Feel free to attack without mercy any or all of the ideas contained in this post.
Just a suggestion.
>>consciousness, as we experience it, is a sort of self-generated
>>misunderstanding by which the brain imagines it's something other than
>>either: a) a mass of blinking cellbodies and the proteins spewed from
their
>>quivering axonic cables; or b) the vanguard of the proletariat.
>
>A self-generated misunderstanding. I like that. There's a lot of value in
>living out misunderstandings -- as with accidents in chemical labs, they're
>often the source of new material that couldn't have been arrived at through
>plodding, methodical logic.
You're awfully agreeable. So consciousness is a kind of accident, a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity. We're not really "individuals" after all. There's no singularity of "self." There's no freedom or intention or emotion or thought or memory or desire or anything. Just brain cells arranged in neat rows. That's all we find when we peek under the hood. The mind is nothing but imagery, and consciousness is what imagines it all. Of course, the primary image created by consciousness is consciousness itself. Otherwise, there would be nothing to imagine all those other images!
>I'm not arguing that biology is fate (that we are only the product of
>our biology). I'm arguing for considering the possibility that biology and
>history -- biology and choice, biology and consciousness -- carry on a sort
>of conversation within us.
But what *are* we except our biological and social history? We are bodies, and we are relations among bodies. The self is simply the overlap. There's no essence to the self, just as there's no essence to human nature. We have no nature, either as individuals or as a species. There's a conversation going on alright, but it's not within us, because there is no us (aside from the conversation itself, that is.)
>It's my guess that we do come up with new
>material that nature never thought of, and that may be what makes us
>different from all the other critters -- uniquely human, you might say.
>Other animals have rudimentary language, other animals can learn to use
>tools, but none of them bother to (re)write themselves the way we feel
>compelled to do. And isn't it likely that the process of writing and
>rewriting our history (our relationships to each other) is what gives us
>the chance to define who we are? And doesn't this often require that we
>reject our biologically impelled urges?
What is it that makes us unique? So what if the computer in our brain is accurate to a few more digits than is achievable in the brains of less fortunate creatures. The point is, they are simply "other animals." We're animals too. Arf. Arf. See? Just symbols-- that's all. So the symbols spoken by humans happen to involve a little more subtlety than those uttered by your typical furry beast. Mere degrees of difference. The animal has the urge to scratch itself. The human has the urge to believe that it has some kind of existence beyond scratching itself.
>I've raised, killed and carved chickens, and I think their
>physical bodies are the most complicated things about them.
A fine occupation. But do you mean to say there's something to a chicken other than its "physical body"? You mean there's some kind of nonphysical "entity" involved in chickens? Where is this nonphysical chicken? Can you point to it?
>>When history's a mere
>>subset of biology, then it's really one thing "interacting" with itself,
>>isn't it?
>
>In a sense, and yet, in the alchemical lab that is the human brain I
>believe we're capable of coming up with definitions of humanity that go
>right over evolution's head -- that allow us to leapfrog over the shackles
>of biology. It's a quaint concept, perhaps, but it has its merits.
So, we're all deep in our brains, playing with our chemicals. Okay... then how come we don't know intimate details about the workings of the brain? Why are all levels of brain function totally hidden from us? Yet somehow we're in there defining ourselves beyond evolution and breaking the shackles of biology. We're leaping around like frogs in there. We seem to know our way around, but really we have no idea whatsoever, and no one has ever seen anyone in a brain, so maybe we're really not in there after all because there's nothing other than *there* in there. Everywhere we look, inside our bodies or out, we're just not there. We're nowhere. At least we know *when* we are. We are right now. But the problem with right now is that it keeps changing. On many occasions I've been afflicted with the powerful sensation that it's the present, only to discover a moment later that it was really the past. It's always such a letdown. At first it's not so bad, because at least it's the very recent past. What's incredible, though, is how far into the past right now is capable of receding. There seems to be no limit. No limit to how far away from ourselves we can drift if we're not paying attention.
Ted