so, keith, you are suggesting that consciousness is a matter of what we are
considering at any one moment. this is very much to my liking.
accordingly, my consciousness cannot be false but is always limited. we
cannot be conscious of everything. we cannot be conscious of what we are
not conscious of, including of its limitation -- except in hindsight, when
the effects of our conscious actions fail a criterion for success that we
have adopted for ourselves.
to me this opens a lot of interesting conceptions.
for example, mistakes would not be the product of consciousness, rather of
its absence.
good old aristotle is still right: you can't (consciously) contradict
yourself.
when you lie you know the difference between what you say and what you
believe to be true
nobody makes mistakes, you realize only afterwards when it turns out that
you did not get what you expected.
feeling an amputated limb has much to do with habituated kinesthetic sensory
motor coordination. when you open your eyes, you know whether the limb is
there. consciousness begins when you reflect on where that difference comes
from, not from the feeling.
thanks, terry, for bringing the discussion back to the more modest problem
you intended to address. "false consciousness" opened a bid can of worms
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhDs in Design
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Keith Russell
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 6:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: False Consciousness
Dear Terry,
Sorry for the confusions - but there is a major issue with the notion of the
English background to the problem that you outline:
"The original question comes from my english background. As I see it, in the
UK, 'false consciousness' is a widely used technical term drawn, as Klaus
says
from Marxist analysis and conceptually extended and refined by Habermas and
others. In practical terms, it's been associated with the cumulative
research
evidence on human cognitive error. Its spiritual home has been mainly with
those involved in left-leaning social change. The term is so carefully
defined
and widely used in UK contexts I didn't feel the need to define it." (Terry
Love)
There are two traditions relating to error involved in this account.
Historically, the epistemological issues come first: it was the English
philosophers who firstly raised the problem of cognition in terms of doubt.
The German answer to these puzzles leads, via Kant and Hegel to Marx and
beyond. But, the questions of false consciousness are not really
epistemological issues in Kant, Hegel and Marx. They are dialectical
features of consciousness not uncertainty issues of sensory experience.
That is, for Kant and the negative schools, parallax error is not important;
rather it is the very nature of consciousness that leads to a battle between
the included and the excluded. I might be able to measure the length of a
stick OK but what do I exclude when I do so? Hence social criticism looks
like something outside the domain of design - the designer is simply
designing toilets - it could be deemed false consciousness to exclude, in
making toilets, knowledge of the impact of toilets in a social setting of
toilet use.
In fixing on an object of attention, consciousness must, of its own action,
exclude that which it is not attending to. How to bring the knowledge of
this absence into my reflection?
Hope this helps
keith russell
OZ newcastle
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