Integration And Muttering Wind

"The Sensitive Man."

Simon Dalgetty tells Elena Casimir that the aim of his special psychophysical training had been:

"'...simply to produce the completely integrated human being.'

"Dalgetty paused. The wind flowed and muttered beyond the wall.

"'There is no sharp distinction between conscious and subconscious...'" (IX, p. 196)

He continues to explain but we pause here to note that the wind mutters in the background - an expression of disquiet. Poul Anderson's background wind sounds are always appropriate.

The relationship between being and consciousness is the central question of philosophy - in my opinion, of course, but it is certainly an important question. Control of narrative point of view is basic to prose fiction. But this is the same question in another form. Philosophy and Literature would be a good combined university course. The most objective possible account of a conversation would merely describe vibrating air molecules, leaving out their meanings. But that would not be a conversation. An objective account of a conversation as such would report what each speaker says without any one of them providing a point of view. This is possible, e.g., the opening chapter of Anderson's War Of The Gods, but usually we do want and expect a viewpoint character. So we are inside someone's consciousness.

Dalgetty says:

"'The brain is a continuous structure.'" (ibid.)

A brain is both a material object and an object of consciousness. How does it generate a subject?