The Thoughts Of William James Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Russell (1960: 767):

Consciousness, [James] says, 'is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first principles.  Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing "soul" upon the air of philosophy'.  There is, he continues, 'no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made'.  He explains that he is not denying that our thoughts perform a function which is that of knowing, and that this function may be called 'being conscious'.  What he is denying might be put crudely as the view that consciousness is a 'thing'.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, consciousness is both the ideational construal of meaning and the interpersonal enactment of it.

Ideationally, consciousness includes mental processes of perception, cognition, desideration and emotion, in which a senser participates as medium of such processes, and a phenomenon participates as the range or agent of such processes.

Two types of mental processes, cognitive and desiderative, potentially involve symbolic processing, whereby the the content of consciousness — in this instance: meaning, the semantic system of language — is projected into semiotic existence.

By the same token, verbal processes also potentially involve symbolic processing, whereby the content of consciousness — in this instance: wording, the lexicogrammatical system of language — is projected into semiotic existence.

Interpersonally, consciousness includes acting on each other through commands, offers, questions, statements and modal assessments.