Unconscious Consciousness: From Behaviourism to Cognitive Psychology

Abstract

I observed at the beginning of this discussion of the `marginalisers of consciousness' that consciousness seems resistant to scientific treatment and is consequently an embarrassment to any discipline that is in the process of establishing itself as a science. So long as the procedures and, indeed, the results of the physical sciences are seen to be the paradigm of science itself, then a science of consciousness is going to start at some disadvantage. For, at the very least, ignoring the subjective viewpoint, overriding the testimony of the objects of study, seem to be the sine qua non of any systematic enquiry that pretends to the status of science. A genuinely scientific political economy will dismiss the reasons individuals give for their beliefs and ideas and focus instead on the objective conditions of production --- which will explain everything from the most abstract ideas those individuals have about society as a whole to the actual behaviour they exhibit. Thus Marx. A truly scientific sociology will look not to the reported experiences of individuals when trying to understand either individual actions or mass social phenomena but to objectively observable social forces. Even apparently deeply personal sentiments and actions --- such as suicide, religion, the formation of concepts, etc. --- are to be explained by reference to these things and not in terms of intra-psychic events.