> [Case] > Isn't "awareness without an object" just awareness, or awareness of > awareness. It certainly isn't nothing. Nothing is nothing. If there is no > object what is it that is aware? If there is something that is aware, then > it is not nothing. If empirical means accessible to the senses then > certainly the self is nothing if not empirical.
[Ham] Awareness of awareness is a mirror looking at its own image. Such a tautology does not exist. [Case] Such tautologies do exist. You just mentioned facing mirrors. If you plug your camcorder into a television and aim the camera at the TV you will see the same kind of effect. It's call video feedback. You can get strange video effects by moving the camera around. Jimi Hendrix was a master of wailing the audio feedback from his Strat and Marshall stack. When someone turns up a mike to high in front of a speaker, the effect can be especially annoying. It can even be seen in narrative form as in the movie "Memento". Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in American was self referential. These are positive feedback loops. When they become totally self referential distortion occurs. But they also can be relatively stable and controlled as when Jimi played the "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. I wonder how many iterations of the image can facing mirrors produce without distortion? More than 10? [Ham] Nor does "pure" awareness, which is a nothing without its referent object. In every example of awareness we can cite from experience, awareness is the proprietary (subjective) sensibility of an other. Even self-awareness is the proprietary awareness of the identity "self". This defines the dichotomy of experiential existence: Awareness + Otherness. [Case] I see no problem with awareness reflecting on itself. I experienced this kind of feedback every waking moment. I don't think the "object" of my awareness is "other" either. More often than not the object of my awareness is entirely self referential. I reflect on memories and reshape them into plans for the future. I manipulate symbols and images and other sets of relationships that have no tangible existence at all. These maybe objects in some abstract sense but it is hard for me to see them as "other". [Ham] If existence is the experience of objects and events in time and space, and the physiological self is one of the objects, then everything that is experienced exists except for the subject that is aware of it. [Case] This is like saying horsepower is not part of an automobile. Or that sound is other than airwaves. Or red is not part of an apple. Objects have all manner of properties defined by relationships external to themselves. Memory is a property of human beings. [Ham] Subjective awareness is set apart from its objective otherness, yet is co-dependent on it for the appearance of existence. Awareness is not an existent: it can't be localized, quantified, or objectively observed. Therefore, by my definition, awareness does not exist. [Case] I agree completely that there are public events and private events. But private awareness is a product of physiology. Just as biology emerges from the inorganic, awareness emerges from the biological. Awareness is measurable and quantifiable. Granted measurement technique are still somewhat crude but EEGs, PET scans, lie detectors, reaction time studies, Myers-Briggs tests, even surveys in Cosmo all measure forms of awareness. [Ham] Now, of course, you can argue that some of the things we are aware of -- morality, freedom, love, pain, etc. -- are not existents either. And you would be correct. These are values; and all awareness begins by differentiating value. [Case] Awareness also consists of integrating values. Discrimination and generalization are fundamental psychological processes and the have been studied extensively. Emotion and ideation are the products of our inborn physiology, our personal histories and what is in front of us at the moment. There are specific regions of the brain that produce emotional responses and specific regions that produce language to describe them. [Ham] The individual, in the primary, pre-experiential sense, is value-awareness. It represents the negation of all "beingness". In other words, the "pre-intellectual" self (as Pirsig might define it) is not a being. [Case] It seems to me a pre-experiential state would be sleep where the brain is active, just a bit fuzzy about storing the experiences. But I also think that what you are calling pre-experiential is sensation where as awareness is perception, that is, sensation integrated into memory. [Ham] It is a nothingness seeking the value of otherness for itself. By acquring (affirming) this value for itself, the subjective self becomes a being-aware-of-otherness as objects, and (presto!) differentiated existence appears. [Case] You are turning nothingness into an active agency. Nothingness can have no self. Nothingness can not seek. Consciousness and the self arise in infants as the nervous system develops and the baby's neural network is stimulated. The network has evolved biologically to respond positively to things that enhance it and negatively to things that threaten it. As it matures it remembers the good and bad. It can differentiate the two. It begins to generalize similar things and events and to classify them according to the responses they produce. This is how the neural network is programmed. Through its interactions with the environment the infant learns. [Ham] I submit that this ontology is not only compatible with existentialism, but not too far removed from Mr. Pirsig's concept of experience as the basis of empirical reality. (At least he would agree with us that the cognizant self is a "fiction".) [Case] It seems to me what you have described so far can easily be accounted for through conventional explanations. [Ham] Thanks for the opportunity, Case. [Case] Back atcha! It's a pleasure as always. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
