POETICKS

My reology requires (I believe) just two axioms.  Axiom 1: reality has the ability to arrange itself into a multitude of varied attributes that can be known.  Axiom 2: reality has the ability to know said various attributes.

About these axioms, I believe just two assumptions can be made.  Assumption 1: reality consists of two entities, one of which possesses the first of the two abilities mentioned, the other of which possesses the second of the two abilities mentioned.  Or: Assumption 2: reality consists of just one entity which is divided in two, the first portion of it possessing the first of the two abilities mentioned, the second portion the second of the two abilities mentioned.

Comments: there is no rational difference between the two assumptions: in both cases there is that which can be known and that which can know–or matter/energy and mind.  The two could not differ less in kind, it seems to me, so I can’t imagine that one of them could somehow turn inside-out (more or less literally, I might add) to become the other.  Since I don’t believe in something from nothing, I also believe that both axiomatic abilities of reality have always existed.  All this seems elementary to me–indeed, I strongly suspect it is the way more than a few previous thinkers have thought about the subject for centuries.  I bring it up here, however, because I find no one seeming to go along with it among the many writing interesting books and articles at present on consciousness, free will, and related topics, such as  Daniel C. Dennett, interviewed in the April/May issue of Free Inquiry.  All of them seem to feel that consciousness is nothing more than one more arrangement of matter/energy, one that can be known as merely some new attribute like life or the color red.  But conscious cannot be known the way one knowns the feel of water, only intuited–except from the inside, in which case only one’s own consciousness can be known–if you can call it that.  I have trouble with calling it that because I do not feel myself ever to know my consciousness, only in being my consciousness–knowing that part of reality which has become its contents.

Note: I use the word , “know,” rather than “perceive” (actually the word I used in my previous draft) because I believe the human brain can perceive said various attributes but see no reason to assume it can also know them–or be aware of them.   The brain is like a morning glory, which can perceive the morning sun and react to it without necessarily being aware of it.  Except that I’m sure it is  aware of it, and would be interested to know what reasons anyone can posit for its not being aware of it.  I may as well add while digressing that the possibility that a flower may have a mind leads to the question of what may not?  A rock? How can we know?  If we have no good way of ascertaining what may have, what may not have, a mind, it would seem all the more unlikely that minds are not everywhere, whether aware of anything at any given time or not.

Among the many ramifications of my outlook are that mind has always existed.  This would make my own mind (or consciousness) eternal (and yours, too).  The problem with that is the apparent difficulty for most people to conceive of a consciousness with nothing in it, or with nothing it can signal it contains–nothing, perhaps, of which it keeps any record of the way the brain keeps a record of its experience in its memory.  I claim that science is of no help here: we can’t know whether a consciousness continues in the absence of some connection to a human brain, or the like, only that it does exist for each of us while connected to a human brain.  (Note that the eternal consciousness I hypothesize will have no memory of previous lives, so I am not hypothesizing some kind of eternal self, although I have no problem with considering what I’m speaking an eternal soul.  The logic involved is different, I suppose I also ought to point out, from belief in some supernatural ruler of the universe in that I have had, and have, personal experience of the existence of my soul–and of matter/energy–but not of any ruler of the universe . . . unless I’m it. )

To decline further into metaphysics, I have to say that I (actually my brain) can’t work out any theory as to how my consciousness can have any effect on my brain, which is responsible for what my body does.  So far as will is concerned, it seems to me that I was given whatever mechanism it is that decides what I do, so can hardly be considered to be in charge of my existence in any way.  My consciousness is along for the ride with no say in where it’s taken.  To put it in another way, if I “decide” because I’m feeling thirsty to drink a glass of water, what has actually occurred is that physical mechanisms I never ordered from any store, have detected that I’m experiencing a state of dehydration such that I should drink water or the equivalent, and notifies the behavioral part of my brain to take care of the matter.  No reason for some “me” in the middle of this process to say, “I am thirsty; I should drink.”

