There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs
We use consciousness...
— Manuel
Oooo I have a problem with that.
Perhaps we are conscious before saying anything...
Consciousness isn't used; it is what uses... — Banno
It seems to me that the meaning of ‘conscious’ or ‘consciousness’ originally referred to the qualitative idea or faculty of awareness. — Possibility
Although the words “conscious” and “conscience” are used quite differently today, it is likely that the Reformation emphasis on the latter as an inner source of truth played some role in the inward turn so characteristic of the modern reflective view of self. The Hamlet who walked the stage in 1600 already saw his world and self with profoundly modern eyes. — SEP article by Robert Van Gulick
The Descriptive Question: What is consciousness? What are its principal features? And by what means can they be best discovered, described and modeled?
The Explanatory Question: How does consciousness of the relevant sort come to exist? Is it a primitive aspect of reality, and if not how does (or could) consciousness in the relevant respect arise from or be caused by nonconscious entities or processes?
The Functional Question: Why does consciousness of the relevant sort exist? Does it have a function, and if so what is it? Does it act causally and if so with what sorts of effects? Does it make a difference to the operation of systems in which it is present, and if so why and how?
The three questions focus respectively on describing the features of consciousness, explaining its underlying basis or cause, and explicating its role or value. The divisions among the three are of course somewhat artificial, and in practice the answers one gives to each will depend in part on what one says about the others. — As above
A comprehensive descriptive account of consciousness would need to deal with more than just these seven features, but having a clear account of each of them would take us a long way toward answering the “What is consciousness?” question. — As above
Are you familiar with the original paper, which is here http://consc.net/papers/facing.html — Wayfarer
Take an animal, maybe a bat, maybe a lizard. They likely have experience, they are aware of things in the world: prey, food, shelter and the like. I am skeptical that such creatures would have "self awareness" as opposed to awareness.
What is added by self-awareness that is absent in experience? The apparent fact that one is aware that it is oneself that is having the experience, not another person nor another creature. — Manuel
Well, yes, an infant would not hold abstracted ideas regarding their innate awareness of self via which other is discerned. And if that is how one chooses to understand what "consciousness" refers to then infants hold no consciousness. — javra
There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs
ns of "mine", as in what we linguistically address as my thirst, my pleasure or pain, my affinity to familiar voices, and so forth--this even if its associating these personal states of self to stimuli takes time. And, in so doing, I offer that an infant holds an ingrained awareness of self, hence a degree of self-awareness without which it (the infant) would literally perish. — javra
The following are all available free here:
https://ku-dk.academia.edu/DanZahavi
Zhavi: We in Me or Me in We? Collective Intentionality and Selfhood. March 2021 Journal of
Social Ontology
Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.2005
Zahavi: ‘Is the Self a Social Construct’, Inquiry, Vol. 52, No. 6, 551–573,
Zahavi Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood: Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness
U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press, 2019 — Joshs
Well, I think they actually are; but given that it is your thread and you are so adamant, i'll let it go for now. — Banno
I've considerable sympathy for the method you wish to use, it being not dissimilar to that of J. L. Austin. — Banno
So the term carried with it a mutuality.
Consciousness is not private. — Banno
It sometimes seem to me that trying to parse the idea of consciousness is like trying to understand what Spinoza meant by God. — Tom Storm
But consciousness is recognised by empirical evidence or observations, and more recently defined as a perceived/known capacity or potential - in self and in others. We commonly refer in these instances to an awareness of certain aspects in experience or what is evident, rather than to the faculty itself. — Possibility
I’m just thinking out loud here, and it may not make a lot of sense - but if we try to bring this back to T Clark’s discussion of the ‘experience’ aspect of consciousness, then perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of. — Possibility
But some materialists seem to argue that because our minds - or the illusion of our minds - rise from solely from matter and are pre-determined by it, there really is no "question or mystery of consciouness" or, even, "real" consciousness or mind at all. How this follows, I don't exactly understand. — hwyl
I don't think there is any mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is a behavior. — T Clark
How does one define behavior — Joshs
. I guess I mean any observable or measurable act or response that can be used to infer an internal state. — T Clark
The only difficulty which I have with your definitions are that they are a bit too precise and rigid. — Jack Cummins
I think that you may have made it too neat and tidy, with no blurry or hazy borders at all. We probably would not be able to agree fully on a definition at all on the forum. This is because trying to do so cannot be separated entirely from the questions about the nature of consciousness, which is one of the most central recurrent problems, or themes, within philosophy. — Jack Cummins
Doesn’t this destroy the subjectivity of consciousness, the very essence of awareness? — Joshs
There is only one subjective experience in my universe - mine. — T Clark
perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of.
— Possibility
I want to say that the experience is not central, since we mostly know consciousness or awareness by observing behavior. As I noted in an earlier post, there really is only one experience in my universe - mine. Anything else is inference. Maybe even anthropomorphism. Or maybe T Clarkpomorphism. — T Clark
Once you realize that the ‘you’ who experiences is always a slightly different ‘you’ , you can recognize other persons as having their own constantly changing subjectivity. If your own subjectivity is not a pure in-itself because of its constant contamination from its world , then the barrier between your own subjectivity and that of other people no longer seems so impermeable. — Joshs
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