27. Notes - on consciousness:/ no ill will - mh

27.  26 September 2019

       1223 hours. I read a good article of the study of consciousness by Philip Goff from edge dot com based on his new book Galileo's Error, Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. 

       Find, if you will, a paragraph or so for focus. - -  You edited this as I wished. If anyone is more interested the full article can be read at: 'https://www.edge.org/conversation/philip_goff-a-post-galilean-paradigm'.

 Amorella

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. . . [But] from the inside, in terms of its intrinsic nature, matter is constituted of forms of consciousness. This is a form of panpsychism, the ancient view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of matter.    . . . 

How do you bridge the gap from the purely quantitative properties of neuroscience to the qualities of consciousness? . . .  The truth is, every theory of consciousness has deep theoretical problems that we need to philosophize and to try and solve. That's true for the materialists as much as anyone else.  . . .

. . . Science deals with unobservable things, but it postulates unobservable things in order to explain what we can observe. What's unique about consciousness is that the thing we're trying to explain is unobservable.  . . .

One underexplored question in the science of consciousness is the relationship between thought and consciousness.    . . . 

What I want to say is going on in the background here is a discussion of what the relationship between thought and consciousness is. Is thought a kind of consciousness, a kind of cognitive experience? Or is thought just something completely different to consciousness?  . . . Jesse Prinz, for example, say, ". . . When I introspect, I just find colors, sounds, shapes, emotions—that exhausts my consciousness. There's none of this cognitive consciousness. I just don't find that at all." It's hard to know how to settle this issue. It's a debate about consciousness as we immediately experience it.

selected and edited from https://www.edge.org/conversation/philip_goff-a-post-galilean-paradigm

[Note: I did not ask for permission to use this material and may be asked to delete all but the  original footnote.]

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       2115 hours. What is most important in the article from my perspective here are these two points: 

1,"What's unique about consciousness is that the thing we're trying to explain is unobservable."; and, 

2, "One underexplored question in the science of consciousness is the relationship between thought and consciousness."

       I agree, and we need to include these two points within the stated thesis. Post. - Amorella

       I also agree. I, as a soul personified, harbor no ill will towards the scientific process. - mh