Research Article

The Intersection of Literature and Consciousness: An exploration of the Potential Impact of New Idealist Perspectives

Prof. Terry Hyland

Free University of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

Submission: September 05, 2024; Published: September 12, 2024

*Corresponding author: Prof Terry Hyland, Free University of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

How to cite this article: Prof. Terry Hyland. The Intersection of Literature and Consciousness: An exploration of the Potential Impact of New Idealist Perspectives. Open Access J Educ & Lang Stud. 2024; 2(2): 555585. DOI:10.19080/OAJELS.2024.02.555585.

Keywords: Potential Impact; Literature and Consciousness; Human Experience; Philosophical Perspectives; Realism and Anti-Realism; Literary Forms; Modernist Literature; Surrealism in Literature; Right Brain Dominance; Existentialist Literature

Introduction

Literature, in its myriad forms, serves not only as a reflection of human experience but also as an exploration of consciousness. The intricate relationship between forms of literature and different perspectives on consciousness – from scientific materialism and realism to the new idealist and panpsychist anti-realist philosophical positions – is bound to be both complex and finely nuanced. By examining key literary works and their representations of consciousness, it may be possible to uncover how authors navigate the complexities of the human mind, offering readers unique insights into their own existential realities and diverse life experiences.

Perspectives on Consciousness

Throughout the ages, the concept of consciousness has presented a considerable challenge to philosophers, psychologists and artists alike. Dennett [1] insists that consciousness is not a single entity but rather an interplay of multiple cognitive and affective processes that shape our understanding of the world around us. As such the concept encompasses self-awareness (what it is like to be a distinctive entity, Nagel, 1974), basic subjective experience and, at meta levels, the capacity for reflection, for thinking about thinking. In addition, it is worth noting that what Lent [2] calls ‘animate consciousness’ is all around us in the natural world in the lives of animals from the smallest insects to the more complex lives of higher primates and mammals.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Susan Blackmore [3] has defined the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in terms of the question: ‘how can objective, physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience?’(p.25). Within philosophy of mind, this ‘mind-body problem’ goes back at least as far as Descartes and his infamous dualist analysis of the mental and physical worlds which leaves unexplained exactly how they may be connected [4]. More generally it results in the long-standing problem of how to explain subjective mental phenomena such as hopes, wishes, intentions, etc. – or simply what it is like to be something (Nagel, 1974) – in a world which, according to science, consists only of material objects, forces and processes.

Panpsychism [5] has emerged as a key component in attempts to solve the hard problem of consciousness which consists in explaining the existence of non-materialist subjective experiences in a world which mainstream science insists is made up of purely materialist elements. Although contemporary interpretations of panpsychism are, in the main, utilized in trying to solve problems of consciousness, the concept has a long history with diverse and widespread uses and applications.

David Chalmers [6] outlines the ‘easy’ problems of consciousness, that is, how to map brain functions onto human thinking and behaviour. Such ‘easy’ problems include the integration of information by a cognitive system, the focus of attention, and the reportability of mental states, but such essentially functional processes leave us with the question of ‘why the performance of these functions is accompanied by experience’ (p.5). This is labelled by Chalmers the ‘central mystery’ (ibid) of consciousness and gives rise to the ‘hard problem’ of how to understand and explain the undisputed existence of subjective mental states in a world which science tells us consists only of physical elements, fields and forces.

Physicalist Panpsychism

In later work, Chalmers [7] has advanced several speculative solutions such as that the fundamental building blocks of the universe utilized by science – space, time and mass, for example – may have to be extended to include consciousness as a primary entity or universal property of everything in the cosmos. This is described as a ‘nonreductive psychophysical’ notion which supplements physical theories by explaining how ‘physical processes relate to and dependent upon the ‘properties of experience’ (p.17).

To make headway on this, as Strawson [8,9] argues, it is necessary to introduce some notion of subjective experience into existing physical theories. Real physicalists according to Strawson, ‘must accept that experiential phenomena are physical phenomena’ (2006, p.1), and supports the assertion concerning the emergence of experiential or consciousness properties from physical, non-experiential characteristics through, inter alia, the analogy of the emergence of the liquidity of water from non-liquid H2O molecules. A core aspect of this speculative thesis is that we do not know enough about the nature of the physical to argue – as dualists since Descartes and most post-Cartesian philosophers have held – that the physical and the mental are irrevocably distinct and irreconcilable. Making use of arguments by Eddington and Russell, Strawson asks ‘on what conceivable grounds do so many physicalists simply assume that the physical, in itself, is an essentially and wholly non-experiential phenomenon?’ (ibid., p.3).

