versus adaptive pressures.
These pressures carry the concept to the external world, to greater
impersonality and concessions to others. The dominant focus of
an act of thought determines whether a belief is fixed and de-
lusional, scientific and provisional, or a philosophical truth that
depends on the agreement of generic propositions with timeless
objects. What it is for a belief to be true engages less the bases of
truth-demonstration than the conditions on which truth is decid-
ed. Ultimately, this depends on the agreement of belief with fact,
though facts depend on other beliefs so there must be coherence
within belief systems for any given belief to be decided as true.
For psychology, it is less how my belief relates to the exter-
nal situation and more how it relates to what I know and feel.
Conviction seizes on facts that satisfy innate, early-acquired, un-
conscious or implicit beliefs. The implicit beliefs that guide con-
viction are saturated with feeling and deep in individual character
and personality, while the explicit beliefs that guide abstract or
rational thought are surface articulations of these constructs in
which feeling and valuation have been decanted. The certainty
310 Jason W. Brown
one will defend is not the conviction one will die for. Though
conviction in a false belief is occasionally given up when reason
prevails, rarely does conviction — as opposed to certainty — follow
on rational deliberation.
We should recall that in most instances, expediency is the
mother of truth. The context behind a fact is too vast for the whole
truth to be taken into account. To say, this is a cup of tea, supposes
one comprehends the language and has an intact perceptual sys-
tem, that one knows what tea is and can distinguish it from other
liquids, that one knows a cup and can distinguish it from a bowl,
saucer and other such items, that one comprehends the other
(object, person) in relation to the self, and can access an object-
concept out of wider spheres of self and world knowledge.
11.4. Adaptation and correspondence
Utility is an adjustment of inner to outer, or the fitness of concept
to fact, which is the adaptation of mind to an inferred external
world. Truth is conformity to an external situation. Trivially, this
implies that truth is what works in a given circumstance. The lo-
cality of utility is in tension with the generality of its application,
for a conditional or provisional truth in pragmatism, or in science,
even if it has a relative ubiquity of application, is not perceived as
eternally true. The question is whether pragmatism is an inad-
equate theory for philosophy, or whether philosophy must adjust
its truth-claims to psychological reality.
The correspondence of content with reality and the adaptation of
content to reality are linked ideas. The ideal of philosophical truth
is an agreement (adaptation) of mind and nature that is univer-
sally and forever true. Psychological truth approaches philosophi-
cal truth when an adaptation holds on repeated occasions. The
difference is the imperfection of truth-finding in psychology (and
science) and the absoluteness of truth-knowing in philosophy.
The scientific concept of truth as provisional contrasts with the
philosophical concept of a truth as pure, final and irrefutable. If
there are such timeless truths — logical, mathematical — invariant,
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 311
applicable to the very large and very small, to mind and world,
experience and thought, then the provisional truths of psychology
are a continuous working-toward them.
In logic, the direction from idea to reality prevails over that
from thinker to thought, though to begin with reality, which is
the tendency in analytic and empirical thinking, as in common
sense, and move inward to thought, is the reverse of the direc-
tion of thought itself. The reality that shapes thought is the reality
thought creates. The former is that of physical sensation applied
to thought as a limit, the latter, a mental picture (or sound, touch)
that results from an iterated trimming of endogenous form. To
common sense, a picture of the world is the starting point of
thought, not its outcome, but for internalism (or microgenesis),
intra- and extra-personal contents are outcomes. The content that
externalism maps to reality and the reality to which that content
corresponds are phases in a single mind/brain state. The irony is
that truth in externalism depends on a correspondence between
two false beliefs: the reification of mental content and the reality
and autonomy of its objectifications.
Along these lines, the externalist concept of the aboutness of
intentionality as a direction to a mental or external object can be
seen as a relation of penultimate to final phases in a mind/brain
state. Introspective content is intermediate in the actualization,
not a terminal addition. The forward direction and the analysis or
individuation over phases narrows intra-psychic potential to extra-
psychic definiteness. A relative suspension of sensory constraint
allows thought to deposit at pre-terminal phases, e.g. imagination,
fantasy, reverie. With loss of constraint, in dream, hallucination
and psychosis, thought moves outward (or the world recedes).
The transition is from felt experience to observation, from gestalt
to figure, from generality to precision. In this progression, the
mind achieves conformity to an experiential niche that is a negative
image of the real.
Given the opposition of internal and external perspectives,
neither of which are decisive, one perspective ought not to prevail
at the other’s expense, since a metaphysic probably owes more
to the unconscious presuppositions of the thinker than the logic
behind them (Collingwood, 1940). Moreover, either approach is
312 Jason W. Brown
incomplete without the other. From an internal standpoint, the
relation of self to content gives truth limited by personal need.
From an external standpoint, with the self left behind and distal
phases sliced off, truth is the correspondence of earlier to later in
a single state. Comprehensiveness demands the incorporation of
all phases in the state, and a sincere effort to deal with feeling in
decision-making and object-value and, more generally, the affec-
tive tonality of supposedly affect-free concepts.
It is worth noting a similarity in the relation of idea and object
to that of recall and a standard in memory. In the former, corre-
spondence is across distal phases in consciousness. In the latter,
it is from an unconscious phase to a conscious one. If a concept
arrives at truth when it matches an object, does a memory arrive
at precision when experience matches recall? In one instance,
a conscious mental content is compared with a physical reality
on the other side of perception. In the other, a conscious mental
content is compared with the physical reality of the unconscious.
In truth-seeking, thought, memory and the objects before us all
realize the potential behind them striving for completeness.
11.5. Process, content and truth
An external object requires a subject as observer but an internal or
psychic object requires a self. All mental contents are conscious.
The rest is non-conscious process, whether intra- or extra-psychic.
The becoming of a conscious object is the dynamic through which
the mental state takes on existence, i.e. phases that generate the
subjectivity of an object (or entity). For internalism, truth depends
on the realization of veridical objects, as well as coherence at
each phase in fact-creation. Externalism assumes self-sufficiency,
stability and persistence. The concordance of thought to fact, or
logical to perceptual objects, has one (logical) foot in the psyche,
the other (perceptual) foot in the physical world. The description
from outside treats some psychic contents, e.g. propositions, as
objective, others not, e.g. hallucinations. Diachronic process goes
from unconscious to conscious, past to present, potential to ac-
tual; synchronics goes from one conscious actuality to another.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 313
A thought can be a vague idea, a specific idea of an object, or
the object the idea is about.46 Thinking of a horse, the idea is immi-
nent in the perception, even if a horse suddenly comes into view
without thinking about it. The horse is recognized as it is seen. It
is judged to be beautiful or ordinary, approachable or dangerous.
Concepts and feelings are activated with the initial perception. The
object (horse) individuates meanings and feelings that are part of
its structure. In ordinary perception, concepts relinquished in a
transition to the object, endure in the perception as identification,
import and affective charge. The idea or concept of a horse, and
the horse, objectify successive phases — from intra- to extra-psy-
chic — in a common process.
A statement, such as “that is a horse”, or the depiction of a horse
in a drawing, points to an object beyond the words or marks. Signs
that stand for or point to objects are said to have a derived inten-
tionality from the meanings behind them. In that an objectified
content — word, drawing — designates an object, it is presumed to
be intentional. On this view, the mental content is interpreted as
intentional rather than the trajectory from the self to that content.
But drawing a horse, a unicorn or the Guernica is the outcome
of a series of mental states. The object depicted in the drawing
— real, imaginary or an art-work — develops out of an idea. It is
not a further object to which the drawing refers, since the referent,
present or not, is also derived from the mental state. The horse in
the fields that is named or called, or rendered in a drawing, is an
extra-personal image that has developed out of an object-concept.
The fact that phases in qualitative transformation take on greater
substantiality in their outward development makes us think that
we copy a real horse, not a picture of a real horse in the external
space of mind, in which a drawing and a horse individuate a com-
mon ground.
46
Object and content are here used interchangeably. From a psychological
standpoint, the distinction is arbitrary. The real divide is between the object (con-
tent) and the process that actualizes the object. The content of an object, e.g. a
horse depicted in a painting, the painting, the actual horse, its tail or a tear in the
canvas, merely reflects the immediate focus of attention, which is the content of
the momentary consciousness.
