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No individual wrote the Constitution. It was a collective effort. Yet it has the features of a work we would expect from a consciousness, such as a view of itse
by delichon 8d ago
No individual wrote the Constitution. It was a collective effort. Yet it has the features of a work we would expect from a consciousness, such as a view of itself as embedded in a larger historical context. I don't have a hard time seeing that document as a form of speech emitted by a conscious collective. And not knowing exactly how human individual consciousness works, it isn't very clear that such collective consciousness is a metaphor or an example.
- randallsquared 6d agoYou and a co-author can write an essay together, in a room, in an hour. Let's assume you each write about half of the essay, and cooperate to edit it into a coherent whole. You and the other person were definitely people during this process. Is there any sense in which you believe there was a non-metaphorical third person in the room during that hour?
- slopinthebag 5d agoyes in the same sense that the organisation of football players forms the concept of a team which has properties distinct from each individual player