My patience, always a dwindling and, I’ve come to think, nonrenewable resource, has, at long last, been thoroughly tried—tried and convicted of aggravated aggravation with skepticism aforethought. What was it that shanghaied my forbearance and drove me to this illicit state? A book. Yes, a book, the very thing that typically flash freezes my patience, preserves it, makes it a cryonic fugitive unpinned from tick-tock sweep-handedness of time. And what was this offending book? None other than David J. Linden’s The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Food, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. Now, because my compass of pleasure usually points to the true north of chocolate, peanut butter, or some combination of the two, I was keen to read it—that, and a mash-up subtitle one item longer than the retentive capacity of human short-term memory. I know fatty food, et. al. are Dr. Feel Goods, but I was interested to learn why. I did not like what I learned. I should have known better. I missed the implications of the clause “How Our Brains Make,” that point man heading up a squad of pleasures. I should have known that that tandemed subject and verb would make the needle of my compass of displeasure spin wildly.
Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, asserts that certain experiences “activate an anatomically and biochemically defined pleasure circuit in the brain.” It seems the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a medial forebrain site, is a sort of pleasure trade center. When stimulated, it fires neurons that send a cargo of neurotransmitters along well-travelled routes to other parts of the brain similarly involved in the pleasure business, thus completing the pleasure circuit and making us shimmy and shiver in sensations of delight. Actually, Linden breaks no new ground here; it’s pretty much dogma in the neuroscience community—a fivegone conclusion. But Linden is doing the Carl Sagan thing, popularizing science for the gee-whizzable laity, though without Sagan’s considerable eloquence; so, I suppose he can be forgiven his unrevelatory revelation. That’s not what extinguished the neuronal firing of my pleasure circuit. No, it was dampered, de-embered, raked, and cooled by what his thesis all but proclaims from the rooftop, an implication crammed into that seemingly innocuous “How Our Brains Make.”
Linden effectually reduces human beings to brain biochemistry, to neural substrates whose components fire in response to external experiences. We are cleanly and crisply cause-and-effected. Mind is brain, nothing more. Our sense of subjective experience, our internal and particular sensibility, our savors and glees and delights and joys and satisfactions and gratifications and relishes and titillations—all our nectareous gustoness, all our ambrosial zestiness, all our primrosy feelin’ grooviness—is illusory. For Linden, our subjective experience is only ours in the sense that some localized cluster of neurons in our brains toggle on. He assumes that because that toggled cluster is a necessary cause of our experience of pleasure, it is also the sufficient cause of that experience.
And this is where my patience wears molecule-layer thin, for Linden’s book is seamlessly sutured to the human reductiveness that characterizes so much of the neuroscientific discourse. What, I wonder, is the appeal of maintaining that reason is not a mode of enlightened choice making but, rather, a mode of confirmatory bias maintenance? What is the appeal of insisting that conscience is a cultural construct merely, one of many ways we are scripted and normed by an internalized indoctrination mystified to seem a personal disposition? Why are religion and art and narrativity repeatedly discounted as evolutionary adaptations selected for group survival; why is altruism diminished to a mechanism for policing outliers who seek to game the reciprocity of exchange; why is God whittled down to the application, at a supernatural level, of an inherent ability to discern patterns and assign them agency? Perhaps it will be argued that these explanations are the truth, are the real, the what is; and that, while we are undoubtedly meaning-makers after the fact, we are in fact truth-seekers.
If this is indeed the case, then I think we need to separate the reality of concepts from on-the-ground, localized, practical viability of concepts. So what if reason really is a means of winning arguments? The concept reminds us that we can be capable of dispassionate discourse is the service of human well-being. So what if conscience really is culturally instilled. The concept still prompts us to avoid cruelty, still prompts us to the nobility of action from principle. So what if altruism is nothing more than vigilant self-protectionism. Its exhibition still inspires us to be mindful of others. So what if pleasure really is nothing more than neuronal pyrotechnics cubicled in a closed circuit compass? We still feel pleasure, feel it intensely, as our own, are drawn to it even if its flame singes us. Derrida and the deconstructionists said that literature collapses under the weight of its internal contradiction, that it defers meaning, disseminates it into a play of signifiers desperately seeking but never finding companionable signifieds. Yet we read and take meaning from that reading.
I worry about the media cannonade of vividly colorful fMRI images that display particular areas of the brain engaged in particular activities: praying, eating peanut butter M&Ms, looking at a picture of a loved one, factoring a polynomial, reading a Harry Potter novel, getting a microderm abrasion treatment. It’s so easy to assume that everything we do, everything we feel, every trait and tendency of which human nature is capable, resolves itself finally in a specifically sited clump of agitated neurons. I worry that a “our brains make us” philosophy can make us strangers to ourselves, make our humanness itself a strange landscape where we wander shorn of a self that feels its own self-possession, shorn of that embodied integrity which shapes our sense of ourselves as coherent beings. Something incalculable about us would vanish, I fear, something become unmelodied, by a Flip Wilsonish “my brain made me do it.” I would hope that we would continue to complete the existential clause “I am” with descriptive adjectives and not the objectifying noun phrase “my brain.” But even saying “I am my brain” defies the muscle-suited materialism of mind-to-brain reductionists like Linden and his communicants, for it raises a question, a saving grace, perhaps, I suspect they would be hard pressed to answer: who, exactly, is the “I” who is speaking?
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Comments
I love do-si-do-ing with your words and brainwaves, Jerry. But I need more coffee.
We are also too enamored of screens. Has anyone screened the human brain engaged with looking at MRIs?
I use to work in one.
Be Fed renegade?
The Vet Center is a Outreach Center and the facility is outside the VAMC Hospitals.
I still get invited.
Vets hurt awful.
The sorta bah `
`
'shrink' may label. I don't agree, generally in the standard diagnostic stuff.
We people are unique human beings. Mind is not localized between the ear temples.
Mind can wander.
Wonder ref Mind.
Mind can extend outward if we are Mindfully Aware and Emotionally Stable.
I get Sad at projection.
People sure Project.
