"Communication does not rely on matched notions between persons": if this
were true, definitions wouldn't be very important. Arguments can go on
endlessly when people fail to agree on meanings. Evidence from studies of
psychotherapy is that a client's suffering is increased when confronted with
"therapeutic" responses which do not recognize the meanings in the client's
statements.
Certainly friends can converse about concepts of moderate importance without
agreeing about their differing notions and move to agreement on the
significance of notions. It depends on whether the individuals involved are
suing each other regarding a contract (for example) or passing time.
Similarly, a production of plastic art need not elicit the same notion among
observers but if a playwright fails to estimate what words or actions will
elicit in her/his audience, she/he is likely to be unsuccessful in producing
a "successful" work.
Geoff C
From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Consciousness Assayed
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 22:18:25 -0700 (PDT)
Cheerskep concludes:
>
> In sum, it's arguable that in two millennia -- right up
> to today -- we have
> made almost no conclusive progress on these core questions
> in philosophy of
> mind.
The inperial we relies on the proposition that one person's notion must
conform to another person's notion or there will be muddling. Why is the
receptive notion need to be in place in order to receive the proposed
notion? Cannot one notion evoke the other? Is that consciousness? Do we
not propose notions to ourselves and thus "converse" with ourselves just as
we do with others? This conversing is the mutual shaping or creating of
notions.
If there can be consciousness outside the functioning brain, how is it
manifested? A dead brain has no consciousness, or, if it does, then
consciousness exists independently of the brain. Cheerskep seems to be
arguing for that when he alludes to cases where pain, for instance, is
sometimes independent of a physical source, apparently. I don't think
anyone has shown that thoughts or consciousness can occur without a brain
(the bodily object) producing them (as distinct from mechanical devices
that imitate actual brains and their functions).
Damasio, at least, is not a philosopher but a neurologist. His
propositions are based on clinical evidence, not philosophical speculation.
It's true that no one can say what consciousness is independently of
biology and physiology. Is consciousness merely biology in action or is it
something independent, even if produced by biology? If we knew, we might
conclude that life is not worth living because if consciouness is merely
biology in action, our "selfhood" is a fiction, a lie, a delusion; if
consciousness is produced by biology but independent of it (like the chick
from the egg) then why would anyone bother with the travails of life and
avoid pure unembodied consciousness?
Maybe consciousness is the quest for it: the more we employ it the more we
have it. In other words, we create consciousness by living and employing it
in evoking or creating "notions" through conversing with ourselves and with
others. (There is a large hunk of involuntary consciousness that prevails
without our direct control or awareness -- like maintaining a heart beat,
for instance).
I think I disagree with Cheerskep's insistence that one person's
pre-existing notion must be matched by another person's very, very similar
notion before there can be communication. I prefer to think that we are
always shaping and reshaping our "notions" in self-conversation, as it
were, and in communicating with others we inspire them to create similar
notions, even those that they did not have previously. So, notions are
consciousness in action, I mean biology in action, pretending to be
independent of it for the sake of inventing selfhood.
WC
