>to the MOQ focus, cause MOD is getting too chaotic in my opinion. >Maybe, I don't know if there's already a topic for February, I could >contribute by sharing some remarks I made on Pirsigs MOQ, concerned >with >Conscioussnes (and personality) > >Marc >
Consciousness. Seems like a good place to start. It's the "hard question" that every neurologist and many physicists want to answer. So first define the problem: The problem is that neither science nor philosophy currently has a satisfactory way of describing consciousness nor of making it fit into a metaphysical paradigm. Some background: Science in the seventeenth century was about the detached study of objective reality. Its whole credo rested on the exclusion of subjective phenomena, which follows from Descartes distinction between mind and matter and from Newton's preoccupation with matter as the proper object of scientific inquiry. Consciousness played no role in Newton�s physics. However, since then, with the rise of psychology and the brain sciences in the twentieth century, mind has become an acceptable target for scientific study. BUT these studies have applied the assumptions, standards and procedures of physical science to a phenomenon that is, in large part, emergent, holistic, and subjective. So we did develop a large body of information about neurons, the effect of drugs on brain capabilities and the *mechanics* of perception etc, however the *process* of consciousness was still neglected. As Alan Watts put it, they were eating the menu instead of the dinner. More recently: Theories such as relativity, quantum physics and chaos, have contributed to a changed understanding of matter. Matter is now widely conceived of as a process itself, as patterns of dynamic energy. The extent to which its properties can be measured objectively is often in question. Science is now coming to terms with uncertainty, ambiguity and the importance of context and relationship. So the answer to the problem of consciousness is: I don't know. But reintegrating the study of the mind with the study of the body, ie subjective and objective paradigms seems to be the direction to go in. _____________________________________________________________ **Short Advert** Web Hosting & Domain Names http://www.smackhosting.com MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
