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| proves that reason is not necessarily sanity |
Showing posts with label reason/excuse maker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reason/excuse maker. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
THE DEBATE GOES ON: HOW CONSCIOUS IS HUMAN CHOICE?
These conversations go on on the World Pantheism Movement website:
Jim,
Perhaps I ought to admit that I completely understand any human beings desire to say that writing a symphony is many orders higher than my little vacuuming machine, but if you take the day by day composition of a symphony (and I've written four, yes, unpublished novels, plus many other false starts, long projects, plus ten or so volumes of poetry, TV scripts, several big near misses but no cigars) and break it down minute by minute as the hours pile up each day, each decision that is constructing that novel (or symphony) is a feeling by feeling, irrational, process of words coming forth "out of nowhere" that arise from an intense concentration on the job at hand. As far as the bird metaphor, I'm sticking to the facts that the bird is "making decisions" that guide his flight path just as surely as a man walking down a street is making decisions about every twist and turn of his journey. It's when we do our journey while distracted and arrive at our destination with no memory of how we got there that we understand that our decisions are exactly like the bird's. Here's a poem of mine that has been published in a reputable literary magazine from which I'll build a further case for the supremacy of feeling over consciousness as the director of human behavior:
MEMORY OF ALL THE RELIGION I'LL EVER NEED
Back to the wind, I held it
And tied to it a knotted tail.
Spring, and all that wind was with me.
Muddy feet that made me clearly dirty,
I was a thing of earth who sought the sky.
Then I ran and let it go and let it out,
And felt it lift to take the wind. Whipping
Madly in a rush, it sought a surface far above me
Until I lost control of it and it flew itself,
And what I held was something in the wind,
A line that curved to nothingness.
For one full windy afternoon, I watched it
Whip and twist at nothing I could see.
All control I had was in the knotted tale
I'd been sure to fasten to it
To hold it straight and true into the wind.
And then that wind became a calm,
And it began to flutter down and
Down, to lay my line along the earth.
END
"Muddy feet that made me clearly dirty, I was a thing of earth who sought the sky... Whipping madly in a rush, it sought a surface far above me... And what I held was something in the wind... A line that curved to nothingness." How well I recall to this day the skin-tingling elation with which those words, sans any meaning other than a sort of music that came with them, arrived into my consciousness out of nowhere. The choices were being made for me.... By Whom? By What?
In retrospect, you'd think that this poem with its very clear metaphor of kite flying is a conscious and rational process of putting together a creative work about the search for God that ends in atheism, but that ain't so. The title which eventually encapsulated what I imagine the poem is about came long after the basic lines were on the page. As an afterthought, that search is what the poem seems to be about, but there was nothing conscious or willful about the trip from the first words that spilled out of my unconscious onto the page. At first the writing flowed from a feeling about kite flying, a memory loaded with emotion about childhood, and a descriptive process, words tumbling after words, filled with elation but no sense of where it was going to land. At the time, I was still not the atheist that I am now, so the ending was a delightful surprise to me when it arose from the sky down into my awareness.
Later, too, I realized, another flash of insight, that if one describes something in the material world with enough accuracy and emotional force, that material description comes to "feel like" a comparable intellectual process, i.e. kite flying and searching for God. A canoe trip that ends with falling off the end of the world into existentialism. A combat flight that ends up with being shot down and finding a grape arbor from which one selects a grape and eats it like a sip from a chalice of blood.
The interesting thing about good poetry is that it's a discovery, a discovery of a poet's inner landscape that was hidden from him until a metaphor, firmly lodged in the material world, tugged out the flow of words that become the poem. A good poem is as much a delight of discovery to the reader as it is to the poet who created it. The more conscious the poetic process, usually, the worse the poetry. Even the polishing that goes on is an unconscious process. On rereading and rewriting, the poet goes over the work dozens if not hundreds of times and, in each reading, new words and arrangements of words suggest new directions and set off more feelings of correctness. The final "choice" of each word is based on a "sense of rightness" that is not logical or reasonable. It's an emotional choice. The writing of a poem is a purely emotional process during which the words come out of nowhere (usually triggered by an emotion laden metaphor that came out of nowhere, stimulated by something in the landscape, inner or outer). Unbidden, the words scramble out of the unconscious to pass swiftly across the screen of consciousness, unbidden and blindly scurrying to join the other words that call to them to come join their brothers already on the page.
