Self-Awareness Issues: A Resolution?

I’ve previously viewed an opinion that there apparently seemed to be no logical reason, in theory, why one couldn’t have more than one self-awareness spread over two (or more) bodies (a counterpoint to those having more than one self-awareness housed in just one body). I’ve now come up with a reason why one can’t have a self-awareness in dual bodies. At least I hope this explains the conundrum.

You’re self-aware if you respond to stimuli, so instead of “I think therefore I am” what comes before even that is that “I respond therefore I am”. Part of that response of course can be thought even if way after the event.

Self-awareness has nothing to do with emotions or intellect or memories or creativity. Poke a foetus with a pin and it will respond. The foetus is self-aware that it is receiving a stimulus.

But there has to be more to self-awareness that. You can respond to a stimulus; I can respond to the exact same stimulus (say a flash of lightning) yet we don’t share the same self-awareness. So, there’s got to be a physical connection between living things in order to share self-awareness (and I don’t mean holding hands either).

To illustrate: You are (or probably will be) self-aware if I stick a pin into your big toe. If that big toe however is then amputated from the rest of you, and I stick a pin into that amputated big toe, there’s no response from you. You’re not self-aware that your (former) big toe has been stuck with a sharp pin! That’s because there’s no longer any physical connection between your (former) big toe and you.

Or take the case of Siamese twins’ conjoined say at the hip region. Now normally these twins would have been just plain identical twins and thus have one self-awareness each. But, because of the physical connection, via a body structure common to both Siamese twins, should that common part be stuck with a pin, presumably both heads, heads that contain the self-aware infrastructure or apparatus, will react. Once separated, no such common reaction will take place. Though I don’t know this for a certainly, it might also be possible that while the twins are still joined, that stroking a part of one twin’s body not jointly shared might produce a reaction in the opposite twin.  

Conversely, if something living is grafted or transplanted onto or into you, that something now becomes part of your overall self-awareness.  But all that still doesn’t really explain why there is for all practical purposes just one self-awareness per customer and why you can’t also be self-aware in a second body simultaneously.

Say I take a 3-D snapshot of you and identify where every bit and piece, atom and molecule, that goes into making you up; what makes you, you at that precise instant, is. Then, using nanotechnology, I recreate another you from the ground up, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, etc. You would then have another self-aware you identical to your own self-awareness. That would remain the case - dual self-aware entities - even if you both go your separate ways - Right? Well probably not for several seasons.

Firstly, that definitive 3-D snapshot probably isn’t possible even in theory once quantum fluctuations and uncertainties are taken into account. 

Secondly, there’s that lack of physical contact between you and your built from the ground up alter ego. I once thought that if another entity had the exact same self-awareness as you, you would be aware of that bond since you both share an exact same self-awareness. But, on further reflection, I have to abandon that since that implies faster-that-light speed communication and that’s not allowed according to Einstein and thousands of physicists who have followed in his footsteps.

That’s nowhere more obvious than when it comes to the concept of the infinite cosmos or a Multiverse. If you postulate that the cosmos is never-ending in time and/or in space, then of necessity anything that can happen will happen, an infinite number of times. There will therefore be an infinite number of you which could occur in sequence (if the cosmos is infinite in time) or concurrently (if the cosmos is infinite in space). The same applies if you postulate a Multiverse – an infinite number (or nearly so) of individual finite universes all co-existing within an infinite cosmic landscape.

Regardless, the upshot is one you in the here-and-now (on Earth) and another you out back of beyond somewhere in the cosmos but also in the here-and-now. You, both of you, are equally self-aware; identically so. However, neither one of you is aware of the other. That’s because what one of you is experiencing can only be transmitted to the other you at a velocity that cannot exceed light speed. When you’re talking an infinite cosmos or a Multiverse, you are talking communication time frames between universes of trillions to zillions of years, assuming any interaction is even possible. You’ll be long dead before your equal number, who is out back of beyond somewhere, has awareness’s that can reach you. Except - that argument doesn’t really work if there’s an infinite number of you existing at all times. Some version of you that existed a zillion years ago should have an awareness-of-self that should impact on that you living zillions of years later. No matter which way you slice-and-dice things, one you within an infinite number of you cannot exist in isolation. But each one of those infinite number of you are not in that required physical contact with any one of the other numbers of you, thus no self-awareness co-sharing. 

CONCLUSION

All else being equal, each person has his or her self’s own custom-made, personalized, unique self-awareness. That’s because everyone’s brain chemistry and experiences are unique and so everyone will respond to the exact same stimulus ever so slightly differently.

But there is no law of nature that says that has to be so. It’s possible that two or more people could have an identical sense of self-awareness, if not on Earth, then especially so if there’s an infinite spatial cosmos or a Multiverse. Yet, even if you have an identical you, a more closely ‘you’ than even an identical twin would be, you wouldn’t share self-awareness with your other self and vice versa. Why?

The answer I suggest is separation. There’s no way to communicate one’s self-awareness to the other’s self-awareness, just like your amputated big toe can’t communicate to you if it is whacked with a hammer. There could easily be more than one self-aware you, identical in every way to you, in the cosmos right now but you do not share that identical self-awareness since there is no physical connection present.



Self-Awareness Revisited



Although the brain is the only bodily organ capable of contemplating itself, part of that contemplation, awareness of self, is an enigma. On the surface it would appear that there can only be a finite number of self-awareness configurations, since the brain is a finite structure, and eventually there would have to be a repeat self-awareness. Yet, there appears to be no record of any awareness-of-self in one body having dual awareness-of-self in another body. That’s an enigma. 

Presumably your self-awareness begins at conception, and thus there is self-awareness even at the cellular level. Now if you, and here ‘you’ could be a plant or a microbe, respond to stimuli (external or internal), then you are self-aware, albeit awareness of self comes in degrees – a mammal is more self-aware than a cactus even though both can respond to stimuli. If you respond to stimuli in a way that’s not predictable by the laws of physics then you are self-aware. A rock cannot be a ‘you’ since it does not respond to stimuli in any way that physics cannot predict and thus a rock is not self-aware.

Chain of Thought: Part One

Your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes. It’s an unbreakable link.

If, or rather since your self-awareness resides in your brain and since your brain is just a finite combination* of various chemicals, neural connections and energy configurations, then your self-awareness is also a product of a finite combination of various chemicals, neural connections and energy configurations.

Your awareness of self presumably only takes up a relatively small percentage of your brain’s chemistry, neural connections and type of energy transactions. That should increase the awareness of self finiteness and thus the probability therefore of there being more than one self-aware you.

So given enough bodies (animal or human) with brains, the particular combination that results in your self-awareness should repeat eventually elsewhere and/or elsewhen, but apparently it doesn’t. Something is screwy somewhere. 

If there is a limit of a singular self-awareness per customer, regardless of how many customers there are, who is doing the limiting?

* Though zillions of combinations might be possible, most would result in non-functionality. Presumably you wouldn’t survive if your brain instructed the stomach to pump and the heart to secrete digestive juices. That should at least reduce zillions of potential possibilities down to a more reasonable trillion(s) of actual viable functionality.

By analogy, there is only so many ways to assemble an automobile or building and have a viable and functional means of transport or accommodation. There are many, many more ways of putting together an automobile or a building that results however in non-functionality.

Chain of Thought: Part Two

Your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes. The question here is how I can shut down your awareness of self without destroying your brain thingy.

If I were to do it, the most obvious way would be to put you under – give you some sort of aesthetic (or get you so blind drunk you pass out, or knock you unconscious).

