Съзнанието
СЪЗНАНИЕ И ВРЕМЕ
Резюме. С този текст формулирам теза, която позволява смислово да се обединят разбиранията за реалностите на неживото и живото, на съзнанието изобщо, включително и разликите на природонаучното и хуманитарното съзнание. Става въпрос, разбира се, за очертаване на смислов хоризонт, който позволява това обединяване. Тезата се формулира така: Съзнанието е универсално субектиране на времевеене; времевеенето на предметната реалност и времевеенето на субектната реалност. За изясняване на тази формулировка е необходимо да се имат предвид поне три открития. Първото откритие се отнася до реалността на времето. Второто различава познанието от логическото мислене и разбира познанието като овременяване от гледна точка на субекта и създаването на познаваното. Третото откритие е свързано със спецификата на субектната реалност като самосъздаваща се.
Ключови думи: consciousness, timing, subjectification, discoveries, spirituality
The aim of this study is to formulate a thesis which allows the meaningful unification of the understandings of the realities of the non-living and the living, of consciousness in general, including the differences between scientific and humanitarian consciousness. I have in mind, of course, the drawing of a horizon of meanings which allows for such aunification.
Initially the thesis can be formulated in the following way:
Consciousness is a universal subjectification of timing, of time; the timing of object-reality and the timing of subject-reality.
In order to clarify this formulation it is necessary to take into CONSIDERATION AT LEAST THREE DISCOVERIES. I say „at least three“ because each of these discoveries is of such scope that it ensures much wider new meanings.
1. The first discovery is related to the differentiation of the reality of time. The result is that time is being thought of as concrete unity of change and continuity, as the reality of this unity which is not reduced to object-ness and space, although it is always in unity with them. The awareness of the reality of time being exercised in such a way requires transcending of its consideration as some property of any reality, as some property of a thing. In order to differentiate the reality of time we should take into account the requirement of Aristotle to regard any reality in its detachedness and separateness from the others. Although we can regard the objects, the realities also from the viewpoint of the property time, as Aristotle does, and as we all usually do, now we face the requirement that time itself be sought and discovered as a specific reality of being. In other words, the discovery of the reality of time reveals the specificity of being which ensues from the reality of its time and which cannot be identified if we think time as property. The ontology of the reality of time is not the ontology of the object-ness and space of reality although it is not possible without them. What adds time to the ontology of the realities is nothing else but their specific unity of their past, present and future. As past and future are non-beings time adds the reality of the unity of non-being and being. Thought in this way through their time the realities reveal their own unity of their past, present and future. This unity is real, it is an ontological factor both for the non-living and the living. This time-related specificity of the real, its own timing cannot be a property because it is reality itself in its timing. Even more, the realities change depending of the ways in which they time. The change of timing is change of the reality itself in its timing which means also change of its object-ness and its space-ness. Timing changes the object-ness and space-ness of the realities in a way which is different from the way in which they change as a result of object-type and space-type relations. In order to understand this time should not be thought as an external accounting for some measurement, which is of no importance for the ontology of the real. As far as I know, only Hegel understands the specificity of these processes in the world of objects as a transition from being present through having essence to substantiality and the occurrence on their basis of subject-ness. From this understanding of the importance of timing for the specificity of the realities follow various most surprising explanations as for example the one of the formation and specificity of life. It helps us understand also why consciousness cannot be explained by referring to the function of the senses, understood only as receiving the impacts from the external world.
2. The second discovery concerns the differentiation of cognition from logical thinking and the understanding that cognition is achieved by the introduction of the time-dimension by the subject and the creation of the subject-matter of cognition. An exclusive merit for this discovery belongs to Kant. Here we are not dealing with the self-consistency of Kant’s conception in this regard, etc. When Kant explains that we cognate only this which we can create, giving the example of construction of triangles, he points out, though not quite clearly, that timing is a characteristic not only of the subject of cognition, but also its object. Of course, we should add to Kant’s achievement also the extraordinary merits of Hegel of mastering change and the historization of timing and of the subject of cognition by applying the capacities of the philosophy of objective idealism.
