currently reading: ‘Sciousness’
Written on June 3, 2008
Sciousness 
by Jonathan Bricklin explores nondual aspects of William James’s thought, especially his notion of “sciousness.”
More of a review coming soon, but here is an excerpt from Bricklin’s essay (p. 71):
The reverberation of striving for and against, of welcoming and opposing, that generates the sense of self, defines a range within which all emotions arise. Every emotion is found somewhere between them. To focus, however, as James does, exclusively on the movement between the polar opposites of welcoming and opposing is to lose sight of a more fundamental movement between a neutral state of consciousness and all others — that is, the movement between sciousness and con-sciousness. To describe the feeling of self without reference to sciousness is like describing sound without silence — the silence that forms the contour of any sound that is heard. Just as there can be no sense of sound without a sense of silence, there can be no sense of self without a non-self background to give it definition. “The palpitating inward life” of welcoming and opposing cannot itself give rise to self-feeling any more than the change from soft to loud gives rise to sound. As sound is defined by its contrast to silence, so, too, the “reverberation” (second beat) of “I” is defined by its contrast to a first beat non-“I.”
Filed in: consciousness,self.
If you find this book interesting, I’m currently reading another one that you might like: “The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding” by Mark Johnson (which you’ve mentioned on your site in the past, but I don’t know if you’ve read it). I’m about half way through the book and find it very well written, though a bit of a challenge. Johnson spends quite a bit of time referencing William James and John Dewey, explaining how their philosophy of pragmatism relates to and sets the foundation for “embodiment” theory: that there is no mind-body dualism and that even our percepts, concepts, emotions, and thoughts are grounded in the physical nature of our bodies (rather than abstract mentalese). My own interest in the book, aside from being a lay person interested in cog sci, is as it relates to the paintings in my “Embodiment” series.
Just thought I’d toss in my two cents worth since I’m enjoying your blog and thought I’d contribute.
-Andrew
(PS: It seems like “Scousness” would be a difficult book to get through, especially if you subvocalize while you read: Is it pronounced “Shuss-ness”?)
Andrew – Thanks for contributing! I’ve read some of Johnson’s earlier work, especially ‘The Body in the Mind’ so I would definitely put ‘Meaning of the Body’ in the ever growing category of “books I would like to read.”
Saying “consciousness” without the first syllable, it does sound like “shuss-ness.”
What beautiful paintings, too!
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