Consciousness Continued

David Stephenson writes:

Self awareness and consciousness; obviously entities have varying degrees of self awareness, particularly as demonstrated by a baby's development, does this mean they have varying degrees of consciousness?

And as an add on to that, if they aren't fully conscious, where do their rights lie in terms of taking their lives ethically. And by babies I did mean children AFTER birth, not during pregnancy.

I would probably argue that consciousness is an innate, connected set of abilities. It is the possession of the ability to react to one's sensorium. Whether we can react in a complex way to our senses in combination or whether we react based on a single input, we can be said to be conscious of our environment. By this definition, consciousness and environmental awareness are synonymous.

Self-awareness goes a step further than that. It an effect of a conscious entity being able to create a recognisable and even malleable environment out of their own physiognomy, psychology, past, present and future. Self-awareness in humans comes mainly from the power of hypothesis. We have evolved the ability to hypothesise the topology of our environments, behaviour of our enemies and friends, and the outcomes of events resulting from these elements. Past a certain level of complexity, we were able to turn these abilities inwards. We looked at ourselves and started analysing our own motivations, likes, dislikes, mistakes et cetera.
It must be stressed that this is still an indirect process. Humans still have to examine themselves on evidence, rather than having access to some kind of source code. Some of us are better at this examination than others. Truly, self-awareness differs between adult individuals. Whilst pretty much anyone will recognise themselves in a mirror, how many are comfortable when presented with a description of their psychology? The majority are more likely to see their own reflection of their selves as the most accurate, despite obvious bias.

The process of development towards self-awareness is instinctive, as language is, but just as with language, we develop shorthand rules for our internal conceptualisation. By this logic, babies learn self-awareness as they do language. They are born with a potential for greater self-awareness than all other animals (as far as we know) but at birth they are a dependent little monkey with no great introspective abilities.

They are, however, entirely conscious of the world around them. The problem with treating consciousness as a basis for individual right to life is that that would instantly rule out the entire meat business.

Problematically, the other major alternative is that we must give utmost right to life to anything, such as a human or a dolphin, which can achieve self-awareness. I say problematically as this logic rules out abortion, but that is a vastly complicated topic for another post.

To work this out without having to descend into endless mind-mending and the creation of a huge number of arbitrary get-out clauses, I will simply say this: Rights must follow common sense and when two sets of rights are in conflict, those which would preserve the greater good and human dignity must be respected.
I don't believe the right to life should be linked to self-awareness or consciousness, simply because this creates an unnecessarily rigid basis on which to base any law or code of ethics. Babies do not have increasing levels of right to life after their birth because this would be impossible to logically justify.

Our right to life is not based on our ability to think, or perceive, and it never must be. It is based on the needs of the many, and the avoidance of the chaos which would ensue if it did not exist. Born babies, as potentially autonomous members of the human race, share our right to life, whether they know it or not.

Consciousness

I struggle with the idea of consciousness. It’s a duality issue, I guess. A matter of perspective. This tiny flash of life we get – how does it work? Are we like a short, sharp sound? A click of the finger? Except instead of a sound, we are a consciousness, brought into being through no volition of its own? If so, if we happen to create echoes, those echoes are the things that people find interesting, especially if they’re distorted. A short, sharp consciousness, only aware of itself, its echoes escaping it, a flawed facsimile of itself. All our actions are only a flawed re-iteration of the original mind.


The conscious mind can never directly interact with, and therefore fully comprehend, its own actions, or the actions of others, because of this. There is a disconnect between thought and action because of the divided nature of these two things. Eventually the echoes fade, and the original sound dies, leaving only a situation with no explanation.

From another perspective, are we not like stars, seen through our atmosphere? During the night, some are clear, always. People with adequate vision can all see them, recognise their colour and size, understand the significance. The majority, however, are dim, and distant, quivering through the air to our eyes. Looking at them directly often makes them invisible, removing comprehension. Looking at them indirectly causes them only to appear momentarily, jiggling from side to side. Some lack the ability to see them even in this way. And are those tiny, flickering stars even stars? Are they not clusters of billions of stars, banding together to be more visible, all in vain? On top of all that, the patterns they choose are not what others see. Whilst they choose logical spirals and discs and clouds, what people see in the sky is lines of un-associated stars forming patterns simply due to their position in a two dimensional perspective. Try as they might, these stars will always be mis-associated. Individuality will always be taken from you by the perceiver.

