Kai
New
I've been thinking a lot lately about the nature of consciousness and the problem with the idea that consciousness can be considered a "thing in itself" after the fashion of the air and the ocean. So this form of essentialism would argue that consciousness does not need to be conscious of anything in order to be fully aware...for consciousness need only be aware of itself.
I cannot say I am persuaded by this in light of everything I see in the natural world. Rather, it seems to me as if consciousness is a kind of relation or dialectic function that arises between two simultaneously expressing and co-dependent facts; 1) a "thing perceived" that relies for its existence and defintion upon a "perceiver, and 2) a "perceiver of things" that relies for its existence and definition on a "thing perceived."
Thus I would say that my consciousness is not really a single "thing." Rather, I would say that my consciousness is really now one thing and now the other. Now it is my taste of a salty food. Now it is that chill arriving from the wind around the door frame. Now it is the edge of the sunlight breaking out behind that cloud. Consciousness essentialism would say that there is a constant and unchanging single thing called "consciousness" behind all of these instances. But I question this. I suspect that it doesn't really make any sense to talk about consciousness existing in itself, anymore than it makes sense to talk about seeing existing in itself, or hearing existing in itself.
There is also the evolutionary angle on this. A bacterium or an amoeba, assuming it has a species of awareness (and I do assume that) can only have, by virtue of the breadth of responses and aptitudes it displays, an extremely primitive form of "awareness" relative to what human beings have. To speak of such lifeforms as being "conscious" is by and large meaningless relative to what WE mean and experience as "consciousness" (i.e. as human beings). It would be far more appropriate to call their condition some kind of proto-awareness or proto-proto-awareness. Something that is not yet minded in any way. Strictly speaking, we could not say that an amoeba was "aware," only that it's awareness actually consisted of "an awareness of moving left" or "an awareness of an appetite to move left" or "an awareness of a stronger stimulus of chemical X to the right" etc.
It also seems very likely to me that our own conscious minds are built up out of many textured layers and sequences of these kind of proto-awarenesses. Indeed, new Gestalts may emerge in that evolutionary process, but obviously if mindedness could have arisen without this layering up from proto-awareness over eonal time, then that would have happened (which it hasn't).
This is also particularly relevant for the issue of life after death or the possible continuation of some form of awareness post mortem. Broadly speaking we can identify three possibilities (excluding simple extinction, which is a fourth possibility)
1) The fate of our minded awareness shadows the fate of our complex forms...namely that complex awareness disintegrates again into its components...presumably, eventually, back down into the primitive proto-awarenesses from which it originally emerged.
2) awareness continues at some kind of human level
3) awareness expands to some kind of species level or universalized (though not necessarily strongly agentic) awareness form.
I don't have a finally held view of which of these possibilities may be true, though I think the first one is under-considered. It is also possible that a combination of such as 1 and 3 may be conceivable.
So anyway, I offer the topic for conversation.
I cannot say I am persuaded by this in light of everything I see in the natural world. Rather, it seems to me as if consciousness is a kind of relation or dialectic function that arises between two simultaneously expressing and co-dependent facts; 1) a "thing perceived" that relies for its existence and defintion upon a "perceiver, and 2) a "perceiver of things" that relies for its existence and definition on a "thing perceived."
Thus I would say that my consciousness is not really a single "thing." Rather, I would say that my consciousness is really now one thing and now the other. Now it is my taste of a salty food. Now it is that chill arriving from the wind around the door frame. Now it is the edge of the sunlight breaking out behind that cloud. Consciousness essentialism would say that there is a constant and unchanging single thing called "consciousness" behind all of these instances. But I question this. I suspect that it doesn't really make any sense to talk about consciousness existing in itself, anymore than it makes sense to talk about seeing existing in itself, or hearing existing in itself.
There is also the evolutionary angle on this. A bacterium or an amoeba, assuming it has a species of awareness (and I do assume that) can only have, by virtue of the breadth of responses and aptitudes it displays, an extremely primitive form of "awareness" relative to what human beings have. To speak of such lifeforms as being "conscious" is by and large meaningless relative to what WE mean and experience as "consciousness" (i.e. as human beings). It would be far more appropriate to call their condition some kind of proto-awareness or proto-proto-awareness. Something that is not yet minded in any way. Strictly speaking, we could not say that an amoeba was "aware," only that it's awareness actually consisted of "an awareness of moving left" or "an awareness of an appetite to move left" or "an awareness of a stronger stimulus of chemical X to the right" etc.
It also seems very likely to me that our own conscious minds are built up out of many textured layers and sequences of these kind of proto-awarenesses. Indeed, new Gestalts may emerge in that evolutionary process, but obviously if mindedness could have arisen without this layering up from proto-awareness over eonal time, then that would have happened (which it hasn't).
This is also particularly relevant for the issue of life after death or the possible continuation of some form of awareness post mortem. Broadly speaking we can identify three possibilities (excluding simple extinction, which is a fourth possibility)
1) The fate of our minded awareness shadows the fate of our complex forms...namely that complex awareness disintegrates again into its components...presumably, eventually, back down into the primitive proto-awarenesses from which it originally emerged.
2) awareness continues at some kind of human level
3) awareness expands to some kind of species level or universalized (though not necessarily strongly agentic) awareness form.
I don't have a finally held view of which of these possibilities may be true, though I think the first one is under-considered. It is also possible that a combination of such as 1 and 3 may be conceivable.
So anyway, I offer the topic for conversation.