Title: THE LAST MAGICAL PROPERTY IN THE COSMOS

WAIT, PAUL, I AM A ROBOT, DARN IT. AND I CAN PROVE IT!

It’s now 9 am and as I awoke, my thought machine fired up. Here’s where we are now: I agree with Paul that my unconscious is part of the total package that is described as “me” and that my unconsciousness makes decisions for me. Therefore I must agree that I’m an object in the Cosmos that runs around making decisions without being conscious of making them (pause) except when reflecting upon those decisions afterward, sometimes within seconds of making them. These decisions are stored in memory for consideration at a later date when similar or different situations call my memories back into consciousness. Fair enough? And I have a memory of thinking, a memory that could be called the essence of consciousness because it allows my memories to loop back upon themselves and to become RECURSIVE.

Now… let’s construct a simple carpet vacuuming machine that guides itself. We already have them in existence. We attach to it a simple computer and speaker that fires up when you plug it in and bring it to LIFE. As it runs around vacuuming a carpet, it reports things like, “I’m vacuuming the carpet. Last week I vacuumed the carpet. Tomorrow, when I come to life again, you’ll see that I’ll start vacuuming the carpet again,” et cetera. Next, let’s connect these ruminations to the things Mr. Vacuum is actually doing. When it turns right, it says, “I just turned right.” When it hits an obstruction and can’t move, it says, “I can’t move.” When it backs up to free itself, it says, “You can’t keep a good vacuum down.” Et cetera. Further it stores in memory activities it did yesterday so that it tells you what it did the day before when you awake it to vacuum. And we might as well give it predictive powers so that as long it’s vacuuming a familiar carpet, it can do the same carpet, or household, repeatedly. Once Mr. Vacuum has done his job, he knows how to do it over and over.

I’ve just described a being that runs around making “unconscious” decisions that it can talk about. I’ve just described myself, minus my feelings. I more or less got that concept of robotics from Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained.

Next! Feelings are described in evolutionary psychology as adaptations for the regulation of the human machinery. So here’s what we add next. We attach a set of tubes and vials with chemicals and pumps and gages rigged into them. We’ll call them the limbic system. And we set the vacuum on an unfamiliar terrain. When the vacuum cleaner hits the end of its carpet world and senses the hardwood edge of a carpet (or a defining wall or object), it pauses, a pump fires up and sends chemicals from a full vial labeled CALM to an empty vial labeled PAIN, and Mr. Vacuum informs you it’s in PAIN. When the PAIN vial fills up, a switch is activated that gives Mr. Vacuum an order to turn right. It turns right but senses hardwood (or obstruction) again and the PAIN vial stays full. The computer automatically orders another direction, and Mr. Vacuum continues to try movements until one of the movements puts it in contact with carpet again at which time the PAIN vial returns its contents to the CALM vial while Mr. Vacuum “calmly” goes on its way vacuuming and, perhaps, if you’re a clever programmer, it hums Church In The Wildwood.

Of course Mr. Vacuum gives a running commentary of everything it is experiencing and doing. It can also be storing all this activity in memory for referral next vacuuming day. Soon, it will have memorized a new household or carpet. So… I’ve successfully added intervening mechanisms for the regulation of vacuuming into Mr. Vacuum’s circuitry. The machine is “feeling” its way through its life and talking about it. I claim, therefore, that I’m a robot just like Mr. Vacuum only I’ve got what is called LIFE. No one has to plug me in, but, wait a minute (pause) I wasn’t plugged in myself until my father plugged into my mother, was I? So I’ve been plugged in too, just like Mr. Vacuum, only it takes me a lifetime to finish my carpet.

Now all that’s left to do is define LIFE in purely material terms, define myself as a collection of matter that is arranged in such a way as to give an observer of my behavior the illusion that I’ve got this MAGICAL PROPERTY called LIFE. And since these other computers (people) need this capacity for projection to recognize my behavior as their behavior so that they can react (find the carpet) correctly for their survival, they give themselves the idea that they LIVE.

