Why is Consciousness

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waechter418
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Why is Consciousness

Post by waechter418 »

getting more and more discredited in Western civilization whose philosophers, artists, priests & poets held it, since the early Greeks, in high esteem.

Is it because modern western sciences pay little attention to consciousness, and if so, only to try to bind it into matter?

Or is it that people are increasingly captured by the material aspects of existence and thus become callous to consciousness?

What is the benefit of eliminating a concept that is accredited to have enriched Western cultures – and of course the grand civilizations of the East, who, by the way, keep its esprit since millennia well and alive?
duszek
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by duszek »

I don´t think it is.

People suffer a lot if they are self-conscious.
People pay a lot to get "charisma" and "charm", which presuppose a high level of consciousness.

There are consciousness-enlarging workshops and seminars.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

waechter418 wrote:getting more and more discredited in Western civilization whose philosophers, artists, priests & poets held it, since the early Greeks, in high esteem.

Is it because modern western sciences pay little attention to consciousness, and if so, only to try to bind it into matter?

Or is it that people are increasingly captured by the material aspects of existence and thus become callous to consciousness?

What is the benefit of eliminating a concept that is accredited to have enriched Western cultures – and of course the grand civilizations of the East, who, by the way, keep its esprit since millennia well and alive?
east or west we can only forge metaphors.

There are no explanations, only finer and finer descriptions.
There are not ultimate answers to 'why'. "Why" only gives you an infinite regress of more whys.
Can can answer 'how'. Although you can only ever use a metaphor to show how one thing, unfamiliar, works with reference to another, more familiar, thing that is known how it works this descriptivity provides all the explanation we are ever going to get.
osgart
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by osgart »

existence sits there as a question. Order, reason, the care of others. Hand, foot, all there doing its purpose. Its intention.

Why? Because something, someone wanted to have life be. Difficult, savage! Dog eat dog!
Just to experience something, anything!
Why does fruit taste good? If existence was a random mindless blind accident it should taste awful.
Dubious
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Dubious »

waechter418 wrote:Or is it that people are increasingly captured by the material aspects of existence and thus become callous to consciousness?
I think that's pretty well it. We are generally more focused on what consciousness can accomplish as 'goal driven" than on what it actually is and the more 'impersonal' ways it can manifest itself.
waechter418 wrote:...and of course the grand civilizations of the East, who, by the way, keep its esprit since millennia well and alive?
The East, regardless of how historically grand it may have been, is now as thoroughly devoid of spirit as it's possible to be. The "esprit" of the East can only be described as a dead end.
Belinda
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Belinda »

There is no "why" regarding consciousness. There is how is consciousness i.e. how did consciousness come to be and how is consciousness maintained.

To ask "Why is consciousness" has to imply that there is , not cause, but reason for consciousness. Unless a reasoning entity, such as God is sometimes supposed to be, deliberately made consciousness there is no reason for consciousness.

The question is teleological. You can ask about teleological causes when you are asking why persons or even animals, or God, choose to do such and such, but otherwise teleological questions are nonsense.

It's just conceivable that some individual who is not fluent in use of English might ask the anaesthetist who has brought a patient round from the anaesthetic "Why is consciousness?"
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HexHammer
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by HexHammer »

waechter418 wrote:bla bla ..bla
Consciousness are in many ways outdated, and in itself doesn't provide any relevance to the everyday life of people. It has been divided into intellects and subconsciousness, which in turn only shows how little you have studied and comprehend.
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waechter418
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by waechter418 »

Dear Belinda
the whole question is:

Why is consciousness getting more and more discredited in Western civilization whose philosophers, artists, priests & poets held it, since the early Greeks, in high esteem?

Dear Hex
i am glad that you are getting involved in "consciousness" - as so far you haven´t demonstrated much of it
Belinda
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Belinda »

I suppose that by "consciousness" you mean awareness of something or other. Do you mean awareness in a visceral sense or intellectual awareness?
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waechter418
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by waechter418 »

Sorry - neither one :(
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HexHammer
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by HexHammer »

waechter418 wrote:Sorry - neither one :(
Then explain what you mean.
Sam I. Elle
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Sam I. Elle »

There is no benefit to eliminating consciousness; we wouldn't be able to explain how there's animation in things instead of in inanimation.
Scott Mayers
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Scott Mayers »

waechter418 wrote:Dear Belinda
the whole question is:

Why is consciousness getting more and more discredited in Western civilization whose philosophers, artists, priests & poets held it, since the early Greeks, in high esteem?
You can use ellipses in the title and then finish it like:

"Why is consciousness..."[title]

"...getting more ..."[OP]

But I caught on in context. I think you have to take a step back to the division in the Middle East in religion and philosophy to understand this. In particular, religion split into a "mystic" form that originally attempted to TEASE others into questioning reality with a caution NOT TO INSULT many others in a climate of culture and religious clashes resulting soon after the evolution of cities. For settlers, they began to drift from the mindset of the tribalist's transient lifestyle. But when the idea of 'ownership' begun to take stronger hold, "lords" (land owners), would compete with others still not reasonably accepting the increasing limitations on their traditional concept that only treated one's present location as all one is allowed to 'own'.