Whether we are heard as echoes, or seen mistakenly as a flickering member or disassociated brethren, consciousness is something that cannot be transmitted; communicated. Our mind is stuck in our head, only observable, truly, by ourselves.

But I wonder if even that is true. Even self-reflection is a method of translating the conceptual, abstract mess that is our mind into a form of language, even if you are not thinking in words. You are trying to create a typology of your own thoughts and motivations, and in so doing are perverting them to fit a framework that you think is logical. Trying to understand the internal workings of the mind is unavoidably the creation of an infinitely reflexive problem. As soon as you try to analyse the mind using logic, you must then ask “why do I think this logical framework is best, and why do I want to know about the internal workings of my mind?” To this, you must then ask “why do I doubt my own internal logic, and my motivation for wanting to know my mind?” Also: “What is my motivation for doubting my internal logic, and for wanting to know the motivation for knowing my mind?” To this, you must then ask “What is my motivation for doubting my motivation for doubting my internal logic” et cetera. It is improbable that there is a logical ‘atom’ of consciousness that cannot be reduced. It is more probable that, like actual infinity; if the number ‘one’ is the expression of a completely certain term, and zero, or a very small fraction of one is our logical starting point, then to create the certain term, we must build it through the endless decimal places that make up any number. This is impossible, as any number can be divided down infinitely.

So exists the mind. Instead of communicating concepts from their core forms, which may or may not exist, and which is impossible, we make imperfect approximations, even to ourselves. To know ourselves is, therefore, as impossible as to know another. Our true selves may, in fact, be an infinite regressive illusion.

Our Children Will Not Curse Us

There's an idea which has been floating around my mind for a while, and it relates to what we are all doing, as a global civilisation. Specifically, what we are doing environmentally as a civilisation. The damage we are causing to our atmosphere, the sea and the land in the interests of our economies and lifestyles and expectations for the future is now fairly unquestionable. Sea acidification rises, sea ice melts, global climate change is becoming more and more difficult to ignore and farming and industry cover more of the land than is necessary or justifiable, taking the place of forests and other pretty useful features of the non-human environment.

This is all reasonably alarming, I have to admit. There is, however, one niggle. We are told repeatedly that our children will curse us for what we have done to the world and they will spit our names as the reason for their ravaged lands, higher sea-levels and whatever else. "Why did they not act sooner?" they will cry over the flaming deserts of Australia. "Those short sighted fools," as they enjoy a glass-bottom tour of submerged Manhattan.
Now I'm not quite so sure that will be the case.
More likely, those alive in 2113 will not give a single flying proverbial. I'll tell you why.

The first, and most plausible explanation for the lack of interest from our descendants will be that, like people of today, they just don't care that much about history. They care more about the here and now. They will have geopolitical fear and they will have terrible pop music and they will need to keep up with the stupid clothing of the day and how do I ask Mandy out and jeez maybe I'm getting a little fat after NeoSaturnalia.
If I was to jump forward in time and fall to my knees, begging forgiveness, I suspect their reaction would be one of bemusement. And possible marvel at my time travelling abilities. But mostly bemusement. Theirs is the real world into which they were born. Mine would be the world of history, that they read about from a book. People become blasé about the most amazing things, such as mini-ice ages, the blitz, horseless carriages. Even if weather remains crazier, or gets crazier, people in a hundred years time will just accept this as normal.

They will exist in a new normal, and our world will be aberrant.

Secondarily, and much more hypothetically, I do just wonder if societies further and further into the future might deal with these situations a little more level-headedly, the further they are removed from our current apocalyptic, post-millennial angst. It is an interesting morsel for thought to think that perhaps a lot of hysteria and mass-panic raging around now might still subconsciously be linked to still being so close to the big 2k. I don't know, perhaps I am over-analysing...

I would like to add that I entirely advocate acting against climate change. It's a big horrendous monster that I'm in no way trying to downplay, but it's a fun little game, trying to jump into the heads of those finding normalcy after all this craziness is done. I'd be fascinated to hear what people out there think.

Location:Armshead Road,,United Kingdom

Violence, Part One

This is the first entry in which I will attempt to tackle the problem of violence in human civilisation. Here I will lay out the framework for what I perceive to be the problem, and I will in future be able to come to some concrete solutions.

Above all, apart from freedom of speech (but not necessarily action; this will be covered below), we must strive for and protect freedom from violence and involuntary, imposed death.

