Part III Emergence of a Wholistic Theory of Inquiry from Idealism

Chapter 6 Psychology

Introduction

The organization to be followed here will be: 1) statement of the problem, 2) review of the material, 3) description of the method, 4) evaluation of the concepts, 5) conclusions, and 6) discussion. The general purpose of this effort will be to integrate the essential aspects of introspectionism, cognitive, and phenomenological psychology in such a way that these aspects can be incorporated with comparably organized aspects of other conceptualizations to suggest a more integrated understanding of inquiry throughout the field of psychology.

Statement of the Problem

Focusing on diverse conceptualizations of psychology, introspectionism, cognitive psychology, and phenomenological psychology, this section will address the fragmented state of the field of psychology in contemporary times and seek an integrated approach. Although there are several different explanations for the fragmented state of psychology resulting in the differentiated "schools," this section will assume that each of these diverse conceptualizations of psychology is a particular perspective of consciousness. The task then will be to evaluate how effectively each perspective of psychology as a school and perspective portrays consciousness in a way that can be integrated with other perspectives.

Giorgi (1970, pp.181-182) describes perspective as "viewpoint." Viewpoint can be either "internal" or "external" relative to a particular consciousness. An internal viewpoint describes that consciousness looking within its own self while an external viewpoint describes that consciousness looking from the inside to the outside. Viewpoint itself can be described in terms of its contents, in other words, what the viewpoint sees, and process, in other words, how the viewpoint sees. The convention to be used here will define a description that is in the first person (in other words, "I see . . . ") as the emic perspective, while a description in the third person ("he, she, or it sees . . . ") is defined as the etic perspective (Morse & Field, 1995, p.242).

The relevant entities, as I am defining them for this section, are illustrated by the items in Figure 11.

This section will present the contributions that selected authors have made to the conceptual system of introspectionism. Reduction of an author's work to a brief statement of essentials entails some degree of interpretation in which there is risk of loss of authenticity in portrayal of the author's intended description. The following abstractions seek to systematically portray aspects of the authors' positions that are relevant to the present discussion as authentically as possible.

Titchener (1898, 1899)

A system of inquiry applicable to living things comprises three points of view from which any organism may be described. Each of these points of view dictates a specific method that arranges knowledge into a provisional working schema. The abstract elements composing a schema are real in that they describe all that is found in our concrete experience of the organism without extending beyond the bounds of concrete experience. From each point of view, elements are arranged interconnectedly so that the schema presents itself as a unified perspective with the three schematic points of view presenting themselves as a unified system.

The three schematic points of view are mutually exclusive but individually each is required to produce an integrated understanding of a living organism. These points of view are necessarily constitutive of complete understanding in precisely the same way the abstract elements are constitutive of their respective schemata. The three schematic points of view are: 1) the structural, an analytical viewpoint, 2) the functional, a descriptive viewpoint, and 3) the developmental, addressing progressive change in both structure and function.

The three points of view can be applied to living organisms in a similar manner at the biological level, the psychological level, or the ecological level. As applied, structural methods are experimental (physical), functional methods are philosophical (metaphysical), and developmental methods seek speculatively to distinguish between deterministic and voluntaristic influences. In application, structural methods must be given priority over functional and developmental methods because structural methods provide the foundation of the schemata in concrete experience upon which the other two schemas depend.

When applied at the psychological level, structural method yields two structural elements of mind, elementary mental processes: sensations (including ideas), and affections. Sensations are essentially comparative, while affections are oppositional. Both psychological elements are in turn determined by the attributes of quality (a specific attribute) and intensity (a general attribute). For example, we find sensations with qualities of space and time and intensities of, respectively, extension and duration.

Schematic structure, comprising a set of structural elements with their associated specific and general attributes, stripped of any objective experiential reference, and isolated from the direct experience that determines it, is an analytic abstraction having the specific purpose of understanding the living organism.

Köhler (1962)

Real physical objects have invariant characteristics that are not presented to us in sensory data but are developed by learning into perceptions of the objects' constant real characteristics. Sensory experiences are not determined solely by isolated external stimuli but by the mental integration of multiple stimuli into a coherent sensation. Sensory experience cannot be reduced to independent elemental components that are separate from context. Therefore, objective experience cannot be observed impartially. Sensory facts are dependent on the perspective of the observer and, based on the supposed existence of "pure sensation," no observers can be privileged to call their observations "facts" while the observations of others are "mere illusions."

Limiting psychological study to only isolated sensory data is not sufficient to the study of mental processes, in other words, to the study of psychology. Scientific study must include a testing of all assumptions and an admission of all data. An unwillingness to inspect fundamental assumptions can lead to neglect of important evidence. Any claim to have obtained a perspectiveless position through disciplined use of "empiristic attitude" is an attempt to place one's fundamental assumptions beyond testing and inspection.

Our assumptions and convictions obtained in development of knowledge are important to the value of that knowledge. Scientific discussion is frequently based on deep-rooted presuppositions on which its arguments depend.

Gurwitsch (1966)

Consciousness is the universal medium of constitution, of origination of and for access to whatever validly exists. Consciousness is characterized by an intentionality that is manifest in a correlation between two separate realms: temporal psychological events and meaningful ideal entities. Continuing psychological events produce a repertoire of stable ideal entities that constitute reality. Experience is the continued interaction of psychological events with the established ideal entities. Thus, experience produces reality. The two prime constituents of reality are self and the category of other objects. The two prime perspectives taken by self are the mundane and the transcendental corresponding to a natural versus a phenomenological attitude. Mutually recognizing selves produce a shared reality, which they experience as the common world of their combined activities.

