Is consciousness a good thing or a bad thing?

[Peron]

Is it better to be aware of the outside world and of pain, pleasure, and emotions or be blind to them and not have the ability to know that you feel them?

For instance as conscious beings we know we will die and a vast majority of us (not all of us) have a hard time accepting the inevitable, for this we live with an 'absence of death' we don't think about it. but Mice and most of the animal kingdom do not know what pain feels like, by this I mean to say that they lack the ability to know that they are being hurt. So is it better to be a mouse, completely blind out the outside world, or a conscious being and aware and conscious of this world and all that it means?

[lemur]

Ignorance does indeed seem to be bliss in at least some cases. I have seen a puppy lick a can, cutting its tongue, and apparently not feel a thing while the blood streams from its mouth. Presumably, pain and pleasure can assist you in perceiving things and thus intervening or planning more effectively. Yet our sensitivities also make us more susceptible to manipulation and social control for the benefit of others against our own interest (i.e. exploitation). The biggest problem with the idea that ignorance is bliss, however imo, is that once people are conscious of it, they try to cultivate ignorance artificially by pretending to be less conscious than they are. This puts their consciousness in conflict with itself and results in a level of general deceitfulness in their everyday living that is not conducive to deep happiness, imo, however fruitful its effects may be in the most immediate contexts.

[Marat]

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that consciousness, in its nagging, dogging, ceaseless persistence, can be one of the most excruciating tortures humans are subjected to, since there is no easy way to escape the constant presence of the atmosphere of the self and its distinctive style of interpreting things, which even the self itself might get sick of (just as friends and relatives sometimes do!). It is to escape the endless stream of commentary by the self on experience -- the way it augments it and often worsens it by reflection -- that people become drug addicts, alcoholics, or retreat into excessive sleep or psychosis.

 

If you actually reflect on all the bad things that have happened and will happen in your life, it is evident that anticipating them, reflecting on them, analyzing them, and remembering them makes them all thousands of times worse than they would be if your consciousness had been much dimmer and had only really noticed what was happening when it happened and no longer. Since humans are organically organized entities, and the world is governed by entropy which opposes that organization, the natural tendency of things is for what we need and want -- our integrity and organization to be preserved -- to be damaged and destroyed. This means that the net effect of the world on us is negative, so the ability of our consciousness to magnify experience only adds to our misery.

 

As the Ancient Greek myth of Silenus says, "The best thing for man is never to have been born, or, failing that, to cease to exist as soon as possible."

[lemur]

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that consciousness, in its nagging, dogging, ceaseless persistence, can be one of the most excruciating tortures humans are subjected to, since there is no easy way to escape the constant presence of the atmosphere of the self and its distinctive style of interpreting things, which even the self itself might get sick of (just as friends and relatives sometimes do!). It is to escape the endless stream of commentary by the self on experience -- the way it augments it and often worsens it by reflection -- that people become drug addicts, alcoholics, or retreat into excessive sleep or psychosis.

 

If you actually reflect on all the bad things that have happened and will happen in your life, it is evident that anticipating them, reflecting on them, analyzing them, and remembering them makes them all thousands of times worse than they would be if your consciousness had been much dimmer and had only really noticed what was happening when it happened and no longer. Since humans are organically organized entities, and the world is governed by entropy which opposes that organization, the natural tendency of things is for what we need and want -- our integrity and organization to be preserved -- to be damaged and destroyed. This means that the net effect of the world on us is negative, so the ability of our consciousness to magnify experience only adds to our misery.

 

As the Ancient Greek myth of Silenus says, "The best thing for man is never to have been born, or, failing that, to cease to exist as soon as possible."

Interesting perspective, but I think you're ignoring the fact that the conscious mind has the ability to recognize itself as a potentially destructive hyper-controlling agent. Of course it resists this "self-consciousness" because it wants to avoid and reason to limit its power, but once it learns that by relaxing its will-to-control, it can actually be more constructive than when it tries to suffocate all life with absolute control, it can be a very effective tool. The key, imo, is to recognize that the conscious mind is nothing more than yet another interactant in any system it is involved in. As such, it can exercise influence but it can never strive for absolute control over the configuration it becomes part of by becoming conscious of. The trick is how to balance the will-to-influence with the acceptance that total control isn't possible. The first reaction is for it to think it must limit itself with absolute boundaries, but that just displaces the will to absolute control, imo. So, it has to learn to regard its sphere of influence tentatively, allowing itself to interject itself at will, while at the same time being aware that it is not capable of ultimate dominance. It will always remain in dialogue with other agents/factors.

