MENTAL PHENOMENA AS CHANGES OF STATE IN A FINITEGTATE MACHINE*

This paper examines the classical functions of the psyche-cognition, affection and conation- from a phenomenological viewpoint and finds them to be defined each in terms of the other. It is held that this circularity of definition reflects the fundamental unity of conscious experience and, as a consequence, that the search for the biological substrate underlying individual functions too readily degenerates into a morphological and biochemical phrenology. An alternative approach, based on considerations from the field of artificial intelligence, is discussed. This approach provides a description of mental phenomena as changes of state in a finite-state machine, the next state being determined by both previous states and current inputs. This concept is shown to be compatible with the descriptions of conscious experience outlined in the phenomenology of Karl Jaspers. It is suggested that neurobiological investigations should be directed towards defining the processes by which state changes occur and further seeking to define mental pathology as aberrations of these dynamic processes. Conscious psychic life is not just an agglomeration of separable and isolated phenomena, but presents a total relational context which is in constant flux and from it we isolate our particular data in the very act of describing them... All differentiations that we make are transient and must grow obsolete at some point if we do not discard them altogether. Karl Jaspers