Blog Archive

Tuesday, 9 July 2019


Three attributes associated with consciousness and which are equally present in waking and dream are witnessing, content and ownership. These are of course mutually implicated, together with a fourth attribute which need not be present other than potentially, which is (the capacity for) reflection. Indeed, if reflection is defined as placing either witnessing or ownership within the content then we must also add not only the actual or potential freedom of self-determination, but also other forms of subsumption such as content within witnessing or witnessing within ownership etc. To say that these are attributes of consciousness therefore immediately contaminates them with consciousness, in the sense of a certain fractal nature whereby what is peripheral in one moment can unfold into being central in the next moment, as in a sort of spatialisation of the paradoxical infinitude of self-reflection. It is not only the simple regression going backwards of 'I know that I know that I know that...', but a version of the same action that which spreads out in all directions. The notion of experiencing is not subject to the same pullulation, but sits lightly without any tension in the direction of either 'truth' or 'reality'.

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