 

 

[Peron]

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that consciousness, in its nagging, dogging, ceaseless persistence, can be one of the most excruciating tortures humans are subjected to, since there is no easy way to escape the constant presence of the atmosphere of the self and its distinctive style of interpreting things, which even the self itself might get sick of (just as friends and relatives sometimes do!). It is to escape the endless stream of commentary by the self on experience -- the way it augments it and often worsens it by reflection -- that people become drug addicts, alcoholics, or retreat into excessive sleep or psychosis.

 

If you actually reflect on all the bad things that have happened and will happen in your life, it is evident that anticipating them, reflecting on them, analyzing them, and remembering them makes them all thousands of times worse than they would be if your consciousness had been much dimmer and had only really noticed what was happening when it happened and no longer. Since humans are organically organized entities, and the world is governed by entropy which opposes that organization, the natural tendency of things is for what we need and want -- our integrity and organization to be preserved -- to be damaged and destroyed. This means that the net effect of the world on us is negative, so the ability of our consciousness to magnify experience only adds to our misery.

 

As the Ancient Greek myth of Silenus says, "The best thing for man is never to have been born, or, failing that, to cease to exist as soon as possible."

 

Wow, Silenus casts a dim view. I would argue that consciousness also increases pleasure, so the two elements, Misery and Pleasure, cancel each other out. And if they are unbalanced i.e if a person experiences more pleasure than pain. These two elements are unbalanced so that person becomes less concerned with the pain after it has passed. So I don't think that the "net effect of the world on us is negative", on the contrary it can be quite positive.

[Mr Skeptic]

Consciousness is very useful, and a precious resource. Most of your stuff is therefore done unconsciously. But the important things are brought to your consciousness, that you may make a better decision.

 

There are some people who never feel pain. It is not nice being one of those, as you can't tell if you got hurt without looking.

[thinker_jeff]

Is consciousness a good thing or a bad thing?

It really depends on what the standard you're using. Because you believe consciousness belonging to human beings only, it must be good if you think human being better than other species, or it must be bad if you think human being worse than others.

I don't see any advantage to human species without consciousness.

[Marat]

Why is it that we seem to value things that cause us to become less conscious? People enjoy sleeping deeply, being intoxicated, vegging out, and becoming so involved in mindless games or sex that they lose their sense of personal identity, so there must be something about the sheer persistence and vigilence, the constant, pestering, commentary and evaluation, fear and speculation, anticipation and regret, which goes with consciousness that is extremely negative.

 

I saw a guinea pig once that had accidentally been dropped, had suffered a spinal injury, and could not use its back legs. When its meal was brought about an hour later, the animal began squealing with delight and crawled forward to eat it. Could a human do this? No, of course not, because our experience of everything is overshadowed by an awareness of our general situation. But given that the one thing we most fear and dread -- our physical decay and death -- is inevitable, our awareness of our general situation is profoundly negative, so I suspect we experience everything in a much less pleasurable way than less conscious beings.

[keelanz]

Is it better to be aware of the outside world and of pain, pleasure, and emotions or be blind to them and not have the ability to know that you feel them?

For instance as conscious beings we know we will die and a vast majority of us (not all of us) have a hard time accepting the inevitable, for this we live with an 'absence of death' we don't think about it. but Mice and most of the animal kingdom do not know what pain feels like, by this I mean to say that they lack the ability to know that they are being hurt. So is it better to be a mouse, completely blind out the outside world, or a conscious being and aware and conscious of this world and all that it means?

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=9Tin7x8OPho

 

who defines good and bad? its subjective. You cant say weather its better or worse without defining your opinion on what is good or bad, sounds weird i know but if you enjoy pain then being "aware" of certain aspects of humanity is a good thing, compared to the other 90% of the population who would says its negative. were all blind in reality to a certain extent anyway so who says we know when were getting hurt? we cry when our child is born and when our parents die, what the difference? were just learning machines were not as unique as you think, just more advanced versions of mice IMO.

