Why do I say such a theory revolutionizes our concept of thought, and in particular philosophical thought? Because I understand from reading philosophers who ought to know, that philosophy through the centuries has had two principal aims, which are in fact incompatible. The first aim was to coordinate the work of specialists each working in their own limited field, and this presumably includes religion, into one grand scheme of knowledge. Not of course a thirst for detailed omniscience, but rather a framework holding the various fields of specialist knowledge together in a coherent whole. The second aim, from Descartes and Kant onwards, has been to make their subject into a strict science, with a definite method and assured results, exempt from doubt and scepticism. My Theory of Consciousness provides answers to both of these ambitions; but not answers which many philosophers will like.
The grand scheme of knowledge becomes a recognition that there are endless attitudes of mind in which thought can take place, each based on its own unspoken and usually unconscious assumptions, and held together by its own particular type of nervous tension in the body; and furthermore a recognition that it is impossible to reconcile two different attitudes of mind, even when they exist in the same rational being, because they are based on different assumptions. Actually it is a mercy that one cannot reconcile two different frames of mind, or we would never be able to make up our minds about anything. Making up one’s mind (so far as it raises itself above prejudice) involves viewing the problem from various points of view, and then deciding as a matter of instinct or good judgement which decision to make. If you could reconcile different attitudes of mind, this would be impossible. Every problem would have only one solution, and this would rule out all sound judgement, and even worse the unerring judgement of genius. But the net result is to deny philosophers their grand scheme of knowledge. It’s a mirage!
Their other aim of making philosophy a strict science ignores the fact that the whole of science and mathematics, (except the theory of numbers), depends on its assumptions and its axioms. And as various scientists have pointed out, the assumptions of science are fairly dodgy. Universal causality breaks down with the quantum theory of the atom and radioactivity, and the universal plan, or plan of growth, breaks down whenever you come across freewill. And as a practising lawyer I would not care to call as a witness anyone who denied the freedom of the will, because he would probably not stand up to 5 minutes cross-examination without either looking absurd, or his will crumpling. Thirdly science assumes you may safely disregard any spiritual content which the matter you are investigating may have. Similarly, if philosophers want their subject to be a strict science, they too must ignore the spiritual side of life, which means the greater part of human experience. So either their “strict discipline” is not worth having, or it hardly goes further than natural science does on its own. My Theory of Consciousness is a development of the theory of attitudes of Kant, Hegel and Collingwood; but not in the direction they intended. Probably it needed someone like myself, familiar with the workings of the mind in the work-a-day world to take it further; the academic mind had reached the end of its useful synthesis. In my Theory, the only reliable frame of mind is the “Perfectly Relaxed Consciousness”, in which thought as we normally understand it is not possible; so error and distortion are written into all human thought and communication, as a necessary part of our human condition. Were it not so, you could not live by faith; and life would lose its point, for the religious and irreligious alike. To imagine that human thought can reach certain and assured results is fantasy, outside the inorganic sciences; and even they may change, but so slowly as to be imperceptible to us.
So both aims of philosophy were in fact chasing the rainbow’s end – and you never reach it!
Now I am no philosopher, I am a retired lawyer; and the reader may ask how I have the temerity to claim to have solved problems which have puzzled philosophers for centuries?