Then, because of this increasing strife, religious justifications had to be raised to defend WHY one or the other lifestyles should be honored. Considering that nature lacks actual gods, there was no universal 'right' to defend one belief over the other WITHOUT demanding that open skepticism be penalized. So the philosophers (or thinkers, in general) could not be 'free' to speak so openly. One way to appeal to this is to try to use rhetoric to TEASE others into questioning things more themselves. (And why those like Socrates appears as likely one of many cautious questioners). Treating wisdom then as 'privileged', 'secretly powerful', and requiring on use self-introspection more would lead those societies that are both locally isolated AND populous with multi-cultural distinctions, find a means to favor this "gnostic" transition into things like "consciousness".

This holds sway in isolated 'dead end' areas, like India, the strongest. Hinduism was more like a compiled evolution of many religions and being more relatively isolated required they negotiate more among each other, favoring the mystic, broadly interpretative style that led to a focus on achieving higher 'consciousness' (as to be aware of that secret hidden knowledge). This is what I believe is the "why" to your question. Western philosophy adapted attention to continue to hold fast to their beliefs because they still had literal room to move to their own spaces. And as technology advanced, power through these enabled more independence that lacked the force required to 'unify' the WAY they can resist a need for 'tolerance' of others. Thus, they lacked the strong need to "mystify" the way they speak around others as they could enforce stricter social structures in the way formal 'Multiculturalism' operates today that tend to support a Mosaic or segregated unions, rather than cultural assimilation.

When I hear those now use mystical forms of religion/philosophy in a 'gnostic' (secret hidden wisdom) way, we are rightfully more skeptical because this IS the way of the con man in Western lifestyles. So "consciousness" seems to BROAD a word to use as though each person knows what the speaker means without 'filling in the blanks' of their own interpretations. It is how we like our art to be only, not actual intellectual thinking.
Belinda
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Belinda »

Scott Mayers wrote:
waechter418 wrote:Dear Belinda
the whole question is:

Why is consciousness getting more and more discredited in Western civilization whose philosophers, artists, priests & poets held it, since the early Greeks, in high esteem?
You can use ellipses in the title and then finish it like:

"Why is consciousness..."[title]

"...getting more ..."[OP]

But I caught on in context. I think you have to take a step back to the division in the Middle East in religion and philosophy to understand this. In particular, religion split into a "mystic" form that originally attempted to TEASE others into questioning reality with a caution NOT TO INSULT many others in a climate of culture and religious clashes resulting soon after the evolution of cities. For settlers, they began to drift from the mindset of the tribalist's transient lifestyle. But when the idea of 'ownership' begun to take stronger hold, "lords" (land owners), would compete with others still not reasonably accepting the increasing limitations on their traditional concept that only treated one's present location as all one is allowed to 'own'.

Then, because of this increasing strife, religious justifications had to be raised to defend WHY one or the other lifestyles should be honored. Considering that nature lacks actual gods, there was no universal 'right' to defend one belief over the other WITHOUT demanding that open skepticism be penalized. So the philosophers (or thinkers, in general) could not be 'free' to speak so openly. One way to appeal to this is to try to use rhetoric to TEASE others into questioning things more themselves. (And why those like Socrates appears as likely one of many cautious questioners). Treating wisdom then as 'privileged', 'secretly powerful', and requiring on use self-introspection more would lead those societies that are both locally isolated AND populous with multi-cultural distinctions, find a means to favor this "gnostic" transition into things like "consciousness".

This holds sway in isolated 'dead end' areas, like India, the strongest. Hinduism was more like a compiled evolution of many religions and being more relatively isolated required they negotiate more among each other, favoring the mystic, broadly interpretative style that led to a focus on achieving higher 'consciousness' (as to be aware of that secret hidden knowledge). This is what I believe is the "why" to your question. Western philosophy adapted attention to continue to hold fast to their beliefs because they still had literal room to move to their own spaces. And as technology advanced, power through these enabled more independence that lacked the force required to 'unify' the WAY they can resist a need for 'tolerance' of others. Thus, they lacked the strong need to "mystify" the way they speak around others as they could enforce stricter social structures in the way formal 'Multiculturalism' operates today that tend to support a Mosaic or segregated unions, rather than cultural assimilation.

When I hear those now use mystical forms of religion/philosophy in a 'gnostic' (secret hidden wisdom) way, we are rightfully more skeptical because this IS the way of the con man in Western lifestyles. So "consciousness" seems to BROAD a word to use as though each person knows what the speaker means without 'filling in the blanks' of their own interpretations. It is how we like our art to be only, not actual intellectual thinking.
Thank you Scott Mayers for your interesting analysis.
The main reason for my impatience with the title was the frequency with which consciousness is discussed in these pages as if consciousness were nothing other than mystical or at least utterly mysterious, and with no reference to the usage of 'consciousness' in its practical scientific or clinical sense. Ignorance among the general population about simple biology worries me, and I wonder what is going on in schools that there is such ignorance.

Because there is this ignorance of the biological point(s) of view about consciousness it seems as if scepticism is dangerously in abeyance these days. The upshot of this is that less sceptical people are drawn into undue reverence for anything Eastern and mystical, which does not matter too much really, it's just a drag on conversations. The really bad upshot from lack of scepticism is that the electorate doesn't understand what they are voting for.
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waechter418
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by waechter418 »

Have a look at

"Another view of consciousness"

(in this forum)
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