Being No One: Consciousness, The Phenomenal Self, and the First-Person Perspective
ornamentalmind
Perspective
“Thomas Metzinger is the Director of the Philosophy Group at the
Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His
research focuses on philosophy of mind, especially on consciousness
and the nature of the self. In this lecture he develops a
representationalist theory of phenomenal self-consciousness. A
Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul presented by the UC
Berkeley Graudate Council. Series: UC Berkeley Graduate Council
Lectures [2/2005]”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k
Here the notion of no self (ego) to be found is approached by yet
another philosopher. He applies current day psychology, physiology and
other scientific findings to philosophically arrive at the conclusion
that we have already discussed and some already know. His approach,
for many, may appear to be dry and all too academic; nonetheless his
findings seem to be important in the process of current day
epistemology, ontology and the recognition of basic truths when it
comes to mind.
For the benefit of all,
OM
archytas
beyond it. This is a great teaching video. The bit that sticks with
me is the blind who won't accept they are blind, perhaps as I am
struck over and over by general failures to learn much about what
really goes on in favour of self-deception and the ease by which this
becomes collective. In some sense here, we are protected from needing
the optimal by being able to survive the 'survival of the fittest'
test as individuals in a 'direct' environment by favouring a mimicking
of what is acceptable because there is a collectivity in which we
'indirectly' survive. I am sick and tired of selfish self
'reflection' as you know, and this lecture had me wondering about
possibilities in the repression of development in the individual by
socially approved epistemic authority to the exclusion of an
individual self-making that is collective in an enlightened sense.
I'm finding it hard to make sense, and sense the words do not give us
a 'model of the real' and stand in the way. I have a rather crass
example - teams beat collections of individuals and yet we do this by
making each individual more of what is necessary for the 'end'. The
'mechanisms' in this are very complex. The 'great bowler' is, in
fact, a product in a team system. We could be Einstein with a time-
machine in terms of producing his physics by going back from now, but
probably not Fiery Fred Truman slaughtering the Indian batsmen in the
1950s (not that we'd bother doing either). Einstein, of course, was a
'product' of the 'team' around him. I'm sure I'm not being clear - I
guess my point is that there is lots in general life around us that
points to this stuff.
archytas
Do you take this kind of material (the link) to 'fit' somehow with
your more 'religious-spiritual view' Bill? I think you know by now I
am not some kind of scientist railing against such interpretation - as
far as I can I'll 'out myself' and agree. I mean your own
'experiments' not tired old clap-trap in the atheist-god debate.
Modern 'stripped of god' Leibniz is in the same field, if of less
interest to me (infinite logical possibilities are perhaps too much
for my soul). The link of of great interest to me beyond this or its
content directly. I mean nothing enigmatic here - it's just very
difficult to explain.
My own route into this is contemplation of 'self' though distinctly
not about my own identity or what makes this 'ornery' individual. I
tend to write in the first person, partly as a reaction to the crass
bureaucratic voice of 'objective intimidation'. If this is self-
aggrandizement, I hope it is of a naked and easily risible form that
allows that kind of 'self' to collapse in laughter. There is an
autopoesis of no bee without the hive and even with life we haven't
found that turns energies we can only imagine to its development and
who knows what 'purpose'. I have to come out of left field.
Take an electric motor and an electric generator. 'Simplify' an
explanation of them to a magnet in 'motion' and a conductor at 'rest',
remembering the inverted commas are 'words'. We might soon come to
further statements about electric fields and electromotive forces.
Some guys we know have being doing 'failed experiments' in detecting a
motion of the Earth relative to the "light medium". The inverted
commas here are even more 'scary words'. We may know of Maxwell,
Faraday and a principle of relativity in Newton. Some "Mad Jew" might
be knocking about with us, though hopefully our awareness of him in
this sense is only through the projections of others. He is talking
about the seven 'o' clock train arriving in terms of the position of
the small hand of his watch, the arrival of the train and difficulties
in evaluating temporally occurrences happening remotely and something
blasphemous about underlying kinematics. Relativity is within a few
pages of our grok, but we won't make it, as he does. Most of us won't
make it even after he tells us, some because they don't listen to "Mad
Jews", others because it is 'all too difficult', some because there
are easier ways of making money. Easier to live with soaked-up world-
views than explore even what it is to look at a watch. Much has been
said of what a waste the unexamined life is. In the hive, some
explore (there seems to be a rota). One does not need Einstein
though, to catch the seven 'o' clock train.
