Till Domesday
Tuesday, 16. January 2007, 19:47:56
The world is ending. Okay, so some form of life - maybe even human life - might possibly survive, but it will only be in a world unrecognisable to us. We are on the deck of a sinking ship, and we don't even have the option to jump overboard. So, what, exactly, do we do? What do I do? I spend a lot of my time wondering just what the correct response to ecologocial armageddon could possibly be. Not long ago I read an article in a newspaper about this issue. I don't have the newspaper any more, as it has now been recycled, so I can't remember what it said in any detail. It was something about doom-mongering and other such self-flagellation being perhaps understandable but ultimately pointless. Then, a little later, I read an item in Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (Volume Two), about ethical consumerism. The verdict seemed to be that it was a fairly shallow response to the problem. It is, said the book, a bit like looking at the impending armageddon and saying, "It wasn't me!" Well, what are we supposed to do, exactly? To be fair, the authors of the book do concede that even ethical shopping is "all to the good". And, if I were feeling petulant, I could point out that Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur are merely two dry British wits selling cynicism as Christmas stocking-fillers. Actually, though, they are quite funny, and they do, on the whole, pick the right targets, and shoot with great accuracy, as here.
Anyway, the point is, there are various people pointing out the inadequacy of our various responses to THE END OF THE WORLD THAT IS NOW UPON US, but there doesn't really seem to be anyone who is coming up with an adequate response. Perhaps there just isn't one. It's not as if anyone has even been inspired to say something profound in the time that's left to us. It's the usual trivia. For instance, Supermodel Naomi admits maid attack, or Complaints of racism on Celebrity Big Brother increase. It's almost as if there really is nothing profound to be said, anyway, as if, maybe the very banality of the universe is what has brought us here to the brink of utter destruction. We just couldn't find anything worth living for. There is a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and he is Light Entertainment.
Even I (makes extravagant dramatic gesture) cannot think of anything to say that is really worthy of the occasion. And my general response to the end of the world, is, apart from the lame old ethical consumerism kind of thing, I'm afraid, usually to get really, really depressed and generally not want to get up in the mornings or talk to anyone or do anything at all (what's the point, after all?). Not very edifying is it? But what's the alternative? Choose life, as they say? In other words, a family of more consumers of the world's resources and a job to support them that also diminishes or pollutes those resources. There's no way out of it really. So, let's all join in a chorus of, "We're all going to die!"
I can state clearly that I do not like this world and I do not like life, but previously there have been consolations. One of my favourite writers, Nagai Kafu, spent a lifetime lamenting the encroaching modernism that was destroying all that he most loved about his native country, Japan. He also had a philosophical, fatalistic streak in him, though, and occasionally would sigh in a literary sort of way, and, figuratively, say, Oh well! On one such he wrote that, however much the natural beauties that once surrounded Tokyo, and the more picturesque ways of life that once flourished there, might be destroyed, at least beauty would remain in the eternal cycle of the seasons, in the geese flying south for winter overhead and so forth. I remember thinking these beautiful and deeply consoling sentiments when I first read them. Unfortunately, we now know better than Kafu. Not even the seasons are eternal. The encroaching cities have destroyed them as they have everything else - it was naive to think the seasons were separate from the rest of nature in this regard. Vile science has made a marriage of materialism with rampant commerce - the issue of this union is plain to see all around us. Now nothing in nature remains undistorted, and since nature is the ultimate source of all beauty, all beauty has gone from the world, and there is nothing left for me, except, perhaps, in memories and dreams.
And what do I do? Well, as I said, I get depressed, and in other news, I write. Yes, I continue to write, like the Emperor Nero fiddling with himself as Rome went up in flames. As a matter of fact, I have been engaged, as many of you will know, in the rather pointless and hypocritical composition of a grand, apocalyptic novel called Domesday Afternoon. It looks like being such a vast undertaking that the world will probably end before I finish it, anyway, and even if I do finish it, well, it's not as if its publication will somehow avert disaster or have any useful effect whatsoever. So why am I doing it? Well, I don't really know, to be honest, except that, in my life, writing has always been one thing I actually can do, perhaps, in a way, the only thing, though I don't necessarily do it well.
I have asked myself, any number of times, why I bother to carry on such a task. A little while back I came upon something that seemed close to being an answer. It is, in fact, an interview with the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith:
The interviewer talks to Elliott about the rationale behind the title of his album Figure 8, and reads out a quote (his quote) to him: "I just like the idea of figure 8, of figure skaters trying to make this self-contained perfect thing that takes a lot of effort but essentially goes nowhere."
Funny, I expected 'figure 8' to be some sort of reference to the moebius symbol of eternity that reembles a figure 8 on its side. However, Elliott confirms the interpretation suggested by the quote. The interviewer expressed some surprise, asking if he really feels that music is pointless, to which he replies, "Yeah, of course. I mean, what's the point? Is music supposed to be a tool to get you somewhere else? No, it's just worth doing on its own."
I may have removed a few "like"s and "kinda"s from the quotation there.
Just in case anyone is wondering how I can think that life is inherently meaningful - as I seem to suggest in this blog entry - but ultimately purposeless, I suppose I should add that I think meaning and purpose are two different things. Meaning is diffuse, like the air, and allows freedom of movement in all directions. Purpose, however, is linear and one-track. Purpose builds roads. Usually to nowhere. Or over a cliff, as it now seems. Because purpose has behind it the notion of progress. But to what are we ultimately progressing? How can there be anything? Science, for instance, eschews meaning, but champions progress, or uses progress as an excuse for its own purposeful agenda. But where are we going with this? Who can plot the ultimate destination that the course we are on will take us to, the genetic tampering, so redolent of Nazi ideas of a master race, the mechanisation, artifical intelligence? If we survive that long, it will take us - this is my guess - to a utopia in which life will not be worth living, since there is no meaning, no soul left to live it anymore, only machines (biological or otherwise) purposefully building and maintaining more machines.
(Incidentally, this post is prompted in part by the fact that, at 5.49 pm on the 14th of January, 2007, I finished the longhand version of the first draft of the first volume of Domesday Afternoon. In longhand, the first volume comes to 1,284 pages. I am currently typing it up, and have typed about half. I will send copies of this first draft out to anyone with my e-mail address who writes to me and expresses an interest.)
