Random quotes or posts from elsewhere

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Jamesh
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Random quotes or posts from elsewhere

Post by Jamesh »

quite liked this post

"Religions, like almost all mammals, human orgazinzations, political, social, religious, familial, are based in a structure of dominance and the two reactions to dominance by others, submission or resistance. In general, among mammals, indeed most sentient beings, the dominant gender is the male. This is not a metaphysical result of any universal law, it is simply the result of the fact that males need little space in their bodies for reproductive functions compared to the female and therefore can build more muscular power and so assert our dominance over the female. It is by far the easiest for the female, or the relatively less physically able male to submit, but at the center of the souls of all creatures lies a desire to dominate in some form. This is expressed in acts of resistance. WIthout this need to resist--to assert ourselves--we sentient beings would simply be so many overgrown amoebas. This is the essence of all human institutions, and religion is just one aspect."

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 17,00.html
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Post by Nordicvs »

So, amoebas don't resist anything?
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Jamesh
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Post by Jamesh »

Was reading this novel the other day and had to be amused at this bit about Songai Kolok, a small town close to the Thai border.

"The girls are not usually local Muslims, the tend to be Buddhists from all over Thailand, especially the poor north, and have decided to specialise in this niche market. It doesn't pay as much as the farang market in Bangkok, but it’s a lot more reliable. Every weekend and most days hoards of pious young Muslim men from Malaysia cross the border here and leave their piety on the other side. They come in expensive 4x4's, on cheap motorbikes, in buses and minibuses. Some even come by pushbike. Some even by foot. Right now, for example, the town is flooded with them. The girls have all learned Malay and the ringit is accepted currency. Young men are standing or sitting in every one of the huts, purring while the girls charm them. In a way they can be more civilised than the farang. They don’t just come to get laid, they want the full debauch, including alcohol and a huge cavernous disco with karaoke. The sex comes at the end of the evening, if sober enough.

The flesh trade is everywhere, it is the economy of this town, there is really nothing else. I think of Mustafa, what an affront this must be to him: what torture to his pure soul to walk through this town every day. In every hotel lobby, café, restaurant, on every street corner, there's a huddle of women somewhere between 20 and 30 years of age. Not exactly a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism. I think any Al Quada evangelist would be laughed out of town. Mohammed himself couldn't incite these local guys to people to a jihad: they're in Islamic heaven already."
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Post by Tharan »

From what I understand, a good debauch actually cleanses the soul to the point that any subsequent suicide bombing is done easier and with clearer conscience. It is essential that the taking of life in the name of Holy Allah (peace be upon him) be done with a clear conscience. The Gates of Paradise are a competitive place and only the best make it all the way through to the 72 virgins. Also, it helps not being a virgin youself when faced with the virgins. They are a demanding lot and experience is preferred when faced with that kind of performance pressure.
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Post by Jamesh »

"You just need to take into account the causal nature of what makes both sides, do what they do.

I completely reject both sides of the islamic versus Neo-conservative arguements.

In terms of what capitalism does to people minds then the islamics are often correct, but the price for agreeing to the islamic side of the argument is inhuman, it is agreeing to be an animal with no individuality. Most islamic people have not experienced this freedom, and they do not know the joy of freedom. On the other hand freedom makes it difficult for good hearted people to rise to the top, in fact it is impossible, so therefore in Western societies, the scum rise to the top. For Westerners it is egotistical materialistic scum that come to power, for islamists it the spiritual scum that come to power.

Human nature is not one that can accept balance, we would not have evolved so far if were otherwise. Nonetheless stability and the freedom from threats only comes from balance and we will accept such balances when they are beneficial to us and try and destroy persons who intrude on this balance. Those who seek power thrive and grow on instability, so they often create same, however when they go to far the herd rejects the interferance and will act to depower the catalyst of instability.

The diffference between Western societies and Islamic or hard core Christian societies, is that only individuals can induce change and these cultures do not allow individuals to florish, they only allow those like them to gain power over others.

Western cultures are "more right" becuase the nature of evolution automatically means greater individuality - ie there are always fewer at the top of the food chain. No religious people and no capitalists understand this point.

[and for my ego] This is one of the bests posts I've ever made."
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Post by Jamesh »

Beyonce most fancied
Beyonce Knowles is the No. 1 fantasy girlfriend, according to AskMen.com.

