There was an interesting discussion and I wrote it down.
There was a film presentation with discussion at rue d'Ulm, organized by Cognivence on the 11th of february. Ghost in a shell, by Mamoru Oshii, followed by a discussion with Kevin O'Regan and Benoît Girard.
I am realizing cognitive sciences are really sexy, and getting sexier with time !
I was expecting the film about the philosopher Daniel Dennett, with his white beard... :-) so quite surprised to see philosophico-artistic manga.
Ok, no, on the poster the protagonist cyborg has too many ropes, cables and tubes hanging to be sexy... But in the film she is not wearing them, although she is quite often nude.
It was about the questions of human / non-human, can cyborgs have a "ghost" (kind of equivalent of soul of spirit). Nice images and music, but I was wondering what kind of discussion would come out of that.
Then came Kevin. And as the discussion started on general "Can machines be conscious", he showered the assembly with what I understood to be ideas from his new book. (But I didn't find references to the book.) Here are some ideas, and the notes in french hidden below.
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Can machines be conscious?
Well, we cannot say if something is conscious or not. Or has free will or not. But if the thing thinks that he has free will and consciousness, if he says "I", that's quite a good argument for it.
Anyway, why are we so passionate about believing that we have a "self"? Free will ? And the machines don't?
Actually to believe that one has a self and free will is very useful for communication and for living in a society.
The "me" is a social illusion.
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About free will, I remembered the chocolate cookie experiment, that actually I first heard from a jazz pianist. Here it goes:
You are hungry, and you have a french chocolate cookie in from of you on the table.
Le petit pain au chocolat
You move your hand to grab it. And you think that you want to grab it and to eat it. If you were asked what you are doing, you would say that first, you decided that you wanted to grab it and eat it, and then you moved you hand. Of course you think that you have free will and you decide what you want.
But actually, this is not what is happening. Your hand moves first, and it is already halfway when you actually realize that you want to grab the cookie...
That is quite a thing when you realize it. It is really quick. But the consciousness comes after. If you observe yourself, you can notice it. You can catch your hand moving by itself.
I asked the reference book: Daniel Wegner: The Illusion of Conscious Will
***
And Kevin went on:
Self is a social illusion. Like money.
Of money, you can say that:
- it is real. We are using it !
- it is a social illusion. If tomorrow, we all come to agree that it is an illusion, then it collapses. Because actually it is only paper.
The self is just like money.
Well, not exactly, of course. A big difference is that it is auto-referent. (What did Kevin exactly mean by that? I didn't get this one.)
But it is quite like money. If the self did not exist, the society would collapse.
There are ways to get out of it. Different cultures create different ways to escape temporarily from the self.
In hypnosis, the self disappears.
A friend of Kevin went to a ball in Oxford. Hypnosis is quite trendy, so they announced that there would be a Hypnosis Expert on that ball. Kevin's naughty friend wanted to see how it works, and he presented himself as the Hypnosis Expert to a young person. Then he did one move, and the young person fainted immediately.
Actually it is very easy to hypnotize anybody, and to get hypnotized. All books on hypnosis talk about that. It can be enough to read a text to a patient, you can even be hypnotized by reading the text to yourself.
Hypnosis is a social phenomena. One just lets one's self be grabbed by somebody else.
It is clearly a social phenomena because it is easy to hypnotize nearly anybody, but only people from cultures where the concept of hypnosis is known. If the concept is unknown, then it does not work. But societies can have many other ways out from the self. Usually every society produces bizarre states where one can get rid of the self for a while.
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Next life I will study trance in Bali from this point of view...
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If you click on the stars below, you can find my notes in french, half is what I translated.
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On a parlé de robotique. Comment faire un robot qui puisse aider un vieille dame à se lever... Ça fait un peu hypocrite, maintenant qu'il y a la vidéo du robot-tank qui circule, on pourra peut-être bientôt faire une petite machine qui tue les gens tout seul, sans aucune intervention humaine. Mais on fait ce qu'on peut. Si c'est un phénomène émergeant, qu'on construise des machines pour tuer des gens, ça implique qu'aucune des particules (chercheurs) n'est responsable du résultat, j'imagine... (?)