But you can do that yourself just by going to sleep. Your five senses shut down for the duration (unless there’s an extremely powerful outside stimulus). But you can only take that absence of an awareness of self just so far and no farther as we shall see.

So if you were born without any of your five senses operating, would or could you still be self-aware? Yes – there’s a limit to how far you can shut down the nervous system and still be or remain alive. So even if you couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell, you’d still be aware of various sensations.

You’d still be aware of hunger and the opposite, the need to go potty in the bathroom. You’d still be aware of becoming tired and the need to go to sleep, and the opposite, of being wide-awake and unable to sleep. You’d be aware of the need to inhale and exhale. You’d be aware that something was wrong if you experienced a heart attack (even though you wouldn’t feel any pain). You’d still be aware of the need to cough, sneeze and yawn.

So awareness of self is not just about the external world that you are aware of and your place in it and what it is doing to you thanks to your five senses. Awareness of self is also about awareness of your internal world (your body), unless you want to consider anything external to your brain as belonging to your external world too, even if it’s your stomach and stomach ulcer or heart and heart attack.

So the bottom line seems to be that you have self-awareness even in the absence of external stimuli – external to your body that is, but not stimuli that’s internal to your body (like hunger, etc.). If you have no self-awareness of stimuli internal to your body but still external as far as your mind is concerned, then you’re dead – or soon will be.

So your self-awareness is dependent on the cooperation of your body (ideally including your five senses) – it’s a joint partnership (unless some mad scientist places and nurtures your brain in a vat in which case the vat becomes your body. As I said before, your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes).

As an aside, you can have a functioning brain without a mind (that which generates self-awareness) like when you’re in a deep dreamless sleep or in a coma or passed out blind drunk, but you can’t have a functioning mind without a brain. Just in case you were wondering about that particular chicken-egg or mind-body question.

Chain of Thought: Part Three

Your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes. That also applies to a lot of other personality traits.

Your self-awareness is not a separate and apart body organ or tissue or cellular conglomeration, like say the liver, gall bladder or the pineal gland. Instead it is housed in a nebulous sort of way in an organ, in this case the brain – as pointed out several times previously. But that equally applies to a lot of other equally nebulous things – morality, emotions, memory, decision making and creativity. And that brings up an interesting quasi-paradox.

There is some degree of morality or ethics that is born innately within us quite separate and apart from what society (religion, parents, teachers, the legal system, etc.) rams down our throats. I conclude this based on observations of my cats whose interactions with each other demonstrate a degree of inbuilt morality or ethics, and they never had any religious instruction shoved down their throats or any other book learning. So it’s probably not surprising that two (or more) people, of differing ages, sexes, races, cultural backgrounds, share much the same views on morals and ethics.

Two (or more) people can have identical memories of X. Say today is defined as being Wednesday the 10^th of July 2013. X might be the memory that yesterday was therefore defined as being a numerical date (the 9^th), on a day of the week (Tuesday), in the month of (July) within the year (2013). Lots of people would have that memory; all those would agree on that shared memory. Or, though my cats do not share the same self-awareness, they both share a common memory of where the litter box is; where their food and water bowls are; where the sunniest place in the house is (which changes as the seasons change, so that’s a neat trick on their part).

Two (or more) people on opposite sides of the globe could have an identical creative thought. That’s no big surprise. Coincidence is often the norm, not the exception.

Two (or more) people could experience the exact same sad emotion; say by watching a particular part of the movie “Bambi”, or experience the same adrenalin rush when hearing their nation’s national anthem.

Two (or more) people could decide to perform the exact same action based on the exact same set of circumstances, like say get out of bed ready to face the day at 8am or tune into the exact same TV program.

But no two people share the same self-awareness, even though morality, memory, emotions, creativity, and other nebulous things all contribute to an awareness of self. Self-awareness is associated with, but is not dependent upon any particular set of memories, morality, etc.

 Chain of Thought: Part Four

Your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes. Wouldn’t it be interesting if that one awareness of self could exist in differing geographies and go in several directions!

There can be more than one self-awareness in one body, like dual or split personalities. Then too, that would be the case if one (human or animal) were born with two heads (therefore two brains). Such freaks of nature have happened as in Siamese Twins. But what we’re interested in is not two (or more) self-aware ‘persons’ in one body, but an awareness of self in two (or more) bodies.

However, for reasons unknown, you can’t have an awareness of self in two (or more) bodies. Now that’s odd since extremely rare things happen. Amazing coincidences almost seem to be the norm. Some people have won top prize in lotto more than once for example. You’ll even find two (or more) humans with identical albeit extremely rare names (Christian; Middle; Family).

The ideal conditions or candidates for such a scenario would be identical twins sharing the same conception, the same DNA, total (100%) organ transplant compatibility, etc. 

However, even in the case of identical twins there are still two bodies (2 brains) housing two separate and apart self-aware entities.

Chain of Thought: Part Five

Your self-awareness resides in your brain. Your sense of self goes wherever your brain goes. But what if we duplicate your brain thingy? There appears to be two ways of doing that: the technologically-assisted ‘natural’ way (cloning), and the technological way (downloading).

There’s no theoretical reason why a human being, such as you, could not be cloned. The only reasons against doing that in the here and now are ethical and legal reasons. However, the brain of a cloned you would be a blank slate, since all those nebulous traits like memory and morality could not be cloned. But what about the self-awareness part of the brain? Presumably your most faintest stirrings of self-awareness begin at conception and increase as the complexity of your entity increases. Presumably a clone of your brain, all things being equal, would have the same chemistry and neural connections. But, all things probably aren’t going to be equal. There will probably be external and environmental influences which will alter, even if just subtly, the brain chemistry (diet, drugs, etc.) and neural pathways (disease, injuries, etc.) of the clone. Therefore, I suspect that your clone would not have your self-awareness and vice-versa. Your clone is in the exact same category as your identical twin.

The other, yet to be achievable, technological methodology of duplicating your self-awareness would be to download it into another form of hardware – not squishy wetware biology but as bits and bytes software into some sort of suitable receptacle, call it a computer if you will, perhaps with artificial arms and legs attached – a robot/android. [A cyborg would result if your actual squishy brain thingy were placed in an artificial receptacle or container or constructed body.] Again, there will have to be lots of legal and moral issues sorted out first, but the technology to do this should be achievable. So, the awareness of self in your biological squishiness will be the same as your awareness of self as, say a robot. Now the interesting thing is that you, your self-awareness, could be downloaded hundreds of times over, just like you can copy and paste a document on your PC. How could you cope being self-aware hundreds of times over in hundreds of different places? This might be akin to a hive-mind or to a computer network.

Which then leads to the next stage: if one could create a self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) then that could be copied again and again, then presumably whatever one AI entity experienced, all would experience. And with that we really enter the realm of science fiction.

Fly in the ointment #1: If there is a biological entity (human or animal) in one place that is a self-aware entity; and there is another biological entity (human or animal) in another place that has the exact same brain chemistry and neural network structure, then the latter entity presumably has the same self-awareness as the former. For each to be not only self-aware as being their own entity but self-aware as being the other entity too, wouldn’t there have to be some sort of telepathic exchange (call it communication if you will) between the two separate and apart bodies? How would that work? Actually it doesn’t logically follow. If you self-aware in another body there’s no need for communication of that fact since you are already self-aware of it.

