The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  Whether the principle of consciousness did this work, however, was questioned by, among others, the philosopher Gottlob Ernst Schulze. Schulze held that the principle, rather than being self-evident, had the status of an empirical generalization, indeed, an empirical generalization that was neither universally valid nor capable of grounding the rest of Reinhold’s philosophy.3 But let me put aside the larger question of whether such a principle can serve as a grounds for philosophy and focus on the truth of the principle, on the question of whether consciousness contains these elements, an idea that has striking similarities to the views of certain contemporary theorists, such as Uriah Kriegel (2003, p. 104), who claims that “in your auditory experience of [a]‌ bagpipe you are aware primarily, or explicitly, of the bagpipe sound [the object]; but you are also implicitly aware that this auditory experience of the bagpipe [your representation of the bagpipe] is your experience [the self].”

  Despite Schulze’s criticism, this model of consciousness maintained its hold in the philosophical community in Germany into the nineteenth century and, as Michael Forster (1998, p. 117) points out, Hegel typically proceeds on the assumption that consciousness does have this threefold structure, with Hegel even at one point echoing Reinhold’s wording of his principle: “[c]‌onsciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time relates itself to it.” In the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, however, Hegel does submit the view to some scrutiny. “Consciousness,” Hegel (1807/1977, §85) states, “is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what for it is the True, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth,” which seems to capture at least the idea that in being conscious of an object (what for it is the True) we are also aware of representing—not just representing but aware of representing—the object (that is, we are conscious of our knowledge of the truth). Yet how does consciousness get to the object? Why does it not just stop at the representation? Hegel anticipates these questions, telling us that although it might seem “that consciousness cannot, as it were, get behind the object as it exists for consciousness so as to examine what the object is in itself,” nonetheless “the distinction between the in-it-self and knowledge [representation] is already present in the very fact that consciousness knows an object at all”; that is, the very fact that we are representing an object, Hegel seems to think, implies that there is an object—“something quite separate from us,” as he puts it in Faith and Being (1802/1907, p. 383)4—that we are representing.

  What are we to say of the Reinhold-Fichte-Hegel (RFH) model of consciousness? Is consciousness representational? And if it is, are we aware of it as such? Does consciousness contain awareness of the self? Does it contain awareness of objects? These are, of course, difficult and much debated questions, but let me touch on a few considerations. Of the three elements, the idea that consciousness is representational in some sense or other was generally taken as the linchpin of the view, with Fichte (1794/1988, p. 71), for example, arguing that the representational element of consciousness is derived from the act of positing a subject and an object and at one point remarking that the idea that we could understand consciousness without representation was “a piece of whimsy, a pipe dream, a nonthought.” Some contemporary philosophers, however, such as John Searle (1983) and Amy Kind (2013), suggest that moods like free-floating anxiety or general depression may be conscious, yet they do not represent anything.5 Of course, as those who hold representational accounts of consciousness do today, someone who upholds the RFH model of consciousness might find representations lurking in these darker moments—general depression is depression about everything, they might say. Still, even if consciousness is representational, it is a further question whether we are conscious that we are representing objects. Another contemporary philosopher, Joseph Levine (2006, p. 179), seems to think we are not: “I am not in any way aware of any cognitive distance between me and the scene in front of me; the fact that what I’m doing is representing the world is clearly not itself part of the experience.” Hegel (1807/1977, §85), however, seems to think this distance is part of consciousness: “something is for it the in-itself [the scene]; and cognition, or the being of the object for consciousness [my representing the scene], is, for it, another moment.”

  One objection to the idea that consciousness contains an awareness of the self, an objection that was voiced at the time and is heard today in connection with the concept of “flow,” is based on the idea that sometimes we get “lost,” in thought, in sensation, or in action.6 When we are engrossed in a philosophical problem and making progress (which may happen occasionally), are we not lost in thought? When we experience overwhelming pain, is it not true that the only thing present to our minds is the pain? And, when all is going well, might not the self disappear in running a marathon or dancing Swan Lake? Kriegel deals with such objections by making the awareness of the self in conscious experience implicit rather than explicit. But I wonder if one need even concede as much, for just what is it to get lost in movement? I believe that a more accurate description of such situations is not that one gets lost, but rather that all those uninvited worries about death, taxes, and the like that have been crowding your mind vanish. The self is there when movement flows and you feel lost; but it is just your better self.7

  The idea that the self gets lost when thought flows may also be questioned. Does one really lose the self, or do you experience yourself as focused on a particularly engaging topic? Moreover, in as much as one does get “lost” either in thought or in skill, it seems that, again, one might argue (contra the idea of phenomenal consciousness) that consciousness does as well, for if there are times when you get lost, perhaps because you are working on automatic pilot, there is no conscious at all.8 And although the case of the self getting lost in pain is a difficult one, it might be said that at least when pain is not overwhelming, one has a sense of an object (the painful sensation in, say, your foot) and of one’s awareness of such an object (if only, you might think, I could turn my awareness away from it).9 As for overwhelming pain, a defender of the RHF model of consciousness might resort to making the awareness of the self implicit. However, there is another line of defense: since, arguably, one can’t actually remember what goes on in extreme pain, one might argue that one cannot know whether the self is present. Perhaps, a defender of the RHF model of consciousness might say, in pain, one has the experience, I am in pain; yet one forgets.10