I was Sad in DC too.
It's an experience.
It's a personal sad.
Thanks.
Ah!
Jerry Denuccio.
You are Pedagogy.
That a compliment.
Teach step by step.
Walk circumspect.
Wild days indeed.
I'll ponder later.
I think you hit the nail on the head with
"the objectifying noun phrase 'my brain'."
The (aptly named) "hard" sciences lag about a century
behind the discoveries of the (not so) New Physics.
Subjectivity cannot ever be erased from the equation;
inside & outside are inextricably linked.
Anyway, it makes no damn sense to me, the neuroscientists'
universe. All this complex meat
built up over 13.5 billion years of inexplicable miracles
for...what, now?...endless reproduction?
If that's all God or the Universe wanted, it should
have stopped at bacteria.
I know it's a thought-crime to mention what the universe
might be about, yeah yeah...
so how come everybody does it?
How does that help us reproduce successfully?
It ties me up in knots of paralyzed despair!
Maybe dumb alpha macho males are what we should be?
Nope, you disproved that in your last post.
There is no such thing as THE brain. It is interconnected
to all our systems, and to the exterior.
It changes.
It evolves personally & phylogenetically.
Who is this "I"? The one lighting up this brain I built for my
uh, self.
matter isnt meat, anyway. It's energy.
No one knows what energy is.
Or why.
Sorry for my incoherency. It's early.
Hope you get a runaway comment stream.
I shall return. Later. When my brain's pleasure centers
are more
well lit.
Or I am lit,ha.
Thoughtful piece, with your characteristic turn of phrase. Thank you! R
Now, I understand the fatty food, orgasm, generosity, learning are really about phyiscal and cultural survival of the fittiest but the other two have me stumped. Alcohol always made me reckless and post always made me paranoid--I could never figure out what was so funny.
I see work in neuroscience as operating at a specific level of abstraction. It's not the only relevant level, though. By analogy, we have the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, and biology, all related, even though in the end everything comes down to physics. Similarly, even if there's an explanation at the neural level for why I choose to do one thing rather than another, other higher-level explanations work just as well.
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
You write: "He assumes that because that toggled cluster is a necessary cause of our experience of pleasure, it is also the sufficient cause of that experience."
In Compass of Pleasure, I wrote (at the end of Chapter One):
"As we shall discover, the evidence for a general neurobiological model of pleasure is compelling and is only growing stronger as more research is done. How, then, should we think about the pleasures—both virtues and vices—that animate our lives? That wonderful meal, the blissful feeling of connectedness during prayer, that night of great sex, the “runner’s high” from a Saturday morning workout, a hilarious tipsy night at the bar with friends—are those all reducible to medial forebrain circuit activity and dopamine surges? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there seems to be a neural rheostat of reward involving the medial forebrain dopamine circuit that’s engaged by almost everything we find pleasurable. No, in the sense that the activity of the pleasure circuit in isolation results in a lifeless pleasure lacking color and depth. What makes pleasure so compelling is that, through the interconnection of the pleasure circuit with other brain regions, we adorn it with memory, with associations and emotions and social meaning, with sights, sounds, and smells. A circuit-level model of pleasure shows us what is necessary, but not sufficient. The transcendence and the texture emerge from the web of associated sensations and emotions that the pleasure circuit engages. Our task now shall be to explore how that all plays out in the brain."
I don't understand why you are misrepresenting my book in this way. It's a classic straw man argument.
David Linden
You write: "He assumes that because that toggled cluster is a necessary cause of our experience of pleasure, it is also the sufficient cause of that experience."
In Compass of Pleasure, I wrote (at the end of Chapter One):
"As we shall discover, the evidence for a general neurobiological model of pleasure is compelling and is only growing stronger as more research is done. How, then, should we think about the pleasures—both virtues and vices—that animate our lives? That wonderful meal, the blissful feeling of connectedness during prayer, that night of great sex, the “runner’s high” from a Saturday morning workout, a hilarious tipsy night at the bar with friends—are those all reducible to medial forebrain circuit activity and dopamine surges? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there seems to be a neural rheostat of reward involving the medial forebrain dopamine circuit that’s engaged by almost everything we find pleasurable. No, in the sense that the activity of the pleasure circuit in isolation results in a lifeless pleasure lacking color and depth. What makes pleasure so compelling is that, through the interconnection of the pleasure circuit with other brain regions, we adorn it with memory, with associations and emotions and social meaning, with sights, sounds, and smells. A circuit-level model of pleasure shows us what is necessary, but not sufficient. The transcendence and the texture emerge from the web of associated sensations and emotions that the pleasure circuit engages. Our task now shall be to explore how that all plays out in the brain."
I don't understand why you are misrepresenting my book in this way. It's a classic straw man argument.
David Linden
what do you mean by:
"The transcendence and the texture emerge
from the web of associated sensations and emotions
that the pleasure circuit
engages. "
"Transcendence" is not a trifling word.
It means "to pass the limits of,
to be greater than (in intensity, power),
to exist of & independent of (the material universe)"
How does this transcendence "emerge"?
By sheer complexity?
What IS this transcendence, once it has emerged?
A Humean collection of associated experiences,
or a..well, a "self"?
Did material substratums evolve from plant
to animal to..uh....advanced animal/human being..
by complexification and
then more damn complexification
ALL FOR THE BENEFIT OF AN EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE
to survive? Well, ok then, we have
made the journey and are well-equipped to survive
(although that is debatable)
any biosphere,
but...
well, I guess my question is why?
Pleasure?Avoidance of pain?
With a very very wide definition of "pleasure" i could almost agree.
Still I am just kind of left feeling depressed by this, not pleasured.
Well, you might say, who says the universe's workings, let alone
its reason for being,
is meant for my pleasure?
Didn't you?
Also: you say: "there seems to be a neural rheostat
of reward
involving the medial forebrain dopamine circuit
that’s engaged by almost everything we find pleasurable"
but in isolation (how and why would it be 'isolated'?)
without the interconnectivity with memory,associations,
senses, social meaning it is not compelling.
