Phenomenology and Philosophy Research

Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind

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Overview

The books and papers listed here are a record of a kind of second career in phenomenology and philosophy I was pursuing in the midst of being a computer scientist. For while I became very good at solving certain kinds of computational problems, such problem solving did not, and could not, engage my deeper being. That being, from an early age, has been concerned with what are essentially philosophical questions. And so I found I could not teach computer science or artificial intelligence without asking after the ultimate meaning of what I was doing. This inquiry first led me to study the philosophical ideas and assumptions that lay behind my artificial intelligence research. Here I discovered the philosophy of mind, and its famous proponents: Andy Clark, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky, Alan Turing, and so on. And I found I was in fundamental disagreement with most of what these philosophers had to say. It was only when I came across the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and the writings of Martin Heidegger that I realised I was not alone in this profound disagreement. And so I set about getting a philosophical education so that I could have some effect in this debate where it seemed to me the fate of the human race was being decided. For the standard view in cognitive science, at least when I began reading in the early 2000s, is that a human being is essentially a highly sophisticated biological robot.

My first positive act was to write a textbook (The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age) and create an undergraduate course based on the book, where I could introduce my students to the philosophical background of the area in which they were about to make their careers. In this course, in more than twenty offerings over ten years, I attempted to explain what computing is, where it came from, and how it has come to dominate our self-understanding, and our mode of economic and social organisation. It turned out, despite expectations to the contrary, that many undergraduate students are deeply interested in these philosophical issues – just so long as they are connected back to the context of the actual lives we are leading here today.

At the same time as running this course, and keeping my computer science teaching and research career alive, I set about studying to become a philosopher in my own right. To this end I enrolled in a second PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University under the supervision of Bruin Christensen and David Chalmers. I also wrote a series of papers and manuscripts (that are available below), most of which were presented at philosophical conferences and workshops, both locally and internationally.

But things did not go well. I found that no one was really interested in what I had to say. I was on a mission to change the consciousness of humanity, and to a professional philosopher, this just seemed naïve. If I were going to get published in a serious journal and gain my PhD, then I would have to tone down my ambitions. But to me, that represented a kind of death. And so, after another brief PhD enrolment at the University of Queensland under the supervision of Deborah Brown, I ended up back at my home university (Griffith) under the supervision of my friend John Mandalios, who had introduced me to Husserl and Heidegger in the first place. With John I could pursue my own line of inspiration without discouragement or censure. But then John had to withdraw from all academic duties due to a serious medical condition, and I was left without a supervisor. At the same time, my mother was entering into the terminal stages of a heart condition. And so I decided to throw everything up, return to the UK and start a new life.

In that new life I began teaching phenomenological philosophy at the Free University Brighton and after a while I decided to transform the thesis I was going to write in Australia into a book that I could publish through the Free University. In this way, out of the UK Covid lockdowns of 2020-2021, The Questioning of Intelligence was born. It is here that I finally say pretty much all I have to say (for now) about intelligence and the way our culture fundamentally misunderstands its essential character. And once this lockdown is finally lifted, I hope to use the book as the basis for a new course that will be open to anyone who cares enough to inquire directly into this question of what it means to be intelligent.

2021

Thornton, J. (2021). The Questoning of Intelligence: A phenomenological exploration of what it means to be intelligent. FUBText: Brighton, 511 pp. ISBN 978-1-8384787-0-4

Back Cover: The Questioning of Intelligence is an inquiry by intelligence of intellgence. It is a questioning of the ground on which we understand ourselves and our capacity for intelligent thought and action. Our means of inquiry is the way of phenomenology, the way of entering into the immediacy of being conscious, now. It is from here we can start to investigate the philosophical and scientific inheritance that has formed the collective understanding we currently have of our place in the universe. In questioning this inheritance we are asking after the source from out of which it has emerged, the same source that is manifesting our experience of being alive and conscious now. According to the scientific materialism of our age, this manifestation of experience is no more than an effect of microphysical events occurring in our nervous systems, events that themselves have been determined by an inexorably mechanistic process of physical evolution. It is this materialistic presupposition that stands in the way of recognising the essential form of our natural, innate intelligence. For it is unintelligible to think a system of purely mechanistic calculations could produce the experience of meaning that is the hallmark of human consciousness. Seeing this is not a matter of argument or proof, it is a matter of direct phenomenological insight. It is on the basis of such insight that we look again at the meaning of the findings of contemporary science. For once we put aside this collective materialism, our science reveals an entirely new dimension of significance, where the meaning of our being conscious and intelligent is reflected back in the forms of processes that science has already discovered. From here, perhaps, we can even start to intuit the action of a universal intentionality that expresses itself through these processes, including the processes of our own human consciousness.

