Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Selbsterkenntnis, Bewusstsein; Unterscheidung, Grundfehler; Tendenz, die unmittelbare Erfahrung für Selbsterkenntnis zu halten; Unterscheidung zwischen Bewusstsein und Aufmerksamkeit (Absicht); Freud: bewusst - unbewusst

Kurzinhalt: The basic mistake in analyzing the notion of consciousness or awareness is to confuse consciousness with attention or intention. This is the problem with Freud's distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Textausschnitt: 41/5 The fundamental problem in knowing yourself as a knower is that, like all of us, you have a spontaneous tendency to think that your immediate experience of your conscious activities is already a knowing of self, whereas it is only an experience of self. Experience of yourself performing these different activities of knowing is an unmediated experience that needs to be mediated by your own inquisitive and reflective wondering. There is a foundational difference, then, between experiencing knowing and knowing knowing. Further, and more important, there is a crucial distinction between experiencing yourself doing knowing and knowing yourself as a knower in and through your acts of knowing as they recur in the different patterns of knowing. (131; Fs)

3. Self as Knower

42/5 Thus far I have been setting forth the clues that would provide you with conditions for appropriating your own cognitional activities. Having set down the meaning and conditions of knowing, you may now ask yourself, Am I a knower?; Do I experience, understand, and judge in the ways we have been discussing? You must answer these questions in terms of your own concrete, conscious activities. However, before the answer is made, it is necessary to clarify just what is meant by the term 'consciousness' or 'awareness.'1 (131; Fs)

3a Consciousness

43/5 The problem in self-appropriation is to develop some familiarity with the distinction between your own activities of knowing and the contents of those activities. Only in appropriating this distinction can you clarify the notion of consciousness. The basic mistake in analyzing the notion of consciousness or awareness is to confuse consciousness with attention or intention. This is the problem with Freud's distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Motives are thought to be unconscious because you are not paying attention to them, and so 'attending to' motives supposedly makes you conscious of them. (131; Fs)

44/5 But contrary to this analysis, you can be conscious or aware without paying attention to that awareness. While you are sitting in a chair reading, you are aware of the pressure of your feet on the floor or of your back and buttocks on the chair, but you do not pay attention to this awareness or experience unless some stimuli draws your attention or you deliberately shift your attention to that part of your conscious field. Attending, therefore, does not make you aware - you already are - but it does make you aware in a different way. For example, you may be lying on the beach, gazing absent-mindedly at the sky, when suddenly a sound attracts your attention and you wonder what it is. Wondering does not make you aware; it makes you intelligently aware, inquisitively conscious. Consciousness or awareness, then, is preliminary to attending, and sets the conditions for attending. If you were not already aware, you could not attend. Attending changes the way you are conscious, from being vaguely aware to being selectively and distinctly aware. However, besides the conscious act of attending, there is also you, the conscious subject, who is doing the attending. Consciousness is a characteristic not only of certain acts, but also of the subject's own mode of being. (131f; Fs)

45/5 Consciousness is not something that you can hold up for examination; rather, it is known indirectly through certain conscious acts you perform and through you, the subject, consciously acting. Not all of your acts are conscious. You cannot attend to the way your hair grows, or to the way you make red blood cells. You do these activities, but you do not do them consciously. Nor are all living things conscious. The major difference between a turtle and a tree is consciousness. Turtles are conscious, and certain of their acts are conscious. The tree is not conscious, nor are any of its acts conscious, that is, it does not operate consciously. (132; Fs)