What is Consciousness?


PDS

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Tony writes:

Greg, (Please tell me which Greg this was, thinking the above...inside, outside?)

It's the Greg who is silently watching his thoughts as if they're a movie written and directed by someone else...

...and then choosing which ones to write down for you to read. :wink:

Using a movie as an example, there are two states of being:

1. Unaware that you are immersed in the movie compulsively emoting and acting out its storyline as if it was the totality of your being.

2. Calmly detached in the awareness that you are just watching a movie in total freedom to choose to emote and to act contrary to the narrative.

Greg

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Tony writes:

Greg, (Please tell me which Greg this was, thinking the above...inside, outside?)

It's the Greg who is silently watching his thoughts as if they're a movie written and directed by someone else...

...and then choosing which ones to write down for you to read. :wink:

Using a movie as an example, there are two states of being:

1. Unaware that you are immersed in the movie compulsively emoting and acting out its storyline as if it was the totality of your being.

2. Calmly detached in the awareness that you are just watching a movie in total freedom to choose to emote and to act contrary to the narrative.

Greg

Not a great analogy, take it to real life where your thoughts are in keeping with reality - not "directed by someone else". You often mention this dilemma you create for yourself, Greg, which isn't apparent to me, of emoting and thinking being flawed -- until they're over-ridden by your calm mind. An emotion - and even a reactive impulse sometimes - is not 'wrong'. In fact, experiencing an emotion is completely right, as an automated response to a 'fact' before you, and all-dependent by type on the values and life-view you hold.

(One person may like to view movies just for their blood-and-guts violence and get their kick out of that, while being bored with tender scenes; another seeing it, might close her eyes to the gory parts and enjoy the story and the romantic parts. Same movie, same 'reality', although both people have far differing emotions appropriate to their metaphysical value-judgment of life. Which is the more rational, is something else).

Anyhow, consciousness isn't two states opposing each other, unaware and aware. It is one process: Awareness, together with introspecting, reviewing or second-guessing an emotion or thought... with another thought following an instant after the first.

Is it true? Is it fitting to my knowledge? Is it appropriate? Should I continue this line? Can I act on it? Etc.

More like the electrical wiring in a house, it's an integrated circuit - you can divert the power to one circuit or another, or several together, or turn down a rheostat of another, or switch everything off. And every dead circuit has the potential of power, determined by your (free) will.

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If you fall hard for a babe, it isn't the result of conscious comparison of perception with soft abstract values.

What does it have to do with my question?

The perspective and power to conclude things is forced by the imperative of survival, which is hard wired.

Hard wired/reptile brain is a fact.

However, there is a consciousness that is aware of what that hard wiring is.

Obviously, you and I are.

This does not eliminate the "blank tablet" that Aristotle and others know/assume existed.

Now I believe that Ayn's analysis missed its mark on this one and PDS, Tony and others are discussing that, or, at least that is what I am aware of...

A...

May be it can be said that Rand's tabula rasa "at birth" isn't perfectly accurate. But not by much in time, and hardly at all by Rand's standards of an "emotional mechanism" and "cognitive mechanism". It makes total sense today (knowing viability of the foetus, induced childbirth and research I vaguely recall) to acknowledge that an infant's sense development and brain growth are fast accelerating for several weeks before birth, so I think the exact moment of birth is not quite all-definitive.

In the final period of that time in utero, she's very likely gaining increasing sense-awareness of her intimate surroundings - perhaps the start of her subconscious mind.

Is that what you mean by Rand missing the mark, Adam?

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May be it can be said that Rand's tabula rasa "at birth" isn't perfectly accurate. But not by much in time, and hardly at all by Rand's standards of an "emotional mechanism" and "cognitive mechanism". It makes total sense today (knowing viability of the foetus, induced childbirth and research I vaguely recall) to acknowledge that an infant's sense development and brain growth are fast accelerating for several weeks before birth, so I think the exact moment of birth is not quite all-definitive.

In the final period of that time in utero, she's very likely gaining increasing sense-awareness of her intimate surroundings - perhaps the start of her subconscious mind.

Is that what you mean by Rand missing the mark, Adam?

Yes, primarily.

A second aspect, and this could have been purely my perception, Ayn severed the connection between a valid emotion that stems from value, i.e., sustaining the life's body wherein resides it's consciousness and ruling out action based on "emotion." That rules out rational action that is automatic from valid emotions that sustain life.

I believe that is the concept you were just addressing with Greg just now.

A...