Idealist Panpsychism

Although physicalist materialism has been the foundation of science since the Enlightenment it has not gone unchallenged within philosophy where idealist theories of knowledge, truth and reality have been around since the Ancient Greeks. Shan Gao [10] has produced a fascinating philosophical history of panpsychism which demonstrates how thinkers from the pre-Socratics, through Plato and Aristotle, and down through the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods to current philosophy of science have advanced theories which propose that the natural world is imbued with, and indeed dependent upon, some form of conscious or mental element. However, in order to avoid the mind/body dualist black hole some form of monism needs to be considered, and Occam’s Razor has led many thinkers – notably Leibniz, Berkeley and, in more recent times, Russell and Whitehead – to consider seriously the notion that, as Philip Goff [11] puts it, ‘consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of physical reality’ (p.112).

A principal materialist move is to assert that – since it is generally assumed that consciousness is generated by the brain – it is simply a matter of time before cognitive neuroscientists provide data which will solve the hard problem. However, as Steve Taylor [12] has argued at length, there are no satisfactory models of how the mind/brain link can be supported, and he outlines the range of implausible claims – from epiphenomenalism to illusionism (pp.58-64) – which have failed to solve the principal problems. In addition, there is now a good range of neuroscientific data which indicates that – contra the physicalist assumptions – certain anomalous states of awareness (such as those produced by brain impairment, hallucinogenic episodes, or near-death experiences) result in reduced brain activity (ibid., pp.67ff.).

Along with the glaringly obvious implausibility of the notion that there might be neural correlates of the taste of coffee, the smell of a flower or the sound of falling rain, the reduction of brain activity in transcendent states of awareness is the exact opposite of what is entailed by the materialist assumption that all experience is generated by the brain. The realization that metaphysical materialism has to be abandoned as an explanation of consciousness represents a courageous step but such a move has been made by Francis Crick’s former colleague, Christof Koch [13] who argues that the ‘emergence of subjective feelings from physical stuff appears inconceivable’ and that, rather than being produced by the circuitry of the brain, consciousness is ‘inherent in the design of the universe’ (p.28).

Moreover, as Bernardo Kastrup [14] points out, there is a crucial difference ‘between materialism as a metaphysics and scientific theories as models’ (p.10). Scientific materialism observes patterns and regularities in nature and constructs models which explain objects and forces – such as subatomic particles and negative electric charge – in terms of their relationship to other cognate constructions and issues only in quantities not the qualities of phenomenal experience. Explaining and predicting how aspects of the material world operate relative to other aspects reveals nothing about the fundamental aspects of nature. The analytical idealism proposed by Kastrup as a more cogent alternative is claimed to solve, or rather, dissolve the hard problem by positing a form of idealist panpsychism by which consciousness is the ultimate primitive.

The explanation of why we seem to be separate from the world and other beings is couched in terms of the idea of dissociated mind states drawn from well-established psychological studies. The brain, rather than generating experience, receives and canalizes information from the transpersonal world of mind. Like whirlpools in the stream of consciousness, individual minds are a ‘partial localization of the flow of experiences in the stream’ (2014, p.82). This idea of subjective experience as individualized representations of transpersonal consciousness is further elaborated by Hoffman (2019) in his theory of conscious realism.

Following Occam’s simplest is best doctrine, the next logical step is to posit the idea that, as Donald Hoffman [15] prefers to say, it is consciousness itself – not spacetime, forces or material objects – that forms the fundamental basis of the cosmos. Hoffman argues that ‘space, time and physical objects are not objective reality. They are simply the virtual world delivered by our senses to help us play the game of life’ (p.xv). His ultimate claim – justified in terms of mathematical arguments rooted in evolutionary facts – is that contra the physicalist case, it could be that ‘consciousness does not arrive from matter...instead matter and spacetime arise from consciousness’ (p.xviii). Labelled ‘conscious realism’, this theory ‘claims no central role for human consciousness’ but ‘posits countless kinds of conscious agents with a boundless variety of conscious experiences’ (p.201).

Hoffman is acutely aware of the monumental cognitive dissonance which may result from considering such ideas but insists that it is simply an extension of the ideas of Galileo and Darwin. Moreover, the notion that reality is constructed through the interaction of conscious agents is supported by a robust mathematical model (pp.203-5) which underpins a process whose objective is to show how everything that we claim to know can be derived ultimately from the theory. He concludes his thesis with the following challenge:

Spacetime is your virtual reality, a headset of your own making. The objects you see are your own invention. You create them with a glance and destroy them with a blink. You have worn this headset all your life. What happens if you take it off? (p.202).

