tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-170814845771372625.post6783325594189382629..comments2024-02-08T10:33:22.915+13:00Comments on Available Light: ConsciousnessKelvin Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16682322819567886400noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-170814845771372625.post-13480019398034733182015-01-19T06:23:55.570+13:002015-01-19T06:23:55.570+13:00Your questions are good ones but I'm not sure ...Your questions are good ones but I'm not sure they are the right ones. I don't know anything about dolphins, not in any important sense anyway, but I have some acquaintance with cats. Do cats like dolphins? Or people? I don't know how anybody but a cat could ever answer that,and obviously a cat couldn't either. My current cat is Hakku. She seems to prefer me to any other person (in fact any other living thing) on the planet. She keeps near me, sits on me at any available opportunity and if she can manage it will sleep in my bed - but only on my side, curled up against me. But does she like me? Or even love me? Impossible to say.She's operating with a suite of mental software that is very different than mine. So I'm the alpha male, to her anyway. I provide food. I protect her. I'm safe. And I'm also big and soft and warm. She responds to all that in ways decided for her by her evolutionary history. Is that akin to the human concept of liking? Who can tell? <br /><br />The more significant question is, does she recognise me as alive? As an individual? Does she have a relationship with me? And I think I can safely say yes to those. And isn't that remarkable, that across the boundaries of species she and I can recognise each other not as "it" but as "thou"?<br /><br />I think the cat and the dolphin similarly recognise each other and relate to each other in an I-Thou relationship. Which to me brings me smack up against the issue of consciousness - what is it? How do we recognise it in others, even in others as alien to our instinctual patterns as a dolphin is from a cat?<br /><br />I think that consciousness is subjectively discerned, and only ever subjectively discerned: which means that it is forever inaccessible to science whose business is with objectivity. Science can measure and talk about the characteristics of consciousness and the various phenomena which are associated with it, but science has failed to even adequately define it - as is now, has been from the beginning and everymore shall be. But consciousness, and life (also beyond the power of science to adequately describe and also subjectively discerned) are the clues to what this universe is about and why we have the privilege of being part of it.<br /><br />And apropos of a conversation, or at least part of one, that we had at your place, I thought you might find this interesting:<br />http://aeon.co/video/science/siphonophores-and-individuality-a-short-film-about-jellyfish/<br /><br />You ARE subscribed to Aeon magazine aren't you? If not you should be.Kelvin Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16682322819567886400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-170814845771372625.post-24259212256226545062015-01-19T00:35:02.494+13:002015-01-19T00:35:02.494+13:00https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=4716547662416...https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=471654766241688<br /><br />Questions<br />Does the dolphin like the cat? If so, why?<br />Does the cat like the dolphin? If so why?<br />What is the definition of 'like' in these contexts?<br />Katehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12453125929159161583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-170814845771372625.post-54648648329802016262015-01-19T00:28:16.013+13:002015-01-19T00:28:16.013+13:00I feel that what you are saying is like a slippery...I feel that what you are saying is like a slippery eel and I can't quite grab it. This is not a relection on your careful articulation, but more on something profound that I saw today that fits in somewhere in this conversation here and also involves a cat. I'll see if I can find it again. Katehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12453125929159161583noreply@blogger.com