She may have missed out on an Oscar nomination, but US singer-actress Beyonce Knowles is the No.1 fantasy girlfriend, according to AskMen.com's Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2007.

The 25-year-old tops the website's list ranking the "most alluring" female celebrities as determined by its readers and staff.

Voters were asked to consider qualities beyond sex appeal and beauty, such as "intelligence, humour, charisma and ambition," according to the site.

More than 8.5 million votes were cast, the website says.

Knowles, currently co-starring in Dreamgirls, was followed by screen sirens Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Alba, supermodel Adriana Lima and actress Jessica Biel.

Rounding out the top 10 were model Alessandra Ambrosio, singer Shakira, TV host Maria Menounos and actresses Angelina Jolie and Elisha Cuthbert.



Lol, this is crap, it is totally based on looks and the degree the bird is willing to promote sex.

Ever heard Beyonce speak -yukk! Too bloke-ish
Angelina Jolie is a complete nutter
Shakira is a confused Christian
Scarlett Johansson -don't know - never seen any personality.
Jessica Alba - has some brains, but is pretty herd driven. A goody-two-shoes

Don't know the others.
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Jamesh
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Post by Jamesh »

Is there a strong correlation between lesbianism and strong authoritarian fathers?
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Post by NLPRN »

I'm unaware of any clinical correlations but looking back at my military experiences and having frequent exposure to senior officer/enlisted members of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, I haven't noticed any obvious increased prevalance compared to the general public. Of course, not all senior military members are "dictators-in-the-making". Some excessively dote on their daughters as if fragile and easily broken no doubt producing submissive, passive individuals lacking significant self confidence or self identity.

This question of course is the nature vs. nurture debate with a gay twist. I'm undecided on which is the primary factor, but I'm more apt to believe the cause is nurture. I would ask: Is there a correlation between homosexual children (male or female) and the amount/ratio (or lack thereof) of total masculinity/feminity exposure during their childhood? Are authoriatarian parents more prone to produce lesbians/aggressive males and passive parents more likely to have submissive female/gay male offspring?

Additionally, one should consider the common rebellious nature in children. Some kids (deliberately?) turn out the polar opposite.
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Post by Jamesh »

"Christian fundamentalism

There was another interview I heard recently, possibly also on The Religion Report, where a man was talking about his research into Christian fundamentalism in the USA. He interviewed many fundamentalists, and claimed that, after a period of time spent establishing a rapport and a trust with these people, "time after time after time, they would confess that of course they didn't really believe a word of it, but they thought it was important that everybody else believed it for reasons of social stability, so they pretended to believe it"

Wouldn't it be bizarre if nearly ALL of the world's religious believers were really just pretending, in order to force everybody else to feel obliged to conform to "acceptable" behavioural patterns!

What a circus!
======================================

"my great Uncle, a priest at the Vatican for some time said that there are not many believers at the Vatican. He left the church for several years because of this - he returned in his 80's before he died a decade ago. RIB Clive Briton"
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Post by Philosophaster »

Where did you get the information in your last post?

Sounds very interesting.
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Jamesh
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Post by Jamesh »

Not from a usable resource - just some ordinary folks I know chatting on another forum. I do trust the fellow who wrote the first part, he has a reasonable amount of wisdom, but it was probably just something he heard on Oz radio.
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Post by Philosophaster »

It sounds really similar to something that Daniel Dennett said, that he suspects that more people "believe in belief," believe that it's a "good thing" to believe in God, than actually believe in God.
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Post by NLPRN »

Well said.
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Post by Jamesh »

A couple of posts I made elsewhere.

Where is the real evidence that time is not just a tool for the measure of motion?
All there is, are theories that can be explained by other more classical theories. Stick to reality if you want to learn and understand more of science.


When dealing with such fundamental matters, I think it is best to use logical evidence.

Time is not just a tool for the measure of motion, in fact it is the opposite, it is everything.

The totality, in what one might term its pure state, is timeless. It is instantaneousness, that is what to exist and to be timeless means. The physical universe requires both instantaneousness and delay.

If there were no time delay then - ignoring that no thing could form in the first place - all change would occur instantly. Quantum-like progressions could not exist.

If there was no instantaneous then causes would not flow at all. The concepts of space and gravity shows us that some properties of the universe are connected in such a fashion, that causal actions occur instantly.

