Self-Consciousness as an Error - continued
There are two possibillities:
1) Self-consciousness exists, I have one, and I am (or my self-consciousness is) in some way free willed. I may be partially influenced by certain material phenomenon, but in some essential way I make up my mind about what I want to do, and are therefore responsible for my actions when I err. There is a random or willed abillity to think brand new thoughts, to choose brand new courses, which is not entirely predictable and there is always a chance of error in predicting wht I will do next (not because prediction itself always has a chance of error, but because the thing being predicted is at least partially unpredictable).
2) Self-consciousness does not exist in that fundamental free willed way. I have no control over my thought - both in terms of what I think and when. Neither is it random what I do. Or in other words, the words we use to describe our consciousness posess a conceptual connotation of freedom, control and persistence or ever-presentness which is a prejudice on our part - a part of our imgination which imagines a free willing self. I imagine a "me" as a persistent thing which controls thoughts and decides what to do, other than a contest of desires in my brain simply winning out in the end (all people simply doing what they wanted to do the most everytime all the time). As such, I imagine my own self-consciousness - it is a side effect of my mind's abillity to imagine or conceptualize which happens at random based on stimuli, and aided and augmented by the learned abillity to use language. I conceptualize "me". The "I". What thinks or churns out thoughts in my mind is simply my pattern recognition and extrapolation sub-process, which I do not control, and simply spits our patterns based on the patterns it is fed whenever sensations bring patterns to it.
1) Self-consciousness exists, I have one, and I am (or my self-consciousness is) in some way free willed. I may be partially influenced by certain material phenomenon, but in some essential way I make up my mind about what I want to do, and are therefore responsible for my actions when I err. There is a random or willed abillity to think brand new thoughts, to choose brand new courses, which is not entirely predictable and there is always a chance of error in predicting wht I will do next (not because prediction itself always has a chance of error, but because the thing being predicted is at least partially unpredictable).
2) Self-consciousness does not exist in that fundamental free willed way. I have no control over my thought - both in terms of what I think and when. Neither is it random what I do. Or in other words, the words we use to describe our consciousness posess a conceptual connotation of freedom, control and persistence or ever-presentness which is a prejudice on our part - a part of our imgination which imagines a free willing self. I imagine a "me" as a persistent thing which controls thoughts and decides what to do, other than a contest of desires in my brain simply winning out in the end (all people simply doing what they wanted to do the most everytime all the time). As such, I imagine my own self-consciousness - it is a side effect of my mind's abillity to imagine or conceptualize which happens at random based on stimuli, and aided and augmented by the learned abillity to use language. I conceptualize "me". The "I". What thinks or churns out thoughts in my mind is simply my pattern recognition and extrapolation sub-process, which I do not control, and simply spits our patterns based on the patterns it is fed whenever sensations bring patterns to it.
posted by JB @ 1:22 AM
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