Conciousness. What is it good for?

[detrop]

Lucky for you, Logo, I got snowed out of work today. Hooray! I can’t build a house when the foundation is covered in ice, now can I?

Even the Cogito is a presupposition. Descartes tried to reason from a consciousness of doubting to “I think.” Well, in order to articulate “doubt” in the first place, he had to presuppose a certain grammatical structure and set of logical laws (i.e. the cogito cannot be both true and false at the same time); he had to assume that his words had meaning and that they were sufficient to communicate his thoughts.

Not so fast, pal. Now you are saying that Descartes principle only makes sense if he can speak about it. No, in order to communicate this principle to another person the proposition must have a grammatical structure, but not so to merely think it. Are you fishing for red-herrings? Stuffing a man full of straw? I got some inside information for you. Descartes thought about these things long before he spoke about them.

But there is a much more basic assumption here: that the doubting of which I am conscious belongs to me. There is no clear logical connection between “doubt” and “I doubt.”

Neither Sartre nor Husserl address this problem.

Sartre dealt with this first-hand, Logo. If you were as familiar with his work as you say you are, you would have known this. You should really know the material before you criticize it. Sartre rejected the primacy of Descartes cogito. Descartes formula “I think therefore I am” is, according to Sartre, a secondary activity. It is not the consciousness which thinks. Sartre claimed that Descartes confused spontaneous doubt, which is a consciousness, with methodological doubt, which is an act.

“When we catch a glimpse of an object, there may be a doubting consciousness of the object as uncertain. But Descartes cogito has posited this consciousness itself as an object; the Cartesain cogito is not one with the doubting consciousness but has reflected upon it. In other words this cogito is not Descartes doubting; it is Descartes reflecting upon the doubting. “I doubt; therefore I am” is really “I am aware that I doubt; therefore I am.” The Cartesian cogito is reflective, and its object is not itself but the original consciousness of doubting. The consciousness which doubted is now reflected on by the cogito but was never itself reflective; its only object is the object which it is conscious of as doubtful. These conclusions lead Sartre to establish the pre-reflective cogito as the primary consciousness, and in all of his later work he makes this his original point of departure.” (Translator’s Introduction to Being and Nothingness)

Having understood this, you will see that there is in fact a BIG difference between a “doubting” and a me “doubting.” The original abrupt cogito is a spontaneous awareness of objects other than that awareness itself. Hell, Brentano will tell you that, long before Husserl ever will. This original doubting takes place in the presence of an object which is not what the consciousness posits as the self. To do that, a consciousness must engage in a methodological doubt: “there is a doubting taking place because there are objects of awareness. There is that “tree,” over there by that “brook,” beside that “cliff,” where there is something standing…a “me” as opposed to those objects of awareness.” The immediate cogito is nothing more than the presence to these kinds of being, the pre-reflective cogito is deliberate, calculated, and methodological. Through a series of negations of these objects, the “self” is posited as an "other than that. Without these objects there would be no way to differentiate a self from any other object. This doesn’t happen simply because there can be a “doubting.” There must be a spontaneous awareness of the doubting before the fact that one distinguishes oneself from the objects he doubts.

“Consciousness of an object is consciousness of being conscious of an object. Thus by nature all consciousness is self-consciousness, but by this Sartre does not mean that the self is necessarily posited as an object. When I am aware of a chair, I am non-reflectively conscious of my awareness. But when I deliberately think of my awareness, this is a totally new act of consciousness; and here only am I explicitly positing my awareness or myself as an object of reflection. The pre-reflective cogito is a non-positional self-consciousness.”(Translator’s Introduction)

I for one am not trying to “describe ALL possible experience.” I can’t concieve of how this would even be possible. You would have to HAVE all possible experiences in order to describe them; perhaps describe means something else here.

Not necessarily. Look at it like this. Any experience whatsoever would have to conform to the a priori structures which make experience possible. If I were to claim that there could be an experience that didn’t involve the assets of my experience, then I am referring to something that isn’t an experience, and this is a bit redundant. I don’t have to HAVE all possible experiences to determine that some facts are absolutely necessary for there to be any experience at all. Describing experience doesn’t mean “in event A there will be person B who thinks/feels C.” It means that if there is going to be event A there will necessarily be person B who will have C, or D, or E, etc. Besides, I’m not the one attempting to verify the proof that there can be any other experience other than my own. I am, however, claiming that if there is, it will conform to the same laws as would my own experience.

And in order to do that, you have to posit theoretical entities from time to time.

Of course, but this comes after the absolute fact of the Cartesian cogito. Descartes first established that he was conscious, then he set out with various theories: “the external world doesn’t exist,” “an evil demon is tricking me,” “its all in my head,” etc.