 

On another note im fairly sure 99% of us presume it is good otherwise we'd commit suicide and try to come back as a butterfly. Self awareness is the best card nature has to play.

Edited April 21, 2011 by keelanz

[Marat]

The Ancient Stoics tried to argue that no external impression on humans was good or bad in itself, but rather, what made it good or bad was only the person's attitude towards the impression or subjective evaluation of it. We see this idea mentioned in 'Hamlet,' where a character says, 'Nothing is good or bad,/ But thinking makes it so.' But this really seems to be a very forced and contrived way of thinking, since external impressions clearly have an objective quality which can be extremely resistant to creative re-shaping by our mental attitude toward them. If you are strapped down to a bed and being slowly tortured to death, I doubt you could seriously convince yourself that your problem was really just with your subjective opinion that torture was bad, and that you should simply change your evaluative approach to things.

 

With respect to suicide and happiness, I think you have to analyze the issue along two distinct tracks -- pleasure and value. Humans decide to remain living or engage with life because they seek to realize value in their own creative responses to conscious experience, not just because they seek happiness from conscious experience. Life may become so unhappy that people decide it is no longer worth pursuing existence for the sake of achieving something of value, so they commit suicide. Or life may be sufficiently happy that the total absence of value in it may still make it worth living. But the interaction between these distinct vectors is complex.

[keelanz]

The Ancient Stoics tried to argue that no external impression on humans was good or bad in itself, but rather, what made it good or bad was only the person's attitude towards the impression or subjective evaluation of it. We see this idea mentioned in 'Hamlet,' where a character says, 'Nothing is good or bad,/ But thinking makes it so.' But this really seems to be a very forced and contrived way of thinking, since external impressions clearly have an objective quality which can be extremely resistant to creative re-shaping by our mental attitude toward them. If you are strapped down to a bed and being slowly tortured to death, I doubt you could seriously convince yourself that your problem was really just with your subjective opinion that torture was bad, and that you should simply change your evaluative approach to things.

 

With respect to suicide and happiness, I think you have to analyze the issue along two distinct tracks -- pleasure and value. Humans decide to remain living or engage with life because they seek to realize value in their own creative responses to conscious experience, not just because they seek happiness from conscious experience. Life may become so unhappy that people decide it is no longer worth pursuing existence for the sake of achieving something of value, so they commit suicide. Or life may be sufficiently happy that the total absence of value in it may still make it worth living. But the interaction between these distinct vectors is complex.

 

I agree for the most part however the analogy given is double ended, your looking at it from only 1 side, if you was the person doing the torturing because for example a close family member was in trouble or for say a matter of national security then if you were the person being tortured you would subjectively at the very minimum understand why your being tortured.

 

If however you were being tortured without a cause there would be absolutely no subjective understanding i dont think, hence it could be defined as objective?

 

So i think it comes down to cause and effect, if theres a cause then the effect is subjective, if however the cause is not understood it can be presumed objective.

 

I dont really understand the process of suicide enough to make a valuable remark however the remark i made on suicide was relative to consciousness being good or bad, I.E if it a negative process of nature, we would surely kill ourselves to get away from it....sort of thing.

[tar]

good thing, bad thing? How about the only thing?

 

Had a thought several years ago, that the purpose of life was "to be", to enjoy being, and to make it possible for others to do the same.

 

To me, a human is of and in the universe, aware of the state of it, at one particular time (now), at one particular place (here). And from this position in time and space we can know what came before and predict what will happen next, and know what is outside and what is inside.

 

Our consciousness is our focus at the moment.

 

God cannot focus on anything because he/she/it is everywhere at once and always has been and always will be.

 

What fun is that? Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to feel or taste or think about or predict, that isn’t already known. How could God "focus" on anything? It's got no reference point.

 

One way to consider our consciousness, is that we, for a short time, are of God (God being all there is/nature/the universe/eternity/existence/reality/or however you wish to put it), but are doing it a favor, by NOT knowing everything that ever was or will be, instead, just knowing here and now. From this point, we can imagine the rest.