Quand est-ce qu'on peut dire que quelque chose est conscient ? On ne peut pas vraiment. Beaucoup de débats. Mais si la chose prétend avoir le libre arbitre, s'il pense qu'il est conscient, s'il dit "je", alors ça paraît être ça.
Le "moi" est une illusion sociale.
Pourquoi est-ce qu'on s'acharne à penser qu'on a un "soi"? Et un libre arbitre?
En fait, penser le libre arbitre est très utile pour bien communiquer et vivre en société.
Je me suis souvenue de la question de la main tendue vers le pain au chocolat. Si j'ai faim, ma main se sera tendue et aura peut-être même saisi le pain au chocolat avant que je me dise consciemment: "Je veux le pain au chocolat." Ca, c'est la verbalisation à postériori.
Daniel Wegner: The Illusion of Conscious Will
L'autre chercheur invité a parlé de son expérience de l'aikido. Le maître a pu le renverser par terre sans même le toucher, en utilisant l'écart temporel infime entre ce qu'il voulait faire (attraper le poignet du maître) et ce qu'il était en train de faire (suivre le trajet du poignet, et, pris dans l'élan d'un constant recalcul de la trajectoire, tomber par terre.)
***
L'argent.
On peut en dire que
- c'est réel. On l'utilise.
- c'est une illusion sociale. Si demain, on décide que c'est une illusion, alors ça s'écroule. Car en fait, c'est du papier.
Le Je, c'est comme l'argent. Sauf qu'en plus c'est auto-référent. (Pas tout à fait compris.)
Si le Je n'existait pas, la société se désagrègerait.
Il y a des échappatoires. L'hypnose est un échappatoire qu'a notre culture, cela crée un moment où le Je cesse d'exister.
Un ami de Kevin a été à un bal à Oxford. On avait annoncé qu'il y aurait un hypnotiseur. L'ami s'est dit qu'il va voir si ça marche. Il s'est présenté à quelqu'un disant que c'est lui l'hypnotiseur, lui (je ne sais plus... dit quelque chose ? l'a touché ?) en tous cas en une seconde, la personne est tombée évanouie.
C'est très facile d'hypnotiser. De se faire hypnotiser. Les livres sur l'hypnose l'écrivent. Il peut suffire de lire le texte à dire au patient, et on s'ets hypnotisé soi-même.
L'hypnose est un phénomène social. On se dit qu'on a le droit de laisser notre Je être accaparé par quelqu'un d'autre.
C'est clair que c'est un phénomène social. Il est très facile d'hypnotiser, mais seulement dans les sociétés où l'on connaît le concept d'hypnose. Si le concept n'est pas connu, alors ça ne marche pas. Mais dans les sociétés humaines, il y a généralement des phénomènes bizarres pour se désaccaparer de son Je.
Il faut une société pour avoir un Je.
Pour la conscience, si on dit que c'est quelque chose qui regarde quelque chose d'autre faire quelque chose, ça induit des boucles rétroactives qui n'en finissent pas. (Pas sûre d'avoir compris.)
Le fait de dire que c'est social
- enlève une aura de mysticisme autour de la question
- décrit bien le fonctionnement des agents que nous sommes
- est auto-référent: fait émerger des éléments
- c'est comme l'argent: ça marche parce que ça marche socialement
Le libre arbitre.
Selon les niveaux de description, ce sera libre ou pas.
- Au niveau de l'individu, on a bien l'impression qu'il a un libre arbitre
- Si des martiens arrivent et lui regardent dans le cerveau, ils vont pouvoir expliquer pourquoi il a fait telle ou telle chose: ils verront qu'il n'est pas libre.
La conscience: c'est aussi un mot que nous utilisons pour décrire notre comportement. Il sert à ça.
La "vie": cela décrit un certain type de comportement.
A une époque, on cherchait la "vis vitalis", la force vitale.
En fait, la vie est entretenue par le fonctionnement des entités qu'on appelle vivantes.
La "conscience", c'est pareil. C'est dans la constitution des agents qu'on appelle vivants. Si on cherche comment ça apparaît dans les micro-tubules ou les neurones, ça ne fait pas avancer.
Il faut changer le mode d'explication. On ne peut pas "expliquer" la vie ou la conscience.