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Anything but severance, in what there is by Rand on the subject. F'rinstance, one would leap into a river to save one's child 'unthinkingly' ... but analyzed, it would be by instant impulse, from an emotion, from one's value, from one's virtues and morality, from one's reasoning, so ultimately, consciousness. Therefore rational - and selfish. It only seems "automatic", I think - just, you won't hesitate in order to philosophize the conceptual chain!

How does it go again? "A lightning fast indicator of the sum of his profit or loss".

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Anything but severance, in what there is by Rand on the subject. F'rinstance, one would leap into a river to save one's child 'unthinkingly' ... but analyzed, it would be by instant impulse, from an emotion, from one's value, from one's virtues and morality, from one's reasoning, so ultimately, consciousness. Therefore rational - and selfish. It only seems "automatic", I think - just, you won't hesitate in order to philosophize the conceptual chain!

How does it go again? "A lightning fast indicator of the sum of his profit or loss".

Sorry to intrude. The principle is Women and children first, articulated by Heinlein and Churchill [quoted here]. It is innate among healthy heterosexual men, especially young men who feel duty bound to enlist in the military for reasons other than personal gain (status, education, adventure, health care and pension benefits). Jumping into a river to save one's child is usually fatal and highly irrational, but we cannot do otherwise. https://www.google.com/search?q=man+drowns+attempting+to+save&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

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Whew! Plenty there to question. "Innate" for one, and "duty-bound".

I think you'll find that "value", individually found and chosen, answers almost all of it.

"We cannot do otherwise" is also consciousness-concept-value based. Not to make the rescue attempt might mean not only the probable loss of a great value and its emotional/psychological consequences, it's having to live always with that knowledge of one's betrayal of a high value.

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Tony writes:

Not a great analogy, take it to real life where your thoughts are in keeping with reality - not "directed by someone else".

Not directed by someone else, Tony... as if directed by someone else.

You cannot objectively observe your thoughts while subjectively immersed in them emoting to, and compulsively acting upon them. Objective is by working definition calm, patient, uninvolved in, and emotionally detached from what is being observed.

You often mention this dilemma you create for yourself, Greg, which isn't apparent to me, of emoting and thinking being flawed -- until they're over-ridden by your calm mind.

What you just described is not my view, it's your own. So it's your dilemma is trying to lift the bucket off the floor while your'e standing in it.

Calmness does not originate from within the mind... but as the result of awareness outside of the mind, able to observe it by virtue of the light of Conscience.

Anyhow, consciousness isn't two states opposing each other, unaware and aware.

Tony, read again what you just wrote... "Unaware consciousness" is an oxymoron. :laugh:

You're either conscious or unconscious. Immersed in thought and emotion slavishly engaged in a futile struggle against it...

...or the master of thought and emotion, outside of it free to choose whether to act upon it, or to let it pass unresponded.

In my opinion, your view is missing an ingredient:

Real awareness is greater than thought and emotion.

Greg

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Tony writes:

Not a great analogy, take it to real life where your thoughts are in keeping with reality - not "directed by someone else".

Not directed by someone else, Tony... as if directed by someone else.

You cannot objectively observe your thoughts while subjectively immersed in them emoting to, and compulsively acting upon them. Objective is by working definition calm, patient, uninvolved in, and emotionally detached from what is being observed.

You often mention this dilemma you create for yourself, Greg, which isn't apparent to me, of emoting and thinking being flawed -- until they're over-ridden by your calm mind.

What you just described is not my view, it's your own. So it's your dilemma is trying to lift the bucket off the floor while your'e standing in it.

Calmness does not originate from within the mind... but as the result of awareness outside of the mind, able to observe it by virtue of the light of Conscience.

Anyhow, consciousness isn't two states opposing each other, unaware and aware.

Tony, read again what you just wrote... "Unaware consciousness" is an oxymoron. :laugh:

You're either conscious or unconscious. Immersed in thought and emotion slavishly engaged in a futile struggle against it...

...or the master of thought and emotion, outside of it free to choose whether to act upon it, or to let it pass unresponded.

In my opinion, your view is missing an ingredient:

Real awareness is greater than thought and emotion.

Greg

Awareness is greater than thought and emotion? Ha! How do you know this and be able to put words to it - while rejecting being "immersed in thought"?

The "master" of thought, naturally. How do you get also being "slavish" to it? What else is there available to man, but thought?

If you know the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept, you know that trying to refute a conceptual method by way of using the same method, is self-refuting and is to be dismissed by a listener.

iow, describe and explain "awareness" to me, WITHOUT thought (you can't have your cake ...) or analogy.