2015

Thornton, J. R. (2015). The Transcendence of Computational Intelligence. PhD Confirmation Document, 141 pp. Completed under the supervision of John Mandalios, School of Humanities, Griffith University.

Abstract: The nature of the subject matter of this thesis makes it difficult to provide a concise summary of what I intend to write. My aim is rather to discover answers to the questions I am posing through the very process of writing. To begin therefore, I can only state the basic questions that are motivating my work: What is intelligence? What is computation? What is computational intelligence? What could it mean to transcend computational intelligence? Is such transcendence demonstrably possible? Of course I have presentiments of answers to these questions. Firstly, in agreement with Roger Penrose, I would say that any procedure that can be realised as a Turing machine can be considered computational. The question for the thesis is whether we can abstractly consider the functioning of the human brain to be equivalent to that of a (very sophisticated) Turing machine. To answer this I shall be examining the latest hierarchical predictive coding models of the functioning of the human neocortex and asking to what extent such (computational) models can account for the capacities of human intelligence. In particular, I shall be enquiring into our capacity to have a direct knowledge of what it is to be conscious, and asking whether such knowledge provides evidence of our being able to transcend the purely computationally determined actions of our neural systems. The confirmation document itself comprises an introductory chapter which provides an outline of the final thesis. At the moment I envisage a three-part manuscript. Part One is concerned with the problem of gaining explicit access to a state of pure, pre-reflective consciousness and thereby discovering what it means to have a direct knowledge of consciousness. In Part Two I plan to examine the computational foundations of intelligence in the functioning of the human neocortex, both from a neuroscientific and phenomenological perspective. Part Three is then intended to draw together Parts One and Two in a consideration of the possible transcendence of computational intelligence.
Following on from the introduction, Chapters 2-5 are all intended for inclusion in the final thesis. They cover Part One described above, with Chapter 2 providing a method of access, and Chapters 3-5 examining the work of Descartes, Schopenhauer and Husserl in relation to the material presented in Chapter 2. Finally, the appendices present two conference papers and one workshop paper that I have written and presented during my candidature. These papers cover various aspects of the questions I intend to address in Parts Two and Three, including the relevance of Heidegger to contemporary cognitive neuroscience (Appendix A), whether the activity of the human brain is causally closed under laws that determine the local low-level functioning of neural populations (Appendix B) and how contemporary models of neocortical functioning can be mapped onto Husserl’s phenomenological account of temporal consciousness (Appendix C).

2014

Thornton, J. R. (2014). Hierarchical Temporal Intentionality. Abstract in: ASSC 18: Handbook of the 18th Conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Brisbane, Australia, University of Queensland, pp. 41-42.

2012

Thornton, J. R. (2012). The Phenomenological Negation of the Causal Closure of the Physical. Abstract in: AAP 2012: Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australasian Association for Philosophy, Wollongong, Australia, Wollongong University, p. 22.