It is perhaps not surprising that the 'self' collapses as we turn to
investigate it. Time did. We may know, in shedding tears for people
we do not know, that we are all brothers (sic), but brothers also
fight, compete and kill each other, forgotten as we seek fraternal
bliss.
What I suspect and can only postulate (as an only partly "Mad Jew" no
doubt excluded by some Jews from being one - no one in my family has
'practised' for over 100 years, mostly pretending to be Xtian
Protestants) is that 'self' is as ancient and unreliable a term as the
time on my watch. There are still records that show that I scored
more runs and took more wickets for my school than anyone else for 10
years either side of 'my time'. I wince now that I remember and laugh
with my mate Dave who says 'Your trouble Neil is that you were no good
at everything'. Einstein no doubt regretted dying not knowing I was
much the better opening bowler and batsman (cricket was big in the
Germany of his youth). I curse god openly for the day she allowed
Paul Wharton to bowl me with one so fast I was only aware of it when
the stump almost impaled the wicket-keeper standing 30 yards back. I
cursed again hearing the call of 'no ball' which meant I'd have to
face another one. Approaching 80, with the mark of the makers' (of
the ball) 'proudly' on my chest, I engaged in the requisite sacrifice
and spooned one up off a slow bowler. My father's grudging comment
that I had done all right seeing as I'd been out first ball, stings to
this day. The tears are not about this. I'd just turned 22 and he
had missed less than a dozen of the games I'd played since first
walking out in short trousers at nine. I am, in mannerisms,
temperament, lunacy and decency as much the man I admired through
occasional loathing, as I am myself. Fortunately, my Mother, Sister
and Brother were particularly good eggs, so his temperament is
modified in me. The world is cruel to many and whatever "self" is,
its massive preponderance lies outside these old wives' tales amongst
those we never knew. I cannot resist, knowing Orn is on an apparently
different and more laudable quest, one further mention from the
scoresheet [Lancashire Academicals v Liverpool Competition 1975 -
Wharton P. ..... 0 (retired hurt)]. Bowlers get no credit for
actually slaying the opposition, but 'imagination' will get you there!
I don't want, in a sense, to say that any of this daft identity is
'self', but I do think we make a mistake in not making enough sense of
the social in its creation and this leads to internal reflections (how
trivial is the 'once was me' I've described?) in which we can despise
this socially created self (of many forms - hero on the day,
blustering buffoon in recollection) against higher ideals and the
potential to be so different. Much as I would have wanted to stay
until after the ball that put Wharton in the dentist's chair, the I
now would have walked away to do something purposeful with Vam, for a
different network of events. I'm pretty sure I'd have gone then,
given the opportunity. As much as we can walk away from 'self',
psychopaths don't, though we can argue they never find it.
Now Bill, away from my "self-gorification" (no typo) through
cricketing heroism, what lies 'beyond' this 'self nonsense' and what
are our relations after whatever dawns? The neuro-stuff suggests we
can get at the 'faulty programming' and you have seen 'light' as other
than the reality I ponder on at the flick of a switch or dream of
being able to evade to contact dimensions that Pat would be better at
explaining that flit about above and below my ceiling. There would
have been no 'day of Wharton's doom' without plenty of broken stumps
behind my bat before, or in his version, sucking his beer through a
straw, the 'bent umpire' (his father-in-law as I remember). What is
the 'world-view' from this 'selflessness'? I would say, cynically in
advance (but not to stop the light - for we need it), that some are so
selfish they would want to achieve 'selflessness' for their selfish
ends. A donkey's knowledge of physics leads to revelation of Einstein
as creating a 'new physics' through which to deny the "determinacy" of
"science". By the time I have erased all cricketing records other
than my school's, my posterity as the world's greatest cricket player
ever will be assured, though I'm fairly sure as we nip into the future
to glean the plaudits, some dismal human interventions will have
erased them too! The world could have had me as a third-rate Einstein
and him striding out to face Wharton down trying to conceal squirming
cowardice. The births of Molly and Vam could have been exchanged.