314 Jason W. Brown
For externalism, the mind produces or discovers facts that are
mind-independent. For microgenesis (and pragmatism), facts are
creations, irreducible values as Dewey put it. Since perceptual
objects are products of the mind, the internalist tends to infer a
physical ground, an absolute reality that is independent of ob-
servation and beyond human experience. The absolute and the
eternal are palliatives for incessant loss in a theory of flux. This
tendency is less pronounced in externalism where permanence is
endemic and the distinction of object and entity is blurred.
11.6. Intentionality
A good example of snatching mental contents from the mind as
philosophical objects is found in the literature on intentionality,
in which propositional contents are detached, analyzed and re-
inserted in the mental state as adjudicative in choice and action.
Intentional objects lifted from the psyche and re-introduced as
determinative in judgment require a construal of truth as deter-
mining the intentionality of the act it subtends. The procedure is
confused because two mental acts are postulated, that of thinking
about something, which is the act of believing or having a thought,
and that of believing the thought is true. An act of speculative
thought as to the truth of the belief is postulated to supplement a
genuine act of agency, i.e. believing, desiring, intending, etc.47
Confusions arise when the object of a thought is interpreted
in terms of its content, especially its propositional content, and
the glide from the content to the impact of truth-attributions on
action. This is sharply drawn in the writings of Davidson (1980)
on intentionality, where it is claimed that intentionality requires
background rationality or, put differently, intentionality can only
be ascribed to rational acts that are based on the truth of state-
ments about them. Davidson’s example is a person who spills a
cup of tea thinking it is coffee. The claim is that the intentional
47
See the critique by Sprigge (Putnam, 1997) who, along the lines of this argu-
ment, postulates one act of conceiving a state of affairs that includes belief in its
actuality.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 315
act of spilling coffee becomes non-intentional when the coffee
is discovered to be tea, though the spilling can still be an act of
agency. Here, the act of truth-reconciliation is appended to a prior
act, which substitutes for belief a true fact that relates to world
knowledge. If true knowledge can retroactively negate or call into
question the intentional quality of a prior act, would this not apply
even if the agent were unaware of the contents of the cup? The act
of thought in which others know the cup contains tea is devoid
of psychological import, though the knowledge, if available to the
agent, can become part of subsequent intentions.
If the outcome of an action — spilling coffee instead of tea
— has retroactive force in altering intentionality, at what point is
the outcome fixed? Take a hypochondriac who believes he has
cancer. If one were to falsify the belief that might not alleviate the
hypochondria nor alter conviction. The doctors are wrong, or have
over-looked the correct diagnosis. Suppose he develops cancer
some years later. How does this rebound on the intentionality of
his prior thoughts or acts? If a person gives money to help some-
one but the money winds up, instrumentally, in the hands of an
assassin, at what point does the later outcome cease to influence
the intentionality of the original act? An intentionality hostage
to truth requires many qualifications. Most statements are not
clearly or immediately true and what is true of a statement at one
time may differ at another.
Mistaken attributions do not influence the psychological qual-
ity of action. An act based on true knowledge is identical to one
based on error, since the knowledge guiding the act is the same
in both cases. If I believe I can reach an apple in a tree but fail in
my attempt, how does the error in belief affect the act? Were I to
truly believe I could not reach the apple, I would not reach for
it, and there would be no act of reaching to which a judgment
of intentionality would be applied. This raises the problem that
a judgment of intentionality in such an instance based on a true
proposition would, if known and accepted beforehand, result in a
failure to act, so there would be no act based on false belief, save
inaction, to which the truth determination applies.
Assuming that the quality of an action is independent of
whether the knowledge accompanying the action is true or false,
316 Jason W. Brown
it is obvious that most individuals have incomplete knowledge of
the true nature of their objects, whether they believe a ticket will
win the lottery or that to marry your true love brings lasting hap-
piness. If an act does not differ if the agent believes it is based on
true knowledge that turns out not to be the case, as in the usual
example of Polonius, or a husband who kills his wife believing,
falsely, she is unfaithful, what is the utility of arguments from the
standpoint of truth attributions?
To replace the psychology of actions with judgments of the
truth of propositions about them presumes a degree of certainty
as to the truth. If the cup contains tea instead of coffee, what sort
of tea, how strong, how hot? Tea is a super-ordinate category. How
much has to be known about the object for the action to be inten-
tional? Must one know or say, I am spilling a three-quarter cup of
mild, luke-warm Darjeeling? If the individual believes he is spill-
ing a liquid without knowing the type, or merely inverting a cup
without knowing the contents, how does his knowledge impact
on the intentionality of his actions? If an error in the identifica-
tion of an object vitiates intentionality, what degree of precision
is required to restore it? If the act of spilling coffee or tea does not
differ according to the truth of the actor’s beliefs, how can the
knowledge of an observer influence its intentionality? This takes
intentionality outside the agent, and turns the psychology of the
intentional into a discourse on linguistic or semantic attributions?
Is this what Brentano had in mind? Is the intentional fundamental
to conscious thought or is it a meta-theory about the words used
to describe it?
If the intentionality of an act is determined by the truth of a
belief or if intentionality depends on the beliefs of others as to the
aim or content of the action, how and by whom is the intentional
to be decided? If another person’s knowledge of an action can
decide whether or not an act is intentional, what aspect of the
intentionality of an act is determined by factors outside it? The
external perspective entails a consensus as to the content of the
actor’s mind even if the act is identical across conflicting judg-
ments. Absent the truth-judgments of others, is it possible for a
person to act intentionally in isolation, or to know whether or not
his acts are intentional? Is it not odd to maintain that one acts
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 317
as an agent, while others decide whether or not the act is inten-
tional? This implies that the judgment of the intentionality of an
act is another act in the mind of the actor, or an act in the mind of
an observer. But these external and ancillary acts are open-ended
regressions that can also be submitted to a judgment of their in-
tentionality, i.e. the statement that a proposition is true or false is
itself a true or false statement. This implies that the determination
of intentionality is not by means of a secondary act appended to
the primary one, but can only be decided within the act itself and
by the actor, though it can be inferred by an observer.
Another consequence of the dual-act argument is that it sup-
poses the opposite condition, namely, that a person can either
mistakenly believe his act is intentional, or unknowingly act in-
tentionally. Such examples show the difficulties that accrue when
the intrinsic nature of the act, i.e. the correlated mental state, is
replaced by descriptions based on the truth of statements about
it. The displacement from privileged access transforms a direct
account of action — voluntary, agentive, intentional, involuntary,
automatic, or other acts of thought and perception — to a decision
on the truth of statements about the content of an actor’s mind.
More precisely, the description of an action is removed to a shared
field of propositions distinct from the intrinsic states they purport
to describe. The cure for this distortion is for the intentional to be
transported from the truth of an external committee to a subjec-
tive aim in the mind of an individual.
It seems obvious that a content in the mind such as a proposi-
tion, or in the world such as a chair, manifests an unseen internal
process of composition or formation. This process, the momentary
pre-history of the content, is conceived as physical with respect to
the chair in its mechanical or atomic structure, and physiological
or psychic with respect to the mind, in brain activity or a com-
bination of memorial and perceptual features. A strictly physical
theory entails that an object is the sum of the parts from which
it is constructed and into which it decomposes, for example the
way a chair or sentence is physically put together. On this view,
assembly does not count in what an object is. The process that
generates an object or statement is like the manufacture of a car,
which is conceived as independent of the order in which it was as-
318 Jason W. Brown

sembled. From the internal standpoint, the world and its objects
are wholes. From an external standpoint, objects are aggregates.
Externalism liberates mental events from their antecedents, crops
them into objects, and transfers them to a world of substance, cre-
ating entities at the forward edge of causal efficacy.

