Have you watched Mr. Nobody?
Its a great movie that i think is somehow related to the subject at hand.
Well, I think it is clear that the majority of the causal factors responsible for consciousness must reside within the skull. We know this from sheer correlation between consciousness and brain activity, etc. However, what is troubling is, as David Chalmer says it, that it “feels like” something to be conscious, to be experiencing the world. Apparently, some people think that there is nothing here to explain. But as Antonio Damasio puts it, what is the thing that goes away when you fall asleep and comes back again when you awaken? What the hell is that? What is conscious experience? This is what Chalmers calls “The Hard Problem of consciousness” by contrast to the easy problems of functional explanation.
It appears that any answer - that “takes the hard problem seriously”, in Chalmer’s words - is left with one of two possibilities. Either conscious experience is an intrinsic property of the Universe like mass or charge (i.e. there is something it “feels like” to be an electron or a steel girder, etc.) or conscious experience somehow “emerges” from otherwise “dead” matter. Neither one of these two possibilities is very philosophically satisfying so perhaps there is some other possibility we haven’t thought of yet probably as a result of our still infantile understanding of the human brain and mind.
Clayton -
Again, please forgive me for being confused by the question. To the extent I do understand it, my only response is that opinions are calculated and changed by the unconscious. The consciousness may experience them.
Since praxeology is descriptive, and not prescriptive, then yes, it has value even if it ignores the insight that what we mean by “he chose X” is “he experienced his uncontrollable, automatic, subconsciously determined preference for X”. This insight really becomes important when people want to prescribe punishments under the confused notion that “he should have experienced choice Y”.
Then we agree. People refer to themselves or others by referring to the consciousness. “‘He’ chose” doesn’t mean his consciousness caused the choice, just that his consciousness is aware of experiencing the choice. And that’s fine, until you want to punish people for experiencing the “wrong” choice.
I’m not sure why you keep misattributing this to me. We agree that choice is determined, clearly. I’m saying the consciousness doesn’t cause the choice, rather it experiences the choice which was subconsciously calculated. So the unconscious determines the choice, based on its ever growing algorithm which was developing since well before conscious awareness of it.
That’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly know what causal role consciousness plays in choice because we simply don’t know. If there is one word that describes Nature at every level, it is economy. Nature is economical with the means at her disposal. Yet you are positing that consciousness is just bolted onto the human mind like some kind of Clockwork Orange brainwashing experiment, forced to “experience” the world in which it plays no causal role whatsoever. That is epiphenomenalism, which is another acausal theory.
The logic of evolution is to infer from the existence of an anatomical feature its purpose. The human hand can grasp things like branches and rocks; its particular features evolved to serve the functions which early humans needed to perform. There is no reason this logic should not extend to conscious awareness itself. It seems obvious to me that amoeba are not aware. Yet they are alive. Humans and other animals with sufficiently complex brains are clearly not only alive, but also aware. Why? What evolutionary advantage did concious animals obtain by not only reacting to the world but by experiencing it? Epiphenomenalism says “none” because conscious awareness can play no causal role in the world and is, therefore, strictly non-functional. That’s an obviously bad answer unless you think that it’s possible that the human hand has five fingers to match the five points of the pentagram that Venus traces out in the sky…
Clayton -
That’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly know what causal role consciousness plays in choice because we simply don’t know.
Then it’s ridiculous of you to say my understanding is ridiculous, because you admit you can’t possibly know.
Re: ephiphomenalism
I’ve already said I don’t accept that conscious awareness is purely an epiphenomenon. Clearly, the consciousness contributes to the overall input which the unconscious processes. But as blindsight demonstrates, conscious awareness of neither the input (e.g. light entering the eye) nor the output (e.g. sight) is strictly necessary.
As a side note, the existence of conscious awareness doesn’t mean the consciousness developed out of a need for it. Perhaps the consciousness is an unnecessary accident, and evolution has yet to weed it out—not that I claim to hold that position, or that it is true. And who’s to say it didn’t develop for different reasons for each species, or to different extents, or that it has the same purpose for each species? I don’t claim to speak on behalf of animals.
As another aside, I don’t see any reason to distinguish between alleged conscious choice, and alleged animal instinct. In both cases, the brain processes input and output. But for some reason, we assume A) we have consciousness and they don’t, and B) therefore our consciousness caused the output. Again, I invoke blindsight—conscious awareness of brain activity is not absolutely necessary.
It seems obvious to me that amoeba are not aware.
Yet by your own admission this is a “ridiculous” position to hold, since “you can’t possibly know”.
what is the thing that goes away when you fall asleep and comes back again when you awaken?
Some theories hold that the consciousness doesn’t “go away”, that it is, in fact, experiencing the dream.
Clayton, What do you mean by “the majority of casual factors responsible for consiousness must reside within the skull.”?
I think he means it would be silly to look for the major causal factor responsible for your consciousness under a rock in the park, in your garage, or on a moon of Jupiter.
Love it.
Well put, professor.
That’s an hour long!
