The Consciousness of Being

[Perseus]

Hello Everybody,

First forum post here, just found this website and am looking forward to participating in the discussion. In any case, I would like to get feedback on the Existential view of consciousness vs. that of Objectivism. I recently started reading Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and the very first section has really thrown me for a loop regarding my current understanding of consciousness.

According to the Objectivism, consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists. That consciousness is inherent in one's grasp of existence; inherent in saying, "There is something of which I am aware." Thus, a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of, is contradictory and absurd.

Now, from reading Sartre, it seems he accepts this faculty of consciousness but takes it in a different direction. To quote from Being and Nothingness, "All consciousness is consciousness of something. This means that there is no consciousness which is not a positing of a transcendent object, or if you prefer, that consciousness has no content."

This statement leads me to assume he agrees with Objectivism's basic stance on consciousness at face value. However, he goes on to state the following, "The first procedure of a philosophy ought to be to expel things from consciousness and to reestablish its true connection with the world, to know that consciousness is a positional consciousness of the world. All consciousness is positional in that it transcends itself in order to reach an object, and it exhausts itself in the same positing."

"However, the necessary and sufficient condition for a knowing consciousness to be knowledge of its object, is that it be consciousness of itself as being that knowledge. This is a necessary condition, for if my consciousness were not consciousness of being consciousness of that table, it would then be consciousness of that table without consciousness of being so. In other words, it would be a consciousness ignorant of itself, an unconscious - which is absurd."

This last part (in bold) is what I find particularly confounding. If, in the Objectivist's point of view, consciousness is merely the faculty of perceiving existents, would it not have to be conscious of that fact it was consciousness being conscious of existents? I do understand that this statement leads to an infinite regress. Sartre himself even pointed this out, which is why he comes to the conclusion that there must be an immediate, non-cognitive relation of the self to itself. He states, "Every positional consciousness of an object is at the same time a non-positional consciousness of itself." Thus, preventing the known, the knower known, the knower known by the knower, etc and so on into infinity.

My questions for the forum would be: do you believe this stance of the non-positional consciousness of itself makes cognitive sense? and if so, how does it stand up or conflict to the primacy of existence? is Sartre correct in expounding upon consciousness of the self non-positionally a-priori to that of a particular existent?

I'm really looking forward to feedback on this puzzling issue.

Appreciate any responses.

Thanks!

[lex_aver]

Welcome to the forum!

Identity of existence is not given in consciousness, only hinted. When you merely see a table, you aren't aware that what you see is actually a table, you are only aware that you see something. It is up to your reason to discover the nature of what you see based on your observations.

I haven't read Satre, so can you expand on what he meant by positional consciousness, please? According to Objectivism, consciousness is a faculty, so it cannot leave the body it belongs to, in part or whole.

Edited December 14, 2007 by lex_aver

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I've read some Sartre, but I can't say I'm very familiar with his views on consciousness. However, there is no infinite regress. The perception of existence and one's realization that we are perceiving existence and then our awareness of what we are mentally doing with that awareness is about as far as it goes. In other words, we perceive a table and are aware that we are aware of the table. We conceptualize the table (and others similar to it) into the concept "table." We realize that we form concepts by integrating similarities within a context. Expanding on this with other examples, we come up with epistemology, the science of how the mind works to form concepts (i.e Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).

I think one aspect of Sartre's and other modern philosophers regarding consciousness is that they don't have a legitimate place to start. We start by perception, then we do things with it mentally. However, if one doesn't realize this, then one gets into a sort of infinite consciousness loop -- are we aware of the entity (the table) or are we aware of our awareness of the table or are we aware of our awareness that we are aware of the table, etc.? In other words, are we aware of an abstraction and the table, or is the abstraction also perceived with the mind? and do we perceive our consciousness or are we aware that we are aware? And if we are aware that we are aware then does consciousness make sense unless we are aware of something?

In other words, if there is nothing there to be aware of in perception, then what are we aware of when we introspect or play something out in our imagination? Surely, it can be claimed that we are aware of something, but if there is nothing present to the senses then what are we aware of in those instances? and then we can be aware that we are imagining, but again, what are we aware of?

In Objectivism, awareness is fundamentally awareness of existence, without which we would not be conscious of something. We can then, through memory, re-arrange our memories of entities into a myriad of imaginations, but at root it all started with awareness of something in reality. So, awareness of our consciousness is awareness of existence one step back, so to speak -- an abstraction of doing something mentally with that which we are conscious of.

It's all an issue of focus. Are you focused on the entity in reality; are you focused on the mental processing that we call conceptualization; are you focused on that and other things that you can do mentally? Basically, consciousness is awareness and we have the ability to introspect, but it doesn't mean that we have these things called abstraction inside our head that we focus on, like watching things happening inside a small room (which some say is our consciousness). A concept is something, but it's not a little theater inside your head full of entities called concepts dancing around like sugar plum fairies inside there.

Don't know if that answered your inquiry or not, but that's my take on it.

The bottom line is that consciousness is an axiom. We are aware that we are aware, and we call that consciousness. And because it is an axiom, one cannot get beneath that. I think it is the attempt to get beneath that that leads to these so called infinite regresses-- i.e. what is awareness. But this question is answered with direct introspection. In other words it is self evident and requires no analysis.

[Perseus]

Thanks for the detailed reply Thomas!

My misunderstanding of Phenomenology, "consciousness being conscious of being conscious of existents," led me to question whether the primacy of consciousness could then be possible. However, it seems pretty clear now that before one can reflect on one's own consciousness (positional consciousness), which in turn perceives existence, there still must be existence first; upholding the primacy of existence.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Thanks for the detailed reply Thomas!

