Dragonfly

I know that talking about fully aware consciousness in hindsight, then losing the memory, is probably a good hypothesis, but how about all those times I simply blacked out under the influence of alcohol?

I drove places, talked to many people, did many things, royally ticked off a lot of folks...

I have absolutely NO memory of most of that. (In a few cases, I have a vague nebulous notion of the outline of some moment.)

Michael

But when you talked to many people and did many things, do you think you were at the time not conscious?

I think those are some wonderful explanations for the "and there they are" situation.  I personally cannot consciously perceive slight atmospheric changes, but I realize others are more sensitive to slightest change in their environment.  Is that conscious or subconscious?  Why don't some things register? What is going on below the surface in the subconscious?  It would seem that we sense a lot of stuff without consciously realizing that we are sensing it.  Is it all just conscious awareness, but barely a blip on the radar so one doesn't realize it exists or where it originated?  Where does the consciousness end and the subconscious begin?  Some people completely deny the existence of the subconscious alltogether.

I think the following passage may be relevant in this regard. From Dennett's "Consciousness explained", Ch. 5 "Multiple drafts versus the Cartesian theater":

seen at various moments on the drive, you would have had at least some sketchy details to report. The "unconscious driving" phenomenon is better seen as a case of rolling consciousness with swift memory loss. Are you constantly conscious of the clock ticking? If it suddenly stops, you notice this, and you can say right away what it is that has stopped; the ticks "you weren't conscious of" up to the moment they stopped and "would never have been conscious of" if they hadn't stopped are now clearly in your consciousness. An even more striking case is the phenomenon of being able to count, retrospectively in experience memory, the chimes of the clock which you only noticed was striking after four or five chimes. But how could you so clearly remember hearing something you hadn't been conscious of in the first place? The question betrays a commitment to the Cartesian model; there are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes.

Here is something to ponder.  There are things that we perceive that cannot be attributed directly to our five senses.  For example when you sense another person's presence without having heard or seen them coming into the room, look up and there they are, or when you feel someone is watching you or talking about you.

How do you know that this can't be attributed directly to our five senses? There are many ways you can explain such a phenomenon without having to resort to mysterious extra senses. "Without having heard of seen" can here very well mean: "without consciously having heard or seen". It is very well possible that you did hear some slight noise, but that it was so insignificant that you weren't consciously aware of it until another equally slight noise may have triggered some alarm function in your subconscious. Similarly for some slight movement in the periphery of your vision, or a reflection in your glasses or in some polished surface, a slight diminishing (or other change) of the ambient light, a shifting shadow, a change of the acoustics in the room, a smell (see "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" for an account of the amazing detection possibilities of our nose), a change of temperature/draft... It is amazing how subtle the clues can be that we may pick up. That has also always been a problem in paranormal research: it seemed that an experiment could only be explained by some paranormal mechanism, until a skeptic pointed out a possibility of sensory leakage. When that possibility was controlled, the effect also disappeared like snow in summer. Other examples are the efficacy of "cold reading" and with animals the "Clever Hans effect". So Kat, if I were you I'd also buy such an Occam razor, they're very useful (Michael still hasn't found his own razor?)

It is interesting to note that this "feeling being stared at" syndrome seems to be an example of a paranormal occurence in one of Rand's books. I seem to remember that it is Dagny who has that feeling (she has a feeling that someone is looking at her and turning around she sees there is someone standing there), but I can't remember in what context. I suppose Rand would have vociferously denied the possibility of a paranormal explanation, but it's strange that she didn't realize that many people would read it like that.

I have not read much Newton since high school, and that was longer ago than I would like to think about.

That isn't important for this discussion, if you just keep in mind that classical or Newtonian mechanics is a deterministic system.

I am unclear as to where the problem is.

That is exactly my point, I see no problem either. But other people do.

There are a couple of threads going on over on another forum on this and, for as much as I try to focus on them, I keep getting the impression that one person is talking about one thing and another is talking about something else. My mind starts wandering.

That's also my my impression, it's just too confusing to follow.

So, let me try to get down to basics for our discussion.

To me it is obvious that brain cells have their own unique nature and they cannot act and function otherwise. It would be very difficult for me to envision a brain cell trying to carry out the functions of a bone cell or muscle cell (other  than figuratively, like when you call someone a bonehead or meathead). A brain cell must do what a brain cell does and nothing else. (I am presently reading a highly technical book on this called Neurophilosophy by Patricia Churchland.)

Now free will. I called this the "faculty of volition" in my essay on addiction and I include it as a component of the conscious mind. I also consider it to have an organic nature and consider it to be exercised in brain cells.

I'd formulate it a bit differently. The faculty of volition is just an aspect of consciousness (animal or human), and consciousness is a high-level description (seen from the intentional stance) of what our brain cells are doing.

More hardline Rand students seem to think that choosing to think can be done as a prime cause, sort of blanking out where the capacity to think in itself comes from. This has origin in Rand's statement that the first choice is the choice to think (in her observations on developmental psychology, for example in ITOE, and elsewhere).

