[Wittrs] Re: Defining Consciousness -- Can we, and if so what is it?

  • From: "blroadies" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:29:14 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>"To consider it a scientific question is to imagine taking up a
position outside of consciousness, from which consciousness can be
viewed as a process or as an object entering into relation to other
objects. No such "external view" is possible. At best all we can say is
that we imagine others to be conscious, and that this imagined
consciousness is imgined to be correlated with brain activity.
> Consciousness my be studied scientifically only if the word is used to
denote something empirical like overt behavior or brain > activity, in
which case the use that Nagel makes of the word gets overlooked."

*******************************************************

I agree.  I prepared the following remarks I hope you see as consistent.

This is my take. LW is concerned with the limits of what we can say. He
suggests (to me) 3 limits.

1. Physical objects: We can describe them variously, set them up in
causal relations, show how they work, but we cannot speak of their
essence, what they are apart from our conception of them and,
furthermore, today's descriptions will, most likely, be replaced, in
the future, by radically different ones.

2. Who and what we are, the "I", the person: The above holds  in
the same way, for the same reasons.

and now the relationship between #1 and #2

3. The 1st person perspective (my sense of myself, my world) can only 
be connected with the 3rd person perspective (my sense of you and your
world) by "reducing" you to a thing without a inner life and,
thereby, describing you and your life as if it were external to you
(reducing you to a point.)

So- I can "cause" a change in your mental state by being harsh
(or loving) to you. But the change I see and describe is an external
process to me. In fact, under this description, there is no
"You" neither in my external description or (wonder if you
agree) in your phenomenological account of the same. For your account of
"what is going on inside of you" is also externalized, objectiified.

Now we can set up a causal connection between my external description of
a process (being nice to you) and your external description ("I feel
good when you are nice to me") -- let's say it happens each and every
time. But this external connection must bypass both my and your inner
life. Mind, consciousness, has no place here.

bruce

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