Thursday 10 August 2017

Could Shepherd have learnt about foetal minds from scientists in her era?


Continuing from my last blog post, I want to consider whether scientific knowledge is a contender for how Shepherd seemed so confident that foetal consciousness was plausible. So far in my research, I have looked into both early modern and contemporary science on foetuses. I want to discover both whether there was sufficient interest in foetuses in her era and just before her time and therefore whether she could have come across the notion in science and also to uncover what science today considers plausible. Here I shall share what I have found out so far about knowledge of foetuses that may have been accessible to Shepherd around the publication of her philosophical treatise ‘Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation’ in 1827.

Historical background to science about foetuses:

When I began trying to find out what academic discussions about consciousness in foetuses had taken place and what research scientists’ findings were in the early modern period, I realised that the literature on this is not abundant or readily available. For instance, overviews of embryology history do not explicitly mention consciousness and many works cited on foetal brains are early 20th century1. However, I eventually discovered things that particularly interested me.   

A recent study has shown that scientists were already specifically taking a keen interest in the anatomy of foetuses during the 18th and 19th century2. Stillborn babies in particular were relatively easy to obtain and study until 1838, which is 11 years after Shepherd publishes her 1827 treatise where she mentions foetal consciousness3. This study shows that ‘bodies of foetuses and babies were a “prized source of knowledge” by British scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were dissected more commonly than previously thought…’4. So, figuring out exactly how much knowledge Shepherd could acquire about foetuses is an open question given that we still are unsure about the extent and depth of scientific knowledge about foetuses in general during this era.

Given we are still learning about scientists’ depth of interest and knowledge about foetuses around Shepherd’s era, it is not inconceivable that Shepherd could also have more knowledge about foetuses than we expect her to have, especially given that she met and had academic discussions with eminent scientists in her day. McRobert points out that Shepherd was friends with well-known scientists throughout her life, including many who had links with the main universities in her day, including the University of London5. This, I think, is important because some of the very few drawings and studies of foetal brains I discovered were images from a best-selling book by Jones Quain, professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of London6. This book, entitled ‘Elements of Anatomy’ was first published in 1828, only a year after Shepherd’s mention of foetuses in her 1827 treatise. So it is possible that Shepherd knew him and his work on the foetal brain and could have discussed it with him because he may well have attended her London salon. I’m not yet sure what his views were on consciousness but this shows that knowledge in this field was developed enough for Shepherd to either learn about it from others or draw on their work to form her own views on the matter. Indeed, Quain was not the only scientist examining foetal brains. In France, Jules Germain Cloquet was producing a 5 volume anatomy atlas and included drawings of foetal brain development over time in the last volume7, published in 1825, only a few years prior to Shepherd’s 1827 treatise. As can been seen by the artist Jan van Rymsdyk, who worked in the UK during the 18th century producing images of foetuses, interest in producing images of foetal anatomy also stretches back to the 18th century. So, given that Shepherd was born in 1777 and van Rymsdyk worked in the UK between 1745 and 1780, it is possible that detailed pictures and knowledge of foetuses would have been accessible to Shepherd throughout her life.  

So I think it is a strong possibility that Shepherd may have learnt about foetal minds from scientists in her era and that this led her to take the notion of foetal consciousness as something she didn’t feel she needed to explain to her readers. Given that Shepherd didn’t mention how foetal consciousness crossed her mind in her 1827 treatise, and given that studies are only now, very recently grasping the extent of knowledge of and interest in foetuses in the 18th to 19th century, we shall never know for sure how it occurred to her. Indeed, at times, she belatedly mentions in a footnote that she learnt that, subsequent to writing her 1827 treatise, her views unknowingly coincide with other thinkers. So even if her ideas could be traced back to resembling something a scientist or philosopher expressed about foetal consciousness, this would not be sufficient evidence to suggest that she did not reach such conclusions through her own independent thought despite this. Nevertheless, given the above, I still think, as I did before9, that it is highly likely that Shepherd learnt about foetal minds by discussing science with eminent scientists, family friends and intellectuals who were part of her London circle, especially since science was one of her favourite subjects and informed her philosophy10. Consequently, I think her views on foetal consciousness probably sprung from these discussions and her own reading, either by learning it from them or by formulating her own thoughts on it based on knowledge available to her.

However, scientific discoveries and theories progress all the time. So, in my next blog post, I want to explore whether contemporary science can tell us if Shepherd is right in thinking foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts.





3ibid

4ibid

5McRobert, J. (2002, revised 2014). Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation. P48-9, Retrieved from philpapers.org: https://philpapers.org/archive/MCRMSA.pdf




9Question time after my paper: see


10 “Many of those in Lady Mary’s social circle shared a love of mathematics, science, and abstract analysis — subjects that played an important role in the emerging philosophy and science of the nineteenth century. They were subjects in which Lady Mary had a keen philosophical interest.”  In McRobert, J. (2002, revised 2014). Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation. P49, Retrieved from philpapers.org: https://philpapers.org/archive/MCRMSA.pdf

Shepherd, M. (1827). ‘Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation’ (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

Sunday 6 August 2017

How did the notion of foetal consciousness occur to Shepherd?


