Sure - my definition of consciousness is - a controversial phenomenon no one can properly define or agree upon and some even suggest is an illusion. :wink:

Descartes confirmed that it is no illusion via his cogito argument.

Though people may disagree on what even a patato is it still produces vodka and chips.


Might as well disagree on the definition of tomatoes too plenty will.

So then just because there is disagreement to the definition of something then gaining consensus on that is important before imparting to discuss further ideas pertaining to it.

Again, and I must reiterate people may disagree on anything these days even …what is gender … what is man what is woman.

But this is not only stupid but a waste of time. For nature has differentiated the two gender by the granting of balls and vaginas respectively.

Err, no. That's just your opinion., man. :joke: Consciousness remains elusive and thinkers far smarter than you (and me) still wrestle with the notion. But the good thing is, it doesn't matter. We still need to live, make choices, take actions, regardless of what carzy-arsed metaphysics one believes.

Substitute a thinker you find relevant and see how you might answer the question. — Joshs

What about Victor of Aveyron? :grin:

So Romanticism says we are all our own precious and sacred spark of divine genius. Nous. Geist. Logos. PoMo translate this theistic tradition into something just as recognisable in its existential fetishisation of contingency, relativism, temporality, and autonomy.

Pragmatism/semiotics instead places genius squarely in the communal mind of a process of rational inquiry taken to its pragmatic limits. So there is no expectation that one has to be responsible for one's own individual genius. We are all clearly trying to stand on shoulders of giants and answer questions that have already been intelligibly framed by some community of inquiry. We start with an audience demanding a suitable reply and a little impatient with crackpot or naive responses.

To shift a paradigm thus requires both a tippable collective state of mind and also the event - the idea or observation - that tips it.

But sure, you would argue that "poetry" has its place in all this. Even a central place. Discourse need not be so rational. It could usefully be allusive and exploratory. A quiet stretching of possibilities. A way to deal with the indeterminate grounding of any axiom-driven mode of inquiry.

I've always found poetry tedious. I'll just admit it. And while I loved many high romantic works of art and literature as a teen, well now I find them mostly cringy and over-wrought. So I am very prejudiced against any idea that poetry is more than entertainment. It was once important when social memory was oral. And even early philosophy was often recorded in poetic form. But we can see how much it also suffered in that choice of telling.

And anyway, there is Peircean semiotics to deal with the vagueness or firstness – the tychic spontaneity – of existence. Rationality caught up there as well. The indeterminate grounding of any axiom-driven mode of inquiry was incorporated into the mothership as part of its ongoing development.

Victor of Aveyron and other feral children illustrate both the romantic expectations that surround the idea of human specialiness and the crashing fact that we are simply a socially constructed species, a linguistic community engaged in linguistically transforming the dissipative basis of our way of life.

A shared project has been in train since cave folk first started leaving their stained handprints on rock walls. Self actualisation is just the individual limit placed on Maslow's communally-defined hierarchy of needs.

We all have some vast weight of social history that constrains our personal journeys into the meaning of life. Our world is already deeply reasonable in some collective evolutionary way. We simply stand on its shoulders and debate what further truths we think we can see.

Unless you are a Victor and skipped that essential cultural download stage while your brain was still plastic and ready to absorb it.

Nice post.

I've always found poetry tedious. I'll just admit it. And while I loved many high romantic works of art and literature as a teen, well now I find them mostly cringy and over-wrought. — apokrisis

I hear you and agree. I also feel that way about the music.

I've always found poetry tedious. I'll just admit it. And while I loved many high romantic works of art and literature as a teen, well now I find them mostly cringy and over-wrought. So I am very prejudiced against any idea that poetry is more than entertainment. — apokrisis

I hear you and agree. — Tom Storm

I'm here to speak for poetry. I don't get a lot of it, but when I do, it goes somewhere really different than non-fiction or fiction. It can lead to awareness of a whole different part of who I am.

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean there's nothing to get. I feel the same way you do about poetry about jazz. I don't get it. It doesn't move me. On the other hand, I can see there's something there. Even if it doesn't work for me, I can see and hear value while not participating. Also, a lot of people whose judgement I respect are moved by it.

