My Inquiry Space for Mind

There is quite the gap between understanding the mind and the brain. As Daniel Dennet noted (paraphrasing), we don’t even understand how qualia happens but it must be neurologically expressed somehow.

For mine, consciousness is the qualia of verbal language as thought. And language, as some mid 20C philosophers noted, is symbols of symbols, and the layering of relationships neurologically, that has brought us from gestures and some simple vocalisation and mimicry, to the sophisticated languages including mathematical abstractions, is just astounding to me.

While I am also convinced that our brain systems are not a standalone in reality, I am convinced that the only conscious experiences we have, can only be experienced because the brain is able to form qualia of it. The possibility of realities that our brain can’t form qualia of, that is a space of inquiry that I hold. The problem being, if our brain can’t create qualia of it, it is gonna be as if it doesn’t exist, like the universe in the minds of people 1000 years ago.

Indeed there is no one who can hold the universe as an image in the mind so we rely on tools of enhanced observation, mathematics to render the observations comprehensible (to some) and those people draw very simple pictures for the lay person, so now everyone knows there’s a universe and its very very big. But no one has convinced me, not even Stephen Hawkins, that they know what the universe, just our universe, is, actually. So to philosophers and neuroscientists in this field, please go explore, it’s gonna be hard work, you may need to build new tools, and it still may take a lot of decades even centuries.

Gender, Eroticism and Identity

One of the great difficulties in finding some path of discourse into this with people who are already enchanted by notions of non-binary and pronouns of multiplicity, is the inadequate distinction of gender, eroticism and overall identity in the minds of most people especially those with first world time on their hands. If language’s most important characteristic is to establish distinction so that we might communicate with each other as clearly as possible, then physical phenomenon must surely be the easiest role language can be applied, even when it gets complicated such as in identifying a living organism taxonomically.

In the area of phenomenon, the binary solution of sexual reproduction in animals is a most obvious distinction. As one of my women friends was want to declare in moments of philosophical musing, “c**ks and v**inas!!”, referring to the triumvarate of gender, erotic desire, and the very difficult gap in communication to bridge founded in the gendered way men and women think.

However it is not difficult to make a distinction between gender (the physical binary related to sexual organs), eroticism (the way the brain is developed to fit the sex organs, secondary sexual physical development and objects of lust); and identity (primarily identifying with sex organs, secondary men/women traits, personality, and the formation of an obviousness who-I-am). When we map any one person to these three categories of identification we can provide a clear taxonomy of human identity. For example all people will have either one or other or both primary sex organs; the mass of people will have consistent erotic to primary sex organ correlates; and the mass of people with identify as ‘like-mother ‘ or ‘like-father’ and they will develop the rest of their identity according to they way their personality responds to certain challenges they meet and whether that meeting is successful or not until the mature adult finds they have ‘solved’ the whole question about who they are. Personally, at 65 years, while I have a clear sure core of identity, there are wobbly aspect of this question and I conclude this is exactly how it should be when a human being wants to be resilient and flexible to new challenges throughout life.

So some people are clear they are one primary gender and their brain correlate is opposite. We call this dysmorphia. And so we come to understand that we have an inherent ‘knowledge’ of gender. And of course it makes sense that even very small brained animals can do this. And so those with a dysmorphia will ‘know’ that they should have a male or female genitalia. Noone says they need a new brain part (yet). And people with dysmorphia, as the few people I have been close to showed, have as varied identity development as the masses – from stoic to despairing. I had a (female) client once whose misfortune went to a whole body image of muscular maleness although (she) inherited a most lithe physicality. To wit, as “it” (her words) went into transition, no amount of steroid was going to allow her to pump the weights and build the muscle desired. Nonetheless all the people with dysmorphia I have known are clear that there was only one of two choices to make – transition from female to male or vice versa. And once transitioned it was clear they were that gender.

Which brings us to the current fashion for non-binary and pronouns. Unless there is some amazing scientific breakthrough in our way of literally seeing ourselves, there is no human I have encountered who shows up as anything other than male or female or both. All the people I have encountered who use pronouns seem to have a clear erotic attraction – opposite sex, same sex or both sexes. The sex, though seems to fit the usual expectations. Even if we look at dispositions, the simple fact of the human anatomy and brain-mind means that the types of erotic content are quite easy to account for – masochism for example is by far seen to align with erosticism in some males and probably related to psychological disturbance. So what we see is that eroticism is largely inherent but has a good helping of identity development thrown in. So the ‘non-binary’ person in fact acts as binary. If the ‘non-binary’ person is identified due to a sense of personality or social identity then this, of course, is not their gender. It may be categorised as ontologically subjective (real but no able to be proven e.g. pain, love) but may as easily be role play (a nice idea that someone wants to cognitively act on as a presentation in social life).