Au Moyen Age, les gens étaient fascinés par le fait qu'on prenne une lettre, on y ajoute une lettre et encore une lettre, et ça fait un mot ! Avec du sens ! Incroyable ! Alors on s'est mis à chercher le sens dans les lettres.
Pour Kevin, c'est de la science stupide. Et il est tout aussi stupide de chercher la conscience dans les neurones. C'est une mauvaise question.
Les questions réelles, c'est par exemple : Comment fonctionne la respiration? Comment fonctionne la réplication des gènes ?
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hello aniko!
ReplyDeleteNice blog! I hope you keep it going!
You say you don't understand why I said that the self was a social construct like money, with the additional property that it was "auto-referent".
What I mean by that is the following. Money is a construct that is used by *PEOPLE*. It works because PEOPLE agree that it should be useful.
But the self is a construct that is used by SELVES. It works because SELVES agree it should be useful.
In the case of money, what makes it work is its usefulness to something else.
In the case of selves, what makes it work is its usefulness to *the same thing* (namely selves).
I think douglas hofstadter has a book: "I am a strange loop", which i have not yet read, but which I expect says something very similar!
Keep up the good work Aniko!
Kevin
Cool article.
ReplyDeleteFunny enough I'm coming onto just the same issues, only from a spiritual perspective, non-duality. But it ends up in the same area, there's no Self, and there's no volition.
I find it very interesting about the cookie. It explains why we become happier when we give up control, because all we're doing is fighting what already happened, or justify it.
I think I've noticed sometimes that I've reacted to a sound before the sound occurred. I wonder if that's related? Kevin?
hello eolake. I don't know about reacting to the sound before it occurs. On the other hand people sometimes have the impression that their bodies react *before* they decide what to do with their minds. This is compatible with Daniel Wegner's theory about free will being an illusion: he says that you construct a story that you wanted to do whatever your body did, *after* you do it, and you convince yourself you decided to do it before you did.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much.
ReplyDeleteAniko,
ReplyDeleteI think you should try some of Masamune's other works, the first two manga for Ghost in the Shell (1.0 and 2.0) have footnotes on every other page discussing how the advent of the cyborg may come about.
With GIS it seems that the ghost that is most important isn't the souls moved into the cyborg body, but the collective soul that developed in the AI of the central computer(s).
It seems in Sci Fi there are two favored topics for self aware machines, those programmed to be human (Asimov's robots, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Dark Star) and those who become aware accidentally, (The Earth is a Harsh Mistress, GIS, Collossus-The Forbin Project, Speaker for The Dead).
As for me, do I believe machines are alive? You must have stood within 50ft of a steam engine at once, so you know that machines can be alive. Are they self aware? Some are aware of their environment and their interface to it, but they do not have the freedom to learn for themselves yet.
And for reacting before a sound? In an electronic circuit an input source may be hardware disjoint from the controller. On detecting data, like a sound, an "interrupt" signal wakes the controller, which then can get the data from the buffer in the input device.
I kinda like to think that waking just before a sound at night is my noggin, or CPU, has been woken by the sound interrupt, and I then "remember" or "recall" the sound from my hearing buffer when my brain is first awake.
It's an interesting analogy, and who can say what is real and what is imaginary anyway?
Quite so.
ReplyDeleteNeuromancer is one of my favorite AI novels.
Aniko, what's a Bo Sho?
Thank you all for the comments! So great to have so great comments on this new-born blog!
ReplyDeleteKevin, thank you so much for the explanations!
I will have to digest it.
I do like clear cut explanations. Take a brave thought and apply it.
It resonates with experience I have from theater. There is that very moment when you get into the role, and become it. And well, there is certainly all the technical work behind (work on the voice, learn the text), but on the stage there is something grabbing you that makes you so much really become the character. Letting the everyday self go seems to be a good description. I was astonished how much I felt organized differently inside when I played. It was high school, I guess we experimented other selves through theater. We were really playing on "becoming the role", not on building it up to make it look good. I am not sure it looked good :-), but it was intense experimentation.
Have you considered theater as a "letting the self go" experience? (Though partially letting go.)
And the experience of the anthropologist on the field. I am thinking about my first year in Indonesia. At a certain point I just felt... dissolved.
ReplyDeleteI should think more about how to describe that in these terms.