Forms of Literature and Consciousness Perspectives

Literary forms and styles are obviously influenced by and a reflection of changes in societal mores and political economic developments [16]. What can be added to such influences is the evolution of different conceptions and interpretations of consciousness of the sort outlined above. If we adopt a materialist or physicalist conception of human experience and reality, this will influence the nature of authorship. Examples of this form would include Zola’s Germinal [17] which employs a realist approach to highlight how environmental and economic conditions impact individual consciousness and collective struggle. The characters are depicted as products of their material circumstances, driven by political and socio-economic reality. Similarly, in more recent literature, Richard Wright’s Native Son [18] illustrates how systematic racism and class inequalities influence the behaviour of the main protagonists. The narrative underscores the impact of the environment on human consciousness, revealing the interplay between personal identity and awareness and the collective forces which shape and reflect politics and economics.

In relation to the more anti-realist and neo-idealist perspectives offered by Kastrup and Hoffman, works influenced by such visions of consciousness are fully on display in modernist and post-modernist literature. Authors who have clearly – in Hoffman’s words taken off the ‘headset of spacetime virtual reality’ (2018, p.202) – would include pioneers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In Joyce’s Ulysses [19], for example, the narrative traverses’ various sites and sources of consciousness, blurring the line between reality and subjective thought and feeling. The main characters’ perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and memories intertwine to create a rich tapestry of phenomenal existence that emphasizes individual awareness of objective reality.

Similarly, in Woolf’s to The Lighthouse [20] The fluidity of perception and introspection reflects a profound anti-realist vision of the world. Her stream-of-consciousness technique, like Joyce, reveals her characters’ inner lives, suggesting that reality is shaped by subjective experience rather than objective reality. In existentialist/surrealist works such as Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1972 edn.) We see the embodiment of idealist principles through the transformation of the central character, Gregor Samsa. His grotesque change reflects a profound internal reality, illustrating how perception shape’s identity and existence. Kafka represents a paradigm case of neo-idealist conceptions of consciousness, and his work can be interpreted as, using Kastrup’s model, the creative construction of artistic visions through interactions with ‘whirlpools in the stream of consciousness’ (2014, p.82) within the wider membrane of mind with is the ultimate ontological primitive.

Coda

The works mentioned above exemplify how philosophical idealism and anti-materialist conceptions of the kind revealed in panpsychist attempts to solve the hard problem of consciousness can serve to influence narrative structure and character development, exploring the intricate relationship between consciousness and reality and, ultimately, suggesting that our understanding of the world is perhaps more subjective and constructively creative than scientific materialism suggests. This new idealism is essentially – using Iain McGilchrist’s terminology – the right brain dominant rather than left brain as in the case of standard scientific accounts of the world. As he puts it, ‘we can only know the world as we have shaped it by the nature of our attention’ (2012, p.9), and the different hemispheres – though collaborating in the process of responding to the world – display quite different forms of attention, focus and objectives. In his most recent work, McGilchrist (2021) summarizes the chief differences between the left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) in terms of their scope and functions:

The LH is principally concerned with manipulation of the world; the RH with understanding the world as a whole and how to relate to it...the LH deals with detail, the local, what is central and in the foreground, and easily grasped; the RH with the whole picture, including the periphery or background, and all that is not immediately graspable...the LH aims to narrow things down to a certainty, while the RH opens them up into possibility....the LH tends to see things as isolated, discrete, fragmentary, where the RH tends to see the whole...the RH is essential for ‘theory of mind’... and essential for empathy...the LH is unreasonably optimistic, and it lacks insight into its limitations. The RH is more realistic but tends towards the pessimistic (pp.46-51).

Along with insights offered by Kastrup and Hoffman, such original and creative positions on consciousness serve to highlight many key characteristics of modernist, post-modernist and surrealist examples of art and literature [21]. The interplay of literature and consciousness is a rich tapestry woven from various threads, including philosophy, psychology and cultural studies. This interplay may explain the inner workings of the artistic and literary process in terms of the individual responses of the artist’s consciousness to the larger membrane of mind which underpins all cosmic activity. The richness of this exploration invites readers to reflect on their inner lives and to recognize how literature may serve as both a mirror and a catalyst for understanding the self and its role in human ethics and social/cultural behaviour [22,23]. As we venture into new literary landscapes, we find countless opportunities to explore the depths of human experience, making the relationship between literature and consciousness – not just a topic of academic interest – but also a vital aspect of our collective journey towards self-awareness.

References

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