Perhaps I need to back-track just a little and set out a simplified hierarchy of concepts ordered by human worth:

Freedom of Speech - The most valuable concept we possess as a species is that of freedom of speech. Without it we are incapable of the continuous revolution against dogma and stagnancy necessary to progress as a civilisation. It allows us to apply the scientific method to ourselves; to seek out faults in logic, justice, purview etc and to attempt solutions. These solutions will themselves always be imperfect, of course. There is no logos towards which we can, or should, aspire. Such a thing would itself only be defined dogmatically and should therefore be rejected outright in the interests of protecting freedom of speech. Imperfection is acceptable with this in mind.

I will go into this in further length in the future, and there are obviously hugely varied and detailed arguments which must be made for and against freedom of speech being held paramount by our species, but for now, this is as much as needs to be said.

Freedom from Violence and Imposed Death - The reason this is second in my hierarchy and not first is simply because there may come times in the future, as there have been in the past, where violence is the only remaining method of protecting freedom of speech. Logically, therefore, freedom of speech takes primacy. Freedom from violence and imposed death does not need much of an explanation here as I will talk about it later.

Freedom of Action - This comes last in this small and simplified list as, whilst freedom of action is exquisitely important, it must also be tempered by speech should things be taken too far, i.e. attempts at totalitarian, theocratic or otherwise suppressive and oppressive behaviour. In the worst and most lamentable cases, malign action must be ceased with violence, but a responsible civilisation must always see this as a last resort and the abject failure of speech.

In reality I think this hierarchy should be seen as a small pyramid, with Freedom of Action and Freedom from Violence and Imposed Death being seen as equally weighted underneath Freedom of Speech. The two are so intricately connected as to be continuous from a distance, separated by a shifting fault-line of social normality.

This is a subject I will return to, and hopefully with more clarity; I appreciate it is a little rushed here, it is simply because it is not what I wish to discuss.

Back on topic: Freedom from violence and death; the why and possibilities of the how.

Now when I talk about violence here, I am not talking bar brawls, playground fights, pugilistic ripostes; I am not advocating a society with repressed expression. These forms of violence are modes of social interaction and are mostly looked down upon or straightforwardly outlawed as it is.

What I am talking about is violence as a means of political persuasion. 

The main forms of this are as follows::

Violence as a Means Toward Social Order: This includes police brutality as a blatant method of control, but extends organically towards the problems of Russia, China, not to mention other, apparently democratic nations.. Russia and China have both become the poster-children for violent suppression of freedom of speech and the troubling echoes of their behaviour are now becoming manifest in supposedly liberal societies.

The simple counter-argument to violence as a means toward social order is this:
If social stability or social power is gained through the use of violence, that social stability/power is not legitimate as it has been gained through straight-forward ignorance of important sociological problems. The ends do not justify the means and, perhaps more importantly, the perpetuation of said sociological problems will necessitate the use of the same unjustifiable violence. This problem either snowballs towards full-on revolution or the society in which it occurs becomes so superficially stable that the majority of the populace become ignorant, willfully or not, of social problems until far after they needed dealing with. I would argue this is the situation in which Western civilisation now finds itself.

Capital Punishment: It cannot be overstated. There is no ethical justification for capital punishment. The argument for capital punishment is simple and utilitarian; it is the removal of a problem. A man murdered by the state can do no more harm and costs the state no more money to maintain, unlike other prisoners. There is also an emotional argument for capital punishment. It provides revenge for aggrieved family, for instance. It scares criminals away from committing extreme crimes. There is a biblical argument: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. 

The problem with many, if not all of these arguments is that they are, to put it diplomatically, hubris, ex post facto. 

The bible was written to govern another world, another era of humanity. The Great Amender, Jesus Christ Himself, actively disagreed with much of the violent old testament. The emotional arguments hold no water as they are failed logical connections wrapped in rhetoric. The fact that after our species existing for 250,000 years there are still societies with the death penalty presents quite a neat counter-argument against capital punishment as a preventative measure. Those who demand vengeance should never be allowed it. It is that simple. The pathology of vengeance is self-sustaining.

The utilitarian arguments for capital punishment fall to pieces upon the mildest scrutiny. Money never measures against the actual worth of human rights; something enshrined in America with the emancipation proclamation. You cannot measure a man's death as a preemptive debt relief. 

