Hi Peter,

Yes, the "non-existent" in the quoted passage is the future as such.  In the Temporality chapter, Sartre writes:
  • “The future is the lack which wrenches it as lack away from the in-itself of presence.  If Presence did not lack anything, it would fall back into being and would lose presence to being and acquire in exchange the isolation of complete identity.  It is lack as such which permits it to be presence”
  • “There is a Future because the For-itself [human reality] has to be its being instead of simply being it”
You write: "consciousness is an unending pursuit of itself, an amorphous nothingness newly nascent with every thought."

Absolutely!   From B&N:
  • "Hence comes that ontological disillusion which awaits the For-itself at each emergence into the future…Even if my present is strictly identical in its content with the future toward which I projected myself beyond being, it is not this present toward which I was projecting myself; for I was projecting myself toward the future qua future”
On my reading, Sartre's "ontology of temporality" is consubstantial with the problem of value.  It's also worth noting that the "nothingness" referenced in the title of the book is neither abstract nor absolute.  Rather, it is a concrete negation of this particular past (that ultimately takes the form of a story).  And re-collection is an effort to consider aspects of the past (or what Sartre calls my "living past") in relation to a future that ought to be.  

~ Steve Q. 



 


On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 3:23 PM Peter Lloyd Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Thank you Steve Q, great quotes.

This might confuse some:
  • "This intention, however we regard it, can only be something that surpasses the given toward a result to be obtained.  This given, indeed, being pure presence, is unable to move out of itself.  Precisely because it is, it is what it is, fully and uniquely.  It cannot therefore do justice to a phenomenon which gets all its meaning from a result to be obtained, i.e., a non-existent...."
So I’d like to add that the "non-existent” is the future, which is always unrealized, uncreated, as yet non-existent. It is only through the intention of our acts, followed by those acts, that we reach at results to be obtained. In doing so, the given remains as it is while each of us, being-for-itself, are changed. In this way, consciousness is an unending pursuit of itself, an amorphous nothingness newly nascent with every thought. No?

It fascinates me how the reader of Being and Nothingness, including myself, can at times get lost within that tome, forgetting that every chapter is simply in defense of the book’s title.
Peter 

Peter Lloyd Jones
562-209-4080

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On Apr 7, 2021, at 11:55 AM, Steven Quackenbush <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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Hi Peter,

I'll offer a few quotes from Being & Nothingness in support of your reading of Sartre:
  • "On its own, an empirical examination of human-being shows it to be an organized unity of modes of behavior or 'comportments'.  To be ambitious, cowardly, or irascible is simply to behave in some particular way, in some particular circumstances.  The behaviorists were right to hold that [empirical] psychology should consist only in the study of modes of behavior in strictly defined situations..."
  • "But if human reality is action, it evidently follows that the determining of its action is itself an action..."
  • "Moreover, if an act is not just movement, it must be defined by means of an intention...."
  • "This intention, however we regard it, can only be something that surpasses the given toward a result to be obtained.  This given, indeed, being pure presence, is unable to move out of itself.  Precisely because it is, it is what it is, fully and uniquely.  It cannot therefore do justice to a phenomenon which gets all its meaning from a result to be obtained, i.e., a non-existent...."
  • "Intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, cannot therefore in any case be explained by a given, even if we claim that it emanates from it."
  • "If intention cannot be explained by the given, it must -- simply by arising -- actualize a break with what is given no matter what that is...this break is necessary for the given to be assessed..."
  • "...the given is assessed relative to something which does not yet exist; being-in-itself is lit up by the light of non-being" (Sartre, 1943/2018)
If this seems gratuitous -- if someone says that "the intention can indeed be explained by a given!", we can simply ask: "should the intention be explained by the given?", and we find ourselves at the heart of the problem of value (which is the fundamental rupture or "break" that Sartre is speaking of here).  

I read Sartre as a behaviorist with an ontology qualified by the problem of value (and "value", Sartre notes, "is beyond being").   

~ Steve Q. 


On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 11:17 AM Peter Lloyd Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Gregg,
Thank you for sharing. Your response illuminates the TOK in the light I needed. I agree with you completely.

As a dreamy romantic art student who has always found defining ontology as a fundamental necessity, when I read Skinner 45 years ago I found his philosophy of behaviorism terribly depressing because of its truths I could not argue against. He seemed to have murdered what I valued most in life. 

When I fell into Sartre’s pond of ontology about a decade ago I decided it was time to take a critical look at how these two dialectical ontologies compare or compete. This deeper reading revealed that Skinner and Sartre have little argument against each other’s ontology, though Skinner does try to interpret his philosophy of behaviorism differently than Sartre would accept; but Skinner’s evidence does not support his own interpretation. Of course the edges get messy with Skinner not accepting consciousness as a behavior.