People tend to think of space as an essentially empty, uncaused kind of' non-thing'. This is not so, everything with any property at all must be caused by that which precedes it. Space is caused. If space is caused it cannot be empty. For a start it gives us the properties of spatial dimensions and a base upon which movement can occur. Space is an entity that has an instantaneous connection with it's entire self. Space also has a timeless quality in that while it is space, that is all it will ever be. That there may be worm holes or gravity waves, does not necessarily mean that they are actually twisted space or gravity. Their properties may be similar, but they will still have to exist within/atop of the same space or gravity framework that everything else does.

It is important to note that, as space was caused, so to does it become a causal agent. It's existence means that it will now be relative to what caused it. Note the continuos cascading flow of the universe. Infinite causes create an initial effect, but that effect is then combined with the original causes to form yet another effect, yet another form. As each new additive effect is created, then spatial territory decreases. Because the original forces are infinite, or timeless, they never stop being what they are, they continually layer the universe with new sets of relativities.

The speed of light is a sign that not forms of causal flow is instantaneous in nature, but it also shows that the fewer properties related to mass than a thing has, the faster it will travel. At the same time the more mass a thing has the more it is resistant to a change of position - the higher the mass, the more force is required to move it.

Now all you need to do is picture a Maslow type triangle. The triangle is representative of the totality of all there is. At the bottom of the triangle there is infinity. The next layer is ultra thin and is called space. The third group of layers is electromagnetic energy, light and rays. Then we come to the matter layers, with heavy elements being higher layers of this group. Finally at the top we have black holes or mass vortexes of that nature.

As we progressively moves up the triangle we see an increase in mass per spatial area, though I prefer to think of this as an increase of the number of parts the thing can be broken down into - its potential total set of properties, or internal interrelationships, an increase in it’s total relativity package. One must include the so-called massless domain of light and other radiations.

My theory is that all properties, all mass, are caused by a slowing down of what was instantaneous.

Now being instantaneous, or timeless, it cannot lose this ability just because it is now forms part of a "thing". So how can anything be slowed down? It is slowed down by increasing levels of relativity within its structure.

Relativity is an "event", it is something fundamental about the universe, and it is in all places and applies to all things at all times.

As relativity is an event, then it is a caused event, a caused outcome, but in being caused it must be caused by something that is dualistic, or totally opposite in nature. That however is the realm of the infinite which we cannot directly see, so we'll leave that alone.

All things however are also dualistic. For their existence they must have both stability and movement. Stability is caused by that which is fundamental being caused to equalise, and what the means is that some parts do not move relative to some others parts. The stability is contained within the part. On the other hand, things move, and all parts of things move. What is occurring here is that the dualistic fundamental causes are not equalised, to which the effect will be movement of some sort.

Delay is caused as a result of the relativity between that which is balanced and that which is moving. The parts that are in balance cause internal and external forces to bounce off it, to be repelled in some way. It is this repelling action that causes the delay required for the existence of things. This repelling action exists in all things, in every part of every thing - even the so called space between a nucleus and a proton contains some degree of repelling ability. It is this that prevents causal action from being instantaneous, as it is "bounded" by that which is more in balance (it does not have to be perfect balance, only space itself is in perfect balance).

This delay is an effect, a caused outcome. This is what we call time.

I am getting into a very tricky area here, but to be honest, even this repelling may simply be an effect - it may not be the true nature of what is occurring.

What might actually be occurring is after such causal balances occur, and external instantaneous causal action strikes these balances, that these causal effects are not repelled (or not wholly repelled) but rather parts of them and the thing in balance are split into more basic forms of the fundamental constituents of reality. I do not know what the fundamental causes are, but in light of the above about time compression, I happily attach the tags Expansionary and Contracting forces to them.

Now if these forces are split into these basic parts or into both less dense and more dense forms, then the stronger contracting force will create gravity and mass, in a smaller spatial area, while the freed expansionary force will cause a larger spatial area to occur and it is the larger spatial area that causes the repellation of one thing from another.

That which is presently not-balanced will become balanced and that which is presently balanced will then cause non-balance.
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Post by Jamesh »

What do you think is behind all existence Jamesh,if anything at all?

Well I have pondered this a bit in the past and have not come up with a logical answer.

Logically I know there is no creator god, or no infinite consciousness, of that I am certain.

I don’t think it is wise to think of The Totality as having a beginning or ending, though a subset of the totality, such as a bubble universe might.