That idea has always struck me as nonsense, and it amazes me that so many people swallow that idea uncritically. On what does she base that belief? How can you choose to think? Choosing already implies thinking. The only thing you can do is to choose not to think by blowing your brains out, but I don't think that is what she means. Now some people have tried to make this notion more acceptable by amending it to the choice "to focus or not to focus". But that is still a very simplistic view which has no basis in reality, which is vastly more complicated than such a binary choice, supposedly leading to either clear thinking rational independent Objectivists or to fuzzy thinking evading evil whim-worshipping second-handers, collectivists, subjectivists etc. etc. Wouldn't it be nice if the world were that simple?

btw - Animals can choose between alternatives on the perceptual level and they do this all the time. What they do not need is morality, since that is something for a conceptual mentality. But they do choose their actions based on values.

Right. They can't deliberate or project the possible consequences of their choice in the future like we do, it's more a range-of-the-moment choice, but it is a choice.

df...

How all this ties into free will and determinism is that common sense tells us that certain reactions and value choices are automatic and come with our brain - while others are open to being chosen (and programmed). Roger Bissell throws desire and time into the equation, and I have seen people literally get tied into intellectual knots trying to talk around that.

But the question "free will and determinism" has nothing to do with the question of automatic and/or chosen/programmed reactions and choices. These may be interesting in themselves, but they divert us from the main question, namely the compatibility of what commonly is called "free will" (the possibility to choose between several alternatives) with "determinism" of the brain, where the latter is defined as the fact that the state of the brain in terms of the functionality of its fundamental building blocks (cells, neurons, or groups of them) at a certain moment uniquely determines the state of that brain at a later moment (ignoring possible glitches), in other words the brain as a classical Newtonian system.

Dragonfly-

How is it that you have established that the brain is a "deterministic system"?

I haven't established that the brain is a deterministic system, but it is a reasonable assumption. In view of the temperature of the brain and the size of its functional building blocks, it is very unlikely that quantum effects will determine the functioning of the brain (the brain is just too hot). That doesn't necessarily imply that quantum fluctuations will never have an effect, but that such an effect will at most be incidental, and not relevant for the systematic functioning of the brain.

Based on our current knowledge of the physics and physiology of the brain this is the most logical assumption. We make the same assumption for the functioning of the rest of the human body.

If you are interested in reading the entire essay, it is posted athttp://members.aol.com/REBissell/indexmmm.html.

The link didn't work until I discovered that I had to delete the period at the end...

I fail to detect the inconsistencies that Torres and Kamhi claim to see. They suggest, for example, that these supposed contradictions explain instances in which Rand failed to grasp the real abstract meaning of certain paintings by Vermeer, one of her favorites. I would alternately suggest that her disappointment at the lack of heroic motifs in said paintings and her excitement over his style which she found so admirable combined to interfere with her ability to focus on what was embodied in Vermeer's subjects. These factors may well have encouraged her mistaken judgment that his subjects were banal and his style everything (relatively speaking). As strong as Rand's allegiance was to the idea of the centrality of the subject in esthetics, her real love obviously was for style. It's not unreasonable to suggest that she probably had an overly narrow view of what subject matter would be appropriate to the execution of a particular style. (Otherwise, why speak, as she did, of such apparent mismatches between subject and style as an "esthetic crime"??)

I tried to write a reaction, but I've been continuously rewriting the text and now it's such a mess that I'll leave it at the moment, I'll have to order my own thoughts first if I want to produce something coherent... Just one brief comment

I think we should make a distinction between Rand's theoretical exposé and her concrete examples. In the first she doesn't confuse the external subject matter with the ultimate content; she even explicitly warns against it, but as soon as she writes about particular examples she does fall in that same trap. Not with regard to literature, but definitely when she discusses concrete examples of art and music. So for those particular examples I tend to agree with Kamhi and Torres.

I wonder whether there are no genetic and/or organic factors that influence the likelyhood of getting addicted to alcohol. I drink one bottle of beer (33 cc) at dinner, and on special occasions at most two bottles in the evening. I've never been drunk in my life, I just don't like it when I get light in the head and drowsy, and that's a sign for me to stop. I just don't understand that people really like to continue drinking in such a situation. It seems to me that the fact that someone can't stop drinking after the first glass can't be explained only by psychological factors, I think that physiological factors must also play an important role.

Dragonfly,

Let's take this to another thread, as it is going in the direction of epistemology, which bores a lot of people.

The present thread is about the lovely mockingbirds in our lives who bring beauty and joy to us through their singing.

I invite you to start it and I suggest "Chewing on Ideas."

Eh..yes.. of course.. well, you know, as English is not my native language it's not so easy for me to write some coherent article, it takes a lot of time to find the approximately right formulations... But perhaps I might just start something by asking a question. And what is better suited to put the cat among the pigeons (or the dragonfly among the flies) than to ask what the objection of Objectivists is against compatibilism, the notion that "free will" is compatible with the brain as a deterministic system. Discussions on Objectivist forums about this subject always generate a lot of heat but very little light. I still have to hear a coherent and compelling argument against compatibilism instead of an angry " it's obvious that it can't be true!" or "I know that it's false!" (if not: "A is A!"). Well it's not at all obvious to me, and perhaps we may have a discussion here without immediately letting the randroid dogs loose.