Fly in the ointment #2: The most likely answer to this whole one self-awareness per customer issue might like in the statistical improbability of it all. Yes, very unlikely things can happen. It’s not inconceivable to toss a coin heads up 1000 times in a row; a monkey pecking away at a typewriter could reproduce say the U.S. Constitution. It just might be the case that the number of combinations of brain chemistry and neural network connections is just so vast, that the number of possible combinations, the number of possible self-aware entities, exceeds by many, many orders of magnitude the numbers of actual self-aware entities that have and every will likely exist. Therefore, the possibility of two or more entities sharing an exact state of self-awareness is just about the same as a tornado tearing through a junkyard and assembling a replica of the White House.

An Extra Chain of Thought:

Some, especial spiritual and New Age types suggest that the cosmos is and always has been self-aware or has consciousness because the cosmos contains entities that are self-aware (like us). We (for example) are the universe’s way of contemplating its own navel – of knowing itself. But I think several problems arise with that point of view.

Firstly, there was a time the universe contained no self-aware beings, even microbes. The spiritual types however extend self-awareness down to self-aware rocks and atoms and even electrons that have awareness of self. That’s an interesting but deluded worldview IMHO.

Secondly, if we accept that rocks and atoms and even electrons do not have awareness of self, we note that the cosmos is mainly composed of just that sort of non-aware stuff, from the macroscopic (stars and rocks, etc.) to the microscopic (atoms and electrons). That rock in your garden isn’t self-aware even if you, your pet dog and your garden plants are. In other words, can a cosmos be said to be self-aware if only the most minuscule part of that cosmos is aware of itself?

Thirdly, a self-aware universe (as defined by having self-aware inhabitants) would have to have an overall self-awareness that was a composite of all the self-aware entities in it which would also change and evolve as self-aware entities came into being, evolved, and then died out. What sort of self-awareness would result if you merged into one great melting pot all of the individual self-aware entities currently in existence on Planet Earth? It would be a dog’s breakfast methinks.     

Self-Awareness

You are a self-aware being. That’s no great revelation. And while there are many unknowns about self-awareness in need of continued research, it’s ultimately grounded in physics, chemistry and biology. The real mystery is why you have one realization of self-awareness in one body, not two or more realizations of self-awareness in two or more bodies. What prevents that from happening? What stops you from having more than one self-aware awareness right here and right now? There seems to be a self-awareness limit – one per customer, and that applies to both human and animal. 

What stops you having more than one self-aware awareness right here and right now?

THE WHEN OF THINGS: PRESENT, PAST & FUTURE

Presumably no other sexual conception – human or animal* - of the millions and millions that have happened since your own conception has resulted in another and simultaneously coexisting self-aware you.

Presumably, none of the other potential trillions of unfulfilled sexual conceptions that could have happened, but didn’t, since your own conception took place, would have resulted in another and simultaneously coexisting self-aware you.

Presumably therefore, none of the sexual conceptions that happened or had the potential to happen prior to your own conception would have resulted in the self-awareness being you call you. That pretty much rules out reincarnation.

Therefore presumably, no conception that will happen or will have the potential to happen in the future that will result in another self-aware being that the current you would also call you. 

Now that says nothing about that one-off unique self-aware you keeping on keeping on post biological death. Afterlife is a separate issue.

THE WHY OF THINGS: NATURAL & SUPERNATURAL

Presumably there is no supernatural force at work preventing two or more simultaneously coexisting self-aware entities both called you by you. The Bible says nothing about there being a limit of one self-awareness body per customer, unless you equate material self-awareness with the nebulous, immaterial and disembodied concept of a soul. 

On the other hand, I’m not aware of any natural law, principle or relationship, biological or otherwise, preventing two or more simultaneously coexisting self-aware persons each calling themselves you. You’d think that if a self-aware you could happen naturally once, it could happen naturally twice, especially given the sheer number of sexual conceptions that keep on keeping on, day-in and day-out. Yet, it’s always a case of one per customer – animal or human.  

The odd thing is that one per customer applies in two odd, but interesting cases. Your clone would not have your self-awareness but their own separate and apart awareness of self. That’s even more obvious in the case of identical twins – you have one sexual conception; but two beings; two non-coexisting, non-simultaneous self-aware identities.

THE EXCEPTIONS TO THINGS

There are people who are aware of having several selves. We call such people with such neurological or psychological symptoms as having a split or multi-personality. However, all these unique personalities are housed in the same body; the same brain, and therefore are the product of just one conception. Whether or not dual personalities reside in any animal species I know not, but presumably it’s not beyond the realm of biological possibility. However, the issue here is more dual self-aware personalities resulting from dual or not-unique one-off conceptions.

THE WHERE OF THINGS: THE BRAIN

You tend to associate your self-awareness with your head, probably because that’s where most of your sensory apparatus is. You do not associate your self-awareness with your big toe or with your thumb even apart from the fact that you know full well that you could lose those anatomical bits and pieces and retain your awareness of self.

Presumably your self-awareness part of you is housed in your consciousness which along with your subconscious collectively comprise your mind, which is housed in your brain.

Why the brain? Presumably I could, except for the brain, replace any part of you with an artificial equivalent (i.e. – hip joint, dentures, etc.) or a natural transplant from someone else (i.e. – heart, kidney, etc.) and you would still have 100% of your self-awareness.   

THE STUFF OF THINGS: MATTER & ENERGY

The brain complex is the ultimate and evolutionary product of raw materials - matter and energy. The brain is just another, albeit incredibly complex, product, a combination of the fundamentals – up and down quarks, electrons, photons and neutrinos.

The elementary components in and of your brain undergo every second by second various chemical reactions and physical processes that require, and in turn, give off energy; take in matter (raw materials) and give off matter (waste products). Part of those reactions and those processes gives rise to what you call your self-awareness.

Self-awareness is dependent on matter and energy. Up and down quarks, electrons, photons and neutrinos and their associated various chemical reactions and physical processes support the existence of awareness of self. The proof of that pudding is that you have no self-awareness when ‘put under’ for a medical operation; when you faint; or even when you are asleep**. When you go to sleep your self-awareness shuts down, tunes out and turns off. All of these altered states of consciousness require altered brain chemistry. The state of your self-awareness can be and is altered by relative states of matter and energy content and processes.

The biggest alteration to the matter and energy component that supports your self-awareness happens at death. And so your awareness of self dies when you die; when your body dies; when your brain dies.

That your brain matter and energy will of course survive your death is not in any doubt (those conservation laws we all learn in high school science class). The specific reactions and processes which require inputs and outputs will not survive. Death negates those. It’s like if your computer receives no inputs, then your computer produces no outputs and your computer for all practical purposes is dead. 

CONCLUSION

You and your self-awareness get but one go-round for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, etc., etc. until death makes your self-awareness and you part company.

Further, presumably in our near-infinite to infinite cosmos there exist an extremely vast number of self-aware aliens or extraterrestrials if you prefer. Presumably you have no additional self-awareness of your bug-eyed green monster-ness on the Planet Zork. So not only are you confined to just a self-awareness here on Planet Earth, but confined to just one self-awareness throughout the entire Universe (and maybe beyond if there is a Multiverse).

I’ve appeared to have painted myself into a corner here since there is no logical reason why one should be restricted or confined a singular awareness of self. So, somewhat reluctantly I have to suggest that this can-of-worms is either strong evidence for a one-off, presumably God-given soul and an existence in a supernatural universe, or a one-off Supreme [computer] Programmer-given barcode and existence in a simulated universe.  

*Animals have self-awareness as any pet owner, zoo keeper or livestock farmer knows.