These things you mention are "adornments"?
So pleasure + adornments = a transcendence?
Of chaotic neural firings
into a net of neuronal activity
that invents the stuff Jerry that aesthete likes
like art and religion and philosophy
etc in order to put fancy ideas on base pleasures?
Why invent literature & whatnot? For higher type pleasures?
I know i am rambling, and i cannot avoid that 'why' question,
but WHY?
Just what is this transcendence? Is it immanent also? what is?
what are we talking about, or around?
(not of, though that could be argued)
& independent of
the material world" sorry
When I lose someone I love, my soul cries out for them in a mystifying way and nothing consoles it. If nothing else, I don't have to feel as bad for those with different beliefs when they have what would be a tragedy for me occur. They can just have martinis, french fries, buy a new car and feel wonderful again. I don't mind if others think they're nothing special, whatever gets them through the night. Life is hard believing we are each special, maybe it's easier the other way.
"all suppositions of the existence of anything outside the material world is superstitious nonsense
and has never been detected
in any way acceptable to a rational examination"
nothing outside? how about INSIDE
the damn material universe?
doesnt everything have an inside (subjectivity)
and
an outside ( what it looks like, can be described &
abstracted as, BY AN OTHER?)
EVEN you are an Other when you describe yourself.
In the next moment you are irrevocably different.
Science!! Cmon! what about relativity, quantum physics,
e.g. "uncertainty",
"nonlocation"
"e=mc 2 which means MATTER IS ENERGY",
these damn "solid " material supposedly
subatomic particles popping in & out of existence?
Is this the " common stuff of the universe like everything else "
mr sand is talking about? Common in our composition,
sure, but pretty damn uncommon if
you mean
common
in a
derogatory manner, like:
i=of the same worth as a plankton, amoeba,tree, ant, lizard,
spider
or spider monkey.
no way no way.
.................................
Rant done. Why do you folks need to denigrate human be-ing?
why??
cuz we f-ed up the planet? so what, we shall fix it.
we shall.
the ecosphere is Gaia and she is alive
but not "conscious" like we are.
she maintains her order in miraculous ways.
made up of molecules,
which are collections of atoms,
which are made of subatomic stuff.
fine. we are all material.
we are made of common stuff.
that stuff is pretty damn weird.
"You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas?” writes the great Ray Bradbury in Zen in the Art of Writing. “Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.”
Bradbury evidently is superstitious, too. If so, long live superstition.
you say: "study of how the ideological and the everyday coincide".
what is "ideology" to you?
whose "everyday" do you abstract down to?
seriously:
I WANT TO KNOW! (BECAUSE I AM A MIND)
Uh, Matt..
Bradbury was a known mentally ill man. I have his
brain scan, and it ain't good, i gotta tell you.
The same areas light up as
charlie manson's and
napoleon's and
hegel's and blake's
(although Blake is a different case. Very odd colors. and
my heavens, those brainwaves, too)
so i gotta say i have proven he is disturbed
cuz well, the statistics back me up.
and anyone who gets anything from looking a horse in the eyes
or the mouth
is a mystic,
which
is also kinda off the everyday chart, so i shall call it
uh...i dunno...
"unusual" at the least,
certainly disturbing.
causing concern.
concern.
i get alot of pleasure from concern, the heidegerrian / phenomenologist kind. not the everyday kind.
concern. why am i concerned about this foolish
argument?
I AM.
disprove me.
The general proposition that to discover generalities and abstractions debilitates the uniqueness of any particular individual person or object is a rather peculiar concept. Uniqueness is not unique. That hamburger you might have consumed was once part of a living creature whose ancestors most probably coincided with yours but that particular piece of meat was part of a being who was no doubt loved by its parents in ways probably not too different from the way humans regard their progeny. A hamburger made from the constituents of Einstein or Newton or Charley Chaplin probably would not taste all that different nor would be less nourishing. That every human alive or long dead has something worthwhile probably is true. The same might be said of any butterfly or diplodocus or human. How much grief have I to spare for all these wonderful creatures? That they are constructed of and function from the possibilities of protein architecture does not denigrate their existence in any way at all. And that these intricate and fascinating mechanics can be analyzed and understood in no way indicates that they have some sort of necessity for a proposed spiritual dynamics which is undetectable.
You seem to rule out the concept of fun. Jerry was having fun playing with words in his essay to pay tribute to essences of his consciousness that do not immediately lend themselves to humorless examination. Several of us who left comments here were also having fun and showing appreciation for the artfulness of Jerry's writing. Nobody was throwing up a wall of defense around the concept of mystery, but we were celebrating the enjoyment we get from the mysterious.
Come, celebrate with us. Turn up the corners of your mouth, smile a tad, laugh a little. No need always to be so severe. Unless, of course, that makes you happy.
I have re-read the post and totally failed to see the hilarity you imply. I enjoy a joke as well as anybody but if this is humor, Woody Allen has fumbled his whole life. The brunt of the proposal is that since we sense emotions there is little if any validity in detecting the mechanics behind it. I am not guffawing.
Love and kissses for eternity...
to the physical body. so what?
moral difficulties for 5 minutes if it was denuccio i guess.
jan: in all fun and talk among men,
what are you trying to say?
you are determined/ ? your worth is less than that
of a great ape's?
i respectfully disagree. you are human.
he is right theologically.
but..
tis the I vs the me, man.
one is upward bound, the other likes to...eat...
matt;
i ate a jan burger earlier. he was kind enough to
accede to my frivolous intuitional arguments
and sent me a pound of flesh
which i downed with mayo ketchup pickle & mustard.
i sent him a half pound of my tummy,
which i sure as shit dont need.
Linden has the evidence behind him when he says that everything we think we are boils down to electrical current in our brains. Sobering, but true. If we go further, all of that boils down to atoms and particles that were originally the products of an exploding star. No supernovas, no us. Sobering.
We are also our bodies. And 99 percent of our body works all by itself, without any conscious input from "us". We do not make our heart beat. We do not consciously breath while we are asleep. We do not consciously digest our food, grow new teeth, repair our skin, grow hair and fingernails, jump in fright, recoil from a hot stove or ovulate once a month. It's all automatic and unconscious.
