to do and be ‘good’—based upon a postulated innate apprehension of moral laws embedded in reason and known intuitively to conscience. Kant’s ideas of moral duty fix upon and about the notion that the morally ‘good’ and the morally ‘bad’ are revealed by conscience without recourse to proofs or evidence: being intuitions of moral laws not grounded in our material, phenomenal experience. These are immutable certainties: never changing and always 'true'.
Kant essentially said that we experience ourselves as moral beings. Further he said that this innate experience of ourselves is too real to be ignored or dismissed as an illusion. Hence, our very experience of ourselves suggested to Kant that it would be useful to postulate that there are moral laws that we know a priori ( i.e ., without our having to think about them and needing no justification, proofs, or evidence to support them). {Sadly, in its universality and its a-prioricity, his postulate does not allow for any disagreements about what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ moral action.}
We can agree with Kant that we are (and experience ourselves) as moral beings or agents. My point in this post is to show that this common experience of ourselves as being moral and feeling moral obligations does not require that we must follow him by postulating a priori moral laws which we must then wilfully, faithfully and blindly follow without regard for any of the possible repercussions or outcomes of doing so upon ourselves or others.
Kant adopted his postulate because he felt it was useful to describe our sensed moral duty as being non-material in origin...that is, one not based upon measureable material phenomena yet nevertheless perceived. Though I agree about the non-material origin of our perceived sense of moral duty (though I do say that it is a biologically felt or sensed duty), I do not find Kant’s postulate to be useful for understanding the unconditional obligation to be ‘good’. I base this conclusion on how conscience emerged within my childhood.]
This is a post about conscience: mine, and the pivotal day it--along with my ‘selfhood’-- flickered into being. It recounts an initial phase in my coming into being as a human being, what I term an emergence out of a ‘me’ into having a ‘Self’ :: an ‘I-Me’ identity /[1] :: how this was a change of consciousness and of thought, and what this change wrought.
And, though this is my account and not yours :: you cannot recall your transition like I do mine :: and though mine has idiosyncracies unique to me, I’m telling you mine because you cannot broach yours in your memory. Yet you, like I, passed through this threshold marking the passage from one stage of consciousness into another, and you like me live with the consequences and repercussions of having done so. This transit we share, briefly put, alters us from being merely biologically human into having bio-psychologically human lives. It is conscience and Self which give rise to this distinction between biological and psychological humanity.
As posted earlier, the inception of my conscience started with (and by) my ‘hearing’ me say, “Maurice is being bad”. This anomaly in thinking did not fit into any of my prior experience or patterns of thought to that very moment. It was incongruous with my sensed feelings about, and my experience of, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as welcome or unwelcome events (or outcomes) that either happened or could plausibly be anticipated as likely to happen to ‘me’.
‘Good’ was not an idea, or quality, or state of being, or category of existence.
Instead it was an experience or its anticipation which i (my ‘me’ ) felt as pleasant, welcome, enjoyable, worth pursuing and/or worth having. Similarly, ‘bad’ was an experience or anticipation that i (my ‘me’) felt to be disturbing or distressing, unwelcome, generally to be avoided or fled from.
Events, in short, were sensed as good for-me or bad for-me. Those sensations or feelings were often visceral, albeit they were more than merely being ‘gut’ feelings. Hence, good or bad were felt apprehensions grounded in nervous feelings of the moment./[2] My ‘me’ or ‘i’ did not think about these apprehended feelings. Instead, they often guided or underscored what ‘i-me’ reasoned about.
Like most life forms, ‘i-me’ tended to move towards what it felt as good for-me and away from what it felt as bad for-me. Bad was simply any event this ‘i-me’ sensed i did not want to experience; good, what it sensed i wanted to.
The words good and bad thus had no inherent meaning divorced from pleasant or unpleasant feelings -- physioceptive sensations /[3]-- about the persons, places, things, and actions which affected me for better or worse. Those feelings were grounded in either my felt experience of them, or else my feelings about an anticipated outcome associated with interactions with them (i.e., what my ‘me’ felt about what it imagined/visualized as a most likely outcome of interaction). /[4]
So I repeat that the words good and bad were not ideas or notions. They were feelings associated with and correlative with experiences. And, though feelings are always cognitive events for some life forms (those where the neural biological architecture for thought exists), such feelings nevertheless fall well short of being ideas./p>
So the statement that Maurice was being bad made no sense to me. Good and bad were feelings centered upon felt outcomes for-me. Yet Maurice had, by yelling at Mrs. Remillard, not done anything 'bad' to me. Hence it was strange to hear myself say he was being bad.
