Is an Agreeable Definition of Consciousness in the Offing?

All too often I see consciousness described as an inner dialogue of me with me that no one else can hear. There were words and sentences … oh, my. But studies actually show that most of our “thoughts” are preverbal, with words being applied only when we attempt to explain to ourselves or others what was running through our heads. Think of it as a variation of dream research, just when you are awake.

And when are we going to get an adequate definition/understanding of what thoughts are. Surely that needs to precede or t least accompany such a thing for consciousness.

And while early consciousness explorers didn’t dome up with much in the way of answers, they did come up with some very good questions. And example of which is “Has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it?” (William James)

And it is recognized that whatever mental activity is going on, its form isn’t fixed. Some “thoughts” are images, others fragments of words, others scents or other sensory information, and others cultural feelings (love, appreciation, etc. in other words nonsensory).

Alluding to dreams as a surrogate for consciousness, dreams are often cobbled together out of sights and sounds from memory. A common dream I had when young is racing across my junior college campus because I was late for a test, as I raced, the test became a final, but also I couldn’t remember where the classroom was, because I hadn’t gone to class for weeks. This often morphed into a search for a bathroom, which were inevitably locked, under construction, or backed up (ew!). This later part of the dream I was able to “interpret.” It meant I had to get up and go to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

People tell me these incredible descriptions to their dreams, something I do not experience. They speak of immense levels of detail and my dreams are like fast cut movies, the minute I “see” something the scene cuts away to another locale. Chaos, utter chaos. But that may be a conclusion reached from my memories, which are vast and detailed. (I can still read snatches from pages of a textbook I had when in high school. What value that had escapes me, but it was something I remembered (probably distorted all to hell as memories are very, very (Very!) plastic.

So, do you think we are on a path that might lead to better understanding of what our conscious mental processing consists of (and I hope our subconscious mental processing, too)?

The realization of what seems to be the case, namely that thoughts are mostly not made of words, words only come to them when we try to explain or communicate the thoughts sits well with my ideas that dreams, psychedelic visions, and whatnot are nonverbal and only get “interpreted” when we try to explain/understand them. This is why the woman experiencing a NDE and senses a glowing figure tells us she “saw Jesus.” The interpretations come pre-packaged as cultural tropes.

And as someone who teaches the mental side of a sport, the realization by one researcher, Christoff Hadjiilieva, that “The big lesson of meditation,” Hadjiilieva said, “is that the mind cannot be controlled,” is very interesting.

An Argument Against Naturopathy/Homeopathy

The State of Alaska’s House Labor & Commerce Committee is considering a bill that “would unwisely permit the practice of naturopathy, a discredited form of pseudoscience, in the state of Alaska.” (Source: CFI Director of Government Affairs and Policy, Azhr Majeed)

Naturopathy is not a name people bandy about. Most people, however, are aware of homeopathy which is really what is being considered in the bill above. (I think the term naturopathy is a substitute term to avoid the negative reputation of homeopathy. The term naturopathy was invented 80 years after the term homeopathy.)

The foundations of homeopathy are basically these two:
Law of Infinitesimals (or Law of Potentization): This principle states that the curative potency of a substance increases as it is diluted multiple times, often combined with shaking (succussion).
Potentization/Dynamization: The process in homeopathy involving serial dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking) to unlock the “vital energy” of a substance. (Source: Harvard University)

In ordinary language, they claim is that diluting a drug or chemical makes it stronger. (You can always recognize a scam if they claim “adding water makes it stronger.”) So, if you run across someone who believes in this nonsense ask them to consider the following scenario:

A guy goes into a bar and asks for a whiskey and a pitcher of water. When he is served, he pours out half of the whisky and fills the glass with water from the pitcher. Then he empties half of that diluted beverage into the bartender’s sink, and fills it up with water again. He does this ten times. Then he downs the final liquid in his glass. So, question: do you expect this guy to fall off of his bar stool dead drunk?

If you do. You are a homeopath.

Was 9/11 Inevitable?

I just finished watching a documentary, A Good American, on Amazon Prime, one of the foci of which was a worker for the National Security Agency. He developed through his own initiative a way to track meta data from around the world to identify potential problems. Being a good American, he did not include meta data from U.S. citizens and the like to preserve their privacy rights.