You could have suffered the indignity of being an Englishman. None of
us believe in 'god's chosen'.
The video and plenty of other work talk of conceptual changes in a
potentially 'inner journey' still accepting a weak 'reality
hypothesis'. Einstein frankly. Written in a spirit of friendship
with some self-ridicule and hopefully taken as such by my friends.
Friends whose won stories, fictional or otherwise, I take as
instructional and with as little patronization as we can muster
between us. Foucault suggested a silent laughter needed to change the
world. I believe 'self' can evaporate between us and is an unworthy
construction we perhaps have to build on foundations of laughter in
order to see it fall and become. It may be that Bill sees 'light' and
I only ponder what an observer is. Descartes was too focused on what
could be made certain and an 'I' that has become that denies almost
everything else, whereas the defeasible reasoner admits to decision-
making on what isn't there until facts arise even to a point at which
the central core must collapse. We may well need spirit to walk
through the valley of uncertainty. What then of the anthroposophy?
What is more in it than 'retreating from a hostile world'?
ornamentalmind
limited to such a view. Of course, in no way does it pretend to be a
TOE. In fact, it was but a lot of words pointing out that which we
(Like you, I’ll use the first person too, however pointing more to the
unity of the apparent many, will use the plural.) already know. When
examined, self does not exist. And, jumping to the protested lack of
ego position of aggrandizement, sharing our story of memories of
specialness, while at all-state orchestra around 1960, while observing
the other boys and girls wearing 1 to 5 earned ribbons for solo-
ensemble contests, when asked, ‘we’ would merely open ‘our’ sports
jacket to display 36 first place ribbons. Clearly, the joker called
ego, not being permanent, can yell for attention wishing not to die.
And, as one aspect of the multifaceted ‘one’ that the psyche in fact
is, while such ruminations are shared by us, we (royal?) can
concurrently observe the domain of hierarchies and where we are at
this point in what appears as time in the possibly cyclical polarity
thereof.
Quickly returning to the link, yes, it is a rather naïve stab at one
of the first realizations necessary. As long as self is seen as
something separate, psychological admonitions aside, sight is limited
almost by definition. As a thought experiment (which of course isn’t
one…experiment) imagine Gautama …an omniscient being. With this
assumption, how could such a state arise?...more importantly, during
an actual practice of theurgy, what attributes would arise? We would
at once recognize (yes, re-cognize) that full enlightenment would not
be limited by memories of one alone. Rather, we would note that the
eternal now would be an all encompassing apprehension. However, we of
course have traveled beyond the hive for now when the first lecture
alone may be instructive. This even though it only uses current day
language to describe that which we already know but forget…or reject
about self. As to one’s own scientific experiment, yes, such states
are possible, definable, predictable, achievable and repeatable. Truth
is that this is not news in any fashion, just something most ignore or
reject.
My guess is that our forays into the likes of Luhmann, Jessop and
Maula however intriguing could be seen for the clap trap such views
are unless applied to the entirety of the human psyche when it comes
to any sort of Integral philosophy. So the atheistic flatland view of
Maturana and Varela aside, knowing what that is, we find that in a
sense Swenson has a bit more clarity than most perceive…when coupled
with a mind-only recognition.
A quick look back at our momentary unknown telos belies such a claim
and instead points to the historical and factual goal we even now
embody.
As youth, quickly realizing that no one actually knew what electricity
was, only having words to describe observations and hope for
predictability, the slate is obviously clean for us all to look and
learn. Even dear Albert could not find his clearly intuited gnosis of
unity when it came to mathematical correlates. We won’t insult the
reader with aspersions upon the young lady from Bright here nor will
we point out that he didn’t say that one cannot travel faster than
light…just that a denominator approaches zero as speed approaches
light…thus rendering it undefined in such terms.
