But, in my opinion the so called varsity-level games in philosophy can be drier than chewing on saw dust.
So JV is the better forum for us amatuers, I say!
In this week's The Stone entry, the well-known author Sam Harris, makes a case for the value of “spirituality,” which he bases on his experiences in meditation.. It is a brilliant article!
Might I request that you don't lose patience till you get to the middle of the interview - because it picks up a lot of steam there. Also, Sam Harris is a rabble rouser, and there is a good chance he could offend your sensibilities.
While I am not comparing him to Spinoza by any stretch, I use Spinoza as an example to say, that let us not forget that Spinoza was ex-communicated from his community due to his thoughts - and several hundred years later, they still have trouble expunging that edict.
Here is The Stone article:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
And here are my thoughts on the article:
What is the observation Sam Harris is getting at? And does it have merit? I would like to focus a little bit on that and see what your thoughts and reflections are in this regard.
A. Verification. We can endlessly go back and forth on scientific verification? Sam Harris makes a subtle point here.
- A single person on an island can be a good scientist, without anyone else there to verify their work! It is still science.
- However, a single person diving into their own mind, cannot formulate and verify what is happening on one of the moons of Saturn.
Both of the above statements are true!
B. Illusion. We stick to an illusion since it is convenient.
At a casual glance, one might see the square and thing of the four circles are attendant figures. But the central picture is that of the square. However, upon closer inspection, there is no square! It is an illusion created by the four 3/4 sized circles.
This is the metaphor he uses to discuss the sense of self.
C. Self. A discussion of Self
There are two questions we can ask in terms of Self-hood
Who are you (reader) according to me, the writer of this note (this would be independent verification)
or
Who are you according to yourself (self-verification)
The salient point that Sam Harris is making is that in either case the judgement could be wrong as long as you are using thoughts to construct the answer. Rather, the answer lies in the space between the thoughts (when there are none).
Meaning it is only when there are no thoughts, does the unreal 'square' of the example above disappear, and the reality of the 4 circles appear.
D. Joke. A terrific joke (as posted by one of the commentors on the article). The joke is on the difference between Hume and Kant
Hume: I've been peering in the windows of my house. Although it looks like someone lives there (eg. plates of food on the table, later the food is gone and dirty plates are in the sink, etc.), when peering in the windows many times I have never seen anyone in there! So I conclude that altho' it appears that someone lives there, that is, empirically speaking, an illusion. Stuff happens, but there is no self who is actually doing the stuff.
Kant: You idiot! It's YOUR house, and of course when you go outside and look in, you can't see yourself in there because you've gone outside to look in! But if there were not a you, a self, doing the looking from outside, you couldn't see the stuff that happened!!! And when you go back inside, you aren't outside looking in.
E. Emergence. Where I stand after all this cogitation is still in the 'emergence theory' camp. Which as articulated very eloquently by another reader, is as follows
Consciousness is the emergent property of a properly functioning brain. This is demonstrated in cases of malfunction, when the physical brain fails or is injured, people can fall into comas or have their basic personalities -- their "selfs" -- changed radically.
These cases of malfunction and their effects on people make it unequivocal that consciousness and the self are products of the brain and do not exist independently of the brain. Not a single shred of convincing evidence has so far been adduced to show otherwise, but lots of evidence points in the direction of materialism.
Now it might be fun to speculate about breaking down the concept of consciousness, but to my (physically generated) mind it's a little pointless, since the emergent property of consciousness is nebulous and almost impossible to grasp. It's like motorbikes trying to understand the workings of "speed" -- an emergent property of their engines functioning properly -- in the same way they understand the workings of the carburetor. It can't be done.
But no doubt conscious motorbikes would develop a notion of "speed" as existing independently of their physical engines, that they would go on zooming along the eternal road in the sky long after their spark plugs ceased to fire. And they'd be just as deluded as religionists fantasizing about an eternal soul that is really their own sense of self, generated by their brains.
5 comments:
Illusion actually tricks our senses- In particular, our eyes. Optical illusions and Magician's ricks are classical examples. It is not that we accept illusions. We have actually,no choice.
Discussion of self is also interesting. Raman to Surya and Surya to Raman, both are illusions!
There is no reality for either of them! Once Raman is gone,there is no Raman. So, while he exists, he is only an illusion - for another illusion -Surya!
Even the discussion between Hume and Kant are also illusions since, the observer himself is an illusion! Unfortunately, most of the discussions on the consciousness and soul assume that the persons making the discussions are real. Trying to understand consciousness is like a molecule trying to find its own structure. It can not be done.
However, discussion about ideas like consciousness and soul are interesting for the same reasons why scientists try to understand the manifestations of the subatomic state and the super macroscopic state, knowing fully well that there is always an uncertainty involved in their conclusions and they have to make a lot of assumptions ( often,absurd) to arrive at the results they want. A physicist is one who assumes a horse to be like a soccer ball as it is convenient for mathematical formulation and solution.
Some additional thoughts.
I used to tell my students that the table in front of me does not exist! They used to wonder how I will prove that. I used to say, 'if you stack a number of balls inside a jar, at its best, only 54 % of the space can be filled (the rest will be the inter space between the balls. So, even if atoms in this table are stacked very close, 46% is empty. Now the atoms themselves have 96% empty space between the nucleus and the electrons. So,even in the 46%, most of it does not exist. The small percentage of the table that is still left can be considered as energy according to Einstein's postulate and hence, even that not exist. Hence the table does not exist'! The students used to thump the table and say ' then what is this'?, i used to say that it is an illusion because, by the same argument, you yourself do not exist! That is how we get back to the point we were discussing that everything around us is simply an illusion.