But for his competition in the NSA, his approach had a problem. It was too cheap to implement and since it didn’t involve huge contracts for external contractors, many former and current employees of the NSA worked for such contractors, it was discouraged and downright sabotaged. Nobody was going to get rich implementing his approach and it was essentially complete in any case.

After 9/11, a suspicious official asked the team in charge of their banned effort to scan all the data collected by the NSA to see if the NSA missed anything. It took a day, day and a half but not only did they find evidence of the 9/11 plot, but they also identified the plotters and much more information that hadn’t come out yet.

The fates of people who stand in the way of corrupt officials getting rich was predictable but when the hammer fell upon this small team of good Americans, it was heart wrenching.

Donald Trump, Mr. President Corrupt Asshole the First, is busy knocking the pins out from under this country, but he is not the one that put our country on shaky enough ground for him to do the damage that has been done. You will see quite a lineup of corrupt assholes preceding him. Watch the video and be prepared to be pissed off, very pissed off.

Fine Tuning, My Ass

There is an argument running in theistic circles called the “fine-tuning argument.” This states that if one looks at the fundamental physical constants of nature, that they support the existence of life. But, if even one of these were to be even a slightly different value, the universe could not support life, so obviously God has carefully aligning the constants of the universe like dials on a machine, God is somehow found in the laws of nature and science, the designer hidden in plain sight in the design.

WTF? You mean it wasn’t aliens tampering with our universe? Or maybe Ancient Druids were tickling the ivories of Nature’s Piano? Magic fairies?

My scientific brethren, slow, plodding that they are, shot holes in this “argument” almost immediately but apparently none of the excusigists noticed. I guess a cadre of people still banging upon the Kalam Cosmological Argument can’t be expected to keep up with the nuances of the latest apologist’s baby. (YouTube has dozens of videos debunking this nonsense.)

Okay, allow me to take if from the top. There are a number of aspects of the argument which never seem to be brought up, so I will:

1. Can the fundamental constants of the universe change? (If they can’t change, how could they be changed, to make life possible?)
2. Is there any evidence of any of these constants being different at some other time? (This would establish that said constant can change, for sure.)
3. Studies show that quite a few of these constants could be slightly different from their current values and the universe would hardly be changed.
4.  Since God was pulled out of someone’s ass as the Agent of Change, how was this done? What was this god’s procedure for doing so. (Magic does not seem to exist in our universe, so if you claim it was via magic, explain how your god’s magic works.)
5. Explain how you know that it was your god doing this work and not one of the others. You cannot just claim that those other gods do not exist, unless you are able to explain why your god does exist and the others do not. (The evidence for the existence of any of the thousands of human gods is roughly equivalent, so this is a heavy lift.)

There is more but enough of you have told me that I am abusing your good nature getting some of these things off of my chest.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Impeach President Corrupt Asshole the First! Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Laws, Laws, Laws …

Donald Trump and his cronys are ignoring or disobeying so many laws that “laws” are a current big topic today. In addition Christians are joining in for the fun and the profit. (Remember when Christians believed in prophets? Now it is profits.)

One aspect of the topic I want to address is the deliberate misunderstanding of what constitute physical laws by Christians, usually one or more steps removed. (Can you spell indoctrination, boys and girls?) What I mean by this is the Christians themselves didn’t make the mistake I will be decribing, it was made for them by Christian influencers: you know apologists/excusigists, what passes for a cleric today, those folks. The poor, non-thinking Christian has been trained to not process or even question the ideas, so they simply “share” them. (Thanks for sharing!)

Theists often are fed this line of argument: “if there are laws, there must be a lawgiver.” This is true if you are considering legal rules and many famous lawgivers are available in human history as examples: Solon of Ancient Greece, for example.

In 1748, famed philosopher David Hume defined natural laws this way: such a law is “a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases.” Brilliant, that is exactly correct. There have even songs written to display this aspect of nature (♫ “The Sun will come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that it will …”) The key words are “a regularity” meaning that we see something happening over and over or over and over in the same way and that becomes a dependable predictor of what the future might bring. (Always “might” in that nothing is certain.)

