You have before you the picture of an apple. You see it. You are aware of it. At some point you become aware that you are aware of it. And now that I've mentioned it, you've become aware that you are aware of your awareness of it and...well, we could go on like this all day. Consciousness is an elusive little bugger. It constantly slips away. Try to catch it working, and you find yourself falling into this kind of infinite regress. Many people have misinterpreted this as a layering of consciousness, but actually it's a demonstration of its method of operation.
For instance, when we say that you are aware of your awareness of the apple, we mean that you've set up camp across the hill, trying to catch consciousness in the act. But once you've done this, the immediate awareness of the apple that you're trying to perceive at work is only a concept of awareness. It has no living vitality. You're no longer viewing the apple through this "awareness." You're no longer see anything through it. You're only seeing the apple indirectly from your vantage point across the hill, as part of a composition involving the apple and this concept of immediate awareness. When we say that you are aware that you are aware of your awareness of the apple, this mean that you've moved to yet another hill more distant than the other. Now you've postulated two concepts of awareness, and you've positioned them in a relationship with one another, one viewing the apple, the second viewing the first. But again, these are just concepts, ideas of awareness. You're not really there. You're up on the distant hill, viewing a broader composition involving the apple and these inter-related concepts of awareness. So, you're not descending through layers of consciousness; you're shifting its vantage points. You're only ever viewing the situation from one perspective.
Sartre's idea of consciousness is like a perfectly translucent lens having neither depth or substance. You can never get around behind it or beside it or above it to see it, because it's consciousness itself that does the seeing. Furthermore, consciousness only exists as consciousness insomuch as it is consciousness of something. It is a subject exhausted entirely in its object. It's existence lies completely in its function. Your awareness of the apple exists as a view of the apple, as a relationship with the apple and nothing else. And yet this awareness is not the apple. It is a perception of the apple. It is something other than the apple. This gulf between subject and object was the crucial point for Sartre.
It is when consciousness is turned inward, that this gulf becomes significant. Consciousness is the seat of our being. It is the nucleus of ourselves. It is the eye of our soul that peers through this lens. When I am aware of the apple, it is I who has the immediate involvement, consumed entirely for the moment in my focus on the apple. When consciousness shifts to consider this awareness, it is I who am viewing it from the new vantage point. I am the subject, always withdrawn from my object. I am not the apple. I am not my concept of my awareness of the apple. I am always something else.
So when we turn this lens on ourselves and view the things which constitute our person, we find this same withdraw. I possess a body, I own it, but yet I am not my body. I am not my job, or my house, or my name, or my memories. I'm not even my thoughts. I am removed from these things as a subject is to an object, just as I am from the apple. I have these things. In some cases, I control these things, but yet I am not these things, not at the core foundation of my being. I find myself constantly retreating to the far hill to gain a perspective on them.
Thus Sartre proposes the fundamental paradox of our existence. Our consciousness, which holds our very being, continually slips free from any defining attributes or any substance that could constitute its identity. It's always somewhere else. It is always something else. It exists entirely in not being the object of its focus, and yet its existence lies entirely in its focus on those objects. You chase it down and it falls continually away into the dark. It is a void, a tiny black hole drawing perception into it, and existing exclusively through this perception.
This will be the starting point of my next post on this matter.
I saw a bunch of galaxies within the infra-red lens of the Hubble telescope within an orb of the subconscious state of mind. I might need to schedule an appointment with someone with the last name of a certain kind of slip.
ReplyDeleteGood luck digging him up. I'm not sure how responsive he'll be to your plight, and he might smell a little bit of decomposition, cigar smoke, and cocaine.
ReplyDeleteInteresting viewpoint, but I'm not sure why I can't observe the apple at the same time I am observing myself observing the apple.
ReplyDeleteThe human brain is capable of observing more that one object at once, holding two different thoughts at once, and collecting data from more than one sense at once. Right now I am composing this reply while considering the memory of that apple, at the same time I am thinking about the fact I am thinking about that apple, while wondering what time it is, all the while smoking a cigarette and noticing the feel of my collar against my neck.
I admit it may be possible to focus on one image exclusivly while ignoring all else, but it seems to me this would be an abberation of normal behavior, something reserved for zen monks.
