Death of Common SenseThe fantasies 'Idea' and 'Consciousness' killed 'Intuition'
Alexander the Terrible (356BC-323BC) had a severe handicap: he grew up in the household of a royal slave-farmer (his father Filippos). And though young Alexander hated Filippos, he was ritually trained (he 'learned') to consider enslaved 'barbarians' as tamed dum human animals (like seeing tamed wild bisons as dairy cows). Alexander's tutor Aristotle had to make the mistreating of 'barbarians' accepted. Aristotle's fantastic solution that later 'drugged' Alexander, and via the Romans the whole Western World: 'Bodies like 'barbarians' are just moving flesh. Greeks are superior to 'barbarians' (human) because eternal heavenly 'anima' (flying ideas) took control of their bodies. (in Latin this became 'ego').
'Heavenly' means 'Immaterial'. Such Unidentified Flying Objects steer wortless bodies within 'Natural Laws'. This feodal fantasy was spread with religious zeal in The Roman Empire and The Catholic Empire by the animist 'aristocrats' (slave-farmers).
In fact Aristotle divided the world in heavenly 'world of anima' and sinful 'world of flesh'. The very start of the 'hard drug' (myth) that the dreams (ideas) produced by the brain addiction 'ego'='idea-maker' make sense instead of being illusions ('animism' / 'egoism').
Many ages later in Enlightenment Descartes ignorantly formalizes this wishful 'egoism' that is the basis of 'white fascism' with the dual logic 'rationalism. After Enlightenment the job of cutting Western reality in 'good' and 'evil' is finished by The British Empire and The US Empire:
Before Aristotle people saw themselves as part of The One or 'the All'. In ancient Greece people like Socrates and Plato steered this reality with OPEN debates. Riding in the vehicle reality, but influencing balance. Everyone had his say, but talented leaders of the herd of human animals (debaters) used their overview (wisdom) to prevent unbalanced actions.
Often the concept imagination is mentioned as the pre-Descartes equivalent of consciousness. The weird differentiation of 'subjective' and 'objective' originates from Aristotle.
'Consciousness' is a huge problem for 21st century 'rational' science. And of course it can be denied. We have experiences, but that does not imply 'consciousness '. Imagining immaterial 'spirits' from space (creationism) is the essence of 'consciousness', but realize that 'spirits' are a western FANTASY of the ancient biologer Aristotle. The peculiar thing is that 'rational science' sees the functioning of the brain as relatively easy problem, while the 'rational' view of the brain, though producing fine subresults, is not even 'close'.
Imagination just like 'consciousness' interprets sensory experiences, enabling to make sense of our role in the unity reality. In a total fire flames are only a part. Either from a conventional perspective or from a fresh, original one.
Ludwig Wittgenstein explained in early 20th century
that our brains transform physical stimulations of sense organs by way of 'concepts'
into workable methods (familiar behavior)
Let's for a
moment forget about the absolutely partly useful vast consciousness science and
literature. Most discussions there show
that it's possible to bite in one's own tail, and that this is awfully complex
(you can find all though here). There are hundreds of
definitions and this creates a tremendous confusion.
Forget about 'spirits' or 'souls'
and use this simply to check definition:
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Consciousness is the property of
looking in a mirror and realizing to see yourself as independent of 'the others'.
If somebody asks "who do you see?" and your name is John, then your answer will
be "myself" or "John". |
This method quite well works with gorillas (using sign language), so why not with humans?
Distinguishing
oneself as individual must have been a major step in evolution. Suddenly your world is not
one heap of sensations of some 'family' anymore, but a small pile that can be organized, within a bigger pile.
You might using this property realize that there is no necessary connection between
leaves being brown and your mood as individual. Without the above 'consciousness' in the total situation
you only see leaves as food for your family.
When you
recognize yourself as being John of course you use 'imagination'. But that is NOT the
essence. That is the creative act of creating the concept 'myself', base of
this imagination. It creates the possibility to fragment experiences. Like for
paradigm shifts for this act there is yet no explanation. There is however a
striking resemblance with paradigm shifts. Both take the ability of realizing
that there is a difference between the absolute all and the relative situation
of 'me within the rest'. How one suddenly gets this ability is yet a riddle But is seems an essential phenomenon.
