Pre Subjective Cognition

There is, in the physicist Wolfgang Pauli's terminology, 'a psyche long before there is consciousness.' … even in highly developed minds judging … is a relatively rare incident in thinking, and thinking in living, an exception rather than the rule

McGilchrist, citing Pauli, argues that psychic life massively precedes and exceeds conscious, reflective cognition, positioning pre-subjective knowing as the norm rather than the exception.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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There is, in the physicist Wolfgang Pauli's terminology, 'a psyche long before there is consciousness.' … judging [the making of judgments in self-awareness] is a relatively rare incident in thinking … thought, therefore, is an abnormality which springs from a disturbance.

This parallel passage reinforces the claim that pre-subjective psychic activity is the baseline condition, with explicit cognitive judgment arising only as a secondary, disturbed interruption.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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prenoetic 2, 5, 12, 17 n.1, 32, 122, 125, 133, 138-40, 190, 200, 205, 237 pre-reflective self awareness 46, 73, 74, 76, 91, 105, 173, 175, 184, 190, 193

The index of Gallagher's major work documents the pervasiveness of 'prenoetic' and 'pre-reflective' processing as organising categories, demonstrating that pre-subjective cognition is a structuring concept throughout his phenomenological framework.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis

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In the beginning … our human capacities for perception and behavior have already been shaped by our movement. Prenatal bodily movement has already been organized along the lines of our own human shape, in proprioceptive and cross-modal registrations, in ways that provide a capacity for experiencing a basic distinction between our own embodied existence and everything else.

Gallagher establishes that pre-subjective, prenatal bodily organisation already constitutes a primitive cognitive orientation toward self-world differentiation, prior to any reflective subject.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis

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there is much going on in our understanding of others, in excess of and prior to the acquisition of theoretical and/or simulation capabilities … a 'massively hermeneutic' background.

Gallagher argues that intersubjective understanding rests on a pre-theoretical, pre-subjective hermeneutic background that precedes and exceeds any theory-of-mind capacity.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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the pre-action system is anticipatory … Anticipation is 'an essential characteristic of their functioning', and serves our capacity to reorganize our actions in line with events that are yet to happen.

Gallagher shows that anticipatory forward-modelling in the body schema constitutes a form of pre-subjective cognition — motor knowledge operating ahead of conscious intention.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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the sense of agency with respect to my own thought comes not retrospectively … Rather, it is a sense that is built into thinking itself. It is part of the very structure of consciousness.

Gallagher locates the pre-reflective sense of agency within the temporal structure of consciousness itself, treating it as a pre-subjective given rather than a product of post-hoc inference.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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quite naturally, we understand our own actions on the highest pragmatic level possible … ignoring possible subpersonal or lower-level descriptions, and also ignoring ideational or mentalistic interpretations.

Gallagher demonstrates that practical action-understanding operates pre-theoretically at a pragmatic level, bypassing both subpersonal mechanism and explicit mentalistic cognition.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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We feed on the cognitive unconscious quite regularly, throughout the day, and discreetly outsource a number of jobs, including the execution of responses, to its expertise.

Damasio frames the cognitive unconscious as an ongoing pre-subjective operational layer that handles cognitive tasks without conscious oversight, yet is itself shaped by prior conscious experience.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010supporting

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self-awareness and our capacity for self-reference are quite simple and robust in their basic structures … complexity is for the most part hidden away within the normal range of motor and cognitive behaviors.

Gallagher argues that the basic structures of self-awareness operate pre-subjectively within motor and cognitive comportment, becoming visible only through their pathological disruption.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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Without protention, thought continues, but it appears already made, not generated by me, appearing suddenly, already formulated as it enters into retention. It is a thought that is neither intended nor anticipated.

Gallagher's analysis of protention reveals the pre-subjective temporal mechanism that normally underwrites the sense of authorship over thought — its failure exposing the usually invisible pre-reflective layer.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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Our 'phylogenetic inheritance', then, contains … an immense amount of potential information … which probably comes into being in stages mainly during the first few weeks or months of post-natal life … Jung's 'archetypes' are probably much the same as innate preconceptions in theory.

Samuels, via Money-Kyrle, situates Jungian archetypes as phylogenetically inherited, pre-subjective preconceptions — a depth-psychological account of knowledge that precedes individual experience.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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In the situation of cognition we are concerned with the relation of the cognizant to the known … the setting up of a concept or system of concepts … is a psychical reality of decisive importance.

Pauli argues that concept-formation involves a psychical reality that is not reducible to empirical observation, gesturing toward a pre-subjective psychic dimension structuring all cognition.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting

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Prereflective experience, 25 … Pregiven, 30, 35–36 … Preafference and expectancy, 369

Thompson's index maps the conceptual neighbourhood of pre-subjective cognition — prereflective experience, the pregiven, and preafference — establishing their systematic interconnection in his enactive framework.

Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside

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metarepresentation can become hyperreflective, and as a result, the schizophrenic can over-monitor aspects of his own experience … The failure of self-monitoring may be that there is too much of it going on.

By tracing the pathology of over-monitoring, Gallagher implicitly illuminates the normally silent pre-subjective substrate: healthy cognition relies on processes that do not reach explicit self-representation.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005aside

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