There is one world, not a choice between an immaterial psyche

and a mindless nature, but a nature that is compatible with psy-
chology. A theory of becoming is the key to the unification of in-
ternal and external perspectives. If becoming in mind and nature
does not deposit entities but constitutes them, to demarcate the
actual as content and neglect the antecedent as assembly is like
describing the flow of a river with bricks. The tendency to extend
mechanism to the psyche and not expand the psyche to the ex-
ternal leads to a machine theory of organism. This tendency is
reinforced by the rupture of a graduated aim to definiteness by
the uncoupling of late phases from early ones, or subtracting the
early ones from their outcomes, when all phases participate in the
epoch of every object or idea.

Finally, substantialism is related to instantaneity. If instants are

discrete, so are substances. Whitehead (PR 20) asked, “how can
concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet partici-
pated in by its own nature”. I take this to mean, how does nature
enter (participate in) entities that are abstractions of the mind?
The reply is that modeling is an adaptation to nature in which flux
is anchored by abstractions of time and space, i.e. epochs of pro-
cess create objects from overlapping durations. The specification
of fact from initial generality is exposed in the suppression of the
irrelevant. The context sampled at successive phases in the men-
tal state, with the impact of nature at every phase, is one aspect of
the totality to which Whitehead referred.
 Chapter 12
The Inward Path: Mysticism and Creativity

“I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life whose fountains are within”
Coleridge

12.1. Introduction
At least since Plato, madness has been associated with inspiration
in the artist and poet, while descriptions of delusion, paranoia,
dissociation, hallucinations and other symptoms of psychotic
thought are common in mystics (e.g. Leuba, 1925). 48 The occur-
rence of such pathologies in celebrated mystics such as Suso or St.
Theresa, and to a marked degree in sects such as yoga, together
with an extraordinary sensitivity, have led some to dismiss the
mystic as a lunatic and his or her visionary truths as delusional.
Here, we are not concerned with the truth of art or ultimate reality,
nor with the turn of mind that may be a pre-requisite, or accom-
paniment, of its attainment, but rather with the mental process of
truth-seeking in modes of thought independent of any judgment
on their outcome.49

The study of the Ucs has revealed a succession of categories

prior to the actualization of the final category into an image or
object (Brown, 1997; 2005; 2007). The retreat into the deep sub-
jective is, thus, a withdrawal to the categories before the arousal
of language, behind the visible and the palpable. This withdrawal

48
In this chapter, “artist” refers to all those who work in a creative way, in dif-
ferent forms of art but also in science, mathematics, philosophy and other fields.
When the artist is distinguished from the scientist, this will become clear in the
text.
49
It has been argued that mental disturbance is more pronounced in the
“would-be” mystic than the true one, Plotinus, Eckhart, Blake, Augustine,
Boehme, but even a cursory reading of the lives of the mystics raises objections
to this claim.
322 Jason W. Brown
is the path to mystical insight and to what Goethe called the pool
of the creative Ucs. Certainly, the lives of the mystics are not so
dissimilar from those of many artists, and the creative experience
has features in common with mysticism. While the libertarian
spirit of some artists may seem in contrast to the asceticism of the
mystic, social norms are defied in both by an unconventional, at
times outrageous personality. In spite of the tendency for exag-
geration, the mystic would seem a more extreme manifestation of
the same trends in many artists, where the romantic ideal of the
genius tends to overshadow personalities of equal ability but less
flamboyant careers.
For the mystic and for many artists, ultimate reality is personal:
the inward turn, the common occurrence of eccentricity or mad-
ness, of intoxication with drugs or alcohol, a variable degree of
self-denial for the pursuit of the calling, the concentration and
the passivity, the “flash of insight”50, the certainty, authenticity
and intimacy of the experience, its deeply personal nature and
uniqueness to the individual, and the passivity and the surrender
that is necessary in art and mystical experience.
The austerities of the mystic — starvation, flagellation, thorns,
and so on — are a more extreme expression of similar trends in
the artist, in the need for alienation and isolation, or ruthless dedi-
cation, even a pact made with god or the self to limit distraction
and enhance concentration and devotion (Gardner, 1993). Many
mystics, especially those with prophetic visions or an accentuated
passivity, have counted themselves instruments through which
god communicates but this can also occur in creative individu-
als. Schopenhauer believed his principal work was dictated by the
Holy Ghost. If one compares the mystical and artistic genius, the
similarities can be pronounced. In some individuals, the experi-
ence is identical. Blake wrote the poem “Milton” from immediate
dictation in a state of mystical ecstasy.
There are also important differences. While mystical experi-
ence has been reported as sudden and unexpected, more com-
monly the mystic goes through a period of prolonged preparation
50
St. Augustine wrote, “and thus with the flash of one trembling glance it ar-
rived at That Which Is (Conf. vii. 23).
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 323
for a trance-like state that may last but a few moments and recur
briefly, once a day, a week, a year, or never again. The parables of
Buddhist sutras emphasize the life of self-denial that is necessary
for enlightenment and liberation. Absorption in nature, or one-
ness in god’s love, is often the life goal. The artist also undertakes
a period of preparation and learning, a stage of incubation, before
the work congeals. At times, a state of inspiration that can reach
near-mystical rapture may herald the process of composition,
though the Eureka or Aha experience, well described by Koestler
(1964), is probably over-rated. In the daily routine of writing or
composing, each line or measure is intuition objectified. The
artist’s craft requires discipline if something original and of value
is to see the light; occasionally, the work is preceded by an intense
transformative insight. The whole that emerges at such a moment
must recur, less vividly, if the insight is to quietly guide the elici-
tation of the parts, but at any given moment, only the parts are
present in Csness. Bosanquet wrote that in drawing a figure, the
artist’s thought is concentrated at the tip of the pen, though once
we see the finished design we imagine the whole work was there
in the beginning guiding the artist’s hand.
The artist’s insight, when it occurs, has the character of holism
(Mehta, 1963), simultaneity, and lack of multiplicity that resemble
the mystic’s big Idea (Bennett, 1923; Stace, 1961). In the mystic,
surrender is to the Other. Artistic wholeness is not apprehended
as immersion in otherness — god, nature — but rather as a deeper
sounding of the self in relation to an intuition that is the object
of inspiration. In the mystic, god is that intuition or object. The
experience is of the multi- or pan-modal categories of the core
self; diffuse, without distinct content, prior to the partition of the
modalities of perception and the different spheres of cognition.51
The artist’s descent is less profound. There is Csness of concepts.
Intuition is in relation to the empirical self and a segment of its
partition, such as music, literature or painting. The feeling is
closer to desire, “located” in the self and its conceptual content.
For the mystic, the core has an intensity that is drive-like, filling
the subject and its categorical primitives. Desire entails division
51
Microgenetic theory holds that perceptual modalities are not recombined but
individuate from a multi-modal or synaesthetic core.
324 Jason W. Brown
or partiality, not wholeness, and is consequent to drive-based feel-
ings of love in union.
The combination of an empirical self that is Cs of a profound
concept and its truth and authority tend to give the artist a sense
that he is a conduit for the influx of spirit, even a messianic feeling
with a responsibility to implement the work and seek publicity for
his efforts. Historically, the allusion to the muse is a metaphor for
the mystery and receptivity of creation. The notion of a muse is
an assignment to a lesser god of the spiritual power of the “divine
Presence” from which everything emanates, including the power
of the muse, who operates in a limited sphere of His influence.
Inevitably, the (usually male) artist and the female muse, and (in
the Christian transition, the) often female mystic enthralled with
a masculine god, lend a sexual flavor to creation in art and inter-
penetration of god and soul in union.
The recovery from mystical exultation may accompany an ac-
count of the experience so far as it is possible, but the experience
is an end in itself. The withdrawal is solely for the purpose of mys-
tical experience. Even the service to others that often precedes
union is for the merit of the mystic as a potential recipient of god’s
love. In religion, the offering precedes and justifies the Idea; in art
it is the reverse. The artist is driven to share the Idea with others.
This process is codified in the Talmud, which advises one not to
seek god but to study so that, one day, perhaps, if you are fortu-
nate, god will find you.
