Consciousness is, amongst other things, a means of self-regulation. By reflecting upon an aspect of life, one can reflectively assess it. "How do I feel and how have I been feeling lately? When was the last time I ate?" One can also attempt to consider the totality of life. "How good is my life and how good has it been? What do I want to do with myself?" These broader questions need to be asked more than they are and are answered much less than they are asked. Why? The answers are discomforting when ambiguous and debilitating when determinately unsatisfactory. We prefer the discomforts we can more immediately address than the ones that require severe or pervasive measures. We fill the obvious holes while living in the valley.
Consciousness vicariously houses a nutritive need as it is the inspector for the person's capacities. It needs stimulation. As appetitive, emotional, rational, and social beings, people contain many capacities for such stimulation. These sources are more or less vital depending on what and how they much they contain.
Some objects are more stimulating than others. Objects that captivate our attention are entertaining. A thing captivates that meets a need. It fills up an empty space. Some objects hold interest longer than others. Objects of perception tend to hold a person's interest little longer than the perception that occurs.
Objects of interest exist in a spectrum of immediacy. Some objects of interest please the senses. They are the most immediate objects of interest. If what is sensed is of interest rather than the act of sensing, then what is interesting is more abstracted than aesthetic interests. Furthest down the road of abstraction are those objects of interest that are ideas. Though these are sensed on some level (i.e., being seen as words on a page or heard as sounds from a mouth), they are primarily thought about or rationalized.
No comments:
Post a Comment