 

In my way of thinking of this, it makes no sense that "I" existed prior my birth, or that "I" will exist after my death. The "I" is my current focus, made possible by my mortal human body/brain/heart group, that is, by its evolved mechanisms able to sense the world, internalize it, and build an analog model of the world in the neural connections and folds of my brain. Awareness of the state of this model, here and now, awareness of TAR2's body/brain/heart group (in my case) is what consciousness is.

 

I'll go with it, as long as it lasts. It's my job. Sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful, but always, the only thing I've got. ('til I don't have it no more)

 

Regards, TAR

[Marat]

I guess the real problem is that your current existence is not the only thing you've got, since you also always know that you could commit suicide, so you always potentially have the possibility of your own non-existence. If we were somehow designed so that suicide were not physically possible, only then would we have to make the best of our existence rather than have the option just to reject it.

[tar]

Marat,

 

I have a theory that often when suicide occurs, it is when a person looses control of things they would rather control, and they find a certain satisfaction and controlling power, in the ability to have the final say in the matter of their own existence.

 

Problem is, they won't be around to savor their victory. So in my estimation, its a pointless excercise, an attempt at relief of discomfort that will yield no pleasure. That in fact will only relieve you of the one thing you've got...consciousness. Permanently.

 

In fact, I think it rather inappropriate that the eventual end to TAR2 is an unavoidable certainty and as such, feel that the one thing I truely do have control over, is making it possible to continue to live and assisting others in doing the same.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Marat]

I don't think it is necessary to be able to frame every experience by continuing to live before, during, and after it for the experience to have any value. That would only be the case if what we were seeking was the pleasure of the experience per se, so we would want to enjoy anticipating it, living through it, and then savoring it afterward.

 

With suicide, in contrast, the point is not either to enjoy the experience of killing yourself -- which would really be unpleasant in itself -- or to enjoy the sense of self-satisfaction afterwards which would come from the feeling of having exerted some measure or control of or defiance against an unendurable life. I think the proper view is that the whole point of suicide is just to bring an end to life, which for some people in some situations can be terrifying, hideous, or monstrously painful. The cessation of all sensation is the goal, not the enjoyment of the experience of suicide itself.

[tar]

Marat,

 

I think you are right. The cessation is the goal. I was just pointing out that it was not a rest that would refresh. It is not an escape to something better, it is the death of you.

 

I am very conscious of the fact that given our mortality, and our awareness of it, there are many things that mortals before us, have done for the benefit of conscious lifes that will remain after their death. This points to an awareness we all have of "something greater" than ourselves. A consciousness that we can consider ourselves a part of, that will not be destroyed by our own death. The memory of us will remain in the minds of those we touched. Our works will remain, to be noticed by other minds.

 

But this is true of any death. And in all cases, the one that dies, is done doing, is done remembering, and can no longer enjoy life. The enjoying is only done between birth and death.

 

And cessation of joy is not what we are after. We seem to me to be constructed in such a way as we look for joy, and look for ways to provide the same opportunity for joy to others.

 

One could always consider their responsibility to the human spirit, and the effect that their death would have upon it.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Marat]

I think that during the first half of our lives we look for joy, even at considerable risk of increasing our suffering, but then in the second half we seek to avoid suffering even at the cost of missing out on joy. Is it that we eventually notice that with an aging body the odds of things turning out badly increase? This may also explain why suicide rates among the old are so high.

 

You raise some interesting questions about the locus of human identity. In one sense, since consciousness is private unless deliberately communicated, we are all islands shut up unto ourselves. If we focus on this characteristic, then we can readily say that if experience starts to be more negative than positive, and the future seems likely to be no better, or perhaps even worse, then why not commit suicide? But in another sense, since our consciousness is informed by and intimately linked to our surrounding society and culture, we can see our experience as having meaning only in its cultural context. Thus even if one part of this wider society, our own consciousness, becomes unpleasant to the person most intimately experiencing it, our entanglement in the emotional and social meanings and duties around us can induce us not to subtract ourselves from the overall human network, since our connection there may still be valuable.