Because consciousness is an axiom, meaning one cannot get behind it or use it to describe itself, what's being suggested in this thread, is that it's only through 'unconsciousness' - non-existent, fundamentally mystical - that it can be viewed. Outside thought and emotion, as you yourself describe, that's where your "Awareness" really lies.

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Tony, read again what you just wrote... "Unaware consciousness" is an oxymoron. :laugh:

You're either conscious or unconscious. Immersed in thought and emotion slavishly engaged in a futile struggle against it...

As the immortal George Carlin explained...

"George Carlin: Flammable, inflammable & nonflammable... Why are there three? Don't you think that two ought to serve the purpose? I mean either the thing flams or it doesn't!"
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That's a good reminder, Adam. There are actually three...

1. Compulsively acting on thoughts and emotions while immersed in them.

2. Futily struggling to resist thoughts and emotions while immersed in them..

3. Observing your thoughts from the outside while detached from them... totally free to do whatever you see fit to do.

Both one and two are states of subjective slavery... two sides of the same coin.

While three is a state of objective freedom... no coin. :wink:

Greg

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That's a good reminder, Adam. There are actually three...

1. Compulsively acting on thoughts and emotions while immersed in them.

2. Futily struggling to resist thoughts and emotions while immersed in them..

3. Observing your thoughts from the outside while detached from them... totally free to do whatever you see fit to do.

Both one and two are states of subjective slavery... two sides of the same coin.

While three is a state of objective freedom... no coin. :wink:

Greg

You do put a lot on your plate to struggle with. Compulsively acting - and resisting - and being "detached".

If it's free you want to be, combine those three into one -then see how you go. Can you do that?

The fourth, a Supreme Consciousness or whichever way you perceive it, I don't expect you to relinquish.

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Brant writes:

Why'd you drop emotions from #3?

Just an oversight, Brant...

...but this does bring up an opportunity for clarification. There is a hierarchy. Emotion always follow thought. So when a person is immersed in thought, they will compulsively react emotionally in the false belief that thought which drives their emotions comprises the totality of their being.

It's similar to being so involved in watching a movie, you forget you are in the audience, so you emote to it as if it was a real experience, when in reality it's just two dimensional images on a flat screen.

If a person is not immersed in thought and emotion, preceding those two is what I call insight. Insight is direct, silent, thoughtless, emotionless, perception which precedes both thought and emotion.

Greg

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Tony writes:

You do put a lot on your plate to struggle with.

But I don't struggle, Tony. That's the point. :smile:

When you realize that that either blindly obeying or rebelling against thought are both reactions to something which is not real...

...that's what ends your slavery as you become the master of thought and emotion.

Greg

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...and just to further clarify.

Thought and emotion are just fine for what they are. What I'm talking about the proper relationship to thought and emotion... and that requires a vantage point outside of them both...

...or you will NEVER lift the bucket off the floor. :wink:

obama-bucket.jpg

Greg

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Brant writes:

Why'd you drop emotions from #3?

Just an oversight, Brant...

...but this does bring up an opportunity for clarification. There is a hierarchy. Emotion always follow thought. So when a person is immersed in thought, they will compulsively react emotionally in the false belief that thought which drives their emotions comprises the totality of their being.

It's similar to being so involved in watching a movie, you forget you are in the audience, so you emote to it as if it was a real experience, when in reality it's just two dimensional images on a flat screen.

If a person is not immersed in thought and emotion, preceding those two is what I call insight. Insight is direct, silent, thoughtless, emotionless, perception which precedes both thought and emotion.

Greg

Actually, this is someone--I think that's you, Greg--so taken up in Christianity he can't tell the difference between it and the world as it is. I guess this works for other religions too. It's an inbred point of stabilizing reference. One can do this as a secularist too, but it's harder. It could lead to to a philosophical dead end--and drink (or even women*). If you have no religion you can simply replace "God" with "Reality." That's the easy part. The morality is where it gets very hard for the secularist. That's why Objectivism is mostly about morality. Unfortunately, it comes up short, both for itself and as a univrersalizer for hoi polloi, which is not true for the great religions. I hope the idea of being a "pantheist" might develop into a good--and powerful--universalizer. Christianity, however, is light years ahead with that based on forgiveness, redemption and salvation through Jesus Christ. Not the Muslim religion, for which Jesus is just another prophet of the second rank. This is why the wealth--true wealth, productive wealth, not oil wealth as state wealth distributed wealth--of Christian countries is overall incredible compared to Muslim countries, especially with state/religion integration meaning the thugs all too easily rise to the top. After the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany the West has, I hope, learned the dangers of secularism gone off the rails with self-created moral hubris justifying mass murder. Genocide as moral-state policy is dead for now.

