Then I would be anxious to hear your account. — unenlightened
When a blind man feels his way with a stick, his consciousness is in the curb he feels, at the end of the stick, in the hand holding the stick, in the brain modelling the environment, and the feet propelling him and confirming his model. When an earthbound astronomer uses the Hubble telescope his consciousness is amongst the stars just as much as it is in his head. Or to put it better - consciousness is not located, because it is virtual. — unenlightened
Consciousness is really composed of elements which are related to the past, and elements which are related to the future. So I think consciousness is "in" the past and "in" the future, both at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover
The best sense I can make of it is that you are speaking as thought and in a thought world, because in the thought world, the model world, time has exactly that property, the model can be run forwards or backwards, restarted, altered, relived, and so on. One has equal access to every moment at any moment. — unenlightened
I have to confess I am struggling to relate this to my experience at all. — unenlightened
My pension is due next week, the government is usually pretty reliable. But I do not become conscious of these things themselves ( as distinct from the ideas that I have relayed here), before they happen. I cannot spend next week's pension today, or bathe in the spring sunshine. — unenlightened
But the painful frustrating world I live in does not afford that freedom; the compensation though is that it is real, not thought. — unenlightened
Well, isn't this the point? You are talking about consciousness. What is consciousness other than "the thought world"? You dismiss my description of consciousness by saying that I am talking about the thought world. What sense does that make? Consciousness is the thought world. — Metaphysician Undercover
I wouldn't say "I am consciousness" because I recognize that there is a significant part of my being which doesn't appear to be part of my consciousness. There are activities of my being which do not seem to enter into my consciousness, the unconscious part of me. — Metaphysician Undercover
So the experiment, or demonstration which would settle this would be a demonstration which would indicate whether or not there is a real difference between past and future in the physical world. — Metaphysician Undercover
Are you talking about unconscious thought, or more bodily processes? Usually, as you seem to suggest, people talk about self-consciousness in terms of being aware of thoughts, but do not talk about self-consciousness in terms of being aware of having an erection or a sore thumb. They identify as having a body, and being a mind. This is largely unchanged by the idea that the mind extends beyond what is conscious. And in such case, I would expect you to say, if not 'I am consciousness', then something like 'I am the mind of which I am incompletely conscious'. Which is to locate oneself as an inner world, in the body but other than it. — unenlightened
Then a glance at this thread should convince you. You can readily scroll back and look at all the past posts, but where the future posts will be is blank. — unenlightened
How is it that I can know about a whole lot of internal parts, like intestines and such, yet I can't really say that I am consciously aware of them? It seems strangely contradictory that I could say I know about my duodenum, but I am not conscious of it. Am I using "conscious" in a bad way? Or am I really conscious of my duodenum, but not directly conscious of it? — Metaphysician Undercover
When I scroll back, I am not really seeing the posts in the past, I am seeing the past posts in the present. I cannot see the future posts in the present, so you think that this amounts to a substantial difference between past and future. — Metaphysician Undercover
You think that consciousness is "in the present", and I think that the present is "in consciousness". It appears like we would need to determine where the future is to resolve this. — Metaphysician Undercover
All of which goes to say that to a huge extent, what I think I am is a story I have been told. — unenlightened
When you put it that way, It seems not so much of a disagreement. Especially because I would rather say, 'The present is consciousness, consciousness is the present'. It is the 'place' where all posts are created. — unenlightened
Sometimes I might use "conscious of" to include all those stories I have been told, without even questioning the truth of some of them. But other times I might use "conscious of" to refer strictly to things which I am immediately aware of through my senses. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think that this is an over simplification now, to say "the present is consciousness". If we look back to what you were saying about modeling reality, I think that "the present" within consciousness is part of a model. — Metaphysician Undercover
Without memory and interpretation, the visual sensation is meaningless; it acquires meaning in relation to remembered experience, learned stories, models of world and self. I have been emphasising the sensory, because philosophy tends to neglect it's importance, and because my claim is that it is prior to what one might call the inner life, because all these stories, including the one we are building here, must enter through the senses. — unenlightened
It is nonsense if it does not accord with the senses. If it does not accord with other stories we might have heard, then it might be that those stories don't quite make sense. So if it is non-story, I don't mind too much, but if it is non-sense I'm in trouble. So immediately, most of my senses slot easily into a story of my familiar home my laptop, my favourite site, and my focus is on this new post that is trickling out as I type. All the background readily 'fits' the story of my life - the story makes sense of the senses. Where I have to pay attention, is to making sure if I can that the story I am telling of the nature of consciousness also makes sense of the senses. — unenlightened
All day long, I'm seeing, hearing, touching, etc, and importantly, acting -typing, walking, carrying, eating, etc. At the end of the day, I seek out a place that is dark, quiet, and lie down for preference on something soft enough that I can hardly feel my own weight. And just to be on the safe side, I close my eyes. Then, if the stories don't insist on telling themselves, I go to sleep. — unenlightened
Now it is fairly uncontroversial to say that the external world - the coffee, the armchair, etc is not conscious, not the location of awareness, but only the content, the provocation.
It is rather more radical though to claim that the internal world, memories, models, thoughts, are not conscious either, but are also only more contents and provocations. — unenlightened
Now dreaming itself is not actually consciousness, but the inner activity which is responsible for dreaming may be prior to the sensory activity, only producing consciousness when the two are united. — Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that all of the stories enter through the senses, but don't you think that there is a part of consciousness which is not a story? What about instinct and intuition? Things come to consciousness through these sources, and I don't think that this is a story, nor do I think that what comes to consciousness from intuition and instinct, comes through the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover
But I think that there must first be an inner capacity to make sense of things, and this inner capacity allows us to construct things from what we perceive with the senses. That is why I would rather place the "inner" aspect of consciousness as prior to the sensing aspect. — Metaphysician Undercover
No the I is the nexus of disorder, dreaming is the brain's attempt at rectification of this disorder — JJJJS
It is when you use the words 'capacity', 'freedom', and 'creativity' that I start to reach my mystical singularity, where stories must end as explanations, and where they come from. Everything one can know, everything one can grasp, everything that makes sense, comes from the past, and this is the physicalist story that is all stories - almost. But we know, as part of that story, that the past is inadequate to the future; we know too that the emptiness of the vacuum is seething with activity.
So there is a capacity, an emptiness, that is capable of originating the new at any moment, and there can be no explanation of it, because an explanation would relate it to the past and it is new, original. Not the capacity is new, it is always there, but what comes from it comes from nothing, and that is what makes it original and creative. It is not thought, not memory, not sensation, though it functions through all of these. Let's call it 'consciousness', as it appears in humans. — unenlightened
The centre of disorder is the I — JJJJS
But isn't this a kind of delusion, to apprehend oneself as the centre? — Metaphysician Undercover
But the disorder is not in the "I", which is the self-determined "order", it surrounds the "I". — Metaphysician Undercover
But this idea of a first, a something coming from nothing seems rather repugnant to me. It seems unreasonable to me, to think that something could come from nothing. That's why when you described being creative, and original, as producing something from nothing, I turned to the inner instinct and intuition, imagination, to say that it didn't really come from nothing. So when I turn to the evolutionary memory, the DNA, and think about the first, the original life on earth, I don't think of this as something coming from nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover
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