You're welcome.

I thought maybe I was being a little wordy. But having a consciousness means being aware of something, but one cannot be aware of having a consciousness until you are aware that you are aware of something external to the mind.

I guess the infinite regress that Sartre was talking about was being aware that one is aware that one is aware that one is aware of something in reality. But there is no need for that. We are aware of something in reality, we can then be aware of that, we can then do something with that awareness mentally -- we can remember, conceptualize, or imagine it being different; and be aware that we are doing that.

I think part of the problem comes in when one imagines that our consciousness is like a room, and things are in that room, and then imagine looking at that room, and then imagine looking at someone looking in that room, etc. It's just that all of those layers of consciousness are simply not there. The beginning point is that we are aware of something that exists external to the mind, and the end point is that we are aware of being able to do things with the data mentally. I see no need for any further layers of being conscious.

[aleph_0]

I must say, though, that when I first began reading this topic, I was not conscious of my act of reading. That is not to say that I could not have been conscious of it, as in fact I am now conscious of the act. Rather, my consciousness of the consciousness was "just around the corner". If somebody had entered my room and asked, "What are you doing?" one appropriate answer that might have occurred to me would have been "Reading." But, in fact, I was not immediately conscious of this until something incited my awareness. Here, the impetus was trying to think of an example of something I was doing without being conscious of doing it. For the reader, he may not be immediately conscious that he is sitting, or that there is nobody in the room with him, or that there is somebody in the room with him. He may only become conscious of these such things when his awareness is incited.

This fact may avoid an infinite regress. I can, indeed, be conscious of something without being conscious of the consciousness. However, if my attention is drawn to the consciousness of the consciousness, I can become so conscious. Moreover, I can now choose to be aware of my consciousness of being conscious of being conscious of something, and so forth. There is no reason, in principle, why I cannot reach any arbitrary order of consciousness--I just cannot reach an "infinite" order of consciousness, so far as I know.

I have a level of respect for Sartre, namely in his creativity. Indeed, as you read further, I have particular regard for his work on the being of nothingness. All the same, there are a great many moments where he just seems sloppy to me, and at other moments he seems to be saying things because he thinks they're cute or because they sound philosophically deep. He is, to my taste, bitter-sweet.

[agrippa1]

This fact may avoid an infinite regress. I can, indeed, be conscious of something without being conscious of the consciousness. However, if my attention is drawn to the consciousness of the consciousness, I can become so conscious. Moreover, I can now choose to be aware of my consciousness of being conscious of being conscious of something, and so forth. There is no reason, in principle, why I cannot reach any arbitrary order of consciousness--I just cannot reach an "infinite" order of consciousness, so far as I know.

I think infinite regress is avoided by our natural limitation of context. Speaking for myself, if I try to think of John looking at Mary looking at Joe looking at Sue, I can create this chain of perception on paper, or as a sequence of remembered relationships, but I can't conceptualize the entire progression at one time, except by a higher level abstract, which might be a sequence of three segments in a geometrical shape.

For a consciousness regarding itself, I can conceptualize that, but to imagine a one regarding itself regarding itself, I find that each segment of the chain is identical and indistinguishable, and thus the same entity. A consciousness can't regard itself, and regard itself at the same time, in other words an entity can't have two identities. (Except by in two different consciousnesses contexts.)

What Sartre is doing is like walking through a room with a table, circling around and entering the room again and saying, "see - two tables!" He circles around again and again, counting tables, as if they are different entities. In the "looking at" example above, if John looked at Mary looking at Joe looking at Sue looking at John, there appears to be an infinite progression of "looking at" in which John is looking at Mary an infinite number of times. This is imaginary and the product of context-switching, in reality, he is looking at her once.

I don't think we are conscious of both our consciousness and the object of our perception at the same time, except as a higher, single conceptual abstract of ourselves being conscious of an object. Any more regressions is simply a mathematical measurement of a regression using "being conscious of" as the unit of measurement, and not a perceptual grasping of the regression.

(typos)

Edited December 30, 2007 by agrippa1

[aleph_0]

I think infinite regress is avoided by our natural limitation of context. Speaking for myself, if I try to think of John looking at Mary looking at Joe looking at Sue, I can create this chain of perception on paper, or as a sequence of remembered relationships, but I can't conceptualize the entire progression at one time, except by a higher level abstract, which might be a sequence of three segments in a geometrical shape.

That fourth order of looking, namely John's "order" (so to speak) is a bit of a doosey, but with concentration I'm sure you can contain that in your mind. This is why I say that it is in principle that I could reach any arbitrary order of awareness, though the lower orders are easier. Higher orders might take progressive mental exercises like Sudoku and Rubik’s Cubes, or just a more powerful mind than I possess, but there doesn't seem to be a limit that comes from an end of the orders themselves.

For a consciousness regarding itself, I can conceptualize that, but to imagine a one regarding itself regarding itself, I find that each segment of the chain is identical and indistinguishable, and thus the same entity.

I distinguish it thus: A consciousness regarding itself as a consciousness regarding itself is a proper subset of a consciousness regarding itself. Namely, a consciousness regarding itself could be a consciousness regarding itself as aware of a tasty butterscotch candy. However, a consciousness regarding itself as a consciousness regarding itself is a consciousness that is aware of a consciousness that has a distinct content than the former consciousness. Nothing about this requires a plurality of consciousnesses, but a difference in the content of the consciousness involved.

[Bagpipe]

I've read some Sartre, but I can't say...

In other words it is self evident and requires no analysis.

This is really a very fine piece. RB

Edited February 2, 2008 by softwareNerd
Removed excessive quote