I just remember arriving, as a counter-reaction, to a state of clinging so strongly on the anthropologist me that is was not really bearable neither to me nor to the surrounding.
Actually there is a crisis usually after the forth month for the anthropologists on their field.
Well, this is a thread I have to explore in the description of my fieldwork, and it may even be of interest for you.
Thanks for the talk and the comments! :-)
Being aware of a sound before one hears it.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a nice case. One has a nearly supernatural experience, and then knowing more about
- electronic circuits, that can have so much to do with how a cognitive system works, for example with the concept of buffering
- and about how the whole stuff is only partially monitored by consciousness
gives it a precise, convincing description. (I am not saying we went until the end of the road here, but the direction is set.)
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Now about perceiving an engine as alive, it has much to do with the architecture of the cognitive system. We have different processing systems for objects and for animated beings. These were developed adapted to the environment through the long thousand years we spent with no steam engines around. The input is taken, shortly analyzed to categorize it, and then sent to the appropriate processing system. Well, if there is something big, moving and making sound by itself, it will be most probably categorized as a living being, the information will be sent to that system. The appropriate sub-systems will be activated, that would not activated for things categorized as objects: detection of intentions, for example. And as a feed-back to your conscience, you will get the "feeling" that it is alive.
I am actually quite happy to be born in the era we start understanding the subtle functioning of the brain...
(Brain, Schmain, it's all run by the non-physical mind, methinks.)
ReplyDeleteMy main beyond-self method is making paintings or photos.
Only problem is through spiritual experiences I became so good at it, the ego being dismantled so fast, that it's higly painful, so I have to be careful.
"I am actually quite happy to be born in the era we start understanding the subtle functioning of the brain..."
ReplyDeleteMe too, it is very exciting - about 30 years ago I have read the book "Biologie der Erkenntnis" (by Rupert Riedl, Parey Verlag, ISBN 3-489-60534-9). It has helped me very much to understand better the evolution (of course other books, too), starting from the simplest possible forms and building up layers over layers over layers ... I don't know, maybe millions of layers up to the growing of selfreflexive patterns of human brains. During this process weaving subunits of layer networks, which in turn are summarized into higher units of layer networks in a hierarchical way, and so on ...
And if you look at the interaction/communication of ANY layer or layer subnetwork with the surrounding: In every layer/subunit/unit it boils down to a simple algorithm of a decision process (*), based on a "subjective probability" or better "certainty", related to that layer and to its own evaluation scale, which in turn reflects/consists the whole surrounding and therefore extracts the rules/laws of the environment, learning/unlearning by repetition.
(*) which reminds me on the 5 elements energy pattern map of chinese healing tradition - the element "metal" (which is a horribly deformed translation) is "the sword of clear-cut decision". In Tibetan healing tradition it is the center of all. As far as I remember.
"Leben an sich ist ein erkenntnisgewinnender Prozeß" (Konrad Lorenz, translated: Life itself is a process of gaining insight).
An ongoing flowering of cosmic consciousness into matter, which itself may be described as energy patterns, also emerging in the same way, with their roots in nothingness. A huge big bubble. It seems to expand more and more, creating more and more playing, until - who knows. (And funny, on the human level, if you look at the dynamics of your feelings: Expanding corresponds with love, shrinking corresponds with "Angst" = Einengung/narrowing. Flow and obstruction.)
Or, as Jed McKenna expresses it (Damnedest, p.207): " 'How do you do it?' I ask Maya for the thousandth time ... I understand. The only materials she has for the construction of this great edifice are veils so flimsy and transparent that they seem woven of nothing more than wisps of dreamstuff. I suppose if that's all you have to work with, then you're going to learn a lot about creating in layers."
Or, another one from Jed: The universe is a big playful puppy ...
Or, in tantric tradition: The cosmos is godliness playing a love game of hide and seek with itself (or himself, or herself?).
Or read "Glasperlenspiel" by Herrmann Hesse.
(Something similar from Voltaire, more addressing human ego: "God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.")
Just a few thoughts late at night, more on a larger scale, maybe not very organized. Of course, it is all just a map to describe some aspects, a selfreflexive pattern, a beautiful game, and there are many aspects, and many maps, and many beautiful games ... to enjoy.
neeraj
P.S.: I was not able to post it in the night, maybe it's too late - I don't know why it didn't work, no captcha was showing up (javascript and cookies enabled), demanding a plug-in without further explanation ... in Opera, now I'm trying with Firefox.