WIDGETIZE
I've read a number of science-minded books recently such as Carl Sagan's 'The Demon-Haunted World' and a few of the Richard Dawkins books. Behind them seems to be the assumption that the human mind can accurately perceive an objective reality which exists apart from it; the scientific worldview usually presumes a set of liberal/humanist assumptions, as well as this idea that sense-information accurately represents something which exists regardless of human consciousness.
But I don't see how this is so; I don't understand how what we 'know' is anything other than human perception and not an accurate representation of an external reality. The world doesn't look the same to us as it does to a deep sea fish or a coelenterate or a termite or an anthrax bacterium. But in order to have any kind of reasonable debate or thesis proceeding scientifically, you have to assume that the material universe tangibly exists and that our perceptions of it are correct; you have to assume that the laws of physics never change, that time actually exists and proceeds in a linear fashion, that anything that can't be measured doesn't exist. But the measuring tools themselves, mathematics, are a human construction, and as Godel and others have shown, they can neither be consistent nor complete - in other words, they possess the same reality as any other human mental construct.
I think the ultimate dream of science is essentially 'become God' - I'm sure no reputable scientist is ever going to come out and say that, but it seems like the logical end-point to the idea of 'progress'. Okay, I'm actually wrong about coming out and saying it - if you read books by the scientist Ray Kurzweil, his recent books seem to suggest just that - that future advancements in molecular engineering, genetics, and applied quantum computing will eventually lead to human immortality, shape-shifting, time-travel, telepathy, etc. Kurzweil is hardly a fringe figure; he's invented cochlear ear implants, made a number of software advances, etc. - in short he's a respected figure in the scientific community. He's stated publicly that he has 'no interest in dying' or something like that. So I think, if pressed, a large percentage of scientists would concede that they think it's possible and desirable for humans to eventually 'become God' or something along those lines.
Behind this is the assumption that the human mind not only interfaces directly with reality, but is in itself rational, distinct, and complete - that is, capable of acting in an 'objective' fashion. But I don't see the human mind as rational at all. Although it's capable of forming principles and concepts, it's also driven largely by subconscious or instinctual motives - in other words, a drunken, tired, or physically abused person is not going to function mentally in the same way as a healthy person. Apparently inexplicable mental motivations also appear to govern the rate at which individuals become serial murderers, dictators, etc - whether they are 'rational' or not has little to do with it. A number of genocides in the past century were conducted in an eminently rational, scientific, and industrial fashion - only these principles were applied to the problem of exterminating as many human beings as expeditiously as possible. So, I doubt if it's really possible to make any clean distinction between 'mind' and 'body'. Even if it were possible to remove a human mind from its body and have it continue to function, then it would no longer be human, but something else. So, 'becoming God' necessarily entails the suicide of humanity. This seems to me to be the end result of 'scientific progress'. Of course, I'm sure a number of scientists and non-scientists alike would look at this in a completely positive light. And I'm sure once we start altering the physical human template, then exploitation, war, environmental destruction, and mass death will be able to continue on an inconceivable scale.
There's a Stanislaw Lem book called 'Eden' where the protagonists (none of which are given names but just referred to as 'The Engineer' and 'The Chemist', etc.) land on an alien world which seems to be deserted. As they explore, they find factories, buildings, and evidence of a civilization. As they learn more, they find that the alien civilization is completely incomprehensible - there is no way for them to make sense of its patterns of war or production. Massive groups seem to have been executed for no reason, while the factories produced apparently meaningless objects.
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I'm sure our world look exactly the same to another life form perceiving it - I can't think of any real explanation for factories churning out compact discs, why certain people are filmed and then televised and not others (ex. Big Brother), why certain practices are seen as sexually appealing and not others (ex. pedophilic sexual attraction to children who clearly can't reproduce), etc. In fact if you look at it from an 'objective' stance, most human behavior is arbitrary and absurd. Most of the things we invest with value, meaning, or purpose have nothing to do with survival or reproduction. As you said in your post - what does producing an album, for example, have to do with biological directives? This isn't even getting into things like assigning levels of 'reality' to things, like how a reality show is 'more' or 'less' real than 'real' 'reality'. I'll stop now before I start putting quotes around every word I use, which is where I think this is going. I'll just say that I think a world of human gods or God would probably resemble a surrealist nightmare more than it would a utopia.
By anonymous user, # 17. January 2007, 21:57:50
Thank you for giving me something to get my teeth into, if my teeth are up to it.
Well, I suppose I used the word 'utopia' to signify what I suppose is the scientific intent or rationale. I could have put it in inverted commas.
I have had people challenge me about my views on science, which has led me to question my 'bias'. Hmmm. After all, I may not be up to this tonight, but I'll do my best. First of all, well, of course I'm biased, but I think that, intellectually, the only people who ever seem to get away with a pretence of not being biased (being objective) are scientists, and I find that deeply suspicious. As I have noted before, Richard Dawkins says we've been brainwashed to respect religion, but what about science? What does it say when the two words 'scientific' and 'fact' are universally considered a natural collocation? Is that not brainwashing?
Secondly, is there something wrong with being biased, if you are open about it? I think the reasons for my bias are pretty clear. Whatever else you may say about science, I dislike it because of its claims to objectivity (authoritarianism), its undermining of spiritual and moral values, and the physically destructive effects it has had on our world.
H. P. Lovecraft, one of the most thorough-going materialists that lived, and an admirer science, wrote that science may be the ultimate exterminator of our species, and I think, in that, he was fairly prophetic.
For myself, I think that one of my strongest influences in this area has been William Burroughs, who quotes the last words of Hassan I Sabbah: "Nothing is true; everything is permitted". This clarified for me many of my own inchoate feelings. The world is full of possibilities, and human choose to bring forth possiblities by the creation of fictions. My own fictions are no more true than those of the scientist, but I happen to prefer them on aesthetic and moral grounds.
When you say "you have to assume that the laws of physics never change, that time actually exists and proceeds in a linear fashion", this reminds me of something I've been thinking about rather a lot lately. It seems as if, in what I have read, and in discussions I have had, that those who champion science, even if they do not believe that some of the individual theories formulated by science are eternal, believe that the scientific method itself is eternal. They refuse to see that there might be a set of assumptions or values underlying the method itself. In other words, it is as if they take the scientific method to have already existed in the stone block of eternity, independent of humanity, waiting, as it were, for the chisel to uncover it. Of course, science is a paradigm like anything else. And just as, in linear time, one man dying on a crucifix on a hillside, will fall behind the event horizon of the past and become part of a dead, unintelligible language, so will science. In other words, it is this assumption of the eternal nature of the scientific method itself, its being aptly carved into the stone block of materialism, that I most object to. Science, too, is just a language, and as we know, languages shift over time until no one speaks them any more.
