Dear Hal, I think you have the bathwater without a baby in it.
Consciousness is a historical noumenon of no content, an imaginary 'thing'
that does not exist. Certain aspects of the human complexity - mainly
mental, but corporeal management as well - are combined into this "word"
which gives rise to endless, but well paid (including 'scientific glory and
tenure) discussions and teachings.
Everybody identifies this monster according to the needs of one's
theoretical whim,
from physicists to mystiques, from psychoscientists to MDs. Some argue about
the "location" of this nonlocal atemporal bunch of concepts, others assign
it exclusively to the neuronal activity, transcending with an elegant
nonchalance from the physical data into mental concepts (like e.g. the
beauty of a sunset, or validity of a legal decision) - even presuming an
unproven causal closure.
You even cannot identify what "mostly" belongs into consciousness, because
everybody formulates a (different) 'mostly'.
The "flow of thoughts" by James is also arbitrary, it misses the
characteristics when in lack of an "unconsciousness" the bodily aspects are
active. Where he is right is the nonexistence of the noumenon.
"Conscious" is identifiable, being 'c' (about?) is not 'cness'. Similarly a
pars pro toto category mistake would be identifying the monster with any of
its assumed ingredients (true or not), as e.g. suffering or love etc.
To reject a word the meaning of which was struggled upon over millennia of
poorer information (epistemic that is) than lately acquired does not want to
"solve all the problems". It is not intended to do so. It may eliminate a
pompous topic which takes lots of energy from able people who could work in
more relevant and fruitful topics.
This is why I said: this bathwater has no baby in it. Throw it out.
John Mikes
<jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
"
http://pages.prodigy.net/jamikes"
----- Original Message -----
From: <hal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>; <hal.domain.name.hidden.org>; <j.domain.name.hidden.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: Is consciousness real?
> James Higgo writes:
> > Consciousness - a flow of related thoughts in time - does not exist, any
> > more than time itself exists. All that exists of 'you' is this very
present
> > thought.
> >
> > This simple view solves all known paradoxes of consciousness, fits with
what
> > we know of the world, and is, incidentally, in concord with Buddhist
> > philosophy. You can even be happy if you believe it; believing it forces
you
> > to live in the present.
>
> This solves all the problems, does it? What about the question of
> whether something, say an animal or a fetus, is conscious or not?
> Should I treat conscious and unconscious entities the same?
>
> And if consciousness doesn't exist, does that mean suffering doesn't
> exist either? Should we not care about slavery, torture and other
> institutions that cause human suffering?
>
> I think you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
>
> Hal
>
Received on Wed Jan 17 2001 - 20:04:44 PST