Thinking/feeling that he was ‘being bad’ was not a minor aberration in my thought. It was a major shift within it. My ‘i-me’,(i), felt an urgent need to understand what these words meant. So without pause, i got off the sofa where i slept. Then i dressed and went outdoors.
{'Being bad', however, did have another 'meaning'. I had had the prior experience of having been told that i-me was being bad. By this stage in my life, I’d passed through 11 foster homes and institutions,/[5] so i had heard this often but without much, if any, uniformity. Indeed, what some called ‘being bad’ was often what others had called ‘being good’. {Notably, in one home, my emptying by drinking the contents of a beer bottle was considered ‘being good’; in others, 'being bad’.} My ‘i-me’ had concluded that ‘being bad’ when others referred to ‘me’ meant only that they disapproved of something i was doing, had done, or was about to do.
And, my reaction to such statements varied significantly. If whoever said this about me was bigger, stronger, and likely faster than me; then i paid attention, took note, or took cover. If he or she wasn’t one of these, i carried on. Thus “being bad” had no felt meaning.}
So how Maurice could be ‘bad’ was enigmatic.
My "i-me" strained to understand. I cannot convey here how much 'i-me' strained. For now, let's just say that I had to strain to find what this meant. And eventually, I came upon a reason.
That reason or answer was that he had hurt her; and, that doing so was bad.
Instantly with this reason, I heard a voice within me say, “And if “you” do this, then “you” too will be bad.”
Something within ‘Me’ had spoken to ‘me’ as “you”!
I had the alarming thought that something alien to me had invaded me. I guardedly closed my eyes to survey within ‘Me’, seeking out this alien speaker who
had addressed ‘me’ as ‘you’. Yet I saw only ‘Me’.
(Such is the psychological continuity between ‘i-me’ and ‘I-Me’ that I was unaware that ‘i-me’ had become “I-Me”. This said, only a “Me’ can address itself as a “you”, for that requires Self-awareness.)
I stress here that this was the first time I had ever ‘looked within’. I 'saw' that nothing had invaded me. So I concluded that I had somehow spoken to myself: that the voice was mine even though it had addressed ‘me’ as ‘you’. Though this way of speaking to myself was new-to-me, I did not puzzle over it. At six years old, I was simply relieved that nothing had invaded me. "It was only me," i thought
Seeing that it was me speaking to myself, led me to believe that what this voice had said was ‘true’. (After all, if you cannot believe yourself, well, who can you?) So, “Maurice ‘was bad’ because he had hurt her. And I too would ‘be bad’ if I did that.”{Readers should note that this is linguistic causality, something I'll get into later.}
This was not an inference based on the view that if a pattern holds, then one can imagine a plausible what’s next. “Red sky in the morning” portends likely stormy weather. It does not guarantee it. In short, "Red Sky" never proposes a certainty; only a likelihood.
Reasoning from experienced patterns is not akin to reasoning from ideas as thought patterns. In short, my ‘if-then’ inference about 'being able to be bad' was not similar to a likely eventuality. The conclusion that I too could be bad was an absolute certainty derived from and based upon the idea of what ‘being bad’ entailed.
Thus, an idea or thought pattern defined what ‘bad’ was always, in any imaginable situation or circumstance. Immutably so. Actions which conformed :: that is, 'fell into' :: to the meaning of this thought pattern were necessarily (certainly and essentially) ‘bad’.
Looking back upon this today, I recognize that this was deductive reasoning from a general or universal statement about what bad was...to any and all particular circumstances that could be fit into the defintion./[6]
This was my first ‘truism’ as it were: namely, a deductive inference from a general to a specific. Such truisms are tautologies.
“Good” and “bad” had become detached: divorced from circumstances, situations, and outcomes. They no longer meant good or bad for-me. Rather, good and bad had taken on essential characteristic meanings... linguistically abstract cognitive meanings. These were ideas I reasoned from.