  A further consideration that is sometimes bandied about today in discussions of whether consciousness is representational involves the neurological disorder “pain asymbolia,” whereby one experiences pain but feels disconnected from it; individuals who have this condition may say that they don’t mind the pain and even that it feels as if it is someone else’s pain. If we take these statements at face value, what should they lead us to believe? Some think that pain asymbolia illustrates that the experience of p need not involve an experience to the effect that I am experiencing p. Yet one might say that pain asymbolia illustrates the relative forcefulness of the “I” in ordinary pain experiences.11 Furthermore, one might find the self in the experience of feeling as if someone else is in pain: it is I who is aware of someone else’s pain.

  As for the idea that in consciousness we are always aware of objects, this is refuted, according to Schulze, by examples of deep reflection, wherein, Schulze maintains, it is only our ruminations that are present. But now we are entering the rocky terrain involving what is to count as an object. Forster (1998, p. 188) suggests, in his defense of Hegel’s idea that all consciousness involves thinking of something as objective, that “even if one is conscious only of one’s own mental states, still one must think of them as objectively or really mental states.” In short, the question of the validity of the RFH model of consciousness is very much an open one.

  18.3 HEGEL’S DISSOLUTION OF THE MIND–BODY PROBLEM

  Hegel, in overcoming mind–body
dualism, had an explicit practical motivation: he felt that his culture’s acceptance of dualism led to unhappiness; persuade people to think of mind and body differently, and such unhappiness is eliminated.12 And the way he aims to persuade individuals to see the union in the disunion of mind and body is by helping them to understand Geist, or what is often translated as “spirit.” How successful are Hegel’s arguments against dualism? And does the elimination of dualism help to alleviate unhappiness?

  In the Encyclopaedia, Hegel (1830/1971, §389) tells us that “the soul is no separate immaterial entity,” not because the soul or mind is material in the sense of solid, weighty matter, but rather because matter is far less material than is often presumed. Once we realize this, Hegel tells us, the question of mind–body dualism dissolves: “the question of the immateriality of the soul has no interest, except where, on the one hand, matter is resolved as something true, and mind conceived as a thing, on the other.” To accept this type of disunity, he argues, is a mistake, for “in modern times, even the physicists have found matters grow thinner in their hands,” and “they have come upon imponderable matters, like heat, light.” For Hegel, as matter thins, so does the problem of the relation between mind and matter, for if matter is, as Hegel sees it, just as mysterious as mind, there is no question of either materialism or immaterialism. This is Hegel’s dissolution of the mind–body problem.

  In contrast, the Cartesian conception of matter, or body, which holds that body is extension—extension in length, breadth, and depth—grounds the mind–body problem: if mind is unextended and body is extended the distinction is plain, since something unextended cannot be identical to something extended. Moreover, if causal interaction requires contact, causal interaction between mind and body on the Cartesian picture is at best difficult to fathom. In Hegel’s words, “the usual answer [as to how to understand the interdependence between mind and body], perhaps, was to call it an incomprehensible mystery; and, indeed, if we take them to be absolutely antithetical and absolutely independent, they are as impenetrable to each other as one piece of matter to another, each being supposed to be found only in the pores of the other, i.e. where the other is not.” But physics as Hegel saw it, and even more so today, fails to suggest a conception of matter, wherein matter is diametrically opposed to mind.

  For Hegel, the inaccuracy of the Cartesian conception of matter was apparent in such physical phenomena as light and heat, which, in accord with the physics of his day, have, he says, “lost the property (peculiar to matter) of gravity and, in a sense, even the capacity of offering resistance.” And the more we learn about matter, the more “imponderable” it becomes. Noam Chomsky (1993, p. 41) puts it well: it is difficult to arrive at a “delimitation of ‘the physical,’ that excludes Fregean ‘thoughts’ in principle, but includes mathematical objects that ‘push each other about,’ massless particles, curved space-time, infinite one-dimensional strings in 10-dimensional space, and whatever will be contrived tomorrow.” Or as Bertrand Russell said in 1927 (p. 104), “matter has become as ghostly as anything in a spiritualist’s séance.”

  Like Russell and Chomsky, the thinning of matter allows Hegel to see mind, or “vital spirit,” as sitting comfortably in the physicist’s world. Yet the distinction between mind and matter, for Hegel, does not entirely disappear: these “imponderables,” he tells us, “which have lost the property (peculiar to matter) of gravity and, in a sense, even the capacity of offering resistance, have still, however, a sensible existence and outness of part to part; whereas the ‘vital’ matter, which may also be found enumerated among them, not merely lacks gravity, but even every other aspect of existence which might lead us to treat it as material.” Nonetheless, “vital matter,” on Hegel’s view, still is matter.13 And today, with the matter of physicists being described in terms of equations and functions and, as such, no longer even having a sensible existence and an “outness” of part to part, the mind–body problem dissipates almost entirely.