The testimony of a mystical experience is itself a tacit and soli-
tary “artwork”. One could say the mystic is the artist and union is
the artwork. Everything goes into the creation of the mystic as an
outcome of personal effort, and all this effort is for an audience
of One. Few are interested to hear the story of the artist’s inspira-
tion; it is the artwork, not the Idea that precedes it, that holds our
interest. A recounting of a Eureka experience is like listening to a
person’s dreams, which hold small appeal except for the dreamer
and his analyst. However, the ancient belief that a descent into
dream reveals hidden truths in the temporal world mirrors the
belief that a descent into the mystical reveals hidden truths in the
timeless world.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 325
While mystic and artist have differing feelings of volition ac-
cording to the degree of passivity and surrender, both feel as vehi-
cles or channels for spiritual inspiration.52 The process of creative
work is a fragile mystery to the artist, who feels relief, elation and
gratitude when a work begins to emerge from the shadows onto
a blank canvas or an empty page. Dante expressed the feeling of
many artists when he wrote that, “art is the grandchild of God”.
Freud commented that, “whoever works as an artist certainly feels
as a father to his works”. A musical work, historical treatise, math-
ematical proof, visualized all at once in the mind, is not a religious
experience, though it can inspire the awe and humility that are es-
sential to religious feeling. But the artist, unlike the mystic, pours
his religious feeling, or reverence, into the work, not into himself.
Once complete, the work is detached, independent, like a child
with its own life in the world, while the inspiration — conception
— with which it began, having been replaced and satisfied over
multiple implementations, is a near-forgotten memory. For the
mystic, however, the event, not having been discharged over time,
remains incandescent, real, transcendent and deeply personal.
The creative is not the experience of inspiration but the concept
that inspires and the work that follows, to which method and skill
are subsidiary. In the mystic, method is necessary to achieve the
Idea, but lacking skill, nothing comes of it except personal exulta-
tion. The austerities that beckon the mystic to unity contrast with
the unity of the Idea that deposits the manifold of an artwork. So,
then, does the soul’s union with god achieve a kind of immortality
for the mystic that, for the artist, comes only with the greatness of
his works. One could say that mystical union exemplifies potenti-
ality, while the potential manifest in the Idea of the artist has value
only in actuality.
The artist with an overarching vision (potential) may use vari-
ous means over many occasions to revive and so empty (actual-
ize) it. For composition, the Idea must be reinstated, implicitly
and without the intensity of its first appearance. The potential is
52
Artistic and mystical trance probably also incorporate aspects of the feeling of
the sublime, which can be attributed to the presence of a sense of the “here-now”
against all space-time, or a point of space in relation to infinity and a moment of
time in relation to eternity (Brown, 2000).
326 Jason W. Brown
mined for content and at some point, when it is exhausted of its
fertility, the work is complete, or at least should be. The greater the
scope of the creative Idea, the more it is profound, personal and
universal. The more delimited the Idea, even if strikingly original,
as in scientific creativity53, the less personal and the closer to the
world of objects. Artistic vision, tied to the material, and replete
with potential, insinuates the totality or the contour of a forthcom-
ing work if not the detail of its parts. The artist apprehends an im-
age of the entire work, but does not drown in its totality. He retains
sufficient detachment to serially revive, convey and recapture the
intuited unity of the whole.
Mystical vision actualizes the fullness of its potentiality in a
concrete reality in which the self is immersed. The totality of the
category is an all-inclusiveness in which ultimate love and god-
feeling pervade the subject in an objectless state. The passivity of
immersion and the loss of self are signs of a regression to levels be-
neath word and image, antecedent to the individuation of content
from the core self. The world dissolves and only pure subjectivity
is left. The lack of content, the unitary or undivided nature of the
state, the relinquishing of the empirical self, attest to its general-
ized, ineffable and domain-free character. In place of Csness of
god there is objectless awareness suffused with spirit. The depic-
tion of mystical vision as a direction without an object recalls stud-
ies by the Wurzburg school of psychology that posited just such
an early phase in the development of a thought (Bewusstheit). The
state also recalls accounts in mystical Judaism of creation, when
a not-yet something that is a mere “not-nothing” takes on a direc-
tion that anticipates the birth of the world.
The characteristics of mystical states have been recounted in
endless and fascinating detail by many writers, accounts that,
like those of creative personalities, usually do not stray far from
the stereotype. Yet even with the more conventional mind of the
creative scientist, which differs in that novelty is incremental and
value impersonal, there has been little or no speculation on the
psychic process underlying creative thinking. For the artist — for
all creative individuals — the descent to Ucs mind — to imagery,
53
See discussion in the Creativity Research Journal 7 (3,4) 1994.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 327
metaphor and fluid imagination — taps early phases in subjectiv-
ity that prefigure the objects of ordinary Csness. The series of pre-
paratory actions leading to union requires the severance of bonds
to the outside world, monastic existence, isolation and subjective
retreat. The mystical ascent to heavenly planes of thought and el-
evated Csness in the exaltation of god-union begins with personal
needs and self-sacrifice, and follows an ingoing path. The profun-
dity of the descent, the self-denial needed for union, the frequent
failure at explication, the sustained and energetic passivity, make
the experience inherently solipsistic.
Every foray into oneness is an inward search54. The god of
union, the absolute, the real, the Buddha-nature, is not found “out
there” in the world of nature or god’s creation but in the mind of
the seeker, in a pre-verbal field of inchoate thought and primitive
emotion. William James suggested that the threshold of Csness
might be lowered to admit what is usually pre-Cs. Meister Eckhart
(1958ed) described a shift from the temporal order of the world
to pure subjective duration. Eckhart in Christian mysticism, and
Coomeraswamy in yoga (1993) described an expansion of the per-
sonal now to the infinite now of god. Nature-mystics contemplate
the Absolute, or ultimate reality of nature, with a focus on a single
object, but even in this method the retreat is from plurality to a
single object, then to its sources in the inner life.
12.2. Creative and mystical thinking
The principle differences between creative and mystical thinking
are the depth and, thus, the selectivity of content, and the accen-
tuation on facets of the mental life as opposed to its whole, i.e. the
work of art versus pure experience. Ancillary features of religios-
ity or personality motivate the sphere of value, the ambition, the
goal and single-mindedness of the search, the relaxation and re-
ceptivity and, consequently, the depth of self-exploration. Artistic
54
For example, a turning point in the life of the mystic, Mme. Guyon, occurred
when a monk told her to “seek God in your own heart and you will find Him
there” (Leuba, p.75).
328 Jason W. Brown
training in composition, literature, dance, etc., leads to skill in
technique, perhaps in theory as well, while religious training leads
to knowledge of scripture and practice. In both there is extreme
dedication. For the artist, work is religion, cult; for the mystic, the
longing for perfection is an aesthetic lived in the flesh. Mystical
and creative experience depends on access to early cognition in
both artistic and religious domains. The truth of art or experience
is an aesthetic of authenticity. The religious individual with skill
in writing (Plotinus, Kierkegaard) or painting (Blake), or the poet
with mystical sensitivity (Tennyson), uncovers the creative at the
depths of the mystical, while mystical feeling in an artist, even a
scientist (Kepler, Newton), is often ingredient in great discovery.
The scientist without a touch of the mystical exchanges wonder
for curiosity, while the mystic without an aesthetic has little but
the memory of a waking dream left over from loving union.
In sum, mystical experience resembles artistic insight but at a
more profound level of the mind, uncoupled from topic or concept,
minus the skill needed for articulation. The greater depth of the for-
mer accounts for the prominence of the core rather than empirical
self, the loss of the subject/object boundary (oneness), the intra-
personal locus and the greater passivity, absorption and surrender.
The severity of preparation for mystical union corresponds, in art,
with the dedication to learning and the acquisition of technique.
The preparation is assiduous, the greater when the aim is to be-
come rather than to possess the Idea. The first duty of god’s bride is
acquiescence. To be worthy is to be selfless. Self-denial is a mode
of active passivity that is the primary condition of submission. In
Buddhism, as in most religions, self-denial is central.
