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Thoughts On Consciousness

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nimble

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I actually have a question on argument form, that I have been mulling over in the old noggin'. I am familiar with the Objectivist argument for free-will. That its proof is readily available to anyone who is familiar with their own consciouness and that they make choices. Also there is usually a reference to the fact that you have to claim to be able to change your mind in order to claim that you are a determinist, so there is sort of a stolen concept fallacy committed.

Now, couldn't the same thing be said about consciousness, and imagination. I know that I imagine things, and that what I experience in my head is so much like a perception that I can describe what I experience in term of colors, shapes, etc...all properties of outside objects, that aren't in my head. Those properties definitely don't belong to neurons in the sense that I experience them. And no one can prove otherwise that I don't experience this because, they aren't the ones experiencing it.

Also, I have one other question. I have said before that I don't see any sufficient reason to believe either free-willers or determinists, and that it makes no difference in your actions no matter what side you take. However, since everyone here seems to be pro-free-will, then what physical part of the brain is it that is the self-motivating part? This seems like a flaw because it would seem to have to be something like a homnoculus (sorry if I spelled that wrong) that would be the operator of a brain.

I am not trying to resort to dualism, because that has obvious flaws, but I am just asking questions about where I find trouble accepting materialism, when it has so few answers to important questions. I think I am much like Rand and how she didn't accept evolutionary theory, because it was so unrefined, and lacked a lot of answers.

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Also, I have one other question. I have said before that I don't see any sufficient reason to believe either free-willers or determinists, and that it makes no difference in your actions no matter what side you take. However, since everyone here seems to be pro-free-will, then what physical part of the brain is it that is the self-motivating part? This seems like a flaw because it would seem to have to be something like a homnoculus (sorry if I spelled that wrong) that would be the operator of a brain.

The flaw is in assuming that the self-motivating existent is a physical part of the brain. The self-motivating existent is the conceptual level of consciousness. How consciousness relates to the physical brain is something I don't know. I have recently learned that Harry Binswanger has a lecture called "The Metaphysics of Consciousness" that might help answer a lot of your questions; I have not heard the lecture myself.

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I'm somewhat surprised to hear all the accusations that "Objectivism ignores metaphysics" etc. It seems to me that the majority of the non-fiction Objectivist works have been focused around precisely questions like the ones in this thread-- even more so than politics, or sex, or similar topics that get more attention on these message boards, because they're more provocative and accessible, or for some other reason. I'd say it's probably true that Ayn Rand spent more time on epistemology than metaphysics, but that's only because a rational metaphysics cannot be formulated until a full system of epistemology has been defined.

That Binswanger lecture sounds like a good bet, and I'd like to hear it, too. Just recently, I borrowed a Peikoff lecture called "The Founders of Western Philosophy from Thales to Hume," and he spent a lot of time with some of the topics on this thread. He goes through lengthy discussions of sensation and perception in Objectivism as contrasted to various views throughout the centuries of philosophy prior to Kant. There's a second lecture course from Kant to the present, but I haven't checked that one out yet.

He devotes a lot of time to the issue of perception as objective, rather than intrinsic or subjective. It's a false alternative to suggest you must be either a dualist or a materialist. Objectivism is neither-- it really is a new epistemology and a new metaphysics as compared to every other philosophical approach in history.

You can describe Objectivism as Aristotelianism minus Plato, if you want, but that will only give you a rough approximation. There are countless additions and innovations made by Ayn Rand, and also by countless other philsophers influenced by Aristotle which Ayn Rand took into consideration when formulating her philosophy. Some people want to think that there is nothing new under the sun, but Objectivism really is something new.

I have recently learned that Harry Binswanger has a lecture called "The Metaphysics of Consciousness" that might help answer a lot of your questions; I have not heard the lecture myself.
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I'm somewhat surprised to hear all the accusations that "Objectivism ignores metaphysics" etc.

I'm not. While Objectivism doesn't truly ignore metaphysics, its system is somewhat sparse in comparison to a lot of others. That's a good thing. Once you go beyond "Existence exists," and everything that implies, you enter the realm of fantasy--and that's exactly what the more complex systems were.