Hi Dragonfly,

Where is thy sting?

You should know that dragonflies have no sting...

You asked me three questions: I will try to answer them.

1. "Why would you propose a new kind of sense organ that receives input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses?"

I'm not proposing anything right now. More musing or speculating. Call it a science fiction level.

Kevin proposed that consciousness is a product of brain activity. I like that very much. In the same manner, our sense organs are a product of our life activity. Yet each addresses a different part of reality that is not accessed by the other. So I am taking the fiction writer's license of going in that same direction with consciousness.

Wait a moment, I can't follow you here. I can understand what you mean by "brain activity". But "life activity" that produces sense organs? Do you mean evolution? Or just the activity of a living body? In the latter case brain activity is of course just a subset of life activity. Neither do I understand your point about addressing different parts of reality. That seems rather trivial to me, even different sense address different parts of reality, each organ has its own task. But of course they work together. To use the computer analogue: the brain is the processor, the senses are the peripherals that provide input from the outside world (scanner, camera, microphone) for the processor.

Still, I can make the same question right back at you. Why would you think that reality is limited only to what we can perceive, then integrate?

What we can directly perceive is of course only a very small part of reality, but thanks to science and its instruments we can indirectly perceive a lot more. If there is anything that we can in principle not perceive (directly or indirectly), then it is not part of science, and for me therefore not part of existence. I reject supernatural phenomena, where I take "supernatural" in the literal sense (outside nature), not phenomena of which people think that they need a supernatural explanation.

Take for example the notion of the "classical" orbit of an electron in an atom (i.e. the electron moving along a well-defined curve in space). We know now thanks to Heisenberg that we are in principle unable to measure such a classical orbit, we can only determine the probability that an electron will be at a certain position and we call this probability distribution an "orbital". The notion of a classical orbit is in this case meaningless, as it is in principle unmeasurable, so it is not part of reality.

Then perhaps you're thinking of the possibility that there are things in reality that we could in principle find using scientific methods, but that we also can perceive directly with some new, developing sense organ. But what is the evidence for that?

Have you ever seen a flock of animals all take off in the same direction at the same time? How do ants do what they do all together when they go out for food? There are a million of observations that do not completely line up. Do these life forms merely have one of our five senses in a more amplified manner, or are they perceiving something we cannot?

The explanation is not so mysterious. Many years ago I've even written computer programs to simulate this behavior, that can be explained by relatively simple mutual interactions between the animals in a group. Did you read Feynman's "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"? (If not, do read it, it is delicious, and you'll roar with laughter!). Herein he describes a few simple experiments he devised to account for the movements of ants. And it is instructive to see how even a non-specialist can find relevant information just by doing some clever, but simple tests.

So my proposal is more of a question than an answer. (btw - What do dragonflies eat?)

Flies (yumm!)

In the meantime you should look for that razor!

Well, here is the thought. What if the conceptual and cognitive faculty also came as part of a new kind of sense organ that is still in evolutionary development? That means that it would receive input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses.

Why would you propose a new kind of sense organ that receives input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses? Is there any reason to suppose that our conceptual and cognitive faculty is not fully compatible with receiving input only from our traditional senses? Where have you left Occam's razor?

I'm reading Ayn Rand Answers and The Romantic Manifesto now.  Although she makes many good points and observations, I have some issues with RM as I feel her views on the creative field are too narrow.  Are her tastes in art, music and literature part of the philosophy of Objectivism or just her tastes?  In other words, fact or opinion,  cognitive or normative?

While Rand made many important points in TRM, the book has also a lot of weak points. I think she is at her best when she writes about literature, the field where she was of course a master herself. But her views on fine art and music are far too simplistic. She was obviously an amateur and quite out of her depth in those areas. I think that she was at least somewhat aware of this with regard to music; AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) she never published her bizarre ideas about the "malevolence" of Beethoven or what was "wrong" with Bach and Mozart. I think she must have realized that she was on thin ice here. But she had no inhibitions when writing about fine art, producing such howlers as calling Vermeer a representant of "bleak kitchen Naturalism", condemning Rembrandt for belonging to the "painterly school" and dismissing all Impressionists as "silly". I cannot but wonder how many of their paintings she really had seen in her life (there is a parallel with her knowledge of the writings of other philosophers, which seems to have been very superficial, Aristotle probably excepted). Apparently her idea of a positive sense of life in painting is equivalent to a detailed realism, bright colors, blue skies, skyscrapers, and people in ecstatic or heroic postures. Everything else must be the result of a malevolent sense of life. In fact there is here a strong reminiscence of the principles of Soviet realism and Nazi art (Arnold Breker for example), with their emphasis on heroic and exalted realism. I think this is a very narrow and stifling view which greatly detracts from the value of the book, making it much more difficult to be taken seriously by the "outsiders".