Have you ever zoned out while driving to work, and then have to think hard about how you made it there. In this case, your self was mostly preoccupied with whatever you were thinking about, but another part of yourself had to have been paying enough attention to the road to get you there in one piece, and you can probably remember the specifics of the drive if you think hard enough. So, to use your metaphor, you were camped on more than one hill at once.
Or something like that. Vote Cheese!
Well, we CAN be aware of multiple things, but they all form a loose composite viewed from a certain perspective. The initial awareness of the apple is what Sartre calls "the pre-reflective cogito." We're simply aware of it without really thinking about it. Once we reflect on our awareness, we're not quite focused directly on the apple anymore. The apple is still there, and we ARE still aware of it, but we're considering it as an object of our initial awareness, rather than thoughtlessly focusing on it. The pre-reflective cogito has discreetly slipped out the side door. We can't do both at once.
ReplyDeleteAs far as your driving example (which I have noticed), we ARE aware of the road, but not reflecting on this awareness. It lies on the outskirts of the composite, peripheral to the direct focus of our thoughts, say the crack dealer we accidentally photographed. But it's all more unified than you might think.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you have to remember that, for the sake of consideration, we're slowing down a process that happens at lightening fast speeds. Your mind flits around from the apple to your collar to your cigarette back to the apple back to the cigarette and so on in a matter of a couple of seconds. This might make it all seem somewhat simultaneous, but if you really think about it, I think you'll see that you're really only giving the bulk of your attention to one of these things at a time. The rest remain as part of the composite, but they shift in and out of the central focal point of your awareness.
ReplyDeleteThe point of all this really, anyway, was the impossibility of trying to gain a perspective on your own consciousness, not necessarily how many things can be held in your awareness at once.
"I possess a body, I own it, but yet I am not my body.... my name, or my memories. I'm not even my thoughts."
ReplyDeleteActually, I am my body, my name, my memories and my thoughts. And a lot more besides. It's just that I can make them into objects of attention too, or even consider them as possessions.
If zis ees Sartre, I no respect 'eem much.
Of course those things are part of our identities, part of us.
ReplyDeleteSartre's writing is...difficult. I'm trying my best to make the ideas more accessible, but it isn't easy. If there's a fault here with the way something is put, it's probably more mine than it is his.
The point is that we can distance ourselves from these things, as a subject to an object. The post up there, for instance, is my post. It's a product of my thoughts and efforts, and yet there is a separation between it and I, as though it were not quite me, but rather my child.
Also, bear in mind that this is all just a first step, which will be built on.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say, "It's just that I can make them into objects of attention too, or even consider them as possessions.", that's the point here, this ability to objectify these things. You can take issue with the way I put it, and you might claim that I'm overstating the degree of this objectification, but essentially, I'm trying to say the same thing.
Yes, I am my body. It is a part of me. Yet I can also stand back and consider it from a distance. So there has to be a part of me that is also not my body, something that can do this standing back and considering. In the same manner, I can also stand back from any part of my identity, or the the totality of it. I am these things, but in some sense I have to not be these things to even have the ability to treat them as objects.
Again, "It's just that I can make them into objects of attention too, or even consider them as possessions." <- This is that retreating to the far hill. This is the point. (Notice even that you're referring to these things as "them", as something other, even as you're objecting to the whole idea, and frankly being quite flippant about it as well.)
Sorry abut the flippancy. I had a girlfriend at university who used to carry Being and Nothingness around with her wherever she went. Somehow it made me feel guilty for never having read it myself. It was on my syllabus, you see, but I could not afford to buy it, nor was I a conscientious student. Madeleine was her name. In the end, I married her friend Judi. It was an eighteen-year-long disaster. So I am revenging myself by being flippant about Sartre. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteVincent, is that story even true? I almost suspect that you're having fun at my expense. Either way, you put a smile on my face.
ReplyDeleteAs for Sartre, if you get a chance, at least glance at a copy. I think you'll see it's fairly impenetrable stuff. I'm doing the best I can with it. My interpretation could be wayyy off. I think I have the fundamentals of his argument for free will, but there's a better than average chance that I'm completely screwing up the details. I'm trying. I'm only human.
I'm afraid that it is true in every detail, down to the names. But I glad it made you laugh. One has to exorcise one's demons. None of it is Sartre's fault, of course. But I have to keep myself from being side-tracked until I've finished the Camus translation. I wonder if the impenetrability of L'Être et le Néant is partly due to poor translation? I don't want to go there, & will rely upon your interpretation with no further flippancy.
