... a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.
I should think you would want to prove that something is an illusion and not simply assert that it is. It would also seem reasonable to at least consider that we think they way do in this instance because thinking this way is sort of built into us, and that it may be built into us because it corresponds to reality. It is just possible that our consciousness has adapted itself to the way things are.
But then there's this:"Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died." How does our author, not having died yet, know that? Of course, he doesn't know it. He just thinks it. This piece is a textbook example of the sloppy reasoning so many scientists display when they try to philosophize. "[T]he mind is what the brain does ..." So our author obviously believes or, rather, assumes. But one should nor base an argument on a mere assumption.
If you have ever "technically" died (as I did, for four minutes), you know something incommunicable but absolute: Sleep isn't close to the experience of non-existence (or, what I term, "n'existence"). I also walk in my sleep, generally when stressed (which explains why there's a gate across the stairs in my house).
ReplyDeleteSleep's passive; but, it's not inert; it's vivid; and, we dream (in living colour or pallor or whatevallors). Also, why do dogs run in their sleep, then? That's not consistent with the argument forwarded here.
In faith, all one can say to the author of this piece (who seems, to me, to be arguing on a platform of logical fallacy)?
Have a nice life and an even nicer afterlife.
Hi Frank & Judith,
ReplyDeleteIt would be so much easier for so may scientists if we were all just zombies. In the physical scheme of things, no consciousness, no self, no mind, no soul, nothing else beside a body is necessary for the determinism of modern science. And if a consciousness is unnecessary, then it never should have evolved, and if it did, it never should have persisted. Consciousness is useless. And we need to distinguish this from a physical body having a built-in security system. Security systems are not conscious entities.
Only physical things can have any effect on a purely physical world. Can you bend a spoon by thinking it so? And if you think yourself into better physical health, didn't you really just release physical hormones into your physical body, physical hormones, not triggered by mere thoughts, but causal consequences of other physical mechanisms in the body?
In the physical purists scheme of things, our thoughts simply and only follow along. You have a hormonal rush, and what we sense as emotions follow. Your brain follows a electrochemical patterns and your mind follows by having a thought process in parallel. Whatever we have defined as our conscious selves, we are urchins who have sneaked through an alley way during a prolonged starless, moonless midnight, through a black door left accidentally ajar, into what was an eternally pitch dark theater, and accidentally turned on an accidental projector, sitting where no one else will ever find us, along for the show of our lives.
So what is this superfluous consciousness that we have--and to play the game of life I can only assume you have it too--what is this thorn infecting the side of physical purists? Indeed, consciousness is all we know. It may be that it's all there is, that nothing physical exists outside our minds.
The Zombie problem is that none of us are zombies. And if none of us are zombies, then we must fall back on our first experience as billions of urchins in an otherwise dark theater, conscious beings if nothing else.
Yours,
Rus
P.S. By the way, I flatlined also.
We interrupt this discussion to award the "LINE OF THE WEEK" to . . .
ReplyDeleteTa da!
Rus Bowden:
"The Zombie problem is that none of us are zombies."
I can't argue with that, Rus, not in a million gears, as in giving 'em to you; but, there are super-string theories where other dimensions exist! Ten and 26 of 'em; maybe, jes' maybe, we's on the wrong mothership :).
Actually, your comment is so well-thought and phrased, I cannot but agree with its logic. How did you flatline? I see a connection, I think, between what you're suggesting, what I implicitly believe, and this experience.
It changed my life (and, not simply giving it back to me); but, I can tell you there is a light and it is indescribably comforting, almost palpably tactile, more comforting than being the last person on earth with the only other person you love more than yourself, I guess.
However, speaking of parallel universes? I was looking for a YouTube clip, right? I went right after I posted my comment; and, Frank will attest to the veracity of this statement. While I was waiting for the clip to D/L, I noticed, after returning to this screen and reading your comment, one of four "promoted" YouTube clips and . . .
OMZombstars! One of those four was called, "Gibt es Zombies?" so, natch, now I'm watching it; and, I will post it for you since, part of our exchange (before Frank went to join Deb at an art-gallery opening or show), involved another question of mine to Frank: How do I do a YouTube post because I wanted to include one; now, I'll leave that one to Frank and post this one instead; it's amazing; and, I think there's a universal truth in this explanation about why we aren't Zombies willing to pretend otherwise.
The link on this goes to an explanation of how the clip was made, here:
http://tinyurl.com/456nv4
But, it's astonishing, the dots connecting on the line in the lines I wrote to Frank. It's very funny and asks the question, Do Zombies exist? You don't need to speak German to understand the gist of this hilarious clip.
Enjoy!
(And, forgive me if I screw up my very first Video posting since I've never done one before and am a little nerviss . . . I think I better go refill my coffee cup, too; and, chill!)
Hi Judith,
ReplyDeleteMaybe we're on the wrong mothership, and maybe we're not. Or maybe we're stowaways. This is where sci-fi takes off. Maybe we're from the exploded supernova where Krypton was, the Atlantis of the cosmos, where we used to be immortal, from which everything is a distorted carnival mirror image--but now that we have had to take over these ape bodies, we die. Or maybe we die here, because immortal Krypton has become overpopulated, and our earthly, apely deaths are a way of getting rid of those of us who are the wretches of immortal life. Maybe we already don't exist anymore, and we are experiencing the finite last of our fizzling out. I can tell you, Judith, I am innocent, innocent. But, alas, it is too late for me.
I had a heart attack in 2003, a 100% block that wreaked havoc on my heart.
I enjoyed the video very much. You cannot embed a video into a comment, only the original blog post--as far as I know.
The crazy thing is that I entered the Zombie discussion elsewhere, and have been at it for a lot of the day . . . then came here where it applied as well. There must be a string somewhere from another dimension, and by discussion we are tying the cosmos together.
Yours,
Rus