Hume wasn’t clarifying the misunderstanding (deliberate or not) I address here, Hume was arguing that miracles not only do not happen, they basically they cannot happen. Again, this is not something your church leaders will bring up in their sermons.

There are consequences in carving out a healthy part of people’s mental lives and then banishing questions and logical thinking from it. It spills over into politics, which is how a completely execrable person like our current president, Der Trumpenfűhrer, can be viewed as an instrument of god … for the good of all.

Is the Absence of Evidence Evidence of Absence?

The title of this piece comes from a quotation from Carl Sagan and it refers to the search for a god or gods. But this line is often taken out of context and assigned a certain infallibility by religious excusigists. Used in the context of discussions as to whether this or that god exists, it is used to defend against a claim that gods don’t exist due to a lack of evidence for their existence. So, is the absence of evidence evidence of absence?

For the TL/DR folks, I will cut to the chase. Yes, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, just not conclusive evidence.

For those, like me, for whom looking for evidence for things that do not exist seems like a fool’s errand, one needs to address how one knows that something doesn’t exist, for example: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, garden fairies, jackalopes, snipes? Well, you look, and if you do not find them, the next person who claims they exist receives a “Well, you are going to have to find them because I looked and could not.

It is not that they couldn’t be found, they hadn’t been found, so someone claiming to have found them needs to provide convincing evidence. Especially if 2000 years of earnest looking hasn’t found anything but frauds.

Bolstering all of this is various aspects of context. I want to know from the person making the claim “how do you know this?” As an example, consider the remains of Noah’s Ark. If someone says, “it must exist because the Bible story is so convincing,” then I know they have no evidence, just a story. Stepping back a bit one can ask questions like: if a wooden boat is exposed to the elements for 2000 years, what can we expect to find?” And if taking the story literally, the wood in the ark was the only non-waterlogged wood left on the planet. Somewhat dry wood to build animal pens of, wood for cooking fires, etc. would be very useful, very valuable. Is it reasonable to expect the remains to be even close to being intact? (By way of comparison, Angkor Wat was built in the early 12^th century CE of stone and wood. None of the wood has survived, only the stone.)

A point atheists, like me, often make in the discussion of “evidence” for the existence of various and sundry gods is if the stories are reliable and their god did walk the Earth, there should be evidence of his existence to be found. It is not as if the claims only involve spirit gods who floated through the air.

And, theists do not like it but we also address the probabilities of such an entity existing. All physical entities that we recognize aren’t separated from all of the other entities. We all use something like DNA to reproduce, for example. We all reproduce. We all need sustenance, food, air, water, etc. A being that needs none of these things has no close relatives for us to study. Oh, but you say we are made in your god’s image so we can study ourselves and learn about your god. Okay, how do you know that? And being made in a god’s image, what exactly does that mean? Do we have any god powers? Can we do real magic?

Again, absence of evidence is evidence of absence, just not conclusively so. Conclusions are hard to come by. Scientists consider all of their “findings” to be provisional because we do not know what we will learn in the future, and well we have been wrong before. But Christians want or claim there is conclusive proof of their god’s existence … and I say, good luck with that. This has a bit of a “be careful what you wish for” aspect to it. If scientists or even theists were to supply adequate physical proof of the existence of a god, it would immediately fall out of the supernatural realm and into the natural world. Then what research topic would immediately become the most interesting to myriads of pimply-faced college graduate science students? Yeah, and they would have their noses in your god’s business immediately. Foremost among them would be the biology grad students wanting to determine why a sole god, which has no other god to mate with, would need male reproductive organs so it would be referred to as “he.” Talk about preferred pronouns.

Why Are Evangelicals so Hell-bent on Making Abiogenesis Part of Evolution Theory

If you are unfamiliar abiogenesis is the scientific theory that life on Earth arose naturally from non-living matter through gradual chemical and physical processes, involving the formation of simple organic molecules, their assembly into complex polymers, self-replication, and encapsulation within membranes to form protocells, eventually leading to the first simple cells. From there the process of evolution takes over and makes more and more complex life forms, etc.