 

Shakespeare says in 'Julius Caesar' that "The good men do oft dies with them, while the evil lives after," so 'my life' in terms of its whole meaning context may well have a strange existence that goes beyond what I can actually experience. But does this matter to me if I can't personally experience it or have knowledge of it? Should I care if after I am dead I am hated by the world and my body is torn apart by dogs in the public square, with crowds gathered around shouting obscene exclamations and hoots of derision?

[tar]

Marat,

 

I happen to be musing oftern of late on the idea of "identity". This spurred by a section in a Stephen Pinker book called "The Stuff of Thought". I have been investigating language since November, in an attempt to understand the meaning behind the words.

 

In the Pinker book he takes an idea from Bertram Russell and expounds upon it. I have forgotten the exact examples he used but the drift is that the same idea in the first person (I,we) is good, the same idea referring to the second person is neutral and when used in referrence to the third person is bad.

 

Such as I am thin, you are scrawny, he is emaciated.

Or I am exploring my sexuality, you are loose, and she is a slut.

 

Never-the-less, it put me on an exploration of those things that cause us to say "we" and there-by cause us to consider the people NOT in that group as "they".

 

Perhaps I should start a thread on the topic. Or perhaps it is very much a part of this one. There are about a score of things I have thought of so far, like religion, spoken language, written language, tribal linkages, physical characteristics (us 6 foot males, us people over 50), geographical commonalities, interests, purposes, common experiences (we who saw the twin towers burn, we are going on vacation to the mountians next week), fans of a certain sports team, coworkers, institutional membership, national or other political membership, philosophical leanings, intellectual capacity (may be part of shared physical characteristics), family, people that know so-and-so personally (may be part of shared experience), and so on.

 

In anycase the question of whether consciousness is good or bad, may be linked to which identity or combination of identities you are concentrating on or considering, or are "conscious" of at the moment.

 

And given the fact that we look at those not in our group in a negative light, it is probably much easier for us to consider someone else, in the "they" category of one type or another as likey to find their life worth ending. Certainly not as easy to take the thought that someone in a "we" category would want to end their life. Unless of course the death is for "us". Such as a suicide bomber dying for believers to battle the Great Satan, or the group of heroes on Flight 83 rushing the hijackers and taking the plane down when they knew it was a missle aimed at "our" capitol.

 

I will maintain my appraisal, that consciousness is not a good thing or a bad thing, but the only thing.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Marat]

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once commented, "Hell is other people," and although the formulation is so cryptic as to be unclear, there is something in it which reflects on what you say, in that the lives of other people often seem unacceptable for us, even if they count objectively as good or happy. The 17th-century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that if a magician offered to transform him into the Emperor of China he would refuse, since having to be someone else would be no different from being dead, which I guess highlights how alien the existence of other people can seem for us. A final, less academic reflection on this comes from a movie in which Stacey Keatch plays a washed-up prize fighter who is trying to cope with his new life without a career. Talking with his manager in an all-night diner, they both look at an ancient, withered Chinese man who works there as the dish washer, and the manager says, "How would you like to wake up every morning and find that you are him?" How do people find a way not only to accept, but even apparently to enjoy, their lives when their existence seems so alien and unsatisfactory to us that we would prefer to be dead rather than to be them? If a healthy, vigorous 18-year-old were to suffer some sort of miraculous progeria and wake up one morning to find himself suddenly 90 years old, he would rather be dead and would perhaps commit suicide, but if he lives to be 90 he will want to live to be 94.

 

Did you ever have the uneasy feeling that if you could suddenly settle your consciousness in that of another person and participate in their consciousness, and experience directly their own peculiar atmosphere of thought, it would horrify you with its alienness, even if that person was a close friend or relative?

 

Fiction usually conceives of one's own death as seeing one's own corpse, but perhaps seeing and studying other lives whose alienness is the negation of our own type of life is a more dramatic intimation of our own death. That experience might also instruct us in the reasons for suicide: I.e., if my life were to become through injury, disease, guilt, shame, or emotional deprivation so alien to my sense of my appropriate identity that continuing to live it seemed more like living as a dead version of myself, then suicide might be as imperative for me as resisting the invasion of my life by another person trying to rape or enslave me.

