Subject: Re: Bios Theoretikos--funny stuff.


>John wrote :
>
>>
>>>Lisa D. wrote :
>>>
>>>>Yes I do mean conscienceness, it was rather late last night..

>>Few explanations on conscience that I am aware of are as elaborate as
that.
>>Could conscience be 'energy' stored or released. In quantum mechanics
energy
>>is in neither state exclusively since the energy stored within any small
>>particle is in a free state. At the level at which classical mechanics
>>operates, energy is either in a state of pure potential, or it is kinetic
or
>>it is in a chemical releasing state (exothermic state). So there is
>>potential energy and there is kinetic energy.
>>
>>The classical definition of energy renders energy as 'something capable of
>>doing work' and as a result energy is quantified as watts, horsepower,
etc.
>>
>>Now when someone speculates that consciousness is energy, there is reason
to
>>believe that it is. Since any phenomenon in nature which is not at
absolute
>>zero is active, it either stores or releases energy.
>>
>>Consciousness is an empty term unless there is a 'concomitant' attending
>>consciousness. Husserl indicated that consciousness is consciousness of
>>something, and that something has the capacity to emit energy. Unless it
is
>>a black hole.


Chris replies:
>No, no. You said this the other day, following on from Aristotle that time.
>Husserl was not correct. Consciousness does not have to be conscious of
>something (although usually it is). You don't need to rely upon authority
>for this, you can verify it for yourself. Consciousness can be entirely
empty.

I am often being funny but some people think that I am being serious. Of
course I was merely (another word for absolute I recently discovered)
mimicing the objectivist who relies on repetition, even if repetition and
endurance are natural, cyclical events in nature. There is always the 'first
time' for each one of us. Does objective science care about the first time?
No objective science likes repeat performances so that inferences can be
made.

I have been rolling around in my noggin the word 'intususpician' which is
Kantian. You see I don't agree that there are subjects any more than I think
there are objects. It is really a question of defining borders and
boundaries. Somehow I believe if everthing is ultimately connected then
these locations are orientations not locations, they are forms.

At the mechanistic level - biophysical that is - there must be some exchange
of energy for a brain-cell event. A brain-cell event does not explain
inferences and notions, and neither does it explain the use of principles.
In the Metaphysics of Aristotle, man is termed as the 'zoon echon logon' and
one of two distinct 'human' attributes is the knowledge of principles. Again
nothing here explains brain-cell events since even the most primitive animal
which possess ganglia does not have any idea of what a principle is.

The following is something I wrote recently on Plotinus and environmental
ethics. They consist of notes - nothing more. Here it is...

Pla(y)tonic words are pebbles, fragments of shell marine life,  palabras por
la playa. Words are either messengers, angelos, or bodies that sign,
somaphorein. The messengers transmit the signs of the bodies: semaphores.
Metaphorein or after phora.

Then the fourth term mentioned in Timeaus, almost obscure, tenebreosa, is
for feeling, value. The three terms mentioned often enough before. Now the
fourth term....feeling.

I see there is an r (arrrh)  in every movement.

Fenollosa:

"Green vines hang on and twine the high forest
Darkly they cover the whole mountain
In it there is a silent and solitary man."

A more striking locution [Kenner]:

"Green vines hang through the high forest,
They weave a whole roof to the mountain,
The lone man sits with shut speech..."

Return to laughter

"Generally women weed their own farms, but sometimes, because it is much
pleasanter to get a month's work done in one day and in company, several
women who have adjacent farms brew beer and summon the women of the
neighbourhood to weed and drink. No man between five and eighty dare venture
near such a party. Each woman takes one line of yam mounds. Abreast, dancing
as they move, singing obscence songs, they weed their way down to the end of
the farm. Meanwhile, in any homestead within earshot, the men prick their
ears at the songs and shake their heads disapprovingly if they do catch any
of the words, for the songs the women sing in the evening while they drink
their hostesses' beer are full of virtuous sentiments and fit for the ears
of husbands." [Return to Laughter: an anthropological novel, Elenore Smith
Bowen].