Yet, at the same time, the holographic meme does lend a fairly useful
analogy to the use of light beyond the limits of relativity and
associated dogmatic proclamations about epistemology. We concurrently
know a multitude and we know it all at once. Any linear memory is but
an anecdote to what it is to be a human being.
We observe the collapse of both time and self and do not forget the
actual collapse of locality itself too. Yes, we are all brothers/
sisters and in day to day living do experience it all from joy to
sadness, tears to laughter. And, when the recognition of no self
arises, the entire process has a different function and result…
something quite different from the common suffering and depressions
all too common. As we are involved in the theater of life, knowing
that there is no self to be found…this alone can open entire new
vistas concurrently with all relative apprehensions. In other words,
as we curse god for perceived past indignancies, we can at the same
time laugh at this little voice that believes it is real and
permanent. Quite a different level of recognition occurs.
So, yes, we are in eternal interaction and the ego trappings do arise…
yet, knowing what ego genesis is as well as it’s impermanence changes
even our quality of social interaction…no longer needing to believe
the blustering buffoon as being real in any sense of the term, just a
symptom of unclarified process.
Yes, there does exist a ‘selfish’ motivation about such realizations…
in Buddhism, such motivation is known as Hinayana. Nothing wrong with
such motivation…in fact, often this view of self perfecting needs to
come before the larger view of doing it for us all is known. Such vows
have always been known as have such levels of motivation.
And, when it comes to the notion of grace, something long eschewed, we
begin to recognize the necessary steps that open the gates to the
kingdom and without a recognition of that which is beyond ‘us’, self
‘wins’ and as a result ‘we’ die. On the other hand, when the beyond is
known…eternity is.
And, yes our tacit chuckles too are guideposts along the path! While
watching the countless blind along the way, light does shine at last
and with such rays, not only is all observed known, the true nature of
the observer is too…consubstantially.
D’s “Meditations on First Philosophy indeed were naïve too…yet, as
Gautama is said to have exclaimed: “Look at all the Buddhas!”
Only gnosis is certain and only gnosis allows us to actively engage in
the world as such rather than projecting self’s hostility and fear
upon it.
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archytas
of my smile as you will, sounds a bit like the collective knowledge of
chief constables, which won't be much! There is much to say yes to
here. I'll remind us that my "Mad Jew" said there would only need to
be one, in response to the monograph '100 against Einstein'. I will
have to look the word up. The records of me can lie where they are,
as you will have guessed. The last to find any was my older nephew,
under some old kit in the school pavilion when he turned up to watch
me play for the old boys in the year of the demise of Wharton's
teeth. The real joy was that he played in borrowed kit because we
were short. The 'ribbons' only come out once a year, when I have a
drink with my neighbour Derek who played with Sobers (Babe Ruth would
be a pale imitation) down the road at Radcliffe. No one really
believes us, or that I beat the great all-rounder in a single wicket
competition (actually, a real no-hoper beat him, I just won the
competition), but we chuckle over the photographs. I am as sure as I
can be that none of this is identity. Solace on occasion and perhaps
a little more.
The point at which the light shines with such rays that all observed
is know and the true nature of the observer revealed is unknown to
me. Such are claims in my world-view, and hope about them from an
inductive construction is not good (but this is not the only
construction possible). I prefer science where there is any, though
this is always cast in an overall reliableism unless I'm just trying
to get something to work as I would with a few books and a thermometer
in keeping tropical fish alive. Reductionism of one form or another
can be OK, but people forget there is a whole bag of clubs of which
this is part and that they may be putting with a driver.
What we have constructed as society seems as certainly dogmatic as
religion at its worst. Science promises something for a while against
the outrage of discovering how conned one has been, but this reaction
is not enough as one discovers both that it is a reaction and that the
battle with the instruments of torture is not over.
