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November 2009 
What is consciousness?
Jeff
Since I go to school on-line I do not have any immediate conversations with others, such as study group or just general discussion with other students hangin in the cafeteria or library… plus my sense is that many of you will have a more higher ideal or view or consciousness around this question. Plus if you could also suggest where your information or thoughts about consciousness came from, research, workshops, etc that would be helpful?
The text is entitled Thinking Critically about ethical issues, V.R. Ruggiero, 2008. In the definitions Ruggiero uses only seem to ask more questions and cloud the issue. First definition he offers and then seems to debunk “is an “inner voice,” but what kind of voice exactly? The voice of desire or discernment? The voice of emotion or reason? Our own voice? (If so, how does it differ from ordinary reflection?) The voice of society or custom? (If so, how do we explain the many times when conscience urges us to defy custom?) The voice of God? (If so, do we explain cases in which conscience fails to inform us that an act is wrong as failures to God?)”
The next definition, if those above questions where not enough to spin you around the spiral a couple of times, is “consciousness is a special “moral sense” or “intuition” that is innate in human beings. Ruggerio goes on to simplify and confuse things with using the word sense as physical “organ” as with eyes and ears. I do not agree with this at all. And then he goes on to suggest that “equating conscience with intuition ignores the fact that conscience can be developed whereas intuition is inborn.” I do not agree with this statement either, I believe that both of these conscience and intuition are inborn and can both be developed? Not taught per se but discovered from our sense of awakening, from our not wishing to be part of the crowd… of this is a course in ethics and ethics seems to be very fluid, ethereal even when the science does not wish to agree!
What I am asking with this blog is these questions that are to be answer for my class based on the above and other research I find. So if you have any thoughts, feelings and or emotions about how consciousness works please share here. Using the below questions as your guide. Thank you!
Discuss the idea of the conscience and its effects on people. Explaining what you believe the conscience to be. Please include personal experiences and examine the critical questions: (1) Do all people have a conscience, and (2) What is the conscience’s source?
Access: Public
oh see now it works
yesterday it took me to the prior blog entry….
when i get back from the tree place i will read it
maybe i wasn't the only one not seeing this blog entry at all??
Thanks for the info…
wasn't showing up in my friend's blogs list either, Jeff…. ?
seems some confusion as to what you are asking here…
conscience is that inner voice, gut instinct if you will.
yes, we all have it, but most people listen to other people instead of finding that guiding voice within.
conscious means to be aware… a notion which raises many many more questions.
big difference, but they sound similar and folks get them mixed up all the time.
I was just about to ask for that same clarity, Stacy.
If the question is about conscience, for me that is the voice which is capable of feeling empathy and responsibility towards others. I believe that all people are born with conscience, but there are those who override it - that's what being a sociopath is.
As far as the source of the conscience goes, it is the Great Mystery to me, something that cannot be known with certainty. Many would call it God. However it is named, it seems to me that bit of spark that is connected to Free Will.
These are my thought at the moment, Jeff. Good luck with your assignment.
Thanks ladies! I am on the correct path than! I had to shake my brain to place into words what conscience and consciousness where… I was confronted with words I use yet had no clear description of what they meant or how they functioned even while functioning within consciousness.
I am Love, Jeff
I love it when that happens, a teachable moment when a word that I use a lot supposing I know what it means suddenly opens up a mystery. What the heck am I talking about when I say….
This morning you and Janet have me wondering are we in fact born with conscience?
OK, this makes sense to me. Yes, conscience probably comes with the human package. It is one of our teachable faculties, easily molded by our society, culture, family, because it is always being appealed to in the socialization process. An operating conscience could be either an evolutionary product of our nature as social creatures, or it could be the hard wiring that makes us social creatures.
A functioning conscience involves empathy, choice, deferred gratification, awareness of a higher love, and many other complex emotional responses to the situations life offers moment by moment. Easy to mold, manipulate, rationalize. What is going on with sociopaths and others who have an undeveloped or warped conscience? Is it wiring? the molding of life experience from infancy? Is it observed and learned?
Conscience seems to put is into the thick of human life. I am seeing it through a lens of having been molded by my culture. Janet or someone else, can you speak of conscience as it is in a natural state, without all that massaging?
Consciousness is an awareness of being. It is infinitely expandable, to the point of enlightenment while still in the body (so we can tell the tale). It is also as small as the spark that says I am. Most of us find a bubble of consciousness in which we can live comfortably, and define its boundaries by inner beliefs including the unconscious ones, and by belief systems, such as religion. Conscience begins to play a role in those boundaries.
Ah, deep play. I used to love these conundrums and would tie my mind up in knots. Then I decided I'd use my mind less and my body more. Consciousness expanded, and conscience eased … into that more natural space I just asked about?
Good morning, time for my second cup.
Memory sits in the brain as a holograph, I suggest you do a little research on holographic universe the latest link up of science and spirit, and see what you think. It makes sense of consciousness and conscience for me.
http://fusionanomaly.net/holographicuniverse.html
Carla, Zephyr,
Thank you for your thoughts/words. They do help jog my mind/brain into another place… yet really the question lies in is it our conscience that helps us come to understand or create “ethics”? For the class is about ethics and how we a people come to the make our choices about important things in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
Just checking Jeff…are you asking for an opinion on conscience or consciousness? The last paragraph didn't make this clear to me.
The French use the same word for both, interestingly.
I'll check in later.
I liked yr blog.
Jon x
Jon,
Thanks! I think I was asking if they are different words and actions or consciousness? I am asking us what we think or have experienced…
I am Love, Jeff
Okay.
Briefly; conscience is a message delivered by an internalised parent…benign and warm and permissory or else degrading and critical….
Consciousness is the empty space wherein the voice arises…hence I AM without predicates….
The idea of the self is that of the navigator of the stuff within consciousness and, being wrapped up in that stuff, tends to lend itself a certain shape although this is ever-changeing…..concepts of self often get confused with concepts of consciousness…especially in european literature…although to my mind they are distinct…..
Warmly, Jon x
It is possible to be unconscious and unable to communicate, and still retain some awareness, which is recovered on return to consciousness, so awareness can be maintained in the absence of consciousness which adds to the complexity in relation to conscience and consciousness.
Perhaps levels and connections are relevant,
if consciousness is everywhere and in everything, then we are consciousness, we cannot be separated or born with it, as it is all…
If we are connected to it and are it, as is everyone, then we always can access different levels..
If our beliefs and conditions effect consciousness ie there is only this reality, then we we somewhat control, access consciousness and its expansion, unfolding..
If we are consciousness discovering itself
Conscience may be a inner knowing, the higher guide, always connected perhaps even to over ride seeming social, cultural and environmental truths, somewhat higher truths….
Perhaps we feel and know with our conscience…