Ulterior Motives

"The Night Face," III.

I have found the passage that I was unable to find here:

"Raven's ulterior motive was simply that he enjoyed her presence and wanted to keep her here a while longer." (p. 572)

There are

stated motives;

unstated, ulterior but nevertheless conscious motives;

ulterior and unconscious motives.

The narrative is in the third person. Therefore, it is not Raven himself but an omniscient narrator that informs us of his ulterior motive. Therefore, Raven himself could be either conscious or unconscious of this motive. However, we assume that the narrator is, as usual, recounting Raven's conscious point of view, not his unconscious psychology. That would have required a more roundabout text to clarify the distinction between Raven's conscious and unconscious mental processes. The master of writing such texts was CS Lewis and I have quoted a relevant passage twice before. See the blog search result for Feverstone.

How do neuronic interactions generate not only consciousness but also the paradox of unconscious mental processes? CS Lewis rightly rejected reductionist mechanical materialism but at the same time uncritically accepted the traditional doctrine of an immortal soul surviving in an indefinite hereafter. I think that for the time being we have to acknowledge the mystery of consciousness while continuing to try to understand both minds and brains.