We actually don't have control over terribly much of our body and its functions, at all. We can control our limbs and our most of our muscles (but not all). We have some control over what we think, but not nearly as much as we would like to think we do. We have relatively little control over what we feel, although we can learn to change our automatic responses to some degree. We have no control over our sensations. We some limited control over what we remember, and we can improve this with deliberate attempts to memorize material. We have no control over the distortions which are imperfect brains create and store in our minds. Much of what we are sincerely convinced is reality is not what it seems to be.
The largely automatic body has an enormous influence on the brain and who we think we "are". When we have a fever or suffer from pre-menstrual tension, lack of sleep, prolonged stress or fatigue our brains do not behave, think, perceive or feel in the same way that they do when we are not subjected to the alertness factors and chemicals that our bodies pump out as the result of these events.
The randomness that typifies any form of life, and a good deal of non-life, still allows us freedom within the confined matrix of possible and probable responses.
We do have some real choices. Just as a humble bee can buzz in one direction rather than another so we, too, can walk or think one way rather than another. But, like the bees, there are things that we are not likely to choose to do, probably won't do or absolutely will not do.
However, some "choices" are also pretty much inevitable.
Who we think we are is heavily dependent on the integrity of our memories. These change over time. If you could go back to the time you were a 4 year old your present "you" might not recognize the mind of that child as "you". The changes are so subtle that we are not aware of the changes. Our sense of continuity of self depends on our recall of pockets of memory from our past. It is unsettling to discover that these memories also change over time. Our minds are not very reliable. What are we to make of the probability that there are, in fact, a series of gradually evolving and changing concepts of "us" as we mature? Our mind and memories are not static. Nor are our cells. Over 7 years we replace all the cells in our bodies with copies, not all of which are free from copying errors. Multiply that by 7 decades and there is a lot of room for error.
Yes, all this is rather uncomfortable. We like to think of ourselves as unchanging or at least the same person as we were after birth, just with additions. All that we know about cognitive processing and development reveals that this is a delusion. We could not process information in the same way as a child so we did not think like the adult that we now are. Nor can we think like that child again. That "us" is lost, permanently. In a way, we have already survived multiple deaths of the self. Because the changes are so gradual we do not notice them.
Proof of this is available in the British "7-UP" documentary which documented the beliefs and aspirations of a group of 7 year olds and then revisited them every 7 years until well into their adult life. Several of the 40 years just could not believe that they had ever thought or felt like the videos of themselves at age 7. It was as if these people were foreigners.
Watching someone die from Alzheimers is a speeded up version of these changes, but this time in reverse. Sections of the "self" of these people die off over several years until there is nothing left that anyone can recognize of the person they used to be. Seeing this happen to multiple people generally causes great conflict for religious medical professionals who believe in the existence of an unchanging "soul" or "personality".
Thanks. I was starting to feel rather lonely.
is there no truth in the poetry of a mighty scholar
who has been schooled in reason
and defends it to the death
(albeit absently,ha)
but still knows of aesthetics?
ok, u say:
"Yes, all this is rather uncomfortable. We like to think of ourselves as unchanging or at least the same person as we were after birth, just with additions"
wrong wrong wrong. i am a fully conscious identity,
an I AM,
who knows damn well i am not unchangeable.
It is part of my BEING
(why do scientifically minded people not understand this word?)
to know my being changes. that is why
there is an "ing" at the end of my
noun/verb.
consciousness, dammit, is NOT ABOUT CONTROL:
"We actually don't have
control
over terribly much of our body and its functions, at all.
We can
control
our limbs and our most of our muscles (but not all).
We have some
control
over what we think, but not nearly as much as we would like to think we do"
SO WHAT, if later, in the changing self, it can be recognized
and changed?
the thing is that we understand.
not alot, sure, because we are not yet
consciously (socially, interpersonally) evolved yet.
this has zip to do with our brains.
i unconsciously, OUT OF CONTROL OF..
who, now?..."me"....?...some temporary focus of consciousness...
out
of control of this ephemeral self indeed is a larger Self that
grows us...
i unconsciously grow my goddamn brain to meet contingencies.
i do not face contingencies
and try to evolutionarily figure an advantage by stumbling upon
a freak evolutionary mutation of my brain that enables me to figure it out.
cause=i figure it out.
later comes effect: my meat evolves.
(BY THE WAY/ what the hell is it that spurs evolution? chance?bullshit)
is there no truth in the poetry of a mighty scholar
who has been schooled in reason
and defends it to the death
(albeit absently,ha)
but still knows of aesthetics?
ok, u say:
"Yes, all this is rather uncomfortable. We like to think of ourselves as unchanging or at least the same person as we were after birth, just with additions"
wrong wrong wrong. i am a fully conscious identity,
an I AM,
who knows damn well i am not unchangeable.
It is part of my BEING
(why do scientifically minded people not understand this word?)
to know my being changes. that is why
there is an "ing" at the end of my
noun/verb.
consciousness, dammit, is NOT ABOUT CONTROL:
"We actually don't have
control
over terribly much of our body and its functions, at all.
We can
control
our limbs and our most of our muscles (but not all).
We have some
control
over what we think, but not nearly as much as we would like to think we do"
SO WHAT, if later, in the changing self, it can be recognized
and changed?
the thing is that we understand.
not alot, sure, because we are not yet
consciously (socially, interpersonally) evolved yet.
this has zip to do with our brains.
i unconsciously, OUT OF CONTROL OF..
who, now?..."me"....?...some temporary focus of consciousness...
out
of control of this ephemeral self indeed is a larger Self that
grows us...
i unconsciously grow my goddamn brain to meet contingencies.
i do not face contingencies
and try to evolutionarily figure an advantage by stumbling upon
a freak evolutionary mutation of my brain that enables me to figure it out.
cause=i figure it out.
later comes effect: my meat evolves.