:smile:

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean there's nothing to get. I feel the same way you do about poetry about jazz. I don't get it. It doesn't move me. — T Clark

Sure. I accept that art can move us. But being moved in a physical or emotional sense is not the same as being moved in an intellectual and rational sense. It is not about being “a community of inquirers” in the pragmatic sense I specified.

And I even acknowledged that poetry originally had that pragmatic function in pre-literate tradition. It fixed social knowledge in easy to remember, attractive to listen to, rhythmic form. Oratory has its own rules of delivery because that is what works when truths and history must be delivered by declamation around the tribal campfire.

So go poetry. But my tastes were shaped by the modern information idiom of clear and sparkling prose.

I like that in my fiction as much as my faction. Cinematic writing. And of course fiction as an art form is also meant to shape us as social beings. It is entertainment, but expresses a social purpose.

My objection is focused on PoMo and its pivot to “expressing feelings, asserting values”. And the ugly constipated writing it too often employs.

Always there is the plaintive bleat. “But what about poetics?” It amounts to a demand to be allowed to hide half-baked thought in the garb of obscure locution and teasing paradox.

PoMo demands that meaning can never be allowed to settle securely in some form of words. And poetry is the art form that gives social legitimacy to that abdication of philosophical duty.

Also, I do think setting yourself a task of self-awareness is pointless. — Tom Storm

Fortunately a great many people don't share this unfortunate view.

"Anyone who says it is impossible to obtain this says no more than it is impossible for him personally to obtain it" ~Fichte

Fortunately a great many people don't share this unfortunate view. — Pantagruel

It might be partly my fault but you're missing my point that trying to be self-aware is probably not how it is done. Witness all the obtuse and self-serving wankers who embrace self-development and awareness workshops in the New Age movement. If you're working on it, you are probably moving away from it. Tao.

I'm here to speak for poetry. I don't get a lot of it, but when I do, it goes somewhere really different than non-fiction or fiction. It can lead to awareness of a whole different part of who I am. — T Clark

I'm glad people like poetry and I wish I did. But I don't. You're probably right about the jazz comparison. Do you consider Tao Te Ching a work of poetic imagination?

I'm glad people like poetry and I wish I did. But I don't. You're probably right about the jazz comparison. Do you consider Tao Te Ching a work of poetic imagination? — Tom Storm

I'll go out on a limb, because I haven't thought this through. Yes, I guess I think poetry aims at the same target Lao Tzu does. That's how it feels to me.

I thought so and I've often wanted to ask you that.

But being moved in a physical or emotional sense is not the same as being moved in an intellectual and rational sense. It is not about being “a community of inquirers” in the pragmatic sense I specified. — apokrisis

For me, self-awareness is not an intellectual or rational exercise, at least it's not only that. It feels like most of my interaction with the world is intellectual, so that's where a lot of my awareness focuses. You can see that in a lot of my posts. I tend to be very aware of what I know and how I know it, how I process ideas. That's the engineer in me. It's both a temperamental inclination and a result of many years of effort. But those aren't the only kinds of awareness. Over the years I've become much more aware of my emotional and physical experiences. The way my body feels. Intuition about how other people feel. I'm probably weakest in my perceptual awareness. I tend to overlook a lot. I'm not very observant of the outside world.

But breaking it up like that is artificial. There's really only one awareness, at least for me. It all fits together and it's not rational at all at bottom. It's just a sense of the world and how it fits together and how I fit into it.

Witness all the obtuse and self-serving wankers who embrace self-development and awareness workshops in the New Age movement. If you're working on it, you are probably moving away from it. Tao. — Tom Storm

Self awareness is a cause of much mental ill health in modern society as people find it isolating and socially crippling. Drink and drugs are needed to blot it out.

The truth that the Tao captures is that we should aim for flow. What people enjoy is being in a state of “unconscious” habit and skill - engrossed in some useful activity.

And that is the equilibrium state that brains are designed for. To exist in the moment rather than to stand back from the moment.

Self awareness is socially constructed technology to get members of a society to filter their actions through a communal lens. It is the way we police our impulses and feelings. It is where we negotiate a social agenda from behind social mask.

That is what then makes us human. It goes with the territory. But that then is why it is so important to really understand what is going on and not fall for romanticised propaganda.

Does Western go-go society value flow? Does it value craftsmanship and true community?

That is why we recognising wokism as another damaging step in Western political technology. It is as bad as neoliberalism or any other social movement that requires us to police our minds in ways that are not necessarily in our best interest.

