If consciousness is a bodily experience, and this bodily experience is conscious of bodily experiences, then it could be conscious of itself. How could then it be at the same time "a different animal" than the bodily experiences it is conscious of. If you say bodily experiences can be the "content" of other bodily experiences, it is exactly as saying we can be conscious of our consciousness.RJG wrote: ↑March 3rd, 2021, 10:27 pmRJG wrote:Consciousness itself can only logically be another bodily experience. This is not to say that we can be conscious of consciousness, as that would be logically impossible. More particularly, consciousness is the singular bodily experience of recognition, made possible by memory. For it is recognition that converts a non-conscious bodily experience into a conscious experience, that we then call “consciousness”.Why would these statements be false?Count Lucanor wrote:Then these statements turn out to be false:
RJG wrote: Therefore, this "something" and the "consciousness" (of this something) are TWO different (but related) things, ...agreed? One is an experience (v) and the other is the content (n) of that experience. Be careful not to conflate one as the other. There is 'X', and then there is the 'consciousness-of-X'. Two different animals!
We can't logically be conscious of consciousness anymore than we can see our seeing, or smell our smelling. We can only be conscious of bodily experiences (but not every bodily experience!). There are lots of reactions (bodily experiences) going on in our bodies, most of which we are not conscious of.
Actually, we do have a way, and it is precisely human experience that allows us to know how the world is, including our own bodies. It may not be direct, immediate knowledge grasped by the senses as first intuitions, but conscious reasoning easily leads us to obtain trustworthy knowledge.RJG wrote: ↑March 3rd, 2021, 10:27 pmIf I understand you correctly, then I don't disagree. We have no way of experientially knowing if our physical bodies match what we see in the mirror, anymore than we know what the "outside world" looks like.Count Lucanor wrote:Actually, we have no more justification in the intuitive sensation of our own bodies as real worldly objects than in the sensation of an "outside" world.
Of course we have.