On 8/18/09, 1:38 AM, Bodvar Skutvik wrote to Platt, Andre and interested
parties:
...I always wonder what we mean by "consciousness", if it is
contrasted to unconscious it's not only humans, animals sleep
and wake up (to consciousness). I suspect it is the more enigmatic
"self-consciousness" which is at the stake, but Pirsig's above
seems not to address that, rather to demonstrate how Quality
is necessary for anything to be perceived at all, the point
refined in the "cutting edge of time" argument.
<SNIP>
Pirsig does not really address the "self" issue, he just speaks
about pre-intellectual and intellectual awareness, the latter of
which is the mind/matter - SOM, which means that awareness
is identical to the respective level. Self-awareness is intellect's
internal view of a mind observing a world different from mind.
I always wonder what YOU mean by consciousness, since you reject the S/O
duality as "real" in favor of an "enigmatic" collective Intellect.
Pirsig uses the first person plural ("we") throughout Andre's quoted
paragraph. For example: "WE are aware of millions of things...WE could not
possibly be conscious if... WE would be unable to think...What WE select and
call consciousness..."
What in heaven's name is this "WE" addressed by Pirsig if it isn't the
subjective you and me and any other individual reading ZAMM? If
consciousness isn't the subjective awareneness of experience, then what is
it?
"For anything to be perceived at all" there must be a "conscious agent".
The cognizant individual is that agent. Self-awareness is not "intellect's
view"; it is the individual subject's sensibility. The act of "knowing",
the value appraisal, the sensual information, the conceptualizing, the
emotion, the wanting, are all part of that sensibility. In short,
being-aware presupposes a conscious being -- the individual subject. You
can pretend that it doesn't exist in order to satisfy a euphemistic
doctrine, but in doing so you deny your own reality.
IMO
Ham
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