The fact that, for me, consciousness is superfluous, seems one more reason to consider it eternal.  That is, there is no biological reason for it to exist.  Going further into counter-intuitiveness, I can’t see that the two attributes of affect (as I guess you would call them) that reality can arrange itself into, pleasure and pain, are necessary; they are simply there (and perhaps almost as hugely different in kind from ordinary knowable attributes as the ability to know, or be aware, is, but that’s a territory I’d just as soon avoid at this time).  Fire need not be perceived as painful to teach us to avoid sticking a finger in it, only tag is as “that which is bad to touch,” which it should be able easily to do in a manner having on affect on us.  Again, I feel like I’m saying something very elementary that nevertheless will not make sense to others.

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Tulips Bouquets

Is the moment I’m in the only moment that has even existed?  Do I merely imagine, because of evidence made up by my brain and thrust at me, that I’ve lived through the thousands (billions?) of moments it seems to me I have?  This is a question that Bertrand Russell raised in some essay or other–and that had occurred to me long before I read what he’d said, as I believe it has occurred to many who think about such things.  All I want to say about it here is that it is a null question.  That’s because it matters in no meaningful way what the answer is.  That, in turn, is because there is NO DIFFERENCE between a moment of awareness that is part of a long sequence of awarenesses and a moment of awareness that is all that exists but which seems like a part of a long sequence of awarenesses.  What a thing is, is determined entirely by its final effect on the person involved with it, and nothing more.  Its final correctly understood appearance is all it is.  Thus, as I’ve many times written, there’s no sane reason to distinguish a real chair from  a chair that acts in every way like a real chair but is really a goose in disguise. 

I’m still on a bit of a metaphysics kick–and having trouble thinking of subject matter for these blog entries of mine, so I’m returning for–what, the hundredth time? to my inability to believe in free will.  Properly to discuss it, I need to give my definition of it.  Unfortunately, I can’t.  That’s one reason I don’t believe in it, for I don’t believe in anything that can’t be defined.  I can define what might be called “secondary human free will.”  That would be something a human being possesses that is (or seems) more responsible for any action the human being is part of than anything else that is part of it is.  When I kick a stone and propel it somewhere, I have been more responsible for what happened than the stone was, so we can say my secondary human free was the cause of my kick and its effect on the stone.  If someone had aimed a gun at my head and demanded I kick the stone, and the same thing happened, then it would have been his secondary human free will that was responsible for the final outcome.   Although perhaps one could say my shfw, let’s call it, contributed since it could have made me try to disarm the man with the gun instead of obeying him.  I think what I’m saying is pretty clear, though. 

The real question is whether anything can “decide” on an action.  It seems to me everything is forced in every cicrumstance to do what it must do because it is unchosenly what it is.   I probably should have said that right away, thed heck with the mush in my first paragraph.  But I’ll leave the first paragraph.  It may have something of value in it.  Everything my body does is dictated by the environment and by my brain.  My brain can only make the rest of my body do what it does because of what that brain unchosenly is.  I can’t see how I, by which I mean my urwareness, or that-which-is-aware-of-the-universe-as-processed-by-the-brain-it-is-somehow-privy-to.  I just can’t find any kind of “will” involved.  Final will–since, sure, the brain seems to make choices of actions.  It doesn’t really, it just does what it must do because of what it is.  For instance, its body may be walking down the street and coming to a deadend.  The brain has a choice between having it turn left or right (forget all other possible choices as ones previously ruled no good by the brain, to simplify matters).  It can “choose” to send the body left, but it wasn’t free to do so, it was forced by what it is to do so.  What it is, is a mechanism that hen confronted by the two choices in this particular situation must choose left.  It can be claimed that it had more responsibility for the final outcome, more will, than the street did.  In the final analysis, however, I can’t see how it can exercise choice.  Every action is ultimately the same as one billiard ball striking another and stopping while giving its energy to the struck ball (or, equally true, allowing the other ball to take its energy).  The first ball stopped because it was what it was.  You can say it stopped because it decided to, but since it could not have done anything else, how can that be called an exercise of free will.  In short, there’s no such thing as will, there is only matter behacing in accordance by inalterable laws of the universe.