Some feeling in Plotinus, with notes from "Plotinus as Environmentalist", D.
Blakeley.

There is a positive cosmic type of mysticism invoked by Plotinus is an
arousal to an endless process of creation for the grounds of a 'unity with
the cosmic'. The unities are not 'shut off' from perception, percipience,
sentience; the unities range from 'embodied sensibility to noesis and
beyond'. There are two modes for noetic and erotic sentience, one is a
'descent mode' and the other a 'ascent mode' [no mention of the existential
posture - or  in repose here].

Reflecting on the descent mode can be altered poetically as 'ensoulment' of
nature, seeing all nature as 'ensouled' as world, phenomenological seeing en
extremis.

Referring to Daniel Kealey, discussing Plotinus, in Revisioning
Environmental Ethics, as a 'positive appraisal of the world' the emphasis of
the via positiva in the 'desent mode' is given more expression, feeling.

Attending to 'points' that give relevance to 'contemplation as theoria,
eros, and poesis, an ethic of the environment as an object of care is
actuated. Ethos actually means habit, and ethic is a habit of life suited to
the landscape that appears and unfolds. It may be said that a landscape is a
unifold (mani)fold, since mani means handy, at hand, as in manigiere
(Italian) to manage and train.

Kealey says:

"All nature contemplates. This may be the most important tenet for it at
once negates the ontological seperateness of the natural, divine spheres.
All share in and are constituted in the fundamental act of contemplation."

For which Blakeley observes:

"...the world possesses value as a concrete expression of higher
principles."

Including in his profile the following features of cosmic mysticism
(quoting):

1.    a sense of the unity of nature, and of one's identity with it;

2.    a sense of the cosmos as a living presence, "intimately rooted in life
and consciousness";

3.    a sense that everything is transpiring in an eternal unchanging
present or that the distinctions between       time and change and eternity
and unchanging are consolidated or interprenetrating without conflict or
disparity;

4.    a sense that, as a result of the transition from attachment to, to
detachment from, ego and world (unity with nous and the One), return (of
laughter) [illegal insertion in quote by me] or descent to the world and
embodiment merits an affirmative appraisal, that it is to be approached as a
product and gift worthy of celebration;

5.    a sense that individuality, properly appraised, is a site of creative
and edifying empowerment that expresses the unifying source (formative
power) of all;

6.    a sense that such existence in, and unity with, the cosmos has both
noetic qualities resulting from the realization of unity and a felt quality
of unity (e.g., sympathy) where the distinctions between self and other,
within and without, being and process function dialectically and
supportively rather than exclusively (in opposition, in composition);

7.     a sense that the material world and its unity are realy, a work of
providence (pronoia), and worthy of serious regard that may be manifest in a
wide range of quite ordinary actions, practices, projects, vocations.

The cosmos becomes an expansive body which is spread out in every direction
and in contact with itself in everything. Recalling that number is
derivative of 'repetition' or 'succession' that

"Sucession or repitition gives us Number- dyad, triad, etc. - and the extent
traversed is a matter of Magnitude" [Plotinus, Enneads]. Plotinus indicates
that time 'has not appeared' in the search for time; time cannot tell of its
'vastness', and 'all we have discovered is Motion in ceaseless succession,
like water flowing ceaselessly, motion and extent of motion [Plotinus}."

Cosmic community

What can be sensed then of eternity is the eternal in nature. Eternal cosmic
unity is the 'repetition' and variation that succeeds each sensible seeing,
or hearing. The net is the unity.

Plotinus

"It is as if a net immersed in the waters was alive....The sea is already
spread out and the net spreads with it." [4.3.9.40].

"But if it has all life (The One is the potency of all things [5.3.15.30]),
and a clear and perfect life, then every soul and every intellect is in it,
and no part of life or intellect is absent from it." [5.3.16.30]."