In contrast, the artist does not pursue the same path of self-
denial. The passive and receptive qualities of inspiration and com-
position are realized only in the creative state. Mystical union is
not creative; it has no content to divulge other than what it is. The
totality of union overwhelms all particularities in its subsequent
revelation. To describe, to discuss, to illustrate is to delimit. The
category of mystical experience stands behind a manifold of pos-
sible concepts, one of which prevails in creative vision. The vision
engages a sphere of content, at first explicit, say a figural, math-
ematic or musical “problem”, but out of receptiveness comes in-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 329
creasing definiteness, and thus originality, as the content resolves.
One sees at first dimly. Then, one becomes blind to the habitual.
Finally, eyes refreshed, one sees again as if for the first time.
The artist is still bound to the temporal world of objects while
the mystic has left that world for the timeless realm of god or na-
ture. This is a symptom of inwardness as engagement devolves
to antecedent oneness with the other. Oneness is not the com-
ing-together of god and mystic but the reaching-down to the
foundations of thought before the surfacing of individuality. The I
and the Thou (Buber, 1958ed) do not embrace each other as in an
encounter but issue from a common source, like waters flowing
from the same spring.
If we presume a descent in creative and mystical thought
through planes of Ucs process, what is important for this idea are:
(1) the activity of developing acts, and the passivity of developing
objects; (2) the elaboration of object space out of a personal space
of imagery; (3) the growth of feeling out of core beliefs and values;
and most critically, (4) the assumption that unrealized or non-ac-
tualized phases of the Ucs are not concrete images but categories
of thought and perception.
12.3. Active and passive
“The road up and the road down are the same”
Heraclitus
In creative and mystical withdrawal there is passivity to an imag-
ined other — muse, spirit or god — who may have authority over
the self. The feeling of passivity is decisive as to whether agency
is felt as internal, belonging to the self, or external, transferred
to the other. The greater the self’s feeling of agency, the less the
power attributed to muse, spirit or god. The self must evapo-
rate if the mind is to be inundated. Agency and receptiveness
are generated within the mental event; they are not applied to
events from outside. The study of pathological cases affirms that
agency depends on and develops with the occurrent state, and
that the object-development is of equal importance to the feeling
330 Jason W. Brown
of agency and its locus as the action process. One could say the
action discharge gives the feeling that an action is self-initiated55,
whereas the object-development gives the knowledge that the ac-
tion has occurred. There is a need to disambiguate these subtle
differences. Perhaps willed movement should be restricted to the
feeling of innervation, agency for the sense of free-will, and voli-
tion for Csness of action, including choice and decision. In states
of palsy, there is still a feeling of effort and will, but this is altered
in sensory denervation. Without effort and the aid of vision, one
cannot move a limb that is not felt. But action is not necessary for
volition. When action is in abeyance the self still can evoke and
“manipulate” a mental image, contemplate a past event, arouse
an idea or imagine a plan for the future.
The inner bond of the mental event with action and percep-
tion or with the active and passive attitude changes each moment
with the changing event. Though we sense that we can choose to
act or not, a failure of action is not a sign that agency is wanting;
agency, willing, volition, are in choosing and implementing, not in
the choice that is made. This feeling differs on separate occasions
for what appear to be similar acts. One moment I am willfully en-
gaged in writing, with each stroke an energetic motion. The next
moment, my mind is vacant; there is no impulse or will to write
and the pen rests helpless in my hand. This difference as much a
function of mood as of conceptual urgency, points to the “deep
structure” of the act. Activity colored by mood can give apathy
and akrasia or, conversely, manic self-confidence. The relevance
of mood might suggest that active and passive “roles” are addi-
tions to events, not intrinsic to them, but I believe this shows that
moods arise at and condition pre-object phases in the micro-tem-
poral process through which events arise.
The relation of an image to passive and active undergoes a
change in mystical descent. The meditation that initiates the
55
The James-Wundt debate on the feeling of innervation concerned the contri-
bution of action to the distinction of active and passive movement. Without sen-
sory recurrence, i.e. action-perception through collaterals of its discharge, there is
not only loss of the feeling of activity but the limb may be felt as not belonging to
the individual or organism. A rat will chew its dennervated paw, as a person bites
an anaesthetized lip.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 331
process, and the concentration on an object, are active processes
that become passive in visionary thinking with the appearance of
images or hallucinations (see below). Receptivity and openness
transform to agency when a mystic receives instructions from an
angel or hears the voice of god. The volitional quality of the imagi-
nary voice is normally a property of the self, i.e. inner speech, and
the relation of self to image or object. Yet, in normal states, there
can be a shift in the locus of agency from the self to the image. On
falling asleep, a verbal image occasionally seems to become the
voice of another person. When sensory constraints are relaxed
or in full dependency on the endogenous, the path outward to
the world for everyday objects occurs for intrinsic images as well,
and like objects, imagined others appear to “contain” their own
impulsivity or volition. When a verbal image objectifies, the voice
is no longer felt to be in the person’s mind; it seems to come from
outside. This is pronounced in schizophrenic command halluci-
nations. The phenomenon is not limited to verbal imagery. In a
phantom limb, the feeling that one controls an amputated limb
may change to a state in which the limb itself feels active. The
limb seems to “have a mind of its own” independent of the self.
Similar phenomena occur with stimulation of the motor cortex.
In the “alien hand” syndrome, a person may actually be choked
by his own hand.
Such phenomena, and a host of others (Brown, 1988), show
that the active and the passive are not opposing tendencies but
parallel attitudes.56 In man, the feeling of volition depends, mini-
mally, on an active feeling in movement that is generated by the
action discharge. In contrast, the passivity of the object-develop-
ment is completed when the image objectifies and is no longer
part of the person’s mind. The many forms of imagery, dreams,
memory and thought images, hallucinations and illusions, eidetic
and after-images, are markers of successive phases in the object-
development, and each mode of imagery has a different feeling
of activity or passivity. The proximity of the image to the world
or core self is one factor in volitional feeling. In the final phase of
56
Some have argued that the tension between the active and the passive in
cognition traces back to the biology of approach and avoidance in unicellular
organisms (Schneirla, 1965), which evolves to grasping and withdrawal, extro-
and introversion, and even aggressive and dependent personality types.
332 Jason W. Brown
image-development, agency is replaced by passivity. This culmi-
nates in the detachment of the image and the feeling of being an
onlooker to the products of one’s own imagination.
In the mystic, the complexity of the active and passive ap-
pears in the mix of pursuit and surrender. The mystic is an active
seeker who pursues detachment with vigor and determination.
In the artist, it occurs in the balance of confidence and receptive-
ness. Mystical union requires resolute commitment and absolute
submission. The union that is actively sought-after is realized in
self-abandon. The paradox is that the final passivity necessary for
absorption entails a suspension of the impulse that drove the mys-
tic to seek union in the first place. Reminiscent of the remark of
how much it cost the government of India to keep Gandhi living in
poverty, a healthy dose of arrogance is required to surrender the
self to the Other. The combination of determination with supplica-
tion, of the quest for perfection with the admission of inadequacy,
of detachment from others with the hope of communion, of the
audacity in the search for god-union with the relinquishment
of any vestige of autonomy, is not for the timid or faint-hearted.
Absorption in god begins with self-absorption, requiring a self to
which all worldly relations are subordinate. A strong will is essen-
tial to dedicate a life in service, since dedication is a means to an
end — that of union — to which self-denial is preliminary. One
could say with some justification that devotion and humility in the
mystic are mere camouflage for so consuming an ambition that
the individual actually believes he or she will achieve a personal
audience with god. Hugel (1921) wrote that mystics have a “great
self-engrossment of a downright selfish kind”, in which all things
are grouped around a “self-adoring Ego.” Such narcissism, which
is not unknown among the artistic class, is neither unique nor es-
sential to the creative personality.
Many writers have claimed that the brain is designed for action
and that knowledge is incipient or preparatory action. However,
the inner life is populated mainly by perceptual images. The delay
in action that is essential to thought is not filled by more action
but by visual and verbal imagery. The mental correlates of action
are largely perceptual (Brown, 1996). Activity arising in the out-
ward flow of action transports the self to a goal. With the evolu-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 333
tion of self and desire, the purposefulness of animals becomes
the volition of humans. The object of desire that can be imagined
as an idea for reflection is an image for the self’s enjoyment. We
are spectators for our visual images, including dreams. The active
quality of inner speech gives volitional feeling to language-based
thought (Brown, 2004). The imagery of verbal thought, when bi-
ased to action, gives volitional feeling; when biased to perception,
it seems to arise spontaneously. Generally, we are passive to what
surfaces in Csness even if we feel that our thoughts are purpose-
fully generated.