Are we, indeed, robots that have come to “life” (just like in science fiction), become cognizant of self and invented the concept of consciousness to describe the process of recursion? I think so. That’s right, we are matter through and through and there is no magical property of life that a power greater than ourselves has bestowed upon us. It’s rocks all the way down. And that's what I, as a naturalist pantheist, understand my condition to be in relation to the Cosmos. "Yep! He's got rocks in his head," some may say, but is that true?

MORE DISCUSSIONS FROM THE PANTHEISM WEBSITE

Okay, Paul, it's 3 am and I woke up thinking about this (damn, I hate this part of thinking), and I got this much. Are you saying that if my unconscious processes make the decisions, then, technically, "I" am making the decisions even if the decisions are unconscious decisions?

Okay, I got that, but then I moved to the problem of determinism. Do I make decisions or does the environment make me make my decisions? Then I had to ask if my choices are "either/or decisions" in that the environment offers my "synaptic self" (LeDeux?) choices that my unconscious processes select from among? Or are my decisions merely "reactions" to the environment and, thus, not free at all?

Then I was really splitting hairs, lying there in the dark. How about this? Those choices that are determined by my genetic makeup are my "free" choices because they lie within me? Any choices made by environmentally influenced distortions of my synaptic self are choices "determined" by forces outside myself and, thus, not free?

But, now, I think, as I wrote the last sentence, probably determined by that last sentence, "My genes are handed to me by my parents. I have no choice in that so even my "genetic choices" (for the sake of expression) are predetermined!"

I just thought also that I'm trying to dethrone reason from its mighty high perch in human affairs. Perhaps, it's rationality I'm quibbling with. And in the term "reason" I don't include the methodology of science because science is tightly linked to the world outside the self whereas all these rational arguments we are having involve the arrangement and rearrangement of words and definitions in order to explain to the unconscious what it's doing and to try and get other beings to see and agree with our inner selves, with our conscious selves.

YES, WE ALL ARE ROBOTS

I think I see something critical and essential to the discussion in the concept of emergence. From my viewpoint there is a direct, physical causality that links me in this present moment all the way back to the Big Bang. I am at the end of a chain of successful "changes" in the physical world that go all the way back through species to and through the first organic single-celled being which all brains agree to call living into the changes that preceded that arrangement. Just because different arrangements of matter act in ways that seem different (emergent) from what came before, does not mean that the chain of physical causality has been broken.

There is a past vision I have had when I imagined myself as not different from a mountain, a tree or an atom but as just a collection of non-living chemical and electrical impulses organized so as to act in such a way as to be called "life-like" by all the physical brains interacting with and perceiving this arrangement of atoms. The body which is me is just a collection of inorganic materials, all arranged and working to represent the affect of what other brains have agreed to define as "life" and "thought". In short, there is no such thing as "life". Life is completely and totally material, turtles all the way down. That vision hit me quite strongly, early on, when I was just starting to explore this fascinating world of evolutionary psychology. I know almost for sure that this act of imagination came to me as I was reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett in the passages where he explains robotic behavior so as one can interpret is as "conscious" behavior, indicating "life". I believe that that moment of imagination has kept me pretty close to a physical explanation of life all this long time since. Perhaps that is the distinction that keeps some of us passing in the dark.

If nothing else, my vision of reality eliminates the difficulty of defining and explaining the emergence of life, since life itself is just a definition for a certain arrangement of materials in the material Universe.

SUPREME COURT VICTORY FOR ATHEISM

Spread the happy word! The decision by the five activist and conservative mis-judgers that a crucifix is not a special religious symbol and can, therefore, be displayed in any public place is actually in agreement with atheist thought. We agree with them in seeing the cross as an empty symbol that stands for a non-event in the history of humanity. The crucifix and the crucifixion it symbolizes means nothing. Don't we agree with that? Of course we do. The cross is an empty symbol standing for nothing. The cross is just a cultural icon like a smiley face and Uncle Sam pointing at you, like Mormon bigamists, like McDonald's arches and apple pie, like the now famous Mustang Ranch in Nevada and going postal. The cross is just an ordinary cultural symbol which has no intrinsic meaning and stands for no religious beliefs. We need to thank those justices for tearing the meaning of the crucifixion down to the nothing we know it is.