We can only use what we see in our universe to give us clues. Things of form or effects have a beginning and ending but that which creates the form, causal action does not. Form relates to utility for the observer – it is subjective, so if one removes this subjectiveness (why for instance does it matter if a rock decays and the atoms are now contained in some other thing – it has not really ended), then even changing form does not have a defined beginning or ending. I feel causal action has always existed, but that offers no explanation as to why. There is nothing actually rationally wrong with the totality always existing, it is just that we, by force of cognitive habit, ASSUME a Start – End scenario. An end to The Totality is also something that cannot be caused, so this is a pointer to the irrationality of assuming that it has a start.

I use the words The Totality to include not just our immediate universe, but the cause of this universe, or any other universe. That our universe may have a beginning or end is really a matter for science and is not really relevant to the question you are asking.

I do not think of The Totally as being something that is surrounded by nothingness, by something completely empty of any properties at all. I do not see the totality as something that grows into and takes the place of nothingness.

The thing is that the whole idea of nothingness seems as equally illogical to me, as does this same concept being the cause of existence. How can something come from nothing? It cannot, such nothingness would have no causal action. I think we can pretty well exclude this idea as a possibility – which is also another pointer that The Totality is something that has always existed.

Within this universe nothingness is not a possibility. If something has no properties then it is impossible for causal action to effect it – there is nothing to affect. Light and gravity for example cannot be a part of nothingness or flow into nothingness to create existence - they simply would not be able to exist in such a domain. Nor can nothingness be caused – causes cannot be removed completely from something. Causes act by changing polarisation.

We really do need to think of The Totality as being in a permanent state of full being, without requiring a cause for its existence. This doesn’t make sense to most people because they visualise empty space as nothingness, they think nothingness is the absence of everything whereas it is actually another form of something.

On the other hand I do believe that things arise from a non-spatial domain. It is a “void” only in the sense that it has no dimensions and no movement, but somehow still has causal ability. Causal ability is the entirety of its nature.

We could call this thing God, but I do not because of the connotations of the word God. God implies ultimate complexity and a wide range of direct abilities to affect the universe. I think the non-spatial domain is the opposite – it is ultimate simplicity – it is something that never changes even though it causes change. I’m an ultimate dualist for this reason. A single something that never changes cannot cause anything other than more of itself (which means nothing in a non-spatial world, except a growth of potential causal power), but two somethings that never change, that always have been and always will do what they do, can cause a different something – it is the relativity between these two somethings that allows the causal action of the spatial world. It is true though, that a non-spatial world would be akin to nothingness – there would be nothing that we could ever directly observe about it, - so it would appear as if it did not exist. It is also of an instantaneous nature and we are incapable of seeing instantaneousness directly as well.

We know it exists however, because nothing in the physical world is self-caused. The creative causal activity and the energy and power of things arises at the moment a thing has been caused to exist. Causes are really just a description of the underlying competition of the universe, they make things to expand or contract in size or complexity or mass or to combine (a from of contraction) or segregate (a form of expansion). Effects don’t actually exist in their own right, they are never not other than causal entities, which is why everything moves. So effect or things are illusionary, however we can observe them because of the time differentials as outlined in my recent post on that Time thread.


If I was forced to give The Totality a beginning and an end, which is not rational, then I would have to say that the fundamental nature of absolute nothingness (no spatial existence, no matter/energy, no inherent causal action), causes a form of reversal from nothingness to somethingness. This whole idea seems quite ludicrous – but what else could happen, there are no other options????. The non-logical irrationality of this paragraph is another reason to believe in the permanence of The Totality.
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Post by Jamesh »

Quotations by James Clerk Maxwell

... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
[Maxwell strongly disagreed with these views and was attacking them.]
Scientific Papers 2, 244, October 1871.

My soul is an entangled knot,
Upon a liquid vortex wrought
By Intellect in the Unseen residing,
And thine doth like a convict sit,
With marline-spike untwisting it,
Only to find its knottiness abiding;
Since all the tools for its untying
In four-dimensional space are lying,
Wherein they fancy intersperses
Long avenues of universes,
While Klein and Clifford fill the void
With one finite, unbounded homoloid,
And think the Infinite is now at last destroyed.
The Life of James Clek Maxwell

The numbers may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician.
Quoted in E T Bell, Men of Mathematics

The mind of man has perplexed itself with many hard questions. Is space infinite, and in what sense? Is the material world infinite in extent, and are all places within that extent equally full of matter? Do atoms exist or is matter infinitely divisible?