Revealing the experienced world in the terms given above is the program of phenomenology. Phenomenology is not concerned with the actual bases for experience or reality, because no such bases can be part of consciousness. However, suspension of belief in the actual bases for an object of consciousness is not the same as denying they exist. Phenomenology is concerned with the presentation of subjective and intersubjective experience in itself. Translating the transcendental terms of phenomenology into mundane terms is the program of psychology. Transcendental phenomenology is thus the fundamental a priori science relative to the natural sciences. Accounting for the very knowledge of reality, phenomenology offers the philosophical foundation for all the sciences (see Figure 14).

Description of the Method

In this section the use of the phenomenological approach to produce an evaluation of introspectionism is described and potential problems are addressed. The phenomenological approach used here will be as described by Gurwitsch in the statement above. Gurwitsch's perspective will be applied to the statements of Titchener and Köhler, looking for differences material to the project of forming an integrated perspective. Two strategies are available for accomplishing such an integration: synthesis and syncresis. Figure 15 is offered as an illustration of the distinction between these two strategies.

The results of applying the phenomenological approach to the selected materials are presented in this section. The first question addressed here is how the term "introspection" will be interpreted. Introspection, in the sense used by the authors addressed in this section, is a looking within, but not a looking within oneself. Introspection is the special skill of looking within others, as if that was possible. What an introspector finds in others is structure and function, with structure being the more scientifically substantiated.

Köhler identifies the fundamental assumption of introspection as that "true sensory facts are local phenomena which depend on local stimulation, but not at all upon stimulating facts in their environment" (1962, p.94). However, for Titchener, introspection can take two standpoints: 1) the structural, which observes an "Is," and 2) the functional, which observes an "Is-for" (1899, p.291). My interpretation of the common characteristics of the usages "assumption" and "standpoint" are: 1) the position of the observer and 2) the ontological status of what is observed. Both Köhler and Titchener are, in my opinion, specifying for the process of introspection an observer who can observe objects and events as they actually exist independent of the observer. The introspector's viewpoint is privileged over that of the subject observed by virtue of the observer's special preparation. As a result of a specialized discipline, the observer has attained the distinct power to look into the very sight of the subject and see what they are actually seeing, what is actually there, as contrasted with what they believe they see. The difference between Köhler and Titchener is that the former does not believe the observer's viewpoint should be privileged. The result of such privilege is that the introspector discards evidence obtained from the subject as an unqualified illusion, where that evidence is as material to a description of reality as is the analysis of the introspector. By Köhler's own logic, however, he has no more privilege to discard the evidence of the introspector than the introspector has to discard the evidence of the subject.

The conclusions drawn are based on the perspectives defined in Figure 13. Given these perspectives, consciousness is the realm of the subject and the internal, emic viewpoint. This is where all experience is experienced. Inquiry into this realm can be done either introspectively, by the subject into one's own consciousness, or by a subject into someone else's consciousness. In both cases, the consciousness becomes, for a specific subject, an object.

The question here is: in what way does each of the authors reviewed contribute to the study of consciousness as an object? The strategy is to take from each presentation those components that can be used to constitute an integrated, syncretic view of the consciousness. The first component I will accept is Köhler's proscription against a priori rejection of important evidence. This position is accepted with the qualification that it may be necessary to set aside evidence in order to construct a provisionally complete and consistent description. I am myself provisionally setting aside in this conclusion the evidence for what does, and does not, qualify as evidence.

Next, I will accept Titchener's organization of consciousness into the components of structure and function without, however, giving priority to structure, and including development in function. Although Titchener presents these schematic points of view as products of an ersatz empirical method, occurring in some independent reality, I believe these are the forms that consciousness takes within Titchener's own consciousness. I believe Titchener obtained these components through true introspection, in other words, looking at his own consciousness as an object (internal/etic). These schemes seem isomorphic with other forms of order, as shown in Figure 16.

This section will present the contributions that selected authors have made to the conceptual system of cognitive psychology. As above, these contributions are presented as phenomenological reductions that seek to portray systematically, and as authentically as possible, aspects of the authors' positions that are relevant to the present discussion.

The following phenomenological reductions have been produced by a process comprising these steps: 1) adopt an exemplar statement representing the best description of the phenomenon under investigation (here I have used Gurwitsch, 1966), 2) review each candidate text to achieve a charitable understanding of the author's position regarding the phenomenon, 3) using the exemplar statement as a guide, identify all expository statements relevant to the phenomenon, ignoring justification and example, 4) extract selected statements and arrange logically into their systemically essential categories, 5) organize statements coherently in and between categories, and 6) interpolate between and extrapolate from statements to achieve completeness; eliminate redundancies. The following abstractions are the results of this process.

Aanstoos (1987)

Description of psychological systems entails foundational commitments. Foundations for psychological research must be phenomenologically based. Otherwise, a theory of consciousness can come to be based on the capabilities of popular technology that views mental processes as mechanistic.

A fundamental synthesis of perceiving subject and perceived world forms a wholistic system. Consciousness in general is embodied in this world. Thinking and consciousness are fundamentally contextual or about this world. Engagement with the world is a perspectival grasping of situations within this context. Grasping is thus limited by perspective and context. Characteristics of humanness are fundamental to perspective and context and, therefore, to rationality within this context, grounding thinking and rationality in humanness. Human perception imposes horizons and temporality. Thinking goes beyond these limits to coherence of a larger whole. Rational totality exceeds the bounds of objective detail, always pushing into the unknown.