Thornton, J. R. (2012). The Phenomenological Negation of Objective Physicalism. Unpublished philosophical paper. 35 pp. Completed under the supervision of Deborah Brown at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Abstract: An outstanding task for contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science is to evaluate the significance and relevance of the phenomenological tradition for the study of mind and consciousness. At the moment, mainstream philosophy of mind stands in relative ignorance of the original work of the key phenomenologists, content either to dismiss phenomenology as muddled and self-contradictory, or to understand it in terms of the interpretations of a few famous contemporaries. Insofar as phenomenology is accepted into the analytic debate, it is seen as playing a supporting role, generating the empirical data of accurately observed experience that then acts as a test of adequacy for analytic theory. The revolutionary aspects of phenomenology, the transcendentalism of Husserl, the destruction of traditional ontology by Heidegger, are placed firmly on the other side of the continental divide.
In this paper, I intend to show that authentic phenomenology stands in a fundamental opposition to the assumptions and practices of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. Phenomenology is not simply a useful tool for generating observations of subjective experience, it is way of engaging in philosophical enquiry that moves in an opposite direction to analytic thought. Unless this is seen clearly, the pronouncements of the phenomenologists will be misinterpreted and inappropriately rejected. To understand phenomenology, one has to enter into phenomenological enquiry ‘feet first.’ It is not a matter of a theoretical understanding. One of the aims of the phenomenological method is to uncover the pre-theoretical ground of theoretical understanding. Arriving at such a pre-theoretical ground means suspending one’s theoretical perspective. And what it means to suspend one’s theoretical perspective is itself a phenomenological question.
The point is that a positive theoretical account of the phenomenological method is not going to communicate what it means to uncover the pre-theoretical ground of experience. One has to proceed on the basis of experience and understand on the basis of negation. These principles can only be claried through actual demonstration. This is analogous to what Mary learned on seeing colour for the rst time. My plan is to illustrate the phenomenological method through a phenomenological analysis of the general framework within which contemporary philosophy of mind operates. I shall term this general framework objective physicalism. What exactly is meant by objective physicalism will become clearer as we proceed.

2011

Thornton, J. R. (2011). The Consciousness Test. Unpublished philosophical paper. 25 pp. Completed under the supervision of Bruin Christensen and David Chalmers at the School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra.

2010

Thornton, J. R. & Christensen, C. B. (2010). An Essential Difference: Wheeler and Heidegger on the relationship between science and philosophy. Presented at: Reconstructing the Cognitive World: A workshop with Michael Wheeler, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, February 3-4, 2010.

Introduction: Michael Wheeler, in his book Reconstructing the Cognitive World, analyses the development of embedded-embodied cognitive science in the light of underlying philosophical differences about the constitution of human agency. On one side he sees orthodox computational cognitive science as holding to Cartesian conceptions of an abstract, disembodied reason deliberating over de-contextualised representations of the world. On the other side, he sees modern-day embodied-embedded cognitive scientists going beyond such Cartesianism to embrace concepts of human agency more in keeping with Heidegger’s account of Dasein in Being and Time. By bringing to light and criticising the Cartesian assumptions of the computationalists and by pointing out and clarifying the connections between embodied-embedded cognitive science and Heidegger’s philosophy, Wheeler aims to lay the “foundations of a genuinely non-Cartesian cognitive science.”
Along the way, Wheeler argues that Heidegger is a scientific realist who holds that modern science provides genuinely objective epistemic access to independently real entities. He takes this to show that Heidegger would not object to the incorporation of his account of Dasein into the broad framework of contemporary cognitive-scientific explanation. According to Wheeler, such explanation is:

. . . a species of empirical explanation in which the ultimate goal is to map out the subagential elements (e.g., the neural states and mechanisms, or the functionally identified psychological subsystems) whose organization, operation, and interaction make it intelligible to us how it is that unmysterious causal processes (such as those realized in brains) can give rise to psychological phenomena that are genuinely constitutive of agency and cognition.

Within this framework, cognitive scientists necessarily make assumptions about what the relevant psychological phenomena are and how they are constitutive of agency and cognition. It is in the formulation of these assumptions that Wheeler sees the hidden hand of Descartes and the potential for a new Heideggerian reconstruction of the area. For Wheeler, the major philosophical task is to clarify these assumptions, bringing into question existing orthodox views and providing a philosophical underpinning for newer embodied-embedded conceptions of agency. Evidently, this task commits Wheeler to endorsing, at least in general terms, the same framework and thus the same assumptions that underlie what he defines as the goal of cognitive-scientific explanation. Wheeler supposes that this presents no problems for the claim that much from Heidegger’s philosophy can be incorporated into cognitive science. To support this, Wheeler adduces a number of passages from Being and Time in which Heidegger appears to endorse Wheeler’s views on philosophy’s role in identifying and clarifying the constitutive assumptions of individual sciences. And so Wheeler concludes that how he conceives such philosophical clarification is basically how Heidegger conceives it.
In this paper we shall argue that this is not correct and that the key reason for this turns on the issue of naturalism. According to Wheeler any serious attempt to achieve the defining goal of cognitive science must accept a commitment to naturalism. Yet the commitment Wheeler appears to have to naturalism (as we shall see, it is not quite clear what this commitment is) and certainly the unquestioned character of it, separates him from Heidegger. In consequence, the actual affinities between Heidegger and Wheeler are limited because Wheeler accepts as given something which, at least on any strong reading of it, Heidegger is concerned to dislodge. This difference entails significant divergence in how each sees the relation of philosophy to science.