My understanding of the poetic and novel-writing process is, in my declining years, further proven to me by the fact that the level of concentration from which arose my best poetry has fallen off. I haven't written a successful poem in years because the unconscious connections can't be called upon without the missing intense emotional concentration. Some of that may also be due to my emphasis on rational forms like working algebra problems. It's no accident, either, that many poets in the past have refused counseling because they were afraid it would harm their art by making them more conscious of the artistic process. Some of them ended in suicide. You might put Hemingway in that camp to name but one. The healthier I become, the more difficult to contact my muse which probably was a very nasty muse, something like the one that plagued Ernest Dowson. And, again, I did not have the courage to pursue that particular muse any farther, but wonder of wonders, the less emotional my approach to writing, the more I am able, far beyond anything I've ever experienced before, to explain and describe rational processes that escaped me before, yet, as always, the words flow out of nowhere and tell me what I'm thinking, rather than the other way around.
I hope all concerned will understand that the preceding arguments are ON TOPIC and have everything to do with my belief that when it comes to decision-making (specially at those higher creative levels that some of my friends on this site cite as proof that man is more free than I imagine he/she is) humankind is making the decisions first in the unconscious and the rationality comes afterwards. Even mathematicians say there are proofs more beautiful than others. I agree with that as a further proof of my argument. What is beauty other than a most personal emotional response to a woman, a book or a painting, a mathematical proof? Afterward, we try to justify our choices, but the choices are emotional and determined beforehand by the entire synaptic landscape of hidden connections beneath the rational world.
James Doerfel said:
These conversations go on on the World Pantheism Movement website:
Jim,
Perhaps I ought to admit that I completely understand any human beings desire to say that writing a symphony is many orders higher than my little vacuuming machine, but if you take the day by day composition of a symphony (and I've written four, yes, unpublished novels, plus many other false starts, long projects, plus ten or so volumes of poetry, TV scripts, several big near misses but no cigars) and break it down minute by minute as the hours pile up each day, each decision that is constructing that novel (or symphony) is a feeling by feeling, irrational, process of words coming forth "out of nowhere" that arise from an intense concentration on the job at hand. As far as the bird metaphor, I'm sticking to the facts that the bird is "making decisions" that guide his flight path just as surely as a man walking down a street is making decisions about every twist and turn of his journey. It's when we do our journey while distracted and arrive at our destination with no memory of how we got there that we understand that our decisions are exactly like the bird's. Here's a poem of mine that has been published in a reputable literary magazine from which I'll build a further case for the supremacy of feeling over consciousness as the director of human behavior:
MEMORY OF ALL THE RELIGION I'LL EVER NEED
Back to the wind, I held it
And tied to it a knotted tail.
Spring, and all that wind was with me.
Muddy feet that made me clearly dirty,
I was a thing of earth who sought the sky.
Then I ran and let it go and let it out,
And felt it lift to take the wind. Whipping
Madly in a rush, it sought a surface far above me
Until I lost control of it and it flew itself,
And what I held was something in the wind,
A line that curved to nothingness.
For one full windy afternoon, I watched it
Whip and twist at nothing I could see.
All control I had was in the knotted tale
I'd been sure to fasten to it
To hold it straight and true into the wind.
And then that wind became a calm,
And it began to flutter down and
Down, to lay my line along the earth.
END
"Muddy feet that made me clearly dirty, I was a thing of earth who sought the sky... Whipping madly in a rush, it sought a surface far above me... And what I held was something in the wind... A line that curved to nothingness." How well I recall to this day the skin-tingling elation with which those words, sans any meaning other than a sort of music that came with them, arrived into my consciousness out of nowhere. The choices were being made for me.... By Whom? By What?
