Reality Check

The best book I have ever read is The Mind's I, an anthology of essays compiled by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett.  Through Science, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Literature the book probes and examines the conundrum of subjective existence - consciousness.  It was published in 1981 - and was a sensation back then following on the heels of Hofstadter's own tour de force, Godel Escher and Bach.

Since it was an anthology, I have had over thirty years not only access to the great minds thinking about this issue all in one book, but a long list of references to works by each of them (Thomas Nagel, Raymond Smullyan, Richard Dawkins, Stanislaw Lem, Luis Borge being some examples).

Thus, it being a source book of the core problem that deeply interests me (consciousness, that is), this is my best book ever, and has stayed so even after 30 years of reading and referencing!  Hail Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (and Thomas Nagel)!

You may well ask, what then rounds out my top 5 books of all time; and they would be Chaos by James Gleick, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, The Way of Zen by Alan Watts.

Rather than just write a review of the book, The Mind's I or a review of an excerpt in the book, I have always been of the mind that I should write my own essay, that reflects learnings from the book and its various contributors, but brings my own authentic sensibility to the 'fantasies and reflections of self and soul' as the sub-title of the book, The Mind's I suggests.

This below then, is my mini-essay, 'Reality Check' in that regard.

Hope you enjoy it!!

Reality Check:

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I.  Introduction

"What is the true nature of reality?  And what is my relationship to it?"  This is the intractable question I have been going round and round trying to think about.    I have an emerging point-of-view that I thought I would write about.  However it is worth spending time on the question itself.


II.  The question

The question has an outer and an inner component.  The first part of the question asks what is true outside?

This I believe is the scientific quest.  For example I am going to take a drop of water and study it so deeply that I will understand and describe what water is - its composition, its properties, its interrelationships and also its applications.  The physicist takes this question further into its core and asks what is at the root of all the atoms, protons, quarks and how does matter behave at its very core.  What is energy?  How is one form of energy different from another.  We are all children of the first half of the question.  We look at our outside world through the lens of engineering, the sciences, math, psychology, finance etc and try to describe the world at its core.  And it is true that he/she who gets to a particular natural-science behavioral law gets to use it and becomes powerful and wealthy!  The discoverers and inventors fall in the category.

That was a rumination on the first half of the question, "What is the true nature of reality?  And what is my relationship to it?"

The second half of the question is 180 degrees different.  It turns the question inwards.  We don't really care to ask the question "What is the true nature of reality" were it not for the fact that YOU ARE ASKING IT!  The drama of the universe gains potency and force because YOU are asking the question!  So the second half of the question "And what is my relationship to it?" means we need to understand who is asking that question.    And finally, what does the word relationship in the second half of the question mean?  Relationship between you and reality - what is that?

I understand the relationship between me and my siblings.  Between my teacher and me, and so on.  But what is the relationship between me and the 'quark inside the water molecule' (using the example above)?  So the question, it seems to me carries a potent force of the entire nature of our individual existence and the entire environment within with we exist.

So, with your permission, I now repeat the question: "What is the true nature of reality?  And what is my relationship to it?"

III.  What am I attached to?

Let us say, I love the leaf on my garden tree.  Wow!  Beautiful leaf.  However, it is the Fall season now, and that leaf turns yellow, orange and then brown and goes into the ground as mulch. I say never mind, the tree will come up with more leaves.  So I am not attached to one leaf, but leaves of the tree.  Then lets say the whole tree rots and dies.  I will say, never mind, it is the garden with all the trees that makes it great - I am attached to the garden and not the tree (or the leaf).  Then I sell my house and go to another house.  Never mind, I am not attached to that garden, I am attached to this garden.

I would hope that you think this is a valid example that illustrates the problem in the original question I have posed.  What is the level at which I fix my gaze and say this is me that is you (the world) and we have a relationship!

IV.  Modes of perception

Lets now journey into figuring out how we respond to this question.  I experience a dichotomy (tri-chotomy really), when I personally ponder this question.  This 'tri-chotomy' is best illustrated by the following example.  Let us say I want to measure the diameter of a water-well and compare it to the engineering drawing I have in my hand (evidently to make some repairs to the well)

Head  - Favors the English Philosopher David Hume's approach to life, and says 'hmmm, there is something wrong with the drawing, the well measures differently from what the engineering drawing shows"

Heart - Favors Idealization of the European Continentals.  "There is something wrong with my measurement.  The drawing calls for a different diameter!"

Soul - Favors the Transcendentalist approach (I suppose) and says, "What do I have to do with this well?  Why bother measuring it?"

It seems to me that either the path of the head, or the heart or the soul (or whatever it is that is emergent beyond my muscles and sinews) is incomplete on its own - i.e a rational apporach, an emotional approach or an intuitive approach are all each insufficient on their own to attempt to answer the question.  You need to combine all three modes of perception.

IV.  Haiku as a way

I believe more than Philosophers, Artists can stake a broader claim on this score.    It seems to me that an artist is a skilled perceiver of 'reality'.  And the artist then renders the reality, be it on canvas, or in a musical note, in verse or a mandala.   The composer of the Fusion Jazz CD, Chateau Benares, states this thus:  "It is as if you (the artist) gets to see reality when this dark world is  lit up when there is a flash of lightning.  The artist then records in a hurry what he saw during the flash.  It is darkness again thereafter."

VI.  Summary

I am a huge fan of Robert Frost.  There is a truly well written and thought provoking essay on Frost and 'perceptions of reality'.   The very last paragraph of the essay (on the importance of using proverbs) is very fitting and strikes back to the first point I make in this essay, regarding talking with contemporary sensibilities in mind.

When I posed this question to a philosopher friend of mine, who has a PhD and did a dissertation in Wittgenstein, he said "Groan.  Could it be possible to answer this question in a response?  In a book? In a lifetime?  A great deal of philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to Wittgenstein and Heidegger is addressed to answering just this question.  Can't say that we think we could better any of them.  But this is an essential question that we humans seem to be programmed to ask!"

So there you are, we can ask the question, and spend a lifetime and not know the answer...


Surya


Readings:

- The Mind's I - Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (ALL the writers and thinkers anthologized in that book)
http://themindi.blogspot.com/

- The Heraclitus of New Hampshire (essay on Robert Frost) - Eric Ormsby
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/the-heraclitus-of-new-hampshire-3190

- What is it like to be a bat - Thomas Nagel
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html

- Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism - Thomas Nagel
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-defends-religion/