And it is unreasonable to think that a memory ceases to be when we are not conscious of it. So it seems to me that there are still entities associated with the mind that are unaccessible to both self-reflection and scientific observation.

Yes, but how useful is that? Instead of creating some fascinating mystery about the mind, this fact only assures me that such things are incontestably useless. I can ponder about this until the cows come home. I wouldn’t move an inch.

My claim is much more modest: simply that there must be something related to “mind” that does not qualify as an observable part of the brain and simultaneously cannot be called “consciousness.”

Great, then what in the hell are we talking about!?

A Sartrean criticizing drug use? Hmmm…that’s new.

No, no. The coke part was acceptable. It was the theory that was not. [grin]

The present-tense I cannot appear to us; that is the aspect of Sartre that I was paraphrasing (and only paraphrasing…not arguing for). The past ego can, I suppose, appear to us in a way, but it is confused to think that there is continuity between the past ego and the present. In other words, “I was” is not the same as “I am”–and the problem is not simply with changing tenses. If the I in the “I was” truly belongs to the realm of the in-itself, as Sartre says, then there is no connection between past ego and the present. They are two wholly different beings, so to use “I” in both cases is misleading. Once again, there is no logical connection between a descriptive claim about an object (“I was”) and a posessive claim such as, “the past in which I was is my past.” This is an assumption, not a “pure description.”

Check this little gem out-

“The “this” does not appear as a present which later will have to become past and which before that was future. This inkwell the moment I percieve it already exists in the three temporal dimensions. In so far as I apprehend it as permanence- ie., as essence- it is already in the future although I am not present to it in my actual presence but as about-to-come-to-myself. By the same token, I can not apprehend it except as having already been there in the world inasmuch as I was already there myself as presence. In this sense there exists no “synthesis of recognition” if we mean by that a progressive operation of identification which successive organization of the “nows” would confer a duration on the thing perceived. The For-itself directs the explosion of its temporality against the length of an immense and monotonous wall of which I have to be in the mode of not-yet and of already, beside the being which is what it is. If then we suppose a consciousness arising in a motionless world beside a uniqie being which is unchangeably what it is, this being will be revealed with a past and a future of immutability which will necessitate no “operation” of a synthesis and which will be one with its very revelation.”- Sartre

If the I in the “I was” truly belongs to the realm of the in-itself, as Sartre says, then there is no connection between past ego and the present. They are two wholly different beings, so to use “I” in both cases is misleading.

You’re playing with semantics, Logo. I don’t need to defend Sartre or myself if I admit first hand that the “I,” as a consciousness, is at present a “no-thing,” and only takes the form of an In-itself historically. The past turns consciousness into a facticity, but at the same time, this facticity is nullified by being “no more.” “Is” and “was” does not change the definition of the “I.”

“Permanence, as a comprimise between non-temporal identity and the ekstatic unity of temporalization, will appear therefore as the pure slipping by of in-itself instants, little nothingnesses separated one from another and reunited by a relation of simple exteriority on the surface of a being which preserves an atemporal immutability.”- Sartre(my italics)

Well, first, I never posited the existence of a “noumena.” I’m agnostic about that.

Well, to a phenomenologist, you are contradicting yourself. Being becomes known through a series of appearances. There is no hidden reality behind phenomena, no noumena, and certainly no position such as agnosticism. To say, "I don’t know what that phenomena is is to say that it could be something other than what it is in its appearance. But it isn’t, Logo, it is exactly as it appears and there is no secret being supporting it. If you claim to be agnostic about the concept of Kant’s noumena, you are complimenting it. Make sense?

Here’s thing De’trop: we can’t actually talk coherently about subjects of consciousness. We can’t analyze them, we can’t philosophize about them; I would even go so far as to say we can’t know much of anything about them. WE CAN ONLY BE THEM, and that’s all that can really be coherently said. Subjectivity is a reference point, not a being, and that’s where I fundamentally disagree with Sartre. To say “consciousness is a being such that…” is already asking for trouble. One can say, “the human is a being such that” or “the brain is an organ such that”; and, I contend, one can talk about the mind as a theoretical entity. But consciousness itself can only be an attribute of the physical self; it cannot be experienced because it is a precondition of experience. It is pure first-person-ness.

Beautiful, Logo. You have entered the Solipsist. And by the way, I don’t exist. I am really you talking to yourself.

To say, “Joe is picking up cigarettes” is to use a subject that can, in its turn, be used as an object. “I” is the same thing. Language does not allow for us to NOT use it as an object, so what Sartre is trying to do really must be beyond the linguistic limits of philosophy. It’s more like mysticism.

What!?

But I find him inadequate in terms of building a coherent philosophical system.

I tell you a secret. So do I. But that will come later.

