by Neri on January 25th, 2009, 2:24 pm
One cannot be conscious without being conscious of something. That is, consciousness always intends an object. Our awareness of any object would disappear as soon as it was experienced, were it not for memory. Because memory is the thing that makes consciousness real, memory and consciousness are actually the same. To put it differently, temporal extent (memory) gives awareness its ontological status.
Primary memory is more or less concurrent with sensory impressions excited by things in the world. However, the brain has the capacity to store memories in such a way that they are not experienced all at once but may be recalled individually. When a stored memory is recalled, it is experienced as secondary memory. One is able to distinguish primary and secondary memories, except when one is asleep.
Consciousness of self emerges from the accumulated memories of the body’s interactions with the world. In other words, self-consciousness is learned. However, once learned, self-consciousness becomes a continuous primary memory (so long as one is neither comatose nor dead). Because it provides alternatives and thereby gives rise to free actions, self-consciousness may be called voluntary memory. Humans have a far greater capacity for voluntary memory than other animals. This capacity is the source of ideas and language.
Organic and reflex actions result from involuntary memory, in the sense that they are purely a matter of genetic programming and result from predetermined causes. However, involuntary actions may also be learned. Such things as standing, walking, running, driving a car and flying an airplane involve both voluntary and involuntary actions that have been learned and remembered. The actions of many lower animals are largely involuntary.
Although consciousness requires a certain cognitive capacity, it is learned through sensory information established as memory. Sensory information, memory and learning presuppose an objective reality with the transcendence of time and space (a world real in itself).
We are able to learn, because we are able to recognize our experiences. However, recognition does not necessitate an “understanding of the essence of things” but requires only a realization that a present experience is the same as, or very much like, one that is recalled from stored memory. Recognition confers separateness on objects of experience and gives rise to the linguistic “naming of things” (nouns).
However, our experience of the world is not only that “things exist,” but also that “things act.” Indeed, without action, we would not become conscious of our own existence, for self-awareness is the experience of the body as both the subject and object of action. Of course, we are also aware that objects interact independently of the body. This realization gives rise to the use of words that indicate action of various sorts (verbs).
The many aspects of human cognition and language are matters far too complex to be treated here. For present purposes, it is sufficient to say that the human brain has been principally concerned with making sense of the world. To do this, it has settled upon a cardinal induction, usually stated as—“Nothing happens without a reason”—or—“All things have a cause.” When I say this is an induction, I mean that it is not derived from logic, but rather from experience.
Historically, both imagination and logic have been employed in the search for causes. The imagination has given us the various religions of the world as well as the belief in such things as the soul, the spirit world, the afterlife and the divine right of kings. Logic has given rise to the technological civilizations of the modern era.
By logic, I mean the use of deductions that take for granted inductions such as the one referred to above [as well as others not relevant to the present discussion]. Characteristic of this approach has been the idea that all general principles rise or fall on what is actually observed or experienced. The latter is usually referred to as “fact,” “data,” or “evidence”—in contradistinction to general principles, which are usually called “opinions,” “theories,” or “hypotheses.” However, the distinction between the two is seldom assiduously maintained.
One may think that there is no difference of opinion on what exactly constitutes a cause. However, nothing can be further from the truth. In both law and philosophy, there are several kinds of causes. However, the one of principal concern here is the predictive or mechanical cause. This sort of cause is mainly the province of the sciences.
Predictive causes are said to have both prospective and retrospective validity. That is, they depend upon the notion that not only the present/past but also the future is fully determined. This notion is based upon the conviction that all events are controlled by immutable natural laws.
The ordinary view is that some things are determined in advance by natural laws while others can only be estimated on the basis of probability. In other words, the “man in the street” believes that while the present/past is certain, the future is not.
Many physicists seem to have great difficulty understanding why time cannot be reversed--why effects cannot precede causes. This is because natural laws take the form of mathematical equations that are fully reversible. Moreover, the scientific community has been profoundly influenced by three hundred years of scientific determinism.
It is little wonder that the advent of quantum theory caused considerable consternation among some scientists. When they were told that, on the subatomic level, one cannot really be sure what will happen until it happens or that the effect must always follow the cause or that time is irreversible—they called such things “strange,” “bizarre,” “incomprehensible.”
At least so far as causation is concerned, it seems that the common wisdom has prevailed after all: Everything has a known cause only when viewed retrospectively. The future really is uncertain. What is done cannot be undone. This state of affairs not only permits the future to be random. It also permits it to be freely-willed. We cannot escape the conclusion, therefore, that we are responsible for the things that we do.