I think Christianity will prevail, especially Catholic Christianity. Catholics make for better theater than Protestants. Over time I think it will adapt and modify itself to become even more rational as people demand it from the religion. Historically as it spread around the world it adapted itself to many local customs and mores while keeping the core. It seems to be doing this most now in Africa. There will likely be an African Pope this century. The big failure to adapt led to the Reformation. There could be future reformations. The Protestants split up into many groupings. The Catholics avoid overt splitting offs.

--Brant

*and song

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Brant writes:

Actually, this is someone--I think that's you, Greg--so taken up in Christianity he can't tell the difference between it and the world as it is.

Putting aside the smokescreen of your religious tirade...

... is it your view that there is no state of being outside the bucket of intellect and emotion you're standing in?

Now as far as your opinion that I don't see the world as it is...

I rely on my God given Conscience to guide me as to how harmonious my actions are in relation to objective reality. I'm happy healthy prosperous with a good marriage and grandkids, and I don't drink any alcohol or do dope or smoke pot. All of that useless crap is for unhappy people who failed at life because they don't want to see the world as it is. :wink:

Greg

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Brant writes:

I really haven't experienced your stated state of being. How did you do it?

You very likely have, Brant...

...especially if you have been in critical high stress mortal danger situations where you experience time slowing down and where you become an emotionally detached observer "outside" yourself, calmly watching yourself... even while in the midst of physical and emotional chaos.

In this state there is sublime clarity. There isn't even a need to know what to do... because you see what to do before you can even think of what to do. Thought is so painfully slow and clumsy in comparison to seeing. In this insight-full state, spontaneous action is possible which is faster than thought deliberated action... because you are acting directly from what you SEE rather than from what you think or feel.

In this state, something so noble and pure and otherworldly can rise up from within you to properly meet the situation precisely in the moment it occurs in a perfectly choreographed dance... because you are moving in harmony with objective reality. In these moments you will feel a strange intimate love for the exquisite beauty of reality.

It is something that will NEVER leave you.

Greg

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See?

There ya go. nodder.gif

This is a state of being which can be cultivated so that your life doesn't need to be threatened in order to experience its benefits.

These are some of the most profound words ever written:

"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."

--Blaise Pascal

"Be still and know that I am God."

--Bible

Greg

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Brant writes:

I really haven't experienced your stated state of being. How did you do it?

You very likely have, Brant...

...especially if you have been in critical high stress mortal danger situations where you experience time slowing down and where you become an emotionally detached observer "outside" yourself, calmly watching yourself... even while in the midst of physical and emotional chaos.

In this state there is sublime clarity. There isn't even a need to know what to do... because you see what to do before you can even think of what to do. Thought is so painfully slow and clumsy in comparison to seeing. In this insight-full state, spontaneous action is possible which is faster than thought deliberated action... because you are acting directly from what you SEE rather than from what you think or feel.

In this state, something so noble and pure and otherworldly can rise up from within you to properly meet the situation precisely in the moment it occurs in a perfectly choreographed dance... because you are moving in harmony with objective reality. In these moments you will feel a strange intimate love for the exquisite beauty of reality.

It is something that will NEVER leave you.

Greg

Well said, Greg.

This state is enhanced, or easier to access, once one abandons the "story" of his life. I actually started the "what's your story" thread to explore this.

Most people cannot reach this state because their "story" is clogging up the space that zanshin (i.e., alert awareness) would otherwise occupy.

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I killed a man, Greg, while in this "state of grace." Three round burst into the chest. Three feet from the end of my M-16. Literally dead on his feet. The airboat driver then gave him a push so he wouldn't fall forward into the boat. He fell on his face into the water. I told Captain George Marecek I wished I could have taken him prisoner. "No! No prisoners," he replied. Marecek was a pure killer. Several months later, as a Major, he engaged the Viet Cong in an action that won him the Distinguished Service Cross. He was convicted decades later, through the course of three trials, of murdering his Cambodian wife, which he probably did (only one out of 36 jurors believed him), allegedly so could marry his cousin and run for the presidency of the Czech Republic. I think he was released from prison and is now living a private life.

While you are in this state you know what you will do in one case or the other (only two things were going to happen and the man unknowingly chose death) and there's no more use of a free-willed choice. Anyway, he was one of the bad guys.

--Brant

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