Various Aspects of Consciousness & Nature of Time Continued: Part 2

The Great Divide That Separates Humans from Animals (by Roger Cook): Abstract: This paper explores the implications for time and consciousness that derive from the fact that animals live their lives locked into the present. This would seem to make language and consciousness logically impossible for non-human animals. The second section explores the implications that arise from the theory of evolution, and concludes that it is very unlikely awareness of time could have been generated in animals during evolution by natural, or artificial, selection. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/90

‘Conventional time t’ versus ‘Rhythmic Time T’ (Two Faces of One Mystery) [by Peter Beamish]: Abstract: Here is described a second form of time. Here, it is also suggested that ‘ALL (real) TIME IS NOW TIME,’ otherwise past and future temporal concepts of the two types are scalar labels called ‘Conventional timetags’ and ‘Rhythmic Timetags.’ Additionally one’s mind is described by a new, seemingly important, dynamic concept called an ‘Essos’ (pronounced Eee-sos) and containing both one’s ‘Conventional Now’ and one’s ‘Rhythm Based Now.’ It is suggested that we use an upper case ‘TIME’ for the sum of these two mental concepts. Described also is the seemingly very important ‘Mental Vector Process’ or ‘MVP’ which appears as the Most Valuable Player, for all living organisms, in The Game of Life. The book preparation, entitled Dancing With Nature, from which this paper is a highly edited form, suggests the merging of the science of physics with the sciences of biophysics and biochemistry. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/91

Eminent Entities: Short Accounts of Some Major Thinkers in Consciousness Studies (by Peter Hankins): Abstract: I run a blog entitled “Conscious Entities” at http://consciousentities.com which is devoted to short discussions of some of the major thinkers and theories about consciousness. This is another small collection of my writings on consciousness which the editor of JCER very kindly selected to appear here. It contains my short accounts of six major thinkers in consciousness studies including Daniel Dennet, John Searle, David Chalmers, Colin McGinn, Roger Penrose & Gerald Edelman. In reading the books of these writers, I found I had views which were very clear, but also completely contradictory; so these pieces are written in the form of dialogues between a character I call Bitbucket (represented by the abacus) who is a hard-line materialist computational reductionist, and Blandula (the cherub) who leans towards dualism and mysterianism. (The last few words of each article, by the way, are actually quotes from the subject himself.) http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/92

Consciousness, Mind and Matter in Indian Philosophy (by Syamala Hari): Abstract: I am very impressed by the striking similarity of concepts in the Guest Editorial by G. M. Nixon in JCER V1(6) to those of ancient Indian Philosophy on thought, time, and Consciousness. I drew only a few examples from the article to depict the similarity but I am impressed by the elegancy of expression and profoundness of concepts in the whole article. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/87