With Firefox it works - some additional remarks about sexy brain science:
ReplyDeleteConcerning free will: Do you know about the "Bereitschaftspotential" (readiness potential)? See e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereitschaftspotential
It is a brain wave in the area controling muscle movement, occuring about one second BEFORE an intended and willful body movement starts ... so, before you become aware of it, the muscle movements are already going to start. But you think YOU are doing it.
Or the phenomenon of the "Spiegelneuronen" (e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegelneuron), a kind of resonance phenomenon, detected and investigated by Prof. Rizzolatti and his team about 15 years ago:
If you look at somebody else doing an intended e.g. hand movement, following this movement with your eyes only, then YOU have brain waves in these neurons like you would have, if you are DOING the same movement yourself. (Now, I have to brag a little bit: At that time I have coworked with Prof. Rizzolatti and developped and built for him a special eyetracker appropriate for his experimental set-ups - see www.eyetracker-drvoss.com.)
"The "me" is a social illusion" ... and a very useful tool in order to survive on this planet. Same with money.
"... If the concept is unknown, then it does not work." Dou you know about the concept of "Mem"? A Mem is working like a mind-virus spreading in society - if you are not infected, then the content of this Mem will not work on you. There is a lot of literature about that, and a very recommendable live speech by Vera F. Birkenbihl can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=XY60DBP4UQk (in German).
O.k., I'll stop for now.
I can't help to add something else about "sexy science":
ReplyDelete"We have different processing systems ... The input is taken, shortly analyzed to categorize it, and then sent to the appropriate processing system."
As far as I understand it, it seems to be a little bit different:
There are many subunits of information processing systems in our brain (subnetworks of layers as mentioned above, making specific decisions). Each subsystem (of course limited to a set of subsystems in a certain area of the brain) gets ALL information and decides "subjectively" whether it is a "signal" or a "noise" for it. Of course, if there is a "signal", it will be processed further by this subprocessor, spreading out to other processing units.
At least, based on this simple idea, I was able to develop an extremely well working mathematical framework in my dissertation in order to describe a lot of very different experiments about measuring subjective strain triggered by visual informational load. Especially I had investigated how peripheral and central visual stimuli are processed when happening concurrently in very different situations (e.g. during car driving, and other contemporary working places with a lot of informational flow).
Man, was I proud - mathematical frameworks are rare in this field, especially such a simple one working so well. But being proud was only the ego part of the equation - in fact it was a deeply mystical experience writing the dissertation: I had worked for many years and performed a lot of experiments about this complex topic, piling up so many different results ... and then suddenly, triggered by whatever, all misty fog is unveiling, and there is total clarity about the whole thing, the experience of "theory" = literally "seeing godliness showing up".
It was a constantly flowing High to write it all down, sensual and painful at the same time. Falling down late in the night exhausted, waking up after a few hours of sleep, the head full and nearly exploding ... after about two weeks the 200 pages dissertation was finished. Really like a big longtime orgasm. I didn't change anything after that - it was simply finished (and accepted by the university mentors).
After that I can understand the totality of "Heureka"-moments in science.
Maybe this is too far out now. If so => sorry. Nevertheless, it was in a way "very sexy" for me, and I'm very thankful about it.
Thank you for the post, Neeraj!
ReplyDeleteInteresting connections!
You worked with Rizolatti, there is basis to brag with that!
Well, I jumped into cognitive sciences when I heard about mirror neurons. I was definitely interested, but that was the final argument.
And Dawkins' book, the Egoist Gene, where he brings up the Memes in the last chapter, also lead me on that path.
I have now read your second comment: thank you so much for sharing this! I am happy to hear about people in cognitive sciences, and hear that science can still bring such intellectual arousal!
ReplyDeleteI am myself working on my thesis now... Well, it is anthropology, I love it, and it is fighting. Mostly fighting with myself, for now.
Sometimes having larger views... but I try to grasp it and it is gone.
(I need to get more organised.)
Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your experience!