At question time, I was asked how it occurred to Shepherd (1827) that foetal consciousness was a phenomenon.

(You can read my answer to this question asked at the April 2017 History of Philosophy Conference Q&A session at the end of my paper on Academia:


This question has fascinated me ever since. Where did she get this notion from? Am I right in supposing that it may have come from scientists or could she have come across it in philosophy? Or was she merely expressing an intuition of hers? Is she right in thinking foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts? So I have been following up this question by researching what knowledge about foetal consciousness may have existed in the early modern period and how far knowledge has come since then. I am currently writing a paper on it but would also like to outline a few of my research findings here as food for thought for the Lady Mary Shepherd Philosophy Salon to mull over. I hope you find this topic as absorbing and perplexing as I have!

Philosophical background to foetal consciousness:

One mention I have come across about foetuses in the early modern period in philosophy is Arnauld using unborn children’s mind as a counterexample in order to refute Descartes’ claim that we are all conscious of our thoughts1. Contra Descartes, Arnauld argues for the possibility of having thoughts we are not aware of having.  Arnauld supports this by arguing that foetuses are an exception to Descartes’ claim because they have thoughts without being conscious of having that thought. Arnauld writes:

“The author lays it down as certain that there can be nothing in him, in so far as he is a thinking thing, of which he is not aware [conscius], but it seems to me that this is false. For by ‘himself, in so far as he is a thinking thing,’ he means simply his mind, in so far as it is distinct from his body. But all of us can surely see that there may be many things in our mind of which the mind is not aware [conscius]. The mind of an infant in its mother's womb has the power of thought, but is not aware [conscius] of it. And there are countless similar examples, which I will pass over. (CSM II 150 / AT VII 214)”2

Descartes answers Arnauld by reaffirming his intuition that we are indeed aware of all our thoughts and that foetuses are not an exception to this so his claim remains in tact:

“As to the fact that there can be nothing in the mind, in so far as it is a thinking thing, of which it is not aware [conscius], this seems to me to be self-evident. For there is nothing that we can understand to be in the mind, regarded in this way, that is not a thought or dependent on a thought. If it were not a thought or dependent on a thought it would not belong to the mind qua thinking thing; and we cannot have any thought of which we are not aware [conscius] at the very moment when it is in us. In view of this I do not doubt that the mind begins to think as soon as it is implanted in the body of an infant, and that it is immediately aware [conscius] of its thoughts, even though it does not remember this afterwards because the impressions of these thoughts do not remain in the memory. (CSM II 171–172 / AT VII 246)”3

So Descartes seems to think that Arnauld’s mistake is to assume that a lack of memory of our thoughts when foetuses has misled him to conclude that they are thinking without consciousness/awareness. Nevertheless, I wonder whether this passage could be read differently. What if Arnauld was referring to our capacity to have unconscious thoughts rather than having thoughts that you are aware of at the time but you cannot remember later on? This would better refute Descartes’ claim because it would point out the possibility of thinking without being aware of thinking and thus avoid the problem of whether you remember having thought it at a later date. Whichever way you prefer to interpret Arnauld’s objection to Descartes, it is useful to remember Jorgensen’s (2014) insightful summary of Descartes’ argument as claiming that:

“consciousness, for Descartes, is an intrinsic property of all thoughts (even of the thoughts of infants) by which the subject becomes aware of the thought itself. While this involves reflection, this is not distinct from the thought itself.”4

However, the puzzle remains because Shepherd does not refer to Descartes or Arnauld in either of her philosophical treatises. Moreover, they seem to think about consciousness differently from Shepherd (1827) in that they have not taken different levels of consciousness into account, unless we read Arnauld as referring to unconscious thought rather than a subsequent lack of memory. Even so, Shepherd (1827) goes further by positing simple and complex levels of consciousness. So given the difference between the concepts explored in Descartes’ and Arnauld’s correspondence and Shepherd’s philosophy, it still leaves open the question of whether Shepherd could have been convinced by the possibility of foetal consciousness through philosophy. Furthermore, as far as I am aware thus far in my research, foetal consciousness doesn’t seem to feature in summaries of 18th Century philosophy of consciousness either5.

This leaves science as a contender for how Shepherd may have been so confident that foetal consciousness was possible that she merely states it boldly and factually in passing without feeling the need to argue for it or explain it to her readers. I shall discuss this in my next blog post.



1Jorgensen, Larry M., "Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/consciousness-17th  

2ibid

3ibid

4ibid

5Broadie, Alexander, "Scottish Philosophy in the 18th Century", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/scottish-18th

Shepherd vol 2: Bibliography

 Bibliography: