They had concentrated rather on the external world in its externality and had passed over, or taken for granted, the modalities it formed in
subjective consciousness.
Still, like any philosophy, it has its dangers, the chief of which is subjectivism» the view, which soon became prevalent, that there is nothing but
subjective consciousness and that the world is but a construction or projection of the self.
(3) The Demands of Logic: The materialistic philosophy of nature fails to take into account not only our experience of
subjective consciousness and the modern revolution in physics.
The attempt of behaviouristic psychology, for example, to externalize reality into pure action - response not only denies the reality of the participating
subjective consciousness but, equally important, the reality of personality as a more or less integral whole and the reality of the relations between persons as that which calls the personality into existence.
Is the history recorded in the New Testament just a vague reality which underlies the Christian consciousness, the contours of which can no longer be recovered, or is it not rather the event par excellence, quite apart from
our subjective consciousness?
Consequently the event in the process of revelation is not an objective reality, it is simply a change in
the subjective consciousness of man.
The boundary between an objective «world out there» and our own
subjective consciousness that seemed so clearly defined in physics before the eerie discoveries of the 20th century blurs in quantum mechanics.
Through interior domestic space and its components, Bachelard attempts to trace the manner in which the poetic image is received in
the subjective consciousness.
Not exact matches
More specifically,
consciousness is the
subjective form of an intellectual feeling.
(PR 130) Yet this is puzzling, for
consciousness is a feature of the
subjective forms of at least some phases of some concrescences, and the
subjective forms of earlier phases of concrescence can not be simply eliminated in later phases, of which the satisfaction of course is last.
It is a «theology of
consciousness» instead of a «theology of facts,» for God «can never be known apart from
subjective experience.»
In Farley's case the circle is broken by introducing a
subjective construal of habitus, and hence of theology, as a mode of
consciousness.
Under Category of Explanation XIII, Whitehead notes that «there are many species of
subjective forms, such as emotions, valuations, purposes, adversions,
consciousness, etc.» (PR 35).
It is the function of a particular kind of complex integration of physical and conceptual feelings which yields the higher intellectual feelings with the
subjective form of
consciousness.
In the case of the woman strolling beside the Empire State Building on lunch break, one might say that whereas God does not convey to her the information that there is in fact a piano falling her way, he could shoot into her
consciousness via
subjective aim an awareness of the possibility that a piano just might be falling her way.
Consciousness is found chiefly in the
subjective form of intellectual feelings, and «intellectual feelings, in their primary function, are concentration of attention involving increase of importance» (PR 416).
I propose that we understand self -
consciousness as the
subjective form characterized by a vivid feeling of «mineness» as it unifies high - grade multiple contrasts.
However, because of the notorious vagueness of the term «
subjective,» I prefer the term «agent self -
consciousness.»
For Whitehead,
consciousness is the
subjective form of an intellectual feeling — that is, a feeling of the contrast between what is, a physical feeling, and what could be, a propositional feeling.
If my past self was conscious, then it is now conscious in God, since
consciousness is part of the
subjective form being reenacted, 7 but it is the
consciousness of that past self, not my present self.
Divine
consciousness would be multifaceted, embracing the
consciousnesses of every reality that had included this as its
subjective form.
But what the mind can imagine in this primitive and picture — like manner does not exhaust our
subjective repertoire; a neglected form, prominent within private
consciousness, is of primary importance to our question.
Our developed
consciousness fastens on the sensum as datum: our basic animal experience entertains it as a type of
subjective feeling.
They use the term «
subjective self -
consciousness» to describe my awareness when I am acting as an agent.
For the subject - object relation is an assertion of ego, one's ordering the world about his
subjective, personal
consciousness, and as such it offers a handhold to all of the invidious evaluations that separate men from things, from each other, and from their own deepest life itself.
Including the
subjective immediacy, this «objective» immortality also includes
consciousness in those cases where
consciousness is the
subjective form of immediacy.
He is often said to have inaugurated the «
subjective turn» — credited with recognizing that we have to start from an analysis of
consciousness and treat all the «objects» of our knowledge as shaped, distorted, conditioned by our «
subjective» filters.
