Consciousness as a Tool
Suppose I want you to consider something you already understand, your own conscious experiences, from a completely new perspective. That is, of course, exactly what I want. I might then say or write persuasive arguments to try to convince you of the importance of my formulation. Again, I am guilty of doing this. I need to be careful in how I articulate my arguments because you are accustomed to understanding consciousness in the way you have always done. If I challenge your existing way of thinking too radically, you will immediately reject what I am saying. I am doing the best I can, but some things need to be said directly.
Our conscious thoughts and images are assertions
that we are able to make privately to ourselves
because we have the ability to inhibit
the motor outflow of these potential behavioral sequences.
Consciousness is not a “higher” cognitive process or an emergent brain function; it is the clever use of inhibited potential responses as a tool in planning and decision making. It is not a spiritual pathway to enlightenment, and it is not proof of God’s existence. It is a specific human ability that sets us apart from other species and makes the tremendous achievements of our species possible.
The first twenty years of my project led to the insight stated above regarding the behavioral nature of consciousness, and the past twenty years have been spent trying to understand all of its implications. I had no way of knowing where my initial insight would lead, but I have followed where it has taken me. It led to a new understanding of thinking processes, to Gibson’s affordances, to the structural probabilities of memory, to a theory of affects and most recently to the two tiers of consciousness.
I only recently realized that I have been reconfiguring psychology by challenging our inflated ways of thinking about the mind and consciousness and elevating the role of the body’s visceral processes. I am now following the implications of having a genetically given, innate substrate that establishes a physical core of experience without conscious mediation. Even this most recent development of my thinking is implied in my initial insight regarding the behavioral nature of consciousness.
I have tried to present the ideas that evolved from my insight in a straight-forward way with as much clarity as possible. I am aware, however, that my own thinking has only moved through the steps it has taken with great difficulty and that much of what I now take for granted was difficult for me to grasp initially. I write this for readers who are unaware of the seminal role that a single insight played in developing the ideas I am offering. I hope to persuade them to persist in their efforts in understanding and accepting the reconfiguration I am presenting.
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