It's interesting what you say about the dream of scientists to become God, and what you say about the possible denial of this, countered with its proclamation by Kurzweil. That does fit in with the whole intertwined history of science and religion, and seems pretty accurate to me.
I have wondered why I have sometimes been hesitant in criticising science. I think there are a number of reasons. One of them is quite simply that, as well as having an abstract presence in the world, science is also composed of all the individuals doing things in its name, and, not having met ALL of them, I'm a little wary of saying things that might be offensive or inaccurate about the people involved. However, there are other reasons. I think one of them is that, so often, there is an 'either/or' mentality propogated by advocates of science; if you're not for evolution then you must be a creationist, or if you're not a materialist atheist, then you must be a cypto-monotheist, or something like that. Actually, I find this offensive, and overbearing. All I've ever wanted to do is to be given the room to think and imagine for myself, and to take charge of my own soul, which is without doubt, the most valuable thing that I could possibly have. It seems as if, somewhere along the line, the mere criticism of science has become stigmatised, as if that automatically makes you a crackpot. There are plenty of people, clearly, who just want you to step in line and ask no questions.
In the afterword of one of the volumes of Mishima's Sea of Fertility, (in the original), one of the commentators wrote a comment that stuck in my mind. I can't seem to find it now, but it was something along the lines of, "With this tetralogy, Mishima seemed to be looking back on the entire Twentieth Century and its vastly accumulating edifice of materialism, and throwing down his challenge before it, saying, 'No! Enough!'" There is, of course, somewhere in the tetralogy, the funny little fable of the mouse that kills itself to prove that it's a cat, because, by drowning in soap suds it becomes inedible to the cat chasing it, and therefore, not being 'something that cats eat', at least has the victory of not being proved to be a mouse. I think that Mishima's own suicide had something similar about it. Whatever other complex reasons there might have been, one significant element, I'm sure, was the spiritual emptiness of the Twentieth Century. Of course, many people called him mad, and it's even possible that he was (I don't actually believe that). At the time, in terms of a protest against materialism, his suicide must, indeed, have seemed like the folly of a mouse killing itself to prove that it was a cat. Materialism, the cat, looms invincible and indestructible. And I think that many of us still feel like that today, that any resistance we can make is quixotic folly. And yet, I think that perhaps the advocates of materialism are not as invulnerable as they believe. Science is growing in strength, but perhaps this hides the fact that its weaknesses are also becoming increasingly apparent, and there will be more people who are neither materialists nor religious who no longer care about the stigma the scientists would like to see attach to them when they criticise science.
By quentinscrisp, # 18. January 2007, 01:10:08
Quentin, agreed.
I think you're right that science is presented in the West (and East, now) in the same fashion that Christianity used to be - that is, as something almost synonymous with civilization, reason, and even goodness itself. Just as I think atheism or agnosticism as concepts would probably have been inconceivable to the mindset of medieval Europe, so any thought critical of science or even 'anti-science' is difficult to imagine with the kind of education systems and outlooks dominant now. Just as the very word 'Christian' used to be synonymous with 'good person' or even 'human' (as opposed to sub-human heathens of various kinds), so the word 'scientist' is automatically freighted with associations of benevolence, reason, clarity, and the like.
You're also right that the scientific method almost never comes under scrutiny, or is even recognized as a construct. In the Carl Sagan book, he discusses how the early Chinese and Incan civilizations 'almost had science' or something like that, as if science is some kind of objective entity and not just a culturally specific, ideological way of looking at certain practices of thought. In the rest of the book, he goes on to try to disprove all kinds of paranormal/mystical events and concepts. Similarly, Dawkins is obsessed with disproving the existence of God. They have the same kind of zeal that the old Church councils on heresy used to have.
In light of this Hassan i Sabbah's dictum makes sense, and also Aleister Crowley's statement that magic is 'Change in accordance with will.' That definition seems broad enough to encompass science as well as less recognized practices, and so makes more sense to me than strict adherence to the scientific method.
So in reference to your original post, to me writing fiction seems as logical a response to possible encroaching apocalypse as anything else.
By anonymous user, # 18. January 2007, 02:41:56
"My own fictions are no more true than those of the scientist, but I happen to prefer them on aesthetic and moral grounds."
Are you saying there is no difference between fiction and scientific discovery? Surely fiction is entertainment in which anything is possible whereas science involves a careful process of predicting and testing to find out the truth about reality. They are very different categories of human endeavour, each valuable in its own way.
"Science, too, is just a language, and as we know, languages shift over time until no one speaks them any more."
I disagree. Has there ever been a system of enquiry that has told us more about the world than science? The fact is that science works. Our computers or spacecraft wouldn't work on religious faith or fictional creativity. Certainly I can understand people's dislike of some of the discoveries that science has made, or its abuses, or the whole concept of technological progress but that is a different matter and a separate argument from the truth of the things that science uncovers.
"It seems as if, somewhere along the line, the mere criticism of science has become stigmatised, as if that automatically makes you a crackpot."
Hmmm, I think this is a matter of perspective. As a scientist and an atheist I have the opposite experience. I have felt that I should not criticise people's religious beliefs because we are supposed to "respect" them. However, it is hard to react to events like 9/11 or the crackpot philosophies underlying the American religious right without a shudder and a desire to speak out against it.
I can understand the attraction of religion and I suspect that it may be impossible for many people (particularly the majority who live in much harsher conditions than we do) to live without it. I'm not sure whether it is better to go through life facing the truth (as far as we can determine it) or believing a comforting myth. What do you think?
By anonymous user, # 18. January 2007, 22:16:22
Well, I wasn't really refering so much to the fictions that I write as fiction of my entire world-view.
"I disagree. Has there ever been a system of enquiry that has told us more about the world than science? The fact is that science works."