PS: For the memes, they are quite discussed as maybe not being so much representative of what is happening, because genes don't changes, cultural items/stories/concepts do. But it is a very interesting food for thougth.
Thanks ...;-)
ReplyDeleteYou worked with Rizolatti, there is basis to brag with that!
Not to be misunderstood: I didn't work directly involved with him - I just contributed by developping/assembling a special piece of hardware for his experimental set-up.
... that science can still bring such intellectual arousal!
It was really an experience of being totally possessed, about two weeks long. I wouldn't like to miss this experience in my life.
As far as I can say, it seems to be quite rare, too: None of my collegues or any other researcher I've met and talked about that could confirm to have experienced something similar.
And it WAS really total ... no chance to stop in order to do anything else than thinking and writing, even sleeping or going to the toilet couldn't stop thinking feverishly (o.k., the writing part was stopped these times;-). Probably I would have died of hunger, if not my girlfriend had brought something to drink or sandwiches from time to time ...
(It reminds me somehow on Julie's description of processing her spiritual autolysis in the 2nd book of JedMcKenna.)
I wish you a good fight for your thesis :-)
Neeraj, thanks a lot! :-)
ReplyDeleteActually sometimes I have a state of inspiration, when my mind is totally focused and very clear and I see a lot of connections between the diverse pieces of knowledge scattered... But it is hard to maintain the state, and somehow I slip out of it.
ReplyDeleteThat would surely be a non-egoic state.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know these "ups and downs" during my (about 7 years long) preparation of my final writing very well, too. I think it was some kind of prerequisite for the final thing.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would like to share something else about this time, which is also kind of mysterious:
After a few weeks having started working in the research institute I had already found the basic question I wanted to work about for my dissertation. In a way I was in love with that question. As I have come to know from my collegues, this fast going was rather unusual.
However, one day at this early stage I sat on my desk and wrote a wishlist about how I wanted my dissertation to be in the end. About one dozen or a bit more points, very detailed e.g. about the mathematical tools I wanted to use and the mathematical framework I wanted to develop, but also some other special points of experimenting and also about some results. Very detailed. Then I put this list into a drawer and forgot it.
Some years after having finished my dissertation I left the research institute. So, I had to clear my desk, and I found my wishlist, which I had forgotten since more than ten years. And I didn't nearly believe my eyes: EVERY single point was fulfilled! No exception! I was totally shocked. How could I have known the final result in so many details in the early beginning? Or did I shape reality according to my wishlist?
I don't know. But I tend rather to assume the latter one.
Far out ... :-)
Or maybe you knew your mind a lot better than you thought you knew. Which is also amazing, very few people know it so well.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar, though more trivial, incident recently: I went to a local electronics store and looked at the new iPod Nanos, which come in beautiful metallic colors. Spontaneously I bought four of them: green, yellow, orange, and purple.
Now see this post, which was made four months earlier, and which I'd forgotten:
http://tr.im/gWCo
the self is an illusion but if we didn't have it we couldn't physically survive, I like to liken the self to leader of a country and the cells to the people of a country, really there is no such thing as countries, just lots of people and a social agreement, and they have leaders and police forces, laws etc, the self is like the leader, its necessary, makes a discussion when the hierarchy below cant do it, is largely symbolic and can change drastically if it has to
ReplyDeleteSo nice to have discussion on my blog! And such a nice and interesting discussion! Thank you to all of you for sharing your thoughts. Seems it's worth the effort of making the blog. :-)
ReplyDeleteI think I had never considered the question in itself (:-). I thought that we all have a self, that can be shaped, that is shaped by inner and outer forces, that has a kind of geologic stratification, that can be partially modified.
But hearing Kevin O'Regan stating that it does not exist in itself, it is "only" something social... I found it a really elegant statement and a good working hypothesis.
Though it does not mean that the self does not exist. It has to exist, because we are social beings, and we need it for any social interaction.
For "drastic change"... I have seen, but funnily enough I have never experienced it myself. I recognize myself in my earliest memories. I have just gained some self-confidence through the years.
Yes, the comments is what makes it worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteI found some early school essays, and recognized myself totally.
From the tradition I'm into now (nonduality), the Self is the basic of the universe and everything we experience, not the least any suffering/anxiety. If you no longer have fear and conflict, you no longer have Self, and vice versa.