[tar]

Marat,

 

Not so sure I can imagine a "negation" of my own type of life. There are too many components to imagine the opposite of all, and what that would mean.

 

Although ones sense of "appropriate identity" does seem to rely on the we vs. they type of distinctions, I think it is a complicated calculus that includes a large body of elements that are "we" elements, as well as a number of elements that are "they" elements, when it comes to the "putting oneself in someone elses shoes".

 

For instance, if I am sitting next to someone in a Red Sox jersey, and I have my Yankee hat on, watching the game at Yankee stadium, there are many things I have in common with the guy/girl, and only one main rule that we are taking opposing sides on.

 

When "Big Poppy" (a Boston star) hits a home run, we both experience the same event, understand its meaning, and have completely different reactions to it. He/She a victorious feeling, and I one of defeat.

 

Still "we" are both baseball fans, enjoying a drink, a hotdog and an exciting, beautiful summer evening at the ballpark. And for both, the "story" is not over (since its the top of the 6th for us both).

 

Any number of other things, we could hold in common. He may be my twin brother. Not difficult in most ways to imagine my consciousness "settling" in his and comprehending his thoughts, and participating in his consciousness, and his peculiar atmosphere of thought. I would just have to imagine my own and change Yankee Blue to Boston Red and imagine it's A-rod at Fenway hitting the home run, and it's him putting himself, in my shoes.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

P.S. This post took a completely different tack, than my original reply to your post last night (which I lost due to computer lock up.) In that one, I talked about how we may have an "area" of our brain that we keep the "bad examples" in, and made analogies of jail and hell and talked about closet doors that we keep locked with "us" on the outside, and those bad things captured and held at bay. In that reply I attempted to address the "uneasy" feeling, and explain it by considering the recursions and frame shifts involved in putting oneself in someone else's shoes, where you may lose track of which side of which closet door "you" are on.

 

P.P.S And I ended the post by saying that "happily our consciousness is unavoidably bound to our own body/brain/heart group." Which does, in retrospect, give us a safe home, and a unique identity, from which we can imagine the rest.

Edited June 15, 2011 by tar

[Marat]

I think that at some point everyone goes through the uncomfortable experience of wondering whether when I see an object I call 'red,' and another person sees that same object and also calls it 'red,' in fact we are both disguising by our use of a common language in response to common stimuli just how utterly incommensurable our own inner experiences are, since when I see 'red' I actually have an image in my mind of what the other person would call 'orange' or 'green.'

 

On a higher level, since I understand 'father' and 'paternalism' in reference to my own experience with my own particular father, even though I also understand that that concept, as a public term, has a wider application than my own experience, I still can't entirely separate it from my own associations. For this reason, if we were both to converse about 'fatherhood,' we would not really be sharing the same meaning, though it would take a lot of discussion to clarify all the distinctions.

 

So if you multiply the different shadings of all meanings in everyone's head from all their personal experiences, abstract learning, and personal beliefs, we must all be truly radically incommensurable persons, who only seem to communicate with each other and share experiences because a common language and a common socialization simplify things sufficiently that the great differences are abstracted down to common denomenators which hide the dissonances between us.

[tar]

Marat,

 

I do not now how to get rid of the little voting bar at the end of your post to see what the end of your last sentence was. For me your sentence ended "common denomenators which..."

 

I do need to know the rest, to know whether I am agreeing or disagreeing.

 

But I do think that language is "common" for a reason.

 

If I have internalized the world, and hold an analog model of it, a "working model" in many senses and there are elements of this model that you also have in your model, it would not really matter if your image of green was more like my image of middle C, as long as I experienced the middle C thing when I looked at a tree's leaf in the summer. That is what green is to you, and that is what green is to me. It's our ability to both refer to the leaf as green, that makes for language, and the fact that we have both "seen" a leaf in the summer and learned that this experience is an experience of a leaf shaped green growth at the end of the branch of a tree. If you know what I "mean" by that, the manner of my own coding, my internal image, "the way" my brain is impressed by that image is no reason for either of us to doubt the greeness of the leaf. Or for that matter, to consider that residing in the others brain would be an alien experience. For if we were to assume the other's position, as the awareness or consciousness contained in the other's body/brain/heart group, we would actually BE the other consciousness, and would carry none of our own wiring, (or memories) with us.