Well, science concerns itself with the physical and reaps the rewards of the physical. I think this is what most people mean when they say that science 'works'. It does, of course, depend what you try to make it do. You can express some things in some languages that cannot be expressed in others. Of course, this is a vast subject. I know people from scientific backgrounds, and, when I talk to them, depending on the person, I don't generally feel antagonism or friction except in certain very specific areas of values and interpretations of reality. From that point of view, if I identify the advocates of science as science itself, which I tend to, then I cannot and do not think of science as 'all bad'. Nonetheless, it does seem to me that there are some elements in what might be called the 'culture' of science that are destructive. As I have indicated, the worst of these, to me, is the idea of objectivity. Science as a whole becomes something that is beyond question, and I happen to think that's dangerous. The fact that science is so effective in manipulating the physical environment seems to be what so much of this authority rests upon - it 'works' objectively. But do we really want to base all of our truths on the manipulation of the physical environment? That manipulation has particular results. Science may be 'merely the tool' of that manipulation, and therefore might be described as neutral or objective, but even a tool is designed by the will and intentions of a human being. A gun, for instance, may be used for nailing a hammer into a wall, but it's clearly designed for different purposes.
"Hmmm, I think this is a matter of perspective. As a scientist and an atheist I have the opposite experience. I have felt that I should not criticise people's religious beliefs because we are supposed to 'respect' them. However, it is hard to react to events like 9/11 or the crackpot philosophies underlying the American religious right without a shudder and a desire to speak out against it."
I think that people should, by all means, speak out against the particular tyrannies and manipulations of religion. I suppose I speak from my own experience. I can quite honestly say that I feel like someone whose thoughts and feelings have been marginalised by science and materialism. I feel less oppressed by religion probably just because I'm lucky enough not to come across it so much in my daily life. I think that, here in Britain, only a couple of decades, or three decades ago, religion was still strong enough for it to have a ridiculous stranglehold. I'm thinking in particular of the calls from the church to ban the film The Life of Brian. Perhaps I'm lucky inasmuch as I seem to have just missed all that. Certainly in my teenage years I became deeply disillusioned with religion because of the hypocrisy of the church, its history of bloodshed, and so on. In my generation, I suppose there was still enough of religion in the air for me to have to rebel against it mentally and emotionally at that age. But since that particular private struggle, I have only occasionally had people knocking on the door wanting me to be religious. No one in my daily life expects me to be religious, and almost no one even talks about religion (except to say how stupid it is). Plenty of people make spontaneous public statements deriding religion. All of the people of faith that I personally know in Britain, keep the matter very much to themselves, and you probably wouldn't even think they had any religion unless you specifically tried to pin them down on the subject.
Personally, I don't consider myself to be religious. I don't really care too much about labels, to be honest. I think (maybe I'm kidding myself), that my mind is fairly protean and shifting. Obviously, on this blog, I seem to come back to the same things again and again. Clearly those things are important to me, and I can't deny them. While I'm quiet, however, my mind seems to be forever on the move.
This is just my impression, but the whole crackpot thing... Let's see. In my life, out of everyone I know, there is a vast majority of people who would consider anyone who is avowedly religious to be 'a bit weird'. Actually, I think they'd probably judge them on personality alone as long as they never ever mentioned their own religious beliefs. However, because organised religions, such as Christianity, have a long history, and we're kind of used to them as a tradition, it doesn't usually go beyond the 'a bit weird' thing (in fact it is probably only Christianity that is 'a bit weird', since everything else is either just foreign - such as Islam - or raving mad). I think, if we posit a lively, alcoholic discussion in a pub, and someone countered the arguments of a materialist by saying that they were Christian, and using whatever arguments a Christian might use, they would be reasonably safe in as much as the Christian faith can be overlooked. It can almost be seen as a given, like a Scottish accent, or something like that. And then, one doesn't need to take it too seriously because it is contained, and the arguments undermining a faith such as Christianity are well-established. You either make the leap of faith, or you sit outside safely able to dimiss it.
I think the whole crackpot stigma comes in much more if you really are opening up the whole subject of reality, and the possibility of a spiritual dimension (something that traditional deism, with its deus ex machina doesn't seem to do, many Christians actually using their religion to keep spirituality at greater-than-arm's length) without being allied to any tradition. Then you've no castle walls of history into which you can run for shelter. There's just you, and, "Well, it seems like this to me." And so on.
"I'm not sure whether it is better to go through life facing the truth (as far as we can determine it) or believing a comforting myth. What do you think?"
Well, I'm glad that at least you put in that parenthesis, as otherwise it would have definitely sounded like 'science has already established the truth, we know everything, you don't'. There is the assumption in what you're saying, that truth is on the side of science, and that to stray from science is immediately to stray from the truth. Just to recap, science is effective on the physical plane. This has also given it a great boost of authority in interpretations of the nature of reality. It is a language that deals effectively with the physical, but a language nonetheless. Is it the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Personally, I don't think so. However, let's suppose for a moment - because it's quite possible and I've considered it, do consider it - that any thoughts I have about the existence of a spiritual plane are merely some kind of wish-fulfilment. Let's not even discuss ideas of the self-evident nature of the spiritual and so on. Let's just forget that and say there is nothing but physical matter - 'the jangling of atoms'. Does facing this 'truth' then mean that I want people to treat me as nothing more than the jangling of atoms, or that I have the right to treat them as such? No, I don't think so. Clearly something else comes into play that seems to contradict the idea that we are mere matter, whether such an idea is true or not.
Anyway, I hope the above in some way clarifies my view, and thank you for writing. Much as it's nice to have people agree with me, it's also good to have people disagree, too.
By quentinscrisp, # 19. January 2007, 00:36:49
Sorry I haven't responded to your second comment. I will do so later, but it's now rather late in the evening/morning.
By quentinscrisp, # 19. January 2007, 00:41:42
Well, it looks like our viewpoints basically coincide here, so there's actually probably not much for me to add.
I was reminded, however, by your previous mention of Kurzweil that I wrote something about him a long time back on this blog. Here it is:
http://my.opera.com/quentinscrisp/blog/show.dml/33555
One and a half years ago now, I wrote that! Time flies. I noticed, actually, looking back over my previous writing and comments in my search for that entry that, to my surprise, my views seem to be fairly consistent throughout. Maybe I'm not as protean as I thought. Maybe it just feels like I am. Or maybe I'm only protean until I actually open my mouth.
I'm still not sure about the validity or worth of my writing, though. Maybe I'm taking this whole environmental armageddon too seriously - or maybe I and other people are not taking it seriously enough - but I feel that writing the kind of thing that I currently write is very much linked in with an old egotistical mindset of individual talent and gaining recognition for that and so on, which is actually very deeply influenced by the whole competitive capitalism thing. Except that, I think there's some childish element to it that probably can't be equated with capitalist ideologies. In any case, at the moment, writing is simply what is there in front of me to do, but I want to be open, if I can, to some other way of employing my creativity that is not so, well, so shot through with personal ambition, I suppose. I'm quite interested in ideas of the oral tradition of literature, and I'm wondering if that's a way forward. I'm not sure, and I haven't really had much energy or willpower to pursue these ideas so far.