Eckermann said of Goethe, genius does not struggle to reach
the heights, genius soars. In ordinary mind as well, thinking does
not give thought; thought comes. And thought comes best in mo-
ments of inactivity and quiet repose when the antecedents of acts
and objects come to the fore. The passivity in the relation of self
to thought, or observer to observed, is an active product of the
process through which objects develop. It is essential for objects
to be shared and independent, and for the illusion that the objects
we perceive are in the world, not in the mind. Agency is partly
a by-product of choice and decision, and partly, a result of mo-
tor discharge. This is essential if the individual is to feel that his
limbs are not prosthetic appendages. Were agency for images like
passivity for objects, i.e. if actions fully objectified, we would feel
like automata; actions would arise like objects, independent of an
actor. Were the passivity of objects to invade the action-formation,
we would feel that perceptions were the outcome of mental activ-
ity, i.e. that we think up our perceptions. Such phenomena are
common in psychotic states.
12.4. Unity and union
The initial phase in the “ascending series” to god-union described
by writers such as St. Theresa, Bishop de Sales and Mme Guyon,
begins with meditation. Leuba (1925; p 169) notes the similarity
to the Buddhist and Islamic traditions. He writes that “the funda-
mental psychological condition of Union is passivity”, to which
meditation and the ascetic life are subsidiary. Meditation leads to
334 Jason W. Brown
passivity by “arresting the activity of the mind”. The inward turn
is a step back from the world, a retreat from acts and objects that
relinquishes agency and replaces objects by images. Instead of an
active self in relation to the world, the self is a passive observer
of its own bodily and mental content. After meditation comes
contemplation; this is not active thought, but attention to one ob-
ject as a means of further emptying and so opening the mind for
spontaneous imagery. Passivity is achieved in concentrating the
mind on one object, or repeating a word or phrase, such as a man-
tra. Howley (1920) gave a clear description of the shift in attention
from a discursive «wandering» over elements to «a fixation on
one element which it draws from the storehouse of memory, and
concentrates intelligence and will on this one point», so reducing
the conscious field to a minimum. The aim of the negative path
of elimination is, as Spinoza put it, «to reach a bare One unen-
cumbered by attributes, which are limitations.» In Sufism, where
inwardness and spirituality prevail over the externality of law, the
repetition of a word or phrase from the Qu’ran — sika — leads
to a forgetting of self and relations to the world. This can also be
achieved in repetitive motion, such as whirling. A homogeneous
state of emptiness ensues as selfless mind is absorbed in a sea of
unity.
Accounts of the mystical path emphasize other methods in
the course of achieving union, many of which have taken on the
status of formal doctrine, even if there is considerable variation
in the path of each individual. Before the final oneness there are
often visions and hallucinations. This is a kind of twilight Csness
with erosion of autonomy but not to the point where the self is
obliterated. The withdrawal from objects to precursor images cre-
ates a “dreamy” state not unlike that of hypnagogy, epileptic aura
or hypnotic trance. The outer world has all but vanished, replaced
by something resembling a “lucid” dream. The agentive self that
initiated the adventure has given way to the passive self of dream
as an observer of its own imagery.
In contemplation, reason, thought and imagery are replaced
by ardent feeling, and by the “simple gaze on divine truth” of St.
Thomas. There is an arrest of inner speech and thought. Ordinarily,
objects and words parse meanings and increment time. The
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 335
elimination of the time order realized in words and objects un-
covers deeper phases of simultaneity and syncretic meaning, the
“thoughts too deep for tears” and boundless emotions; undivided,
inarticulate, generalized, ineffable. The opposition of the self to
its images, concepts and feelings dissolves, and with this there is
a dissolution of self-consciousness. Bishop Hedly wrote that he
who is conscious while he is praying has not yet arrived at perfect
imagery (Butler, 1922).
In the sphere of emotion, affect that in waking was distributed
more or less evenly over all perceptual objects, is now concen-
trated into one object of contemplation. When this object is then
relinquished, affect suffuses inner space and grows more intense
as individuality recedes to its core, as if one traveled upstream to
the source of a great river from one of its many tributaries. The
outcome of this descent is surrender in union with god or im-
mersion in the absolute of nature. The state is that of a powerful
emotion, usually described as all-encompassing love. The mystic
is consumed by god, the Other, as lover, great companion or fellow
sufferer. According to Poullain (1912), the very center of Christian
mysticism is the other as an immediate and vivid apprehension
of “divine Presence”. Not to diminish the import of the union or
its significance for the mystic but to align it with other modes of
thought and behavior, one could suppose that mystical ecstasy is
an experience akin to fully internalized sexual ecstasy that dis-
charges a mode of pre-object mentality prior to the division of self
and other.
Apart from the sexual histories of the mystics, which have
been lucidly interpreted by Leuba (1925), and discussed by many
writers, including psychoanalysts, the mystical experience can be
interpreted in relation to ordinary sexual excitement. Love would
then be a derivative of sexual drive, and the extremes of asceti-
cism a form of masochism. Some saints, especially women, report
sexual dreams of being kissed and bedded by, or married to, god.
In the passage of consciousness from interest in another person
to desire for that person, to the coupling with a partner who is still
external, the ever-greater proximity and absorption leads to a melt-
ing of the physical boundaries of flesh and the psychic boundar-
ies of feeling. The dissolution of the self and the inter-penetration
336 Jason W. Brown Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 337

with the other accompany a retreat from asymmetric and deliber- forms of mystical union (discussion in Forman, 1998). The reli-
ate limb movements to automatic and symmetrical axial motility. gious and cultural background may determine the conditions that
Focal voluntary actions are replaced by rhythmic impulses. The are pursued for descent, while the part-categories of culture and
transition is from adaptation to the world to the archaic and en- personal interest naturally guide the less profound descent in cre-
dogenous. The confluence of drives that are suppressed, deviant ative insight and the still more superficial objects of science. The
or inner-directed — repressed sexuality, hunger in starvation, fear phases of descent (Fig. 12.1.) occur in all human minds.
in acquiescence, anger in self-directed austerities and mortifica-
tion — coalesce in solitary rapture. The sublimation of the outer-
directed drives, the loss of their objects and the muted expression
of their natural realization result in a wholly subjective discharge.
Mystical union is fully intra-personal. The outer world has disap-
peared. Motility is suppressed. A similar phenomenon occurs in
REM-state dreams, where there is also paralysis. In ecstasy when
visions and revelations occur, the individual is incapable of vol-
untary movement, unable to come out of trance at will (Poullain,
1912).

The allusion to sexuality in union particularly in the religious

mystic, integrates some aspects of the uncanny to what is familiar
and comprehensible. Mystical union is not an other-worldly expe-
rience beyond human understanding. To claim the phenomenon
is god-inspired removes it from philosophical or psychological dis-
course. The parallel trend in the concept of creativity, i.e. that of
the genius is inspired, implies an influx from outside or a state of
supernatural possession that uncouples the creative process from
what is known of mental experience. Smith (2006 and elsewhere)
has described attributes of creativity in relation to experimental
studies of personality development, especially the import of pre-
perceptual stages in driving surface cognition, phases of affect
and meaning, and the micro-temporal transition from “depth” to
“surface”. Sexuality plays an important role in the ability to probe
otherwise hidden or submerged levels. The allusion by students
of mysticism of the importance of sexual feeling is of uncertain
import but it does align the phenomenon with percept-genetic or
micro-genetic phases in thought and perception.
Along these lines, to claim that mysticism is a construction of
social, linguistic and religious traditions does a disservice to the
universality of the experience, the commonality of its precursors,
the descent into self and the pattern of expression found in all
Fig. 12.1. The mystic withdraws to Ucs categories that are the
initial phase in the mental state. In art, there is incomplete with-
drawal to the phase of conceptual feeling that partitions the core.
