From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Mon Sep 12 2005 - 19:23:32 BST
Reinier (Paul, Scott mentioned) --
Your efforts to clarify and define Consciousness for the MoQ community will
be appreciated by the MD participants, and I think you've made some
important distinctions toward that end. Some of your conclusions, however,
will not be found acceptable by those outside of this esoteric group, and I
include myself in that category.
For example:
> Experiencing, or valueing (or whatever name you like to give it)
> is the creator of our reality. Consiousness is a result of it, not the
> source of it.
You see, I think you've got this backwards. Using your terms, I would say
experiencing and valuing are the result of a "conscious" (i.e., sentient)
Creator.
I also disagree with the comparison you attempt to draw between
(philosophical?) Naturalism and Teleology:
> Philosophical naturalism and teleology investigate the existence
> or non-existence of an organizing principle behind those
> natural laws and phenonema. Philosophical naturalism
> asserts that there are no such principles. Teleology asserts
> that there are.
Your reference to "principles" here is somewhat ambiguous, since Newton's
laws and Darwin's evolutionary principles are certainly recognized by and
applied to the investigations of naturalists. I'm not sure what
"philosophical naturalism" means, but the common notion of naturalism in
Science involves the logical positivist approach -- i.e., developing
experimentally provable principles from empirical observations of the
physical world. Teleology does not "investigate"; it is a belief system
based on reductive logic and intuitive concepts.
I do agree with the following axioms you have posited.
> DQ is Essence
> Man is not the just the sum of his cells
> Consiousness is not a product of the brain.
> A human can experience his body. This means the body is an other.
I have problems with this one, however:
> A human can experience his thoughts.
> This means his thoughts are an other.
This is true only if you consider the human body (brain) to be the
"experiencer". If consciousness "is not a product of the brain", then
conscious thoughts must emanate from something else. What is the source and
its locus? To me, a thought is one's proprietary awareness of an idea or
concept, but you have not defined "awareness". And that's the central
problem this DM thread was meant to resolve. Unfortunately, it also appears
to be a point of major disagreement between us.
You say:
> A human can't generally experience other human's thought ...
Leaving the mediums' claims for thought transpondence aside, this shows you
understand thought to be proprietary, in the same way that feelings are
proprietary. Unless you restrict "thoughts" to the category of
"communicated ideas", in which case they become objective, your conclusion
is invalid and, I think, incomplete. "Having" a thought infers a sensible
subject -- the "thinker" who is aware of the thought.
Consciousness is arguably the most difficult human function to nail down
definitively. According to Sir William Hamilton, "Consciousness cannot be
defined: we may be ourselves fully aware what consciousness is, but we
cannot without confusion convey to others a definition of what we ourselves
clearly apprehend. The reason is plain: consciousness lies at the root of
all knowledge."
Paul, in a new subject heading he's titled "Mudville", exhorts us to advise
him if we observe an "excessive level of abstraction and jargon in some of
the posts on this forum." If you review the recent exchange between Paul
and Scott, you'll see why his conscience may be troubling him.
A suggestion. Can we start with Awareness and proceed from there?
I submit that Awareness infers "subjectivity", therefore would exclude
biological responses to chemical agents from this category.
Does an atom or molecule possess awareness? (I say no.)
Does an amoeba? (Probably not.)
Does an earthworm? (Probably.)
Does a dog? (Yes.)
Does a human? (Yes, including self-awareness.)
Let's forget about the "specificity" of particular thoughts, and focus on
the what it means to "be aware". I believe subjective sensibility is the
foundation of all awareness. My Webster's Collegiate defines "aware" as
"having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge." Aware,
cognizant, and conscious are all synonyms inferring "having knowledge of
something, and esp. of something not generally known or apparent". Can we
at least agree that "showing" awareness is of less philosophical importance
than "having" awareness?
If you can agree to this strategy, we can then proceed to an epistemological
analysis of what Awareness entails and whether it necessitates a
non-biological source.
Best regards.
Ham
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