(May 9, 2013 at 10:54 pm)apophenia Wrote:
A more fatal flaw, to my mind, is that while it may be true that our form of consciousness, and the way it is realized, may necessarily entail that it exists in time, this doesn't mean that any form that consciousness might take must necessarily occur in time. It would be similar to noting that all life on our planet is carbon based, and concluding that life can't exist in a world without carbon. The generalization doesn't hold unless you can in some sense show that it is reasonable to conclude that a consciousness dependent on time is the only form that consciousness can take; failing that, I don't see how it can avoid being nothing more than an argument from ignorance ("I can't imagine how consciousness could exist without time, therefore consciousness must require time.")
I suppose ultimately the main problem here is pinning down exactly what consciousness is such that you can make the argument directly, rather than indirectly as you seem to be doing. However, once you do that, it may no longer be necessary to even make the argument, it might be self-evident.
Good point. I thought I sort of explained briefly why to my mind, it seems like consciousness necessarily requires time; consciousness is a series of events that when put side by side, give us an experience of reality. It's like a movie and all its frames. The movie wouldn't be a movie if it was stuck at frame 1. Likewise, we wouldn't be *conscious* if we were stuck at the first "instance". Only through time, do we get a flow of instances adding up to enable us to experience reality.
It's not that I'm arguing from ignorance, because if the above is true, then consciousness -- of any kind -- has to tick off time as one of the things it is influenced by, because it is necessary no matter what.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