ReplyDeleteI've wondered about the translation myself. Sometimes the writing goes round and round in circles, almost as those he's intentionally trying to confuse the reader. An example:
ReplyDelete"However, the necessary and sufficient condition for a knowing consciousness to be knowledge of its object, is that it be consciousness of itself as being that knowledge. This is a necessary condition, for if my consciousness were not consciousness of being consciousness of the table, it would then be consciousness of that table without consciousness of being so. In other words, it would be a consciousness ignorant of itself, an unconscious -- which is absurd."
There's a meaning here, and it can be unraveled, and I think I get it, but I had to run the risk of about three nosebleeds to get there.
I don't think it is worth one nosebleed, probably not even a sneeze. Yes there is a meaning, but I don't consider it a worthwhile one. I remember it as a fat book, Madeleine had it in a kind of shopping bag. In retrospect i don't think she read it either. She was brainy and perhaps wanted people to know it. I could tell you more about her, but it would be irrelevant to our discussion. Obviously I would have opened it whilst in her company, and probably encountered a paragraph like your quote. Now I want to search the Web for something which says that though Sartre was a good novelist & playwright, he went too far with his philosophical project & that it is generally discredited by the scholars.
ReplyDeleteNo, there are good ideas in the book. One passage taken out of context hardly does it justice. As for being "discredited by scholars", I'll try not to let that bother me.
ReplyDeleteTrying to write coherently and concisely about the consciousness, especially in a time when it was just being realized that such a thing existed therefor having few predecessors to draw upon, is like trying to see the front of your own eyeball from the inside. Like trying to explain time travel. I suspect that there are verbs that are needed that haven't been invented yet.
ReplyDeleteLike Schrodinger's cat, merely being aware of your consciousness alters your perception of the thing and moves you to yet another "hill" without you even being aware of it.
To use a metaphor that comes to mind; consciousness is akin to something that is the polar magnetic opposite of everything. The closer anything gets to it, the further it slips away. Yet it always re-centers itself when you're not looking.
And now I am acutely aware of Doug's collar and I can foresee copies of "Being and Nothingness" popping up in Vincent's life over and over again until he gives in and reads it.
Once again you have lived up to your title.
"...like trying to see the front of your own eyeball from the inside." Exactly. I think you've got a handle on the situation quite nicely there Reverend. The "polar opposite" thing is apt as well. And yes, it's a confusing subject.
ReplyDelete(Do you also picture Doug's collar as being on a starched white shirt? Extra itchy.)
No, please ignore my unworthy comments. I have found a crib-sheet, I mean lecture notes on the book, which are themselves 243 pages long. I do accept that there is good stuff in the book, I was just temporarily reverting to being as pig-lazy and pig-opinionated as I was as a student.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I tried to follow that link and there was nothing, not even a blank page. Very appropriate. That would be the extremely condensed version.
ReplyDeleteit was a link to a .pdf document and requires that you have Acrobat Reader software installed. But for a man of your calibre, the extremely condensed version is more than adequate, I'm sure. Just add water.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rev, your prophecy has verisimilitude. Is there an International Verisimilitude Day, I wonder, or a Long-Odds Race-Winners Day?
Oh wait, I got it to work. I just had to be patient and let it load.
ReplyDeleteGeez, they sure went a little crazy with the underlining.
This three-way among diverse and versed minds alike has left me wondering if my own consciousness has in fact left behind a play of personalities which are in question to even be a real fact of my surfing to this page, or if each of you are just voices inside my overly imaginative brain. Just pictures of conflict that display big words I tend to scream diction for further understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs a side thought, I think this Vincent fellow might actually be Bryan in another parallel existence, with an English accent. Did I once read somewhere that he fancied old typewriter's?
We usually fall asleep with the teevee on, though most nights I mute it before i drop off. I guess I was extra tired and left the volume up. Woke up at 5 am hearing Morgan Freeman talking about existentialism and the perception of being and consciousness. In my half awake half dreaming mind i was reading your blog with Morgan Freeman's voice. I just said "No Bryan! It's too damn early for this, dammit!" I hit the mute and went back to sleep.
ReplyDelete@Scott: No, we're not voices in your head...or are we?
ReplyDelete@Rev: Must have been that "Through the Wormhole" show. Good show. I would love to have Morgan Freeman narrate my blog. See if you can set that up the next time you go to sleep.
