Re: [epistemology] Postulate of Absolute Awareness
Joseph Polanik
>JP: (your) ambiguities remain ambiguous and controversial issues
>remain ... in controversy. specifically,
>1. ambiguity as to the meaning of 'human universe'
>G: NOTE: words don't carry, but more or less vaguely hint the meaning,
>very vaguely indeed with respect to general and intuitive connotations
>such as "universe" or "awareness". Talking about them, particularly
>misleading are possessive adjectives like "my", prepositions like "of",
>etc. "My awareness" suggests wrongly a "I" having "awareness" and yet
>such forms are unavoidable when using a natural language. Sartre
>introduced a convention to put misleaders in brackets, like in
>"conscience (de) soi". (Pls. don't comment on Sartre, off topic in this
>thread). Thus I shell [sic] write "(my) awareness", or "awareness (of)
>tree", or "(my) universe". Not that it's precise, but it hopefully
>stresses the intuitive hint.
you are using a linguistic convention introduced by Sartre; because, you
say that certain statements in natural languages are misleading; but,
you don't explain why the statements you qualify by using this
convention are misleading otherwise.
if I say 'I am aware of the tree', I am making a report. I am reporting
awareness of the tree and self-awareness of this I which is aware of
that tree.
two questions arise
1. what is misleading about this report?
I am the referent of 'I' whenever I say "I am aware of hearing my dog
barking"; hence, I am self-aware. since nothing unreal is self-aware, it
must be the case that I am real --- in some sense, anyway.
unless you want to contest the first law of reality (that nothing unreal
is self-aware), I don't see what is misleading about statements such as
'I am aware of hearing my dog barking'. yes, the statement does indicate
that there is an I which is aware and self-aware; but, what is false in
such a claim?
2. how specifically does a first person statement of awareness or
self-awareness contradict your postulate of relativity?
it seems to me that there have been other philosophers who have
advocated positions that are indistinguishable from your postulate of
relativity but which are not threatened by a first person statement.
to paraphrase H-N Castaneda, I am the geometric origin but not the
source of the world as I experience it. [1]
it seems to me that Castaneda is saying more or less what you are saying
about (my) awareness of (my) universe; but, does not recognize any
contradiction with first person statements.
Joe
[1]: by paraphrase I mean translate into the first person the following
passage from Castaneda's The Phenomeno-Logic of the I:
The self is the geometrical origin of the world, that is, the center of
the universe as an experienced whole. Yet is it *not* the source, or the
root of the world, nor is it the provenience of experience. Origin but
no source, that is the fundamental contrast in the structuring of the
self and the world. Self-awareness is the linkage in that structuring;
awareness of self *qua* self is simply the hightest portion of that
linkage. Thus, any theory of the self and self-awareness has to reveal
the nature of the fundamental contrast, and explain the linking roles of
the different degreees of self-awareness.
--
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. --- H-N Castaneda
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