He wrote (p. 267, my translation): «The world is a richly varied configuration of interdependent qualities; some of these are given factors in my (or another's)
consciousness, and I call these
subjective or psychic, others are not directly given to any
consciousness and these I term objective or extramental — the concept of the psychical does not arise in this connection.»
Hamilton personally is dubious about
subjective immortality, i.e., the continuation of the present stream of
consciousness beyond death.
In the marital act, moreover, husband and wife do not use their bodies as instruments to provide them with
subjective states of
consciousness but rather respect their bodies as intrinsic to themselves as bodily persons.
Secondly, conceptual feelings, apart from complex integration with physical feelings, are devoid of
consciousness in their
subjective forms.»
By
subjective immortality I mean that the
subjective feeling (which in persons includes
consciousness) is retained in God.
Where
consciousness occurs, it appears as the
subjective form of some part of the higher phases of experience.
With the modernist position that being does not transcend
consciousness (being is posited by
consciousness), any
subjective foundation which is achieved can be the object of a further more radical
subjective foundation.
This experience may in some way be connected with an event of revelation, and it may be necessary first to extract the distinctive Christian self -
consciousness, but that does not make it any the less
subjective.
Myth therefore employs
subjective means derived from the human imagination to describe a reality which utterly transcends
consciousness, and which possesses an objective validity in its own right, quite apart from its effects on the disciples and witnesses.
Accordingly, the primary experience of receiving with emotional and purposive
subjective form the causal influence of other actualities tends to be only dimly illuminated in
consciousness precisely because it is primary.
That this first step is an error is indicated by Searle himself in his allusion to the bipolar (private and public) character of conscious awareness, which prompts one to ask whether most scientific approaches to the problem of
consciousness are vitiated at the outset by a failure to leave open the possibility of an indissociable bipolarity in key ideas (such as public - private,
subjective - objective, and body - mind).
«
Consciousness» for Whitehead has a more restricted use applying to the
subjective form of particular types of intellectual feelings; thus something much broader in Whitehead's conceptuality must be found.
In a recent survey of research in this area, John Searle suggests that the task of banishing mystery from
consciousness depends on finding a way to explain that aspect of
subjective experience that he calls «qualitative feels.»
The awareness of intuitive realization of the
subjective immediacy of concrescence then is the awareness of the energetic force present in all existents and as such serves the same ontological function as
consciousness in Aurobindo.
This «God» does not just govern life, but also the inanimate physics of the universe which birthed life and allowed it to progress to a point where it now has a
consciousness capable of deciphering itself through our
subjective perspectives and realities.
Similarly, there is no need to posit that human beings have
consciousness (in the sense of
subjective experience of qualia) or free will (some sort of influence that is neither random nor deterministic), yet most atheists believe in both (even your venerable Richard Dawkins has affirmed belief in free will).
Nothing is more likely to help a person overcome and endure objective difficulties or
subjective troubles than the
consciousness of having a task in life.»
Both kinds of feelings are pre-reflectively meaningful because, for Whitehead, reflective, judgmental
consciousness is only one «
subjective form» of feelings, which is possibly present in the final phase of some concrescences.
Whitehead introduces God's consequent nature for a number of reasons, one of them being that this integration of God's conceptual feelings with physical feelings makes propositions and
consciousness as
subjective form possible, and this makes it conceivable that God possesses
consciousness.
Instead of the contents of
consciousness being treated as the
subjective counterparts of objects in external space, Whitehead treats them as the residue resulting from natural transmutation processes that occur within that space.
In contemporary biology
subjective aspects of life such as
consciousness, purpose and free will are either ignored or else attempts are made to reduce the
subjective to the objective.
In May, researchers in Sydney, Australia, suggested that the main part of the insect nervous system works in a similar way to a mammal's midbrain, and might provide the capacity for the most basic form of
consciousness,
subjective experience.
A great many people, however, believe that
consciousness exists — that there's some sort of self or singularity that is the beholder of
subjective experience.