I invite you all to embellish on this beginning while asking yourself if those judicial activists are really our allies and had to come up with this very tricky decision that seems to make Christianity a semi-official state religion but which really supports the Constitutional separation of church and state or did they just outsmart themselves as so many pompous a-holes often do.

A TOPIC ON PANTHEISM WEBSITE

A discussion thread had to do with why we pantheists call ourselves pantheists. My reply follows:

The consciousness that rides along within and is generated by the activities of the brain that calls itself I, since it is the slave of biology and physiology, interacts strangely with these attempts or any institution's attempts to use the language of consciousness to define what consciousness, carried along by the body's activities, finds itself being and thinking from day to day.

I call myself pantheist because the brain that calls itself I and that carries the I of me along with it is deeply enmeshed in the biology and physiology of the airy reality into which it found itself swimming (existing). The collective brains who make up the category "scientist" have physically interacted with the Cosmos in such a way as to give other brains, through the senses of their eyes (reading) and ears (hearing), a new kind of information about that reality. The brain that calls itself I has learned from this set of scientific brains (who form opinions, expressed mathematically, only after by materially testing the physical Universe) that it is not enough to trust language, the creator of consciousness, and, thus, does not accept any reality that exists solely within the language and which is not physically present (so as to be sensed) in the material Cosmos. Thus concepts like "god" which exist only in the realm of the untrustworthy consciousness and which can't be smelt, touched, sensed by the physical body are foreign to it (the brain that calls itself I). The brain that calls itself I and finds itself afloat in air like a fish in water knows itself as a part of the physical Universe and not part of the conscious Cosmos.

If "MY" speechless physical body has any relationship with the physical Universe, it is much like a zygote to a mother's body than it is a consciousness to a higher consciousness which language has made up totally and completely. Since it is my speechless body that exists in the Cosmos and "I" am the language it is hearing as thought, it/I am completely and totally dependent on the physical Cosmos for my continued existence. And since a speechless zygote can't worship it's source, so my body can't worship the Cosmos, except through hearing itself in the thoughts that are generated within its synaptic patterns by its daily efforts to procreate, win friends, have sex with the opposite sex, surround itself with comfort and surplus, et cetera.

Sometimes the body that experiences its own self in consciousness as I will sense itself so safe for a moment in the Cosmos that a wonderful feeling of well-being (i.e. flood of dopamine or other chemical) fills it and that feeling will generate a thought to explain to itself what it's feeling and that thought is "worship".

The previous philosophical notations have made me understand something very interesting to me—the human robot (i.e. animal) through consciousness (the naming with words of the outer reality) has been returning from the naming of the outer world back to the naming of itself, to its physical reality as a robot that is experiencing and responding to the physical Cosmos. The namer is discovering the silent source of its naming function and, perhaps, someday the namer and the named will become as one.

Anyway, that's why I (or the brain that names itself I) name myself "pantheist" for this moment in time. It's purely an emotional thing, separate from all the conscious quibbling that goes on in the insubstantial world of consciousness where disagreements about naming are common.

ANOTHER OF MY LONG PHILOSOPHICAL JAUNTS ON THE PANTHEISM WEBSITE! I KINDA LIKE IT:

Well, here I am, awake later than I want to be because of a dissatisfaction with the way something is coming down in my life, so what better time to spout off a little? When I tune in on discussions anywhere, about any "spiritual" path, I'm always impressed by the effort and time that some of your reflections show in pursing the knowledge about if not actually setting out on the path of various religious or philosophical programs. So much effort, so much accumulated knowledge, shows how much unhappiness there is in the world, for one would not be searching the world for a better philosophy if the philosophy that one has is working as one expected it to work out.

