consciousness

Day 3411, Cogito, ergo sum.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I understand Descartes’ journey to find the things that he, or maybe better said, we can know. I also strive not to speculate, but to stick to what we can know, such as Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” And it is obvious that we think, regardless of what we believe.   

I thought about this because of what even he, in a different way, will have noticed. I like YouTube, but I don’t care too much for the model or the company that owns it. However, there are a lot of interesting videos to find.  There is, of course, this famous algorithm that serves you what might be interesting for you. This makes it difficult to be critical of what you find on YouTube because we all have a different experience, no feed is the same.  But as long as you know that there is an algorithm and how it roughly works, you can make use of it to find interesting stuff and what hangs around the borders of what you find interesting.

I enjoy watching documentaries, interviews, and video essays about philosophy, psychology, society, and related topics. But most of what I watch is from creators who are sceptical, and they tend to steer away from speculation. Last week, I watched some videos about consciousness, and in some of them, they interviewed individuals who seemed to be experts in a specific subject and stuck to that topic throughout the video.  If I find someone interesting, I will conduct some research to gain an impression of their stance on other subjects. Sometimes, they stray from the norm and come up with the most fantastic ideas on how all of this, in this case, consciousness, works when you watch them being interviewed or portrayed by creators who have a more specific agenda and are less critical. It is, of course, no crime to speculate, but when I then see them in these pseudo-scientific videos about third dimensions and alternate states, I will reach for the ignore button.

These uncritical thinkers are no Descartes, so that’s why I ignore them. Even though Descartes will also venture into areas where he cannot prove that what he says is true, he still has a great mind. With thinkers from his time, it is also harder to blame them for not being too outspoken because blasphemy could literally cost you your head, and they did not have the luxury of all the knowledge we now have about our physical bodies. Descartes is, of course, known for his dualism, which posits that the physical body somehow interacts with the spiritual world, specifically the soul. Scientists have examined the brain and other parts of the body where this connection is formed, but most serious thinkers recognize that there is no soul and such a connection. One of the clues is damage to parts of the brain, which then affects how we think (think also of alcohol, caffeine, and drugs). If there is a soul separated from our physical body, how can this soul then be affected? Damage to the brain is something that can be measured, and its effects are visible in how someone behaves. In this, you also need to theorize on why this is, but there are at least effects to be measured that can give some proof. Theorizing what happens with the soul and how that connects with the world is much harder to ground in reality, a reality we can all understand, and not just the imaginative mind of a few individuals.

Day 3406, Do you know that they say? 2

Daily picture, Do you know that they say?

Do you know that they say?

They say that it is hard to find the place in yourself where the decisions you make come from, why did you choose this over the other? If you want to scratch the back of your head, you might feel that you just decided that, but do you have control of all the movements that your arm makes to reach that itchy spot? You can say yes and insist that you have the control to move your hand to another place at any moment. And that might be true, but do you consciously control all the muscles in your arm to guide it to its place? No, of course not, just like you don’t control your heartbeat or your bowel movements. What I try to say is that we feel some control over what we want to do with our bodies, but for the most part, we have no control over it. We walk everywhere without ever thinking about how we do it; it all happens unconsciously. But is it not possible that even this last bit of control, the decision you feel you make, is also an automated process that includes this feeling of control? Benjamin Libet is famous for the research he conducted in the 1980s, which showed that our brain begins making decisions up to 10 seconds before we are conscious of it.  So if you answer a question with yes or no, the research can show you that your decision was already made before you got the chance to answer a certain way, and you get the answer presented to you just before you are conscious of it  We are like the child with a fake steering wheel sitting on the passenger side of a car, steering in the direction the car goes just a second after the car changes direction, and we felt the power of control. This research has been repeated ever since, and it is clear that this happens. The debate these days is more about the consequences of it.

Just think about it, but realize that any opinions you have about it are formed before you are conscious of it. If your first reaction is no, impossible, then you have to realize that you have to compete with scientists who have studied our brains for years, and that “you” can only make decisions with the knowledge you have available. If you are not up for that task but still can’t believe it, then I suggest you get some new information in your system so your unconsciousness can form a better opinion for the you, you feel you are*.

*It is hard to wrap your mind around it, but try to think of yourself as your self, as a feature like the skin you have. The skin also changes over time, and you have little control over this feature besides some moisturizer you can use. You definitely have a self and a personality (it separates you from the others around you, just as your skin does), but this seems not to be a static entity. You might perceive it as a constant, but it is more like the sea where you swim in, and your self is the sea, constantly changing but seemingly not, and with no chores in sight, you don’t feel you are drifting.

Day 3405, Do you know that they say? 1

Daily picture, Do you know that they say?