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and everything that implies

Lol, I like how you tossed that in, there. But "everything that implies" is a vast amount of information! Especially if you include the law of identity, and everything that implies. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, every axiom has metaphysical as well as epistemological implications-- yes, no?

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Lol, I like how you tossed that in, there. But "everything that implies" is a vast amount of information! Especially if you include the law of identity, and everything that implies.

It is a vast amount of information as compared to no information, but not when compared to other metaphysical systems, such as Plato, Hegel, or the Christians, who, in addition to (at least implicitly) accepting the axioms of Objectivism, posited all kinds of other useless crap to go along with it.

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, every axiom has metaphysical as well as epistemological implications-- yes, no?

Yes, and that's the reason the two branches are usually taken together--it's really difficult to draw a clear line between the two, at times. Most of those implications are epistemological, though. It's only a very small portion that is metaphysics. I think Ayn Rand said once that Philosophy is 90% epistemology.

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  • 2 weeks later...
It is a vast amount of information as compared to no information, but not when compared to other metaphysical systems, such as Plato, Hegel, or the Christians, who, in addition to (at least implicitly) accepting the axioms of Objectivism, posited all kinds of other useless crap to go along with it.

I don't dispute that Objectivism, or any philosophical system which respects the Onus of Proof principle is much simpler than any philosophy which fails to do so. And certainly the Christians and religionists/Platonists are the worst about neglecting the (ironically, Christian) philosopher William of Ockham's razor, "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity."

But I'm still a little uneasy about your exact wording, "Once you go beyond 'Existence exists,' and everything that implies, you enter the realm of fantasy..." This could be true depending on what you mean by "go beyond," but it omits the fact that axioms are meaningless in the absence of sense perception.

Many Western philosophers, including Hegel, thought that everything that can be known can be deduced from axioms-- and there is a famous story in which one of Hegel's critics held up a fountain-pen and challenged Hegel to deduce his specific pen from axioms, and Hegel simply muttered some response to the effect that he was too profound and famous a philosopher to waste time bothering with pens. But Objectivism holds that there is no a priori knowledge, and no innate ideas. It is an empiricist philosophy in that sense, like Aristotelianism was (empiricism, in the proper sense of the word, isn't limited to sensualism and representationalism, as many people assume).

The point I'm trying to make is that, although consciousness is certainly an aspect of existence, there is nothing in the concept of existence existing alone which directly implies consciousness, or any specific metaphysical observations-- omitting the fact that in order for there to be a "concept" of "existence exists" there must be some consciousness possessing the concept; because it would be possible for existence to exist even if there were no conscious beings. That follows from the "primacy of existence" principle.

Even if the axiom of consciousness could be derived from the axiom of existence, it still wouldn't prove any specific observation that a person might make about the nature of reality. Nothing in the axioms can demonstrate that water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, or that hot air is lighter than cold air-- only that, if these facts are observed, and the proper procedures for induction and deduction are followed, they can be known with certainty to be true and necessary in a specific context. But that latter statement, which is a metaphysical statement that Objectivism does dare to make, can't be underestimated in its profundity, or in its pregnancy as compared to most other prevalent systems today. So in one sense, Objectivism might say less than other philosophies which make all sorts of groundless cosmological or metaphysical assertions arbitrarily. But in another sense, it says much more about metaphysics than they do (in the sense of actually saying something).

Yes, and that's the reason the two branches are usually taken together--it's really difficult to draw a clear line between the two, at times. Most of those implications are epistemological, though. It's only a very small portion that is metaphysics. I think Ayn Rand said once that Philosophy is 90% epistemology.

That makes sense. One of the attractive things about Ayn Rand's approach, I think, is that she never divorces her metaphysics from her epistemology. She never makes a claim about "the nature of the universe" without at least some brief explanation of how you can know that it's true. So the Objectivist metaphysics is prior to the epistemology in the sense that existence must exist before a person can know anything about it, but the epistemology is prior to the metaphysics in the sense that you need some grounds for establishing truth before you can proceed to grasp and discuss reality. I agree it's difficult to distinguish one from the other, sometimes. [i know I'm hairsplitting a little here, but only because I think it's important, not because I'm trying to take what you said out of context. :) ]

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