3. The third discovery is related to the specifics of subject-reality as self-creating. The problems in this field are of such scope that even their enumeration is difficult. The main difference is that the subject is not simply timing – object-realities are timing too, but it is subject of time. As subject of time it creates itself as timing and eo ipso creates time, sets the beginning of timing, ensures time; and also, of course, loses time, does not leave time, etc. The subject achieves this with its own reality, but also with the other realities, depending on which reality it manages to subjectify. The empirical recognition of the subjectification of time is done by identifying growth, decline, dying, multiplication, behavior, doing, creating.
If we follow Aristotle and his differentiation of kinds of souls and we recognize in the different kinds of souls different forms of subject-ness, we can presume that plants and animals are subjects of timing too, as long as they grow and multiply, and also decline and die, but they do this in a different way in comparison to the thinking soul, to man, they do this rather in the determinateness of their bodies. Man subjectifies timein a universal way, or he can subjectify it universally. In this case by the term „universality“ is meant that it is possible to subjectify the time of all kinds of realities, and mostly of realities different from the own body-ness of the subject. The vegetative and the animal subject-ness subjectify time via their body-ness. The animal subjectifies also behavior, indeed, and thus to a certain extent subjectifies the timing of other animals, but it can’t subjectify realities which are different from it and do not serve directly its bodily subjectness.
Empirically the universality of subjectification is established in creation, preparation of means and their usage. The means is achieved in its introduction into the dimension of timing: it is prepared now in order to be used afterwards and at that – many times. The creation of the means should ensure such a modification of the object which makes possible its timing. The object, the objects – transformed into means, can endure this transformation because their own time (the unity of their past, present and future) allows this to happen in them themselves, in their own timing. The activity of this transformation is exercised by the universally subjectifying subject because he can subjectify the timing also of other realities, different from his own, via universal multiplication of his own subject-ness. In order to achieve this he multiplies his own subjectness, not via reproduction of his body, not even via acquiring various behaviors by the organs of his body, but via the mastering of the timing of other realities by their re-creation and creation. The universally subjectifying subject achieves this by subjectifying the plenitude of timing. He subjectifies the past and the future and masters the present in its various dimensions by returning to the past and the future many times, he investigates them, experiments with them in order to produce and maintain the sought present. Subjectifying universally, the subject of his own timing wants, dreams, imagines, errs, rejects, hates, likes, suffers, changes, plans, projects, etc. missing the difference between the subjectness of the animal and the one of man in regard of feelings and wants.The being which can carry out such a subjectification of the time of realities different from it, as well as of its own timing, is a conscious being and “has” consciousness. Because it can control the plenitude of the timing of realities different from it, as long as it can manage to do that. In this case it does not matter whether the timing of the stick is controlled, or of an accelerator of elementary particles, or of a cognitive, educational or artistic process. The big difficulty in this case is to find out how is it possible at all the subject to subjectify time of realities that are independent of his body. The explanation is that in the same way as the animal transcends the limitations of a plant’s body via the subjectification of behavior, man transcends the limitation of the behavior in carrying out and organizing of activities. The subject-ness of consciousness is multiplied by activity and not by the creation of other individuals (the plants) and other individuals and various behaviors (the animals). An additional difficulty in this case is that the subject of consciousness subjectifies also through the capacities of the vegetative and the animal subject-ness, and also the characteristics of the subject-ness of time as growth and multiplication are valid also for the universal subjectification of time by the social subject-ness.
THE UNIVERSAL SUBJECTIFICATION OF TIMING IS SPIRITUALITY, IT IS REALIZED AS A COGNITIVE PROCESS IN UNITY WITH LOGICAL OPERATIONS
From a different viewpoint this interpretation can be understood as claiming that consciousness has its specificity not only in the particularities of thecognating but also in the specificity of the reality which is being cognated, THE TIMING OF THE COGNATED. Of course, the specificity of the cognating as a special kind of subject-ness is taken into account, a specificity which can be subjectified in various timings, transforming them, because it can subjectify its own timing in tune with the timing of realities that are different from it, preserving them in the unity of its individuality, and eo ipso of its spirituality.
From an even more different viewpoint this interpretation can be understood as claiming that there is no way to achieve consciousness in regard of object-nesses and spaces without ensuring subjectification in the time-dimension. The fact that the whole history of the civilization, REALIZING THE SUBJECTIFICATION OF TIMING, does not recognize it in its own ontology demonstrates only to what extent the subjectification of the timing has expanded its universal capacities as a constructive creative process.