January 17, 2007
From Seeing Red
“Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.”
comments
“Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.”
comments
There’s always the De Anima.
say more….
Re: can one’s consciousness remain after one dies?
I hate to post just the conclusion, because without the preceding arguments and discussions it isn’t easily understood or granted.
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
John: I agree, this is not likely to be granted by many thinkers–even if the discussion is presented. I don’t want to be facile about the whole thing, but it conjures thoughts of great debates about angels dancing on the head of a pin. How is it, for instance that one may seek to gain the authority of the One (“by virtue of becoming all things”), only to then posit a separate “state” existing beside that One. This is simply a redistribution of all the pertinent issues, done in such a way as to divert attention from problems while bolstering the “benefits” (particularly those that benefit the argument at hand). Notice the use of such terms as “essential nature”–used as if that term in itself might not contain the very rug under which Much has been swept. And the term “one’s consciousness”: which is it, your personal consciousness, or that One that doesn’t know you from Adam? And finally, this last bit about how “Actual knowledge is identical with its object”: if I know that the speed of light is (about) 186,000 miles per second, in what sense is my knowlegde the speed of light? I’m quite sure that argument piled upon argument could find a way here to squirm around problems to reach a unified system. But in the end, a good test, and a good path for educating the intuition, is to always note just how conspicuously convenient some arguments are. One might, for intance, strive to develop a nervous tic whenever uttering the phrase: “Look at how miraculous it is, to find that the Whole of Creation had our very hopes for self-serving power and unity in mind!”
Thanks for the comments, Daryl. I don’t intend to here defend Aristotelian psychology; I just wanted to direct some to it. The passage above (and I messed up with the italics: the whole below is excerpted from De Anima, book III, ch. 5) is from a much larger, extensive and coherent study of psychology.