Consciousness

[Gregory Goode]

At 03:13 PM 9/1/98 PDT, nanda chandran wrote:

>Srinivas Sista writes :
>>Since your definition of consciousness suffers from error, you are
>>getting into all sorts of confusion.
>
>I took a look at the thesaurus. Consciousness is equated with all these
>words : awareness, mindfulness, cognizance, knowledge. And AFAIK, none
>of these words can be explained without a subject and an object.
>
>So please explain the difference between consciousness and being
>conscious.

Let me try -- consciousness is usually spoken of as awareness that is
impersonal, not owned or posessed by any entity.  Being conscious on the
other hand, is a possession by an entity or is an attribute of an entity.
How about an example of the impersonal kind of consciousnes....  A body is
material, physical; a mind is too at a subtle level.  Consciousness is not
material.  It is that in which objects appear, some of those objects are
body/mind mechanisms.  So this kind of non-physical consciouness, being
non-physical, cannot have a location, or movement, and time doesn't apply
to it.  If we can agree on that, then how can consciousness be owned by a
body/mind organism?  That is, how can consciousness be personal?

--Greg