(BY THE WAY/ what the hell is it that spurs evolution? chance?bullshit)
"depends upon who is doing the evaluation. An ape no doubt values itself just as much as a human might do."\
great generalization. what's the damn criterion? let me guess:
EMOTION.
FEELING OF PLEASURE OR PAIN.
does a great ape grieve for the plight of Apes at Large
& how they gonna soon be f-ing
extinct if we
humans don't
overvalue other humans' actions & save em?
nope.
they live in the now, but not our now.
jan, this gets me mad, almost.
it is almost obscentity:
"temporary phenomena of the strivings of protoplasm fiddling with possibilities of its variation"
so? so? all protoplasm being equal,let us murder and rape and wage war, yes?
no! you might say.
why not?
protoplasm striving for advantage.
dont you deserve advantage?
why not kill yr enemies...?
still in fun.
i am never ever not ironic, do not worry.
i could care less about the out come of this argument,
unfortunately.
i am dead in the heart.
but...
well..all this cruelty and murder and blood seems to me
wrong, sometimes.
religion and science etc is certainly mostly bullshit.
but why? JESUS, CUZ WE AINT GOT THERE YET.
And we waste energy arguing over nonsense like this.
Jan is more than protoplasm.
he is a...uh...being...a be-ING.
THERE is past and future, and in between is the "ING"/
can there never be a better world?
sure: there already is, since when we had human sacrifices,
e.g.
we are outgrowing our myths. our religions.
soon we will be fresh and clear headed.
i know this shit gotta be cleared away, especially christianity,
but...
there once was a man, a "christ"...
he was good and wise i believe.
his followers oughta be made into hamburger, but that is a different
story.
new myths.
NEW Myths...or paradigms as u fancy folks call em..
new new
mightily not-here
scholar
believes in
" the existence of an
unchanging
"soul" or "personality".
nobody like denuccio has
believed in that shit
since he first started to read the masters.
unchanging?
change is absolute.
so may be
some kind of permanence:
some damn laws or habits of this wacky universe.
i doubt it highly, but here is where permanence comes in:
we think of it, it is an idea or concept or fallacy or whatever
in our heads.
we at least ought to seek out
the valid subjective experience
that says there is.
if there isnt, so be it.
buddhists say no. christians say yes yes.
no vs. yes is an invitation to compromise,
like matter vs energy
dark vs light
good vs evil.
comes down to, uh oh, subjectivity always, yes?
must be a blind dream of thousands of wise men and women
like denuccio on his scooter.
must be erroneous.
what value is subjective experience?
the advances of neuroscience should be applauded.
they are trying to put the objective
onto the subjective.
neither is ever it.
god help us, we got a two headed coin here.
a symbol.
where they put two pieces together.
That should read "Scream and wail"
and it was a mistake of terminology!
u say:
consciousness is merely a supplementary gadget
developed by a most highly under rated
superior unconscious intellect
that is really the master in charge.
It is a mere diplomatic envoy to perceptive reality
whch conflates itself with immense hubris as being central.
It is not."
i agree entirely. except i say what u call consciousness
is ego, a dwarf mutant evolutionary experiment
in control and mastery and solipsism.
i say: consciousness is being, or be-ing....
it is ego plus the mighty (unconscious as yet, but forever?)
substratum of animality & instincts & emotions&
growing bodies
and growing brains.
what is this unconsciousness? it can be made conscious!
not heartbeat regulation (well, yeah that can...)
or growing a voice box in just the right spot
on a planet in just the right spot
where everything just right happened
to start it all off...
we are unconscious in 99.9999999999999999999999 percent
of our being, back to the damn big bang, i wager.
this "you" you denigrate is the same "me" i denegrate.
the selfish damn ego, arguing and always needing to be in
CONTROL of a body,
a family,
a nation...
it is a phase.
we will get better.
please jan say we might possibly get better.
that is all i ask, really.
i say good night.thanks for the fun, jan.
let's hope our brains got...um...
well,
we can agree on
"neoplastically reorganized" can we not?
where is linden?
peace.joy. love.
that is all that is required for the real brain work to begin.
an afternote of,ha..."significance'...
i got a gallon of protoplasm in an igloo styrofoam freezer
and i really need to prove something with the damn
gooey stuff.
what do you suggest?
the absent landlord denuccio would say
teach it to appreciate a masterpiece of art or lit or
one of those other softy humanities,
but
i am open to any suggestions.
teach it to blog on os?
I went to bed last nite before LaRosita arrived to chant with Jan. Nothing either of them say is inaccurate, in my pedestrian opinion. My only objection is their sour dismissal of any attempts to celebrate the lighter realms of consciousness. Theirs is an aloof condescension that would chill us lower beings to the quick were it not for the saving grace of our appreciation of irony, good will and good humor.
Anyway, I'm tired of talking like Charlie Chan or the Dali Llama.
And I thought I was capable of stringing together long, large worded, highly complex single sentences that are so convolute as to make one wonder where the end or beginning is, was or can be said to have come from in the first place, but Jan Sands has definitely got me beat and I'm running a mere close third to Rosita.
Is it just possible that the argument, "We cannot measure it or detect it," means it doesn't exist is a non rational logical fallacy born of reductionist philosophy of "seeing is believing" and what I can sense is, and what I cannot sense, is not, ab reductio absurdem?
One day, not long ago, the world was flat and there were no germs. This was the reality on the ground. It wasn't true, it was simply believed to be so. Could this same point of view, only using higher technological sounding wording, tools and concepts be just as similarly untrue today as it was 400, 200, 100, 50, 25 years ago as it was and is and remains untrue 4,000,000 years ago and 4,000,000 years from now?
Could it simply be that the mind is nothing more than this reality's processing equipment for the sensory device known as a human which has to record and react to all stimuli, both internal and external to this or that body in order to provide the simulation's holographic storage the data that is this experiment, witnessed by so many that the cumulative experience creates a gestaltian consciousness that exists outside the program of this reality, yet remains somehow, holistically connected and or interconnected with it, giving rise to this whole "god" concsiousness concept as well as things like ghosts, spirits, angels, aliens and could it also be possible that these and other things known as supernatural or otherworldly experiences are nothing more than bleed over and crosstalk amongst the potentially infinite number of holographic and completely real reality simulations all being run in the same horrendously large computational device we ignorantly refer to as The Universe?
