Consciousness and Time

• Main Authors: pang chin poh, 彭進寶
• Other Authors: Allen Y-H. Houng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/39426575074279574847

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 哲學研究所 === 89 === Abstract What would happen if we pierce a pin into a man’s finger without any anesthetizing? It is so obvious that nobody will deny that the poor man will be in pain. However, how can we make sense of the man’s subjective experience? How definitely can we affirm that he will be in that pain? The problem of consciousness is to give an explanation of how subjective experience can be derived from this objective world. Somebody thinks that such problem can never be solved. Based on the insolvability of this problem, some philosophers further argue that contemporary science is not complete. Do we have any reason to believe that the study of the objective physical world can never explain a subject’s experience of consciousness? In this thesis, my aim is to discuss the problem of subjectivity of consciousness. I focus on some philosophers’ point, such as Thomas Nagel’s, John Searle’s and Roger Penrose’s, on this problem. Since I found that there are some rigid relationships between the direction of time and the subjectivity of consciousness, I start my discussion from the development of concepts of space-time in physics. I try to figure out the relationship between the change of matters and the subjective experience. On this account, I proposed a physical basis for the privacy of one’s conscious content. I think that is the very reason why the third-person account or objective science have no way to grape and affirm the content of a subject’s conscious experience. In my argument, the uncertainty principle and the probabilistic results of measurement in quantum mechanics play the critical roles. At last, I use the idea of physical basis for privacy of consciousness to interpret some puzzling results of psychological experiments and the direction of time. This shows that such a proposed idea is worthwhile to be concerned.