Alexist,
Consciousness to me has the elements that you describe. It is the perception of knowledge that hits me first. The ability to gain new thoughts, ideas and grow with them leads to it.
A snail is conscious of its surroundings on such a miniscule level compared to an armadillo which is less then a dog which is less then a dolphin or human. I know I am sentient for the standard reasons but also because I want to be more then I am. I don’t wish to wake up one morning and not want or know that would be death to me an end.
Consciousness, sentient , exist, will, senses tie us up into a package of wonder. Good and bad alike. Is every creature capable of consciousness to an extent yes, It is knowledge of some sort, knowledge that things you must do, get done.
It is said by some that we were made in a gods image I don’t believe for one second that means the god’s physical form I believe it could only mean the soul ,that which makes us who we are .
To that end I believe our conscious state, subconcsious state and dream state, is in flux as we evolve deeper into ourselves. We are the last frontier, for we have yet to scrape the surface of what makes us tick as individuals and as society. We know we use only a portion of our mushy brain so that at least tells me there more surprises yet to come. Concsious is the will and sense to wake up and explore your life as it comes at you in full 3D plus more.
I think our subconcsious state evolves faster then concsious state, that sub is where our instinct and senses lay. Concsious state is tightly controlled by us and our involvement in society so it can not grow and evolve as fast. Sub is our dreams our selves stretching the sub and feeling its borders if any borders exist. Meditation has long been believed a way to refresh and stretch the mind. In meditation the outside world is not there it is just you. Do I believe man capable of godly powers, yes eventually I do think that we will evolve past our bodies and into our true shape. It is evolution and our minds are the evolution.
Emorgasm wrote:
I personally believe their to be some type of manifested(energy-laden consciousness field) boundary conscious aware beings, being aware of themselves as a single self, formulate naturally which makes for this apparent separation of subject and object. Essentially this is the mind, and the boundaries are expanded with experience while holding all separate memory and experience, possibilities for experiences, etc.
So as it appears now, for we have more information about the true nature of material thanks to the world of quantum physics. Before we had this, materialism definetely made for difficulties in the consideration of consciousness, but was IMO an important step that must have occured. We still seemingly have a ways to go before a paradigm shift can occur, for the old way still reigns rampant, and you know how people dont like change.
emorgasm wrote:
i will admit that i’m sympathetic to this view. I know we are only supposed to give our own opinions instead of acknowledge famous thinkers, but: Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream, Spinoza, and panpsychism (not a person) remind me of your words.
Kriswest wrote
Is this really the extent of consciousness? We don’t understand it because we are so rarely conscious of ourselves. We react like the snail does but at a more sophisticated level. You may be aware when you sit down at the computer but levels of consciousness that separate man from animal as I understand it begins at its lowest level for us as self awareness or the awareness that you are aware.
No I don’t think that is all, Its more then that. All the topics that have been posted here about free will, Soul, etc. these are all parts of of it, Everyones opinions on the subects are valid and descriptive of what we are. Realize that we are dissecting something untouchable, untasteable unsmellable we can only sense with our mind through our experiences and beliefs. Everyone has differing thoughts, similar yet different. Death, birth, life, Soul, Councsious, will, Morals, Goodvs evil, Love, hate, It goes on.
We perceive so many things with out the help of our basic physical senses that it boggles the mind what we know and we have only begun to know. Even things that have happened to you that you can’t remember effects what you are. The incorporation of so many things on so many levels creates us our universe, As a society and as individuals. To me it cna be boiled down to:
I am me and I will continue to be me even as I change. My core self will anchor me to my original self even as I grow. I allow barriers to change and move so that I can attempt to become more then my core self. should I go into a coma or lose memories through disease I still will be me and changing inside though none may perceive it but, me. That is all that truly counts.
Something cannot be greater then the sum of its parts a statement that itself is a great example of informal fallacy. This statement holds true within mathematics, but here the word ‘greater’ takes on subjective meanings, which becomes the statements weak link.
None the less this is not what Dennett’s critics are accusing him of. The fallacy of composition as defined in the cambridge dictionary of philosophy:
“The error of arguing, from a property of parts of a whole to a property of the whole; eg, the importent parts of this machine are light, therefore this machine is light. But a property of the parts cannot always be transferred to the whole. In some cases, examples of the fallacy of composition are arguements from all parts to a whole eg; everybody in the country pays its debts, therefore the country pays its debts.”
What you should note is that these fallacys result from various leaps in logic. If all the parts of a machine is blue, then I think it would be quite logical to assume that the machine itself is blue, but if all parts are light, well it is not logical to assume that the machine itself is light. Its a leap in logic and reason.
Personally I see no such leaps in Dennett’s view of consciousness, but if there is maybe you could point them out.
Alright Detrop if you want to stick to the definition in wikipedia, or stick to the original intentions of those that coined the term, rather then what the term has evolved into today, well then sure… consciousness is and always will be the original Cartesian cogito of Descartes, and Sartre. Well formulated arguement, Bravo!!
Sure it can. Neuro-science can’t account for all solipsistic experience(I’ll take a moment to point out that Dennett hardly rely’s soley on neuro-science to form his views), but we can now account for some previous ‘solopsistic experiences’.
Neuroscientists have recently been able to deduce exactly what object subjects were looking at merely by analyzing their neural patterns. It seems that previously privileged information may not be so priveleged after all!!
Also if you wish to rely soley on solopsistic deduction then you are seriously debilitating yourself. Our senses. and our intuitions decieve us. Its fairly evident in such instances as apparent motion, colour phi, and the neon colour spreading phenomena, which Dennett covers extensively in C.E.
Uhmm? Seriously if you are going to critique a theory then you might want to familiarize yourself with it.
Dennett makes it clear that he does not advocate epiphenomalism, and argues against it as a foundation for qualia.
" ‘with professor Rorty cherring me on… I am ready to come out of the closet as some sort of verificationist, but please not a village verificationist; lets all be Urbane verificationists’[dennett 1982b,p.355] This book pursues the course further, arguing that if we are not urbane verificationists, we will end up tolertating all sorts of nonesense: epiphenomolism Zombies, indistinguishable inverted spectra, conscious teddy bears, self conscious spiders" Dennett C.E pg 461
It seems fairly evident that dualists take for granted that the “I” exists. A good theory involves parsimony. Descartes assumed too much.
Of course its a conclusion. Such continental rationalism is dead my friend. We don’t hold to old ideas such as the earth being flat. Why hold on to such silly ideas such as dualism? How can you rely on one part of your experience, and completly ignore the other.
You’re intuition decieves you just as it did Descartes. You ignore experience of raw physical data because the implications, seems so different from your experience of thought, and sensation, but it is thought and sensation by which we come about the data!!
ITs just a problem of seeming. Sure it seems that you are this single rational agent, but you’re not… “But I sure seem to be”,
“yeah no shit! Thank god we have practicle methods for verifying our assumptions”
If it exists independent from the causal empirical world then you have to conclude that it can have no effects on the physical world!! And this my friend is epiphenomolism.
How about “Consiousness is what it is and not what it seems to be”
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