In short, as you point out, mind is behavior, not a thing to possess; it is an act, which is totally Sartrian. What Skinner provides us is the radical importance of the external world. No behavior, even internal conscious behavior, occurs without an external world. The conscious cat needs a tree. Without the tree it cannot fall and cannot choose to land on its feet. It would have nothing to be conscious of. 
Peter 


Peter Lloyd Jones


Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart. 




On Apr 7, 2021, at 6:42 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi TOK List,
  I shared my Life’s Work blog on SSCPnet, which is the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, and my “home list” from way back in the late 1990s. It is the home of the “clinical science” approaches to clinical psychology that I am very critical of in the blog. I prefaced my sending the blog with the realization that I am not trying to convince anyone. I did receive a friendly note replying that Skinner solved the problem of psychology by realizing that there was no mind. The real issue from a Skinnerian view is that cognitivists cling to the idea that mind causes behavior. He would be a minority on that list, but the Skinner faction is real. I would send it but I don’t have permission to cross list it. But I can send my reply. My point is that the “mental versus behavioral” issue is central. Indeed, I don’t think that anyone can really get a handle on cognition or consciousness if they don’t understand this core issue.

Best,
Gregg
>>> 
 
Hi Mike,
 
  Thanks for the note and the engagement. I was an (anti-behavioral) cognitivist until I got in several discussions on this list way back in the late 1990s. Joe Plaud, who called himself "mini-BF" and I went round and round. I then did a wise thing and actually read Skinner 😊. I saw that his "three tiers of selection" model (natural, operant, and verbal) totally aligned with Life, Mind, and Culture on the Tree of Knowledge System I was working from (model attached).
 
  The problem with Skinnerian behaviorism, as I repeatedly have shown (see, e.g.,https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__drive.google.com_file_d_1AdwSuZgsF4cINKN264SNXi-2DxwFBV1pvR_view&d=DwIGaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=p7D1Irl6iK_CrLk2yP09j1NSkOhyDjIFd86LIeuOuME&s=u5VcWAYYXdqS0PEGsRsasjxk-Q90X8Eicn5TtLgFu9M&e= ), is that it is confused about ontology and epistemology and uses the wrong terminology. Consider three cats in a tree. One is dead, one anaesthetized, a third awake and aware. Drop the first one and it bounces. That is "material behavior" mapped by physics. Drop the second one and it too bounces. But we look inside and we see lots of complex functional "physiological behavior" that is keeping the cat alive. That is mapped by biologists.
 
The third cat lands on its feet and takes off. What do we call that? Behaviorists make the mistake of calling it just "behavior". But this description obscures the fact that there is a general and specific meaning. The general meaning is movements that can be observed. But the first two were examples of that. The second meaning is functional awareness and responsiveness that can be observed and studied by psychologists. As the "behaviors" of other cats suggest, this is a different kind of behavior than physical or biological behavior. And it is this functional awareness and responsivity that Skinner means by (operant) behavior. But it is a specific kind of behavior. The Tree of Knowledge System properly maps this as "mental behavior". The mental is the adjective that is needed to characterize the kind of behavior of interest.
 
Yes, there is no dualistic mind, like some supernatural life force or God given soul. But this is a straw man characterization of the mental. What serious science believes in supernatural dualism? Thus, lets dispense with this characterization, which I know Skinner was fond of. The UTOK breaks with Skinner's philosophy of science, which basically was all about epistemology, prediction and control. The UTOK posits that the actual goal of basic science is about description and explanation. I want to be able to explain how and why the cat lands and its feet and takes off. The reason, of course, is that embodied nervous system engages in information processing, which or "neurocognition," which can be framed in terms of recursive relevance realization (see here: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_202101_john-2Dvervaeke-2Ds-2Dbrilliant-2D4p3r-2Dmetatheory-2Dcognition&d=DwIGaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=p7D1Irl6iK_CrLk2yP09j1NSkOhyDjIFd86LIeuOuME&s=PrZFCp6LzyhCUaMuo1-05YmQYISP5nUkbrKriKC4jxI&e= ). Skinner was clearly wrong to argue that neurocognitive functional approaches are unscientific.
 
The bottom line is that the UTOK agrees with your basic point. Mind is behavior rather than some other kind of thing. Tree of Knowledge largely agrees with Skinner and frames mental behavior in terms of "Behavioral Investment Theory" which frames it as a kind of commerce with the environment. And, just as Skinner said, it is an emergent dimension of activity that arises as a function of behavioral selection. But it disagrees with you that psychology is the science of behavior. Basic psychological science, according to the UTOK is properly defined as the science of "mental behavior". It solves the mind versus behavior problem that sits at the heart of the "crisis". Indeed, it is long time past that scientific psychology gets the relationship between behavior and the mental correct.
 
Best,
Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)


Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.

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