Bwaaaahhhhhh!!!

To say one has an experience that is conscious (in the phenomenal sense) is to say that one is in a state of its seeming to one some way. In another formulation, to say experience is conscious is to say that there is something it's like for one to have it. Feeling pain and sensing colors are common illustrations of phenomenally conscious states. Consciousness has also been taken to consist in the monitoring of one's own states of mind (e.g., by forming thoughts about them, or by somehow "sensing" them), or else in the accessability of information to one's capacities for rational control or self-report. Intentionality has to do with the directedness or aboutness of mental states — the fact that, for example, one's thinking is of or about something. Intentionality includes, and is sometimes taken to be equivalent to, what is called ‘mental representation.’

It can seem that consciousness and intentionality pervade mental life — perhaps one or both somehow constitute what it is to have a mind. But achieving an articulate general understanding of either consciousness or intentionality presents an enormous challenge, part of which lies in figuring out how the two are related. Is one in some sense derived from or dependent on the other? Or are they perhaps quite independent and separate aspects of mind?

And do you give a rat's ass?

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
~Kingsley Amis


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What is a mind?
How is it related to a body?

Descartes answer was substance dualism. A person consists of an immaterial substance (mind/soul) attached to a material substance (a body). But this thesis fails a crucial test. An immaterial substance cannot move a body; therefore a mind cannot move a body.

Somewhere in this blog of mine, I shall assume that to have a mind one must first have a brain. This is a materialist perspective. Some weaknesses in this perspective will be described. I shall argue that minds do not necessarily exist as entities, that we nevertheless are aware of our own mental events and that we are aware that other people have similar events.

Directly linked to my heart: when it stops, I die.

Ain't this fun? Go and check it out...

The Locus of Faith

Hey, but let's relax...


If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
~ Rabbi Hillel ~

Notwithstanding all of the above, though, here's another question for you...
Does consciousness survive death?

One simple change in our worldview would have the most profound and dramatic effect on our lives. And it is this: to see, as Eastern philosophies have long seen, that the brain does not give rise to consciousness.
~:~ The brain is an organ of thought and memory, and has evolved as such for a variety of reasons. It pays for an animal to be able to remember what has happened to it so that it has a better chance of repeating its successes and avoiding its failures. It pays to know how to respond most appropriately to fellow members of your species or clan, especially if you have to fit in with a social structure in which complex interrelationships play a central role. It pays to be able to speculate about the future, analyze situations, and work out novel strategies. It pays –- if you are to stay alive and prosper in a niche as incredibly intricate as that of Homo sapiens –- to have inside your skull a two-hundred-billion-unit neural net of unprecedented power for processing and storing information. You have to be able to think and remember extraordinarily well. But the point so often overlooked is that there is absolutely no reason why you should have to be conscious.

[read more…]

Kinkazzo's Travels (keeps expanding...)


THE MYTH OF THE GODS: PAGAN & JUDEO-CHRISTIAN
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
GO TO CONTENTS:
1. DID JESUS CHRIST REALLY LIVE?
2. A DOUBTFUL EXISTENCE
3. THE HISTORICAL JESUS
4. SPIRIT, SOUL, AND MIND
5. BIBLICAL FANTASIES & JEWISH ATHEISM
6. WHOSE BIBLE IS IT ANYWAY?
7. BUDDHA AS FICTION: THE BUDDHA MYTH
8. HOWEVER…HUNDREDS OF PROOFS OF GOD’S EXISTENCE!
9. ...AND FINALLY: GOD'S NOTES

BUT WHEN ALL IS DONE AND DUSTED
...a composite question still remains, at least for me:

What was there BEFORE and WHY?

Ok, so I've read Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Russell and more, as well as Dawkins' books, and Hitchens' and Harris', and Darwin's, and Dennett's, Gould's and you name it, I've read it (even Stenger, with all his equations). And tried it. Tested it in my mind, that is, just like Einstein used to do with his theories.
Free yourself from the burden of delusions!

Freethinking... sure. Think freely, and go mad.
Done this for most of my life,I'm now insane, and still arrive to the same pointless quandary. "Pointless" because nobody seem to achieve a purpose by it, and "quandary" because nobody, but nobody, seems able to provide a satisfactory answer.

The one basic unanswerable question (variously expressed below):

--- What started it all? What was there BEFORE? What was the "causator", the Prime Mover (Aristotle help me, pleeeeease)?