Objects that are revived are penetrated with feeling as value. The
scientist also retraces this process, but lives closer to the object-
world. Each mental state is a recurrent transition from core to em-
pirical self to external world.
12.5. Theocentric and nature mystics
The mysticism of god-union is most often described in the Christian
literature, but accounts resemble those of the Asian mystic who
seeks communion with nature. In the latter, oneness is with the
ultimately real or ground of existence, an absolute that is «super-
sensual and super-rational». If the One of union is personal it is
god, if impersonal, the absolute. In the former, god is creator, in
the latter the universe is emanation (see Hughes, 1937). For Mercer
(1913), the term god should be reserved for the phenomenal as-
338 Jason W. Brown
pect of the absolute. The central idea in nature mysticism is that
mind and nature are manifestations of the absolute. In both forms
of mysticism, the unio mystica is achieved by a descent through
the personal Ucs as the particulars of Cs experience are abdicated
for a dream of holistic unity.
Mystical thought has a tendency to monism, but it would be
inaccurate to portray the process as a replication of the same
“stuff” of matter in increasingly complex systems. All knowledge
and experience rest on the process through which mental phe-
nomena are derived, a process that in my view can be traced
back to elementary physical entities. What is continuous is the
expansion, inside-out, of the internal relations, subjective aim and
directionality of process within the temporal extensibility of physi-
cal entities. The pantheist sees the continuum in psychic terms;
the materialist sees it as physical top to bottom. Hughes argues,
citing Plotinus and Augustine, that pantheism is not essential to
religious mysticism.
The possibility of love-union with god does not imply that each
of us has godly attributes or is a particular in the mind of god, but
that individuality can be immersed in the totality of the divine.
The transition from the human psyche and its material basis to a
fusion (infusion) with the spirit of god is less a spiritual becoming
of the person or a recession to a spiritual core than openness to
god’s love. The notion that we are ideas in god’s mind, or that our
souls are ingredient in universal spirit, are concepts discussed in
other formats, but they do not appear to inform the process of
mystical retreat. This is because the god-union does not uncover
an underlying oneness, but achieves unity by allowing god to en-
ter one’s being. This contrasts with the nature mystic, for whom a
common process would seem to be necessitated by the continu-
um of psychic individuality with the physical absolute. Individual
mind is a distal manifestation of the ultimate data of reality.
Nature and mind may not be composed of the same constituents,
but they are emanations of the underlying ground of existence. Of
the various explanations of the continuum, increasing complexity
with emergent features, in spite of its inadequacy, is perhaps the
one that is most widely accepted.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 339
12.6. Creativity in art and science
“One-eyed science deficient in its vision of depth”
Whitehead
The idea that mystical experience is an extreme of normal cogni-
tion and an outcome of phyletic trends brings the phenomenon
into relation with evolutionary process on the one hand and ar-
tistic and scientific creation on the other. Microgenetic theoery
assumes a qualitative change within the mental state in its transi-
tion to actuality. For this reason, the differences between ordinary,
creative and mystical thinking are as important as the similarities.
These differences have several explanations: (1) a disparity in seg-
ment or phase, i.e. relative depth of origination; (2) the extent to
which concepts are partitioned, i.e. the unity or multiplicity of
vision and composition; (3) the prominence or extraction of feel-
ing, i.e. intensity, generalization and locality; and (4) the degree of
objectification, i.e. the phase of concepts, or of objects.
Mysticism and creativity are grounded in personal feeling. In
the former, feeling is the goal or end to which the state is directed.
The intensity of feeling arises in the proximity to core drives and
the non-specificity of conceptual primitives, and the temporal
compression of the manifold of possibility in unrealized poten-
tiality. In the latter, feeling follows the separation of the manifold
into specific occasions that generate a multiplicity of inter-lock-
ing parts. Science and philosophy are impersonal; they attempt
to drive feeling out. The certainty of mystical truth and the unique
vision of the artist depend on their intra-psychic locus. The mystic
leaves the world the artist returns to. In both, value deposits at
subjective phases in personal experience, or in concepts rather
than external objects, but the final objects of art and science aris-
ing out of conceptual feeling are not dead products of thought;
they radiate the intrinsic value that accompanied them into the
world.
The more personal a belief, the greater is the conviction in its
truth, no matter how implausible it may be. Strong and unshake-
able beliefs are akin to delusions in their resistance to argument
and indifference to verification. Indeed, how could one authen-
340 Jason W. Brown
ticate a reported union with god or nature? The objects of art
and science conform to the concepts behind them. To speak of
deep or shallow concepts is to judge their scope, originality and
explanatory power. The inwardness of mystical union contrasts
with the open-ended dialectic of extra-personal science. Most sci-
entific “facts” are provisional, and the more impersonal, the more
provisional, at least in principle. There is no complete objectivity,
even in the most solid fact; this is evident in the ferocity of sci-
entific and philosophical debate. Objectivity does not require an
external perspective, which can never be fully achieved; rather,
there is an accentuation of the distal or objectified segment of the
mental state and a de-emphasis on its subjective portion. The self
imaginatively inhabits the objects it perceives, or imagines that it,
the self, is one of those objects. One has this experience on occa-
sion in gazing at the body when it seems alien or dissociated, or
just another object in the world. The objectivity of science is less
a perspective from outside, than the subtraction of the personal
in observation. The object is no longer the exclusive product of
an individual imagination. For the scientist, shared objects have
precedence over individual observers. This is the outcome of an
observation of a reliable, eternal world in relation to the fragile,
perishable self, and translates in epistemic theory to the belief
that objects are the starting points of concepts.
For those who believe the path to truth lies outside the mind,
the intra-personal truths of the mystic are suspect or fraudulent.
In contrast, those of the artist are closer to the object world. The
ideal is not intra-personal but directed to others. The truth-value
in art is more in the sphere of feeling and symbolism than rea-
son. The artist wishes to transfer to the observer his insights and
emotions. Such insights may qualify as truths in that they reveal,
by implementing them, concepts that cannot otherwise be sub-
mitted to scientific test. Most philosophers would grant that art
reveals truths about the human condition, even if they cannot be
formulated as propositions that can be falsified. It was for this rea-
son that Goethe titled his autobiography Poetry and Truth. In con-
trast, science puts its questions in the form of propositions that are
true or false. The locus of scientific thought shifts from the mind
of the individual to a world of communal objects, validation and
consensus.
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 341
There is a transition in every act of cognition from the phase
of intuition or the pre-verbal categories that discharge in mystical
experience to a conceptual richness of greater specificity, i.e. an
artwork or domain of scientific inquiry. This phase leads to the
objectified concepts of art, e.g. a poem, painting or performance.
In art, concepts are rendered in a form that can be judged for
depth and quality. In science, concepts lead to findings that can
be tested and confirmed. Art and science submit their objects for
extra-personal judgments. The mystic is indifferent to the judg-
ment of others. The artist may act with indifference or disdain and
reject the opinions of others, but his work will still be judged, while
the scientist’s trade depends on such judgments. The continuity
from the personal to the impersonal reflects the relative depth or
degree of inwardness that dominates each mental state.
In mysticism, the self uncovers the ground of its existence or
fuses with the Other. The mystic has limited interest in the truths
of extra-personal science. Perhaps he believes the scientist is
deluded by appearances that have little relevance to the direct
experience of deity or nature. However, a profound truth about
nature must cohere with a truth about the mind; one cannot ig-
nore the source of one’s objects. One who begins with the objects
of physics will not reach the mind, But if one starts with mental
phenomena, it may be possible to trace their devolution to basic
entities. If so, a continuous thread runs from mind to physical na-
ture. Nature mystics know this truth, but their insight is without
content — blind concepts, as Kant put it — leaving nothing to be
decided on. Mystical experience is adrift from the wider commu-
nity of knowledge. The mystic does not just renounce the world;
he is alienated from the illusory objects left behind in his descent.
In fact, he demolishes those objects without putting forth new
ones to replace them.