  It should be clear that I am rather sympathetic to Hegel’s dissolution to the mind–body problem. But let me look at a very different approach he takes to arguing against dualism: what some commentators have seen as his argument for behaviorism. Hegel tells us in Phenomenology of Sprit (1807/1977, §322) that “the true being of a person is that person’s deed” and that “when a person’s performance and inner possibility, capacity or intention are contrasted, it is the former alone which is to be regarded as their true actuality, even if he deceives himself on the point, and, turning away from his action into himself fancies that in this inner self he is something else than what he is in the deed.” The deed, he tells us, “is not merely a sign, but the fact itself…and the individual human being is what the deed is.” And in the Encyclopaedia (1830/1975, §140), referring favorably to the Gospels, in which it is written, “by their fruits ye shall know them,” Hegel tells us, “a man is what he does.” Is Hegel, then, a behaviorist, holding the view that mind isn’t distinct from body since it is no more than the movements of the body?

  I am not convinced that Hegel is presenting an argument for a metaphysical position, which tells us what the mind is, rather than a normative one, which tells us how we ought to judge others. Or at least, if Hegel is arguing for metaphysical behaviorism, he arrives at it by means of normative considerations, considerations that have an echo in a strand of present-day feminism. Hegel is bothered, and rightly so in my opinion, by people who brag about how great they are or about how they could have done great things, when, in fact, their actions do not reveal this. Similarly, Hegel is infuriated when others judge someone not by what the individual has done, but by how the individual supposedly is inwardly, criticizing those who might discredit someone’s apparently praiseworthy actions because they think that the inner motivation for such actions was merely vanity or some other contemptible passion. He seems to think that, at least for adults, what matters is what they do. And if so, though he does not speak of such cases explicitly, Hegel would seem to think it similarly wrong to praise an adult for all his inner genius, if such “genius” has not produced any worthwhile actions, for, as researchers point out today, such praise may very well be influenced by implicit biases, or stereotyping.14 Hegel, I think, is right: in such situations, we should praise people according to what they do, rather than how they supposedly are inside.

  In fact, I think that Hegel might not go far enough in his advice, for he (1830/1975, §140) seems to accept that “a sharp-eyed teacher may, from perceiving in a boy marked talents, express the opinion that there is a Raphael or Mozart in him,” even if it is “the outcome [that] will then teach to what extent such an opinion was grounded.” If our perceptions of others come with implicit biases, as tests such as the implicit bias test seem to indicate, then even such an attitude needs to be adopted with caution for it is most likely that certain groups of individuals will be seen has having inner potential, and that perception, rather than having its accuracy tested by the pupil’s future actions, can in part determine them (those with Mozart inside of them will of course be trained more rigorously than those without such perceived talent), which is great for those who are seen as having potential, yet detrimental for those who are seen as lacking it.15

  So it seems, then, that there is at least a normative component to Hegel’s view. But why is it not also a metaphysical behaviorist view? Perhaps the above claim provides a clue, for Hegel seems to think that there is something that the sharp-eyed teacher notices, that there is some inner potential or talent. The ultimate judge of whether such talent exists, or how great it is, he holds, is going to be seen, at least in the long-run, in behavior. Yet apart from the fact that he says that the deed is not merely the sign of the mind, but the mind itself, he seems to accept that we do have intentions, for if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be the case that, as he (1830/1975, §140) says, “[occasionally] in individual cases…well-meant intentions are brought to nothing by unfavorable outward circumstances.” And indeed, in such cases�
��for example, when a person sets out to help a sick child, yet is struck with an illness himself and can no longer follow through—we want to look to a person’s intentions rather than actions and praise those intentions rather than seeing such a person as worthless because of his or her inaction. Of course, Hegel would say, and probably rightly so, that we determine whether such intentions exist in the first place by the actions they produce. But this does not mean that the inner intention does not exist and, when illness strikes, it would not seem right to say that that person’s worth is the totality of their deeds. Similar claims could be made for inner intelligence. Although in favorable circumstances we ought to judge people’s smarts by what they do, in unfavorable circumstances, such as extreme poverty, the wisest council would seem to be: make no judgment at all, or, perhaps even better, assume Mozarts, Raphaels, and Galileos exist in all. So although I think that Hegel’s dissolution of the mind–body problem based on the thinning of matter is persuasive, I am not convinced that his behaviorist leanings should be understood as an argument for metaphysical behaviorism.

  This bring us to the question of whether overcoming mind–body dualism does the practical work he thinks it does; that is, whether it promotes happiness. Whatever one may think of the truth of Hegel’s metaphysical picture, his motivation is noble; who can cavil with wanting to promote happiness? But does separating the mind from body lead to unhappiness? Perhaps it does if dualism leads us to value individuals not for their bodily actions but for what goes on in their minds; for such a picture, as Hegel (1807/1977, §322) suggests, may lead to thinking of one’s actions as meaningless: “[w]‌ork and enjoyment…lose all universal content and significance.”