1. Ethics and subjective experience
Jonathan Paul Marshal
UTS

2. What makes subjective experience?
Both our thinking and unconsciousness
Theory dependence of observation
Being enmeshed in complex systems
Empathy and awareness are important to ethics

3. Thinking directs perception
Thinking, emotions, and habit (‘Themha’) are interconnected,
Forming egos (most thoughts are repetitious)
What depth psychs call ‘complexes’ but I’ll call configurations
This is not positive thinking, which involves supressing reality and awareness
Suffering is real
It involves the awareness that thought and theory influences what we perceive, in complex & unfathomable situations

4. Complexity All living systems are complex systems
No easy harmony in such systems
We cannot understand the system completely
It is in constant flux
All organisms are permeated by complex systems

5. Complexity challenges old myths of order
The world is messy
Things are not separate
Nature is surprising
Sustainability, or holding to a fixed pattern of extraction, is impossible
Mess can be good

6. Unconsciousness is produced
Perceptually – through thought (‘themha’) and biology
Functionality – we can’t perceive the background of thought
Socially – suppressing empathy for others, trying to fit in
Bodily – supressing discomfort = suppressing ‘nature’
By our preferred orders

7. Awareness
Is greater than we think – we are part of systems, we perceive we receive more perceptual simulation than we notice
Have unconscious wisdoms
Unconscious empathy
Unconscious capacity for harm

8. Accessing unconsciousness
Become aware we consciously experience results of ‘thought’
Become aware we experience complexity unconsciously
Cultivate feeling our bodies, and empathy for others
Recovering experience of images, dreams
Attention to world, including natural world
‘Working with’ gives feedback and feeling

9. Summary Thought and attention give awareness Complexity
Unconsciousness
Increasing awareness through symbol and attention
Empathy is a form of awareness