Consciousness, Intentionality and Milieus
Somehow, since thousands of years, this very probability or hypothesis of I Witnessing Me has been the very basis of philosophies. The personhood, its feel about individuality, its interactions with external milieus and their experiences, the impact of such experiences on personhood et al were agenda of philosophical interests. They all emerged out of the three elements of I, Me and Milieus. Later, especially in modern and contemporary times, science took over the agenda and added its researched and experimented discoveries to the existing knowledge of humanity about the above-mentioned domain. Both philosophy as well as science has common agenda and the singular aim and purpose of all their endeavors are to understand reality better and create such knowledge, which could make life-living better for every human being.
An individual can do the same. He or she does not need to be either a philosopher or a scientist to make his or her life better. It is available for any common person, who is open to the idea of I Witnessing Me and practices the artistry involved in these processes of witnessing. It is however important to understand the science behind the artistry and purpose shaping up the artistry.
It is a huge facility for a person to understand some ideas, which modern science has facilitated for us. First is the domain of Consciousness, second is the landscape of Intentionality and third is the dimension of Interactional Experiences between intentionality and external milieus. The science behind these three aspects is complex and detailed. We are not going into them but every aware person must delve deep into contemporary scientific knowledge about them. We talk about them at the end of the eBook. Here, we shall just understand them in general terms of convenience.
First we talk about I. For convenience and facilitation of understanding, we can accept the hypothesis that I is about Consciousness. This ‘I’ is the sum totality of your experiences and memories, which are stored in brain states and grows with the passage of time. In the probability of reality of I Witnessing Me, this ‘I’ is what you feel of yourself, as you exist and stand at a point of time and space. This ‘I’ is conditioned and shaped up by three critical elements – sense of time, experiences and memories. At any moment, your sense of ‘I’ is an emergent representation of the three elements, you have been through, stand in contemporaneousness as well as perception of a time and space ahead. This ‘I’ is something like a spectator watching a play at the theatre. The difference in the life-living theatre is that the ‘I’ is witnessing ‘Me’ and its contextual situations with milieus.
What then is this ‘Me’, which the ‘I’ is witnessing or is supposed to witness? This perceptional or cognitive differentiation between I and Me is cryptic. This probably is what scientists call the hard problem of consciousness. We have talked that consciousness may be in layers but it is in continuum. That is why; there may not actually be a segregation of I and Me but, they may seem cognitively different dimensions of personal self, in different functional landscapes. This sounds mystical but has its seeds in structural mechanisms and processes of brain states as well as the complexities involved.
Again, for convenience and facilitation of understanding, we can accept the hypothesis that when we say I Witnessing Me; this ‘Me’ is the shades of Intentionality, playing out in external milieus, interacting with society-culture-polity and in turn generating experiences for ‘I’. These experiences later form as long term memories, which shape up and condition ‘I’. In other words; in the aphorism, I Witnessing Me, the Consciousness is witnessing its own Intentionality.
What this Intentionality is? It is the causality, for the organism to lead its interactional choices or decisions vis-à-vis the external milieus. The brain processes signals from external milieu, the consciousness layers of ‘I’ perceives a threat perception and prompt comes the Intentionality to run away. There could have been alternative choices too. However, as Intentionality was arrived at, it was carried out by body, which may be referred as Me. In simplified generality, we can say, I perceived a situation and the Me carried out the Intentionality. At brain levels however, this is very complex and layered reality. The continuum of three layers of consciousness may make all perceptions as overlapping.
Everything is a reality engendered in the brain states. If consciousness is hypothesized as emergence of neural plexus functionality; Intentionality too is brain-processed reality. It is perplexing and complicated. Among scientists, there may be debates and differences over brain functioning and its pivotal role in engendering consciousness or intentionality but we for all practical purposes can accept that all emerging realities, which we feel, are outcomes of brain’s complex processing mechanisms. That is probably why we can say the brain states present all dimensions and landscapes, which may have a feel of segregation but they are all part of continuum.
The third dimension of brain engendered reality is the interactional experiences, which the functional aspects of I and Me bring about. They are all Information, which the brain states process. The initial sensory perception is supplied to brain as information. The perception-creation for I is information and the Intentionality, which these information engender, is also information. Very naturally, what emerges out of the interactions between the Me and milieus, are also information. This hypothesize that all interactional experiences are registered in brain states and they form the memories for ‘I’ to use in future information processing. These memories can be short term and long term. Then, there are processes for recall and replication of the memories, when required. How memories in subconscious domain of brain states move up to conscious awareness after recall are complex science. This however is part of witnessing repertoire.
From the perspective of science; scientists have been successful in unraveling and deciphering the correlates of the complex brain functioning, which match up or align the neural activities to outcomes of intentionality. However, they have not been successful in arriving at a definitive and singularly logical causality of these processes. What does this mean? It means, science can say, this happens in the brain for that to happen in terms of externally realizable behavior-action. This neural procedure emerges in brain states, which engenders that specific intentionality of action-behavior in humans.
That is why modern neuroscientists can predict without fail, seven seconds before you actually decide on something. It is because they can now decipher the neural correlates, which translates into a specific intentionality of behavior-action choices. However, they cannot say with surety as why a set of neural plexus activity creates a specific feel and actualization of certain choices and decisions in humans.
From the perspective of ancient spiritualism and philosophies, it can be said that the correlates may not reveal the causality but still, it can be a good parameter for a person to skillfully use the embedded information in that parameter for his or her own wellness and successes. The causality in scientific parlance and actuality is different than what an average person can accept. For practical purposes though, this scientific knowledge of correlates itself is good enough to design and devise effective patterns of personal wellness goals and attainments. This we need to talk about.
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