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Consciousness

metaphysical speculations and supposed distinctions

Grant Gillett

pp. 135-150

Abstract

The human soul and consciousness are active in the world of nature as part of the origins of things and situations informed by human symbolism and propositionising. Therefore the soul introduces human creativity, relationships, reasoning, and imagination into a world of contingency and brute causality, turning it into a partly humanly constructed world. That transformation changes everything through a special kind of non-linearity in which human meanings inflect what happens in our adaptive niche and embeds us in symbolism, culture, and flows of life that transcend causal mechanisms and put human relationships and imagination at the heart of the world shaping us. We therefore become enchanted, storied beings realising forms of life that do not require mystifying varieties of metaphysics to explain their richness.

Publication details

Published in:

Gillett Grant (2018) From Aristotle to cognitive neuroscience. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 135-150

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-93635-2_7

Full citation:

Gillett Grant (2018) Consciousness: metaphysical speculations and supposed distinctions, In: From Aristotle to cognitive neuroscience, Dordrecht, Springer, 135–150.