In sum, for artist and aesthete, for scientist, philosopher or oth-
ers who work in a creative way, intuition may arise from a concept
on a universal scale or one of more narrow interest. Concepts of
the widest scope are fundamental categories that spill into in-
creasingly more definite spheres of value. The immense joy of
god-union that is recaptured in descent is an early, unrecognized
phase in an ordinary act of cognition. This phase partitions to sci-
342 Jason W. Brown
entific or artistic concepts that still have a high grade of intrinsic
feeling. Feeling is diminished as it distributes to concepts that
point outward to the world. The exocentric locus of scientific con-
cepts delimits feeling to a concentration on one object or field.
This is the phase of contemplation in the mystic. In the scientist, it
can become a center of inestimable value. The mystic abandons
objects for emptiness; the scientist retains them and fills them
with value. The dedicated scientist who spends a lifetime studying
a liver cell, a ganglion in the brain, a physical particle or a piece of
viral nucleic acid, has enlarged that concept to a universe of value
that claims a devotion that, as in mysticism, is comparable to the
feeling of love.
For the nature mystic, the absolute has certain of the non-mor-
al, impersonal and ideal qualities of the philosopher’s god, such
as timelessness, permanence and indivisibility. Process thought
is inconsistent with permanence and wavers on the existence of
timeless objects. For this reason, more powerful arguments are
needed to support the belief in a rock-bottom ground of substan-
tial nature. In theocentric and nature mysticism, objects vanish in
a mist of ultimacy. Scientific knowledge retains those objects that
mysticism discards. The generative concepts behind those ob-
jects, which are the primary instruments in the origins of theory,
are reclaimed when feeling is eliminated in the quest for inter-per-
sonal assent. The elimination of emotion from scientific research
is presumed to result in affect-free concepts. However, feeling is as
fundamental to organic systems as energy is to matter, so much
so that a metaphysics of feeling may well be prior to one of energy
in physical matter. Elsewhere (Brown, 2005) I have speculated that
feeling arises in the becoming (change) or temporal extensibility
that generates an object or concept, while being is the duration or
category created by the becoming.
Art, like mystical experience, achieves truth in perceptual im-
mediacy. In creative thought, study and deliberation precede in-
sight. There is a period of gestation, as conception gradually devel-
ops, followed by the labor of execution and revision. The aesthete
studies an artwork for a while before understanding catches up
with “gut reaction”. As in mystical knowledge, we apprehend that
a work of art is profound, but we cannot always say why. The intu-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 343
ition feels right but cannot be articulated. Ineffability is a psycho-
logical fact, not a limitation of language. It conveys the experience
of potential before it actualizes in words. The lack of words, which
is a way of characterizing ineffability, is a failure of the partition
of the immediacy of wholeness, which is experienced without
being apportioned, without being incremented into moments by
thoughts, acts and objects.
William James understood the intensity of conceptual feeling
underlying rational thought when he wrote that philosophy is
more a matter of passionate vision than logic, the logic coming
afterwards to justify the vision. First we have the idea and then we
look for support in the authority of research, tradition and opin-
ion. The inward descent of the mystic is replicated partially by the
artist. But unlike the former, the artist excavates concepts that, for
the mystic, are mere way-stations in a deeper pursuit. The phase
of conceptual feeling that is the starting point of art-creation for
the mystic is still too much part of the world. In Buddhism, the
Arhat seeks to rid himself of feeling, e.g. desire. In the final stages
of enlightenment, he must eliminate concepts. This amounts to
an elimination of mind, for so long as mind exists, a state of non-
conceptuality would seem to be impossible. The state of “pure”
or objectless Csness is not a mode of awareness, as in animal
mind, where external objects are conserved, but an immersion,
or feeling of oneness, in the categorical prime that deposits the
core self.
The outward progression in art divides a unity of conceptual-
feeling into constructs with little feeling-tone, or feelings that seem
non-conceptual. Put differently, conceptual feeling can go in the
direction of feeling, in which the conceptual aspect is diminished,
or in the direction of concepts, in which feeling is subdued. This
gives the false impression of an opposition of concept and feeling,
or historically, of reason and appetite. But intense feeling still real-
izes a category (fear, love and so on), while abstract concepts retain
an affective tone in their value to the individual. It is the feeling or
value in the concept that selects it for analysis. The greater the
partition, the more object-centered or external the concept, the
closer the creative act is to science than to art, which even when it
344 Jason W. Brown
is displaced to a world of objects remains, in its conceptual integ-
rity, very much a subjective experience.
To put the discussion in a more fully microgenetic context, the
drives, the base categories and the Ucs or core self are ingredient
in a plane of cognition that discharges internally in mystical states.
This phase gives rise to the empirical or Cs self and its conceptual
feelings. The partition evokes a subjective aim that will become
the intentional agent of ideas, acts and objects. At an early, intra-
personal phase of this partition, concepts of particular value arise
out of core beliefs, ingrained skills and experiential memories, e.g.
mathematical, musical or artistic. These concepts are penetrated
by intense feeling. The intensity can be described as a flood of
emotion or gasp of amazement that saturates a still inchoate con-
cept. The intuition is gradually worked out as the concept devel-
ops into objects (parts). The whole of the insight gives rise to the
particulars that exemplify it. The feeling-tone that was intense in
the original concept tends to dissipate as it distributes into ideas
in the mind or objects in the world.
When the individual is centered at a distal or objective phase
in the implementation of the concept, say in fine-tuning a compo-
sition or revising a manuscript, the creative power of the insight,
though active, is weakened in the partiality of its material. We now
speak of skill or technique, the 99% perspiration of Edison’s fa-
mous remark. Conrad wrote in a touching way of the uncertainty
and struggle in the choice of every word. Original ideas develop
in the context of experience and interest when the conceptual
mind resists objectification. Whether an idea is interesting, novel
or deeply original, whether it is revived in art or science, even if
it remains pre-conscious in a psychotic personality, concepts of
innovation and power can only arise at a phase prior to objec-
tification. This is because concepts are not assembled from Cs
elements but precede those elements and give rise to them in a
sequence of recurrences.
One characteristic of creative thought is the exploitation of
early phases in perceptual imagery. Much has been written of the
Ucs sources of creativity, but few “mechanisms” have been pro-
posed. Perhaps the most important of these is metaphor, which
has been widely discussed in cognitive science as well as neuro-
Neuropsychological Foundations of Conscious Experience 345
psychology. For Miller (1996) scientific theories begin with meta-
phoric constructs. These constructs result in literal descriptions
that approximate concepts of physical reality. He writes, “all our
utterances about the world are metaphorical”. Science is a sub-set
of such occurrences. One phenomenon is described in terms of
another or a surrogate is employed to achieve insight into novel
fact. Koestler (1964) described creativity as a sudden convergence
of two strands of thought that result in a new way of thinking. This
idea has been further developed by Rothenberg (1996). The con-
vergence of different lines of thought is another way of describing
metaphor as a synthesis of contrasts, or the generation of novelty
from discord. While Rothenberg dismisses the importance of re-
gression, the ability to tap preliminary or Ucs phases of pre-logical
whole-part relations, such as metaphor, is central in the creative
act.
What distinguishes creative from ordinary thinking is richness
of metaphoric thinking and greater access to those phases in mind
where metaphor is active, as well as the ability to develop meta-
phors of striking originality. From a psychological standpoint, what
is important about metaphor and related phenomena, such as me-
tonymy and synecdoche, is that they are instances of whole-part
relations through which topics overlap due to shared predicates,
when the part implies the whole, or when certain attributes of an
object serve to propagate novel constructs. An example in poetry
might be a “dark” mood that becomes “night falling”. Einstein’s fly
on a train is an example in scientific discourse. Religion is replete
with metaphors and symbols. With respect to religious mysticism,
an example is god as father, lover or bridegroom. If metaphor is
ubiquitous in language, it is because whole-part relations are fun-
damental in mind and nature. The natural tendency of thought is
to analysis, or the derivation of parts from antecedent wholes. The
creative step reverses this trend by a move inward to the wholes.
The focus is now on the concept, context or background behind
the particulars. This opens the way to a novelty generated by the
multiple relations of unrealized parts. Put differently, the incom-
plete analysis permits the arousal of unexpected parts that are
tacitly subsumed within wholes that have not yet individuated.
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