Chili wrote: ↑November 7th, 2018, 1:27 am
Before we "like to ascribe to ourselves" a trait, we would need to be conscious of the trait, of ourselves, or what attribution is, etc.
No, you would only need to be
aware of the trait.
Consciousness is more than mere awareness, and the fact that this is not defined and agreed on beforehand is the reason why people often misunderstand each other when discussing "consciousness".
For example a sleeping man has awareness, he has dreams, but no one would say that we are ordinarily "conscious" while we are dreaming. Even a man in a coma would have some kind of simple awareness, but no one would say he is "conscious".
Consciousness implies a certain awareness of the self and it surroundings, particularly in regard to any goals or aims desired.
Awareness implies no self-knowledge or self-awareness whatever, nor any knowledge or awareness of any practicalities -
where to go, what to do, who I am, etc. It only implies an awareness of
anything at all, nothing more.
For example, let us take an incredibly simple living organism or 'entity', in which all it happens to be aware of is a
single sound. It goes on and on and on until one day, it stops, because the organism or 'entity' has died. While it was alive
all it was aware of was this single sound, this certain vibration, and
nothing more. It never
knew or
thought about who it was,
what the sound was,
why it was hearing it, if it
liked it or not, etc. No thoughts, no feelings, no change in awareness at all, its entire lifetime, all it was ever aware of was this single sound, going on and on with
no change in tone, pitch or rhythm.
Would you say that that organism or 'entity' was a
Conscious entity ?....