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archytas
undoubtedly worse under fascism than political correctness (including
old issues of how a 'mannered society' arises). I believe much
retreat to subjectivity is because we are socially subjects and not
'free'. We could do much to alleviate this and its externally created
'govern-mentality'. Denial of the subject has always lead to its
return. Humans always seem at their most robotic to me whilst flying
starships into soap operas, the brief hope given by the Vulcan or
actual robot soon also consumed in kitsch. My guess is we give up on
adaptability and tolerance of the uncertain far too quickly and do not
gain awareness of a split from nature in this rush and how
conventional this is. Before we know it, we are making assumptions on
the real as we thrash about in the mundane and forget in our
conceptualisations that this has happened and we are not accessing
what is given but living in the myth of the given. One can say here
that most never know the limitations imposed by 'relativity light'.
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archytas
regularly relies on some kind of special supernatural assistance in
order to complete (some part of) its ordinary cognitive activity. The
assistance can be supernatural and it must be special, in the sense
that it must be something more than the divine creation and ongoing
conservation of the human mind or what a different believer like me
takes as going on in the mundane.
It is useful to think of illumination as analogous to grace. I’m
tempted to say our politicians and leaders so clearly lack this, that
they are evidence we need it back on the table. Grace postulates a
special divine role on the volitional side, and divine illumination
postulates a special divine role on the cognitive side (one needs no
god for any of this, but the traditional talk included one in some of
our traditions). Grace is intended as an explanation not of all human
desires and motivations, nor even of all virtuous desires and
motivations. Rather, the proponent of grace holds that there is a
certain class of volitional states, crucial to human well-being, that
we can achieve only with special divine assistance. Likewise, the
theory of divine illumination is intended as an explanation not of all
belief, nor even of all knowledge. Rather, the theory holds that there
are certain kinds of knowledge, crucial to cognitive development, that
we can achieve only with special divine assistance. It is an odd fact
that, despite the close analogy, grace is regarded not as a
philosophical question, but as a theological one (I believe this is a
mistake). It seems (I’m a tyro in this stuff) divine illumination
hasn't generally been regarded as plausible since the thirteenth
century, grace continues to be taken seriously by many theologians. I
can say motivational psychology's relative obscurity in comparison to
cognitive psychology is a case in point. Managerial versions of
‘motivation’ are dismal and leave one with craving having rather than
to be.
For most people today it is hard to take divine illumination
seriously, hard to view it as anything other than a quaint relic. In
proper perspective, it has a broader context, not as peculiarly
Christian or medieval, but as an assumption shared by most premodern
philosophers. I would strip the thinking of the ‘divine element’. We
need to identify and to take seriously the philosophical problem that
drives illumination theory, indeed what leads us to seek something
like in living generally or not. In large part, the theory has been
invoked to explain rational insight -- that is, a priori knowledge.
Recent philosophers, preoccupied with empirical knowledge, have not
had much interest in this topic. (Recent exceptions are Bealer 2000
and Bonjour 1998.) But to see how something like divine illumination
could have ever seemed at all plausible, one has to see how deeply
puzzling the phenomenon of rational insight actually is. One way of
seeing this, and of seeing how little we understand rational insight,
is to look at cases where something goes wrong (which we know
empirically – or at least could). A recent biography of the Nobel-
prize winning mathematician John Nash describes his long period of
mental illness, during which time he held various odd beliefs such as
that extraterrestrials were recruiting him to save the world. How
could he believe this, a friend asked during a hospital visit, given
his devotion to reason and logic?
"Because," Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as
if talking to himself, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came
to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them
seriously" (Nasar 1998, p.11).
We give trust to the deliverances of pure reason. But why should we
trust reason in this way? Why should we have confidence that others
can come to share our insights? Where does it come from? What was
the difference between Nash’s maths and his alien experiences? (the
film to watch is not ‘A Beautiful Mind’ but ‘Pi’ and I’d also
recommend an acquaintance with the maths of ‘Dr. Strangelove’s Game –
itself reeking with madness.) The theory of divine illumination
attempts to answer such questions, yet I don’t want it to come with
the baggage of Popes, Priests and Mullahs (etc. ad nauseum). I would
say most of our politics is based on an unexamined ‘divine’. Orn is
as clearly disconcerted by something like this as me. I guess I want
a more social answer than his apparently internal quest.
