Does Consciousness Move Through Space and Time?


If I am riding my bicycle, and I have a pain in my knee, and am aware of that pain as my leg bends and stretches as I pedal... is my awareness of my knee also moving up and down? Does my consciousness move through space - and time?

Again, if I say to myself, as I walk with my dog Pippin on one of our favorite trails, if I say to myself: "I am here; it is now", then, a minute and a hundred paces later, I say to myself again "I am here; it is now".... did the part of me that really was aware of "here/now" in both instances, did that part of me also move a hundred paces, and grow one minute older?

You have to try this yourself before you can experience that part of yourself - your awareness - though perhaps you can assess the question logically without doing the experiment. In that case, you're like that "school" of philosophers back in the first half of the twentieth century who answered such questions by saying things like: "'Consciousness' isn't a noun to which we associate verbs of moving or aging, so the answer isn't 'yes' or 'no', but, 'It is nonsense to apply verbs of moving and aging to a concept - concepts don't move or age."

That just proves my point - we are then left asking, "Why don't concepts move or age?" Even the philosophers in that school - logical positivism - have to answer by telling us what a concept is, and how concepts differ from knees that go up and down, and bodies that move along a dirt path alongside their beloved dog.

They still have to explain what a concept is, in what sense it exists and is real, and therefore why it doesn't age or move. Even if the logical positivists don't do so - if there are any left alive - it remains for each one of us to ask, and try to answer, the same questions.

Comments

csweningsen said…
A wonderful picture, and a wonderful expression of the question.
Meg! said…
Interesting! Philosophy is a lot of questions and explanations and arguments and logic. I don't get it. But this is still interesting!

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