 
                           20000806.03

     I am much aware that the reduction of perception and
knowledge to an hypothetical biophysical, biochemical or
molecular event (mechanism) will appear to be the exclusion, the
banishment, the denial of subjectivity or soul as having any
significance in the cognitive process. Such a conclusion,
however, I consider unwarranted. To be sure, the history of
neurology is replete with denials of subjectivity, with
determined efforts to demonstrate that perception, sensation,
action or thought is "nothing but" an objective physical or
chemical process of one kind or another. As all intelligent,
sensitive and experienced physicians know, such conclusions are
unrealistic and can be, when uncritically applied to medical
practice, very destructive. The fact remains that so long as
there is an individual who is conscious, who thinks, who sees or
hears, who feels pain or bliss, who experiences sorrow or
happiness, no objective explanation will adequately explain his
state.

     In this respect the theory I have proposed is not so drastic
as might seem on first consideration. It claims simply that the
processes of symbol formation, correlation and expression may be
interpreted as biophysical or molecular processes. There is no
intimation that these biophysical or molecular processes may not
themselves entail or be productive of consciousness, of the
consciousness of self with all its spiritual consequences and
appurtenances. The interpretation that I have proposed does not
repudiate any idealistic, existential or phenomenological
tradition.

     The circumstance that an experience, in our case, a
cognitive experience, is subjected to a more complete objective
analysis, entails no repudiation or denial of its concomitant
subjectivity. An analytic pharmacology of peyote is no denial of
its hallucinogenic effect; indeed, the class of psychotropic
drugs is a large one, and has been extensively studied, and none
of such studies have ever or can ever vitiate the effects of
these drugs on the psyche. The same must be said of the
electrical or chemical stimulation of brain tissue, or for that
matter, of its destruction, which in the extreme leads to the
temporary or permanent loss of (self-)consciousness, to death
itself, without any implication that subjectivity is disparaged
or denied thereby.

     The error lies in the all too prevalent presumption that
subjectivity, subjective experience, or to say it bluntly, that
soul has an objective location which can be defined, or s
structure which can be analysed.  The designation of soul as
pneuma or spirit is misleading in a way analogous to the way in
which the designation of God as a person, as lord or father is
misleading. As one may dissect the human body indefinitely
without any realistic expectation of discovering subjectivity and
without and founded fear of injuring or destroying it, so one may
make objective analyses of the processes of memory, of
perception, of knowledge without dicovering or denying
subjectivity, even though subjectivity is expressed in these
functions to a high degree.

     Subjectivity is a concomitant of all conscious mental
activity. One cannot describe it, one cannot summarize it, but
one _can_  draw attention to it; and the disciplines which
demonstrate subjectivity are subsumed under the category of art,
literary, visual and musical.

                            * * * * *