The cognitive is grounded in the precognitive. Meaning and rationality emerge from the interaction of consciousness and world. Understanding consciousness requires understanding not only these meanings but also the processes that produced them, including the constraining factors such as perspectivity and reflexivity that manifest context.

Symbols, the objects of thought, imply a significance beyond, which cannot be completely described in objective detail. In other words, symbols imply much more to consciousness than can ever be made explicit. Therefore, the mechanical manipulation of technologically determined symbols cannot express the wholistic content and processes of consciousness, and technologically determined systems cannot capture the necessarily phenomenological bases of psychological systems.

Dreyfus (1967)

In an attempt to reduce consciousness to mechanical simplicity, descriptions may be based on unquestioned philosophical assumptions. We are not explicitly conscious of all the factors that constitute our understanding of the world. Global awareness, understanding beyond the sum of determinate bits of information, is a complex, non-mechanical attribute of consciousness.

An understanding of consciousness requires consideration of metaphysical (ontological) dimensions that are not formalizable. Global context determines the significance of situational details. The world is not given as a set of determinate objects. Ambiguity cannot be overcome mechanically. Understanding of consciousness is revealed in the problematic relationship between theoretical and practical understanding. There is no objective universe to be known theoretically and applied practically. It's not that simple.

Mayer (1981)

Human behavior can be understood in terms of human mental processes and memory structures. All data used must be publicly accessible and all results must be replicable by others. Mental activities are observed indirectly and described in terms of measurable analytical elements. These elements describe both mental process and mental content. The purpose of such a description is to explain and predict human behavior. Such descriptions are tested as theories for their ability to explain and predict.

A complete psychology of humans requires three components to be understood and related: behavior, cognition, and affect. Cognitive psychology is the theory of mental processes and structures. These are defined and described using a specific set of analytical tools: 1) The information processing model - we understand and can predict computers completely. Humans are like computers. 2) The process model - human activities conform to procedures that can be described as process models. 3) The structural model - human knowledge can be described as a structural model. 4) The strategic model - humans use techniques to control knowledge and procedures to achieve a specific goal. These techniques can be described as a strategic model. These four analytical tools can be used to describe any human activity.

Neisser (1985)

The ecological approach to human cognition addresses concept formation, perception, and memory. The aim of cognitive science is to explain the mind, which cannot be observed directly but can be modeled. The adequacy of a model is tested experimentally and compared with other models. The mind may be modeled in terms of structures, processes, and strategies without regard to the environment within which the mind is embedded. Considering the environment is the basis for the ecological approach.

Theoretical issues about the mind cannot be resolved in entirely artificial settings. Humans must be observed in their natural context, their environment, because they have evolved specifically to interact with that context. Learning adapts a human to a local environment and to particular responses to that environment. Environmental, or contextual, objects can be categorized for a given human. These object categories can be arranged in a hierarchy of increasing abstraction. Category relates to the purpose of an object for that human. Purpose relates an object to the human who conceives it.

Objects are perceived by a mind on three levels of analysis: environmental objects, opportunities, and perceived objects. Information about environmental objects relative to perceived objects is used to identify opportunities. Information exists objectively, independent of perceiver. It assumes illuminative, occlusive, and kinetic functions in optic, acoustic, and mechanical mediums. Characteristics of memory, or recall of information, are based on long-term retention or short-term retention, and fallibility. Abstract significance is less fallible than particular content in memory.

Ecological analysis describes ordinary activities in ordinary environments. Structural description relates the perceiver to the environment. Abstract structures are more important than particular structures.

Rojcewicz (1987)

Structure specifies the content and organization of consciousness. Structure changes during stages of human development, obtaining equilibrium in different ways. Differences occur primarily in conceptions of thought and configuration of the perceptual world. A subject's reflection on these differences can be random, be suggested, be liberated, or be spontaneous depending on the subject's motivation to reflect. Development progresses through stages of increasing ability to distinguish the psychical from the physical. It is not clear whether this development is genetic or learned. Development stages move from the phenomenal grasping of meaning to the analytical grasping of physical detail.

Perceptual organization cannot be reduced to the organization of ideas but is prior to ideas. Meaning is prior to content. Meaning is manifest in schemas that filter perception to produce meaningful results. Schemas produce objects, cause/effect relationships, and time/space relationships. These are actively synthesized from raw perceptual data. Application of schemas is on the basis of form existing in the perceptual data.

As perception develops, different worlds are produced. Universality and necessity are progressively extracted from the original data. This dialectic between consciousness and pre-consciousness is manifest in existence. Perception does not completely express the world although understanding is of a complete world. Each lived experience is a unique experience.

Simon (1980)

Cognitive science is concerned with adaptive information processing systems. Empirical science discovers invariants in observed phenomena. Invariance occurs only within a limited environmental range. Since the descriptive is related to the normative, it is easy to confuse observed invariance with necessary invariance.

Invariants provide a channel for recognizing and handling a set of common concerns associated with understanding the human mind. These mediating constructs act as tools. Humans create tools without understanding why or how they work, simply by recognizing that they do work. Understanding why and how are rationalizations that come afterward.

