Meditation.
Rene Descartes did it. His Meditations were probably - according to Anthony Gotleib - the most discussed philosophical treatise of the time. And it still garners a lot of attention. Descartes himself thought he'd resolved the problem of the mind and what we can know - as well as the proof of the existence of God - and that it was really just a starting point from which further empirical investigation should start. But few have agreed.
Husserl thought that through extracting the sense of ego from his mental concepts, he could achieve pure cognition. This seems akin to the state that Zen masters achieve after 10,000 hours of meditation. But Husserl thought it was just a matter of thinking correctly. Or not thinking.
Wittgenstein seemed to think that all experience arose from the web of language and that there was no thinking outside language. Oh, and that if you got language right, then you'd be on the path to truth. In Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Murdoch quotes him a great deal - well, inevitably - there's a chapter on Wittgenstein. The impression, it's only an impression as I can't make head nor tail of what he's saying, is that he finds the issue of consciousness incredibly anxiety-provoking. It seems this is because he wants to make it all language, and, in fact, it's not. It's just not.
Of course, much of it is - the voice telling me what I need to do and what is worrying me and what I could say given that question in two day's time, should I meet that person or choose to write them an email. But a lot of it seems to be not in language until I pay attention to it. Before I pay attention to it, it's like a stream of general meaning which coalesces into words and phrases when I start listening.
But, wait, who is listening? And who is speaking? Which is me? Are they both?
Before I get hung up on that, think for a moment about the experience of writing or speaking. Hands or mouth do this thing of creating the words in text or sound and it's like they're unspooling from some darkness and yet the words and sentences are not just random... it's like you're pulling from a pot a thread which is not a thread until you pull at it. In the pot this liquid substance just has the potential to be a thread. Maybe like a thick glue. But behind the words that are actually coming out is this concept or meaning that you are seeking to express - that you are simultaneously pulling out from the pot but also in a sense pursuing... there is a pull and a chase going on at the same time. But what you can't be sure of, as you pull out the words and chase the meaning, is what language structures precisely will come to mind. I could have said 'exactly' not 'precisely'. I could have said 'come to the fore' or 'appear' or 'resolve out of the mists within'.
And what about that 'tip of the tongue' feeling? It's very specific. It's like the thread's knotted and caught in the gears somehow. You can't get past it. That one word. The right one. It halts the progress.
When you notice yourself thinking, as in that semi-sleep state, and you suddenly become conscious that you're running through some script about - I take an example from lockdown - what meals to make out of the remaining random vegetables that were delivered three days ago in the organic selection box. No longer are you pulling and pursuing. You're just a witness of something running through its motions. And, stranger still, sometimes it's like you start to 'hear' it part way through but you 'know' what was 'said' before you started listening. Was it there in words? That missing section? Is it because you remember, somehow, something of which you were not really conscious? Or is the knowledge a knowledge of something that never was linguistic and was just a concept?
This takes us back to concepts. They can come as sensations or feelings but are intentional in the philosophical sense, in that they are about something. maybe it's possible for that state of being about something to carry meaning without language? Maybe the concept has to be translated into language?
A step further back and sensations can be just sensations until you pay attention to them when they become concepts. Consider dozing. There are sounds all around and they're kind of there, I mean, you can't shut your ears. The birds and the cars. Creaking boards or bubbling radiators. Footsteps. The people next door. Whatever. But while you are not attending, they are just sensations. But as soon as you 'notice', that bass hum becomes the concept of cars going past - a little more attention placed on it and it's verbalised, and you are thinking, 'cars going past' and then you notice irritation. Before all this, the sound could have been waves on a shore, or, at the very least, relaxing. Yet when you notice, there's a change, sometimes, in the emotional connections. The sensations might carry one emotional colour; the concepts, once formed, might carry another.
Concepts, by their nature it seems, have a magnetic effect. Memories and emotions are drawn to them like iron filings. The more intentional a concept gets, with words, the more references and suggestions it attaches. From a sound, it becomes a story.
Take the cars: the sound was soothing me when I was meditating earlier. I'd closed the windows, so the noise level was low and regular, like waves. Then I noticed and the idea of cars was there, Images of generic cars going up the hill. Memories of finding engine noises soothing when I stayed at my sister's house as a tiny child and missed my mother. Memories of when the traffic noise at my current house drove me crazy and I had double glazing put in. Thoughts about traffic building up as lockdown's easing. Considering my journey time to work. There wasn't time to say all that. but it was all there. Some words, fragments of sentences, but the sense that the whole framework, with longer narratives, was suddenly in existence.
Cats, one assumes, do not have language. But I am sure they have concepts. In this same period of meditation, the kitten was on the bed with me. Then he chirruped and jumped from the bed. He trotted out the door and down the stairs. I knew what he was doing. He went to find one of his toys, brought it back, jumped on the bed and placed it on my stomach. He looked at it and patted it. Looked at me. Gave a small mew. When he did not have the toy, he had a concept of 'toy' and... or... 'playing' and shaped his reality to make that concept more likely to be activated in the real world.
How would Wittgenstein deal with this? Because we do the same. Sometimes we might find ourselves in action toward an end - making a drink, going to the loo - before we have articulated to ourselves the desire.
I had this experience in my personal training sessions. In between exercises, I would stop. I'd be standing by the weight. And thinking that I needed to rest, recuperate. And I'd wait. And then my body would move me to pick up the weight before I had made the conscious decision to do so. The action happened first.
Sartre said that freedom comes with action. He believed in determinism - in that thinking happens because neurons fire which fire because of the physical causes that are caused by other causes and so on back to the big bang. But the action, the free decision in action, is where freedom exists. Yet even then, I think, we are not free. We are always, really, just watching. Making up the story. Reading the script.
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