But thank you for your encouraging words, anyway.
By quentinscrisp, # 20. January 2007, 00:14:23
"Is (science) the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
No but it doesn't claim to be. It is a system of enquiry and the results change as we discover more, though some of the major tenets of science have so much supporting evidence that it would be perverse to deny their validity
"Let's not even discuss ideas of the self-evident nature of the spiritual"
Yes, let's! In the past it was "self-evident" that epileptics were possessed by the devil and that continents were solid lumps of rock that didn't move. It's ironic that science, which is so often portrayed as dogmatic, hidebound and narrow-minded, has made us cautious of the "self-evident" and revealed the truth to be more strange than we at first thought.
"Let's just forget that and say there is nothing but physical matter - 'the jangling of atoms'. Does facing this 'truth' then mean that I want people to treat me as nothing more than the jangling of atoms, or that I have the right to treat them as such?"
But science doesn't just deal with physical matter, it also deals with forces, energies, fields, waves, mathematical concepts, statistics etc, all combining in fantastically complex way to create the phenomena we experience. I don't see this has any particular moral implication (good or bad) with regard to how people should be treated. Our morality comes from a wide mix of sources (genetic, religious, psychosocial), though information gained by science on our evolution as social animals may provide useful information in explaining or legislating for particular moral behaviour and choices.
"Clearly something else comes into play that seems to contradict the idea that we are mere matter, whether such an idea is true or not."
But what? I assume you refer to a soul but why is it necessary to posit the existence of something that is (for some reason) not amenable to scientific study?
P.S. By the way, there's a documentary about Sparks on Radio 2 tonight at 8.00.
By anonymous user, # 20. January 2007, 14:49:26
I can't write at length at the moment. I don't actually disagree with most of what you're saying there, though I might have some qualifications to make later.
For now, let me just respond to this part:
"But what? I assume you refer to a soul but why is it necessary to posit the existence of something that is (for some reason) not amenable to scientific study?"
But why must I always resort to science in order to posit the existence of something? There are parts of my experience that I choose to think about or express in my own language. And I would also like the freedom to think about things outside of the range of scientific study.
Thanks for the Sparks tip. Not sure I'll be able to catch it, though.
By quentinscrisp, # 20. January 2007, 18:58:57
By quentinscrisp, # 20. January 2007, 21:02:58
very good
By anonymous user, # 21. January 2007, 12:18:40
"Let's not even discuss ideas of the self-evident nature of the spiritual"
Yes, let's! In the past it was "self-evident" that epileptics were possessed by the devil and that continents were solid lumps of rock that didn't move. It's ironic that science, which is so often portrayed as dogmatic, hidebound and narrow-minded, has made us cautious of the "self-evident" and revealed the truth to be more strange than we at first thought.
Okay, let's. Well, first of all, 'self-evident' is a bit of a risky term to use, but I use it here with certain specific things in mind:
"In the past it was "self-evident" that epileptics were possessed by the devil and that continents were solid lumps of rock that didn't move."
And currently it's self-evident that science is the most productive way to understand the world around us?
"But science doesn't just deal with physical matter, it also deals with forces, energies, fields, waves, mathematical concepts, statistics etc, all combining in fantastically complex way to create the phenomena we experience. I don't see this has any particular moral implication (good or bad) with regard to how people should be treated."
Of course, this is true, and what you say afterwards, that our morality comes from a wide mix of sources makes me think that our positions might not be that far removed from each other. I use 'atoms' for the sake of convenience, as a representation of materialism, or, more specifically, of a view of life that seems to be purely quantitative. However, what if I conduct a little experiment here and take the liberty of changing some of your words:
"But science doesn't just deal with blibs, it also deals with froobles, snallies, vimps, gimmybreeches, ythihectical concepts, rammerflips etc, all combining in fantastically complex way to create the phenomena we experience."
And, for the sake of fairness, let's do the same for me:
"However, let's suppose for a moment - because it's quite possible and I've considered it, do consider it - that any thoughts I have about the existence of a fimfum are merely some kind of wish-fulfilment. Let's not even discuss ideas of the self-evident nature of the gnipzlix and fleeps."
If you look at what we're saying in this way, it all becomes a little less important, and perhaps rather pointless. I suppose that's what I mean (or part of what I mean) when I say that everything is a fiction. Again, my biggest problem with science is that there are so many who claim that science alone is not a fiction. I think that some fictions are better-constructed than others - as I write I'm quite familiar with this fact - and science is a particularly powerful fiction, but that does not mean one has to concur with it, or approve.
Also, I think that, though language can be seen as a sort of algebra of signifiers with no inherent reality, as I hope I have demonstrated above, there do seem to be more value-judgements attached to language than there are to the mere x and y of mathematical algebra. Therefore, to use your example, one person might describe a certain phenomenon as possession by devils, and someone else as epilepsy. Is one right and one wrong? No, one is x and one is y. However, this is x and y with value judgements, one that the phenomenon is supernatural, and one that it is medical. Other interpretations also exist. All are fictions, but they will influence how the person believing the fiction treats the phenomenon.
Now, let me try and turn to what I mean by the self-evident nature of the spiritual - something that transcends these fictions.
I will start by saying that I think human beings, for the most part, are still very much juvenile in their attitudes, and that includes myself. I think that, for the most part, we speak and act out of insecurities, resentments, neediness and so on. So, rather than just express a legitimate concern that human activity is destroying the planet that sustains us, for instance, I fall into deep anxiety and say that we're all going to die. That's a fairly easy example, but attachment to mental positions arising from insecurity can take incredibly subtle forms. I believe that materialism is one such position, or rather, one such attachment.
