Hi Mike,

  I am happy to respond to this from a ToK/UTOK perspective. 

  I make a crucial distinction between "functional awareness and response" and experiential consciousness or sentience. Functional awareness and response is available from a third person, exterior perspective. Thus, when your dog is sleeping they do not exhibit functional awareness and response, when they wake up and come over and start engaging with you, then they do. 

  Experiential consciousness is not available from the third person exterior epistemological position, but only from the first person interior point of view.  We can see this distinction clearly in the animal kingdom. Ethologists and comparative psychologists have long studied "animal behavior" in terms of functional awareness and response (i.e., the basic S-O-R paradigm). However, exactly which animals are "conscious", defined as experiential awareness/sentience, is a great question.

  As this educational video notes (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1olZfwzDP3yuj877SXcBX7m5EmKJNH6I4/view?usp=sharing), I consider functional awareness and response connected to what I call Mind1. Experiential consciousness is Mind2. The attached description of a praying mantis makes clear the distinction. We know lots about the mantis' Mind1. We don't really have a good guess as to whether the mantis has a Mind2 or not. Some argue yes, some no, but I think the best answer is to be agnostic at this stage in the game. 

Best,
Gregg



   

-----Original Message-----
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Michael Mascolo
Sent: Sunday, October 4, 2020 9:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Consciousness and awareness

Hi All:

Can someone please suggest definitions for “consciousness” and “awareness”.  Is anyone here arguing that these are two different processes?  I’m not sure what it means to say that an organism can be aware but not conscious (unless consciousness means “self-conscious”).  

M.

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