Ok, ok, you say 'why do you have to have a causator?' -- because, paradoxically, it makes sense. The other way around, it does not. You can't have something from nothing. That's physics, right? And, to top it all, my mind (and so the minds of all) cannot comprehend infinity, because my mind is finite; don't give me Big Bang theories: I accept them already. No contest. But before? It must have bigbanged from somewhere, the very 'action' of bigbanging...what caused it? Inflation? Good. Inflation from where? You give it physical explanations, and the question irremediably returns to the "before" - yeah, infinite regress, indeed. And before? What was there before?
Is God the Before?
Naaaah, let's put the 'God' word aside for a sec.

Then NOTHINGNESS? Well, folks, my mind cannot comprehend 'nothingness'.
Refrain, all together now: you can't have something from nothing.
But if you can, then can we call that 'nothingness' God? Ah, fuck, here's God again. The semantics of god. And we get something like... "In the beginning God...etc etc" -- but that's been written already...

Hawking (on attending a conference at the Vatican -- ...of all places!)) once said he did have some sort of answer... but then I believe it came to nothing (pardon the pun).
What a mess. Is it the same for you? An ultimate utter mental mess?

Infinite frustration, that's what it is.

---(which frustration, -- Dawkins docet -- must have frustrated Humanity since its collective mind started functioning, given the various & fantastic explanations throughout its history: the fear, the magic, the gods & devils, thus the religions, the superstitions, the rites, the propitiations, the wishful thinking, the holy books, the hallowed laws, the righteous killings, the just wars....bwaaahhhh)---

You see, it's the Cosmological Argument all over again, which in its simplest form states that since everything must have a cause the universe must have a cause - namely, God. This doesn't stay simple for long, I'm afraid. Says Dennett that some deny the premise, since quantum physics teaches us (doesn't it?) that not everything that happens needs to have a cause. Others prefer to accept the premise and then ask: What caused God? The reply that God is self-caused (somehow) then raises the rebuttal: If something can be self-caused, why can't the universe as a whole be the thing that is self-caused? This leads in various arcane directions, into the strange precincts of string theory and probability fluctuations and the like, at one extreme, and into ingenious nitpicking about the meaning of "cause" at the other. Unless you have a taste for mathematics and theoretical physics on the one hand, or the niceties of scholastic logic on the other, you are not apt to find any of this compelling, or even fathomable...

Hmm, I feel better already...........

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And now a joke...

A Jewish lawyer was troubled by the way his son turned out, and went to see his Rabbi about it. "I brought him up in the faith, gave him a very expensive bar mitzvah, cost me a fortune to educate him. Then he tells me last week he has decided to be a Christian.
Rabbi... where did I go wrong?"

"Funny you should come to me," said the Rabbi. "Like you, I, too, brought my boy up in the faith, put him through University, cost me a fortune, then one day he comes and tells me he has decided
to become a Christian."

"What did you do?" asked the lawyer. "I turned to God for the answer," replied the Rabbi.

"And what did He say?"

He said, "Funny you should come to me..."


If aliens landed on a barren Earth after nuclear annihilation, I’d like them to find this list of Man’s literary achievements to offset against Man’s self-destructiveness:

THE WESTERN CANON!

or the
CODEX OCCIDENTIUM LIBRORUM
With hypertext and links to relevant author’s biographies and downloadable works. Enjoy...

There are many wonderfully varied pleasures available to anyone living on this small planet who manages to maintain an inquisitive eye, a childlike wonder and a sense of humour. It is true that the ageing process always involves an increase in rigid thinking, in firmly held opinions and in hardened attitudes. But although we cannot defeat physical ageing to remain young in body, we can do a great deal to stay young in mind. The trick is to never stop asking questions and never stop exploring, whether it be new places or new ideas. And it helps to perform at least one perversely eccentric act each day, no matter how small. Nearly all the great discoveries made by mankind have come from exploiting a lucky accident. But you stand no chance of encountering such an accident if your life is too neatly organized and routine-dominated. A search for novelty cannot guarantee exciting discoveries, but you can be certain that without it there will be none.

And please don’t fall for that propaganda about requiring advanced technical skills in order to be able to unravel the mysteries of the universe. It is true that in some specialist fields they are essential, but it is amazing how much is sitting out there, just waiting to be discovered, simply by using the naked eye.
(Desmond Morris, The Naked Eye, 2001)

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.