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Consciousness
Meaning of Conscious It is a mental state that creates an understanding of what an organism is to be like that very organism. Its meaning is drawn from the viewpoint of that organism and not any other. The consciousness occurs at the many different levels of animal life, and in simple terms it is being human from a human beings point of view.
Existence of Consciousness
The consciousness exists since we are able to imagine and reason out the very nature of ourselves and other animal life other than our own. We may not be able to express the life of other animals correctly, since we are limited to our own viewpoint hence unable to fully comprehend their experiences, senses, and mental processes. …show more content…
unless we changed our structure. And even then, we would not be able to explain what is it about being a bat by being a bat ourselves. As noted by Nagel (436):
‘I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications.’
The very fact that we can make these analyses and try to imagine what it is to be another organism from their viewpoint is proof enough that the conscious does exist.
Exploring the Objective Account of the World through the Subjective Consciousness An objective account of an experience by other organisms is possible through separating the experiences from our own specific viewpoint. By having several viewpoints, humans are able gain greater objectivity of these experiences and understand, what it is ‘to be’ a bat from several viewpoints such as a human, another bat, and the bat itself. It means that the conclusion that will be drawn conclusion is more objective, since it is from different …show more content…
This is accomplished by reducing our dependence on individual or species-specific points of view toward the object of investigation.” And even though our analyses and hypotheses may be difficult to comprehend as we are mind-bend in reasoning from our own individual point of view; the very nature of our world is a physical state. Physicalism embraces ‘is or are’ phenomenon, in its simplest form and isn’t dependent our ability to deduce its meaning from specific or different viewpoints.
Existence of Self as Dependent on Consciousness
A self-awareness created by a sense of being ourselves from an in-depth and inherent comprehension of who we are, is done at the mind level. The mind is one that directs the body, and its senses. Awaking our senses lead to experiences that animals have. These senses and experiences is through a transformation of the conscious to the physical and observable nature of an organism. Thus our true nature and self is a by-product of our consciousness, this is further noted by Nagel (436) who states:
‘I do not deny that conscious mental states and events cause behavior.’
Mindfulness Practices in Understanding