Ethics and subjective experience Jonathan Paul Marshal UTS
Ethics and subjective experience Jonathan Paul Marshal UTS jon. marshall@uts. edu. au
What makes subjective experience? • Both our thinking and unconsciousness • Theory dependence of observation • Being enmeshed in complex systems • Empathy and awareness are important to ethics
Thinking directs perception • Thinking, emotions, and habit (‘Themha’) are interconnected, • Forming egos (most thoughts are repetitious) • What depth psychs call ‘complexes’ but I’ll call configurations • This is not positive thinking, which involves supressing reality and awareness • Suffering is real • It involves the awareness that thought and theory influences what we perceive, in complex & unfathomable situations
Complexity • All living systems are complex systems • No easy harmony in such systems • We cannot understand the system completely • It is in constant flux • All organisms are permeated by complex systems
Complexity challenges old myths of order • The world is messy • Things are not separate • Nature is surprising • Sustainability, or holding to a fixed pattern of extraction, is impossible • Mess can be good
Unconsciousness is produced • Perceptually – through thought (‘themha’) and biology • Functionality – we can’t perceive the background of thought • Socially – suppressing empathy for others, trying to fit in • Bodily – supressing discomfort = suppressing ‘nature’ • By our preferred orders
Awareness • Is greater than we think – we are part of systems, we perceive we receive more perceptual simulation than we notice • Have unconscious wisdoms • Unconscious empathy • Unconscious capacity for harm
Accessing unconsciousness • Become aware we consciously experience results of ‘thought’ • Become aware we experience complexity unconsciously • Cultivate feeling our bodies, and empathy for others • Recovering experience of images, dreams • Attention to world, including natural world • ‘Working with’ gives feedback and feeling
Summary • Thought and attention give awareness • Complexity • Unconsciousness • Increasing awareness through symbol and attention • Empathy is a form of awareness
- Slides: 9