Frankly, Buddhism or not, no religion starts out with an accurate picture of the human condition and without an accurate view of reality, how can anyone expect to build a philosophy/religion that can lead to any good? Right up front, I don't expect any formal way of structuring the chaos of existence with a goal to happiness will ever work out for anybody. The human psyche is not set up to experience happiness on a continuous basis. The brain is a computational device evolved to solve millions of small computational problems, from separating a vertical line and a horizontal line, to identifying a predator or other threats, from deciphering another human's behavior with a goal of deciding whether or not to trust that person to calculating what behaviors will best serve in seducing the woman it's attracted to. These continuously running calculations are always operating in the now and without a sense of time and mostly outside of consciousness. The emotions inform this give and take between the brain and its environment, and they make the decisions for us. If it were not for negative emotions, we wouldn't know what behaviors to avoid, and we'd run out in front of cars without a hint of danger.

For me, the sciences of neuroscience or evolutionary psychology provide the best description of how the brain creates reality and functions in view of that reality. The difference between those sciences and Buddhism is that they provide a description of reality not a panacea for it. When I began to understand how accurately they explained all the dilemmas of my life, past and present, I was drawn to them like a thirsty man to a Heinekens. All my struggles with identity, masculinity, the opposite sex, social relations with both sexes and family, peer pressures, courtship, work relations and finances are being answered to my satisfaction by these sciences, but they don't, and neither do any religions or philosophies, give me any special comfort in view human behavior, my own or yours.

I guess, if I have a philosophy it's a psychological one; it would be based on a rough and ready understanding of my own behavior and how they have affected people in the past who loved me or whom I loved and a handful of mental tricks to try and soothe the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Those slings and arrows are going to keep coming, and I can't stop them and I must feel them because the sciences I trust have told me that that's my fate as a member of the human species.

But all is not for naught. Living has taught me some valuable lessons and science shows me just what pieces of human nature I was dealing with while making wrong and painful decisions. For example, for awhile in my life I was a "take this job and shove it" sort of guy. Hey, if it's good enough for a country western singer, it's good enough for me! But I'd do that "take job shove it" routine when my problem was poverty and its accompanying complications, and I was smarting at the unfairness of some job situation. Somehow, leaving a job never solved the basic poverty I was dealing with. I'm specially sensitive about money issues and can be trusted to overreact when someone other than me is spending our surplus. (Thus, I am awake tonight, see?) So I go someplace, like an AA meeting, and I tell on myself. I identify the behavior, admit to it, laugh at myself, and then return home and apologize... if needed.

What I find interesting is that you can go to almost any religion and find someone who'll share the same insight about behavior, owning it and making amends. Sometimes the words change. It's so universal that you begin to see that it comes with the human animal territory; it's a morality (a behavior pattern) that transcends religion. Monkey see, monkey do. And what amuses me is that all the superstructure of religions, their holy ones, their seventh heavens and nine portals and twelve gates, their dogmas and creeds and learning them tit for tat has nothing to do with how one actually deals with the constant barrage of emotions and reactions caused by them which one must feel if one is to be alive. I can see some practices like meditation and chanting or even prayer (if not the desperate sort) can be helpful. Chanting creates breathing patterns that can release stress and meditation can calm down brain waves, but these aren't religious practices, are they? They're physiological practices like running which also reduces stress.

Let me restate so I can understand myself. Religions are collections of concepts. Learning them are useless, specially if they're founded on unscientific assumptions. What one needs is a way of accepting his emotional life just as it is, allowing them into his life, allowing them to inform his decisions, and finding ways to reduce their negative influences. These helpful lessons come with living and are mental (psychological) lessons and practices, not religious ones. Almost all people who suffer the most are the ones trying desperately not to suffer. They are people who always go to the happy movie because they tell you that "life is bad enough and one has to escape". Now me, I've always liked unhappy movies. They rub my nose in my escapism and force me to confront my silly wish to escape, escape, escape. When I was young, those movies scared the hell out of me, but nowadays, I don't find my "life" to be that bad at all, and I revel in a good story with real and complex characters.

Well, am I sleepy yet? I guess I'll find out.