All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.

Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance.

Mathematicians my flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.
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Jamesh
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Post by Jamesh »

The existence of a being is caused by infinite causes. A human being has consciousness. This consciousness is akin to godliness. Consciousness is being, and knowing, one is the centre of the universe. There is no other way for you to experience things other than as this temporary flowing centre. This means you look out upon the rest of the universe. The universe is always our own universe, therefore you, while conscious, are always the only god.

That everything you do and think is determined by causes is in a way neither here nor there. Well, except that, there is always more than one correct perspective on such questions. I'm a perspective-dualist. I take the point of view that the most accurate answers always encompass a One-to-All viewpoint and an All-to-One viewpoint, ie looking at something as if it one was inside it and also taking the thing as an entirety. To be inside something means to look at its causal nature and to be outside means to view the thing as an effect.

From the inside perspective, as everything that is you is caused, this means that none of yourself is of your own making - there is nothing inherent in your existence. For this perspective then The Totality is your maker and could be referred to as God.

Taking the outside view, the opne that consciousness provides, is the act of a God, in that one is placing oneself artifically separate from the rest of the universe and determining what a thing is and what its relationships are. You, as an entire thing, are doing the deciding and creating and the tools that you have to work with are your experiences. You are the God.

Neither viewpoint is more valid than the other. Both are the reality you experience.

There is no Abrahamic creator God for many reasons. One I have not thought of previously just slipped into my mind.

"Everything is caused" is not an entirely correct statement. A truer one is that everything is constantly causing. In reality there are no effects, one is always viewing causes in action. At no point is any thing truely static, and I mean any thing, even space. (Re Space - I'm a dualist who believes that two opposite fundamental forces, Expansion and Contraction, create and are all things, as well as permanently creating each other. If we can observe something such as space or time, then they must be caused by something active. In being caused by something active they also must be active causal agents. The whole of existence is a continual two-way flow from an infinitely expansion pyramidal base to infinitely finite contractive point at the top. All things are just combinations of many layers of this process).

God to be infinite would need to have some form of absolute staticness. It could not be subject to change or causes. If something is not subject to causes then it would have to be outside of the universe, rather than actually being the universe. If something was outside the universe and not subject to causes, then it could not in return be a causal agent that could act upon the universe.
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Post by Kelly Jones »

Consciousness is being, and knowing, one is the centre of the universe.
How can one know that consciousness is the centre of the Universe, if the point of reference (what isn't at the centre) isn't in consciousness?

-
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Post by Jamesh »

I don't understand your question.

Things, either as identified things or whole the panoramic background one is experiencing and the resulting qualia are always incoming to consciousness. They flow through consciousness, which has the effect of triggering qualia creating instructions to the body, which in turn feeds back into the mind as confirmation of some action. We only know we are sad when our body tells our consciousness that we are sad.

Only to the actual body is experience a direct two-way process, where parts of the body merge with the plethora of incoming causes, and create excess/lose electrons, which form into electrical currents that end up creating consciousness and thoughts in the frontal lobes. The two-way process also occurs in the act of thought creation in the frontal lobes, in that the calculating tools of the frontal lobes must include switches that are temporarily changed as the data flows through. The created thought itself however is one directional, ie it flows forward from a beginning to an end.

Consciousness thus has to always be the centre or eye of the needle in which this thought flows through.
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Post by Jamesh »

The Islamist Websites Monitor, which focuses on the major jihadi websites

http://memri.org/iwmp.html
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Post by Jamesh »

...But Humphrey turns the tables. Consciousness seems mysterious because it has evolved to seem mysterious. Fascination and elusiveness are its primary functions. With an evolutionary perspective, due attention to neuropsychology and a little conceptual re-engineering, the explanatory gap can be closed.