**I’m not convinced you have self-awareness when you are dreaming since you are not self-aware that you are dreaming. Dreaming is just another altered state of consciousness, one that’s separate and apart from your wide-awake conscious self-awareness.

Human Reality Revisited: Part Two

In these life and times of your day-to-day activities, going about your business in this four dimensional space-time you find yourself stuck in, I doubt whether you question that what you experience is anything but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What you see is what you get, and what you get is really real reality, absolute nuts-and-bolts no question about it reality. If that’s what you think, think again.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

REALITY OUTSIDE OF THE STRIKE ZONE: THE NEBULOUS OTHER

What if someone or something else is pulling your chain? So far I’ve gone on the scenario that there’s a really real reality out there for you to experience and absorb. You are pulling your own chain; dancing to your own tune. Now what if some significant other is calling the shots?

You are a natural entity with wetware rooted in carbon chemistry

- A bit outside the scope of normality or what passes for normality, there are whole textbooks full of case studies of brains that haven’t been hardwired up quite correctly and so you’ve cases of people hearing colors or mistaking their wife for a hat or who have multiple personalities or seriously believe they are Alexander the Great, Jesus, or say President Kennedy.

- Although it doesn’t necessarily follow, there are those who believe that those who see ghosts or aliens or angels or the Loch Ness Monster are fantasy prone; just internally generated visions that’s all in the mind. Can shamans, mystics, gurus, and related really visit an otherworld of alternate realities, or are they too just fantasy prone, with perhaps some help from smoking the good stuff. Of course if they are experiencing such things, well that in turn might be evidence for alternative realities.

- And don’t we as adults construct an entire fantasy world for children – Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, even the Bogyman who’ll, we say, do nasty things to naughty kids. Don’t children on their own construct fantasy worlds they live in along with invisible playmates? I wonder if there’s anything really different in principle between children believing in their invisible friends and adults putting their faith in invisible deities.  

- Adults too immerse themselves in fantasy worlds from putting on virtual reality helmets to boldly go (the 20^th Century version of the Star Trek holodeck), to actually dressing up in Star Trek or Star Wars outfits as various characters from those (and other) fictional worlds, to participating in all sorts of role-playing scenarios. Though one would hope that when doing dress-up for masquerade balls and attending fantasy conventions, the adults would be aware that they are doing make-believe. You’d hope that though some fans (fanatics?) can get really carried away to extremes, like naming their kids after their favorite fantasy character, collecting thousands of items of memorabilia, even say modeling and outfitting their home to resemble the interior sets of say the Starship Enterprise. It’s been done! Though I suspect this must be a modern phenomenon. I don’t recall ever hearing about people in the 17^th, 18^th or 19^th Centuries playing at King Arthur, holding mock battles and jousting contests, though maybe I’m wrong on that. It’s certainly common today for hundreds to play dress-up and reenact Civil War engagements, and there’s many a wannabe cowboy out there in suburbia. 

- Your natural brain-in-a-vat scenario might be where some ‘mad’ scientist has cultured some brain cells in a petri dish and eventually grown a full-sized brain-in-a-vat which is kept stimulated 24/7 with electrical impulses – your reality. Or, perhaps your body has aged and kicked-the-bucket but your brain – still alive and ‘kicking’ – has been removed and kept alive but in ‘storage’, but still requiring stimulation, pending a suitable transplant into another body whose brain has died.

- Your natural brain is being manipulated scenario. Say you’re a patient in a hospital in a coma, or undergoing a neurosurgical operation and your brain is being stimulated in an effort to determine what’s what. Perhaps that stimulation is what you take, while in your coma, or under-the-knife, to be your reality – but all you sense and remember is really being induced. There might even be a time dilation effect. Presumably you could electrically stimulate the brain such that the brain would experience or remember years worth of experiences but the applied stimulus is just taking a few minutes. 

- You’re dreaming. You are really a bug-eyed-monster from the planet Zork; or a pussy cat; or even a human; but you’re asleep and dreaming this alternative lifestyle which in this dream state you are interpreting as your actual reality. Until you wake up, your dream IS your reality.

- One or many? You could philosophically argue that the sum total of life, the universe and everything is illusionary and just the product of Your Mind. Life, the universe and everything (all else but your mind) is just Your Mind playing games, a created illusion or construction to keep Your Mind from being bored. Or, you see someone in the shops and you conclude that as you see them, they see you, and both of you have a perception that there’s a really real reality and both of you are a part of that. That’s the common sense worldview, but the universe doesn’t always play by common sense principles. Of course it’s possible that the both of you are all part of a larger mass hallucination; that you aren’t The Mind, but rather one of the creations of The Mind of someone else. 

There is no way you could distinguish any of the above realities from your perception of what’s really real.

WILD PITCH, ERROR ON THE THROW

You are an artificial entity

Needless to relate, there has been a massive amount of theoretical and practical research dedicated towards the goal of creating an artificial mind, a silicon chip mind or a mind made out of silicon chips, machine intelligence, otherwise more commonly known as artificial intelligence. The reasons are manifold, from just the academic pursuit of seeing if it can be done for the sake of seeing if it can be done, to practical applications like designing robots that can assist in making the lives of the handicapped or elderly or the lonely more bearable or beating the pants off of some egomaniac chess champion, to putting artificial intelligence to the same sorts of creative use that wetware intelligence is put to. Perhaps an artificial intelligence can put two and two together and come up with a Theory of Everything, the Holy Grail of physics. Artificial intelligence can also boldly go where wetware intelligence cannot since silicon chips are a bit more durable under extreme environmental conditions than flesh-and-blood.

Put another way, if Mother Nature can evolve flesh-and-blood intelligence, then that flesh-and-blood intelligence can create and evolve machine intelligence (and ultimately that machine intelligence can further evolve and advance the capabilities of machine intelligence). The basic reason is that there is no difference in principle between a squishy neural network, and a silicon chip network. It all operates on electrical connections, complex connects it is true, but just wiring. Now, the question arises, is your mind a squishy neural network or a silicon chip network? There’s also a third possibility. Your mind isn’t physical at all – squishy or silicon – but mathematical. Your mind is just computer code. 

- Your artificial ‘brain’-in-a-vat scenario might revolve around the idea that you, or rather your mind, is just a processing machine sitting on a bench top or on a shelf, maybe as a prototype, being fed data (that’s your reality) to see if your silicon chips are able to ‘think’ outside the box relative to your mind just being a sophisticated adding machine.

- Your artificial ‘brain’ is manipulated (programmed) scenario might be akin to you being a fully functional robotic android though programmed not to know in order to better integrate into the society that created you. If you cut yourself and bleed and feel pain, that’s just a programmed illusion. When you ‘die’ (your programmed use-by date) you’re recycled/reassembled – a form of reincarnation. Most of your memories are false ones programmed into you, so you believe you had a childhood for example.

- Finally, you are neither flesh-and-blood nor silicon chips. You’re just bits and bytes inside a computer. You’re a piece of software. You’re a simulated being just existing in virtual reality, created by others; manipulated by others without any awareness of this on your part.

Human Reality Revisited: Part One

You are an electromechanical device or machine, even if it’s the product of biological evolution. You certainly operate on electricity (converted from the chemical energy in your foods); you’re certainly mechanical. Those bones, joints, muscles; your movements, are certainly mechanical in nature and biomechanical engineering is certainly an active academic pursuit, especially for athletes and those with skeletal-muscular abnormalities. 

Part of that electromechanical you is your brain – more electrical than mechanical, though engineered never-the-less. Your brain houses a very up close and personal part of you – your mind. Your mind is the key to your reality which will not be the same as anyone else’s reality and in fact your reality maybe totally unreal.

