[MD] Consciousness

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Steve

16 Dec.

Bo had said:
> > > Animals awareness (biological value perception) are by senses, hope
> > > we agree about that? Also that sleep isn't present at the lower end
> > > of the bio. scale, it has something to do with more complex neural
> > > systems. Regarding "dynamic" in the static range I am skeptical

Steve: 
> An animals awareness can be compared to an infants awareness:

    Lila: "One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires 
    awareness of simple distinctions such as pressure and sound, 
    and then at birth acquires more complex ones of light and 
    warmth and hunger. We know these distinctions are pressure 
    and sound and light and warmth and hunger and so on but the 
    baby doesn't."  

> Steve: In other words, for the baby, hunger and sounds and light are
> not static patterns, yet. They are still undifferentiated experience.

This post also turns into the "dynamic within static" question. A human 
baby (even in the embryonic stage) perceives all biological values 
without any pre-meditation. It surely would sense the cold and hunger 
too if exposed to that. That it hasn't been born and/or old enough to 
have learned the (social) language and the names of its sense 
experience - or gone to school to achieve (intellectual) knowledge 
about biology and sociology - goes without saying. 

    Lila: "We could call them stimuli but the baby doesn't identify 
    them as that. From the baby's point of view, something, he 
    knows not what, compels attention. This generalized 
    "something," Whitehead's "dim apprehension," is Dynamic 
    Quality.   

If the static (differentiated) part of MOQ's dualism is to have any 
meaning it must have some function. As said, a baby surely 
differentiates between hot and cold and perceives every sense 
impression perfectly - animals have even sharper senses -  without 
language. Is language supposed to be the static gateway? 

> Steve: If we can imagine that from the baby's perspective this is
> dynamic quality, then from an animal's perspective we can also imagine
> what dynamic quality is like. But remember as I cautioned recently in
> a post to Arlo, we are no longer in the perspective of radical
> empiricism when we imagine what the perspectives of others must be
> like--whether other humans, or rocks and trees.

Glad you dismiss "radical empiricism" whatever it is supposed to 
be/say


Bo