Are these questsions any less important than understanding the mechanics and mechanism we call the brain? Are they (and conversely, is the study of it, them or all) more or less valid and does this information truly mean that it's all in our heads?
As Morpheus tells Neo:
Real? What is real? Is it what you can see? What you can taste? What you can touch or feel? Is so, then reality is nothing more than electrical signals sent to the brain.
No matter your point of view, whether it be spiritually guided, physically guided or metaphysically guided (and I'll argue with you till the cows come home and the sun goes down that's not the same) we are all in the same boat when it comes to understanding, comprehending and deciding what is and what is not.
The I of who you see
Is not the I that is me
And the I that is me
Is not the I of who you think to be
Nor can the you I percieve
be the You that You believe
Is the I of all you percieve
So who are You to believe?
So tell me, what physical sense is it that determines you are you and I am me and that this reality is all that we have and there is nothing after that? And, from there, how do you, you pitiable sensory and perceptive device of this reality, make the determination for any me that exists outside of that you that you think you are?
For all you know, you're just the insane rantings of my own mind and none of you exist except to prove, by action and reaction to me and what I do that I do, in fact, exist? Crazy? Maybe, but if I am then what does that make any of the rest of you hallucinations?
rated and regards
Dunniteowl - You rant therefore I am? Keep ranting, friend.
Some people, like you, like to use and read flowery language in all literary registers. That is a personal preference that is not generally shared in this literary age. In this age, it is considered a flaw to use flowery language unless the genre is free wheeling poetry. When used to argue a point this style will not win any literary prizes. It is inappropriate. It is pretentious. It impedes the delivery of the message. More to the point, the “mighty” scholar will not have their work published in peer reviewed journals.
If, however, a person is submitting material to the editor of a magazine that publishes poetry, writing in a succinct and pithy academic style will not result in publication here, no matter how eloquent the prose.
I have been published in several different genres. I know the differences. I try not to confuse them, except in those places where an out-of-context register can emphasize a point or dramatize an emotion. Or when I aim to be humorous.
“BY THE WAY/ what the hell is it that spurs evolution? chance?bullshit”.
Believing that evolution is spurred by chance is the mark of a poor science education. I am sorry for your lack. Here is something to remedy that deficit.
Evolution is spurred by the characteristics of the environment of the organism, whether static or changing. A species will adapt to its environment if it possess a sufficient range of variants in its genetic pool. Those naturally occurring variants that are best suited to the current environment of the organisms are favored. More of these individuals survive and reproduce than the organisms that are least suited to the particular environment.
If there is insufficient variation in the gene pool of the species it will die out if the environment changes, especially if there are dramatic and sudden changes. If there is a healthy amount of variation then the environment will gradually shape the species to its characteristics.
Over time, this will produce groups of organisms that are so different from organisms that have adapted to a different environment that they cannot interbreed. That is the definition of a new species. Some monkeys become a different type of monkey (but they are still classified as “monkeys”), Some apes become humans (but they are still technically a variety of “ape”). Some wild cats become lions, tigers and pumas, but they are all still classified as “cats”. Some wolves become domesticated dogs (although they are all technically “dogs”.)
Although Great Danes and Chihuahuas have physical differences which prevent them producing viable offspring both varieties are still classified as dogs because genes from both of these varieties can move from one to the other because they are each capable of interbreeding from other varieties of dog. If these connecting varieties were removed, as they might have been if humans were not there to protect them from environmental extinction, then Great Danes and Chihuahuas would give rise to two new species. In that case, eggs and sperm from the two would not even combine in a test tube.
Given enough time, this differentiating process results in completely different phyla (families). Eventually some reptiles become birds. The differences are now so great that they are no longer classified as “reptiles”. People who are unfamiliar with the scientific explanation (= scientific “theory”) of how the process of evolution works to produce different species often mistake “phyla” for “species”. This confusion gives rise to the ridiculous argument that evolution, if it were true, would create “crocoducks”.
In summary, if there were no environmental changes and no genetic variation in organisms there would be no evolution. If there were changes in the environment, but no genetic variations in organisms there would be no surviving organisms.
Genetic variation is mainly due to chance phenomena but the extent of the variation is controlled by certain limiting factors. The range is caused by random combinations of the genetic alleles (same gene, different characteristics) that occur in the genetic material in the inherited DNA which is recombined during mitosis (division into sex cells with half the number of chromosomes) and meiosis (normal division of cells in a growing organism). The variation is expanded due to copying errors (which occur in every organism, especially as it ages) and rearrangement of the genetic chemical codes due to naturally occurring background radiation or contaminants.
The person you are is the direct result of these kinds of random (or chance) events. Your eye color, finger length, skin color and cognitive capacity are due to the random combinations of genes. The person you are is also determined by less random events. Your sexual preference, personality and reactions to stress are in large part due to relatively non-random events in the womb or in the very early post-partum environment. Finally, who and what you are is determined by your place in the history of the development of life on this planet. Your racial characteristics and speciation are due to the drawn out non-random environmental selection process that we call evolution.
“SO WHAT, if later, in the changing self, it can be recognized
and changed? the thing is that we understand.”
The point I was trying, apparently unsuccessfully, to make it that we often cannot recognize our “self”. What we think of as ourselves is colored, not by reality, but by our context and perception of the present. The brain makes things up to cover the gaps in its memory or to make sense of what seems to be a nonsensical thought or action that it actually took in the past. We are very easily fooled by this, which is the reason by unsubstantiated human testimony is the lowest form or admissible evidence in a courtroom and why it is not admissible at all in the world of science.
What do you see in the blind spot that you have in both eyes? Are you even aware that you have such a hole in your vision? Can you find its edges without subjecting yourself to special tests? No. You can’t. The brain has been filling in that gap since it first learned to “see” and make sense of the world outside itself. What you “see” is not what is actually there, but fudge that blends into the surrounding environment. We might think we know what we did yesterday, and why we did it, but we might be wrong.