Cognitive science seeks to understand intelligent systems and the nature of intelligence. Intelligence is a matter of the forms substance takes and the processes it undergoes. Form and process are manifest in symbols that have meaning and can be manipulated. Intelligent systems are goal seeking within a changing environment and are worked out in a dialectic between a physical organism and that environment. Intelligence is the ability to continue to exist by finding opportunities in that environment. Cognitive science seeks regularities in the characteristics in both intelligent systems and in their environments that make this possible.

Only human systems have this capability, exercised by creating symbols and manipulating them. This processing ranges from serial mode for precision to parallel mode for efficiency. Abstract invariants act as constraints through recognition of similarities. Perception and action are matched with patterns in both the organism and environment that have been successful. This matching continually allows for innovations that may be more successful.

There is a world outside the organism that the mind obtains and retains knowledge from regarding successful experience. Constructing the world is an ontological problem, while insuring that this construction adopts successful patterns is an epistemological problem. Intelligence is a matter of solving ontological and epistemological problems to discover opportunities.

Smith (1987)

Exploration establishes conceptual foundations based on empirical support. Conceptual foundations are philosophical. Perception is an inferential process separate from cognition. Perceiving objects also establishes the relationship between these objects; these are internal structural relations. Structure is not built from discrete elements but is perceived as a whole. The central problem of psychology is the recognition and production of structured forms. Forms are created by reciprocal determination of wholes. The significance of elements is determined entirely by their position in a systemic whole. Parts depend on structural wholes.

Behavior is determined by how an actor perceives a situation. It is the organism's construal of the situation that counts for what the organism does. No specific construal of a situation can be reduced to any other. Purposes determine what characteristics structural functions have in common. An organism's construal of a stimulus is its representation of a situation. Discourse is the encoding and making external of internal representation. These representations have a structure that is psychologically real. Intuitions, as the deep part of the structure, play a crucial role in deciding what is psychologically real. Clues in the surface structure help select a deep structure. Acts of apprehension apply schemas in a cognitive strategy for perceptual analysis and drawing of inferences.

Cognitive science explains behavior in terms of a rational but unconscious process of inference. Thinking is voluntaristic while perceiving is deterministic. Perception is not intellection. Objects of thought are actively (consciously) constructed, while objects of perception are passively (intuitively) constructed. The intellect is applied when the perceived whole is not immediately grasped.

Wertz (1987)

Perception gives reference to transcendental objects. Global meaning is immediately given prior to any elements of the perceived objects. Objects are perceived by virtue of their surface characteristics, as wholes continuing in time, with instrumental value to the perceiver. The perceiver actively pursues development of an entire world composed of such objects. This world develops over time by interaction of the perceiver with the world. This world becomes the basis for intellectual representations.

External stimuli alone cannot explain perception. Perception directly apprehends unity and meaning in any worldly situation. Therefore, there must be some original structure in the external stimuli that determines unity and meaning. Perception is a means to access, beyond the perceiver, a transcendental reality.

The developed world, though never complete, is habitually exercised and intentionally developed by the perceiver. This world provides the ground against which intellectual representations are the figure. Intellectuality involves a higher dialectic that surpasses perception. Understanding this system requires a phenomenology of perception based on the perceiver's "body-subject." Phenomenology gives priority in understanding to descriptions of perception over intellectual constructions because these preserve the original unity and meaning. These descriptions are believed to be more concrete and true to incarnate subjectivity. The human body exists in the world and may be perceived as such accompanied by other objects and other human bodies. The body is not only disclosed but is also disclosive, providing a perspective that makes all other objects relevant.

Intellectualization is an order of existence excluded from the physical world. This is the order of objective knowledge. Psychology is the study of the pre-objective world that is the basis for objectivity. The pre-objective world is manifest in the body-subject that subtends all experience of the world and forms between the two a single system. The cohesive whole of the body-subject stands out in perfect synchrony with the equally cohesive, but diacritical, perceptual world. The body habituates an intentional posture towards the world within the system. Intentionality opens the perceiver to possibilities that are not directly given. These possibilities render the holistic perceptions as a virtually complete and present world. This world includes the virtual body. The virtual nature of the unity and completeness of the world are a source of error.

The body discovers possibilities by engaging with the world and refining and articulating it to competently determine what had been indeterminate. The holistic structure of the body-subject is both synchronic and diachronic, in other words, not static. Structure emerges autocthonously from perceptual ground as a recognized situation in which decisions can be made. Other and self, the possible and the necessary are related as two poles of a single dialectical continuum.

In this section the use of syncretic method to produce an integrated model of cognitive psychology is described and applied. The phenomenological perspective assumed as an exemplar will be as described by Gurwitsch. That description is summarized here:

Gurwitsch (1966)

The purpose of phenomenology is to describe the phenomenon of consciousness and how it reveals the experienced world. Phenomenology is concerned with the presentation of subjective and intersubjective experience in itself. Translating the transcendental terms of phenomenology into mundane terms is the program of psychology. Transcendental phenomenology is thus the fundamental a priori science relative to the natural sciences. Accounting for the very knowledge of reality, phenomenology offers the philosophical foundation for all the sciences.

Consciousness is the universal medium of constitution, of origination of and for access to whatever validly exists. Consciousness is characterized by an intentionality that is manifest in a correlation between two separate realms: temporal psychological events and meaningful ideal entities. Continuing psychological events produce a repertoire of stable ideal entities that constitute reality. Experience is the continued interaction of psychological events with the established ideal entities. Thus, experience produces reality. The two prime constituents of reality are self and the category of other objects. The two prime perspectives taken by self are the mundane and the transcendental corresponding to a natural versus a phenomenological attitude. Mutually recognizing selves produce a shared reality, which they experience as the common world of their combined activities.