As for pronouns. I’m here to state for the record that I am not enrolled in the request to use the multiple pronouns of english for a single individual and will continue to use pronouns as befits how an individual presents to me. This is simply, for me, so as not to become confused nor confuse others, when speaking about. However I resile from gossip or backbiting, so pronouns only seem pertinent to being clear on provinance when reporting on consensual third party communications. Otherwise to anyone’s face, Jane is Jane and Bob is Bob.

Deplatforming and Academic Exiling

Recently a couple of academic authors complained about their treatment of being de-platformed at a speaking event because they supported Israel but their work did not have anything to do with the politics of Israel. Without telling in what context they supported Israel, I found that missing from the article more intriguing than the article’s argument for the questions about the use of exile as a community safety tool.

Lurking at the edge of the frame of this article is the question of righteousness vs justice. Having read and spoken to a range of americans about their political views I do notice there is an american bubble that has political combatives as friends as if moral questions don’t matter. And then there are people from left and right who get righteous about the evil of certain political stances when their opponent is just living in the other bubble. Then there are the stances that are or could be equated to actual evils or extreme human rights violations.

In that situation the question arises, “How does an organisation deal with them being represented by a speaker who seems might be a supporter of actual extreme human rights violations?” Certainly if it was a presentation about human rights or in defence of that violation, I would encourage that organisation to withdraw contact. Exile doesn’t need to be forever, but it is a useful tool to use when confronted with the possibility of lack of community empathy, for just the reason it should be used, to ensure the community itself doesn’t get a message that certain behaviours are okay. To wit, the safety issue is the likelihood that the permission for a supporter of human rights violations to be acknowledged as an appropriate speaker to the community, is permission for anyone in the community to also forgo the human contract, not to violate others. And history does show that such ‘thin edge of the wedge’ does get pounded home eventually, to the greater detriment of the community.

As to who should be passing such moral judgement, I think that is in the bigger conversation about human rights, moral obligation, etc, and then the organisation must choose in good will but with it’s community responsibility ever in mind. Ultimately even courts might have to play a part in that conversation. Indeed that is the world working well.

In the case such a supporter of a human rights violator is speaking on a specialty are removed from the violation or the violator, I take the view that all intelligent people have gaps in their moral world view, things they don’t pay a lot of attention to because it is cultural and not really impactful on their specialist life. Then I would listen to a physicist explaining subatomic particle research even if said researcher was a supporter of the Pol Pot regime (although not if still a supporter after the fact – I don’t think I could get into that room). Similarly I am personally beholden to the work of Martin Heidegger even though he was a Nazi sympathiser to the end and betrayed at least a couple of jewish colleagues including the thinker Hannah Arendt who maintained his friendship nonetheless. And to this I acknowledge the complication that we humans are around our personal relationships but am pacified by them, rather than indignant as others are. On the lighter end of the scale, I will listen to Tom Cruise speaking on direction of action movies but not on his support for an organisation that has psychically and sometimes physically assaulted people.

I’m hoping I have constructed the personal inquiry I have with people I think have a dubious moral relationship with human rights violations and whether I could listen to them about anything else they might have to say, and any other stance I might take and encourage others to take.

We Need to Breed a New Apple

An attack by a lone muslim and the arrest of a chechnyan youth plotting a bombing during the olympics in france, can be likened to the minute pustules that are erupting on the skin of the apple of the global enterprise.

While there are some that imagine these ‘rotten’ spots are part of a disease on the skin of the global enterprise, the reality is much deeper. While indeed there is a network of disease damage running across the face of the human world, and that disease is supported by internet technologies and communications, and sometimes orchestrated by skillful persons, even these are part of a deeper issue.

