Reflections on Free Agents
A Links entry from Friday, July 6, 2007Reflections on Free Agents
Interesting post and discussion over at An und für sich. Here’s an excerpt:
Thus, brain size, etc., is still important to be able to accurately map the world and predict phenomena; but the shift from consciousness to self-consciousness is necessarily a qualitative, not quantitative one. The addition of this reflexive element is purely formal and virtual, adding what appears to be only a quantitative improvement to the mapping faculty, but once it is introduced, it reorganizes the “same” raw materials into a new kind of structure whereby the organism can consciously make itself do stuff, or at least try to, by means of its ability to “perceive” itself.
Alex Taylor
For means of this discussion, let’s divide consciousness into three categories: core consciousness, self-consciousness, and extended consciousness (I got these definitions from the neurologist Antonio Damasio, if anyone’s interested).
Core consciousness is the ability to assemble your sensory information into what’s called a Cartesian theater. If you think about how your reality works, it is wierdly, in a way that can’t be described, one flowing entity. Although you couldn’t describe the geography (is hearing to the right or left of touch?), you can sense that all your stimuli are presented in one entity known as reality. Amoebae do not have this, insects probably do not have this, dogs have this.
Self-consciousness is the ever present visceral feeling lodged in your working memory that everything you come in contact with relates to you, and you are the one who can think about and act on it.
Extended consciousness is the autobiographical self. It is the knowledge of where you went to school, who you know, etc. It is nervous ticks you have built up in your life.
The ability to have complex emotions seems to be deeply intertwined with core consciousness, which confuses things.
Anyway, the claim made by that excerpt is a big one. Saying that any of these functions is qualitative is a step that I’m not sure we can take. I agree that self-consciousness, as it is basically just a little center attached to working memory yelling “you are you! you are you!”, is probably qualitative. An alternative to that would be provided by chaos theory, which says that complexity in systems comes from an increasing number of units and relationships.
Anyway, my point is that that’s a bold claim to make, that’s probably true, but I don’t think all the evidence is in. What’s important, though, is that we don’t mistake self-consciousness with extended consciousness. Extended consciousness is a qualitative and quantitative leap
Bryan Klausmeyer
In Zizek’s The Parallax View, he actually does discuss Damasio’s theory, which is where this post by An und fur sich comes from.
Worthy of noting is also John Taylor’s notion of consciousness as relational phenomena (www.amazon.com/Race-Consciousness-John-G-Taylor/dp/0262700867) and there was one other, but I forget the author.. she argues that self-consciousness came about as an accident due to mating pressure (encephalization as akin to something like a peacock’s tail, and that any usefulness that stems from it is purely accidental outside of mating/courtship).
Alex Taylor
That’s interesting, I just read a book (“Why God Won’t Go Away” by Andrew Newberg) that argued that the ability to have a transcendental meditation comes from mechanisms in the thalamus designed to focus one’s attention during rhythmic activity. He predictably goes on to speculate that the capacity for religion stems from evolutionary pressures on sex.
So are we made to fuck or fuck to make? (Both, clearly.)
Bryan Klausmeyer
bryklaus@umich.edu
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