Phenomenology is not concerned with the ultimate bases for experience or reality, because no such bases can be part of consciousness. However, suspension of belief in the actual bases for an object of consciousness is not the same as denying they exist.

Application of Method

Gurwitsch's perspective will be applied comparatively to the integrated statements of Aanstoos, Dreyfus, Mayer, Neisser, Rojcewicz, Simon, Smith, and Wertz, looking for conformities material to the project of forming an integrated phenomenological perspective. The strategy to be used for accomplishing integration will be to syncretize these multiple views into a transcendental perspective. Syncretic integration is accomplished by 1) combining the analytical categories from all the candidate texts into a single text, 2) reducing these categories to their systemic essentials, 3) normalizing the language based on similarities of concept, 4) adjusting for coherence in and between categories, and 5) guided by the exemplar, resolving inconsistencies and eliminating redundancies.

The results of applying the phenomenological approach via the syncretic method to the selected materials are presented in this section. In other words, this text is meant to transcend the contributions of the authors cited above while being constrained to the structure as defined by Gurwitsch.

Study of Consciousness

Cognitive psychology, in the sense used by the authors addressed in this section, is looking at and understanding mental content and processes as functions of consciousness. Cognitive psychology defines a language of consciousness that integrates both psychological and biological research. What cognitive psychology finds in consciousness is described as mental representations and the relationships these representations have to each other.

Consciousness is a means to access a transcendental reality. The mind cannot be observed directly, except by introspection, but it can be modeled as a theory of mental processes and structures involved in production and recognition of structured forms. Psychology seeks to understand intelligent behavior as an adaptive process of a system of conscious and unconscious processes of inference, in other words, recognizing a pre-objective world that is the basis for objectivity. The purpose of cognitive psychology is to understand, describe, explain and predict the phenomena of consciousness, including the unconscious, through specifying its structures and defining what characteristics those structures have in common. The ultimate purpose of such a description is to explain and predict human behavior.

As a branch of empirical science, which discovers invariants in observed phenomena, cognitive science seeks regularities in the characteristics in both intelligent systems and in their environments. These invariants, or regularities, are mediating constructs that act as intellectual tools used to describe and understand consciousness. In ecological analysis, which describes ordinary human activities in ordinary environments, human behavior can be understood and modeled in terms of the structures, human mental processes, and strategies by which learning adapts a human to a local environment and to particular responses to that environment. Since parts depend on structural wholes, considering the environment is the basis for the ecological approach. A complete psychology of humans requires all identifiable components of both behavior and environment to be individually understood and collectively related.

The Psychological System

A human uses information about environmental, worldly, objects and their relationships to identify opportunities. Engagement with the world is a perspectival grasping of situations within a fundamental context of consciousness of opportunity (intentionality). Meaning and rationality emerge from the interaction of consciousness and world. Reflection on this process goes beyond the limits of perspective and context to coherence of a larger whole.

Pre-perceptual schemas produce objects, cause/effect relationships, and time/space relationships that are actively synthesized on the basis of otherwise imperceptible form existing in the raw data. Universality and necessity are progressively extracted from the original perceptual data. This dialectic between consciousness and pre-consciousness is manifest in existence and being.

Perception directly apprehends holistic unity and meaning in any worldly situation. There is original structure in perceived stimuli that determines unity and meaning, relates the perceiver to the environment, specifies the content and organization of consciousness, and makes perception psychologically real. Structure is not built from discrete elements but is perceived as wholes that are decomposable into other wholes, continuing in time, with instrumental value to the perceiver, creating a context of meaning.

The perceiver actively pursues development of an entire world comprising objects of thought that are actively (consciously) constructed, objects of perception that are passively (intuitively) constructed, and the internal structural relations between these objects. Purpose relates an object to the human who conceives it. Intentionality opens the perceiver to possibilities, not directly given, that render the holistic perceptions as a virtually complete and present world. This world develops over time by interaction of the perceiver with the world and, though never complete, is habitually exercised and intentionally developed by the perceiver. The mind obtains and retains knowledge from the world outside the organism by matching perception and action with patterns occurring in both the organism and environment that have been successful. Precision and efficiency are criteria that improve the possibility of success.

Objects assume specific functions in specific physical mediums. For a given human, contextual objects can be categorized, relating to the purpose of an object for that human, and arranged in a hierarchy of increasing abstraction. This constitutes a construal of a stimulus as a representation of a situation, producing a representation that is fallible because it is virtual. Human behavior can be understood in terms of generalized construed situations that provide a channel for recognizing and handling a set of common concerns associated with intentionality operating within a limited environmental range.

Structure emerges originally from perceptual ground as a recognized situation in which decisions can be made. Structural changes, primarily in conceptions of thought and configuration of the perceptual world, occur during stages of human development, increasing ability to distinguish the psychical from the physical (in other words, moving from the phenomenal grasping of meaning to the analytical grasping of physical detail), and obtaining equilibrium in different ways. As perception develops, different worlds are produced. As an element of structure, the body is not only disclosed but is also disclosive, providing a perspective that makes all other objects relevant. The body discovers possibilities by engaging with the world and refining and articulating it competently to determine what had been indeterminate. In worldly engagement, behavior is determined by how an actor apprehends a situation. Acts of apprehension apply schemas in a cognitive strategy for perceptual analysis and drawing of inferences. Discourse is the encoding and making external of these internal representations.