[Logo]

@de'trop

Not so fast, pal. Now you are saying that Descartes principle only makes sense if he can speak about it. No, in order to communicate this principle to another person the proposition must have a grammatical structure, but not so to merely think it. Are you fishing for red-herrings? Stuffing a man full of straw? I got some inside information for you. Descartes thought about these things long before he spoke about them.

So here’s the challenge. Come up with a demonstrable assertion, but don’t try to put it in language. Just demonstrate it–pre-linguistically. And then, without using language, show me how you’ve proven it, and I’ll accept your “red herring” accusation.

Now, my guess is that you’re having a little bit of trouble with this, so I’ll go on. Here’s the problem: philosophical concepts are only meaningful when put into language. Perhaps there is some mystical sense in which Descartes actually formulated the cogito without somehow expressing it linguistically. I doubt it, but even if it were true, you can’t prove it (I don’t care how much ‘inside info’ you have). The concept can only work as legitimate philosophy if it is legitimately UTTERED; whether Descartres is just expressing it to himself, or if he is saying “cogito ergo sum” to some collegue doesn’t matter. Point is, the argument doesn’t exist, philosophically speaking, without its formulation in language.

writing paper…more to come…

[Logo]

Neither Sartre nor Husserl address this problem.

Sartre dealt with this first-hand, Logo. If you were as familiar with his work as you say you are, you would have known this. You should really know the material before you criticize it.

Very interesting. For starters, I never claimed to be an expert. But the criticism isn’t mine; it’s Stephen Priest’s, from his new Sartre anthology (I’ve returned it to the library so I can’t actually quote it for you). It’s almost a verbatum statement. But the fact that you say I “would have known this” if I understood Sartre is telling; it illustrates a real problem in Sartre’s methodology. Fact is, there is so much debate just over what the guy was actually trying to SAY that it becomes quite difficult to build on his system.

Sartre rejected the primacy of Descartes cogito. Descartes formula “I think therefore I am” is, according to Sartre, a secondary activity. It is not the consciousness which thinks. Sartre claimed that Descartes confused spontaneous doubt, which is a consciousness, with methodological doubt, which is an act.

Having understood this, you will see that there is in fact a BIG difference between a “doubting” and a me “doubting.”

Sure. So Sartre rejected the primacy of the “I think” and replaced it with the pre-reflective cogito–which still doesn’t solve the problem of how the thinking of which I am conscious is MINE. Sartre’s argument for the “I”, as I understand it, is something to the effect of, “I am pre-reflectively aware of being conscious, therefore I am conscious, therefore I am.” It only puts off the problem. All Sartre has said is that we have this pre-reflective intuition that this doubting is my doubting. I don’t see how this amounts to a demonstration. It is a sort of pre-reflective property-claiming. The only real description is of doubting itself; there’s no way to describe “my” doubting any differently other than to say that I believe “this” doubting to be mine. I don’t see how saying all this is pre-reflective gets around the problem.

Instead of creating some fascinating mystery about the mind, this fact only assures me that such things are incontestably useless. I can ponder about this until the cows come home. I wouldn’t move an inch.

Well I suppose it’s up to the psychologists to decide how useful it is. They seem to think it’s important, and I suppose we can leave it at that.

There is no hidden reality behind phenomena, no noumena, and certainly no position such as agnosticism. To say, "I don’t know what that phenomena is is to say that it could be something other than what it is in its appearance. But it isn’t, Logo, it is exactly as it appears and there is no secret being supporting it. If you claim to be agnostic about the concept of Kant’s noumena, you are complimenting it.

Well there is a very well-developed agnostic position known as Empiricism. Whether that position is right or wrong is another matter. However there are useful reasons for saying that things may actually BE other than what they appear. For instance, a colorblind person may see an object as red, while the rest of us see it as blue. To say that the object IS the infinite series of its appearances is to admit that it can be both red and blue at the same time–which is a contradiction. It is blue–although the colorblind person won’t ever experience it that way.

…still more coming…

[askewd]

are rocks conscious?

Hello everybody. This is my first ever post. I’ll quickly introduce myself: my name is Dale Askew, I am 26, Live in Norwich, UK. I am probably not as “intelligent” as most of the people in this community, in the sense that I haven’t studied philosophy, am not brilliant at English or maths and my brain doesn’t have loads of references about other great philosophers that it can relate to. So, if you can forgive me for that then you may see that I have some good ideas about things. (i say may!).

I had an experience once where I “met” my most true self, became totally conscious - maybe some people call it a moment of enlightenment, I sort of merged with the core of my truest being. If anybody cares to read about that particular experience then you can find it here: trans4mind.com/awakening/ (I didn’t built the website, it was just some personal emails which got put up there)

Anyway, enough about me, back to the original point… could a rock be conscious?