For the most part, because I recognise myself to be still very juvenile, I avoid preaching or teaching what I think of as good or right. I am deeply suspicious of those who set themselves up as teachers. I feel that what I am good at - if I am good at anything - is writing macabre and fantastical fictions dealing with questions of the nature of reality but not offering any fixed answers. It's really a rather lowly calling, but I'll be happy if I can excel in it, and I try to put my heart and soul into it. This means that I am very curious about all aspects of existence and what it means to be human, and I find that, throughout history, other people, too, have devoted themselves very seriously to this matter - to that most important (for us) question of human potential. Some of these people have inadvertently started religions. What they have been trying to do, however, is to point to the self-evident spiritual nature of existence, which is consciousness itself, before the fiction of interpretation takes effect. For some unknown reason, progress in the area of human potential, human consciousness, is incredibly difficult. It is much easier to fool ourselves we are making progress by developing physical technology to the Nth degree. But I don't think we're mature enough yet to be able to handle the kind of technology we have developed.
I'm afraid that my writing on this blog can tend towards the pugilistic, and that's not always, or even often, very helpful. However, there are plenty of people who have dealt with this subject matter in a more balanced and sober way than I have.
For example, I have recently read - and it's been long overdue - Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. If I say that I think it should be a set text at schools, I suppose that might sound a little provocative, but, really, on reflection, I can think of few things that I'd rather be set texts.
On the back, the blurb from the Sunday Times describes it as, "Concise, evocative, wise and above all, humane."
That last word is apt and telling. What we're talking about here is someone who has managed to put aside, for a moment, the juvenile attachments and insecurities, and write about something in a serious, adult manner. That is extremely rare. Let me quote from the text:
Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist, all our education is predominantly verbal and therefore fails to accomplish what it is supposed to do. Instead of transforming children into fully developed adults, it turns out students of the natural sciences who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience, it inflicts upon the world students of the Humanities who know nothing of humanity, their own or anyone else's.
Gestalt psychologists, such as Samuel Renshaw, have devised methods for widening the range and increasing the acuity of human perceptions. But do our educators apply them? The answer is, No. ...
And now look at the history of mescalin research. Seventy years ago men of first-rate ability described the transcendental experiences which come to those who, in good health, under proper conditions and in the right spirit, take the drug. How many philosophers, how many theologians, how many professional educators have had the curiosity to open this Door in the Wall? The answer, for all practical purposes, is, None.
... when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system - when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of practical use) than Swedish Drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. Verbalists are suspicious of the non-verbal; rationalists fear the given, non-rational fact; intellectuals feel that 'what we perceive by the eye (or in any other way) is foreign to us as such and need not impress us deeply.' Besides, this matter of educaton in the non-verbal Humanities will not fit into any of the established pigeon-holes. It is not religion, nor neurology, nor morality or civics, not even experimental psychology. This being so, the subject is, for academic purposes, non-existent and may safely be ignored altogether or left, with a patronizing smile, to those whom the Pharisees of verbal orthodoxy call cranks, quacks, charlatans and unqualified amateurs.
But for those who are interested in the development of what Huxley calls the non-verbal Humanities, of discovering the self-evidently spiritual realm of pure consciousness, in which even these words I am writing now to attempt an explanation become a kind of distracting nonsense, there are, in fact, certain textual touchstones, although, because, as Huxley points out, the field is left to 'quacks', it's a difficult, pathless way to get through by oneself. Anyway, here are some of the texts that I have discovered to be useful:
The Tao Te Ching.
The Passion of the Western Mind, by Richard Tarnas.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
On Having No Head, by Douglas Harding, who, I am informed, died earlier this month.
That will do for now, as quantity, of course, is not as important as quality.
Before I sign off on this subject, I would also like to quote from Brian Josephson, of whom I imagine you have heard. The quotes are taken from an interesting interview in a recent issue of New Scientist:
Why did you decide to give up your highly successful work on superconductors?
I read a book called The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra that pointed out the parallels between quantum physics and eastern mysticism. I started to feel there was more to reality than conventional science allowed for, and some interesting ideas that it hadn't got round to investigating such as altered states of consciousness.
You have become an advocate for unconventional ideas. How did that happen?
I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a "memory" of compounds that were once dissolved in it - which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked irrationally strong reactions from scientists and I was struck by how badly he was treated. To an extent, I realised that the way science is done by consensus could get things completely wrong. I feel that it's important to try and correct the errors that scientists are making.
What errors are these?
I call it "pathological disbelief". The statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it" seems to sum up this attitude. People have this idea that when something can't be reproduced every time, it isn't a real phenomenon. It is like a religious creed where you have to conform to the "correct" position. This leads to editors blocking the publication of important papers in academic journals. Even the physics preprint archive blocks some papers on certain topics, or by certain authors.
Do you mean that scientists cannot accept these phenomena because it would ruin their view of the world?:
It would mean admission of error. Instead, sceptics can alwasy say that there must have been something wrong with these experiments. This means that you can never really prove anything, and a sceptic doesn't actually have to discover anything wrong to dismiss an experiment.
Is this why you've posted the motto "take nobody's word for it" at the top of your website?
Yes. And the corollary of this motto is that if most scientists denounce an idea, this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the idea is absurd. It seems that anything goes among the physics community - cosmic wormholes, time travel - just so long as it keeps its distance from anything mystical or New Age-ish.
There are lots of pointers towards strange things, such as the quantum interconnectedness of entangled particles, but physicists are very prickly about them, saying you shouldn't read anything into these results. There are in fact a lot of scientists who believe telepathy exists, but they keep quiet about it.
I take it that mean you pay a price for speaking out about things like cold fusion, telepathy and the paranormal.
Yes. If you say you accept the reality of the paranormal then this automatically affects your reputation. It's assumed that if a person believes in this kind of thing then his views are not worth considering. It has led to certain people being very prejudiced against me and assuming there's something wrong with anything I do. I don't have the kind of support network that researchers usually have. But since I can do my research on the mathematics of the brain by myself this is less of a problem than it otherwise would be, though it slows down progress considerably.
By quentinscrisp, # 21. January 2007, 18:36:01
Pleased to meet you.
Where are you from and what brings you to this neck of the woods, if I may ask?
By quentinscrisp, # 21. January 2007, 18:39:37
I'd just like to step back in here for a bit and add a few things.
I think the science we have allows us to influence and interact with reality in a certain way, but there seems no way of really knowing whether this is the only reality, or the only possible way to interact with it. I think the heart of what Quentin is saying is that it's impossible to separate science, culture, and fiction - each of the three constitutes and influences the others. I'll quote R.A. Wilson and his term 'reality tunnels' - science is a reality tunnel. It gives you a way of looking at existence. ('Metanarrative' is a similar term devised by the literary theory set, but which means more or less the same).