The only thing you know that is really real is your mind. Everything else could be an illusion to a greater or lesser degree. Even your mind could be an artificial construction rather than a natural one and you would be none the wiser, but at least an artificial mind would still be a really real mind to you.

Your mind is the gateway to your perceptions of reality. If you have no mind (like before your conception) you have no perception of reality.

REALITY INSIDE THE STRIKE ZONE (EVEN IF NOT RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLATE)

Your reality is twofold. There’s your here-and-now reality, reality as perceived by your five senses and channeled into your wetware; there’s your there-and-then reality, reality stored as your memory inside your wetware. 

In either case, your reality is all in your mind. Your brain chemistry; your neural network wiring are where you’re here-and-now and there-and-then reality lie.

But is that reality accurate? Would your reality match someone else’s version of the exact same events? No!

BRAIN CHEMISTRY

Your brain chemistry is never the exact same moment to moment. Ditto for every other odd bod and sod on the planet.

What determines your brain chemistry? Your age; genetic makeup and background heritage; foods and beverages; sleep patterns; what drugs and/or medicines you use; pollutants in your immediate environment; disease and/or injury to the brain or nervous system; even outside manipulation, say electrode stimulation by a neuroscientist.

Your brain chemistry isn’t the same as anybody else’s. If everybody’s brain chemistry were the same, if everyone were hardwired up the same (neural networks), then each and every one of us would like and dislike the exact same things equally. Each election would be a 100% landslide for all votes would go to one candidate. Even the opposing candidate would vote for their opponent, which is all nonsense as the two candidates (in fact all candidates) would have identical worldviews/policies. There would be no such thing as ‘different strokes for different folks’ and as such the world would be in one hell of a mess.

FIVE SENSES

When it comes to your five senses, your mind doesn’t receive the original stimulus or stimuli, only a crude copy that’s been translated into another language – one that your mind can interpret and come to terms with.

Your mind didn’t receive that photon of light – just an electrical signal describing the information that photon carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that sound wave – just an electrical signal describing the information that sound wave carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that molecule of food odor or taste – just an electrical signal describing the odor or taste information that molecule carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that cat scratch – just an electrical signal describing the sensation of receiving a cat scratch elsewhere.

Everything ‘real’ in the here-and-now is the sum product of the feed via electrical signals into your mind via your five senses. But the ‘real’ in your mind is a crude copy of the ‘real’ outside your mind as input gets translated in the process and any translation is never as good as the original.

Another facet to that is that your five senses can be tricked into perceiving illusions. You’ve experienced optical illusions. A common one is the perception that the Sun goes around the Earth. We still say that the Sun rises and the Sun sets as if the Sun were moving and not the Earth rotating. You’re also probably familiar with the Moon Illusion, whereby the Full Moon at the horizon appears much larger than when higher up in the sky, but it is not. Your perceived reality and real reality aren’t the same. There’s also taste and smell illusions that can be perpetrated. There are illusions with touch and no doubt audio illusions as well. Mankind’s technology helps confuse the picture too. A hologram looks 3-D and solid but isn’t. The mind, via the senses, can be fooled into accepting six (or more) impossible things even before you’ve sat down to breakfast!

You’d be well aware that witnesses in courtroom cases will have their ability to translate what they experienced via their five senses into reliable data that can be recalled into question when the guilt or innocence of the accused is at stake. You’d probably be aware that there are seemingly millions of psychology studies that prove again and again that eyewitness testimony isn’t worth squat and can be easily manipulated via the power of suggestion.

Using independent instrumentation to verify reality like a thermometer or Geiger counter isn’t any better as their readings are meaningless until you use your five senses to read the readings resulting in the same translation issues and thus you’re back to square one.

Even if you have absolutely perfect sensory apparatus, your reality will be relative, not absolute, to someone else’s reality as Einstein so aptly demonstrated. Without going into a longwinded example, just accept that you may see Event A happen before Event B. Someone else in a different frame of reference sees Event B happen before Event A. Yet another person sees Event A and Event B occur simultaneously. That’s why it’s Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Relativity, and not Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Absolutes. 

MEMORY

Your Reality: Strike One: Your brain chemistry isn’t reliable or consistent.

Your Reality: Strike Two: Your five senses that input to mind isn’t reliable.

Your Reality: Strike Three: Your memory is definitely not reliable. Memory is not infallible as those courtroom dramas often highlight.

So, if 100 people experience an event, and have to recall that event say ten years later, how many versions of really real reality are you going to get? What odds that even one of these recollections will be 100% spot on?  What odds that none reflect that really real reality (RRR) of that event (assuming such a concept as RRR in the first place of course)?

To be continued…

Natural History: Some Random Rambling

Theory of Consciousness: Actually I don’t think it’s all that mysterious; well it may be mysterious but it’s biologically universal. Every living thing from humble microbes to plants, jellyfish to frogs, birds to cats to primates have consciousness because all respond to external stimuli in ways that are not predictable by classical physics (unlike a rock expanding and contracting as the temperature rises and falls). From conception to brain death you feel and respond to stimuli 60/60/24/7/52, like gravity and temperature, etc.  If you respond, in un-rock like ways, you are self-aware or have consciousness. If you should have some different definition in mind, then perhaps look for a dividing line between that which is clearly not exhibiting consciousness by that definition and what is. What is the difference in biochemistry between that which is and that which is not? Explore that and you’re on the way to an answer!

Consciousness can be expressed as a series of Russian dolls, which probably doesn’t actually explain what it is, but it’s interesting. We start with: “I’m self aware”. Then, “I’m self aware that I’m self aware”. Then that string is followed by “I’m self aware that I’m self aware that I’m self aware” and so on down the line unto infinity.

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Dreaming: From the moment we wake up, until the time we go to sleep, our brain gets bombarded with sensory inputs – sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. When we go to sleep however, we’re in sensory isolation. Unless it’s a really loud bang, or super strong odour, or the pet dog jumps on top of you, you sleep soundly through it all. It’s not good to be in a sensory isolation tank for eight hours straight, which is what sleep is. So, how does the brain manufacture sensory input? Dreams! Apart from the automatic functions of the brain/nervous system, like breathing, your brain keeps active via dreaming. It’s generating images and receiving back those images – busy work if you will.  

The reason therefore that it’s hard to recall your dreams, well it’s akin to short-term memory. Once awake, once the brain is in forward gear, in high-drive, what was dreamt about is now as irrelevant as what you had for dinner 101 nights ago.

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Reality: Any alternative reality (i.e. – higher realms of existence; spirit worlds; non-corporeal beings; astral planes; etc.) expounded by those who have experienced that so-called ‘reality’ by deliberately altering their brain chemistry via ingesting, injecting or inhaling various brain chemistry altering substances (alcohol, LSD, marijuana, petrol/glue sniffing, pain killers, or just any old generic ‘magic mushroom’), or undergoing sensory isolation is totally suspect, has no credibility and is not to be believed. That equally applies to involuntary brain chemistry alterations (i.e. – exposure to bring flashing lights, lack of sleep, oxygen deprivation at high altitude, long-term fasting, or eating foods that inadvertently contain brain chemistry altering chemicals).

You certainly don’t accept your mind-generated alternative realities you experience in dreamland when your brain is in sensory isolation mode, so why accept the ‘magic mushroom’ variety?

It’s hard enough coming to terms with everyday reality when you are wide awake and stone cold sober, so who needs to unnecessary complicate things with alternative ‘realities’? In fact, even when you are wide awake and stone cold sober you cannot always trust your mind to reveal to you really real reality – optical illusions anyone?

