The Structural Psychology Of Edward Titchener In Chomskyan Formal Linguistics

Edeman (1992: 37):

During James's time, however, excessive attempts were still being made to use introspection to reach conclusions about the mind, often with dubious results (as in the case of Edward Titchener, who regarded experimental introspection as the "sole gateway to psychology" and elaborated grand theories of sensation and feeling based on this method).

Blogger Comments:

This method was adopted by Noam Chomsky, who regarded introspection as the "sole gateway" to language and the mind, with similarly dubious results.  In Chomsky's case, this reflects the fact that his linguistics is Cartesian, and concerned with the res cogitans, and so, concerned with knowledge of language, rather than language itself (as res extensa).  Consequently, because intuitions are instances of knowledge, such introspections constitute the data to be accounted for by a theory of knowledge of language.  This appears to be unknown to most, if not virtually all, linguists working in Chomskyan Formal linguistics.

William James' View On Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 37):

James's greatest achievement may have been to point out that consciousness is a process and not a substance in his characterisation of this elusive process in his essay "Does Consciousness Exist?", a question he also pursued in Principles.  Whitehead has made the claim that, with this inquiry, James was to the twentieth century what Descartes was to the seventeenth.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, human (higher-order) consciousness involves mental or verbal processes unfolding through a medium, senser or sayer, respectively.  Where the process unfolds through time, the participating medium persists through time.  In the case of mental processes, this can include the projection of ideas, the meanings of the semantic system of language; in the case of verbal processes, this can include the projection of locutions, the wordings of the lexicogrammatical system of language (that realise the meanings of the semantic system).  That is, the content plane of language constitutes the content of consciousness.

This ideational perspective is complemented by the interpersonal dimension of consciousness: the enactment of the self in intersubjective relations as meaning.

To these perspectives might be added a textual dimension of consciousness, second-order with respect to the other two dimensions, which involves the highlighting and cohesion of the other two, in ways that that make them coherent with respect to a given situation.

In this view, since language is a social semiotic system, higher-order consciousness is social and collective.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

Language is a socio-semiotic system, so it follows that higher-order consciousness is constituted socio-semiotically; and since socio-semiotic systems are collective, it follows that higher-order consciousness must also be collective.

Hume's Scepticism Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 35):

The most ruthless and skeptical of the empiricists, Hume, concluded that no knowledge could be secure given that it is all based on sense impressions.  Even scientific knowledge appeared to be shaken by his analysis of cause and effect as no more than mental correlation based on the repetition of these sense impressions. But as we will see later, sense impressions are not the issue; the biology of mind involves much, much more.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of SFL theory, all knowledge, including relations of cause, is meaning construed of experience.  Scientific knowledge is the reconstrual of (first-order) meaning as (second-order) 'meaning about meaning', the reconstrual of phenomena as metaphenomena, analogous to the reconstrual of a landscape as a map.

On the other hand, the uncertainty of meanings, as arguable propositions, is a feature of the interpersonal dimension of semiosis, and metaphors of modality suggest that all projected meaning is probabilistic.

I think	that	‘s	true
Modality: probability	Subject	Finite	Complement
Mood			Residue

The probabilistic nature of meaning-making, semogenesis, is borne out by the two-slit experiment of quantum physics which demonstrates that, at the very limits of perception, observed particle frequencies (meaning as instances) vary according to the probabilities of the system (meaning as potential).

Berkeley's Monistic Idealism vs Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 35):

And Berkeley's monistic idealism — suggesting that inasmuch as all knowledge is gained through the senses, the whole world is a mental matter — falters before the facts of evolution. It would be very strange indeed if we mentally created an environment that then subjected us (mentally) to natural selection.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is a distinction between experience and its construal as meaning.  In construing experience as meaning, there is a distinction between a material order phenomena (the physical world) and semiotic order metaphenomena (mental and verbal representations).

It is not that the "world" is mental, but that 'the world' — as perceived, thought or talked about — is meaning construed of experience.