However a
common cat clearly also remembers and recognizes 'friends' and 'enemies'. BUT not because it is
senses a being different from oneself and still familiar, but because of properties
(smell, taste, sound etc.). It recognizes situations.
Which functions should any android make 'more' than a cat?
Using this
property of recognizing oneself in a mirror, one can distinguish all kind of 'consciousness'.
I.e. recognizing own thoughts and recognizing experiences (mind-body problem).
Because it has not to be a consequence of the definition, but it must not make
such a distinction impossible. Then evolution produced fine 'magic'
in creating the necessary properties.
IF one recognizes the
self, THEN it is possible to create a link between this self and thoughts or
experiences. Be sure that evolution produced the necessary magic.
Today 4 functions
are regularly linked with 'consciousness'.
1. Analyzing (the property to ACT AS IF some behavior is independent of reality
2. Willpower (goal thinking)
3. Awareness (in the brain dividing of experience and action)
4. Logic
1 and 3 I already treated, let's have a look at 2 and 4. Again a use
the same method: researching if my used concept hinders the mentioned function.
2. Willpower = Intention presumes that you can link NEW BEHAVIOR and your archive of SKILL. No
problem IF you recognize yourself as creative animal WITHIN a herd with skills.
4. Logic = Linking Models (fantasies or thoughts) with Experiences. That created
the difference of opinion between empiricists and rationalists in the 17th
century, although both camps are 'rational'. What is necessary is distinguishing between behavior and memory (action and archived actions), AND
between the one to who uses a 'model' and the group. Again no problem
using my simple definition. You might mistake bodily behavior and archived behavior (experience), but
that's in no way compulsory. A machine with these 4 functions might still become a ROMAN Christian dualist or a Buddhist considering reality as unity. The difference is in the logic.
Some scientists claim
that before the word 'consciousness' got fashionable, these first 3 of the above four notions
represented the same and were known as "common sense". Logic was implicit in the body, common sense is logic that became intuition.
and when thoroughly tested in millions of years becomes part of our DNA.
What is more, these 4
properties are said by many scientists to be responsible for our
awareness of change, for imagination, for memory,
and for wakefulness and sleep
Cartesian rationalism
is generally seen as a new scientific revolution in Western Europe, but lesser attention got that it destroyed
'imagination' as pure intuition. The new way of thinking ignored intuition, but intuition is the required basics for further abstract thinking.
Intuition proved to be enough
for distinguishing oneself, but individualism is distinguishing oneself WITHIN a
family. That could explain why
individuality before end 17th century was according to me not known
or leading a weak existence. More important was strengthening your own clan,
tribe, group or whatever.
Mathematical analysis
offered a new paradigm by way of fragmenting the unity
reality to give room to individual consciousness. It certainly was not the way to keep overview, as was much more
obvious using 'group-imagination'. Rationalism in French Enlightenment finally lead to capitalism (economic rationalism). This became until now the
leading paradigm. Seen this way it seems a only partially succesful 'choice' in evolution.
It needs balancing with other choices.
Individualism and Collectivism should be in balance.
In the television series "Star Trek" there is a bee-like culture that cherishes only the
community as a whole. They don't know individuality, and nevertheless are quite successful.
In pure Pavlovian reactions beings like spiders, bees and ants are far superior to humans.
That's why SF movies are crowded with such beings. If they are able to realize a kind of
unpredictive group-intelligence, then such a culture is quite threatening.
And what about a mix between human intelligence and Pavlovian superbeings?
Maybe some individual humans posses wisdom, but that doesn't automatically include their realization of a 'self'. But people believing in a way of absolute truth might think otherwise.
God and Mystery
Religion and Absolutism / Religion and Relativism
The notion 'God' is closely tied to both Absolutism and Relativism. Further in this text I'll dive into it.
For the moment I tend to believe the statement: "God hates religion" (or "God has no religion"-Mahatma Gandhi); and to think that not more than any other belief-system the believing in a God (or Allah, or Buddha, or whoever) leads to absolutism or authoritarianism.
The English
word "religion" probably comes from the Latin word religo,
meaning to "bind up." This former meaning speaks for itself.
Jesus was a prophet; Jesus 'preached' a way of life that was a paradigm shift. Amongst others without slavery).
