Consciousness Trilemma

[bennyboy]

Wow this certainly has gone on a long time.
Have to say I don't see how one can be directly aware of being aware.  If anyone thinks otherwise, perhaps they can provide a 'blow by blow' description of what that would be like.  

Sure. When I wake up, I begin to have a flood of memories, ideas and sensations, and I'm aware of this fact.

We can't say that consciousness lags behind brain function and also that it IS brain function, since a thing cannot lag behind itself.

What's hard about that?  Consciousness and brain function aren't an identity.  The latter gives rise to the former, so of course it lags behind.  There is preconscious processing to be done before consciousness of anything can arise.  You can sit there humming your "be here now" or "I am awareness" mantra if you like but the decision to do so will be the result of prior processing too.

You are talking about the complex process of building content for the conscious mind to experience. Since this takes time, the content of experience must necessarily lag behind the moment. But unless you are suggesting time travel, that-which-is conscious must be operating in the present.

It is precisely for this reason that the content of experience and the awareness of awareness cannot be conflated.

In a monist view, the consciousness must be exactly synchonized with the brain function since they are said to be one and the same, n'est-ce pas?

I think you mean that the things we experience are in the past, not that the consciousness which experiences them is.

A monist's problems aren't my problems.  Why do you say they are one and the same?

Something must exist in the present, or we are in a serious paradox, indeed. Our experiences might be about the past, but to say we are actually experiencing IN the past is a pretty strange idea, since it means we are biological time machines.

Therefore the experiences and the experiencer cannot be the same-- that-which-experiences cannot compose sensations in a zero amount of time, and the experiences which are presented cannot actually be experienced at any moment except now.

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We must say it, or we are saying something self-contradictory.  A person cannot be self aware "in the now" by any coherent materialistic description.

This is fair enough. The idea of self, if it is to be experienced, must be fed to that which is conscious through a series of memory and other brain functions.

But cut the "self," and I'd argue that all awareness must be in the present-- it's just awareness OF things that happened (or at least were processed) in the past.