So many aspects => it's easy to get lost ;-) Just a few comments:
ReplyDeleteA supplement to Douglas Hofstadter: His book "Gödel, Escher, Bach" was a bestseller in the eighties, which is a bit strange ... very voluminous, and I think, many who have bought it didn't read it completely;-) Me too, but at least I have read a major part of it. Very interesting and inspiring, and also a lot about "strange loops". Basically a very useful concept, and (being aware of it) also a useful creative tool.
Escher is well known for his "impossible" drawings, and Bach, well, the well known composer. But as far as I know very few know Gödel, except mathematicians: Gödel was a kind of giant in mathematics like Einstein or Planck in physics ... described as simple and nonmathematical as possible he has proved, that in every axiomatic formal system you can make statements which are principally neither provable nor disprovable within that formal system (incompleteness theorems) - a kind of built-in blind spot. Of course a very rough description here, better read Hofstadter (or for a short look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gödel) ...
In that way he has taken away some major solid ground mathematicians thought to have before, resp. wanted still to find ... so, mathematics will never be "finished". Maybe another kind of relativity, if understood as absence of a claim to absoluteness. And the huge bubble will grow and grow ...
Hofstadter tried in his book to describe similarities/analogies of the structures found looking at the very different work of Gödel, Escher and Bach - inspiring (maybe not for all people :-).
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Another aspect I want to comment on is the illusion of the Self. Sukiho, to compare Self with the leader of a country or corporation I see also as one of the possibilities and sometimes as a good map to think and to talk about. Sometimes I use this analogy, too, when I talk to somebody and try to make it as simple as possible. Maybe connected with a question like: "Do you want to have a dictatorship within yourself, or how would you like it? Think about." Or I use it as a tool for integration, when in a bodywork session several very different feelings in different body parts arise.
This point of view sees the Self and some other inner forces as entities like particles, connected in a network. On the other side (at least I think so: like with the particle/wave complementary in quantum physics) there is another possible analogy complementary to that, namely the view of Self as a kind of a wave moving fast in a circle, so that the illusion of a compact closed circle arises.
Like if you stand in a dark room and move a light fast around, you will see not a single point of light moving, but a circle as a "Gestalt". And these inner waves are your thoughts/feelings, and their intensity is like amplitude and speed of the inner waves, often closed in loops and permanently changing, and the resulting "Gestalt" seen by you is your Self. Another nice analogy, isn't it?
Of course, thoughts/feelings are partly synchronized with the surrounding society.
In my opinion, this is for example a good map to think about how meditation can work as a device for transformation by dissolving Self, but maybe this is now too much OT.
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The wishlist ... I really don't know how it worked for me.
At least I can state the facts, and observe their structure - and as a metaphor I can say: To put an arrow into goal, you have to aim at the target and to stretch the bow, then you have to let go ...
Maybe comments about the wishlist are more appropriate in the new thread :-)
Neeraj, thank you for this comment! Well, now it is late, I cannot answer...
ReplyDeleteI just remember that we had that Escher-Gödel-Bach book at home. I loved the pictures...
maybe I was wrong, perhaps a human has a far more advanced system then a country, maybe its more like a democracy that is totally automated every second so there is no leader, I dont know but I sort of mean that the self is something like pain, if you poke yourself with a pin you sure feel it but really its just a tiny signal up a nerve, but its necessary that we have the illusion that its pain so we survive
ReplyDeleteNeeraj, actually, I have nothing to add... just thank you, you wrote so very interesting comments!
ReplyDeleteMaybe one day I will meet that Escher-Gödel-Bach book again and read it... or a part of it. :-)
Thank you all for the comments. I became these times very interested by the topic of self and consciousness, and it is great to have such a high conversation about that.
Actually it is funny because I feel that this process of reflecting about it is changing my way of being present in everyday life. It is an exploration.
Sukiho, I like the pain comparison.
ReplyDeleteSukiho said: maybe I was wrong ...
ReplyDeleteNo, not at all ... at least in my view no map is right or wrong out of its own, it's just more or less practical resp. helpful to explain some structure you see somewhere.
I have heard somewhere the aphorism:
Poets use sometimes lies in order to say the truth,
politicians use sometimes truth in order to lie ...
Yeah, even that ...