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Consciousness

Living With Three Minds

Consciousness, in the sense of cognizance, willfulness, deliberateness, mindfulness, is one's awareness of one's awareness of one's awareness. This implies three levels of awareness, which I will describe in terms of answering, questioning and investigating. We unconsciously answer what we know, we consciously question what we don't, and we investigate the difference. The interplay of these three levels - answering, questioning, investigating - accounts for our experience of the lives we live. We live with three minds, in dialogue, identifying with each, as braids in a thread.

This should seem obvious to us. Perhaps, by the end of this essay, it will seem obvious. Until then, I appreciate your efforts to understand me. The problem we face is that people today, like you and me, rely on words so much that they often equate words and thinking, as if we can't think without words. So I will explain how we can and do think without words. I will tease apart the answering mind, which provides us with sensations, moods, impressions, and the questioning mind, which manages words, concepts, assertions, and the investigating mind, which engages conceptual structures, metaphysical conundrums, cognitive frameworks. Indeed, it is this third mind by which we distinguish all three minds, by which we fit together answers and questions.

In writing this essay, I accept the challenge of presenting this third mind in the language of the second mind. I will explain with words how to think without words. This is so ridiculous! Imagine a miser explaining with their piles of money what earthly goods each pile represents, although they've never actually spent any money and have never enjoyed anything. Yet perhaps one day the miser will. This is not so far from wisdom. What is, however, sad is if the miser cares only for money and how to exchange money for more money. By analogy, I dare assume that you care for more than just words.

A key skill to develop is thinking abstractly with mental actions rather than words. Consider playing chess, making music, driving vehicles, playing sports, cooking meals, tending gardens, sailing boats, dancing dances, fixing appliances, hunting animals, deducing causes, solving geometry problems, mulling moods, recalling dreams, reliving memories, showing affections, catching attention, interpreting attitudes, fantasizing, sizing up situations, conducting experiments, receiving visions, clarifying illusions, tending to one's conscience, doing good deeds, praying without words, imagining God's point of view. These are complex mental activities where words can be used but they don't have to be. We can instead think directly in terms of actions and possibilities, as infants do, and the deaf do, and people did before language. Many people have no inner monologue. I confess, that is hard for me to imagine, as somebody who lives with one or more layers of prattle.

Letting go of our prejudices and our preconceptions and considering what we are left with. Learning on a faith that there is something more. Importance of what we identify with - with the senses of the world, with the words in our mind, or with something else - and ultimately whether we identify with our own selves or we let go of our selves on behalf of something greater. And this is apparent in the many theories of consciousness.

Words are convenient, and those same mental actions help us explore the nature of their convenience.

Mental actions.... everything... facts... absolute truth...

Words have the power of arbitrary symbols but we have other powers as well, and other types of signs - icons and indexes, as Peirce noted.

Words such as consciousness, cognizance, willfulness, deliberateness, mindfulness are

Yet like fish in the water, or birds in the air, or worms in the ground, or humans in language, we sense what's there but not what's not. Take a fish out of water, take a human out of language, that is the act of consciousness. Language makes us aware of our awareness, and consciousness makes us aware of language. We humans share language. Can we share consciousness?

Consciousness, as a word, can refer to simply being awake. It can furthermore refer to being aware. Indeed, it can refer to being aware of being aware. When we dream, we can be aware, and at times, we can even be aware that we are aware. We can be aware that we may be dreaming. Yet if living matters more than dreaming, then being aware, or being aware of being aware, is not full fledged consciousness. What does it mean to be fully conscious?

What is the point of consciousness.

We find ourselves in an evolutionary journey that may lead to heaven or hell on earth. More importantly, each of us finds ourselves in

Two streams of consciousness.

• commentary, director's cut, play-by-play, chatter box, monkey mind

Are these two streams the basis for memory?

Removing prejudices, removing preconceptions, abstract void.

Kuhn and Chalmers focus on phenomenal consciousness, on qualia, on awareness of the first mind.