Bealer, George (2000). "A Theory of the A Priori," Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 81: 1-30.
Bonjour, Laurence (1998). In Defense of Pure Reason (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Nasar, Sylvia (1998). A Beautiful Mind (New York: Simon and
Schuster).
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ornamentalmind
will echo a few points and stretch understanding a tad. For decades, I
wasn’t even sure of what grace was. Only a couple of years ago did I
begin to grok it. Unlike most theological projections of some
apparently external supernatural being to focus upon in such
instances, I took the opposite approach and focused on self…yes, that
very aspect that deconstructed, just is not. Through this path of
inquiry, similar to those entrapped in AA (Alcoholics Anonymous for
those not involved in this culture… http://www.aa.org/?Media=PlayFlash
) …it is possible to not only cease taking one’s self seriously but to
then recognize that we in fact ‘do’ very little as human beings. In a
sense, at some point it is quite easy to recognize that there are
factors beyond (more powerful?) our own individual intellection as
much as most egos and thinkers would like to deny such facts. And,
when a very deep acceptance of such states arise…life and being itself
becomes not only easier, but qualitatively better in numerous ways.
And, like most similar situations and recognitions, one must
experience it to know it. Many make such a claim. And even more reject
such a possibility.
Moving to the creative activity of mind itself and Nashes,
consciousness/mind itself is *not* limited to what current thinking
says is sane. It does include all thoughts, sane or insane and beyond.
Any attempt at rejecting thoughts that just don’t make sense all too
often results in even more bizarre behaviors than simple acceptance
would have. So, the adage of ‘Know Thyself’ goes beyond simple
philosophy and ideation and thought games…it goes to the heart of the
matter and includes all apparent randomness and, when known, only then
is it possible to grok the origins thereof and become truly self
realized. Try to imagine any other methodology if you can.
As to social answers…sadly I haven’t learned your language well enough
yet. Knowing that, I’ll forge ahead as always and suggest that
socially, we are always in interaction of one type or another. And,
introspection includes observing all of the social networks,
interactions and realities. IF one is aware of such things, ‘they’ are
no longer external … they are an integral part of the psyche itself.
And, in a larger sense, when ‘we’ are so aware, an actual unity of
experience and knowledge arises.
Molly
how it differs from what is known – facts, details, logic,
rationality, information…
Anyone who has had a lucid dreams, and can fathom the difference
between a lucid dream, where we are keenly aware that we are dreaming,
and the dream that is not lucid, where we are immersed in the thoughts
and feelings of the dream as if it is our only state of mind. The
difference between these two states is the difference between the
known and the awareness of what is known. This lucid awareness is
what “is given,” and the known of the dream is the “myth of what is
given.” To stop living in the myth of what is given means moving
beyond the known into the awareness of the known.
In dreaming, beyond lucid dreaming is creative dreaming, where, from
the viewpoint of awareness, we actively create all that we are
dreaming. We are aware that we are dreaming, and this awareness
allows us to create the dream by choice. We can solve complex
problems difficult to solve in waking states bound in the limitations
of rationality, relate to others who we cannot access in the space
time limitations of waking states, and explore countless other
creative possibilities. This can also be accessed in waking states
through the state of grace, which is a state of awareness that allows
the same creative capabilities, not because the state is “achieved
with a special divine assistance” that is external to our essential
nature, but rather is accessible through our own essential nature. We
do it in the dream state. We also, consciously or unconsciously, do
it in the waking state.
What this means is that we cannot really retreat from a hostile world
but we can establish the viewpoint in ourselves that establishes the
creative awareness that protects us from hostility in our direct
experience, and allows the full spectrum in human experience that
leads us “the evaporation of self between us.” The joy of laughter
may just be the foundation that allows it to fall and become, I
wholeheartedly agree.
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archytas
though I would point anyone getting religiously involved towards
writers like Whitehead on widely organised and cult religions from a
scientific point of view. There are vampires about. I have humans at
their most robotic in much 'creativity' - Mills and Boon 'rules', pop
music, Star Trek captains and so on. Leadership causes much hostility
for its own purposes, at many social levels. There is another form of
creativity.
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