by Giano Rocca
Chapter 30:
Nature of the self-consciousness or awareness of self
In reality structural historical, knowledge, is transmitted mechanically or repetitively. However, the knowledge, in its creation, is not severable from the affectivity: the one presupposes and implies this other. Affectivity and knowledge, together, represent the purpose of humanity, definable as happiness self-conscious. The love or affectivity, you communicates through the creative sociality and operational. The excess of self consciousness, on the part of an individual, who is such if it exceeds the actual knowledge and ability of the subject itself, you manifested in megalomania. The ability to prophesy, charisma or magnetism of an individual, characterizes a overflowing self consciousness, while had accompanied by a knowledge and ability, in some exceptional way.
The irrationality is a form of error, related to the nature of the agent subject. It is not solely the fruit of the lack of knowledge or not enough knowledge, but also of the incognizance or shortage of awareness. The shortage of awareness of an individual creates a contrast between its real nature and its behavior, creating one affective decompensation with respect to the knowledge gained and at the essential nature of the subject itself. The failure to conscience of knowledge acquired, cancels the its value. The insufficient awareness of the knowledge possessed, makes the latter: sterile or fruitless. The overestimation of knowledge possessed, on the contrary, may determine aggressions or blunders and fanaticisms. Socrates, saying “I know not to know”, proved to have been conscious of the limits of his own knowledge, which would not allow him to define it: authentic knowledge. The conscience cannot be divorced from knowledge. There can’t be, indeed, a high consciousness, without an adequate knowledge. On the other hand, if the conscience implies knowledge, it is not said that knowledge, necessarily, implies consciousness or awareness of the actual reality of what you know, being possible that exists an abstract knowledge and fictitious (soaked in ideologies), not accompanied by adequate consciousness of its failure. You can say that discriminates between scientific knowledge, in the field of human knowledge, and ideological knowledge, elapse between the presence, or not, of the conscience of the actual human nature. The conscience is definable as the awareness of acquired knowledge. This awareness, gives value to knowledge itself, which becomes prolific itself of further knowledge and source of self-satisfaction. The irrational faith consists in the acceptance of an irrational knowledge, antithetical with respect to the empirical ascertainment. The irrational faith, like of the rest also the rational faith is, however, vitlizing, being generatrix of creativity or vital force. Parmenides had considered love: the fruit of the “need” or structural inevitability (1). In reality, the falling in love is a specific type of faith and is, therefore, consonant with the irrational nature of reality structural historical. Baruch Spinoza had stated that love is consequent to the conscience (or the belief) to be loved, believing that you have not provided the its cause (2). The love is, therefore, connected to a given type of faith. Love is greater if there is the “consciousness of freedom” (3). Therefore, the love can, however, coexist with the full rationality and, indeed, it is increased from this, becoming a rational faith. Psychologists define: the perception, the thought and the believe, as “ways intentional of to be” and the object of these “ways intentional of to be” is defined as “intentional object”. The phenomenal awareness or consciousness, or better to say, its objects, are defined “intentional objects of awareness”. Psychologists are wondering what constitutes the brain activity that determines the awareness or conscience. They ask themselves, furthermore, because the consciousness transformed the knowledge into something hardly communicable. The cause of the difficulty to communicate the conscious experience, derives from the irrational contents of the knowledge and from the awareness of these limits. The conscience is defined, by Nicholas Humphrey, as the process psychic that determines the wonder toward the world and the sense amplified of our importance. It ignores that, in reality, awareness is a psychic process precisely of all living matter, namely, of each nervous system biological (4), although this awareness is not accompanied to the knowledge of the own real condition , if not, as potential, not yet realized, of the human beings.
Spinoza had admitted that the non-knowledge constitutes a suffering of the mind (5), while knowledge is a cause of joy (6), although “the principle of conservation” (7) tends to preserve the non-knowledge of individuals.
Giulio Tononi has theorized that conscience is integrated knowledge, namely, a compresent knowledge, namely, integrated, in its entirety, or: in its main synthesis (8). The progress of humanity is measured not only in the field of knowledge but, above, in the field of consciousness: of self and of the others. The actual knowledge of the structural reality historical is an element of the progress of conscience. The human being, with the own intellectual abilities, can judge, and feel foreign to its nature: everything that does not reach its same degree of conscience. The conscience is evolving and, therefore, can reach a level sufficient to enable it to assess such as: totally immoral the structural reality historic in its entirety.
B. F. Skinner stated that conscience is a product of life, in society (9). The human conscience develops through the progress and the evolution of the structural reality historical.
The conscience individual is the complex of morality introjected or made their own by the individual himself, and constitutes its code of conduct. Where the behavior of the subject deviating from its conscience, there occurs an immediate attempt to reduce and eliminate this gap, or through the modification of the conscience itself or a modification of the behavior; where none of these two modifications are occurring, develops the sense of guilt. This, if the conscience has at its base a profound conviction and, at the same time, if the behavior that diverges from the moral has had stringent reasons (10).
Humanity is rooted in each individual, which is the expression, or manifestation, of the species. Humanity, therefore, not transcends individuals, but it is the individual who must take responsibility for the problems of their own species, being the species the generator itself of its individuality and of its sociality, of single individual. The species is present in every individual, in the same way. There is the “co-responsibility of the individual with the generality of the living and co-specific”. Indeed, there is, the responsibility of the individual for humanity, which is, moreover, present in every individual, as an intrinsic need, and the need for survival of the individuals is an aspect of the manifestation of the species. The valorization, and self-valorization, of the single, expresses the social value of the individual: for the collectivity and for himself. For humanity, as a whole, the individual has a value that corresponds to the level of expression of the being, realized by the species, taking account of the contribution that the specific subject he gives to the achievement of one specific level. The responsibility is connected to the consciences of single individuals, while the capacities are connected with their knowledge.