what is the nature of consciousness? i would say that the nature of consciousness are the sensations. without sensations we could not have consciousness , therefore senses (the co-producers of sensations) are essential for any kind of consciousness to be present in a living thing.
this type of consciousness is present in every animal which reacts to external stimuli.
Something happens, and be it a noise, physical contact, smell, taste, or sight, it provokes a response from the sense organs of the animal resulting in a perception. this perception is either recognized and associated with a prior experiance or it is treated as new/foriegn.
what makes human consciousness different than any other animal? larger memory capacity? more eloborate associations? do we percieve the world in a different way than animals?(dogs lack color vision, bats us sonar for navigation)
I don’t think Consciousness has a “nature” because when thinking occurs, language is used, and language can only ever describe experience intentionally.
Sartre uses the example of Constantine conquering an empire as an end in which to establish a counter weight; this city lacks such and such. The motive for the action is intentional and doesn’t exist, that is, the state which is ideal, and which is achieved, is in the moment of its realization rather than its discovery. It is precisely because Constantine posited what was lacking that his consciousness was intentional, and therefore not essential or “natural” in the sense that consciousness was involved in a present state of realization; the consciousness was for and toward that end. The ideal was transcendent to the real when it took form as an intent.
The same theme Sartre describes in his analysis of “the waiter.” The roll of the being of the waiter is “played at” and intentional; it is an effort. The waiter moves a little too perfectly, his gestures are in a sense generic and inauthentic. The ideal of the “self” here in the consciousness is a project of existing and has no preceding nature; the “waiter,” precisely because he is “playing at being such,” does not exist as a nature because it is chosen and directional; it is an intentional project, just as the efforts of Constantine who posited a lacking object in order to have a motive. The waiter is a project that involves choice…the role is not inherent or innate.
what i meant by nature was obviously “essential charectoristics”, i think its quite obvious that sensations are a prerequisite to consciousness. consciousness is also an essential prerequisite to thinking, as we can’t think about nothing, thats not thinking.
language is how we communicate our thoughts,whether the median is air(sound) our paper(sight) we still need the senses to communicate. so even if language and thinking are to be included in what we call consciousness, sensation is an essential part of it.
so, id say that the nature of consciousness is to process information. where does the information come from? the interaction of our senses with the world arround us. reading a book is the same as going for a walk in so far as we are conscious while doing both. everything in the universe has some charectoristic which makes it distinct from other things. our awareness/consciousness is what allows us to differentiate one thing from another.
There’s a subtle problem with this. It would be impossible to distinguish between a primary form of conscious perception, such in the case of seeing an object without thinking about it, and a secondary form, where one thinks to themself “I am seeing an object.”
In order for it to be verified, it must become a pre-reflective entity, and the activity of “thinking to oneself” is entirely based in language…“words.”
So is “processing information” an actual event, or just a word phrase acting as a pre-reflective entity; the object of focus in consciousness.
One would have to be simultaneously aware of an object and also not thinking about it in language terms.
If i look at something from a distance and i say to myself, that is a tree, it is my memory of a tree which is held against my current perception in comparison. when i recognize that this object i am currently seeing is similar to my idea or my memory of trees i thus far attained from past experiance, i can say with conviction that " the object i am viewing is in fact a tree"
now i see where my account of the nature of consciousness is falling short.
obviously saying the nature of consciousness is to process information is broad enough to cover 2 types of information. language/ideas and sensations. but the question remains,
is thinking (processing of ideas and language) a function/faculty of consciousness(in the information processing sense) or a distinct function of the mind?
if you could clear up what you mean by pre-reflective entity im sure i would better understand your perspective.
Everything including a granual of sand and beyond is ‘concious’. Now, what gives a concious being life are the devices given to the being for awareness purposes. Inotherwords, we are extemely concious beings because our eyes, for example, give us very good awareness through the sense of sight. Without our eyes we would not be as aware of our surroundings and therefor less concious beings.
Another example:
Take artificial intelligence. I am sure you have seen some of the modern robots Japan and other countries have created these past couple years. It seems as time goes on that the more devices we give our robots for awareness the more ‘alive’ they become. They evolve as each sensor is entered into their mainframe, so to speak. Soon they will have so many electrical nerves they will be as alive as us.
So I think that mass itself is already concious. What seperates life and death is awareness. When we lose our body i.e. the sense of feeling, sight, smell, hearing, and taste etc. we don’t die, we lose our awareness and we simply become part of the concious flow of the universe. Maybe one day we will regain awareness. Who knows?