The only argument listed here (I will approach this subject in length in the future) which holds up to any extent is that regarding potential future crime. If a man commits homicide, he has a higher likelihood of committing again. This is a fact which cannot be avoided. Apart from in the cases of provably innocent men put to death.
The arguments against capital punishment become long-winded and complicated quickly and will be dealt with by me in the future but at the moment I will simplify: The government murder of a human does not prevent or solve anything on any scale larger than the individual. On the individual scale, there will always be a responsibility thrust upon a person to actually conduct execution. Even if it is a computer which does the deed, that computer needs programming. It is not acceptable to allow for the responsibility of murder to be put on a person's shoulders, however willing they may be.

War: The case of war is one I have spoken about at length with people in the past and it is one difficult to bring to a conclusive solution. As a pacifist, my feelings are plain: murder is unacceptable. There is, however an argument for Just War and I would be remiss if I didn't spend considerable time on it.
A statement which demonstrates my feeling which would be difficult for most modern humans to disagree with is this:
War is the failure of politics.
If it is being used as a tool of politics, then that polity can no longer claim absolute right. This statement would, logically, justify at the very least the aims of the Allies during the Second World War. Political peace had been attempted and failed, spectacularly.
Any war waged to prevent further war is a gamble on potentiality, however, and few are as clean cut as the war against fascism. War is a colossal subject which I will cover in length, but here I will simply repeat the phrase: War is the failure of politics.

A world without any of these three forms of political violence will most likely never exist. A world without war, for instance, sees a gradual increase in governmental obsession with observing its own citizens; a situation which could feasibly lead to increased police brutality and social repression. War will always be waged, whether by men or their proxy robot replacements. Societies will always murder their own for political reasons. There are, however, ideals towards which we must strive. We must marginalise war. We must pour scorn on government oppression. We must whole-heartedly reject any claims to credibility made by an institution which believes crimes can be solved by something as simple as symmetry.

Any comments/arguments/suggestions would be more than welcome. I hope I can give some satisfactory answers.

Apologies

There is in fact a series of updates on its way, I've had a fairly hectic few weeks. Reasonably big things on the horizon. Who'da thunk creating a universal philosophy for myself would have been in any way hard?!

On Nick Griffin

I haven’t failed to notice Nick Griffin’s spectacularly repellent return to the limelight. His threats towards and irresponsible, callous and potentially illegal acts against (i.e. giving out their personal address on Twitter) the couple disallowed service from a (apparently irony impaired) Christian b&b are so crass, childish and moronic as to make redundant any statement of distaste by myself. Anyone with a worldview not based on fear and hatred can see his actions for the cynical, desperate pandering to the armchair-fascists (or bar-support fascists) he relies on for votes and publicity. He has been quiet and half forgotten for a time, so he needed to re-enter the arena with a splash, so he latched onto a rabble-rouser and went “all Nick Griffin” on it.

So far, so predictable.

What worries me is the reaction. I received an email earlier asking to sign a petition to get Griffin banned from Twitter. Now, the main reason given is the publishing of the couple in question’s address, which is in direct contravention of Twitters rules of use. Fair enough, he needs to be reprimanded for that within the rules. What worries me is a call for him to be silenced for being disgusting. I would respond to this with two points.

The first, for the angry amongst us, which includes myself, I have to admit. Let him tie his own noose. Whilst there are lots of very deluded people out there who will agree with his published sentiments, there are also many more who will despise them. He is broadcasting on Twitter, not targeting (this does not seem to occur to him, incidentally). Let him speak, and make himself look like a monster wanker. He is not Adolf Hitler, he is a hooligan, an angry child, a half-baked fury-merchant and he must be allowed to reveal himself as this. No amount of negative publicity can do as much damage to his reputation than his own blundering, blustering ignorance.

The second point is that if we start censoring people for having horrible views, we not only damage ourselves in the long run, but also raise the question of credibility regarding our own views. The first bit is obvious; any attack on free speech sets a volatile precedent which can be used to justify an incredibly wide range of action in the future, far away from the original intention, however well meaning. The second is, in the short term, a greater worry as it is less easy to undo. A furious response will often be interpreted as a sign of insecurity. Those who stand against gay rights will see a vengeful response to Griffin’s hot air as a sign that they have made a dent, and they will carry on with it until they feel they can cause real damage. The response to this is not spite or rage or censorship. It must be dismissal of an untenable philosophical and political decision. It must be calmly disassembled, discarded for scrap. A response to meet Griffin’s arguments head on risks only turning the rational into a mirror image of the irrational instead of the measured rejection that it should be. Rationality is not a simple opinion; it is the outcome education, observation and reflection.

