Personally my brain stack overflows at about 3 or 4 levels of being aware that I am aware that ... I am aware. I think it would require infinite memory to truly be aware of an infinite number of steps in such a recursive relation.
Maybe the infinite hierarchy doesn't have to be thought/remembered in full. Royce notes that the simple intention to be completely self-aware is enough: the infinite hierarchy is logically implied in the intention. Oskar Becker has a slightly different approach: he says that as soon as one notices the endlessness of 1, 2, 3.... etc. one is already beyond the natural numbers and has reached the first transfinite ordinal (small omega=N) which collects all the natural numbers into one set. And then of course one can continue: omega+1, omega+2...etc. Noting the endlessness of that series one has grasped the next transfinite ordinal (omegaxomega). And so on... Becker notes that Cantor's generation principles can be recast as principles inherent in the structure of self-awareness. I think that's a strong point. On the other hand, if there is an absolute self-awareness grounding reality as such, then maybe it must have infinite memory... I don't know, this account is still too undeveloped to say anything more specific in it. What about when a being is not contemplating its self-awareness and merely living in the moment? Is it not conscious at those times? In my view one cannot live in the present without self-consciousness. Maybe this is lame argument, but I think this is suggested by the similarity of the words "present" and "self-presence"... I would say: the self-presence of the absolute self-awareness is just what the present is... It is difficult to explain this, but intuitively it feels right to me... And then there are is also the claim that there is no (phenomenal) consciousness without a measure of self-awareness... Kant originally advanced this idea, but many present-day cognitive scientists accept it as well... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