In our dreams we exist as a consciousness of varying degrees, in these dreams we talk to others, we play, we work, we interact, the environments seem real, there are trees, there are rocks…

Even though at the time it all feels very real indeed, when we wake up we realise it was “only” a dream, and that in truth, the entire episode was a product of our imagination/mind. In these dreams EVERYTHING we perceive / interact with is actually a creation of our own minds; the rocks, the trees, the other people… all created by the “higher” (dreamers) mind.

So if I pick up a rock in my dream - the truth would be that there would be no real division between me and it, it being me in the first place. It would be an illusionary division of my own consciousness that is creating and sustaining it in it’s particular form as a rock. The rock would be me, and I would be the rock. I would assume the dream character was me, but infact it would be no more me than the rock, I would simply be using the dream body as a perspective point.

So, my dream body would be an unconscious illusion, the rock would also be an unconsciousness illusion, the separation between me and the rock would be an illusion. The REAL ME would be the whole things, everything, the entire dream.

My point is, when i pick up a rock and look at it, I assume I am conscious and the rock is not, but in fact it could be that neither I nor the rock is conscious, as we are both mere dream elements. the “real” us is the entire thing altogether - one consciousness, many perspectives.

I sort of got a bit to deep for myself there and am not sure if anybody will see what I am saying.

Hope I inspire something.

DALE

[detrop]

So here’s the challenge. Come up with a demonstrable assertion, but don’t try to put it in language. Just demonstrate it–pre-linguistically. And then, without using language, show me how you’ve proven it, and I’ll accept your “red herring” accusation.

Logo, will you slow down and just think about that question for a moment?

What if, as Jaynes suggested, human beings lived a period where they weren’t “conscious” and didn’t have linguistic abilities, but functioned perfectly as a civilization? Am I to assume that you mean any and all kinds of “thinking” is language based? Sure, you think with words in your mind…you say them to yourself as you execute the thought, now, but as an adult. You take for granted that, even though you can’t remember it, there was a period when you were a fully conscious and aware child acting and responding in the world without knowing how to say “momma,” much less “transcendentalism.”

You might be defending the theory that consciousness became a property of the human only after the species developed opposable thumbs and linguistic abilities. To some degree I accept this. But I don’t think that the original necessary structures for experience are any different for a less evolved organism with even a minimal amount of awareness. If there is any amount of cognition whatsoever, there is also some amount of interference and doubt in computing the reality of the experience. A bad example would be watching a dog react to its shadow as if it were another “real” dog. I know, bad example, so sue me. My point, however, is that the cogito is always the result of an awareness of a world in which the one who is aware is necessarily aware that they are aware as well and that what they are aware of is not their awareness, whether real or illusion. Yeah, that was long winded, I apologize. You get the idea. There doesn’t have to be any “explaining” to indicate this rule, only experience.

Is the rock conscious? Who knows.

It only puts off the problem. All Sartre has said is that we have this pre-reflective intuition that this doubting is my doubting. I don’t see how this amounts to a demonstration. It is a sort of pre-reflective property-claiming. The only real description is of doubting itself; there’s no way to describe “my” doubting any differently other than to say that I believe “this” doubting to be mine.

Okay. We’ll try this exercise.

Explain, in your own words without relying on your experience, what things would be involved in a case where there was such a thing as “doubt.” Forget about Descartes, Logo, and myself.

Invent a scenario where something existed which allowed for the possibility of “doubt” and what that entailed.

Oh, and no you can’t say “when de’trop thought he was going to get laid that night but that it was highly improbable,” either.

However there are useful reasons for saying that things may actually BE other than what they appear. For instance, a colorblind person may see an object as red, while the rest of us see it as blue. To say that the object IS the infinite series of its appearances is to admit that it can be both red and blue at the same time–which is a contradiction. It is blue–although the colorblind person won’t ever experience it that way.

I love this argument. Thank you, Logo.

Here is the missing scale in the dragon’s breast:

“To say that the object IS the infinite series of its appearances is to admit that it can be both red and blue at the same time–which is a contradiction.”

UNLESS it is granted that “red” and “blue” are only approximations to begin with. And as the phenomena changes empirically, “blue” and “red” are not absolute facts. However, the proposition of “blue is not red” is coherent in the sense that if there is a “blue” it is not also a “red,” and anything less would be a contradiction. From there, you mistake the logical value of the proposition as a logical demonstration for the objective truth of “blue” and “red.”

What is it that is “not also a …?” That is the question that escapes your premise. Again, if “red” and “blue” do exist they will be logically related in at least one way: red and blue are different and can be represented epistemologically as seperate truths that can’t be both true and false, hence, “the object can’t be both red and blue at the same time–which is a contradiction.” But you are assuming that red and blue are objective truths to begin with. Likewise, a “fribbitz” isn’t a “kalwicket,” obviously…

But what in the hell are they?