It’ll put hair on your chest…
Ok so I watched that lecture. I think I’ve figured out the problem with mainstream free willies and their establishment opposition: “determinists”.
This is the problem: false dichotomy. And I’ve been pointing it out in this thread for a while. Let me explain.
The question is always “does a person have free will” or, the opposition question “is a person’s will determined”. What I’ve been pointing out is that the important question is “what is mean by a person”. Nobody ever touches on this, so everyone in this thread and everyone in the establishment arguing about free will or determinism is missing the point. The unconscious brain processes input, the consciousness experiences output. “A person” generally associates with his consciousness, so no, the consciousness, being the experiencer and not the chooser, has no will—whether the non-will is “free” or “not free” is a red herring.
OK, I haven’t posted anything really weird in too long. So, here’s my theory that the pop song “Glad You Came” is actually about the 2008/2012 transits of Venus. It was released to album about a month after the transit.
Just take a look at the music video to begin with:
So, the first hint is the opening line “The Sun goes down, the stars come out” - the song is not about hooking up, it’s about the stars. “I’m glad you came”. Who came? And who’s glad about it?
“My universe will never be the same”
Here is an allusion to the fact that planets never form the same alignments; it is an ever-different pattern. It is like the old proverb, “You can never step into the same stream twice.”
“I’m glad you came”
Who came? And who’s glad about it? We’ll see in a moment…
“You cast a spell on me, spell on me”
Here, we have a hint that we’re talking about magic. Magic and the stars. Astrology, anyone?
“You hit me like the sky fell on me, fell on me”
The sky fell on me - an allusion to myth, the meeting of Gaia and Uranus, earth and sky. All life springs forth ultimately from this primordial sexual union of the “above” and the “below”.
“And I decided you look well on me, well on me”
This was the phrase that first piqued my interest. Who talks this way? The group is Irish but I’ve never heard any English-speaker say “you look well on me.” The phrase “you look well” means “you appear to be in good health.” And the phrase “you look good on me” is a widespread idiom, easily understood. This phrase is jarringly out-of-place and I think it’s meant to grab your attention.
Who’s glad who came? Who looks well on who? It is the same two beings…
“Turn the lights out now”
A reference to an eclipse or occult - when the moon covers the Sun, the lights go out…
“Now I’ll take you by the hand
Hand you another drink
Drink it if you can”
Again, another reference to myth, in this case, the mythical figure, patron of mankind, Bacchus/Dionysius.
“Can you spend a little time,
Time is slipping away,
Away from us so stay,
Stay with me I can make,
Make you glad you came”
Another illusion to the inexorable motion of the heavens. It is by the heavens that we mark time… the rotation of the Earth, the movements of the stars, and the courses and ratios of the planets.
Now, for the last clue, let’s return to the music video. The video opens with the Sun. That’s because the song is being sung by the Sun. It is a song of the Sun. Next, we see beautiful bikini models hooking up with each member of the band. They are Venusian women. Venus is the Roman name for Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. These women definitely look good on them. And this is the key to the puzzle - the Venusian women are simply symbols of Venus herself in the sky, transiting the Sun, visiting him two times in succession roughly every 100 years for a brief liaison. She occults and, thus, hides that portion of the Sun (the lights go out). She spends a little time with him, time slipping away, but the Sun implores her to stay (in her orbit) because he will make her glad she came (to visit, that is, transit the Sun). Venus is the one that the Sun is serenading with this song. It is she who looks well on him (occult). The Sun is glad she came (visited him briefly these two times, to return in about 100 years).
Just noticed a couple more details in the opening sequence. Each member’s face is shown full-screen in succession. Each one is a symbol of the subject of the song which was shown in the first frames of the video: the Sun. As a nice touch, there are five band members to match the five points of the pentagram that Venus traces in our sky.
One last detail: one of the band members (I think the band leader) repeatedly points skyward… at one point, they all do - notably, he points skyward with his right hand. This is the astrological hand motion that signifies “As above, so below.”
Clayton -
Wait, so now you are trolling astrologers?
muahahaha }
This movie was right up my alley and narrated by Brian Cox! An hour and a half of total transport! Too cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooy2LTJoMVM
Damn, now I’m starting to wonder… what if Fomenko, Sitchin or Velikovsky were on to something? There seems to be two possible extremes, the Atlantean extreme (an ancient, hyper-advanced civilization that disappeared) and on the other extreme the fabrication hypothesis (Fomenko). I have serious problems with the Atlantean hypothesis… shouldn’t at least one Atlantean Pepsi-can have been left lying around near one of these amazing, ancient monuments??
The monumental energy and deception of the other hypothesis makes it almost as difficult to believe. From where could a secret conspiracy have managed to muster the immense human and other economic resources required to mount a globe-spanning campaign of archaelogical fabrication?? Maybe the capstone of the Great Pyramid is sitting on ice somewhere in the Vatican’s vaults… dun dun DUNNNNNNNN.
Clayton -
Tesla’s Wireless and the Tunguska Event
Clayton -
^^never heard this hypothesis before^^
I love it. It makes perfect sense to me though. Thanks Clayton! As always, love your posts!