The most dramatic experience of these phenomena I have ever seen has come from patients whose right hemisphere has been temporally dysfunctional. That’s the hemisphere that checks things against its global memory of how things were in the past. It is also the hemisphere that attends to things in the left field of vision. And the one that differentiates between “self” and “not self”. Neuro-scientists have tape recorded what patients say and do and perceive while this hemisphere is “off line”. When that hemisphere is back on line, and the patient returns to “normal” the verbal left hemisphere will flatly deny that it ever say, said or perceived anything differently. When shown the videotaped evidence that hemisphere will come up with a variety of “reasons” why the record is false. They convince the person who is producing them, but not those who are and have been observing them.
Let me repeat myself. While you may THINK you recall what manner of person you were at the age of 10, you actually do not do so with any accuracy. You may not even accurately remember the person you were yesterday. You cannot tell what is true and is not true. The sense of continuity with your past is a grand illusion. The brain does not like a vacuum so it makes things up, including aspects of your life history.
You are not the person you were when you were ten years of age. You only think you are. That “person” died long ago. You do not even have the capacity to think like a ten year thinks these days, because the brain cells in many areas of your brain have since matured and the connections have been re-wired. You literally cannot think like a ten year old, no matter how hard you try. You don’t have the same brain cells any more.
I am well aware that this is disturbing stuff, especially since the brain is genetically wired to experience a sense of continuity of self. The whole concept is therefore, non-intuitive and against “common sense”. I make no apologies for that. In spite of your protests I will continue to tell you what neuroscientists have confirmed, over and over again: who you are think you were in the past is not who were actually were. Chances are the person you think your were yesterday is someone different. Don’t worry. If your brain can’t cope with the idea that much of the sense of self is a delusion then it will invent all sorts of reasons that will convince you that this is wrong. It is very good at it. Meanwhile, objective science will go on collecting more evidence that it is mistaken.
Out of everything this is my favorite. Fire, wires, cubical, neurons and EWNS just is LIFE! A bundle of non-related relating mechanisms.
"But even saying “I am my brain” defies the muscle-suited materialism of mind-to-brain reductionists like Linden and his communicants, for it raises a question, a saving grace, perhaps, I suspect they would be hard pressed to answer: who, exactly, is the “I” who is speaking?"
I like the book BLAST. Hoot! And, your working for? Your friend the author, Linden? I'm buying the book because I've had these guilty pleasures on the title, and would dearly like to NOT be accountable in any measure!
RR
Out of everything this is my favorite. Fire, wires, cubical, neurons and EWNS just is LIFE! A bundle of non-related relating mechanisms.
"But even saying “I am my brain” defies the muscle-suited materialism of mind-to-brain reductionists like Linden and his communicants, for it raises a question, a saving grace, perhaps, I suspect they would be hard pressed to answer: who, exactly, is the “I” who is speaking?"
I like the book BLAST. Hoot! And, your working for? Your friend the author, Linden? I'm buying the book because I've had these guilty pleasures on the title, and would dearly like to NOT be accountable in any measure!
RR
I'm terribly sorry, Matt, but even the most superficial examination of religious beliefs very quickly reveals the most idiotic nonsense which is the basis of their suppositions. If they were merely not useful such as the recent Texas prayer for rain or much of astrology they could be safely ignored but the things like persecution of gays or other sadistic concepts is not something to be tolerated by a sane society.
Your quick denial that the unnecessary miseries out of delusions demanded by religions has anything to do with religion or that I am somehow strangely vituperant in condemning them indicates something fundamentally lacking in your abilities to observe and analyze. I cannot remedy that lack. That's your problem.
Sometimes.
And sometimes not.
Let's leave it at that.
Why are some so upset
by the very idea of being meat
when the meat is the seat of the idea?
While others get ticked off
in the time it takes to write a poem
and by the fact that they can never explain
the interval.
All I know
is that those who fall upon others
for using poetry instead of prose
in any context
are doomed to wander
inside their skulls
(and nowhere else)
forever.
Pity.
And they were "right," too.
But what's that got to do with anything?
rate
So I am a self-righteous old goat for holding to my understandings and you are what? For holding to yours. I have no idea how old you might be and only have strong suspicions as to your species but in inter-species discussion is, if nothing else, something of an innovation on the net.
But that's rather neat
Considering what it may do.
With looking and thinking
While I'm eating and drinking
It may be responsive to brew.
But at times it reacts
Correctly to facts
And nicely invents something new.
So, to tally the score,
Who could want something more?
It's nothing that I would eschew.
You've read about the series of boyfriends I went through over the last decade. They were attractive, highly intelligent, had great jobs and were pleasurable company.We were convenient for each other and I moved on when I lost interest. Three of the five married suitable women in less than a year and seemed pleased. I didn't find that myterious thing with them and wouldn't consider even moving in. We are all different, I consider myself irreplaceble and special, they didn't.
I hardly see a difference in beliefs as being a reason to get upset yet people battle endlessly over it, I guess I don't understand the desire to fight. I spent 10 years happy with an atheist, it's his business what he believes as my beliefs are mine, my concern was his behavior. The poor author, hope he knows this is normal OS stuff. I would like to know why I love the taste of aspirin, I wonder if anyone knows. I hope he comes back and tells me what's wrong with me.
I wonder where Jerry went while there's a party gone wild at his place? He's probably smoking a J, eating fries dipped in milkshake in between cocktails and romps in bed. Everyone is getting pleasure fighting, gobbling fat, getting buzzed and having sex. Everyone but me, big sigh, my neurons are sad.
At age 85 it's been a while since I took a crack at sex and perhaps the exercise would finish me off but cancer and a heart attack is far less enticing so, if you ever find yourself in the Helsinki area give me a call.
The bulk of the stars that you see are simply not there anymore and insofar as their influence is concerned, it would take many millions of years for them to send any signals here to be received.
