I think consciousness is sufficiently different from physical things that we cannot know that it has this same "limitation." Consciousness may be the only thing that can study consciousness. If consciousness is feeling and thinking, then that which feels and thinks can feel and think about itself. Maybe?I see no obvious reason why consciousness cannot perceive itself as an object.
— ucarr
Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer
I think consciousness is sufficiently different from physical things that we cannot know that it has this same "limitation." Consciousness may be the only thing that can study consciousness. If consciousness is feeling and thinking, then that which feels and thinks can feel and think about itself. Maybe? — Patterner
You have only told me, this is your inner Self in the same way as people would say, 'this is a cow, this is a horse', etc. That is not a real definition. Merely saying, 'this is that' is not a definition. I want an actual description of what this internal Self is. Please give that description and do not simply say, 'this is that'. Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. Eṣa ta ātmā sarvāntaraḥ: That is the ātman."
Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object.
"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense”. Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further.
In our context here, it is a measurement system. This is a fact about consciousness, thus establishing its identity as an object. — ucarr
So what? How does that have anything to do with this self referential problem?What does consciousness do? In our context here, it changes the state of superposition into the state of (well-defined) position. — ucarr
I haven't researched it. But I have heard of one exception. in his introduction to his translation of The Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran speaks of Ruysbroeck.This is something which is barely said in the history of Western philosophy, — Wayfarer
I have described the discovery of Atman and Brahman – God immanent and God transcendent – as separate, but there is no real distinction. In the climax of meditation, the sages discovered unity: the same indivisible reality without and within. It was advaita, “not two.” The Chandogya Upanishad says epigrammatically, Tat tvam asi: “Thou art That.” Atman is Brahman: the Self in each person is not different from the Godhead.
Nor is it different from person to person. The Self is one, the same in every creature. This is not some peculiar tenet of the Hindu scriptures; it is the testimony of everyone who has undergone these experiments in the depths of consciousness and followed them through to the end. Here is Ruysbroeck, a great mystic of medieval Europe; every word is most carefully chosen:
The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone. In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life. — Easwaran
Later philosophers explained maya in surprisingly contemporary terms. The mind, they said, observes the so-called outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consists of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because these are the conditions of perception. In a word, the mind looks at unity and sees diversity; it looks at what is timeless and reports transience. And in fact the percepts of its experience are diverse and transient; on this level of experience, separateness is real. Our mistake is in taking this for ultimate reality, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except his dream.
Nowhere has this “mysterious Eastern notion” been formulated more succinctly than in the epigram of Ruysbroeck: “We behold what we are, and we are what we behold.” When we look at unity through the instruments of the mind, we see diversity; when the mind is transcended, we enter a higher mode of knowing – turiya, the fourth state of consciousness – in which duality disappears. This does not mean, however, that the phenomenal world is an illusion or unreal. The illusion is the sense of separateness. — Easwaran
The whole 'hard problem' arises from regarding consciousness as an object, which it is not, while science itself is based on objective facts. It's not complicated, but it's hard to see. — Wayfarer
Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects, but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness. — Skalidris
To me, this type of reasoning implies impossible premises. And to show that, let's first start with possible premises. We know that:
1) One indispensable element for the perception of objects is consciousness.
2) Time flows in one direction.
The logical conclusion from this is that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning). — Skalidris
Any materialistic theories about it is followed by this question "why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?". And any materialistic attempt to answer that question also ends up being followed by the same question, creating a circularity that seems impossible to escape. — Skalidris
However, when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular because it circles back to incorrect premises that contradict the rest of the reasoning. — Skalidris
Your first sentence implies consciousness cannot examine itself. Can you explain how this is the case given the fact that, in this very instant, we are examples of consciousness examining itself? If we're not doing that, then what are we doing? — ucarr
Can you explain why this premise is not an impossible premise leading to the logical circularity you're propounding? — ucarr
If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr
brain precedes mind, at least from the materialist point of view: brain and mind always co-exist, but there's no thought without brain, as demonstrated causally by the maxim: absent brain, absent mind. — ucarr
I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, and I don't believe it is immaterial, I believe we cannot know either of these things. — Skalidris
The hard problem of consciousness arises when one believes consciousness can successfully study (and explain) itself as an object in the world. — Skalidris
You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity? — Skalidris
So even if we can associate physical processes with consciousness, we cannot break down the intuitive meaning into smaller parts, and breaking something into smaller parts is how we explain things. — Skalidris
To go back to the "and" example, any definition or description of the material processes behind "and" includes the concept "and". — Skalidris
If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr
No, it simply implies that we do not know. — Skalidris
...we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept. — Skalidris
although I believe there are benefits to viewing things that way, I don't have reason to think it's how things are. — Patterner
So naturally, we could try to define "and" as the physical process. It could be: “And” is a circuit that receives several inputs and gives an output of 1 if all inputs are 1. You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity? — Skalidris
. It seems that people sometimes either forget that something cannot exist prior to its conception, or can reason with a distorted vision of time, leading them to enter a reasoning of how something was created as if it did not already exist and was not used throughout the reasoning. As if things could exist and not exist at the same time.
It's kind of like the liar paradox “this sentence is false” that implies the attribution of a truth value before the sentence is created, which creates some kind of weird time distortion where future and past events get mixed up and circle back to each other because they are contradictive.
"This sentence" refers to a future reference which is "this sentence is false". So it's attributing a truth value to itself that is not constructed yet. And the analysis after the creation contradicts the analysis based on events that did not happen yet so it's continuously changed — Skalidris
Presumably, Science studies reality "as-is", while Philosophy studies the world "as-if"*1. That's why scientists observe the Brain, but philosophers imagine the Mind. Consciousness is not a material object, but our Minds can picture the state or qualia or function of Knowingness*2 as-if it is an object-of-interest in a hypothetical context.The whole 'hard problem' arises from regarding consciousness as an object, which it is not, while science itself is based on objective facts. It's not complicated, but it's hard to see. — Wayfarer
Are you saying that scientists should simply leave the Mind/Body problem to impractical philosophers? I suspect that pragmatic scientists and Buddhists, with no metaphysical axe to grind, would agree with you : "shut-up and calculate"*1. Yet, metaphysical monistic Materialists also simplify the "problem" by insisting that Mind is nothing but Matter doing what comes naturally*2. So, they resolve the "problem" by telling Idealistic philosophers to butt-out.↪Gnomon
No, no, no. It's not nearly so complicated, there's no need for all this complicated verbiage. Science studies objects and objective facts - how big is it, where is it, how fast is it moving, how does it interact, what causes it, etc. This it does for everything from the sub-atomic to cosmic scales. But as consciousness does not appear as an object, it is not included in that analysis as a matter of principle. Let's not loose sight of the forest for the trees. — Wayfarer
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