[MD] Consciousness (explained?)

[Ham Priday]

On 8/18/09, 1:38 AM, Bodvar Skutvik wrote to Platt, Andre and interested 
parties:

> ...I always wonder what we mean by "consciousness", if it is
>  contrasted to unconscious it's not only humans, animals sleep
> and wake up (to consciousness). I suspect it is the more enigmatic
> "self-consciousness" which is at the stake, but Pirsig's above
> seems not to address that, rather to demonstrate how Quality
> is necessary for anything to be perceived at all, the point
> refined in the "cutting edge of time" argument.
<SNIP>
> Pirsig does not really address the "self" issue, he just speaks
> about pre-intellectual and intellectual awareness, the latter of
> which is the mind/matter - SOM, which means that awareness
> is identical to the respective level. Self-awareness is intellect's
> internal view of a mind observing a world different from mind.

I always wonder what YOU mean by consciousness, since you reject the S/O 
duality as "real" in favor of an "enigmatic" collective Intellect.

Pirsig uses the first person plural ("we") throughout Andre's quoted 
paragraph.  For example: "WE are aware of millions of things...WE could not 
possibly be conscious if... WE would be unable to think...What WE select and 
call consciousness..."

What in heaven's name is this "WE" addressed by Pirsig if it isn't the 
subjective you and me and any other individual reading ZAMM?  If 
consciousness isn't the subjective awareneness of experience, then what is 
it?

"For anything to be perceived at all" there must be a "conscious agent". 
The cognizant individual is that agent.  Self-awareness is not "intellect's 
view"; it is the individual subject's sensibility.  The act of "knowing", 
the value appraisal, the sensual information, the conceptualizing, the 
emotion, the wanting, are all part of that sensibility.  In short, 
being-aware presupposes a conscious being -- the individual subject.   You 
can pretend that it doesn't exist in order to satisfy a euphemistic 
doctrine, but in doing so you deny your own reality.

IMO

Ham