In his 1992 book A History of the Mind, Humphrey argued that consciousness is grounded in bodily sensation rather than thought, and proposed a speculative evolutionary account of the emergence of sentience. Seeing Red is a refinement and extension of those ideas. Put simply, we don't so much have sensations as do them. Sensation is "on the production side of the mind rather than the reception side." When the spiky-haired cartoon character is looking at the red screen, he is doing red. He is redding. The evolutionary history of sensory enactments like redding (or hotting and so on) can be traced to the bodily reactions of primitive organisms responding to different environmental stimuli, noxious and nutritive. Imagine an "amoeba-like" creature floating in the ancient seas. Like all other organisms, it has a structural boundary, which is the frontier between "self" and "other." The animal's survival depends on crossborder exchanges of material, energy and information, and, as it moves around, some events at the border are going to be "good" for it and some "bad." It must have the ability to respond appropriately—as Humphrey puts it, "reacting to this stimulus with an ouch! To that with a whoopee!" At first the responses are localised to the site of stimulation, but evolution endows more specialised sensory zones, this for chemicals, that for light—and a central control system, a proto-brain, which allows for co-ordinated responses to specific stimuli: "Thus, when, say, salt arrives at its skin, the animal detects it and makes a characteristic wriggle of activity—it wriggles 'saltily.' When red light falls on it, it makes a different kind of wriggle—it wriggles 'redly.'" These are the prototypes of human sensation. With the march of evolutionary history, life gets more complex for the animal and it becomes advantageous for it to have an inner representation of events happening at the surface of its body. One way of accomplishing this is to plug into those systems already in place for identifying and reacting to stimulation. The animal's representation of "what's going on?" (and what it "feels" about it) is achieved by monitoring what it is doing about it. "Thus… to sense the presence of salt at a certain location the animal monitors its own command signals for wriggling saltily… to sense the presence of red light, it monitors its signals for wriggling redly." Such self-monitoring by the subject is the prototype of "feeling sensation."

Evolution then takes the animal to another level at which it comes to care about the world just beyond its body, so that, for example, it becomes sensitive to the chemical and air pressure signals of the proximity of predator or prey. This requires quite another style of information processing. "When the question is 'What is happening to me?' the answer that is wanted is qualitative, present-tense, transient, and subjective. When the question is 'What is happening out there in the world?' the answer that is wanted is quantitative, analytical, permanent, and objective." The old sensory channels continue to provide a body-centred picture of what the stimulation is doing to the animal, but a second system is set up "to provide a more neutral, abstract, body-independent representation of the outside world." This is the prototype of perception. At this stage the animal is still responding to stimulation with overt bodily activity, but eventually it achieves a degree of independence and is no longer bound by rigid stimulus-response rules. It still needs to know what's going on in the world, so the old sensory systems stay in service, and it still learns about what is happening to it by monitoring the command signals for its own responses. But now it can issue virtual commands which don't result in overt action. In other words, it no longer wriggles. Rather than going all the way out to the surface of the body, the commands are short-circuited, reaching only to a point on the incoming sensory pathway. Over evolutionary time the target of the command retreats further from the periphery until "the whole process becomes closed off from the outside world in an internal loop within the brain." Sensory activity has become "privatised."

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/arti ... hp?id=8612
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Post by Pye »

.

"Consciousness is sensation, privatized . . . . "

(Regardless of outcome, this is good meat-to-beat, so to speak, Jamesh. Ta for the potentially fruitful think-work. I'm in a schoolish crunch right now, but mean to respond when and if I reach some fruition and/or argument with the aforementioned idea.)


.
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Post by Pye »

.

Of course, what we are left with here is the privatized part, which is not unlike the notion of subjective equilibrium I put forth here some time ago (and for which some mighty hammers subsequently came down upon me/it).

Also as I've had occasion to maintain, that which we call "sense" in our minds is indeed a physical sense, one form of sense/sensation upon the whole scale which an organism feels. The brian is the sense-making organ in every way, for without its involvement in sight, sound, touch et al, (and of course thinking) nothing registers to the organism, as the study of brain disorders has exampled time and again. All sense is interpreted by this sense-making organ, which leads us to understand that its relationship to some external what-really-is is a tenuous one. It is not so much that the sense is accurate to the objective truth of something, for we are just as apt to draw the wrong conclusion from (what is assumed to be) the purely empirical through (what we call) our five "physical" senses, as we are apt to mistake our reasoning sense as standing in flawlessly for any ultimate truth. Thinking is feeling - sensing - and indeed this privatized process is necessary for us to be conscious of anything--abstractly or concretely (to which by now, you might figure I am not down with as some opposing binaries). As much as sense-making may or may not be accurate to the object/situation it encounters, it is clear that sense-making is necessary to us, errors and all.

