Variation for Variation's Sake.

According to the Stimulus-Response model, all behavioral modification is for an ulterior purpose, namely, modification is a response to a stimulus that aims to resolve the problem presented by the stimulus. For example, when a habitual smoker reaches for chewing gum instead of a cigarette, it is for the purpose of, for example, easing the stress that has hitherto habitually led to smoking a cigarette. But not all variation in habit has an ulterior motive. Most of us are familiar with personal situations in which we 'just want a change of pace, or a change of scenery'. So, to put on a hamburger, one might, just for the sake of change, try mustard instead of the usual ketchup. An example like this might be dismissed as trivial, but a much more significant one is musical composition, in which Theme-and-Variation is the essential structure of the activity. Variation in musical composition is always fundamentally for its own sake. Kant's characterization of artistic products as 'purposeless, but as if they had a purpose', stands as a refutation of the S-R model of behavior, which, if he had not been at an advanced age, he might have explored more thoroughly. For, perhaps the most the deeply ingrained human habit is to behave for some ulterior purpose, a habit which can be broken.

Behavior Modification

At bottom, the stimulus-response model of behavior is a dissatisfaction-satisfaction circuit. That is, what initially stimulates a response is something problematic, and the response is a means to resolving the problem. For example, in an infant, hunger is a stimulus to which a response of crying leads to feeding. Behavioral patterns can thus be taught or modified via punishment and reward techniques. But such an educational technique is suited to children. Adolescents begin to self-modify their behavior rebelliously, with responses contrary to what they have been taught. In an adult, a new dimension must emerge if one is to break one's conditioning. First, one must become aware of one's behavioral patterns, and second, one must constrain oneself from falling into them. An example of how to achieve such self-constraint is offered in one of the greatly under-appreciated facets of Kant's 'Categorical Imperative'. His formula refers to 'maxims', a 'maxim' being an articulation of a behavioral pattern one is considering acting upon. Usually going unnoticed in studies of Kant is that the very awareness of one's habitual responses is itself the beginning of detaching from them, to be followed by active constraint, e. g. Kant's 'universalization' procedure. So, self-constraint is a necessary condition of self-modification, and for Stoicism, it seems to be regarded as a sufficient one as well. However, someone who is seeking to quit smoking often needs to not only not grab cigarette, but to furthermore put on a nicotine patch and chew some gum. In other words, mere suppression of a habit does not suffice to rid one of the dissatisfaction that first generates it. As Nietzsche and Freud have famously argued, unless constructively redirected, that dissatisfaction can breed responses that are much more harmful than that which has been suppressed. Thus, adult behavior self-modification must both understandingly constrain the original pattern, and vary it.

Stimulus, Response, and Intellect

According to one standard model, behavior has a 'stimulus-response' ('SR') structure, namely, that, at bottom, all behavior is a response to some stimulus. At its most basic, response follows directly upon stimulus, as if they composed one continuous circuit. In SR theories in general, Intellect is regarded as intervening in the circuit, introducing calculation into it, pertaining to the possibility of a variety of responses to a stimulus. The capacity of Intellect is thus the grounds of the distinction between 'lower' and 'higher' creatures, with many gradations in between. But the distinction is not necessarily inter-species; rather, it can be discerned within a matter of inches on one and the same human organism. A blow to a certain spot just below the knee will immediately be followed by a small kick of the leg, while one to a spot just a few inches below that might also be followed by a kick, but it also might be followed by linguistic comment, a punch, or a flight away. In the latter case, some calculation has preceded the ultimate response. One important criticism of the scope of SR is that it oversimplifies the lower-higher distinction, especially insofar as it ignores a crucial factor in the response phase, namely Habit. The criticism acknowledges that a habitual response is as automatic as a reflex, but it maintains that habits can be changed. To which a defender of SR can argue that the changing of a habit simply entails a redirecting of response, via reward or punishment. However, as especially Stoicism has shown, given a stimulus, one option is not merely either a habitual or a novel response, but no response at all. The Stoic can thus argue that what the SR model most notably glosses over is that the Intellect is not merely calculative, but constraining, as well.

Sense-Experience

The classic Empiricist theory of 'sense-experience' is 'Atomistic'. Namely, it holds that sense-data are the irreducible building blocks of the entire universe, which, by implication, can never mean more than an experiential universe. This Atomism has also been one of its most vulnerable features. Some have argued that any sense-datum is itself the product of a construction, just as contemporary Science recognizes the the existence of sub-atomic worlds. Others have argued that any sense-datum is only an arbitrarily derivative abstraction, e. g. that redness is not irreducibly given, but is only an abstraction from a perceived ball. These criticisms might be said to be insisting that Empiricism is wrong because there is more to a sense-datum than meets the eye. In contrast, the challenge here asserts that there is more to a sense-datum that meets the eye than what the Empiricist is reporting. For example, as one is walking along, one might notice a red ball in its path up ahead. What is most immediately visually noted in the situation is not redness or sphericality, but that something is in the way. In other words, the initial datum of that sensory experience is resistance, not merely potential resistance, insofar as that the ball may prevent the foot from touching the ground, but actual, insofar as vision itself cannot pass through it to see the path underneath the ball. So, the primary visual datum here is not redness or roundness, but opacity. And, since this datum pertains first and foremost to its impenetrability, it is more accurately classified as a motor-, not a sense-, datum. Generalization to touch is easy--the primary datum in feeling is resistance. But if generalization of this analysis to the other senses is less easy, it is only because of its unfamiliarity, not its inaccuracy. It might become more familiar with respect to 'hearing', if the latter is construed as 'listening to', and a sound interferes with what we are trying to listen to, e. g. the sound of a car engine drowning out the words of someone talking to us. Therein, the resistance aspect of a sound-datum is as obvious as that of visual opacity. A further familiar example demonstrates the general point more effectively. When a hand that has been exposed to cold weather is placed in lukewarm water, the sense-datum is 'hot'. To the Empiricist, this is proof that the 'hot' is not in the water but in the perceiver of the datum. But another interpretation can agree that the datum is not in the water, but can further argue that the 'hot' is not atomic, but is, rather, actually 'hotter than the initial coldness of the hand'. In other words, the datum is in the hand. And, what is happening in the hand is an increase in the velocity of its molecules. In other words, the 'sense'-datum is actually a 'motor'-datum--the product of a synkinetic process that is an awareness of the change in local corporeal motions. Generalization to the other 'sense'-organs yields the criticism of Empiricism: 'Sense-data' are all primarily 'motor-data'.