In retrospect, you'd think that this poem with its very clear metaphor of kite flying is a conscious and rational process of putting together a creative work about the search for God that ends in atheism, but that ain't so. The title which eventually encapsulated what I imagine the poem is about came long after the basic lines were on the page. As an afterthought, that search is what the poem seems to be about, but there was nothing conscious or willful about the trip from the first words that spilled out of my unconscious onto the page. At first the writing flowed from a feeling about kite flying, a memory loaded with emotion about childhood, and a descriptive process, words tumbling after words, filled with elation but no sense of where it was going to land. At the time, I was still not the atheist that I am now, so the ending was a delightful surprise to me when it arose from the sky down into my awareness.
Later, too, I realized, another flash of insight, that if one describes something in the material world with enough accuracy and emotional force, that material description comes to "feel like" a comparable intellectual process, i.e. kite flying and searching for God. A canoe trip that ends with falling off the end of the world into existentialism. A combat flight that ends up with being shot down and finding a grape arbor from which one selects a grape and eats it like a sip from a chalice of blood.
The interesting thing about good poetry is that it's a discovery, a discovery of a poet's inner landscape that was hidden from him until a metaphor, firmly lodged in the material world, tugged out the flow of words that become the poem. A good poem is as much a delight of discovery to the reader as it is to the poet who created it. The more conscious the poetic process, usually, the worse the poetry. Even the polishing that goes on is an unconscious process. On rereading and rewriting, the poet goes over the work dozens if not hundreds of times and, in each reading, new words and arrangements of words suggest new directions and set off more feelings of correctness. The final "choice" of each word is based on a "sense of rightness" that is not logical or reasonable. It's an emotional choice. The writing of a poem is a purely emotional process during which the words come out of nowhere (usually triggered by an emotion laden metaphor that came out of nowhere, stimulated by something in the landscape, inner or outer). Unbidden, the words scramble out of the unconscious to pass swiftly across the screen of consciousness, unbidden and blindly scurrying to join the other words that call to them to come join their brothers already on the page.
My understanding of the poetic and novel-writing process is, in my declining years, further proven to me by the fact that the level of concentration from which arose my best poetry has fallen off. I haven't written a successful poem in years because the unconscious connections can't be called upon without the missing intense emotional concentration. Some of that may also be due to my emphasis on rational forms like working algebra problems. It's no accident, either, that many poets in the past have refused counseling because they were afraid it would harm their art by making them more conscious of the artistic process. Some of them ended in suicide. You might put Hemingway in that camp to name but one. The healthier I become, the more difficult to contact my muse which probably was a very nasty muse, something like the one that plagued Ernest Dowson. And, again, I did not have the courage to pursue that particular muse any farther, but wonder of wonders, the less emotional my approach to writing, the more I am able, far beyond anything I've ever experienced before, to explain and describe rational processes that escaped me before, yet, as always, the words flow out of nowhere and tell me what I'm thinking, rather than the other way around.
I hope all concerned will understand that the preceding arguments are ON TOPIC and have everything to do with my belief that when it comes to decision-making (specially at those higher creative levels that some of my friends on this site cite as proof that man is more free than I imagine he/she is) humankind is making the decisions first in the unconscious and the rationality comes afterwards. Even mathematicians say there are proofs more beautiful than others. I agree with that as a further proof of my argument. What is beauty other than a most personal emotional response to a woman, a book or a painting, a mathematical proof? Afterward, we try to justify our choices, but the choices are emotional and determined beforehand by the entire synaptic landscape of hidden connections beneath the rational world.
James Doerfel said:
I have no problem classifying both birds and humans as eukaryotes, nor calling the organ housed by a bird skull and the organ housed by the human skull both “brains,” nor placing human intelligence and bird intelligence on a continuum, nor relating bird behavior and human behavior to their eukaryotic organisms. I do wish to maintain that birds and humans are different species—they cannot viably mate. I recognize a different design in bird bodies and in human bodies, despite the fact that they are made from roughly the same stuff. [Given a cup of bird stuff (molecules) and a cup of human stuff I doubt you could tell me which one belonged to which.] I recognize different structures in their respective brains, including structures in human brains which never evolved in bird brains. I also wish to point out for the record that no bird yet discovered is a scientist or an Olympic competitor or a pantheist. And I account for a bird navigating by the stars and a human being composing a symphony by different explanatory matrixes—you know, like science does. Biologists speak of humans evolving a capacity for deliberative choice beyond that of any other known species, and they identify this capacity as the number-one reason for our species’ success on planet earth.