The reality of the nature of the eruptions, the leprosy, of extreme individual or group action from the body politic has been clarified by the genocidal attack of the Israeli government on the palestinians of Gaza, and the trespass, kidnapping, arson, and murder of palestinians in the west bank. With support by many western nations including the military and weapons manufacturing might of the USA, Israel has conducted this genocide with an impunity that has shocked the most machievellian politicians world-wide.

As the devastation of Gaza unfolded, whistleblowers and analysts and journalists began to unravel the relationships that were allowing the genocide to occur in full view of a modern connected global community. What they have found, as a whole, is that the apple is rotten at the core. It appears that there is no government on the planet that is not in more or lesser ways, morally incompetent, corruptly complicity in the domestic politics, baron-robbers of their own people and of other nations where they can.

The eruptions we see among the body politics of many nations cannot be cured by tracking pustule after pustule and cutting it out of the skin of the global community. These eruptions are created by the rot of government at the core of the human world. By cutting out each pustule as it arises, and, in the case of Gaza, pretending that the only way to do that is by killing tens of thousands of other people of the body politic, will lead to the complete destruction of the body politic. As the core rot grows in power, even if there is the occasional saint ameliorating the speed of that rot, the very fabric and cohesion of the apple skin will decay and dissipate. At some time this century, the body politic and the governments of the world will be in ruin, chaos could rule and millions even billions of people could die.

It is extremely important that people everywhere begin to develop robust and resilient capacity for moral courage and power. You should be in conversation with whomever you can find a like-minded person of peaceful means and construction of new socially collaborative models. You should lend you personal resources to building such models, at the least as peaceful conversations of support, and also supporting organisational, educational, and physical structures to forge a new model of community and governance. We can’t cure the current rot at the core of the apple of human government, we need to breed, create, a whole new apple.

As the governments of the world collapse in their corrupt partnerships with each other or criminal competitions against each other, the dislocated peoples will increasingly need support that won’t come from the hoarders. So let’s do this. This is a multi-generational enterprise. Everything you can do right now, no matter how impotent it may seem to you, will create places from which the next generation can build. And some of us already have experience, so just reach out.

WE ARE NOT – SO WHY KILL EACH OTHER?

The extraordinary topography of the human brain is exemplified in a new image of one cubic millimetre of the brain cortex of a 45 year old woman, created from electron microscope images of 5,000 slices. (Nature Research Report)

There is something important to be said about this image. It is one cubic mm of human cortex. Here is where and how we learn. This image represents the very similar image that can be drawn from any 45 year old woman or man on the planet. Yet there is no person in this image. There is no depiction of another person in this image. There is no culture or religion or race in this image. This image puts lie to any reason anyone might have that someone else is actually different, someone else is not human, someone else doesn’t deserve to be treated with the utmost care as a human. I put to lie the idea that one human can’t get along with another human, really. It does tell us that our cultures, religions, tribes etc, are made up. They are virtual representations designed from the firing of these plastic networks. And just as we can design a horror story, we can as easily design a romance. Some people make an argument for a horror story. And from that story they unleash real weapons on real life. I prefer a romance, a story of flourishing and abundance and love.

Indeed, what this image shows is that the image itself, while itself is not a made up virtual reality, is a rendering, a depiction, of the forms that the same neurology can create from its own capacity. The neurology doesn’t have direct access to thing-of-itself. It is not necessarily everything related to the ‘structure’ of the brain or mind. Even as it makes a rendering of a whole structure and then associates it with a completely virtual story called “I”, we can easily see that there is no “I” in the brain, just neurones. And we can only see, even in this marvelously detailed image these are only the neuronal structures those neuronal structures can make a representation.

We live in a circular virtual argument about who we are. And then we choose to kill each other over it.

Could it be that there are un-rendered aspects of reality that offer another story of who we are altogether. Could those aspects of reality show us that the things we call “I” are simply units of emergent consensus from an enormous topography of even more varied structures that can’t be replicated in the neurology we see here, i.e the neurology that makes up a certain awareness of its own output and only its own output. And in the more enormous topography from which the story of “I” emerges, all beings are represented, all humans, all creatures.

And could it further be that such topography is not limited to the 3 space and 1 time dimension, but flows into infinite dimensions of space and time.

“We” are most likely to be small renderings of an infinite being. And from our small rendering we form an attachment story so limited in scope, so impoverished, that we would kill over it. The flourishing story reaches out into the topography we don’t have access, right now. It reaches into worlds we don’t have access right now.