So the folk psychology term of consciousness has huge problems once you try to apply it in science. It confounds biology and sociology in believing things like introspection to be a biological function rather than a linguistically structured skill. It makes the big mistake of thinking awareness to be a running realtime representation of reality rather than having this complex internal temporal structure. It makes a big mistake in creating this homuncular self that is then witnessing the representation.
So consciousness - and all its crew: unconscious, non-conscious, subconscious, preconscious, semi-conscious - is a very familiar social construct that just ought to be junked so we can start over again on a better metaphysical and scientific basis.
But no hope of that of course. — apokrisis
And as I have also explained, the actually important relation between attention and habit is that attention produces some general state of intentionality ahead of every moment of action. — apokrisis
There's no hope because the way general beliefs about the mind are socially constructed are socially useful. You can't fight what culture wants you to believe as part of its own self-preserving mythology. — apokrisis
If we think of ourselves as freely choosing souls or rational beings, separate from our gross animal physicality (or Freudian unconscious), then that is exactly the myth by which we will learn - get into the habit of - acting. If you think about the nature of consciousness in the conventional fashion, then society is assured you will behave within the scope of that conventional construct. — apokrisis
A person's totally paralyzed by a neuromuscular blockade and they're conscious. — Mongrel
A person can be conscious without having any particular intentions. — Mongrel
Where's the problem with one thing's general being another's particular. — apokrisis
So the word "cat" may be used to refer to a particular cat, or it may be used to refer to cats in general, but to confuse these two is category error, or equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover
And thought and feeling and planning and imagining aren't actions? Muscula — apokrisis
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