Our chemistry, for example, is based on molecular bonds - everything is conceived in terms of organic or inorganic molecules, possible polymerizations, etc. But it's possible to imagine a different form of chemistry that doesn't even acknowledge the existence of molecular bonds and focuses on the positioning of quarks. I think you can apply this principle to most other disciplines as well - how and what we can measure aren't necessarily the only way, or all that exists.
But my problem, as stated before, is more simple: I don't even really accept that there necessarily is a material universe. I'm sympathethic to Berkeley's idea of Immaterialism, because I'm pretty skeptical of whether our sense-information actually does point to an external reality. That is, I don't see how we can know anything outside of perception - we can say "I see a tree" or "I can feel the tree", but we can't necessarily say "There is a tree." Of course this risks total solipsism, but I think there's a kind of balance there of recognizing other people and still not dogmatically accepting claims which are very easily disproved later down the line (the various models of the atom and how they've changed, 'dark energy', etc.) Various kinds of Buddhists have also looked at external reality with at least some skepticism, if not outright disbelief.
I remember taking a philosophy class once, and when it got to Berkeley, everyone (including the lecturer) treated him as a kind of joke or figure of fun - like, "He didn't believe in matter!" I think I was the only one not laughing. I was sitting there thinking "Well, no, but...he's right. His argument makes sense." I think at the time (1700's or whenever) someone commented on Berkeley like "His arguments are impossible to disprove, but they produce no conviction." Well...again, they were pretty convincing to me. I just think we're raised to believe that doubting the existence of (or at least agreed nature of) matter is absurd, so we don't question it.
The same skepticism I extend to language - I don't see how words have any real meaning at all, except in relation to one another - you can understand 'cold' in terms of the absence of 'hot' and a certain associated sensory impression, but if another word existed like 'frigid' or 'slightly chilly' your understanding (and hence the reality) would be different. The language determines the content of consciousness...the converse is also true.
Again, I don't see how any of this rules out or denigrates science, but it seemingly does allow for things to exist outside of it. My problem is when scientists, especially respected ones, start making statements like 'Mysticism is invalid' or go around trying to 'disprove' things. The same can be said of religious authorities, political leaders, etc. though, so I think it's more a human trait in general than a necessarily scientific/religious/etc. one.
By anonymous user, # 21. January 2007, 20:47:23
I believe that Johnson, upon hearing Berkley theory, and being told, despite its 'inherent absurdity' it was difficult to refute, said, "I refute it thus." And kicked a rock. But I find his response to mean nothing whatsoever and to demonstrate his emotional attachment to matter.
I think there is a kind of difference in attitudes, which I am increasingly discovered, between what I'm starting to think of as a this-world orientation and, well, I'm not sure what the best corresponding term might be. Otherworld-orientation is not quite right, somehow, but anyway, I'm definitely not in the 'this-world orientation' group. There seem to be very few of us about who are not. But it surprises me just how much people have invested in the idea of the solid reality of this world. Everything just seems totally imaginary to me.
By quentinscrisp, # 21. January 2007, 21:28:07
“But why must I always resort to science in order to posit the existence of something?”
Well you don’t but what’s to stop me positing the theory that my computer has developed intelligence and its occasional crashes are signs of irritation at my sceptical comments? Or that kangaroos were separately created by aliens? Or anything else that takes my fancy? Doesn’t there need to be a reason for a belief and some source of confidence that it is not erroneous? Science tries to test ideas to see if they explain or predict phenomena better than other ideas. Religious or “spiritual” belief seems to derive from “faith” which seems to me to translate as “believing in something because you want to believe in it”. This has always seemed strange to me. I remember being amazed when a friend (another scientist actually) said he could believe in something just because he wanted to believe in it. This strikes me as a form of madness (though possibly a psychologically beneficial one – see my earlier question about the possible desirability of believing in a comforting myth). I don’t think I am capable of believing in something for which there is not some convincing evidence. After all, when children grow up we expect them to give up belief in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy and start facing reality. You may think that it is reasonable to go on believing in such things. Fair enough. The problem I have is when religion uses its power to affect those of us who don’t agree with what (to us) seem crazy myths. Leaving aside the obvious religious wars and terrorism there are also issues like abortion, euthanasia and stem-cell research where religious dogma seems to frequently over-rule common sense and common humanity. This is why people like myself and Richard Dawkins get a bit angry at times!
"In the past it was "self-evident" that epileptics were possessed by the devil and that continents were solid lumps of rock that didn't move."
“And currently it's self-evident that science is the most productive way to understand the world around us?”
The difference is, science has proved itself to be so.
Science led to treatments for epilepsy that (I think, though I don’t have the figures on this) worked more frequently than exorcisms (charitably assuming that a few exorcisms might have worked through psychological means). And the theory of continental drift has explained a lot about the distribution of animals and plants around the world while religious fundamentalists are still searching for Noah’s ark. Another important point is that the scientific method and its major discoveries are the same worldwide whereas religion is not. Surely that is another sign that science is discovering something fundamental and universal whereas religious or spiritual ideas (though they have some similarities) are culturally generated myths? I take your point that there may be things that are not available to scientific scrutiny due to their nature but I don’t see how we can understand them or have a high enough degree of certainty that they are real. It’s a matter of probability. There are many more ways to be wrong than to be right and unless we have good quality bias-free evidence we are likely to be wrong by simply “just believing”.
Regarding Brian Josephson’s comments, I agree it looks bad when scientists dismiss ideas that are labelled paranormal or new age. However, I think you have to realise there is a lot of precedent here. Those ideas have been knocking around for many, many, many years. The onus of proof is on the proponents of such ideas. In all that time we still have no firm convincing proof that UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot etc represent anything beyond our current view of reality. It’s all very well to say that scientists should consider all possibilities but given that life is short and money is limited I can’t blame them for ignoring all that old stuff that has been so utterly unproductive of hard evidence or insight. However I must admit I have an aesthetic fondness for some of those things - I used to be more credulous when I was young and I loved reading books on cryptozoology, flying saucers, the Loch Ness Monster etc, In fact I’ve recently been enjoying a cheap box set of Season 1 of The X-Files and an entertainingly bonkers book by Jon Downes on the Cornish Owlman (which someone reckons is a bird-headed spirit conjured up by the surrealist Max Ernst when he stayed in Cornwall. Rule Dementia!)
"Everything just seems totally imaginary to me."
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Our attachment to matter is surely more than "emotional". Have you tried walking through a wall lately?