Recently, Physicists discovered that it is possible that the entire universe including our earth and every thing in it is simply a two dimensional hologram! This is very interesting and fits into exactly what we are discussing. Briefly, in a hologram, there will be bright and dark spots ( Constructive and destructive interference) which consist of the entire information of the object. The interesting point is that the information is spread in ALL the points and not in individual dark or bright spots. This is the reason, when a hologram is torn into two pieces, unlike in a photograph, there will be two full objects in both the pieces!
In terms of the universe being a hologram, it means all the thing that exists in it is simply a manifestation of information spread into various points of existence and non existence. So, it may appear that the discrete points are real but just as either the dark or the bright spots themselves do not have the complete information, any individual object does not have all the information. It means that in the small spot (Earth) in which we live itself ( let alone us) is real. It is simply a part of a huge hologram! There is nothing real about any single part of a hologram. The entire object in a hologram will not be seen until it is reconstructed. Even then, it will appear as a suspended object only and which you actually can not touch!
Perhaps this approaches the argument which the two great philosophers are arriving at.
Here’s what I liked:
"And certain truths about the nature of our minds are well worth knowing. For instance, the anger you felt yesterday, or a year ago, isn’t here anymore, and if it arises in the next moment, based on your thinking about the past, it will quickly pass away when you are no longer thinking about it. This is a profoundly important truth about the mind — and it can be absolutely liberating to understand it deeply. If you do understand it deeply — that is, if you are able to pay clear attention to the arising and passing away of anger, rather than merely think about why you have every right to be angry — it becomes impossible to stay angry for more than a few moments at a time. Again, this is an objective claim about the character of subjective experience. And I invite our readers to test it in the laboratory of their own minds."
This lesson is indeed one of the central lessons of meditation. 1) that we let the prefrontal cortex run its tapes that defines our neuroses over and over and 2) that mental storms like anger, fear, greed, jealousy and many other emotional overreactions, are profitably thought of as electrical storms over which we can gain some control, often times just by seeing them for what they are.
But here’s where he, and Buddhists in general, take this lesson too far:
"The same is true about the conventional sense of self — the feeling of being a subject inside your head, a locus of consciousness behind your eyes, a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts. This form of subjectivity does not survive scrutiny. If you really look for what you are calling “I,” this feeling will disappear. In fact, it is easier to experience consciousness without the feeling of self than it is to banish the white square in the above image."
This bit, though constantly preached in the Buddhist tradition, does not make sense:
"The moment that you truly break the spell of thought, you can notice what consciousness is like between thoughts — that is, prior to the arising of the next one. And consciousness does not feel like a self. It does not feel like “I.” In fact, the feeling of being a self is just another appearance in consciousness (how else could you feel it?)."
A former Phenomenologist would ask Mr. Harris, “OK, so who’s having those feelings?”
Also, rather than the motorbike analogy, I’d like to go with my trusty ‘flocking’ analogy. This analogy works for both consciousness and agency (or free will). As you know, the point of the flocking analogy is to point out the central quality of complex systems – that such systems don’t reduce to the sum of their parts. Flocking, herding, fish schooling are, in this framework, the emergent phenomenon arising from the individual subject animal’s need to find protection in company – but not run into them, and yet move to the center of the grouping where the greatest protection lies. You can tear their brains apart on the operating table and not find any ‘flocking’ algorithm. Just as you can tear the human mind apart and not find consciousness.
In other words, there is no ‘central mind’ or ‘controlling force’ managing flocking behaviour. It arises as an added, or emergent, phenomenon from the ‘three rule of flocking.’ And it naturally happens when a particular configuration or set of relationships of the individual parts (animals of a certain instinctual nature, in this case) exists.
So to, as you point out, with consciousness when neurons are in a particular configuration or set of relationships of their individual cells. So far, so good.
Now you need to up it to the next emergent phenomenon phase shift – we’ll call it ‘agency’ (or free will). It too, in my view, is the emergent phenomenon of consciousness with in a particular set of cognitive functioning relationships in human minds at certain level of consciousness. You might say that agency (free will) is an epiphenomenon (a secondary or additional phenomenon) of the consciousness phenomenon.
Harris is quite right that the sense of a Self is not something like a homunculus (a little person in our brain that is running the show) is quite faulty. But the fact is, flocks exist, consciousness exists, and agency or ‘Self’ also exists. It’s just not as tight and simple a phenomenon as our ‘common sense’ of it suggests.
Definitely interesting except that he supplies certainty to his doctrines vis a vis others. But that is so with people who advance any doctrine.
For the one whose temperament is to look into his own 'self', faith in theistic gods may not appeal.
But for the one with theistic faith, self enquiry may be boring to the core. There is no point in debunking anyone's faith.
For the one who has faith in Christ or Hanuman (the derisive reference as monkey god could have been avoided by the writer), they stand for many exalted values, even one of which cannot possibly be matched by the writer. It is the spirit of sacrifice, un-matched courage, life long celibacy, humility beyond compare of these two (gods) that evoke a response from the faithfuls.
What is wrong in that?
While the man may pursue his own quest, he should allow others to pursue theirs?
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