Obvious Leo wrote:Alpha. You commit a common logical error by conflating consciousness with awareness. Consciousness is a PROCESS and it is simply a generic term for all acts of cognition but awareness is a specific term for one's observation of such acts. Clearly one can't observe something until after it's already occurred so we can't be aware of a thought until after we've already thought it, but this act of observation can then operate as a causal agent in directing the cognitive process. Perhaps a a basic text on cognitive neuroscience might help you understand that neurally networked computation is non-linear and thus non-Newtonian. In non-Newtonian systems causation operates both top-down and bottom up throughout networked causal hierarchies.
I think it might be worthwhile to make a distinction between awareness and consciousness, but I do not think that your particular version is necessarily the one everyone would accept.
The two words are almost interchangeable, but whilst some uses to which they are both put can be exclusive, they are very often to be found covering exactly the same ground. We must be aware that the words are no the thing of it, but gross approximations of parts of reality. The universe does not obey laws, nor does it comply with our descriptions. Descriptions and laws are consequent on events.
Both are processual, in the sense that neither can exist or make sense as a static phenomenon. We might choose to take one or the other as synchronic or diachronic - but this would only be for explanatory purposes, not for descriptions of how they work, but what they are.
A non processual model for anything is a falsehood. Time moves on.
For Alpha's purposes, no reflections on either gives rise to "free will", what ever the fuck that might be this week.