New Age cults even exploit positive psychology. I attended a Landmark Forum weekend as an observer to see what was actually going on. The social tech being delivered was in itself laudable and transformative. But that was the introductory course. Where it turns dodgy is the multilevel marketing of further videos, texts and “deeper work” than follows.

So self awareness is tech we can learn, a skill we can master. But you have to start with how neurobiology evolved to function. The general goal of the brain as a prediction machine is a state of skilled and unthinking flow.

And then when it comes to the socially constructed aspect of selfhood, you would want to understand the implications of what you are taking on board. There are choices. But few ever realise this is the game. They just go for what’s on the shelf as the expected purchase. And if not that, they shop in the gluten free or organic aisle instead.

I find a lot to agree with there. I spent much of the 1980's attending New Age workshops, seminars, lectures, yoga, meditation, theosophy, Scientology, Gurdjieff Movements, Buddism, Wicca, etc. Got to know some of those folk quite well and found they were as riddled with acquisitiveness, ambition, jealousy, and anxiety as any neo-liberal, freedom loving, greed-is-good secular corporate hustlers I also knew. There were some lovely and good people there too, I should add.

For me, self-awareness is not an intellectual or rational exercise, at least it's not only that. — T Clark

See my post above…

Over the years I've become much more aware of my emotional and physical experiences. The way my body feels. Intuition about how other people feel. I'm probably weakest in my perceptual awareness. I tend to overlook a lot. I'm not very observant of the outside world. — T Clark

It’s interesting to hear you describe that. And I understand as a lot of my reading to research these issues is case studies of this kind of thing. Oliver Sacks style reports.

Indeed I went through this myself right at the start when I began investigating the “machinery of thought” and trying to introspect. It was shocking how much I just wasn’t in the habit of seeing because I didn’t yet have the theoretical constructs to recognise it as it happened.

Now it is a learnt skill and I can do it without much thought and effort. It is part of what I have made predictable about my “self”.

But breaking it up like that is artificial. There's really only one awareness, at least for me. It all fits together and it's not rational at all at bottom. It's just a sense of the world and how it fits together and how I fit into it. — T Clark

I disagree. If you have integrated your various forms of experience under the one running sense of self, then that has to be a learnt rationalisation now practiced to the degree it is a fluid habit.

But it doesn’t matter how you frame the change. Obviously for you it is important that it has come together in a useful way.

And that is why I tout positive psychology. Generally it is a tool to articulate your own unconscious thinking - externalise it in a way that can be rationally critiqued and then reframed in a fashion that feels more pragmatically true to the life you must actually live.

If your parents always wanted to you to be a good straight Catholic, or some other such “self”, how do you kick out the old you and find the new you?

You have to change the framework rationally - linguistically - as it was all your old habitual self-talk that was keeping you locked in the previous place,

And if you had never developed the habit of noticing certain kinds of sensations or feelings, then again you would still have to talk out a plan of what a change in attentional habits would be like to start to then live like that.

Hah. I was lucky to have parents with a positive psychology approach. So even joining the Boy Cubs, I was immediately aware of its coercive and cultish aspects. I didn’t last long. As soon as they tried to make me boss others around as a troop leader, I was off.

Likewise at 10, I joined another friend in his judo classes given by a white zen Buddhist monk. I was fascinated as an observer of human eccentricities, but could never have been a convert. Especially not sat in the tropical sun in lotus position, supposedly meditating as I could hear the mosquitoes circling lazily down towards exposed flesh.

Self awareness is a cause of much mental ill health in modern society as people find it isolating and socially crippling. Drink and drugs are needed to blot it out. — apokrisis

This makes me think of something my older brother told me. Welbutrin is an antidepressant that is also sometimes used to help people quit smoking. It was prescribed for him because he had tried to quit many times without success. He told me he stopped taking it because he became much more aware of how badly he had treated some people in his life. It became an overwhelming experience which interfered with his life.

The truth that the Tao captures is that we should aim for flow. What people enjoy is being in a state of “unconscious” habit and skill - engrossed in some useful activity...

