The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #107029   Message #2216526
Posted By: Amos
16-Dec-07 - 12:21 PM
Thread Name: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
We can all find a body without looking too far and notice it is there.

We can all drum up a picture of some past moment and look at it, thus examining a part of the complex of recordings that makes up the mind.

We can all extrapolate about where the brain is and sort of sense its location inside the skull.

Two interesting outliers, though, are these:

1. Some, most, of us can take such a picture and place it far away, in front of us, behind us, or anywhere we choose to put it, and look at it being there.

2. All of us, at some point, face the question, "what is looking at the picture"? While some would argue it is a neurological subroutine, others would assert it is something more unique -- a viewpoint in consciousness not necessarily hard-coupled to any particular structural element.

And a third question arising from these is whether there is such a thing as "pure consciousness" without an object of which it is being aware. This is the sort of question that in some case leads to dramatic spiritual states and/or discoveries, but which seems to be well outside the normal spectrum of neurological studies.

A