So, evangelicals are commonly opposed to the Theory of Evolution as well as the process of evolution as it contradicts their claim that all living things were created, in the beginning, by their god, as they are now. Some will go so far as admitting that minute changes in species may be due to evolution, but not the creation of whole new species, un unh.

So, so far the evangelical dogma reads:

evolution — bad

but why are they also opposed to abiogenesis, at least as a concept as we haven’t worked out the details? I think it is because they haven’t thought it through, so the evangelical dogma became:

abiogenesis, is part of evolution — bad

I remember back in the 1950s and early 1960s if you didn’t like someone, the common slur was to call them a communist, even though I suspect that most people couldn’t define what a communist was. So, if you don’t like something biological file it under evolution.

Okay, so, you know who thought through abiogenesis? Louis Pasteur (Yeah, he dead, but still!)

“What a victory, gentlemen, for materialism if it could be shown that matter can organize itself and come to life. Ah! If we could give (to matter) that other force which is called life … what need to resort to the idea of a primordial creation, before whose mystery one must indeed bow down? What need for the idea of a God creator?” (Source: Louis Pasteur, quoted in “We Are Not Alone” by Sullivan, 1964, page 77.)

Pasteur was aware that crystals of chemicals formed themselves, that is they were self-organizing. We have since come to understand that nature in its entire is self-organizing including most of the chemicals that make up living organisms. The final step envisioned by Pasteur hasn’t been taken yet. We do not know the exact process of abiogenesis. But from simple cells on up, we have it almost entirely mapped out. If we add abiogenesis, we will have the whole magilla. (I hope I live that long!)

Note—Another term used for abiogenesis is biopoiesis.

Postscript That quote, expressing a materialistic triumph if life could arise from matter, is also attributed to Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century English journalist, economist, and literary critic, appearing in his writings discussing the mystery of life’s origins in contrast to materialism.

Pasteur said something almost equivalent (The quote comes from his famous lecture on “Des Générations Spontanées” (On Spontaneous Generation) delivered before the Sorbonne on April 7, 1864. ) but he was defending, in essence, creationism and wasn’t an espoused materialist.

Why Are Extra Dimensions Always Parallel to Ours?

Extra dimensions of existence, often referred to as hidden or parallel universes or even other planes of existence have been of interest to people for thousands of years. Only recently was the subject, long considered a woo-woo topic, been bolstered by scientific speculations. For example, string theory seems to hint that “reality” has 10 or 11 total dimensions (9-10 spatial + 1 time) for mathematical consistency.

As an aside, it always intrigues me that the mathematical necessities of an unproven physical theory have credibility, rather than are indicators that the theory is off track. Usually nonsensical outcomes undermine a theory’s credibility, but in this New Age all kinds of bullshit is taken seriously. I blame this on Albert Einstein and his ridiculous “space-time” claim that time and the three dimensional space we all know and love are linked, without explaining how two completely different dimensional systems could get linked together. What holds them together? Why don’t they fly apart? Could temperature and density be so linked? How about other measurement dimensions? And are the three spatial dimensions actually linked, aka physically, or is that just the way they are defined.

Okay, okay, enough ranting. This post is about why additional “dimensions” are considered to be parallel and not, say perpendicular to our existence? The spatial dimensions are perpendicular and not parallel. My guess is that since parallel lines, parallel planes do not cross, those “parallel” universes/dimensions/whatever do not cross in that we cannot determine anything about those extra dimensions/universes … ever … as we have no access to them to measure stuff.

But they are there, the math tells us so … and shamans and the like, too.

Postscript And if space has three dimensions, why does time only have one? (There are some theories that work from time having three, I was amazed to find out.

How To Change Your Mind

I just started watching Michael Pollan’s documentary “How To Change Your Mind” which is based upon his book of the same title (see cover over there). Actually, I am pretty sure I bought a copy of that book. I just haven’t read it yet. I think I have over one hundred books that I have bought that I have not yet read. This is one of the unintended consequences of eBooks. I no longer have bookcases groaning under the weight of books. All of my recent purchases fit in my Android tablet, easy peasy. I am indebted to Amazon in that I can’t tell you how many times that I see a book go on sale and I click on the link and Amazon tells me I bought it in 2019 or 2020.

