Lawrie Douglas (Lawrie.Douglas@btinternet.com)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 04:38:45 +0100
There is a difference between consciousness and self-consciousness.
Consciousness results from a biological structure in the brain which works
as the focal point of a whole organism; consciousness is an awareness by
this structure of what is fed into it. I say this, rather than
"consciousness is an awareness of the outside world," because that would be
to rule out awareness of the feelings of the body. To the cerebral circuits
which generate consciousness, the rest of the body is the outside world.
Self-consciousness is generated out of intellectual structure, ideas as to
who one should be as well as memories as to who one has been. To be
self-conscious one must live in human society in order to internalise the
intellectual structure of language. Wittgenstein says that a baby or an
animal may be in pain, but in order to know you're in pain you have to learn
the concept marked *pain*. A baby or an animal may be conscious, but to be
self-conscious one has to learn an abstract language in order to abstract
from one's moment to moment awareness, and reflect on an abstract picture of
oneself.
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