Skip to main content

Once Mysterious...

From the subjective side, consciousness presents no mystery.  Consciousness is found to exist not just among its other objects but even as the a priori possibility of finding such objects.  Consciousness is a given whose structure and elements present themselves to consciousness.  Consciousness knows itself and, for itself, is objective.

The mystery of consciousness is only discovered from the objective side.  Through an eternity (which means through the progress of a world order) there was only motion and mobile, a universe of pure and unreflective impulse. Then, one day, as if a spark were struck, awareness flamed into existence.

Was this extra existence, which is admittedly so different from matter (as different as we believe life to be from death) a possibility of that same matter all along?  This mystery is felt in the question, "Where did it come from?"  The thought that it could arise through some coincidence, a brute coordination in the nature of things, a switch that flips when shapes are coordinated properly, beggars the imagination.  The whole thing seems too fortuitous to have occurred by chance, and so we reach out for a cause: why was consciousness, which otherwise might never have existed, tied to just this, and not anything else?  And if it didn't exist originally, why need it ever have existed at all?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Self Motivated

I've been doing a little better since I wrote "On Teaching."  I still haven't been applying for jobs. It starts to feel like a lot of effort, and I get very little positive feedback. I don't have a fixed area in which I'm applying -- just feel like I'm submitting applications randomly to schools or whatever position anywhere in the country. I would rather go "on the ground" to a particular office or campus, submit my resume in person to whoever is in charge of the operation, interview the people there. I think I'll be volunteering or substituting -- just trying to get experience and make contacts. I want to make enough money, if I can, but after spending so many years treading water, I'm anxious to see if I can find a way to do  something and not just get paid. -- Part of the reason I've "tread water" is my own lack of motivation, but I don't want to have one more year where I feel like I'm doing something meaningles...
Post a Comment
Read more

Interpretation: "Leda" by H.D.

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down of his soft breast uncurls his coral feet. Creature of the sea, made from the deep, Not its darkness where the hundred monsters Sleep but from a deeper still, where pearls And other jewels their corazón await, A depth so clear, so still, Deeper than the deep, about its treasures Clinging like a sheet, edge upon the edge Of what is seen, a flicker and a sweep. This way to emerge! Royally too evident become And darker darkness radiate, to sweep and fly, Ever in the way things underneath Have shown themselves And wear the world as a wreath, Oblivious to any demand, "Why?" Through the deep purple of the dying heat of sun and mist, the level ray of sun-beam has caressed the lily with dark breast, and flecked with richer gold its golden crest. Gold on gold more gilded, on the other hand, recedes Into a darkness and stillness, leads The mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Test and What It Tests

The students here spend (or are supposed to spend) the time that they are not in class studying for TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language).  I asked a student and one of the Chinese English teachers whether they wouldn't learn more English if they used that time to study it in a different way. They could read a novel or watch movies and TV shows in depth (record every line, look up all the words they don't know, watch them until they memorized them). The student didn't have anything much to say. The teacher simply said, flatly (but he always speaks flatly) that it is more useful for them to study TOEFL, because they will go abroad in half a year.  Someone could make a satire out of it: students are more concerned to improve their English score than to improve their English. "There's a correlation -- a rising tide lifts all boats."  If only the instrument were perfectly precise! And couldn't it just as well go the other way? You could spend more ti...
Post a Comment
Read more