People and Processes

The developing picture of consciousness as merely awareness1 of the contents of certain states or events leaves no room for the common and unreflective view of consciousness as the place where thought processes occur. Thinking and reasoning are things that we do, not merely experiences of which we are aware, but if thinking is in fact an ‘activity of mind’ or reasoning a ‘process of thought’, we seem to have a dilemma. To repeat Lashley’s dictum, no activity of mind is ever conscious. We have, of course, no introspective access to the actual processes of the brain, but neither do we have introspective access to what may be called the activities of the mind; we can think a thought in dactylic hexameter, but we have no inkling of how this is done – it just ‘comes to us’ from we know not where. Yet what is thinking and reasoning if not a ‘conscious activity of the mind’, an activity of which we are aware?