[MD] Consciousness (explained?)

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi  Mark, Platt and interested parties 

14 Aug. markhsmit wrote (to Platt):

> I think I would tend to agree with you that Consciousness is
> the Ground of being, without getting into semantics about
> what that means.  This brings to my mind the "Nature
> of the Ground", a chapter in Aldous Huxley's book " The
> Perennial Philosophy" (always a joy to read).  In this 
> treatment of such a Ground, Huxley describes it as
> "eternally complete consciousness".  What is interesting
> is that many writers which Huxley cites, compare this to God
> (whatever that word may mean to them).  Eckhart (the real one)
> describes this as the "Divine Ground".  If one is to strip away
> all the dogmatic and controlling parts of a man-made God,
> it could be that we are left with Consciousness.


Don't take me too seriously, but you - Mark - don't understand what 
the, MOQ is about. Pirsig profess to have found existence's absolute 
bottom, this bottom even though dynamic have static layers and it's 
the instability/stability relationship that counts. If one, on the other 
hand, finds "Consciousness" as the ground of being, a Metaphysics of 
Consciousness is called for. If God (Divine Ground) is it, a 
Metaphysics of God is the next step. Pirsig's point (had he understood 
himself!) is that the Dynamic/Static divide is the only possible 
alternative to the Subject/Object divide, what the ground is ... for me 
it's "mu". All suggestions of what constitutes reality works fine as long 
as it is dynamic/static split. Platt will remember some of the entries, his 
own Beauty is a beautiful one, I once suggested Intuition.

As said, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual consciousness 
works fine, but I'm afraid that you - Mark are stuck in the notion of 
consciousness as the subject's reflection of a reality outside of itself, 
and if so you are still at the intellectual level ... no wonder as 
"consciousness" is intellect's invention. It looks like no one really wants 
intellect's paradoxes dissolved, they want some utterly complicated 
innermost "interface" where mind and matter interacts. Like Ron who 
refuses to see the SOL (Intellect=SOM) as some "Lorentz 
Transformation". By the way, Mark, you knowing a bit about Relativity, 
isn't the said Lorentz Equations a way of understanding Einstein from 
Newton's "ground" and vice versa?

> Where I get stuck is where does personal consciousness
>  come in?   At some point, it seems to me that this Consciousness gets
>  divided up. This may be called an illusion by some, but it's one hell of
> an illusion! 

(Sic)

Bodvar