Regarding math, my philosophical aporia does not owe my distrust of mathematics but to the comparative absoluteness of my/our trust in mathematics. What makes math so &%$@ trustworthy… so decisive? I consider mobility, the ability to move up and down the various levels of complexity and emergence, the ability to pan in and pan out, to synthesize a coherent representation from multiple points of view, the benchmark of reason and the scientific method—you know the reason and method we Pantheists respect “as our best way of understanding nature and the Universe.” And, yes, we have the evolution of our bodies with their big brains—brains capable of reason and science—to thank for that.
George Thomas said:James Doerfel said:I can see no difference between a bird's flying by the stars and human's learning things to store in memory, memory being the storage capacities of synaptic patterns in the brain for recall when something in our environment compels those favorable memories back into the thin sliver of awareness. Memories, of course we all know, are stored with emotions and people without the capacity to feel (some of whom have been studied) that summons the connected thoughts, are unable to make decisions. (This last sentence is why I say that first comes the feeling (the instinct), then follows the thoughts that some of us believe are the impulse toward a behavior when, actually, it is the voiceless feeling that triggers the behavior, not the thought.) What we and birds do instinctively, we humans have learned the clever trick of discussing (ruminating, predicting) it afterwards. Step by step these improvements in learning capacities increased and at each step, the instinct preceded the thoughts about that capacity.
Jim, I can't help noticing that you express a distrust of the abstractions of mathematics but that in discussions of free will and/or consciousness, you do believe in going "up" several levels of abstraction and speak of "top down" reasoning toward the problems of consciousness and free will.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
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?
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.
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.
Friday, May 18, 2007
REASON IS A FARCE
I’m reading a bit, from time to time, in a collection of John Updike’s essays called Odd Jobs. In Updike’s critique of the Library of America’s volume of Franklin’s collected writings, imagine my surprise to come across an idea of Ben Franklin’s which very much predates one of my own conclusions.
It seems that Franklin was for a time a vegetarian, then, one day he was confronted by a piece of tantalizing cod. He writes, “When the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs—Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you…. So convenient a thing to be a Reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Such a sly wink in the words, eh?
It’s only in the last few or many years that I’ve concluded that reason is nothing more than an empty talker, a wheedler and excuse maker for, a justifier of the feelings which we try to pretend are not the true drivers of human behavior. All the endless hours of TV talk and newsprint spilled and book and magazine words arguing this and that, and all of it only to justify one’s feeling threatened or safe or to, as Franklin so nicely put it, justify one’s doing what one has “a mind to do” anyway. In short, there is no reason for doing anything except that one has a mind to do it.
But where Franklin wrote, “a mind to do”, I think we must all be honest and say that we have a “feeling to do”, even though we now all know that feeling is not in the heart but in the brain, in the limbic system. I’m serious here—we all pretend there is reason for everything we do, but I think we, most of us, act first and think later, or, at least, spend a lot of time trying to reason ourselves out of behavior and feelings we are bound to feel anyway. Can’t we always spot the man who’s just talking and we know that we can’t trust him further than we can spit a boulder? Wasn’t I a man much like that myself? That’s why you could trust President Carter when he said that, sure, he’d lusted in his heart after other women. He was admitting to having a “feeling self” which was not always in line with his spoken self. Any man who says he hasn’t lusted for a woman other than his wife is either a liar or totally out of touch with himself. And that’s a man to stay clear of—either way.
In the same collection of Updike’s writings is his critique of a many-paged volume of selected entries from Leo Tolstoy’s diaries. When one reads some of Tolstoy’s agonizing over the battle between his instinctual self and his reasoning, moralizing self, one understands that an honest man must conclude that his reason is no more than a nice piece of background music, elevator music, for the rising and falling instinctual urges of his animal self. Even if one does not act upon his feeling self, it’s usually the feeling of fear or some other feeling that suppresses the dangerous action contemplated. Then, of course, his good old wheedling self will come up with a noble reason for his not having done what he was afraid to do.
