[MD] Intellectual activity

[Ham Priday]

Alice --


> We used to be such goods friends.
> let's just stop all this fighting. :-)

Forgive me, but if you regard expressing minor differences in a
philosophical position as "fighting", then I fear you're in for some
unpleasant experiences.

> First of all there seems to be a confusion in terms.
> In my estimation, There is a difference between
> consciousness and self awareness. In fact, I will say that
> you can be conscious without being self aware. Just
> because you don't understand a situation does not mean
> you can't experience it. I believe that babies take their time
> realizing that they are not everything around them.
> So I guess I am saying that consciousness is the
> experience of life.

I beg to differ with the first part of your assertion.  One can be conscious
of a situation without understanding it.  I suggest that understanding or
comprehension is more correctly termed "cognizance".  However, inasmuch as
all consciousness is awareness on the part of a subject, a "self" is
implied.  "Self" has no empirical existence, hence the "blank slate"
connotation.  My blank slate is the same as your's prior to differentiation.
What distinguishes "you" from "me" is the beingness with which you identify
as your experience.  In other words, until you incorporate objective
beingness into your reality, Alice doesn't exist.  Essentially, she is only
the potentiality for existing.  Alice is "actualized" by the being of
otherness which is the object of her experience.  That's what makes her
being-aware.  Clear as mud, right?

> That would mean the awakening happens as soon as
> the senses are able to record experience. I'm sure this
> happens in vitro, but it really does once the lights of the
> hospital shine on those fragile eyelids. But there is no
> thought of "What's happening to me?" because for the
> baby, there is no "me"  The development of that awareness
> happens over time and takes years to fully develop.
> Perhaps what self awareness is is being conscious of being
> conscious.

You raise a controversial issue that has profound implications in the "right
to life" movement.
Just when does a human individual begin?  And the answer will depend on how
you define the individual.  I think you're correct in concluding that
"self-awareness is being-conscious of being-conscious."  But can a living
person be considered a human being if he or she has no self-awareness?   If
that person exhibits organic response to pain, light, touch, etc., we say
he/she is a human being, based on the empirical evidence.  Yet, we can apply
the same criteria to an amoeba or sponge, except that these organisms do not
have human form.

The term I use to distinguish organic sensibility from consciousness is
"proprietary awareness".  "Proprietary" relates sensibility to a particular
subject, and I maintain that until or unless a sentient organism develops
the capacity for proprietary awareness, in the psychic sense at least, it is
not an actualized (individuated) human being.

> I think your theory is dependent upon some things
> which I don't admit. One would be a perfect state.
> You seem to think that this exists somewhere and
> that we were there and now we're not and we feel the
> loss. I think the place we were was cells inside of our parents.
> Isn't that miracle enough? the joining of two humans to create
> another. Once the process starts, it travels a very well known
> path until the neuro-pathways are complete enough to start
> to respond to data.
>
> You also refer to the former solipistic serenity. I think
> this might be commonly known as a soul or heaven. So it
> seems that somehow we are called from our wholeness to
> have a human experience. How is that decision made?  Do
> we make it or is it like at the bakery? your number is called
> and then you're "up".  It seems like there must be quite a
> sophisticated system going on there which would indicate
> that there needs to be a far more elaborate explanation than
> wholeness, it-ness and nothingness. And then were at the
> same place again, the need to explain the mechanism
> ... Infinite recursion.

Nature is a sophisticated system because it involves an infinitely
differentiated process.  The essential source of differentiation, on the
other hand, is quite simple: Difference arises from the absolute negation of
Nothingness.  This creates an other (awareness) divided from beingness (the
object(s) of awareness).  Thus, a simple definition for existence would be:
the proprietary awareness (appearance or experience) of a divided Essence.

[Ham, previously]:
> The neurophysical development required for speech and
> social orientation is still several post-partum months away.

> But most of what is required is in place, ready to function.
> It needs data and fuctioning mouth aparatus.

It needs continuous psycho-neurological development.  But, basically, the
fetus is equipped with the potential to become a functional human being.
The transition is gradual, incremental, and like all other processes in
existence, occurs over time.

Thanks for a thoughtful response, Alice.

--Ham