“I feel that what I am good at - if I am good at anything - is writing macabre and fantastical fictions dealing with questions of the nature of reality but not offering any fixed answers. It's really a rather lowly calling, but I'll be happy if I can excel in it”
You do indeed, so maybe I should stop arguing with you! It’s just that I’ve found a lot of anti-science feeling amongst creative people which I feel is sometimes unjustified. Perhaps a non-scientific belief is necessary to the creative process for some people, as opposed to just “making stuff up”. After all, many of my favourite artists (Robert Aickman, Arthur Machen, William Burroughs, Andrei Tarkovsky…) expressed similar beliefs, though others (H. P. Lovecraft, T. E. D. Klein) have much more rational worldviews so it’s clearly not always necessary.
By anonymous user, # 22. January 2007, 20:47:36
i believe i have done something, a clarion call to other civilizations that there is something here. i made an LP of synth music on an old analog machine. Momus released it, and it got airplay on several stations. Now supposedly radio waves go out into space and keep going further into the universe. Maybe there is some alien listening somewhere, and may want to hear more sounds from me. i know that is pretty egoist of me, oh well.
rroland
By anonymous user, # 22. January 2007, 21:04:12
Pleased to meet you.
Where are you from and what brings you to this neck of the woods, if I may ask?"
By the way, I didn't want to be scary here... I just like to know something about my visitors if I can. Do you have an online presence?
Perhaps I even know you already.
By quentinscrisp, # 23. January 2007, 14:29:22
"Now supposedly radio waves go out into space and keep going further into the universe. Maybe there is some alien listening somewhere, and may want to hear more sounds from me."
Hence the music of the spheres?
By quentinscrisp, # 23. January 2007, 14:30:52
I don't have time to respond to everything at the moment, but just to give a quick answer to the everything-being-totally-imaginary bit, well, this is something that is very hard to articulate, but is nonetheless a distinct and persistent aspect of my experience of life. Of course, if you know Berkeley, you'll probably have an idea of the general area I'm talking about, but Berkeley, of course, is philosophy, and what I'm talking about is perhaps as intangible as a certain flavour of perception. Some things give a hint of that flavour, and, in particular, something like this:
http://www.chinapage.com/chungtz2.html
Perhaps I can best explain it by saying that I seem peculiarly designed to tell stories, even if I'm still not that good at it. You know the parable of the blind men and the elephant? One feels it and says its a spear (he feels the tusk), one says its a rope (the tail) one says a tree (the leg) and so on - well, for some reason, I get a hold of life and it seems to me like a story. Everything appears to me in terms of stories or other kinds of imaginary fiction. That just seems to be that metaphor that works for me. But this sense is particularly strengthened for me when, for reasons beyond our fathoming (though we can certainly guess at some of them) people demonstrate again and again that they inhabit different stories, different fictions. I pick up a book by Nagai Kafu and I'm in a very different world to that I find myself in when I pick up a book by H.P. Lovecraft. This multiplicity is in itself fascinating to me.
By quentinscrisp, # 23. January 2007, 14:42:00
By lesoldatperdu, # 23. January 2007, 17:53:46
By quentinscrisp, # 23. January 2007, 18:13:38
The 'Chuang Tze dilemma' is something that seriously gave me near mental problems as a child.
Everyone knows the feeling of being preoccupied by something in a dream and then waking up to find it wasn't a 'real' problem - it was just something from a dream. One moment your mind is frantically racing with the problem of where you're going to hide the painting you and Count Dracula have just stolen from the Louvre, the next moment - a mere blip of consciousness later, like a record skipping - you're 'awake' and realizing the problem of hiding the painting no longer matters because you have to get your trousers on and brush your teeth quickly so you can make it to work on time and the painting wasn't 'real' anyway.
I don't know why, but the repeated occurrence of this phenomena caused a debilitating existential crisis when I was a little kid, probably from feeling like my emotional reactions were stronger in dreams than they were in real life. This made me doubt the validity of emotions as much as it did 'reality', since I became convinced both could be counterfeited or otherwise tampered with.
By anonymous user, # 23. January 2007, 19:14:13
I've just re-read Lovecraft's 'Polaris', entirely on a whim, and it struck me as Lovecraft's version of the Chuang Tze/butterfly story. Then I read some notes on it at the back of the book:
This comment itself point to the true significance of the story: it is not a "dream fantasy," as has been commonly believed, but rather a case of psychic possession by a distant ancestor... the protagonist's spirit has gone back 26,000 years and identified with the spirit of his ancestor.
That seems fair enough, but some comments by Lovecraft on the dream that was the basis for the story in a letter to a friend also support the comparison with the old Taoist story:
"If the truth or falsity or our beliefs and impressions be immaterial then I am, or was, actually and indisputably an unbodied spirit hovering over a very singular, very silent, and very ancient city somewhere between grey, dead hills. I thought I was at the time - so what else matters?"
Personally I have often felt dreams to be more real than waking life, as if they are the quintessence of life, with all the distracting structural stuff taken away.
Other versions of the Chuang Tze story would be... The dream sequence in An American Werewolf in London, the entire film eXistenZ... My unpublished story, The Resort. There are others...
By quentinscrisp, # 24. January 2007, 00:17:55
"I don't know - Existential ideas on consciousness have been completely disproven by science (yes, our brains are physical things). It's kind-of like Freud I guess - fun to talk about, but in reality we're just entertaining ourselves with it."
So, in other words, just shut up about it, don't even bother trying to think for yourself, science has done it all for you already. No. No objections now. After all, it's been completely (dis)proven.
"Almost all of 20th century thought can be either cut down or outmoded by science - language, society, human behavior ... that's the realm of science, and I'm not sure why so many thinkers were obsessed with it without critically investigating our brains, genes, hormones, etc. (I think Chomp ski is an exception). I think our personal, non-social inner worlds are best done with this kind-of thinking because it goes beyond the physical (even if it stems from it)."
More of the same: 'Listen to my voice. You are feeling sleepy. You are a robot. You have no free will.' Science is the only authority, forget any other way of interpreting the world.
And what's this? "yes, our brains are physical things".
Does this statement have any meaning at all? 'Yes, our brains are brains. Yes, our brains are [insert judgemental but basically meaningless word of own choice].' It's almost tautological in its redundancy. But that's the kind of redundancy that materialism is based on.
By quentinscrisp, # 20. February 2007, 20:07:18