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An Anatomy of Human Mental Life AN ANATOMY OF HUMAN MENTAL LIFE 1 2 An anatomy of human mental life Psychology in unideological reconstruction incorporating The synapse-state theory of mental life Peter Naur naur com publishing 3 An anatomy of human mental life © Peter Naur, 2004 All rights reserved Printed in Denmark ISBN 87-987221-3-1 Published by naur.com publishing Begoniavej 20 DK 2820 Gentofte Denmark The cover pattern is inspired by the synapse-state theory of section 4.4. Ordering information may be found via Internet home page: ‘www.naur.com’. Peter Naur, b. 1928, Danish scientist, mag. scient. in astronomy 1949, dr. phil. 1957. 1953-59 at Københavns Universitets Astronomiske Observatorium. 1959-69 at Regnecentralen and lecturer at Danmarks Tekniske Højskole and Niels Bohr Institute. 1969-98 professor of Datalogi at Københavns Universitet. 4 Contents Preface ..............................................................................................7 1. Introduction ..................................................................................9 2. The ideological decay of psychology ........................................12 2.1 The spurious ‘science’-issue........................................................13 2.2 Philosophical confusions...........................................................16 2.3 Confusions of methods and measurements.....................................19 2.4 Three ‘psycho’-ideologies...........................................................22 2.5 Founding the American-psychology-enterprise................................24 2.6 William James’s Principles misunderstood and misjudged.................27 2.7 Activity of the American-psychology-enterprise..............................30 2.8 Emergence of behaviorism..........................................................32 3. Issues of the American-psychology-enterprise from the years 1920 to 2000..............................................36 3.1 Behaviorism and contenders........................................................36 3.2 Emergence of cognitivism..........................................................40 3.3 Flaws of cognitivism................................................................45 3.4 Cognitivist pseudo-problems......................................................47 3.5 The American-psychology-enterprise 1945-2000.............................50 4. Habits and synapse states ..........................................................56 4.1 Each person is a bundle of habits.................................................56 4.2 Habits of musicianship..............................................................56 4.3 The plasticity of the nervous system............................................58 4.4 The synapse-state description of the total organism.........................60 4.5 The neural activity of the *stream-of-thought.................................62 4.6 Development of habits from instincts...........................................68 4.7 The false-track behaviorist view of nervous activity.........................69 4.8 The ‘memory’-fallacy of cognitivism............................................72 5. The stream of thought and thought objects .............................79 5.1 The problems of describing the thinking going on..........................79 5.2 Extracts of William James’s description of the stream of thought.......80 5.3 James’s description of the thinking going on unknown in the EncPsych ..........................................................96 6. The sense of sameness and acquainting (conception) ...............99 7. Knowing-about and imagery .....................................................105 7.1 James’s description of knowing-about and imagination...................105 7.2 The confusion in the EncPsych around imagination.......................107 8. Association, the dynamics of mental life ...............................108 9. Thinking of time and remembered recall (memory) ................112 9.1 The experience of the specious present........................................112 9.2 Remembered recall (memory)....................................................115 10. Sensation versus perception ...................................................119 11. Perceptional discrimination of parts and perception of difference and likeness........................121 11.1 Perceptional discrimination of parts..........................................121 11.2 Perception of difference...........................................................122 11.3 Perception of likeness............................................................125 5 12. Perception of sensed objects ..................................................126 12.1 Perception of objects of sense-impression..................................126 12.2 Perceptual illusions...............................................................128 13. Perceptional understanding of spaciousness ..........................131 13.1 The development of space understanding....................................131 13.2 Cognitive fallacies in describing perception................................133 14. Sign habits and language........................................................136 14.1 The deliberate and habitual use of signs.....................................136 14.2 Description of linguistic sign habits: dictionary and grammar........138 14.3 Perception of linguistic signs versus rules of grammar.................139 14.4 Structuralist (Chomskyist) fallacies of language..........................141 14.5 Language in EncPsych ...........................................................144 14.6 Description, definition, category, and the confusions around concept............................................147 15. Creative thinking, discovery, invention, construction, and description.........................................150 15.1 Creative thinking..................................................................150 15.2 Signs of creative thinking in communicating discovery, invention, and construction..............152 15.3 The works of science/scholarship and art....................................154 15.4 Description forms..................................................................154 15.5 Coherence as a matter of the perception of descriptions.................157 15.6 Creativity displayed in a description of the stream of thought.........158 15.7 Reasoning, the invention of argument.......................................159 15.8 Creative thinking unknown in the EncPsych ..............................165 16. Signs and descriptions of individual persons ........................169 16.1 Common and individual properties of persons of the human species ..............................................169 16.2 Common designations of individuals’ qualities............................170 16.3 Emotional feelings and moods.................................................182 16.4 Mutual perception of signs of individual qualities: social contact and privacy........................................................184 16.5 Signs of individuals’ habits.....................................................184 16.6 Signs of the momentary, individual state of consciousness............186 17. The activity of art...................................................................187 17.1 Sign perception habits in the activity of art................................187 17.2 The signs of works of art........................................................187 17.3 Media and subjects in works of art............................................189 17.4 The public’s perception of works of art......................................194 17.5 Ideological issues related to the activity of art.............................196 Appendices 1. CHI and Human Thinking..........................................................199 2. Computing as Science ...............................................................208 3. Peter Naur and Erik Frøkjær: Philosophical Locutions in Scientific and Scholarly Activity .....................................218 4. The Meaning of Joseph Haydn’s Early Symphonies ................239 Literature .......................................................................................276 Index ...............................................................................................279 6 Preface The background and justification of this book are presented in the Introduction. It was worked out from 2003 October to 2004 August. Initially my plan was to present merely a detailed critical reconstruction of the subject matter. Unexpectedly, during this reconstruction, in 2003 November, I discovered the synapse-state theory of mental life, as presented in sections 4.4 and 4.5. In conformity with the general tenor of the presentation, I have chosen the form of expression and typography, including punctuation, exclusively from a concern that what I want to say may emerge with the highest clarity, without any concern for conventional notions of politeness or principles of style. References to the list of Literature at the end of the book are given in a form shown by this example: (James, 1890). I am indebted to Jesper Hermann for the suggestions to use the Oxford Encyclopedia of Psychology and The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology as descriptions of present-day psychology, and for steady encouragement to the writing. I wish to express my gratitude to Erik Frøkjær for his constant and unfailing help and encouragement to my work on the book and to my grandson Jacob Naur for his enthusiastic
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