...Self awareness is socially constructed technology to get members of a society to filter their actions through a communal lens. It is the way we police our impulses and feelings. It is where we negotiate a social agenda from behind social mask. — apokrisis

I don't see self-awareness as a technology at all. Perhaps you could call the practices that lead to awareness, e.g. meditation, technologies, but I think that's a stretch. For me, the Tao and self-awareness are states where we are released from the communal lens and our social mask. The search for self-awareness is a search for surrender of our wills. I think to achieve that fully is impossible. It certainly is for me. In the meantime, the effort is enjoyable. The effort not to expend effort.

Now it is a learnt skill and I can do it without much thought and effort. — apokrisis

I agree it is a learned skill. It's taken me more than 50 years to get even as far as I have.

I disagree. If you have integrated your various forms of experience under the one running sense of self, then that has to be a learnt rationalisation now practiced to the degree it is a fluid habit. — apokrisis

And I disagree. I don't think the experience of everything all at once is artificial or a rationalization. My intellect is not separate from my body, my emotions, my perceptions, all my experiences. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for us to have dueling awarenesses here. There's no reason to expect that different people would think of it or experience of it in the same way.

And that is why I tout positive psychology. Generally it is a tool to articulate your own unconscious thinking - externalise it in a way that can be rationally critiqued and then reframed in a fashion that feels more pragmatically true to the life you must actually live. — apokrisis

I wasn't familiar with positive psychology, so I looked it up. It made me think of my father. He was an engineer working for Dupont his entire career, starting out as a supervisor on shift work, getting into management, and ultimately working on labor relations. The last years of his career he spent trying to get unions and management to work together. That involved committees of union workers sharing ideas with management and other I guess you would call them "stakeholder engagement" practices. He was definitely a pragmatist and he took principles and practices from all over the place - management theory, eastern philosophies, human potential practices like encounter groups. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew about and used positive psychology. I think he really did see what he was doing as technological - as human engineering I guess you'd say.

I hope the way I described it doesn't sound condescending. He was trying to do what all good managers do - balance the needs of the company with the needs of the people who worked with him and for him. He wanted to make peoples lives better at the same time making them more productive. He always said that workers got his ideas right away and were enthusiastic about them but management resisted every way they could.

But that way, his way, doesn't work for me. That's not how I see people.

That's not how I see people. — T Clark

Do you mind if I ask you what you mean? I am not clear how your father saw people from your account other than he tired to provide a positive work space based on an eclectic approach.

Do you mind if I ask you what you mean? I am not clear how your father saw people from your account other than he tired to provide a positive work space based on an eclectic approach. — Tom Storm

I think he saw people in a way similar to my interpretation of the kinds of process @apokrisis described. He was an engineer and he saw labor management processes as an engineering problem. He used to make lists and draw flow diagrams of how worker/management interactions should work. He tried to apply what he had gotten from his sources in what seemed to me to be a rigid, mechanical way.

Sorry, Apokrisis, now you can set me straight for any misrepresentation.

On the other hand, my interactions with other people are almost entirely intuitive based on my personal reactions to the situations and my perceptions of how others are thinking and feeling. I'm not a wonderful manager. It's very possible his style worked better in practice than mine did. I don't know.

That makes sense. Thanks.

How do we develop our consciousness and self-awareness?

By using a combination of ratchets & pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps of course! :snicker:

Three key bits of advice here.

First note you need to differentiate between the neurobiological awareness of animals and the language and culture expanded conciousness of humans. Awareness is biological. Self awareness is socially constructed. Knowing that should deflate a large part of the problem as it is the neurobiology that is the complicated bit.

Second, it will help to realise that awareness is not about a passive neural display - a representation of the world - that then requires some further mysterious witness. This is the dualistic Cartesian mistake. Awareness is a pragmatic and embodied modelling relation with the world. The brain exists to predict how the world could be in the light of actions that might be taken. It is an active engagement rather than a passive contemplation.

A third thing that could be added when it comes to getting started on the neurobiology is that neuroscientists prefer to talk about awareness in terms of its two critical levels of process - habit and attention. As part of the whole prediction-based design of the brain, it is set up to learn to process the world as automatically and “unconsciously” as possible. Attention only kicks in if the world doesn’t fit the predictions and the brain has to pause to generate some new predictive state that better explains the available evidence. — apokrisis

Very well put.

I don't see self-awareness as a technology at all. — T Clark

That isn’t disparaging. It is to say it is is another level of semiotic regulation. And we can aspire to professional standards and evidence backed practice. It isn’t something mystic that can only be acquired in encounter groups or exotic eastern practices.