Consciousness and Behavior

According to the theory of 'Consciousness' being advocated here, all awareness is fundamentally self-awareness, meaning that it is fundamentally an intra-organic process. In more common jargon, the 'consciousness of outer objects' is mediated by the consciousness of local corporeal processes, i. e. the 'consciousness of redness and roundness' is actually the 'consciousness of looking at something red and round'. This inverts the classical Empiricist thesis that knowledge begins with impressions of the outer world. But the challenge to Empiricism is not merely 'Epistemological', as would seem to be the case from standard classifications in Academia. For example, that Locke's notion of 'Tabula Rasa' has significance to both Epistemology and Political Philosophy can hardly be grasped where those two subjects are taught in entirely different Departments, by those with different areas of expertise. More to the immediate point here, despite their being systematically presented in one and the same book, the connections between Hume's Empiricism and his theory of behavior seem rarely to receive attention in Academia. Those connections were hardly new with Hume. To the contrary, they are as traditional as Aristotle, who argues that motivation begins with some sensory stimulus. So, if a sensory stimulus is ultimately, directly or indirectly, from without, then behavior can only be a response to something external. Thus, an alternative theory of 'Consciousness' will entail a challenge to the Empiricist theory of Behavior.

Learning How To

Being 'experienced' at something means knowing 'how to do' it. So, since how something is done unifies the various motions involved, it is the Form of the Experience. Now, this Form entails more than the simultaneous coordination of bodily motions, e. g. of the movement of the surgeon's hands and eyes as an incision is made. For, the incision must come subsequent to the anesthetizing of the patient, and prior to, e. g. the removal of the appendix. In other words, the Form of most activities is a sequential ordering as well. furthermore, knowing how to do something means having learned to do it, and it is most likely that the learning process entailed step-by-step movements through the stages of the activity. To learn how to walk, a baby must first learn to stand, and then to put one foot forward, and then the other. This natural analysis of the Form of an Experience helps demonstrate two main ways that observation and movement interact in it. First, the inner awareness of the localized bodily movements constrains and coordinates them; in this interaction, the awareness is subsequent to the movements. On the other hand, movement can be subsequent to awareness: the awareness that one is standing up, or that one has completed an incision, is the point of departure for the next phase of the activity, putting a foot forward, or removal of the appendix. Examples such as these suggest what is problematic in both Teleological theories of behavior, and Platonism. The former insist that behavior has a point or points of termination, whereas the Teleologist is hard-pressed to cite any example of a completed action that is not itself the point of departure for a new action. Plato thought that Contemplation of Form was just such a terminal point, but he leaves unexamined how such Contemplation might also be the starting point of another activity, e. g. how Contemplation moved he himself to write voluminously about it.

Experience

Corresponding to the two notions of Consciousness are two differing common usages of 'Experience'. One means to 'undergo' and to 'observe', and, so, is often classified as a 'passive' notion. But, when, for example, one is asked whether or not one is an 'experienced' surgeon, one is not being asked whether or not one has observed oneself performing surgery, but rather whether or not one has performed surgery. So, this notion can be classified as an 'active' one. But the value of this active sense of 'experience' is not as an alternative to one that is surely a prevalent connotation. Rather, it brings to light the unequivocal essence of Experience. The 'active' notion does not reject that Experience is observational, just that it is merely observational. A surgeon surely observes what (s)he is doing, but such observation is integrated with the moving of hands, fingers, eyes, etc. So, Experience, in at least the 'active' sense, would seem, paradoxically, to combine both 'activity' and 'passivity'. But the seeming paradox is a consequence of an inappropriate use of 'passive' to begin with. As Dewey has argued, even the observation that is the quintessential 'experience' in Platonism, the Contemplation of Beauty, is not merely 'passive'. For, as he analyzes, the contemplation of a painting entails not merely passive looking, but an active reconstruction of the work, perhaps even a reconstruction that accurately repeats the artist's initial construction itself. That such reconstruction takes place in the imagination does not undermine the point that it is no less 'active' than the movements of the surgeon's hands, just as the surgeon's observation of those movements is no less undergone than a observer's being affected by the colors on a canvas.