Overview
The most inclusive aim of my research is to show that the structure of consciousness is shaped by the cognitive functions it supports. The phenomenology of meaning is explored in this context — a very different starting point from a “bottom-up” approach which takes experiences like seeing a red patch or feeling a sharp pain as paradigm cases of what it is to be conscious.
Meaning is the core of human cognition. And the experience of meaning is a component of the “fringe” of consciousness. If so, this unifies a wide range of cognitive phenomena. First, by showing how two disparate processing architectures, serial (conscious) and parallel (non-conscious), work together as an integrated biological system. Second, by identifying fringe meaning as the crucial through-line that runs from ordinary language and problem solving in its broadest sense to aesthetic and mystic experience. Among other things this explains how a basic cognitive process can evoke some of the most powerful “ineffable” experiences our species can have: when something, the most important something, eludes our grasp.
I also try to clarify various philosophical issues raised by the study of consciousness. These include the degree to which consciousness can be defined formally as an information bearing medium, further reasons to doubt epiphenomenalism, and a critique of what is currently called “functionalism,” which confuses functional identity with ontological identity. My use of functional analysis is quite different. It is much closer to the method used to explain, say, why the pelvis of a Tyrannosaurus Rex or our heart, have the structure they do.
Updates/Notes (U/N) These often link to relevant passages in my published work, or expand aspects of it: e.g., why the arts are used to reinforce political and/or religious legitimacy. U/N will also access illustrative graphics, background sources, and relevant selections from my interviews and talks.
See U/N Yoshimi 1 for more on the scope of this research program.
The Fringe
The function of the fringe is to condense, in consciousness, vast amounts of non-conscious information, information that consciousness could not otherwise contain. In part to execute this function, and so conserve consciousness’ limited articulation capacity, fringe experiences have no evident sensory content. There are many ways to demonstrate the non-sensory character of fringe experiences, which range in intensity from very slight to very strong.
The term “fringe” comes from William James. The non-sensory character of the fringe is often more evident on the periphery, notably during conscious retrieval. But the connotation notwithstanding, fringe experiences pervade the entire field of consciousness. As James recognized, they are not just peripheral.
The number of possible fringe experiences is countless. But only the smallest fraction can at any moment occupy consciousness, where they meld into an experiential Gestalt. Most of these component experiences are fleeting, though a few are far more abiding — e.g. the experiences of causation and self. But the center of my research is the experience of meaning or, in the context of my theory, what I alternatively call rightness.
See U/N Mangan 1 for James' treatment of meaning in the fringe.
Rightness as Non-Sensory Experience
Functionally, rightness signals degrees of positive fit between focal content in consciousness and its context information — and most context information is completely non-conscious. So in one sense the relationship here is straightforward: the better the fit between conscious content and non-conscious context, the stronger the fringe feeling of rightness will be. This needs various qualifications, the most important being the role of habituation, but we’ll take that up later. For now, to show rightness in action, consider what I’ll call the Klein paragraph. It is important to read it all the way through and at normal speed:
A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance. (Klein, 1981)
When most people read this for the first time it makes no sense. The sentences don’t “fit” with one another. As a whole they feel meaningless, and the unpleasant sense of disjointedness increases sentence by sentence. Yet all the words are individually meaningful, and each sentence is in well-formed English.
At this point I'll slip in the word kite, and the phenomenology should change radically, even before you reread the paragraph. The words on the screen — the sensory component of the experience — did not change. What did change was the non-sensory component, the experience of rightness.
Now we’d say the paragraph “makes sense” or "feels meaningful” or is a “coherent whole.” And when intense, this experience will evoke expressions like “ Right!,” “Yes!,” “Of Course!,” “Aha!” Once non-conscious processing has been able to establish a coherent context, meaning floods in. Or to put it in more theory-specific terms, rightness floods in.
See U/N Mangan 2 for further examples of non-sensory experience.
See U/N Mangan 3 for the relation of rightness to other ways of treating meaning.
The Rightness Continuum
The cognitive function of rightness is to signal degrees of fit between conscious contents and their immense networks of non-conscious context information. The experience of rightness can therefore vary from the most humdrum to the most exalted. In some cases information seemingly implied by rightness cannot be “grasped” by attention. When intense, this experience is often given a mysterious interpretation, but it can be explained as an intensified component of a retrieval mechanism.
yea...
/
Ah-Ha!
/
Ahhh!!
/
!!!!!
/
Everyday Experience
Here rightness is least intense: e.g., it can range from the feeling that something barely makes sense to the feeling that a conversation is meaningful and apt. It underlies the feeling of coherent "flow" and of dimly felt intuitions.
Problem Solving
Here rightness is more evident. A solution is enveloped by an evaluative YES!, its intensity initially a function of the importance of the insight. Rightness also helps guide the search for a solution via interdependent cycles of serial/parallel processing. When found, the solution is explicit and specified.
Aesthetic Experience
Here the fringe contains a strong feeling of rightness. But unlike problem solving, the “solution” can’t be fully specified. In much of traditional aesthetics great art is said to evoke something inherently elusive. It isn’t enough to recognize unity, explicit meanings and so on. There is also a crucial and unspecifiable something in aesthetic experience called the je ne sais quoi.
Mystical Experience
Here the feeling of rightness is extreme. Overwhelming knowledge about the most profound aspect of existence seems to be disclosed — and yet this disclosure is ineffable. It typically resists any adequate articulation. The structure of some (not all) mystical experiences have the same structure as a strong aesthetic experience.