For me, the Tao and self-awareness are states where we are released from the communal lens and our social mask. — T Clark

But is that attaining self awareness or shedding it? I’m talking about finding a better way to integrate with a community of minds rather than just escaping its constraints. Our challenge is how to find a balance in that regard, not particularly about finding a way to disappear into some sublime sense of self.

A capable person can chose to lead or follow, assert or surrender. It is the rationality of making those choices - and not taking either choice personally - that is the skill.

my intellect is not separate from my body, my emotions, my perceptions, all my experiences. — T Clark

Again, holism is the oneness of the many, and the multiplicity that forges its oneness. Parts and wholes are that which are both differentiated and integrated. So it is not an opposition but a synergy in the systems view.

He was an engineer and he saw labor management processes as an engineering problem. He used to make lists and draw flow diagrams of how worker/management interactions should work. He tried to apply what he had gotten from his sources in what seemed to me to be a rigid, mechanical way. — T Clark

Sounds like you think he achieved something nevertheless. But DuPont. How easy would it be to create genuine community values in an industrial corporation?

Thanks. I think I impressed myself. :cool:

It's in line with Dennett's view.

Buzzkill. :rofl:

What do you mean by the 'self-complex'?
— Amity

Ideas and memories that one identifies with. Answers you might give if I asked you what you're like or who you are. I am ... 70 years old, male, a gardener, philosopher, mathematician, red hot lover, I like marmite and hill walking and I speak French and am married to... not the facts, the habitual ideas or thoughts that occur to me. — unenlightened

OK. The answers concern 'identity'. An amalgamation of all of the above gives a steady sense of self?
How we know, or think we know, who we are lies in the telling of a short or long story by self or others. I'm reminded of Dan Dennett and, I think, the Narrative Self [*]. My story has gaps, I've forgotten the details but it left an impression.

Of course, we can always be lying to ourselves or others have taken control of our identity.
Are we who we should, could be or really are? The delusions of self, the relationship with the truth - all need to be considered. Is that not the point of 'getting to know you'? The basis from which we can start taking control of the way we go or think? Our paths...

Taking the time to notice, pause and reflect when a thought 'occurs' outside our usual pattern.
And then, if we're lucky, to share in a discussion by writing stuff down. Sometimes, we don't know what we think until we do that.
If our minds can be flexed, are flexible, then change can happen with increased awareness, I think.
So selves and skills of listening can develop within this kind of community...or not...

The OP asked:

Third; what are the barriers? — Universal Student

I hope @Universal Student is still around.
Already mentioned as a mental obstacle is 'distraction'. That can lead to not even hearing far less listening in a careful manner. Also, no desire to question if what we tell ourselves or others is true.
Perhaps, if we look too hard our sense of wellbeingness would be shaken to its core.
However, a core self is not completely shattered that can be rebuilt on a sounder foundation.
Change the narrative?
Know Yourself. As much as you can...

How would that manifest as a 'silence' or an 'emptiness'?
— Amity

I have to say that, not because I experience something, but because in making the distinction, I have necessarily excluded every positive experience as being 'contents of awareness'. It doesn't manifest, it is the condition required for manifestation. Thus if my inner condition is a cacophony of noise, how can I hear anything? If my head is full of thoughts and anxieties about tomorrow, I cannot give attention to what you are saying. So to be aware is to be silent internally. It is to have room for something new. — unenlightened

I've read this a few times now and the meaning is not yet in my grasp. In other words. I'm :chin:
Perhaps if you rephrase the first 2 sentences?

I agree that if you are too anxious about future events and these thoughts fill your mind to capacity, then it is unlikely that you are able to give full attention to the present.
However, we have the capacity to compartmentalise mental activity, our thoughts.
We 'get over' ourselves, when we need to fulfil our social roles as carers, doctors or red hot lovers.

I agree, sometimes 'to be aware' might mean an internal silence, depending on context.
What our aims are, what we hope to achieve. Internal silence is not always needed rather the opposite.
It might give us room for something new, or something old...another same old story but one which is unique to the individual. Something blue. The winds of change.

[*]
Dan Dennett:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/85/Spinning_Narratives_Spinning_Selves
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_the_illusion_of_consciousness