Intelligence is the ability to continue to exist by solving ontological and epistemological problems to discover opportunities in an environment. Only humans have this capability, exercised by creating symbols and manipulating them. It is not clear to what extent this capability is genetic or learned. Intelligent systems seek goals within a changing environment, where substance takes forms created by their reciprocal determination with wholes, and worked out in a dialectic between a physical organism and its environment. Constructing the world is an ontological problem, while insuring that this construction adopts successful patterns is an epistemological problem. Exploration establishes conceptual foundations based on perceptual support where rational totality exceeds the bounds of objective detail, always pushing into the unknown to achieve a global awareness. Global awareness, understanding beyond the sum of determinate bits of information, is a complex, non-mechanical attribute of consciousness that determines the significance, or meaning, of situational details.

Foundational Commitments

Conceptual description of psychological systems entails foundational commitments that are philosophical in nature. No information exists objectively, independent of a perceiver. There is no objective universe to be known theoretically and applied practically. The world outside the organism is given as a set of indeterminate objects. Consciousness is embodied in this indeterminate world as reality and can be conceived as the joined elements of a single system, a crisscrossing of perceiving and perceptibility joined in a cohesive whole, each incomprehensible except in mutual reciprocity, overlapping but not coinciding.

Perceptual organization imposes horizons, temporality, and global meaning, giving reference to transcendental objects. Human perception is immediately given prior to ideas, and prior to any constitutional elements of perceived objects. Although understanding is of a complete world, perception does not completely express the world and cannot be reduced to the organization of ideas. The world includes the virtual body. The human body exists in the world and may be perceived as such accompanied by other objects and other human bodies.

The pre-objective world is manifest in the body-subject that subtends all experience of the world and forms the body-subject into a single system. The holistic structure of the body-subject, other and self, the possible and the necessary, are related as two poles of a single dialectical continuum that is both synchronic and diachronic, in other words, not static. The cohesive whole of the body-subject stands out in perfect synchrony with the equally cohesive, but distinct, perceptual world. The body habituates an intentional, opportunity seeking posture towards the world within a system of memory, or recall of information, and awareness of its inherent fallibility.

This physical world becomes an order of existence that is the basis for but distinct from intellectual representation, the order of objective knowledge. Form and process are manifest in symbols, objects of thought, that have meaning and can be manipulated while they imply a significance beyond, that cannot be completely described in objective detail. Symbols imply much more to consciousness than can ever be made explicit.

It is the organism's construal of the situation that counts for what the organism does. Intuitions, as the deep part of the structure, play a crucial role in deciding what is psychologically real. External stimuli alone cannot explain perception. Perception is an unconscious inferential process separate from cognition and intellection (thinking), which are conscious. Intellectuality involves a higher dialectic that surpasses perception.

Theoretical Constraints

Theoretical issues about the mind cannot be resolved in entirely artificial settings. Humans must be observed in their natural context, their environment, because they have evolved specifically to interact with that context. Foundations for psychological research require a phenomenology of perception based on the perceiver's "body-subject." Phenomenology gives priority in understanding to descriptions of perception over intellectual constructions because these preserve the original unity and meaning. Mental activities are observed introspectively or indirectly and described in terms of consensually identifiable analytical elements. The significance of elements to describe both mental process and mental content is determined entirely by their relevance in a systemic whole. The adequacy of such descriptions is tested for their ability to explain and predict as compared with other descriptions, continually seeking innovations that may be more efficacious.

Abstract generalizations are analytical tools that recognize similarities and enable comparisons between models. Ends can be described as purposes, activities conform to procedures that can be described as processes, choices conform to knowledge that can be described as content, and control describes adjustment of knowledge and procedure to achieve a specific purpose. This technique can be applied to construe a structural model of any perceivable system. These specific elements and the structure they give to phenomena preserve the original unity and meaning of experience in concrete intellectual constructions.

We are not explicitly conscious of all the factors that constitute our construal of the world. Humans create tools without understanding why or how they work, simply by recognizing that they do work. Understanding why and how are rationalizations that come afterward. The virtual nature of the unity and completeness of the world are a source of error. The characteristics of consciousness are revealed in the problematic relationship between theoretical and practical understanding. An understanding of consciousness requires consideration of metaphysical (ontological and epistemological) dimensions that are not easily formalized. It requires understanding, not only meanings but also the processes that produced them, including the constraining factors such as perspectivity and reflexivity that are manifest in context.

These summaries show how each of the authors reviewed contributes to the study of consciousness as an object. The strategy has been 1) to take from each presentation those components that can be used to constitute an integrated, syncretic view of consciousness consistent with the phenomenological view as presented by Gurwitsch, and 2) to consolidate each author's contribution into a single statement representing the integrated view. The following are critical evaluations of each author's contribution.

Aanstoos (1987)

Aanstoos links psychological description to specific psychological bases, contrasting phenomenological description with mechanistic explanation, privileging the former as more holistic, and providing a more complete description. Holistic phenomenology is required because consciousness itself begins with wholes, irreducible to detailed objectivity and grounded in the inexpressible realm of the pre-conscious.

However, the idea of interaction of consciousness and the world must be rejected from a phenomenological perspective because the world is an integral part of consciousness (p.190). Phenomenologically, this interaction must be between self and other. The concepts of "world" and "consciousness" go beyond the phenomenal "thing in itself."

Dreyfus (1967)

Dreyfus emphasizes the specific metaphysical foundation of ontology in describing consciousness. These foundations are difficult to articulate and are not simply mechanical and objective.