This alone blows out of the water most of what lumps together as New Age claptrap, like altered states of consciousness. You may alter your consciousness, but that doesn’t expose you to really real reality.

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Telepathy Revisited: There just might be a (slight) case to answer after all. That telepathy isn’t, isn’t silent one or two way crystal clear communication over vast distances between two separate brains or minds. What telepathy might be is that vague sense that there’s another mind out there, close by though, that has some resonance with your own. The classic case is that sense that you just know that someone else is watching or staring at you even though you can’t see who it is.

There has to be a medium by which this transfer can well, transfer from them to you. That medium apparently is Earth’s electromagnetic (EM) field. Brain thoughts or activity is electromagnetic in nature. It perhaps might be barely possible for those brain EM waves to be carried via Earth’s EM field to another person’s brain. That other person would at best just have a quasi-vague sensation that they were sensing, well, something, without being able to put a definitive finger on the specifics to many decimal places.

The non-human evidence is how large flocks of birds or schools of fish can in near unison turn on a dime. Since the “turn” command isn’t vocal, and visual observations would make for unacceptable lag times, the idea is that the communication is EM in nature from brain to brain at light speed via Earth’s EM field as the in-between medium.

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The Wheel: When you think of the most important and fundamental inventions that humans are credited with only a select few really stand out. Taming fire is one. Cutting tools like stone flakes are another. Writing is a third. Coming up with the concept of nothing or the zero was a real breakthrough. And of course there is the wheel. However, there are a few anomalies when it comes to the wheel. In the ancient Americas for example, the wheel was both known, but unused. Translated, you find in the archaeological record children’s toys that have wheels. What you don’t find is that concept extrapolated into the adult world. Adults, be they Incas, Aztecs, Amerindians, etc. did tot make use of the wheel even though wheeled toys abound. Now the basic reason for that given is that they had no beasts of burden like oxen or horses to pull chariots, etc. so therefore no wheeled chariots. However, that doesn’t explain the lack of other practical adult applications like the wheelbarrow, or small wheeled wagons/carts/platforms or ‘shopping’ trolleys or even a primitive rickshaw that could be pulled by one person. Not everything wheeled has to be the size of a chariot, a covered wagon, a stagecoach. There’s not even a potter’s wheel and so on. The concept of round or rolling (as in logs) is obvious to the most basic of cultures, yet for the first half of their very lengthy empire, that super-civilization, at least for those times, the ancient Egyptians, didn’t make use of the wheel. The Australian Aborigines didn’t seem to have a wheel-eureka moment either.

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Orion’s Belt: It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintake The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as a belt. For some mysterious reason, several archaeological sites exhibit or mirror the positions of the trilogy of stars that make up the Belt of Orion. The most famous is the trilogy of those massive ancient Egyptian pyramids on the Giza plateau. The second is seen at Teotihuacán’s central pyramid complex in Mexico. The third is a trilogy of Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Okay, Orion’s Belt, that trilogy of stars, is fairly prominent in the night sky, but then too so is a lot of other star patterns. What makes these special to our ancient ancestors? A big deal of this is made by ‘ancient astronaut’ theorists. Somehow that trilogy of stars must be special, like perhaps home turf to ET. Alas, that doesn’t seem all that plausible. Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintake (Delta Orionis) are very bright stars (to the naked eye), but they are also very, very far away. That alone suggests that they are very un-Sun like. Alnitak is 736 light-years away and 100,000 times our Sun’s luminosity; Alnilam is 1340 light-years distant and 375,000 times as luminous as our Sun; and Mintake is 915 light-years away as the crow flies and is a whopping 900,000 times the Sun’s luminosity. Mintaka is also a double star system. Translated, the trio of stars that make up Orion’s Belt don’t seem to be likely candidates for extraterrestrials that would come a-calling as ‘ancient astronauts’. I very much doubt SETI scientists would target these stars as likely candidates to point their radio telescopes at.

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Human Language: Modern humans are one species, many breeds, but one species. Our single species has however thousands of languages, both in use and extinct. That’s an anomaly. Other animals, each a single species, whether of not they come in breeds like cats, dogs and horses, have one vocal language (supplemented, as in the case of humans too, by body/facial ‘language’). A Chinese cat can converse, that is making its intentions understood, with a French cat, or with an Egyptian cat or with an Australian cat. Why humans alone needed to or have developed a massive multitude of spoken languages is a bit of a mystery. Body/facial ‘language’ on the other hand is pretty universal, therefore singular.

You’re Out of Your Subconscious Mind: Part Three

In psychology, there is the concept of the subconscious, or the unconscious, mind. Whatever you call it, you have no real apparent control over it and it’s not subject to your introspection. As such, you have no free will over this apparently automated non-awareness part of your mind (not to be confused with your automated nervous system which holds sway over your body). When you lack free will over the workings of your own mind, well that suggests something or someone else is pulling the strings: translated its evidence for a Simulated Universe.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

EMOTIONS

Emotions are strange in that you may see a picture of X and burst into tears, or laugh out loud, whereas I’m totally ho-hum, under-whelmed, boring. However, another image may cause me to rant and rave, while you just yawn-the-big-yawn. In either case, you seemingly have no control over your feelings. You don’t seem to have much free will in terms of who you like or dislike or who you fall head-over-heels in love with, so again, I’d conclude that emotions are part of your subconscious.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS IS THE CONSCIOUS?

It seems however unnecessarily messy to have both a subconscious and a conscious mind. Actually, it was Sigmund Freud who divided the mind into the conscious mind and the subconscious (unconscious) mind. The question arises, might the subconscious actually be doing ALL the number crunching and feeding the answers to your (illusionary) consciousness or conscious mind, sometimes unexpectedly – that eureka moment, but more often as not, humming a constant feed along to you in the background, a feeding which as far as you’re concerned is your (illusionary) conscious mind in action but it’s all just the subconscious. You think your conscious mind is composing that letter, but the words and sentences are being fed through to your (illusionary) consciousness via that subconscious interface without you being self-aware of that. So in fact there is no consciousness housed separate and apart as an organic structure, only the illusion of one. Your automated nervous system runs the body; what we now call the subconscious runs the mind – the entire mind.

That’s probably a vastly oversimplification, but regardless of whether or not the subconscious and the conscious are separate and apart or one and the same, the subconscious is top of the pecking order over which we have no control. Only the automated central nervous system rules above all else – if it didn’t you’d be kaput, extinct, stone dead as a doorknob.  

MEMORY

I’d be of the opinion that you can’t in fact operate on the conscious level at all at anytime as hinted at above. You read the word “tree” in a book, hear the word spoken, or see a “tree” in the movies or outside your window. You must immediately reach back into that subconscious cubby-hole and draw back out what a tree is in order for the work or image to make sense. You see gibberish in a book or hear it, say someone ‘speaking in tongues’; maybe it’s real gibberish or maybe it’s an unfamiliar foreign language, but it’s gibberish nonetheless. Or say you see something you’ve never seen before (or never heard or learnt about). There’s incomprehension because there’s no subconscious cubby-hole to reach back into that contains that something that will enlighten you. And so you have gibberish or the great unknown to contend with.

One hundred percent of your perception of reality comes into your mind via your five senses and if anything perceived doesn’t match up with your subconscious cubby-hole encyclopaedia then part of your reality makes no sense.

