11.21.09

Consciousness trying to explain consciousness

Posted in Philosophy, Schopenhauer, Science & Religion at 4:14 pm by nemo

Comment on Schopenhauer and death

reece sullivan said,
November 21, 2009 at 2:56 pm ·
I’ve had a strange relationship with William Blake in that he articulated a lot of things I’d already thought, only a couple hundred years earlier . . . and that we also have the same birthday, oddly, which will actually be a week from today: Nov 28th. At any rate, I found out that he said, as I’d said in different words before, that he’d already died and been “reborn” several times in his “life,” thus, we’re to take it that this might, on some level or the other, be applied to death, proper. Life is a series of deaths. I believe this is something one can see in Proust’s thoughts, too. What holds all these “separate” selves together so that we say they’re a person, ourselves? Proust’s main character was concerned that he would “die and be reborn” so that the (actual) death of his lover would become more and more removed . . . in such a way that he’d be a different person, essentially, only able to sympathize with his past self that lost his lover in the same way that one would sympathize with a stranger who lost his lover. In other words, whatever tragedies or joys we experience eventually become the tragedies or joys of another person: a past self that’s dead and that’s been replaced by a “reborn” self.

Concerning “The World As Will & Idea” and consciousness:
When we think about science, for instance, trying to understand consciousness, we have to realize that the ultimate tool being used to understand and “explain” consciousness is, well, consciousness. The thing trying to understand and trying to explain is that thing we’re trying to understand and explain. We obviously have a hard time trying to categorize or even explain this phenomena itself: is it a “strange loop?” What is it that’s even going on here? Some say that the creative power of consciousness ends up creating a mirror effect, so that, on some level, we can always find something wherever we look that might, to degrees, seem to show us something. This could also parallel holographic explanations of the world. For this reason, I’ve thought for some time that if I could flush these thoughts out more and if I had the time and passion to do so, I’d write a book playing on Schopenhauer’s title named, “The World as Mirror and Idea.” Because it’s consciousness that’s looking, the world will seem to mirror whatever our consciousness is set on.

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