Please don’t take a bite out of my leg, especially since I am such a hideous creature - oh on second thought, you probably wouldn’t want to bite the leg of a hideous witch - so I’m safe.
Anyway, I’m still not necessarily sure that self- consciousness is consciousness reflecting on consciousness but I may be totally wrong here. Wouldn’t that just be self-awareness.
That is self reflection and thought and being flowing in the present moment but not consciousness reflecting on consciousness.
Maybe I’m a bit confused here but I have a problem with how consciousness can reflect consciousness.
When we use the word “self” we’re usually referring to our own personal identity and how we see ourselves, factually and personality wise. But is that pure consciousness or ego?
Perhaps we come a bit closer to consciousness reflecting consciousness for example when we look at a tree, “see” it without thought or personal reflection…just gazing on it. At some point, we disappear in a sense, that tree and our self will merge into pure one-ness, will interface and perhaps then consciousness will be reflecting consciousness.
Having read the posts, JSS presented the position I hold too well enough, [size=50]better than I would have been able to[/size], and as you seem disinterested in further dialogue about the subject Erik, I won’t bother you.
But I’ll just clarify about the jellyfish
My point is precisely that your standard of intuitively judging whether something is conscious/subjective or not is fallible.
If you showed a decapitated, moving snake to somebody who never ever saw a snake and doesn’t know it should have a head, the person would most likely believe it is a conscious animal similar to a worm, with no necessarily distinguishable head from the body, wouldn’t you agree? And if they DID go in the direction of reasoning that it is unconscious and its just that its nerves are responding to external stimuli, it would most probably be because it would share a number of feats signifying death present in other animals as well - its bottom is slashed open, it’s bleeding from one end like other animals missing a body part do, etc.
So your intuitive claim that this is all a “load of malarkey” doesn’t carry much weight I think.
The thing about the decapitated snake, though, is that we both already know that it was decapitated…
With the J-fish, it’s not decapitated, or injured in anyway.
I get what you are trying to say and I admit that the J-fish could be completely unaware; but it’s also plausible that it has a primitive form of awareness, considering that it’s a living organism, not too unrelated to other organisms, which possess subjectivity. In my opinion, I believe they do have a primitive awareness; but, of course, no way to prove it for sure.
The consciousness is neither identical nor reducible to the brain. The argument that consciousness vanishes with the death of its living being is not proven, and the argument against it is not disproven - so it is possible that the consciousness does not vanish with the death of its living being, and perhaps it will never vanish. The consciousness exists, has affect, and therefore it is possible that it exists for ever and ever - like that what in former days was called „psyche“, „soul“; but the consciousness is also neither identical nor reducible to psyche or soul. The consciousness is part of the body (nervus system), part of the mind or the signs (semiotical, linguistical, logical, mathematical system), but most of all it is independent.
Yes, we know it because we know how a snake is supposed to be built, how it’s supposed to look if it’s not decapitated. The reason we know it’s not unconscious DESPITE the fact that it’s moving is that we know it’s missing its head/brain, we use knowledge and not intuition.
My point is that if you showed the decapitated snake to a person who doesn’t know what a snake is, a person who would only have intuition available at their disposal, from the way it’s moving they’d much sooner conclude that it has some primitive form of consciousness than that it’s unconscious. That’s why intuition isn’t of much use here.