>
>>Consciousness is consciousness of something. A subject with consciousness
>>must have an object, and to perceive an object, that consciousness must
>>operate, or act.
>
>Why ? Just because english language requires subject and object ?
>
>>An act of consciousness assumes an object in space time. So
>>consciousness is concomittant. Concomittant consciousness (cetasika in
Pali)
>>'is a collective term for feeling, perception, and formations, variously
>>subdivided; in other words, aspects of mentality that arise together with
>>consciousness.' [Path of Purification, Vol. 1, Buddhaghosa].
>
>Ha! But,but,but...seems to me you are overly concerned with reliance upon
>these old guys and their theories and classifications of terminology. Just
>put your finger to the end of your nose and press. The fact that you
>can do that,
>and experience a sensation, is consciousness. The sum total of all similar
>sensations and perceptions is also consciousness. But a lot of the time -
>even most of the time - you're not conscious of the end of your nose. So,
>you can be 'unconscious' of things, and also conscious of things, according
>to where your consciousness is directed. This facility to direct
consciousness
>can be called attention or awareness. If you sit and meditate and detach
your
>attention from all objects and sensations, then consciousness still
remains,
>(contrary to Husserl, or whoever else). If you remove all objects of
>consciousness
>from the field of experience entirely, and make a feedback loop where your
>object of consciousness is consciousness itself, then you have found God.
>Or Nirvana, or whatever you care to call 'It'.
>You can become detached from all material realities and bathe in that
>primordial reality which underlies all that exists. There's all kinds of
other
>fancy tricks you can do as well, once you learn that knack.
>
>>The relationship of conscience to consciousness is that conscience is a
form
>>of knowledge. In fact conscience means 'sensibility' or 'ethical
judgement'
>>[New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, Funk and Wagnalls, vol.
2,
>>1943].
>>
>>One modern definition of conscience describes it as a 'power'. Perhaps
that
>>power is 'moral action' or a 'beautiful act' if it really is sensibility.
>>The two essential meanings - sensibility and ethical judgement - have
power
>>connected to them. So power is the capacity to do work, nonetheless it
could
>>be cultural work pursuing a hypothesis.
>>
>>"A conscience is needed for the age, as for the individual - a power that
>>shall reveal itself, and arouse and convict it." [John Young, Christ of
>>History, Bk ii, p.73]
>>
>>The archaic meaning of conscience is 'consciousness' or 'inner thoughts or
>>sentiments' even 'pity'. The latin root of conscience is conscientia
meaning
>>'with science', or knowledge. Therefore nice does not mean with conscience
>>since the latin root of nice is nescius, ignorant <from ne, not,  + scio,
>>know.
>>
>>"An uncultivated savage is never a nice inquirer into the refinements of
>>law." [Irving, Sketch Book, Phillip of Pokanoket, p. 361]
>>
>>So today a nice person is still ignorant and with out a conscience. That
is
>>some funny stuff.
>>
>>at swim two birds,
>>
>>John Foster
>
>
>I'm not sure that I see much connection between energy/power/work and
>consciousness, except at the basic biological level that all
>metabolic processes
>are using (chemical) energy all the time, and that includes the brain.
There
>is obviously SOME connection between the brain and the mind, or
consciousness,
>but there's no real agreement on that, just endless disputes among
>different groups
>of specialists, depending upon their favoured philosophical preconceptions.
>
>I like the idea of a nice person being ignorant and without conscience.
>A lot to be said in its favour. I believe that if children were not screwed
>up by what passes for education (but is really ideological indoctrination)
>and did not have moral codes ( much of which are arbitrary and nonsensical)
>forced into their consciences, then they'd probably be nicer people.
>Happier, too.
>I don't believe in Original Sin. I believe the Buddha Nature is pure
>and unsullied.
>The trouble is, that once 'civilisation' has 'cultivated' a person,
>it takes a lot of
>work to become autonomous and 'uncultivated' again, and most never even
>realise the possibility exists.
>
>C.L.



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