Let’s not dignify Nick Griffin’s asinine claims of “heterophobia” with the anger he lives on. Let’s just dismiss him into oblivion.

The problem with Objectivism

Mark has asked me my opinions on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, i.e. Objectivism, and also for an explanation of my statement, "We are at the beginning of a new era of humanity. It is one which links us to all others, and makes a nonsense of internally consistent but externally incompatible belief systems."

I'll start off with my opinion on Objectivism. 

A disclaimer: not having enough of a Sunday afternoon to write a 1000 page philosophical treatment, I am treating Rand in a hugely simplified manner. 

Firstly, the idea that the universe exists in some kind of static, "true" sense; a logocentric "1", is extremely tenuous to begin with. To be pedantic, the exact nature of the universe is not directly measurable. On the very most basic scales of reality, one can only know the momentum or the location of a particle; not both simultaneously. Less pedantically, the conceit that the universe provably exists outside of the mind of obviously always going to be unsubstantiated and, with regards to our own selves, not actually wholly relevant. Whether we are only in our own solipsistic universe, a computer simulation, a divine creation or a mindless, infinite extent of matter and energy, no appreciable effect is had on the concepts of useful, admirable or even just normative behaviour. Finally, the idea that reality and the human mind exist discretely is observably untrue. Whilst, yes, our minds cannot blot out the stars or move the continents, they most certainly drive the environment within which we live, and willful ignorance of this is irresponsible to the point of inhumanity.

Perhaps all that is irrelevant.

What I truly take issue is is the concept of a prescriptive moral code for individual success. This is the central tenet of many religions and political/economic (the three can be readily conflated) systems and it remains fundamentally short sighted and unethical. Now let me make myself clear here: Violating the rights of fellow human beings is unacceptable. Removing the right to action, choice or life are abhorrent behavioral patterns. This does not, however, mean that individual rights trump everything else. Rand believed that a system of unrestricted capitalism was the ultimate expression of the preservation of individual rights. This is an astoundingly naive extrapolation which speaks more or her pathology than it does her philosophy. Capitalism demonstrably and repeatedly removes individual rights from the populace as it seeks to remove competition. I cannot overstate this point: capitalism is the un-systematic removal of competition over time. Human rights are competition to the rights of capital. The point that "well yes, so those capitalists are actually acting in a way that Rand would disagree with" only shows the fallacy of her stance. Capitalism is not practicable without this destruction of the rights of the less able. The idea that people can just magic up opportunity and enter into this corruptible golden city of unfettered individualism is facile; an insulting denial of the world created when individual power is abused as an inevitable outcome of unrestricted personal growth. That this is not a truth universally observed speaks only of the power of propaganda and its used-car salesman cousin, advertising.

Another point which needs emphasising: socialism is not the alternative. There is no alternative. There is no perfect politics. There is no ideal human arrangement. The striving for such a state is admirable but must always be misguided as we are, as a species, simply running an indefinite experiment with forever altering base-values. Rand sees capitalism as the state to which a civilisation should aspire to meet the needs of its individuals. Europe of a thousand years ago saw fundamental Christianity in the same light. The path to personal enlightenment is always sold by a serious salesman who first creates the image of a prophet, then a destiny. The most important invention is always a past.

Competitive capitalists are not prophets, nor are their pet politicians. Destiny is not personal wealth and happiness; these are merely side-effects. The past is proof that the universe can exist as a manifestation of both itself and of the human mind.

I'm aware that that was a reaction rather than an alternative, but hopefully I will be able to make my own views clear in time.

With regards to the statement, "We are at the beginning of a new era of humanity. It is one which links us to all others, and makes a nonsense of internally consistent but externally incompatible belief systems."

Simply put, I have faith that time and cooperation will bring forth certain methods of interacting which encourage and nourish all of humanity and I think the communications and transport technologies developed in the last century or so will be central to this process. In earnest, I think the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will be seen forever as the point at which human kind developed self-referential perception; the kind which, in nascent forms, has seen an increasingly peaceful, inclusive and altruistic wave of social change sweep through civilisations over the past few hundred years. We are in the midst of a new, technological enlightenment, constructing a mirror for ourselves. How long it will take to assimilate the whole image is a question for historians hundreds, perhaps thousands of years hence, and for philosophers forever after that.