All of these millions of daily inputs, matching with cubby-hole outputs, take place so fast, not quite at the speed of light but getting there, that you have no awareness of it happening. The lag time between reading “tree” and the “ah ha, I know that that means” is so fast it just doesn’t register. If there was a significant time differential you’d know it. Back in our Stone Age cavemen days, our ancient ancestor’s world of fight or flight, survival of the fittest, any lag time would be detrimental to your well being. I see a “sabre-tooth cat” – five second delay – subconscious cubby-hole says “sabre-tooth cat bad news, run”. By then you’re its dinner; it’s too little too late for you.       

Take another common scenario. After you wake up in the morning you tend to greet those around you with a “Good morning (person’s name)”. Say it’s “Good morning, John”. Now you have to reach back into your memory to recall what the appropriate phrase is and what the persons name is. You also therefore need to remember the meaning of ‘appropriate’. It would be strange and inappropriate to say “Goodnight Josephine” instead, or “I think I’ll have pizza for dinner tonight”. But how do you reach back into your memory to draw out the correct phrase when you don’t remember what you’re looking for. If you did remember what you were looking for you wouldn’t have to look. It’s the same with any though process. You’ve got to remember what it is you need to remember in order to think the thought, or say the words, or perform the actions. It’s all very circular reasoning. You have to remember what you need to remember in order to remember!

If you remember where you put your keys you don’t need to search your memory to discover where you left your keys, but you initially still had to perform that search of your memory since you remember where you put your keys! But how did you know where to search for the answer (where did I put my keys), an answer that wasn’t an answer to an unasked question like how many keys are on the keychain or what’s the colour of the key I actually need. Your memory bank is a huge place with millions of bits and pieces of data. Only a very tiny fraction is relevant to “where did I put my keys”. It’s like trying to find one sentence in an encyclopaedia or that proverbial needle in a haystack. 

Further, you had to remember that you needed to remember where you left your keys. That infinite regression of I need to remember in order to remember in order to remember is almost like that series of Russian dolls, one inside the other inside the other. Ultimately your entire mind becomes 100% clogged with the key problem and you shut down from mental overload. But you don’t, shut down that is, so there’s another solution.

If you cannot consciously recall where you left your keys, and that’s a scenario we can probably all identify with, then you rely on your subconscious. If you’re too impatient for that relax, wait and see approach, there’s always the tried and true treasure hunt approach, but that in itself also involves numerous memory exercises. 

YOU’RE ON AUTOPILOT

You don’t need to remember to wake up, or to breathe,  or how to take one step in front of the other to walk from A to B, or how to digest your breakfast, or if you’re sick or injured your body by itself usually manages to put things right. You don’t have to remember how to heal a cut or get over the common cold. If nearly all of your body is on autopilot, pre-programmed as it were, perhaps all of your body is pre-programmed, including the mind, regardless how many divisions it has.

OFFICE ASSISTANT

 I actually have two separate and apart virtual reality critters on my PC, the standard Office Assistant (cleverly disguised as a cat) and Felix [the cat]. Now the question is, do these simulated critters in any shape, manner and form mirror the (apparently) really real human?

Firstly, I think we can all agree that these two virtual critters are just that – simulations. As such we can all agree that they are just software programmes and that they have no free will. But there are many, many parallels between their behaviour, their mental processes, and that of the (apparently) really real human being. 

For starters, the Office Assistant (OA) has memory. If I perform a certain action, I get a prompt to do something in response. The Office Assistant (OA) has searched its memory for an appropriate reply to my action. It has made a decision. It also shows an emotion in trying to attract my attention since it wants further input from me. Because software can and often is upgraded, well that’s learning in another guise. Felix, on the other hand, exhibits some sensory processing by exhibiting a sense of sight, smell and touch when interacting in a creative with other objects it encounters. It exhibits a range of behaviours that you’d identify with a really real cat. About the only things they are not programmed to do is go to the litter box or have sex or vomit, for fairly obvious reasons, though it could be so programmed if one wanted. 

They both feed, albeit off of electrical energy. They wake up when I turn on the PC and go to ‘sleep’ when I turn off the PC. The OA actually takes catnaps during long intervals of inactivity where its helpful hints aren’t necessary. There’s also no way of telling if they are programmed to enter a dream state like real cats do. I suspect probably not as it would be unnecessary and a waste of programming.

Of course it’s all just sophisticated programming. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but I’m sure any computer software programmer worthy of the title could spell it out in incredible technical detail.

The upshot is, these clearly simulated cats do indeed mirror many of what we’d identify as real biologically human traits. Of course given the relative sophistications, it’s like comparing the value of a five cent piece against a five dollar bill, but the commonality is that both the five cent piece and the five dollar bill are money. The difference between Office Assistant/Felix and me is just a matter of degree.

MIND OVER MATTER: THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING?

Try as you will, your mind cannot influence the behaviour of non-living material, otherwise you’d always win playing the slot or poker machines and 18 holes-in-one at the golf course would be, well, par for the course.

I say non-living because your mind can influence other living minds, though I don’t mean via telepathy or some such or various other technological devices allegedly used for mind-control purposes. The quite ordinary hard stare or the ‘evil eye’ or the barking voice is all that’s required as any raw recruit at the receiving end of the Drill Sergeant’s wrath can attest to. Some minds are putty in the ‘hands’ of other minds. On a gentler note, your thoughts, ideas, words spoken or written can shape the worldviews of other minds.

Two lovers gaze into each others eyes – mental communication of a sort transpires each affecting the physiological state of the other.

Influencing other odd bods and sods apart, your mind can have some minor influence over your own body. Some people have some control over their heart rate to some extent, and the placebo effect, both positive and negative has been proven beyond all doubt in terms of alleviating minor medical ailments by accenting the positive or aggravating the negative. With respect to the later, if you really think someone’s put the whammy on you, and you believe in the power of the whammy, then you can just waste away and curl up and snuff it. It’s not surprising that such things are possible since your mind is really matter (biochemistry) and your body is really matter (biochemistry) and biochemistry can flow from one to the other. Now that only works on a relatively minor scale. You might defy the Earth’s gravity and arm toss a ball up into the air, but you can’t defy it to the extent where you can arm toss the ball all the way to Mars. Likewise, your mind might be able to shorten the duration and severity of a common cold, but it’s probably beyond realism to expect it to overcome a case of pneumonia.   

CONCLUSION

 Free will means having control over your own mind. It’s mind-over-mind. You’re in command. But you’re not in command over your subconscious. Lack of free will points to another undefined nebulous someone (or something) in control of you, or in other words, a scenario that’s more likely as not makes you a virtual reality in a simulated universe.

And no, I didn’t come up with this topic consciously – it came to me unwanted, unbidden, via my subconscious.

You’re Out of Your Subconscious Mind: Part Two

In psychology, there is the concept of the subconscious, or the unconscious, mind. Whatever you call it, you have no real apparent control over it and it’s not subject to your introspection. As such, you have no free will over this apparently automated non-awareness part of your mind (not to be confused with your automated nervous system which holds sway over your body). When you lack free will over the workings of your own mind, well that suggests something or someone else is pulling the strings: translated its evidence for a Simulated Universe.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

CREATIVITY (The ‘What If’)

Is creativity pre-programmed or an act of free will? How many things do you do during the course of your day that you did not consciously plan to do, yet could have so planned in theory? Those spur of the moment things, even little things, you didn’t walk up having them on your agenda, must have originated from your subconscious. You really, apparently, didn’t have any free will over doing those agenda items - that is doing them consciously with a before-the-fact intent.

