Where's the screen? The paradoxical relationship between mind and world

Abstract

Screen Consciousness is a cross-disciplinary anthology published as part of the Consciousness, Literature & the Arts series, under the general editorship of Daniel Meyer-Dinkegrafe. The essays in the book are from a range of disciplines — art, philosophy, film theory, anthropology and technology studies — each concerned with how their field is being transformed by the new discipline of consciousness studies. The project was initiated by Pepperell and jointly edited with Punt of the University of Plymouth, each of whom also contributed an essay, Pepperell's being entitled, "Where's the Screen? The Paradoxical Relationship Between Mind and World." In it, Pepperell recasts the long-standing problem of the relationship between mind and world in the light of new theories of mind emerging from consciousness studies. Using the question of where the cinema screen stands in relation to the person viewing it, he argues that neither internalist nor externalist models of perception can adequately account for the appearance of the screen. He concludes that in fact both theories have merit and that rather than being forced to choose between the two we should accept a 'dialethic' solution in which both theories are valid, despite the obvious contradiction that results. The significance of this argument is that it offers a novel way of reconciling an enduring split between opposing camps in the philosophy of mind, internalism and externalism, and applying this to cultural theory, in this case film studies, athough the possible applications are much wider. The argument has been peer-reviewed and publicly presented in several forms, including at the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society conference in Oxford in 2005, and the book has been positively reviewed in several academic journals, including Leonardo, and Consciousness, Literature and the Arts.