I have only gotten through the first segment which was on LSD. It is really clear at this point that the federal government and a couple of state governments lied through their teeth to get that drug banned. I am not a fan of unregulated recreational drug use, but the uses of LSD in helping people with mental disorders is pretty well established at this point, yet it is still banned.

What prompted this post is the claims being made by those having taken the drug therapeutically. Many said it helped them immensely, even to the point of stopping them from considering suicide. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is the claims that what they “saw” while under the influence of the medication was somehow profound, even to the point of helping us to understand the mind and consciousness. And if you believe that, I have an AI over here which will allow you to fire 25% of all your employees.

The experiences are what they are, but the interpretations are made after they have exited their trip, not while they were tripping. For example, one person under the influence saw a “vision” of a woman holding a young child. She told MP that it was the Madonna and Child she saw. She also shared that she was a devout Catholic. If you take the “image” she “saw” at face value, one could describe it as a woman holding a young child. There is no way what she saw would tell her that the woman was the child’s mother. Might have been its aunt, babysitter, nanny, or drag queen. And as to their identification as Mary and Jesus, were they wearing name tags or did they speak to her?

We do not know where thoughts come from, but we do know images are stored in memory, as are sounds, and more. This chemical (LSD) stirs the pot of what is coursing through one’s brain, most definitely, which is supported by studies that show that blocked up problem solvers benefit from a single dose of LSD. When you can’t get out of your own way, a good dance partner slides you into a more correct position. This is one of the uses that seem very promising for LSD.

But claiming that LSD opens up new “data” to help us understand the mind and consciousness I’ll believe when there are some actual results and not just advocate claims, aka interpretations.

Why is the Idea of a Self So Puzzling?

In consciousness studies, the idea of a self is bandied about. Some say it is an illusion, others say, well, very different things. I am not well-versed in the literature of consciousness or “the self” but it seems fairly obvious as to what is going on, at least to me, which may be a sign I am completely mistaken.

The idea of “the self” seems a simple matter of access.

Evolution has shaped us both physically and mentally. (I use the word “shaped” because theists have ruined the word “designed.”) It seems obvious to me that prey animals, such as our species, need a capacity to remember. If I eat a particular plant and am sick as a dog for days after, if I can’t remember that experience, that experience has no value to my survivability. Similarly, the idiot who sees a tiger and goes “Here, kitty, kitty” to the lovely pussycat is unlikely to survive. We don’t need to perform that experiment ourselves, just observe others doing it. But we need to be able to remember it.

Once memory is established, the ground has been laid for the development of imagination (and we are not the only species which imagines, something all dog owners can appreciate). Imaginings are nothing more than synthetic memories. If we can create memories, it isn’t a huge leap to creating possible memories, say involving scenarios with that tiger which has moved into my neighborhood. Imagination is a huge advantage to a prey animal, giving them multiple “memories” to use to choose future actions from. (We also then need a way to distinguish real memories from synthetic ones, but details, details….)

To do all of this we must become aware of our thoughts, whatever those are. (I wish we had a better theory of thoughts, rather than putting all of our eggs in consciousness research baskets.) And then comes the so-called “Theory of Mind” which is when we look into the eyes of a fellow human being and register that there is someone home, someone with memories, imaginings, thoughts, the whole magilla, just like us. But we do not have access to those memories, thoughts, etc. It really does seem, however, like those others have them. (When languages evolved to be able to convey complex information, sharing one’s memories of a recently deceased loved one or a special successful hunt, certainly undergirds the idea that “others” have their own memories, because they aren’t exactly like our own.)

Recognizing all of this means that there is an access wall around us, and we assume around “them,” too. We have our memories, thoughts, etc. and they have theirs. This is sufficient to establish the idea of “self,” mine and thine.

So, why is this mysterious?

And being able to recall memories, real or imagined, implies a framework being established to make that possible and such a framework can’t be very far from being able to create and recognize one’s own thoughts, I would think.

If we only knew what the fuck thoughts were (prototype synthetic memories, aka imaginings, what?)!

Of course, I could be wrong … as I have proven many times in the past.