Abstract

The purpose of the dissertation is to expose a set of experiences constitutive of an aspect of a full intellectual conversion: psychic conversion. The dissertation is divided into three chapters. The first chapter sets out the nature of intentional consciousness against the backdrop of a phylogenetic account of the differentiations of consciousness through which human thought has progressed. The second chapter sets forth the primordial context of meaning in which humans operate: common-sense consciousness. The third chapter addresses the issue at hand: the nature of psychic conversion and its relationship to intellectual conversion. ;The third chapter begins with a resume of the findings of chapter two concerning the tension within the common-sense subject which results from the foundation of the common sense subject within two dialetically opposed principles: the tendency of the biologically dominated subject to prioritize his own images and feelings and the tendency of the intelligent subject to treat him or herself, his images and feelings, as one instance among many deserving consideration. The resulting tension between these dual principles within the subject creates the context for the necessity of a coupling of a psychic conversion with an intellectual conversion. In our approach, psychic conversion results from an appropriation of the spontaneous tendency of the images in which an insight was first grasped to control the contexts of meaning to which the insight is applicable. We utilize two examples to illustrate this point. The first concerns the difficulties which were posed to scientists in the shift from a mechanist/determinist physical theory to a relativistic physical theory. The second concerns the history of the clarification of the conceptual basis of the calculus. This development in mathematics exemplifies a more broadscale requirement of thought: a liberation of thought from its primordial context of meaning as the only possible context of meaning and an acquisition by the intellectual subject of an ability to select the contexts of meaning in which he or she is to operate. The aquisition of such an insight and ability is tantamount to a psychic conversion