2007

Thornton, J. (2007). The Impersonal Knowledge of Conscious Experience: A philosophical investigation. Unpublished philosophical manuscript. 81 pp.

Preface: My motivation in writing this manuscript is to fundamentally challenge the prevailing wisdom of the philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence communities that conscious experience is created or caused by the operation of physical neurons in a physical brain. Because this idea remains unchallenged, it is now widely treated as an obvious truth, a fact beyond dispute. And so it is disseminated into the larger human community, through the media, and through scientific education, without further reflection.
As I shall demonstrate, this naturalistic scientific conception of consciousness is little more than an assertion of faith or belief, which remains unsupported by factual evidence. To see how this has come about, and how the reality of consciousness remains beyond the grasp of contemporary scientific and philosophical thought, requires that we each, individually, investigate this issue in our own conscious experience.
My aim is therefore not to give a detailed criticism of the particular arguments and positions of contemporary thinkers but to present a methodology for the investigation of the mind. The basic thrust of this methodology is the attainment of an impersonal first-person observational standpoint, and to show how such a standpoint can act as the foundation for an authentic philosophy of mind. The idea is to proceed by practical demonstration and not by conceptual argumentation. As such, this work flies in the face of current practice, and there is much in it that will appear provocative and even nonsensical to someone schooled in the existing literature.
Therefore I have to ask my prospective readers to suspend their judgement, as far as is possible, until they have absorbed what has been described in the following pages. For this is a practical work, and asks you to test what is proposed by actual observation and not according to the thoughts and opinions of others.
I should make it clear that this approach to the investigation of consciousness has not been plucked out of thin air. It owes much to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, although it goes somewhat further in identifying thought as the agency of the personal viewpoint. Behind that lies the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and my quite separate experience of the work of various twentieth century spiritual teachers. Of these the most profound inspiration has been the life and work of Barry Long (1926-2003). In particular, it is Barry Long’s recognition of the fundamental distinction between thought and observation that lies at the core of the current work. Not that you will find a spiritual teaching in these pages. This is a work of philosophy and does not assume the existence of any spiritual realm. Quite the reverse. What is asked for here is only that we remain within the empirical realm of our direct, first-person experience.

Thornton, J. (2007). The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age: A historical, sociological and philosophical enquiry. Pearson Education Australia, 286 pp. ISBN 978-0-7339-8848-6

Back Cover: The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age is a book both for undergraduate computing students and for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of technology in the modern world. Dispensing with simplistic explanations, the book first considers the evolution of the computer from the origins of number to the development of the microprocessor. Along the way we meet the early pioneers of mechanical calculation, including Pascal and Leibniz, the groundbreaking work of Charles Babbage and his Difference Engines and the drama of the wartime code-breakers at Bletchley Park.
But this is not just a historical text. It provides an introduction to the theory of computation, showing how Alan Turing’s concept of a universal Turing machine helped form the foundations of modern computer science. Theory then becomes practice as the book explores the von Neumann architecture and shows how simple switching circuits can be used to construct a general purpose computer.
The basic theme running throughout this discussion is that the foundations of computing and the information technology age lie in the scientific turn of mind taken by our entire civilisation. From this perspective, the book traces how information technology has been used to restructure the economic and social life of the developed world and enquires into the ultimate direction and purpose of this process of globalisation. The reader is then drawn to consider how our technical, materialistic understanding has ignored the underlying reality from which all technology emerges: human consciousness.
Finally, the book argues that this inability to acknowledge the central reality of consciousness has caused modern civilisation to enter into an unbalanced pattern of development, where we increasingly understand ourselves as biological machines that must be adapted to the latest technology, rather than as the creative intelligence that technology was originally supposed to serve.