You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

“states of Consciousness” Philosophical Concepts and the Virtue Trap / 245
Wolinsky: Okay, so it goes along with it. So you have this
“my” consciousness, which believes in the concept
of a virtue, and it has an umbrella and it
has a thing running through the body, which is
aware of it and how it organizes it, and there is a
counter concept of confusion, figuring out, and
action to keep it away from all of that, and it also
has a concept called “can never get it anyway.” It
also has another here which is the expectation
of the other act through this smaller virtuous
way of course it can’t possibly, but then again
you should be able to understand their plight,
but of course there is two points, and two points
always meet in the virtue of a “higher” third point
anyway, and there is this “other” consciousness
which is now transmitted to this consciousness
a whole thing about morality, which this “my”
consciousness goes along with—now if all of this
was made of the same underlying consciousness,
the same substance, and had nothing to do with
anything, along with the one who is aware of it,
then . . . ?
Student: . . . NOTHING_______(silence)_______
Wolinsky: And if this concept called “my” consciousness
believed in this whole cosmology, everything
from Hegel’s dialectic all the way down to “I
can’t get it and you should get it,” and the transmission
of morality, the concept implicit that is
the small and implicit going along with it, if all
of this was believed by the concept called “my”
consciousness how would this concept called
“my” consciousness deceive itself?
Student: Again, it is really subtle but “it is” operating from
all of that.