I call creativity the mental “what if” exercise. You take this bit from this cubby-hole and that bit from that cubby-hole and a third bit and fourth and fifth bit from other cubby-hols and combine them in a unique, theoretical, creative, what if, ways. It’s been said that from the reality of one drop of water you should be able to come up with, or envision, the idea of a waterfall or an ocean, even if you’ve never seen or heard about either and therefore don’t have a waterfall or ocean cubby-hole. So you reach into your cubby-hole for the concept of many, numerous, billions and billions; your cubby-hole for cliff; your cubby-hole for bowl or depression; your cubby-hole for gravity, and several more besides. And so you come up with new cubby-holes for theoretical waterfall (but probably lacking the thunderous sounds, spray and foam), and theoretical ocean (but probably without salt, marine life, the tides and waves), not actual parts of your reality, only your ‘what if’ reality, and to be honest, a lot of our cubby-holes are of that nature.  

Let’s take a simple everyday scenario. I think I’ll cook up a pizza for dinner tonight. It’s a spur of the moment eureka moment that wasn’t present when you woke up this morning. So where did that pizza for dinner thought come from? It probably came as a bolt out of the blue at lightning speed; it leapt into your conscious mind, but it was constructed from the various bits and pieces that resides elsewhere in your mind – in your subconscious mind.

Inside your mind you store a whole dictionary full of concepts, each in its own little cubby-hole, which you probably keep adding to all the time. The dictionary of a fifty-year-old is much bigger than that of a five-year old. Imagination or creativity is that which picks and chooses relevant concepts from those various cubby-holes and strings the chosen bits, at seemingly light speed, into a logical linear conglomerate. Sometimes the bits and pieces are strung together to form an original bit of creativity or of the imagination, though that may not be original or creative to someone else, but it is to you, and that’s what counts. I mean I / cook / small / mushroom / thin base / pizza / dinner might not be all that much a stretch of your imagination or overly creative, but I / cook / small / thin base / magic mushroom / pizza / dinner might be.

But let’s back up a second to that storehouse of cubby-hole concepts. That I / cook / small / mushroom / thin base / pizza / dinner is a very specific outcome. You have cubby-holes for cook from scratch vs. ready made frozen vs. dial-a-home-delivery vs. dine out. You have cubby-holes for toppings like mushroom vs. pineapple vs. pepperoni vs. beef vs. ham vs. olives vs. onions vs. capsicum or some combination of those, and a lot more besides. You have cubby-hole concepts for breakfast vs. lunch vs. TV snack-time vs. dinner. Then there’s small individual size vs. large size vs. family size where everybody gets the same deal. And thin base vs. medium base vs. thick base pizzas. Lastly, there’s the choice of pizza in the first place. Your cubby-holes contain concepts of alternative dinners like steak vs. lamb vs. seafood vs. spaghetti vs. chicken vs. turkey vs. ham vs. any of dozens of other possibilities. From the hundreds upon hundreds of choices / options / permutations drawn from those concepts stored in the cubby-holes of you mind, you make one subconscious decision. It could be even a slightly irrational decision – maybe you don’t have any pizza-related ingredients in stock; it’s nasty weather and you’ll need to go to the supermarket! 

I’d suggest that with so many hundreds of options (and this is just one tiny facet of your daily coming to terms with your day), how can you make a final conscious decision using only your conscious mind? You’d be stymied. You’d be indecisive faced with that multitude of conscious options. It seems as if your subconscious crunches the numbers; your consciousness acts on the answer. Your subconscious says I / cook / small / mushroom / thin base / pizza / dinner and then your conscious mind puts that answer into an action mode and makes it so.

Of course not all creative activity is subconscious in origin – or so you think. You compose a letter off the top of your head; ditto holding a real time conversation.

DECISIONS

Do you take a right turn or a left turn at Oak Street? That was the issue at hand for a popular song, and surely the resolution of the issue is a conscious decision and subject to free will. Your subconscious cubby-holes will store and provide for you the positives and negatives of either choice when you drag them to the fore. But what if it’s the very first time you are required to make such a decision and you have no prior knowledge to draw on. Surely that decision will be 100% a demonstration of free will. Or will it? How can you make an informed decision when you have no data on which to make a decision? The easy option is to toss heads or tails, but there’s no free will cigar awarded for that.

Perhaps if you are right-handed you might subconsciously (there’s that word again) true right when you reached Oak Street.

Your mind, like the rest of life, the Universe and everything, is composed of molecules, in turn composed of atoms, in turn made up of the elementary particles we all learn about in high school science classes. Now the realm of the micro-verse is governed by the probability laws of quantum physics. As such, if you really want to get down and dirty, any and all mental activities at any and all levels have to take quantum physics into account. So what’s the big deal? Well, your decision to go right or left at Oak Street might just boil down to a probabilistically quantum state of some elementary particle in your brain which could go either way in a totally random way which you have no control over.

In quantum physics, when you have an equally either/or state of affairs, well that’s known as a superposition of states. If nobody is looking, you go both left and right at Oak Street until someone peeks and it’s determined either/or. It’s another version of Schrodinger’s Cat-in-the-box thought experiment with a naturally radioactive substance that has a 50/50 chance of decaying in say one hour. If the decay happens, it triggers a device inside the box that kills the cat. If the decay fails to eventuate, the cat lives. Until someone looks after one hour, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. After someone peeks, the cat is either dead or alive.

So, in a sort of similar way, perhaps a radioactive atom inside your brain (and you are naturally slightly radioactive) will decay or not decay during the time you are agonising over that left or right turn. The decay/not decay will decide, not if the cat lives or dies but whether you turn left or right at Oak Street. In any case, you have no control. Quantum physics controls your subconscious which controls you and your decisions in the absence of any other driving force.

FREE WILL

As noted frequently above, when it comes to the subconscious you have no control over how it operates. Therefore, with respect to the subconscious, you have no free will.

While watching a DVD of a TV show or feature film for the first time, your phone rings. You hit the “pause” button while you answer the phone. Now when you return, mentally you can envision hundreds of possible scenarios or options that could unfold in the few minutes after you resume viewing by hitting the “play” button. But you know there will be only one scenario and it is fixed – absolutely. Why? It’s been pre-programmed. There’s no free will for the characters.

Now what if we could freeze frame your mind like a DVD – hit your mind’s “pause” button split seconds before a pizza dinner in all its finality detail entered your conscious mind. We, the outsiders, could imagine hundreds of scenarios of what would happen when we un-paused your mind, but just the one scenario would eventuate. 

Now the question arises – you have no control over your subconscious mind and what it comes up with, yet the subconscious seems to often rule the roost where much of your decision making is unplanned; much of your creativity is unplanned; all that much to do with your imagination is unplanned, unplanned meaning your conscious mind played no active role. You just slept on it; you had that unplanned eureka moment while your brain was idling in neutral.

The DVD analogy was pre-programming. Might your subconscious be pre-programming as well? If so, no free will, and one scenario that pre-empts your free will is your existence as virtual reality in a simulated universe!

So, if you are not in control of your subconscious then that implies a lack of free will of the mind and your mental processes. You certainly don’t have mind-over-matter free will (you can’t flap your arms and fly or run faster than the speed of sound), but you no doubt think you are in charge of your own mind. If that’s not the case, well any sign of that is suggestive that you are living in a computer software-generated simulated universe which gives you no free will at all, only an illusion of free will. 

Belief in astrology is self-negating your belief in your free will since the stars and the planets rule in your roost. Perhaps one idea for such acceptance of astrology is that you don’t have free will and so astrology is your scapegoat substitute.

To be continued…