Mayer (1981)

Mayer clarifies that any description implies a prediction of verifiable observations, in other words, a theory that can be tested. A systematic description makes related observations understandable, and qualifies as an explanation regardless of what one calls it.

Mayer tends to hypostatize analytical elements (behavior, cognition, effect, structure) as entities that actually exist independent of an analytical context, and, therefore independent of consciousness. This is phenomenologically untenable. Not only is a "computer" supposedly independent of consciousness, but "humans are like computers" (Mayer, p.11). This is naive realism at its worst.

He does, however, confirm the four irreducible analytical elements of structure: 1) purpose (ultimate goal), 2) process (activities necessary to achieve goal), 3) content (knowledge of how to achieve goal), and 4) control (techniques to adjust knowledge and activities to achieve goal). This is a hypothesis for which I have been accumulating data: that these four analytical elements can be used to describe any human activity (Mayer, pp.10-14). It is important to note that this structure is completely testable in all elements.

Neisser (1985)

Neisser stresses the ecological approach that models consciousness as a system in a natural environment. Both individual and environment can be described using analytical categories.

Although the special significance of abstract structures is identified, the precise nature of this significance is ambiguous.

Rojcewicz (1987)

Consciousness can be described as a structure of content and organization undergoing change. Primordial schemata shape original meaning in pre-conscious/conscious dialectic development, yielding universality and necessity.

Simon (1980)

Universals (invariants) are mediating constructs (tools) that make understanding possible. However, this perspective is presented in a disturbingly anthropo-techno-centric context. Simon is also naively dualistic in his portrayal of organism and world. This position is redeemed by recognition that intelligence (ability to survive) has crucial metaphysical (ontological, epistemological) foundations.

Smith (1987)

Conceptual foundations are philosophical and produced by increasingly conscious layers of inference proceeding from the whole to its parts. These foundations constitute a structure used as a basis for action and discourse. Inferences also range from the deterministic to the voluntaristic as a continuum between these two extremes.

Wertz (1987)

The whole is prior to its parts in perception. Wholes are conceived as having an instrumental value to the perceiver, where meaning is associated with a unity. Increasingly abstract levels of figure against ground in dialectic yield transcendental understanding. Phenomenology emphasizes the ultimate ground as the basis for this structure.

Gurwitsch's perspective will be applied comparatively to the integrated statements of Giorgi, looking for conformities material to the project of forming an integrated phenomenological perspective. The strategy to be used for accomplishing integration will be to syncretize these multiple views into a transcendental perspective. Syncretic integration is accomplished by 1) combining the analytical categories from all the candidate texts into a single text, 2) reducing these categories to their systemic essentials, 3) normalizing the language based on similarities of concept, 4) adjusting for coherence in and between categories, and 5) guided by the exemplar, resolving inconsistencies and eliminating redundancies.

This exercise is meant to describe how Giorgi contributes to an integrated understanding of consciousness. The strategy has been 1) to take from each presentation those components that can be used to constitute an integrated, syncretic view of consciousness consistent with the phenomenological view as presented by Gurwitsch, and 2) to consolidate the author's contribution into a single statement representing the integrated view. This section offers a critical evaluation of that statement.

Regardless of Giorgi's opinions on the possibility or desirability of unifying psychology, his systemic description of psychology reveals it as radically diverse and without the necessary global intent to unify on the basis of function. His rhetoric is probably designed to stimulate the organization of such a global intent.

Giorgi's argument for unification is made fundamentally incoherent by the intent to describe the different possible interpretations of psychology relating to its unification under the definition of a scientific discipline. This must destroy coherence because there is no limit to possible interpretations. However, a systemic approach to resolving this problem of disunity in psychology is procedurally outlined by Giorgi. Unfortunately, one of the weakest characteristics of Giorgi's descriptions is the tremendous resistance of empirical science to an understanding of reality founded in consciousness. The phenomenon of power in social systems and its relation to the descriptions of reality those systems will accept deserves much more attention.

An interesting effect emerges from Giorgi's description of the relationship of the therapist and the researcher. General meanings arrived at by the research community are certain to influence the "discovered" meanings that are offered to a describer by the researcher. This might seem to violate the practice of phenomenological reduction. Phenomenological reduction supposedly precludes bringing into research the received opinions of the research community. Yet therapy, for example, must assume that the researcher is in command of a more efficacious reality than the describer. Even the mandate for the psychology professional engaged in phenomenological research to eventually assume a psychological perspective seems to produce this same inconsistency. I believe the issue here can be confused with what in other contexts would be a matter of privilege.

While the psychological researcher must put aside all preconceptions and express only the concrete meaning of the describer, this must be done from a psychological perspective. What could the psychological perspective be if not a preconception? This failing would be consistent with most other analysts who seek a privileged perspective. Along with claims of existence, claims of privileged perspective must be included in the lists of preconceptions. However, it is precisely the claim of phenomenology that such a perspective, phenomenologically derived, is not privileged but transcendental. Since the transcendental position is forever in a state of revision based on expanded empirical evidence, it is not assumed as a privileged position, but trusted as provisionally inclusive and universal.

When psychology defines consciousness as the prime phenomenon, the fact of having to deduce the existence of other consciousnesses has a specific effect on the rational structure of the psychological system of inquiry. It means that the experienced, subjective consciousness (one's own) must be put aside in favor of an objective consciousness that is allowed to describe itself. How does this differ from logical positivism? I quote the logical positivist Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent." In contrast, a fundamental assumption of phenomenology is that there is no conscious experience of which we cannot speak, and, if we say enough and share it collectively, we can express and share some essential aspect of that experience in a discursively formal way. Thus discourse is recognized as a radically distinct medium from experience, yet capable of transmitting meanings from experience that are no more a physical part of discourse than consciousness is a physical part of an organism. It is not necessary to fully understand and logically explain this phenomenon to observe that it happens!

