Date sent: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 20:09:13 +0000 To: virus@lucifer.com From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: virus: kurzweil cuts the mustard Send reply to: virus@lucifer.com
> In message <199901041650.KAA20257@castaway.uwf.edu>, Joe E. Dees
> <jdees0@students.uwf.edu> writes
> >> Yes, folks, consciousness is a meme! :-)
> >> --
> >> Robin
> >>
> >Is that a dagger I see before me? How should I know? I'm not
> >conscious! Joe
>
> In saying you're not conscious, you're depending just
> as heavily on the notion of objective consciousness,
> as if you were saying that you are conscious. It cuts
> both ways. We can't say that, objectively, we're
> conscious. Nor can we say that, objectively, that
> rock is not conscious. Nor that we are not, nor that
> the rock is. In entirely objective terms, "conscious"
> simply has no meaning, so cannot be used in *any* way.
> This makes absolutely no difference to ordinary,
> everyday usage, because it's only when philosophising
> that we wonder about "objective consciousness".
> Philosophy is a whole different language game.
> --
> Robin
>
Conscious is not objective, it is subjective - inhering in subjects
(although when they get togethrt, intersubjectivity is possible).
Objects are that which consciousness is conscious OF; even selfconsciousness
is consciousness of a self-construction (a kind of
bootstrapped "straw self"), rather than of the self itself (for, to do
that, it would have to include the intending as well as the intended
self, and the flashlight of consciousness cannot illuminate itself (or,
rather,the recursive and self-referential snake must eat its tail, but
cannot consume its own mouth). Joe