On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Martin Packer wrote:
I've tried to stay out of this thread, because it's a difficult
topic and I'm no philosopher (though I can't seem to put their
damned books down!). But my 2 cents, for what they'll buy, are that
one needs to begin with an acknowledgement that Cs is, as I said in
my last message, relational. I don't mean by this that it is a
relationship between mind and matter, I mean that Cs is a
relationship between matter and matter. I think we'd all agree that
Cs is a property, an aspect, only of living organisms. I completely
agreed with your earlier post, Andy, that Cs is not simply present
or absent but is a matter of degree or type. My favorite Hegel is
the phenomenology, which is a story about the education of Cs over
time. So not all living organisms have the same kind of Cs, and
humans don't all have the same kind, of have one kind all their
lives. Cs develops. But it is always to be found in interaction
between organisms (material) and other material stuff.
It seems to me that it might help a lot to think of consciousness
not as a property or aspect, but as an activity. It is certainly a
relational, material (with formal) activity, in relation to other
activities in ourselves and in our world.
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