 

I guess this is what was meant by your fellow considering his move into the emperor as being the death of "his" consciousness.

 

So I would pretty much disagree that qualia should be considered private, special things, that are completely alien experiences to others. In fact it is the very sameness of our qualia, that give us the common ground from which we draw distinctions, and find ways to share our common experiences of the world, (and of ourselves).

 

For instance, to half quote the famous philosopher Marat, "I think that at some point everyone goes through the uncomfortable experience of wondering whether..." How could you think that, if our qualia where not of similar construction?

 

How I would put it, is that we have completely different models, of the exact same world, built with similiar equipment. Our different models are due to our unique history of position and experience, not so much because of a radical difference in equipment.

 

I have a rather intimate knowledge of the basement room I am typing from. It is part of my model of the world. It is not included in your model. However if you came here, you would recognize all the elements in it, and call them the same thing I call them. And the green things, you would call green. You might not know the history of each object and what they "meant" to me. But I could tell you.

 

So where is the "mystery" in qualia?

 

Regards, TAR2

 

P.S. Now I see the end of your post "hide the dissonances between us."

 

But I do think it may be the other way around. It is our common way of experiencing the world that allows us to share our experiences of it. Words are shorthand for actual, real things about the world that we have common experience of.

 

In a sense, language is communication between two minds, that already know each other. Two minds, that use the same shorthand.

[Marat]

What you say replicates a series of philosophical insights from Kant to Wittgenstein, which I also agree with -- at least when I'm not toying with ideas just for the sake of speculating. Essentially the accepted theory is that it would be impossible for us to notice ourselves as an object of our own, inner experience, unless we had a relatively stable world of experience outside of us to frame ourselves into determinate contrast with it. Similarly, we could not even fixate on individual objects and experiences within our consciousness unless we lived in a linguistic community which fixed these meanings into determinate form by other speakers using naming and identification rules for experiences in a stable way -- such as could only be made possible in a community of speakers correcting and thus holding steady each others' identification of things.

 

Thus, ultimately, the ability of our own consciousness to make us aware of our most basic 'object' -- our continuing self-awareness as a self -- and of all individual objects and experiences, is parasitic on our living in a linguistic community whose social, linguistic, and rule-using instructions tell us how to frame, unitize, and re-identify these sensations as discrete things. This is encapsulated in Wittgenstein's dictum: "There can be no private language."

[tar]

Marat,

 

Yes, I am heavily influenced by Kant, and Pinker and (just starting a Chomsky book), since they are some of the authors I have at my right at the moment, along with Deutscher. All only partially read, and it doesn't take much grist for my mill to go off grinding, so I enjoy such discussions as these, as much as reading more of what great minds have already discovered about language.

 

Interesting to me is how one can use the phrase " what WE know " and be referring to stuff that the utterer may not themselves be aware of. Points to a membership in a "consciousness" greater than that of a single human organism. A consciousness that evidently has everything other than any intention to commit suicide.

 

In this, I would have to say that consciousness of this type appears to be a "good" thing, because the continuation of human consciousness is the one thing that we have all been striving for, since we started being human.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited June 18, 2011 by tar

[Marat]

Though in some ways what you are saying would amount to having to say that Nazism was good, since in terms of its own meaning and value system, it affirmed that it should continue to exist. Similarly, in terms of the only meaning context and point of reference we have, we find that the continued existence of that meaning context and point of reference -- the linguistic community, the other minds who keep its rule use stable and thus make a public language possible, and the self-consciousness it calls into being -- is affirmed, since there is no meaning perspective outside of it available to our knowledge from which we can refute it. But we can at least see that things die, and can imagine what it would be like if all the noise of experience stopped, and sometimes, from a certain existential perspective, people evidently see that as a good thing.

 

An interesting old text to look at that makes very clear Kant's discussion of how individual consciousness comes into existence only from the existence of a stability given outside of it is Peter Strawson's 'The Bounds of Sense" (London: Methuen, 1966).