Mark Blasini

Thoughts & Outlooks

Notes on consciousness

6/18/2023

  1. All beings strive to express themselves – that is, to articulate their underlying drives, desires, configuration. This will to expression expresses itself as the force of existence and allows for the identifiability of the being.
  2. Any being whose expressive possibilities are dependent upon its relation to all other beings can be called an object. These expressive possibilities can be expressed as actions, activities, behaviors.
  3. When an object expresses itself, it expresses what can be called an objective existence – an existence that expresses precisely its relation to all other beings.
  4. Any being that expresses itself as a possibility - i.e. a possible (mode of) expression - can be called an image.
  5. An organism belongs to a class of objects that expresses itself through the production of images of possibility – i.e. images of (possible) modes of self-expression. This activity of production can be called imagination.
  6. Anything that allows an organism to produce an image of possible self-expression can be called a sense. Thus, we may also call the activity of producing images of possibility sensing, or first order imagination.
  7. What senses are allowed for by the organism, and thus what images are possible for the organism to produce, is dependent upon the organism’s genetic code – i.e. the set of molecular and chemical procedures that, when followed and replicated on a continual basis, construct the regenerative expression that is the organism itself.
  8. The images of possibility produced by an organism express themselves (to the organism) in the form of experiences.
  9. What an organism senses, it expresses. For example, if the organism senses the possibility of eating, it will eat. If it senses the possibility of running, it will run. This relationship between sensing and expressing can be called instinct.
  10. Necessarily included in the images produced by the organism through the senses is an image of what is not possible (impossible) for the organism to express – i.e. the limitations of its potential mode of expression. For example, what is communicated within the possibility of eating also includes all other forms of expression not possible within that expression (e.g. flying, sleeping, swimming, but also rubber-banding, desking, tabling, flooring, etc.).
  11. All these possible and impossible forms of expression constitute the world of the organism. In this sense, the world of an organism can be defined as the totality of images of possibility/impossibility for the organism at the moment at which they are generated through the organism’s senses. Said another way, the world of an organism is its reality - its possibilities and limitations, the expression of the relationship between its imaginative and objective existence.
  12. An image of the world of the organism, produced through the organism’s senses, can be called mind. The mind is not simply an invisible, inaccessible space that is private to an organism, but encompasses the specific way that organism understands (produces an image of) its world.
  13. An image of possibility as expressed within an organism’s mind – i.e. expressed as possible within the organism’s world-image - can be called a thought. For instance, the thought of walking is only constitutive of the organism’s understanding (image) of a world in which walking is possible. Thus, all thoughts are limited by the limits of possibility in the organism’s mind. Said another way, one cannot think outside of what one understands to be possible.
  14. Thoughts are conditioned by concepts, which are images that express the relationship between all possibilities within the mind and the mind itself. For instance, the thought of walking is conditioned by the concept of bipedalism, which expresses the relationship between all possible forms of motion with two legs/feet (e.g. walking, running, hopping, etc.) and the possibility of walkable space (e.g. stable ground, open space). Without the concept of bipedalism, one cannot have the possible activity of walking.
  15. An organism can be said to be conscious if, in its imaginative process, it is able to produce thoughts. This form of imagination can be called second order imagination, or thinking.
  16. Only conscious organisms can understand, that is produce an image of, its world - the totality of its possibilities. Non-conscious organisms cannot produce an image of its world. In other words, non-conscious organisms cannot produce an image of all that is possible (and not possible) for them; they can only produce an image of what is possible in that world in that moment.