A general definition of consciousness that accommodates most views (Vimal, 2010b) is: “ ‘consciousness is a mental aspect of a system or a process, which is a conscious experience, a conscious function, or both depending on the context and particular bias (e.g. metaphysical assumptions)’, where experiences can be conscious experiences and/or non-conscious experiences and functions can be conscious functions and/or non-conscious functions that include qualities of objects. These are a posteriori definitions because they are based on observations and the categorization.” (...) Non-conscious experiences are equivalent to relevant proto-experiences and nonconscious functions are equivalent to related proto-functions at various levels as these terms are precursors of respective conscious subjective experiences and conscious functions aspect of consciousness. The non-conscious experiences and non-conscious functions may be considered as a part of the definition of mind and/or awareness. (shrink)

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans (...) underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realization of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as "the world" – as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness. (shrink)

The article proposes a phenomenological and semiotic theoretical framework for the intelligibility of the meaning of belonging, one of the most fundamental concepts in present-day cultures and societies. After defining belonging as a spatial enunciation that brings about 1) the frontiers of a space of belonging; 2) the consequent opposition between an environment of belonging and one of non-belonging; and 3) the relation between, on the one hand, the subject of enunciation and, on the other hand, the opposition /environment of (...) belonging/ versus /environment of non-belonging/, the article articulates a typology of “figures of crossing,” in which belonging is manifested through the narrative dialectics between placement and displacement. In the theoretical framework of tensive phenomenology and semiotics, four macro-regimes of belonging are singled out: “sedentary estrangement,” “nomadic belonging,” “nomadic estrangement,” and “sedentary belonging.” Moreover, four semantic paths dynamically representing the transition between these regimes are identified: “exile/invasion,” “cosmopolitanism/curiosity,” “acclimation/tolerance,” and “alienation/suspicion.” In the conclusion, the theoretical framework developed by the article is proposed as instrument for the analysis of the “rhetorics of belonging” in present-day cultures and societies. (shrink)