Even if the reality is deterministic, the experience of consciousness-as-revelation is one in which changing situations are encountered, assessed and acted upon with relative freedom and with (potentially) anti-entropic behaviour. Short of possessing truly godlike powers of omnipotence, we are all in the same boat; we think, we act, we consider our choices to be successes or failures based on the results they bring. If all this occurs with absolute deterministic inevitability, it is far beyond our ken to truly comprehend the situation as such. — Oliver Purvis
For an individual to arrive at the conclusion that consciousness is deterministic and that therefore freedom and choice are illusions is to choose to reject the existence of choice. It is not surprising that holding such a contradictory view about oneself should cause some distress. This is not to say that the conclusion is wrong, but that it is simply not a valid perspective for a conscious being. The experience of choice is part and parcel of consciousness-as-revelation. To experience – to be – consciousness-as-revelation is to experience the sense of ownership of conscious states as they develop according to changing circumstances; the sense of ownership is the basis of the ‘I’, the phenomenon of subjectivity by means of which all experience is possible. Any mental event involving discrimination, however deterministic in absolute terms, is therefore experienced as an aspect of the self, the ‘I’; it is intended. — Oliver Purvis
Denying the experience of choice amounts to a denial of the ‘I’, or a denial of consciousness. Subjectively, this is a philosophical impasse; I can deconstruct myself no further – if ‘I’ am not conscious, ‘I’ am nothing. To escape from my despair I must choose to accept the reality of my experience of choice; the alternative can only lead to an unfulfilling process of circular reasoning. If my goal is genuinely to escape from my depression by philosophical means I must make this choice, thereby removing the cognitive block to my natural ways of thinking and being. The alternative, considered as an abstract concept, can be fascinating and informative but pragmatically it just doesn’t work. — Oliver Purvis
According to the one, I am wholly independent of Nature and of any law which I do not impose upon myself; according to the other, I am but a strictly determined link in the chain of Nature. Whether such a freedom as I have desired be at all conceivable, and, if so, whether there be not grounds which, on complete and thorough investigation, may compel me to accept it as a reality, and to ascribe it to myself, and whereby the result of my former conclusions might thus be refuted;—this is now the question.
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Which of these two opinions shall I adopt? Am I free and independent?—or am I nothing in myself, and merely the manifestation of a foreign power? It is clear to me that neither of the two doctrines is sufficiently supported. For the first, there is no other recommendation than its mere conceivableness; for the latter, I extend a proposition which is perfectly true in its own place, beyond its proper and natural boundary.
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The system of freedom satisfies my heart; the opposite system destroys and annihilates it. To stand, cold and unmoved, amid the current of events, a passive mirror of fugitive and passing forms,—this existence is insupportable to me; I scorn and detest it. I will love;—I will lose myself in sympathy;—I will know the joy and the grief of life. I myself am the highest object of this sympathy; and the only mode in which I can satisfy its requirements is by my actions. I will do all for the best;—I will rejoice when I have done right, I will grieve when I have done wrong; and even this sorrow shall be sweet to me, for it is a mark of sympathy,—a pledge of future amendment. In love only is life;—without it is death and annihilation.
But coldly and insolently does the opposite system advance, and turn this love into a mockery. If I listen to it, I am not, and I cannot act. The object of my deepest attachment is a phantom of the brain,—a palpable and gross delusion. Not I, but a foreign and to me wholly unknown power, acts in me; and it is a matter of indifference to me how this power unfolds itself. I stand abashed with my warm affections, and my virtuous will, and blush for what I know to be best and purest in my nature, for the sake of which alone I would exist, as for a ridiculous folly. What is holiest in me is given as a prey to scorn.
... — Fichte
'I' am my consciousness.
Non-conscious aspects of my organism (particularly the unconscious mind, brain, nervous and hormone systems), while essential for the creation and modification of consciousness, are not in themselves the conscious experience. Remove some part of the body, alter the function of the unconscious mind - provided consciousness has not been destroyed by the changes there will remain an experience of self: this is the essential 'I'. — Oliver Purvis
The zombie's usage of the word 'I' would elicit identical responses as before but semantically the word would be empty (for the zombie) - with no conscious 'I' to which it would refer it would be merely one more noise among the many comprising the language, a system of rules blindly applied in complex interactions emulating those of a conscious being. — Oliver Purvis
Consciousness experiences itself as a continuous process. — Oliver Purvis
The process feels intentional; C1 leads to C2 in accordance with my will. For this to be the case successive conscious states must be in some way formulated in those preceding them (otherwise they would seem to spring into existence from nothing). — Oliver Purvis
There is no pre-existing ‘I’ to which the conscious experience happens, and to which the ‘I’ will react (with surprise or otherwise). The ‘I’ is the experience, including all the affective and sensory qualities revealed therein (It may be argued that sensory perceptions - which refer often to things beyond the organism - are not part of the ‘I’. — Oliver Purvis
Most of the time my consciousness progresses without involving a reflection upon the continual revelation of developing states and the passing away of prior ones, but there are frequent occasions when I do experience surprise at the process. An unbidden thought; a long forgotten memory triggered by some sensory experience or arising with apparent spontaneity, perhaps giving rise to further associated memories; the sudden perceptual shift induced by an illusion or magic trick. These kinds of conscious events feel different to the typical conscious experience - a kind of cognitive non sequitur — Oliver Purvis
They occur (so it seems) because I caused them to occur; they feel like products of my will. It is counterintuitive to consider these thoughts as simply ‘occurring’ in the same manner as ‘unexpected’ or ‘passive’ aspects of the conscious experience, and yet this must be so given that they are part of the conscious experience: consciousness-as-revelation. In a similar way in which ‘unexpected’ thoughts arise containing a conscious sense of surprise, ‘intentional’ thoughts carry a sense of intentionality. — Oliver Purvis
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