As a matter of fact, I am attempting to be a voice in Bryan's brain. He has certainly become a voice in mine. If it gets too troublesome, I shall see an exorcist, to get his voice out of my head; and also attend confession for my sins against his person.
ReplyDeleteAs for the effect on the rest of the world, I plead the Somethingth Amendment of the American Constitution, whereby I cannot be held responsible for people getting in the way of my loaded gun after I've already decided to fire it.
Is that a Fight Club reference?
ReplyDeleteHmm, the 2nd Amendment would apply to having the gun, but people usually "plead" the 5th when they don't want to incriminate themselves. I'm not sure if we have an amendment for people getting in the way of our guns.
That might also explain why there is no such amendment.
ReplyDeleteVincent mentioned it's existence. Ergo, it must exist. Somewhere.
ReplyDeleteLeggo my Ergo.
ReplyDeleteNo it wasn't a Fight Club reference. I could get a lawyer to argue the existential point as mentioned by Rev, but we need a Plan B too. Surely there is something in the Constitution to exonerate collateral damage in a just war?
ReplyDeleteIf not, nobody but terrorists could afford to fight any war. The cost of the compensation would be more than the comboined cost of the weapons of mass destruction and the psychiatric aftercare for our military.
Britain has already reached this conclusion, I think.
I'm not sure about the constitution, but I'm sure someone out there has found a way to sleep at night over these things. They probably have a name for it at the Pentagon, like maybe The "Oh Well" Rule or The "Sucks to Be You" Doctrine.
ReplyDeleteThey do talk about "rebuilding the infrastructure" after the fact. Might have something to do with our over-extended credit.
Whoa, now I have a headache. This sounds like the kind of thing I would've talked about in college after smoking something illegal (not that I ever did that sort of thing!) It's sort of like seeing a reflection of yourself in a mirror and in your mirror reflection you see a reflection and in that one another reflection etc. etc. You see them all but they're each one step removed. Or maybe I'm just tired. Oh, and thanks for the bad poem!
ReplyDeleteOh, that's just nice. I just spent the last half hour looking through references on Wikipedia on collateral damage which lead to the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute, etc...
ReplyDeleteBasically, if you are shooting at a legitimate military target and a civilian steps in the way, it's his tough cookies.
I know.... I take things too literally, sometimes. And I'm easily sidetracked this early in the morning. Sheesh...
@Mouse: "Whoa, now I have a headache." That's what we do here :)
ReplyDeleteAnd no problem. I sank to the occasion.
@Rev: Well, there really isn't much you can do when someone insists on stepping in front of military bullets. "Hey what's that yellow laser light moving around on your chest? Let me lean my head in and see if I can follow it back to its source."
In the future do you think we will be able to program robots to actually perform this type of awareness you talk about?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question. I don't think you could have genuine artificial intelligence without it, at least not as we typically understand it. We have approximate simulations of it in games and so on, now, but genuine autonomy would require consciousness.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a post early on here about how autonomous artificial intelligence would require emotions. Emotions, if you think about it, require consciousness. You can't have an emotion with the awareness of experiencing it.
But how could you ever hope to achieve such a thing? It seems almost miraculous, but yet it's just life. It's that mysterious thing somehow generated by the chemicals that compose us. It must be possible somehow. It would change a lot of things.
Actually I think you can have consciousness without emotions. Most emotions are based on glandular and nervous system responses that an artificial intelligence would not need nor necessarily have. However, I do think that until you could find a way to simulate those responses, creating an artificial intelligence without any sense of emotion, like creating a being with no sense of right and wrong, would be a very bad idea. Then you would end up creating one of those monsters that try to take over the world they always show on teevee.
ReplyDelete"Let's play thermonuclear war."
"How about a nice game of chess, Dave?"
True, but I said that you couldn't have emotions without consciousness, not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteAs for artificial intelligence, I didn't say that it had to have emotions to have consciousness. I said that it had to have emotions to have autonomy, the ability to make its own decisions.
From there I'll refer you to my original post on the subject, and you can make up your own mind about it.
And that's what I get for reading this too early in the morning. A fogged head. Very fuzzy intelligence and my emotions are all centered around coffee. Sorry for the confusion.
ReplyDeleteVeri word- invocyt. A parasitic mite that attacks and consumes account related paperwork.
Geez, we better keep those out of the office.
ReplyDelete