Indeed it is privatized. As such, reveals an even greater turn of profundity to Kierkegaard's truth is subjectivity -- belonging to, around and about us. Whether we focus inward or outward, we cannot exceed our own instrumentation. We can only answer to the particular sense-making trajectory that best serves our privatized experience. An organism on a trajectory of self-destruction will do the same thing, and it is telling to note that the suicidal mind most often reports no "sense" in anything anymore before it extinguishes . . . .


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Nordicvs
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Post by Nordicvs »

"Lie Detector on A Loon."

Dr. Switzer: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here today to demonstrate the delusional accuracy of the hemispheric dual-function of conscience. As you fine sirs and madams know, conscience is attributed to one hemisphere, but there are many areas of both sides of the brain adapting to environmental stress, stimulus, problem-solving, overcoming and developing into the overall conscious, sub-and-full-awareness, and so forth. The illumination of the clarity of the mind to recognize truth, in order to see what is real and what is not. Each hemisphere has dual function, as we know, and behaves differently when one appartatus, like the part of each hemisphere responsible for math, or whichever, is specialized in the brain. An artist, for example, might be left-brained or like Salvador Dali; his perceptions were structured as a whole, its meaning expressed in a surrealistic, morphing symbolical right-hemispheric, organic way. Allow me to introduce the subject of this evening's experiment, Naz. Say hello, Naz..."

Naz: "Allo?"

Dr. Switzer: "As we can see, Mr. Naz---"

Naz: "Emperor Naz..."

Dr. Switzer: "--Naz is here, with a hat of tiny wires, each measuring certian waves in the brain---in short, he's wearing a lie detector and we'll know if he's lying."

Naz: "Good!"

Dr. Switzer: "What is the nature of the universe?"

Naz: "To give birth to itself."

Dr. Switzer: "Well, he seems to be telling the truth. Sort of an odd concept, though. I'll expore it for the purpose of the experiment, but we'll try to stay on topic. Because, and of course you well know, Naz here is a textbook paranoid schizophrenic."

Naz: "Phrantic...elolology...I should get going..."

Dr. Switzer: "Where to, Naz?"

Naz: "Out, up...there..."

Dr. Switzer: "He believes what he's saying. What are you looking at? Can anyone see...Naz?"

Naz: "Fuck off."

Dr. Switzer: "Okay, Naz. We'll switch the subject, okay?"

Naz: "Twist it...twist it all to hell..."

Dr. Switzer: "Why does the universe wish to give birth to itself?"

Naz: "Inevitable. Cause cannot be a first cause until it commits suicide."

Dr. Switzer: "Well, there were a few spikes, but he is still settling down. His blood pulse rose over the last two questions. Naz, have a few deep breaths...we'll let him catch his breath and then get into more intense questioning..."

Naz: "Fogs. Frogs. One more breath. Fuck those pansy stay-at-homes..."

Dr. Switzer: "Why one more breath?"

Naz: "I'll die. Pink to black."

Dr. Switzer: "Then what?"

Naz: "Hmm. Heaven. Not down...black crosses...at night. Graveyard skies..."

Dr. Switzer: "What is that?"

Naz: "Up."

Dr. Switzer: "Why do we have to go up?"

Naz: "What? They fucked us! We have to...Jesus Christ!---think about it. We're running out of everything, fucking wastelands!--- with psycho machines runnin... around like in---too many!"

Dr. Switzer: "Okay, Naz. Calm down. Are you saying humans have to go somewhere?"

Naz: "Yes! By Kennedy, yes!"

Dr. Switzer: "But why...we can't run away from our problems, Naz, yunno?"

Naz: "Judgement Day, idiot! End!---end of fucking days, generation zed. This planet wants us gone! Hell pits and hungry millions. Bombing raids and eyeless trench breakfast Cornflakes...milk strawed face masks..."

Dr. Switzer: "Ah, so you feel humans are doomed here...?"

Naz: "Yes! Ant farm...cyber fucking ant farm! Ausrotten!"

Dr. Switzer: "Alright, settle down. We believe you---but it's all under---"

Naz: "Control? Cunt troll...swine under a bridge eating garbage! No---no, control---we can't control biology! There is only order and chaos...every time we try, it just blows up in our faces...rockets, that's what we need...more fucking rockets, that's show em..."

