Present awareness wrote:No point in arguing about definitions, since different words mean different things to different people. A dictionary will define words and each person will interpret those definitions.
Self awareness is just one aspect of awareness. Awareness in general, could be called consciousness, since any argument for consciousness without some form of awareness, would not make sense. Even a person whom we call unconscious, in a deep sleep, is still aware of sensations and sounds, as an alarm will jolt that person awake. When dreaming, there is awareness of the images that pass through our minds.
We are not conscious of the body temperature being regulated or of the secretion of insulin into the bloodstream, but there is an awareness on a chemical level, which responds to fluctuations in temperature or blood sugar levels.
For basic conceptual distinctions, see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... ss/#ConCon
* Sometimes "consciousness" and "awareness" are used synonymously, and sometimes they are not. For example:
"Awareness can be broadly analyzed as a state wherein we have access to some information, and can use that information in the control of behavior. One can be aware of an object in the environment, of a state of one's body, or one's mental state, among other things. Awareness of information generally brings with it the ability to knowingly direct behavior depending on that information. This is clearly a functional notion. In everyday language, the term 'awareness' is often used synonymously with 'consciousness,' but I will reserve the term for the functional notion I have described here. …
Consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, but awareness as I have described it need not be accompanied by consciousness. One can be aware of a fact without any particular associated phenomenal experience, for instance. However, it may be possible to constrain the notion of awareness so that it turns out to be coextensive with phenomenal consciousness[.]"
(Chalmers, David J.
The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 28)
Given Chalmers' distinction between
functional/informational or objective awareness and
experiential/phenomenal or subjective awareness, one can speak of nonconscious awareness of stimuli or signals (e.g. during sleep), with this being perception or information-registration without sensation.
* There's a distinction between
transitive consciousness (consciousness
-of-something) and
intransitive consciousness (consciousness
simpliciter, the state of subjecthood), whereas awareness is always transitive: it is grammatically correct simply to say "He is conscious", but not to say "He is aware" (without adding "…of x").
* What makes the situation more complicated is that "awareness" (like "consciousness") is ambiguous between a first-order and a second-order sense:
1. In the first-order sense, to be aware of an experience is simply to have, undergo, or "enjoy" it, with the awareness consisting in nothing more than the presence of the experience. This can be called "affective awareness" of one's experience.
2. In the second-order sense, to be aware of an experience is to know or to perceive that one is having it. This can be called "cognitive awareness" of one's experience.
My distinction between 1 and 2 corresponds to Searle's distinction between a "constitution/identity sense" and an "intentionality-sense" of "awareness":
"There are "two senses of 'aware of', which I will call respectively the 'aware of' of intentionality and the 'aware of' of constitution. You can see the difference if you contrast two common-sense claims. First, when I push my hand hard against this table, I am aware of the table. And second, when I push my hand hard against this table, I am aware of a painful sensation in my hand.
(a) I am aware of the table.
(b) I am aware of a painful sensation in my hand.
Both of these are true and though they look similar, they are radically different. (a) describes an intentional relation between me and the table. I had a sensation where the table was its intentional object. The presence and features of the table are the conditions of satisfaction of the sensation. But in (b) the only thing I am aware of is the painful sensation itself. Here the 'aware of' is the 'aware of' of identity or the constitution of the experience. The object I am aware of and the sensation are identical. I had only one sensation: a painful sensation of the table. I was aware of (in the sense of identity or constitution) the sensation, but I was also aware of (in the sense of intentionality) the table.
Applying this lesson the the Argument from Illusion, we get the following result. In the case of the veridical perception I am literally aware of the green table, nothing more. But what about the hallucination? In the sense in which I am aware of the green table in the veridical perception, in the case of hallucination, I am not aware of anything. In the ordinary sense, when you are having a total hallucination, you do not see anything, you are not aware of anything, you are not conscious of anything. But the source of the confusion is the following: In such a case you are having a conscious perceptual experience, and ordinary language allows us to use a noun phrase as the direct object of 'aware of'. In that sense I am aware of a visual experience, but this is a totally different sense from the intentionalistic sense because, to repeat, the visual experience is identical with the awareness itself; it is not a separate object of awareness. In the case of the hallucination, there was an intentional content but no intentional object; there was an intentional state where the conditions of satisfaction were not satisfied.
At the most fundamental level the entire argument rests on a pun, a simple fallacy of ambiguity, over the use of the English expressions 'aware of' and 'conscious of'. The proof that the same expression is being used with two different senses is that the semantics is different. Consider sentences of the form: 'Subject S has an awareness A of object O.' In the intentionality sense, that has the consequence: A is not identical with O. A ≠ O. In the intentionality sense: A is an ontologically subjective event that presents the existence and features of O as its conditions of satisfaction. But in the constitution or identity sense: A is identical with O. The thing that one is 'aware of' is the awareness itself (A = O)."
(Searle, John R.
Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory of Perception. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. pp. 24-5)