Giorgi hopes to show that a science of humans requires different methods from those used in natural science because an "indubitable" characteristic of humans that is not found elsewhere in nature, "transcendence." Giorgi's argument fails on two counts: 1) he offers no concise definition of transcendence, and 2) he does not show that transcendence cannot be captured in the descriptions of natural science. These weaknesses could have been avoided had he done a phenomenological description of transcendence and had he not entered into this inquiry with preconceived ideas about "humans."

This final section discusses the conclusions drawn above in the context of the purpose of the section: a more integrated understanding of the field of psychology. Two issues constantly addressed by the literature on phenomenology are emergence of the subject (Gurwitsch, 1966, pp.399-412) and the return of non-positivistic philosophy (pp.412-418). Phenomenology differs in its approach to evolution of the thought in formal descriptions of reality in that it does not have as a driving force in its program the need to overturn and replace all other descriptions of reality. Instead, phenomenology seeks to transcend the field that has produced all the competing formulas for consciousness and reality by articulating an abstract description of a higher level of reality encompassing all others. This is why I believe this view can be described as employing a syncretic strategy for integrating all other views. A truly philosophical turning toward the subject as the ultimate ontological entity requires the extraordinary feat of suspending all consideration of objective reality and excluding all questions of causal origins. Without the transcendental attitude, this position can be considered the antithesis of the viewpoint of modern science. However, with the transcendental attitude, this position, by merely describing, explains most anomalies that constitute the period of intense existential anxiety that has come to be called the post-modern condition.

My position on the question of possible integration is based on the view that the myriad forms discourse assumes in order to express the products of a specific experience tends to obscure the singular nature of that experience for all individual consciousnesses. Because our articulations of our experience are different from those of others, and we become invested in those articulations, we assume our descriptions are uniquely correct and others descriptions are somehow in error. Alternatively, if we assume our experiences must be the same as others, and if we are describing the same world, then there must be some way to reduce the myriad descriptions to a single description without eliminating any essential concepts. This is what is attempted using the syncretic method demonstrated here.

The syncretic method attempts to divest the conceptual essentials of their particular discursive trappings, leaving the essentials in a normalized form that can be shaped into an integrated description. In addition, the syncretic method has the ability to incorporate the most powerful concepts from any description without having to also take, or else derogate, the less desirable or problematic concepts that accompany them.

I acknowledge that the integrated statement offered here still requires substantial refinement. It is the continued refinement of the essentials to a truly complete and consistent model that distinguishes the disciplined product from the merely casual one. This process will be continued by abstracting the work of major proponents of the phenomenological method in psychology and attempting to integrate that abstract with those of other perspectives of psychology.

As a result of the analysis done here, the different movements in the field of psychology, where they are different and not just proprietary articulations of the same movement, are revealed as distinct intellectual constructions founded on different metaphysical bases. The specific difference in metaphysical bases that seems otherwise irreconcilable is that of an empirical perspective versus a phenomenological perspective. However, this analysis has shown that the phenomenological perspective subsumes the empirical perspective and is not just mutually exclusive of it. This means that these two perspectives do not compete on the same level. While the empiricist is not interested in and does not understand the phenomenological perspective, the phenomenologist not only understands the empirical perspective, but also respects its efficacy in describing certain kinds of phenomena. Thus phenomenology itself informs us that there is no logical reason why empiricism and phenomenology cannot be concinnous, to use the meaning of unity that Giorgi (1985) prescribes. When the phenomenological perspective and the empirical perspective are united functionally in pursuit of the same purpose, they can be said to have been integrated. The possible means for accomplishing this have been demonstrated in this section.

Phenomenological method specifically enables the integration of these diverse intellectual structures by reducing each of them to their irreducible essentials, where it can be observed that irreconcilable differences in lived experience of these phenomena do not necessarily exist. Obviously this implies an intention to integrate these diverse descriptions. For those who lack this prerequisite intent, integration may seem problematic and even incredible. Phenomenology predicts such a response (Giorgi, 1975) from an observer who hypostatizes an explanatory theory that has been publicly acclaimed. Such a response is the consequence of an inability to adopt a phenomenological perspective, precluding the possibility of agreeing on a single description of reality through dialog. Conversely, we can see that the phenomenological perspective is instrumental in integrating diverse perspectives wherever they may occur.

Appendix C shows a comparison of the structures of the perspectives of Giorgi and Gurwitsch. Although we can see that these observers are describing different things, if one assumes an intent to integrate, one assumes these are different perspectives of the same thing. Based on this intention, it is possible and even reasonable to produce an integrated description from these two perspectives. Whether it is desirable or not is, in my opinion, a political question. By political I mean there will be an irreconcilable conflict between these two views only if either of them is seeking a position of absolute dominance. In my opinion, the situational basis for mutual exclusivity is a matter of proprietary interests in a specific perspective. A transcendent perspective will always serve to integrate diverse systems by describing the relationship between them. It is true, though, those those with proprietary interests will describe any description that aspires to transcendence as just another competing perspective. Those who must use these views to understand the world around them and actually make decisions based on that understanding must be the ultimate judges.