I am born February 2 which is ground hog day and every morning I awaken in a different parallel universe. The stars all look the same but I have a hunch they change places in the night like musical chairs just to kid us.
Audit this class for Free.
May I quote Matt Paust?
"We cant all be zombies."
James M.E. is disturbed?
Matt Paust @ 9:06PM -
`
Grandma and Poppa agree?
We can get a big back pain.
God will mold us back `gin.
Carry one another along.
We have those burdens.
Give free piggyback rides.
I sense that there will not
be much farming done`gin
and the editor shall no hack
nope
cc - email
ever again
or he go so
bonkers too
/*\
/|,|\
just behave
[,] okay. ah!
This may be odd coming from someone who believes in, or at least talks in terms of, spirit and soul, not only of people but of the earth itself, and pantheons of deities - but only when the moon is full.
I'm with Rob; that is, neuroscience presents but one way of making sense of our physical and cognitive selves. Philosophy is another. I feel fairly confident that all these efforts by scientists to understand or explain how we function will never completely remove the mystery. Even if our brains do "make" us in neurological terms, they certainly don't own us.
By the way, I haven't read "Compass of Pleasure" but you can bet I will now. Dear Dr. Linden, take note: this is NOT bad publicity at all.
Great, brain teasing, mind boggling post!
I don't agree with you on some key points. But please understand: I debate the points and rhetoric -- but with no rancor. The opposite, in fact. We are kindred in our deep interest in this, and both subject to blinders and bias and incomplete knowledge.
Your bias shows up in how you frame some lines. You make a partially apt point in suggesting the neuroscience has preferences, but it is nonetheless splintered and schism'd in that great science way. There is no "dogma in the neuroscience community" as you put it, and most of the NS community is anti-dogma, as all good scientists should be. Being human, some hold on to cherished ideas, true enough. But you sweep to broadly here, methinks.
I several places you reduce and exagerrate to persuade us of the reductionism of the author's position (and the normative NS community, too). This is complicated. It's possible to find declarations by some that seem to say that the brain is "all there is", and even easier to take statements out of context that seem to show this. But it is simplistic, and a kind of polemic.
I know I use polemic in many of my posts, consciously. Hard not to when the point of our posts is to persuade.
But just because one believes -- or observes, with rigor -- that the brain is the alpha an omega of sentience and feelings as perceived by sentience (an important distinction, because our glands play a profound part in our feelings, but what is a sensation if not perceived by the brain?), it does not per se mean that one demeans or denigrates the entire range of human feeling, as it is experience, nor as it is applied to decisions and behavior. One does not require the other.
For example, you say: "Linden effectually reduces human beings to brain biochemistry, to neural substrates whose components fire in response to external experiences. We are cleanly and crisply cause-and-effected. Mind is brain, nothing more. "
Whoa, nelly. I can't say if he says anything as bald as this. But I would love to see the quotes and the context they appeared in, from him or any other serious NS. This is you applying your opinion, and might be you creating a strawman.
Sagan among many others, like Paul Kurtz, and even Dawkins, are capable of passionate, soaring rhetoric that celebrates our since of wonder, our consciousness of the infinite (real and imagined). You hammer home the idea that it is all either reductionist -- and even suggest a loss of "integrity" and our self ("stranger") -- or else we have a saving "grace" of some kind, unspecified. But this is not what I find in brain-as-seat-of-self science. Nothing like it.
Not a single thing is lost if we recognize the overwhelming evidence for the brain being the singular host of "I". We still feel EVERYTHING we feel, including the sensation of dislocation, the duality of "I" control "Me'. In fact, we cannot escape it, short of years of contemplative practice, resulting in a momentary illusion of a kind of unity-that-is-not-unity.
I still feel, and will not surrender, all feelings of grace, ecstatic beauty, connectivity with all sentient beings, a divine presence, noble altruism, public morality, and personal ethics. Even though I do not believe in the smallest shred of anything supernatural, and feel equally comfortable with the idea that it is all, in fact, the self-orchestration of brain chemistry, organ activity, time's arrow, socio-biology, culture, and circumstance.
You say "I worry that a “our brains make us” philosophy can make us strangers to ourselves, make our humanness itself a strange landscape where we wander shorn of a self that feels its own self-possession, shorn of that embodied integrity which shapes our sense of ourselves as coherent beings. Something incalculable about us would vanish, I fear..."
This is perhaps the crux of your argument. I must cede that secular science-ists like me have no durable traditions yet that supplant small religious communities, and cannot be too blithe about human beings making easy adjustments to a rational POV about our brains. We apparently want and perhaps need a sense of awe and wonder, coupled with a externalized Other to rely on, something not-brain, something "magic". I get that.
But nothing should stand in the way of scientific examination, nor it's findings. We must adjust to reality, not persist in wish-thinking. Just because we like magic doesn't make surrendering to it a good thing. Perhaps the answer is, has always been, to shift the focus. I can feel the sensation of "magic" about the Hubble pictures of deep space, and about a newborn, and how some people are exceedingly compassionate, and about South Africa transforming itself in my lifetime. I no longer have to "trust my sense" that there is an actual magical dimension to explaining the complex, astonishing and elusive reality of being a human brain.
-Emo Phillips
So I'll just add this: reductionism is a useful philosophy to have around the laboratory when one is trying to puzzle out the workings of some sort of biological system. If you are trying to figure out the role that a particular gear inside a watch plays in moving the hands forward, it is not particularly useful to that end to spend much time daydreaming about the nature of time. The fact that you employ a reductionist view in your work, does not however, mean you can't believe or at least acknowledge that there are greater unknown forces at work, or mysterious properties that emerge from a sum of reduced parts.
We neuroscientists don't really tend to worry too much about 'the mind' because we still don't understand the parts. Understanding how the isolated clumps of neurons work is the portion portion of the problem that we can test via scientific method. An understanding of the function of the biological parts may well not be sufficient to understand the mind, but it is almost certainly necessary. One thing that is absolutely true however, is that no matter how much one likes of hates the idea that the 'mind' emerges from nothing more than the properties of brain-meat, has absolutely no bearing on whether it does or not.