TAKING A WALK—
A BREAK FROM BLOODY WU LI HOLY WHIRLING GRAIL MASTERS
Something has come over me. I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it, but it must be something I want to do. Since for nearly three weeks now, I am walking every day, as much as an hour and a half a day, sometimes as little as 40-50 minutes, but every day I walk. I’m not even power walking; I’m just strolling, strolling down by the river (see photo) or all around Vancouver Central Park and Historic District near Fort Vancouver, or through the streets of downtown Vancouver which is a pleasant place without too many tall buildings. As the lady at the Visitor’s Center told me—tall building aren’t allowed in downtown Vancouver. Portland’s airport takes off and lands up the river from Vancouver, and there’s a small public airfield right on the edge of downtown Vancouver. According to her, that busy airspace controls the heights of buildings in downtown Vancouver.
I’m reading a bit, from time to time, in a collection of John Updike’s essays called Odd Jobs. In Updike’s critique of the Library of America’s volume of Franklin’s collected writings, imagine my surprise to come across an idea of Ben Franklin’s which very much predates one of my own conclusions.
It seems that Franklin was for a time a vegetarian, then, one day he was confronted by a piece of tantalizing cod. He writes, “When the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs—Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you…. So convenient a thing to be a Reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Such a sly wink in the words, eh?
It’s only in the last few or many years that I’ve concluded that reason is nothing more than an empty talker, a wheedler and excuse maker for, a justifier of the feelings which we try to pretend are not the true drivers of human behavior. All the endless hours of TV talk and newsprint spilled and book and magazine words arguing this and that, and all of it only to justify one’s feeling threatened or safe or to, as Franklin so nicely put it, justify one’s doing what one has “a mind to do” anyway. In short, there is no reason for doing anything except that one has a mind to do it.
But where Franklin wrote, “a mind to do”, I think we must all be honest and say that we have a “feeling to do”, even though we now all know that feeling is not in the heart but in the brain, in the limbic system. I’m serious here—we all pretend there is reason for everything we do, but I think we, most of us, act first and think later, or, at least, spend a lot of time trying to reason ourselves out of behavior and feelings we are bound to feel anyway. Can’t we always spot the man who’s just talking and we know that we can’t trust him further than we can spit a boulder? Wasn’t I a man much like that myself? That’s why you could trust President Carter when he said that, sure, he’d lusted in his heart after other women. He was admitting to having a “feeling self” which was not always in line with his spoken self. Any man who says he hasn’t lusted for a woman other than his wife is either a liar or totally out of touch with himself. And that’s a man to stay clear of—either way.
In the same collection of Updike’s writings is his critique of a many-paged volume of selected entries from Leo Tolstoy’s diaries. When one reads some of Tolstoy’s agonizing over the battle between his instinctual self and his reasoning, moralizing self, one understands that an honest man must conclude that his reason is no more than a nice piece of background music, elevator music, for the rising and falling instinctual urges of his animal self. Even if one does not act upon his feeling self, it’s usually the feeling of fear or some other feeling that suppresses the dangerous action contemplated. Then, of course, his good old wheedling self will come up with a noble reason for his not having done what he was afraid to do.
TAKING A WALK—
A BREAK FROM BLOODY WU LI HOLY WHIRLING GRAIL MASTERS
Something has come over me. I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it, but it must be something I want to do. Since for nearly three weeks now, I am walking every day, as much as an hour and a half a day, sometimes as little as 40-50 minutes, but every day I walk. I’m not even power walking; I’m just strolling, strolling down by the river (see photo) or all around Vancouver Central Park and Historic District near Fort Vancouver, or through the streets of downtown Vancouver which is a pleasant place without too many tall buildings. As the lady at the Visitor’s Center told me—tall building aren’t allowed in downtown Vancouver. Portland’s airport takes off and lands up the river from Vancouver, and there’s a small public airfield right on the edge of downtown Vancouver. According to her, that busy airspace controls the heights of buildings in downtown Vancouver.
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