I guess what I’m finally saying is that I just can’t comprehend what free will could be.  Even if cause and effect doesn’t exist, then chance, not will, is dictating what happens.  But in that case no discussion of the matter is possible.  Well, except to say that what happens happens reasonlessly instead of saying that what happens happens due to the laws of the universe.  Would that make any difference?  The rules of the universe are what they are due to chance.

Okay, another fifth-rate entry.  But 21st-Century academics will love it, you can count on that!

I sent a letter-to-the-editor to Free Inquiry a few days ago.  I that it eminently publishable but now I’m wondering again if the view expressed, which seems easy to understand to me though perhaps not easy to agree with will seem to Free Inquiry flaccid.  It is simply that mind is as different from matter as up from down or in from out–which, in fact, it and matter precisely are.  The rationalist belief is that brain equals mind, but I simply can’t see how that can be so.  There seem to me three possibilities: (1) Mind (by which I mean whatever it is that is aware of the universe) and matter are one, mind being permanently the inside of matter, and privy to what it does.  (2) Mind is separate from matter but unable to dwell apart from it due to some attractive force like gravity or magnetism, and somehow “perceives” its experience, or its interactions with other matter.  (3) Mind is separate from Matter and, in our case, only by chance linked to it.  (3) is difficult for me to accept since it gives rise to the question of how mind and matter came together in the first place, and how they came back together after separating, as by chance they would eventually have had to.  I see no difference between (1) and (2), only between the words used to describe the relationship.  And (3) is just (2), intermittently.

Since matter, at least in the human realm, is essentially immortal, certainly something that continues after any life it made up, I see no way mind would not be the same. 

To me, that mind experiences pain and pleasure is a greater mystery than its existing in the first place.  That is, that there is something that experiences colors or pressures or whatever is fascinating, but that it then experiences a painful or pleasurable judgement of those colors or pressures or whatever seems triply absurd.  Of course, it does inject a kind of meaningfulness into existence, for it makes every configuration of matter good or bad, thus quite literally giving “direction” to existence–to the good, away from the bad.  Of course, in a universe designed by a god with a heart, there would not be good and bad, only very good, and less good.  I have to admit, though, that while I have no trouble taking the existence of matter as nothing strange, since nothing’s existing would be just as strange, I have a bit of trouble as to why mind exists–since it certainly doesn’t do anything but experience existence; and I am really bothered by the existence of good and evil.  I suppose I’m pleased by the latter since it seems to me that nothing seems to suffer more bad than good, even I, however much it sometimes seems that misery is our permanent lot.  Even a mayfly has many more moments of probably happy life than of death. 

Do I lean toward a belief in intentional design.  I think I could if my brain were not rational.  My brain tells me the theory of intelligent design may provide hints of the view of existence of the intelligence involved, but nothing of any value to anyone genuinely interested in significantly increasing his understanding of the universe.  It won’t tell us what color hat the intelligence wore when working on his design, for instance.  A greater problem with the theory is that, like all theories supposing the existence of a Divine Something-or-Other is that it leads to an infinite regress–i.e., to the question of who or what designed the intelligent designer of the universe.  I can only retire to my sad belief that what is, is, and no more can be said about it.

Last two questions for this entry (old ones of mine): how do you know I have a consciousness and how do you know a stone does not?  I say I do and ask somewhat sophisticated questions like the two I just asked and a stone doesn’t?  Sorry, but I didn’t ask any questions, my brain did.  The genuine I, which I call “the attached urwareness” of this body at the keyboard, just passively listened to it doing so.  No one can show otherwise.  Not that it makes any difference whatever.