Dr. Switzer: "Now, now---"

Naz: "Yes, NOW---right fucking now. Push the fucking button and let's go! Look at what they are doing to us! Slaves! What are you doing questioning me? I have Panzer Divisions, muthafocher!"

Dr. Switzer: "Remember what I told you, Naz---"

Naz: "What are we doing sitting here staring at each other? Becoming horrid white mice in mazes, scurrying and sociologically fusing into one another, like historical cults breeding cloaked chameleons in a Chinese box of mirrors..."

Dr. Switzer: "Interesting. And do you feel that you, Naz, are in one of these mirrored boxes...?"

Naz: "No, no. I'm good. Everything's going along fine. Fuckers... Magna line...take that, smash that... Magnas...magnus...magma... Maggie's farm Matter... mater...materialism..."

Dr. Switzer: "But I thought you said the end is near?"

Naz: "Yes! Look at the world, for fuck sakes! Swinehound! Hound from hell guarding you, chittering house bound squirrel! Think they won't come a diggin'? They can smell your nuts. How many nuclear capable nations? How many 70-year stockpiles of missiles and iron bunkers, Trident warheads, all pointing at every city. Satellites can count your hairs. You know what happens when the power goes off? Chaos. They better switch all those cameras everywhere to thermal detection. Hmm...candle, flashing...I hear gunfire and breaking glass...where's my cell phone? 'We are your friends, do not run...'"

Dr. Switzer: "Do you really think that? It says hear you're lying..."

Naz: "Of course! Everything I say is the lie? Mater's trix! You too! And we're both right because of that."

Dr. Switzer: "Okay, Naz, relax. No one's going to blow up the world. And even if that did happen, that wouldn't be the end. We'd learn our lessons."

Naz: "And after that? Global shopping mall, glass-bubbled cities with a Vegas temple? 'What's a tree, Mom?' ---'Oh, nothing, Dear, you just eat those crispy fluffy sugar-coated, vitiman-enriched, Pink-Os. Each with syntho-veggie goodness!' 'Sickly sweet fake green cream crap inside, knew it. Thanks, Maw.' Why are we still here? Green's showing us the way out! He saw! He went---up---even apes got a clue: birdman brothers, Wright brothers in 1903, then we'll be on the fucking moon, bam, and we stopped in 1972?"

Dr. Switzer: "Well, I'm not sure it was, exactly, that year, the this indicates---"

Naz: "Fuck that thing. We have the technology right now to build a ship, anyone could build their own ship, in their own backyard, and go. Instead we're looking at, looking into, looking out of squares."

Dr. Switzer: "I'm not following you...squares?"

Naz: "Monolithic proportions, psychologically; reversed, reflective? Dividing? Cross? Inverted perception. Box, what are you staring into right this moment? Computer square, with another square inside---the glass screen...and then? More...boobies, cubed?"

Dr. Switzer: "Are you saying that, like babies staring and head for three concentric circles, a breast, so do we; are these shapes 'henids?'"

Naz: "De-con-struct it all, all the memes!---that's what I needed to do...build an ark made of light."

Dr. Switzer: "Well, I'm afraid it's a lot more complicated than all that, my dear Naz. There are substantial costs involved with---"

Naz: "Bah..fucking ninny. Duct tape and wielding equipment. Electric waterwheel in an energy shell, build the frame and get a spark to take off. Wham, anywhere you want. Slingshot and a jetpack? Crossbow capsule? Space seed? The source is everywhere, pick one and get to work. Fucking eh..."

Dr. Switzer: "Heh. Well, that's very amusing, Naz, but---"

Naz: "But again with you!"

Dr. Switzer: "Calm---"

Naz: "No, you get un-calm, I'm tired of adapting to you, psycho borg...."

Dr. Switzer: "Naz, what is one's nature?"

Naz: "Our collective purpose. A logically ordered, random set of elements within DNA that encodes purpose. Mission of a species---consciousness of flight---spear--bow--arrow; plight, then flight, then finally space travel. Evolutionary cycle reset for humanity."

Dr. Switzer: "Well, very good, Naz. Speculations are fun! I'm sure you've had a long day with us, but we appreciate your truthfulness."

Naz: "Can I go now, to my underground bunker? I need to put a bullet through my skull!""

Dr. Switzer: "In a moment, Naz. What we've learned is that his one lie occured with sarcasm, but the remainder he believed to be true. This concludes---"

Naz: "Alo?"
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Jamesh
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