He did not aim at his view of life becoming a rigid religion.
I see that in quite rational western 'church' authority the greek belief-system of split
mind and body is still honored and in the rest of society since the Enlightenment came a dominance of rationalism.
Believing in the uniqueness of life on earth is totally different from being imprisoned in worshipping gods (dogmatism or
absolutism).
Mind that there is nothing wrong with absolute knowledge or authority. Any learning process starts with an authoritarian absolute phase. Because first you respectfully try to drain your professors from knowledge. Their knowledge resembles dogma, but is only used as training. There comes the time to go your own way, and use your own creativity. Only if that phase is forgotten THEN you end up with absolutism (teachers or teachings being worshipped as little gods). Religion is an example of believing in a God, shaped into an absolute belief-system (or fundamentalist belief).
The bulk of mankind consists of followers, who will follow any strong leader. So don't underestimate religions and any shape of dogmatic belief.
The inevitable partner of absolute knowledge is relative knowledge. It provides the flexibility to question old truths and to change into new truths. It is the creative spark that prevents tradition from becoming ceremony. Ceremony in itself is not bad (in evolution humans even developed a liking for it), but when only used to worship tradition its function gets to keep thing as they were (or to halt evolution).
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The word 'relativism' as used by me indicates a belief in truth dependant of the used knowledge system. This was very well described by Wittgenstein in his Closed Circle Theory. The opposite is believing in general truth whatever the used system of thought. |
Related to the described phenomenon philosophy got two camps: rationalenlightened absolutists (followers of the elder Popper) and enlightened absolutists (relativists like Thomas Kuhn). See Popper-Kuhn debate. More than necessary these camps became adversaries. Kuhn like Nietzsche for instance was only fighting the 'scientific' dogma connected to religion (the church) and not against believing or teaching. In fact he choose to be a teacher himself. And like most 19th century Christians judged Nietzsche as a 'devil', fanatic Popperians saw Thomas Kuhn as a charlatan.
The Enlightenment end 17th century started with an energy slurping and superfluous border between learning from experience (empiricism) and learning by pure reasoning (rationalism).The early 17th century could be called Age of Absolutism (with guys like the French king Louis XIV). It is thus no surprise that when Enlightenment end 17th century started, the belief in absolute truth was still dominating. Let's not make the same mistake twice. At present absolutism as found in capitalism is getting dangerously strong, because of creating an unnecessary border between absolute knowledge and relative wisdom (capitalism = economic rationalism a peculiar mix of old fashioned rationalism with empiricism, a doctrine easily changing in dogma).
Capitalism has brilliant sides. Don't let it die in dogma. Get rid of bureaucracy and monopoly of knowledge, this is only serving accumulation of wealth. In essence this is discrimination, and should not be protected by law.
In earlier times differences in creativity and authority in common sense cultures were ritualized in 'respect', and that paid out in many ways.
[the immaterial catholic god] God was INVENTED to explain mystery.
[the catholic god] God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.
Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore.
But you need him for the other mysteries.
So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet;
you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain,
such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time--life and death--stuff like that.
God is always associated with those things that you do NOT understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.
Richard Feynman
[the common sense god] Ahura Mazda offers wisdom about life [fire=life].
Yahura Mazda (the Wise Man) offers insight in tricks of life that you still can't make sense of.
When you finally made some sense of a specific trick of life,
you make guidelines for behavior which [when not flexible, but rigid law for order ] MIGHT bring you in fight with Yahura Mazda (with common sense);
For common sense about life you don't need Ahura Mazda anymore.
But being Fire-men you need the struggle between 'mazda' (wise = common sense = clear) and 'ahri' (unknown = stil dark) for making sense of the dark regions outside the shining white Fire.
Therefore with respectful curiosity leave dark sides of Fire (without guidelines = 'ahri') to your enlightening teacher Mazda.
You need Mazda 'light' in 'the dark' [enlightening open debate] for cautiously leaving 'tradition toward the Shadow Sides of Fire which the 'conservative' side of your Behavior safely wants to barricade with FireWalls of Prejudice (rules).
Zoroastrianism
Definition of Pyromania (Fire-madness = War on Terrorism): The irresistible egoist urge (addiction) to get fulfilment by destroying.
I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.
Franz Fanon.
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