Do you know that they say?

They say that we, well… with ‘we’ I mean our brain, are good at spinning our experiences, and especially our past experiences, in such a way that we feel we are the same person now as we were years ago. There is, of course, no independent source that records all our experiences, but if you know how our brain works, you more or less have to conclude that the past we remember is, for the most part, an invention of your brain to keep you from feeling lost in the overabundance of reality.

We get bombarded with millions of inputs every second through all our senses, but some scientists say that we process only 20 inputs per second. Can you imagine that if you heard everything that your ears hear, you would not be able to listen to the sound you want to listen to? Our Brains are evolved to ignore most of the noise around us and “guess” what is interesting. You will also feel a touch on your arm when it is unexpected, but ignore all the times your clothes are touching you in the same places. The we in us, the so-called conscious part, is only aware of a select part of all the millions of inputs.

If you accept this as something that sounds right or at least logical, then you can take it a step further and view all our experiences as just another input for our brains. Our brain not only filters out unwanted noises but also unwanted experiences that disturb our present state of mind. This doesn’t mean that you only feel happy thoughts; it means that if you are a racist at this moment, your brain “rewrites” your past in such a way that you forget that you really liked your teacher, who was a foreigner, when you were young. This is, of course, a possibly flawed example, but the point is that we often lack a clear understanding of what happened in our past because our brain gradually rewrites memories over time to align with who we are now. There is simply no way to remember who you were in a distant past; even stories from friends and family contradicting your version of events will have to go through this filter, so you preserve them as correct, and otherwise you will dispute them.

If you believe that you have a soul that is independent of your body and that your soul is the you, you feel then this idea might not work for you. There is no proof that we have a soul, only that we feel that we have something like a soul, and the soul you feel correlates with the one prevalent in your culture. As far as we know, our brain, along with all the hormones and other factors that influence it, is responsible for shaping our emotions and identity, which in turn create our feelings, including those of the soul. This can be tested, has been tested, and a conclusion can be drawn. Just as most of the cells in your body are not the same as they were 30 years ago, there is no reason to believe that very little of you is the same as the you from 30 years ago, though you would never feel it; you can only understand that it is so if you’re lucky and except it.

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
Fernando Pessoa,

  • I don’t say that your brain does a good job of protecting you from feeling lost; it is possibly the default or primal state it tries to tone down. I suppose a cow that does little thinking requires less protection from somber thoughts in an evolutionary context. I guess our first words and thoughts were questions, wondering why we need shelter every day and why some people stop being there, and the endless chore this is. This was probably the reason why religion was a successful tool in taking away the sharp edges of this empty feeling. We need our illusions, pretty lights, and sounds so we can forget. I just wonder when “we” decided the noise was ugly because is not your symphony, my nightmare?

 

Day 3216, no time to look.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Can you imagine that you lived a hundred thousand years ago? On a calm morning, you walk to the lake and look down into the dark water just before you put your hands in it to scoop so you can drink. You see a face, reflected, we might say now, a face like all the others you see around you, but this one is unknown.

These days, you see yourself more often. In the morning, in the mirror, and on pictures you have hanging around or on your phone. I am not sure if we really look at ourselves, but we know it is us that we see, though we probably have a hard time describing ourselves if we have to.  

I have to be careful when discussing how important your looks are and how much it contributes to your self-image. I have had the same haircut and beard lengths for half my life. It was never a choice out of style but out of laziness and practicality. I can trim my hair and beard once a month and be done with it. It is a style I am used to, and it bothers me when my hair gets too long, partly because of how it looks, I have to admit, but also because I don’t like to trim it. I know enough people who pay more attention to their appearance; maybe because I have little to work with, I never really developed that urge. 

Maybe because I was already partly bold and grey when I was twenty-five, I stopped seeing myself in the mirror as any competition in the particular world I was living in; there are standards, no matter where you live, and I didn’t meet them hair wise and didn’t care. Maybe not entirely because of this, but I started paying more attention to how I looked on the inside. To understand what beauty is inside, I started reading books that talk about this, and though beauty in this realm is also in the eyes of the beholder, we can all agree on what is ugly and what is not, even if it is not fashionable and politically correct. 

The mirror in this inner world can be your consciousness. And just like in the real world, we often don’t look deep enough into the eyes we see reflected in the mirror. Maybe this is because of the attention you don’t give it or because you see the look you want to see, the one that is in fashion; the world’s approval is enough for you. Perhaps you are like that person who lived a hundred thousand years ago, and you never had a clear, calm morning when you looked down into a deep lake to see your reflection for the first time.

Disclaimer: these words are a work in progress, and I know from experience that I would write them differently tomorrow, but we live now, and this is how I say it now.