This new form of reasoning, from a general idea that was ‘true’ to what was necessarily also ‘true’ all the time, did not displace my prior overall 'i-me' patternistic reasoning. Indeed, this form of reasoning stood out as an exception to how I usually thought. Nevertheless, I have concluded that our cognitive ability to reason abstractly comes out of our con scientia :: our together knowing, knowing together of ourselves as able to be good or bad :: one based upon the formation of the identity of the Self.
{ Here I conclude Part I: My “Isness” Meets My “Oughtness’}
[Next: Part II: My “Isness” Meets My “Oughtness”: The Identity of the Self]
[1]
. Hereafter I will distinguish between the preconscient ‘me’ :: the one I acted out of prior to the inception of conscience :: as the‘i-me’ (i.e., i or me) and I will use the ‘I-Me’ (i.e., I or Me) strictly to refer to the later “Me’ which acted out of a sense of Self. The former ‘me’, though fully aware of all ‘not-me.s’, had no sense of Self, having no vantage point from which it could view itself. The
latter ‘Me’ (or ‘I”) is the self-aware Self containing not one but two vantage points for being ‘visible’ to itself, these two
synergistcally shaping the ‘Identity’ we call the Self. {I do this because, due to language, my ‘me’ used the word and referred to itself as “I”,
but this was an ‘i’ without self-consciousness. In short, ‘i was me’ and ‘me was i’ as an experiential identity due to language rather than a sense
of Self.}
“Identity” as Self arises out of our perception of ourselves as simultaneously this but also that :: a together knowing, knowing together that holds us together in selfhood :: also known
more generally as personhood :: and which is the result of a dynamic synergy between alternative perceptions of what one is. The Self is
an extension analogous to an ellipse shaped by two ‘centres’ of being.]
[2]
Nervous here means more or less conveyed biologically by the nervous system.
[3]
I have had to coin the words physioception and physiognosis to clarify my thinking.
Physioception is a word I have coined from the Greek φυσιο (the Latin physio) and the Latin captus (to grasp or seize) which is ception. The former, physioception (or ception), is pre-cognitive ‘awareness’ of the environment of an organism, say for instance a bacterium, an interior taking hold of (sensation)—in a bacterium’s case, an internal biochemical change—which “informs” the body about what is happening to it, with 'feelings about' signifying the meaning relative to the body of the life form. Briefy, ception is immediate ‘bodily’ awareness of changes within the environment of the organism.
The latter word, physiognosis,stems from the Greek Greek φυσιο (physio) and γνῶσις (gnosis/cognition). Though not all organisms display cognition, physiognosis is an awareness of body and environment which, like physioception, arises out of sensations arising within the body itself, sensations which are transmitted neurally as 'feelings about'. Physiognosis is always and everywhere the primary modal understanding or meaning of associations mediated through physical sensations experienced internally by living organisms and transmitted neurally. As modal, physiognosis is primarily a preconscious or unconcious processing that requires no self-awareness, although physiognosis entails body awareness.
[4]
In a later post I will talk about the Promethean form of cognition and imagination that we share with other intelligent animals. Prometheus stands for the birth of imagination within the animal kingdom. The Promethean imagination heralds a new form of consciousness which allows for non-causal, non-deterministic reasoning about what’s next based upon the order of patterns (discursive reasoning we share with many animals and not based upon any sense of time or causality). For instance, the adage “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight; red sky in the morning, sailors’ warning” is based upon apprehended likelihoods shaped by recognized patterns of experience. These are non-causal presentiments about what follows, and as such are visualized associated correlations about what’s next that are themselves based on the associative neural architecture of memory. This ability to infer what’s coming from patterns is notable among many life forms, is prior to the development of more abstract forms of deductive inference, and is one reason why Socrates refers to the rise of the latter (abstract thought based upon universal ideas that relate to the many) as effectively the coming of a new Prometheus to humankind. [See The Philebus where Socrates talks about deductive inference (what we call abstract reasoning) with the words, “A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light...” http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/philebus.html]
[5]
In context, I had entered foster care when I was two and a half, my ‘terrible twos’ so to speak, when children distinguish between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ while acting out of their ‘me’. The subsequent moves in care are likely ‘why’ my conscience emerged so much later than is usual.
[6]
. The logic was: This is bad. [Therefore, if] I do this. [Hence] I am bad. And, interestingly, not doing this meant I was good.
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