No atheists in a black hole

The species of man apparently is designed to anticipate a deity. Although this does have an evolutionary advantage, saying this in no way explains the phenomenon, finding a point in the brain where such may be localized, in no way limits a cognitive significance to this fact about our species. Such are the views of reductionists and they cannot grasp how describing a closet from the inside does not effect an escape from the closet.  But the need for an escape is interesting, and built into the genome.  Now we are not going into the greater significance of this, merely pointing out what could be obvious from a rare perspective: that the simpler and hardest working of our species share with those widely considered at the high intelligence end of the spectrum -- they share an unexamined belief in a deity.  For the fisherman on a pier in rural Mississippi, and the laptop hunching scientist both believe, without any evidence, in a power superior to their own, a  stronger, faster, smarter --- power which -- still -- takes an interest in them.  Whether their idea is of a forgiving humanoid deity, or a cranky, humanoid with extra eyeballs, extra-terrestrial, the basic format is identical.  Only someone, with a perseverance in objective study of psychology and cosmology (to use the terms of Jan Cox), (who also pointed out that the idea of aliens is the idea of deity) might ask, and what does this tell us about people, about ourselves.  Let those clinging to their binary mind, talk of things of which they know nothing.

Artificial mind

The New York Times today has an article about why the recent scientific feat of planting articial DNA into a living cell. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/science/01angi.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

In it they quote Richard Feynman to the effect that if you don't build something, you don't understand it.  Which caught my attention, (in a very attention getting article) because Jan Cox mentioned this is his off hand way. I say Jan's words were offhand because everything he said had another non verbalizable purpose, as he spoke to students he hoped to point in a certain direction. Feynman's use, and most certainly the quote, (the quote both by the article and by the DNA artificer) is different, it is a throw away line, what Gurdjieff called smart aleck intellectualizing. The first time Feynman thought that phrase: If you don't build it, you don't understand it, he had a glimpse.  Then he said it again, he wrote it,and he did not have the real glimpse again and everybody reading it, thought yeah that's right, and totally missed the import of the phrase. Now it is said to sound cool, with it -- in the way scientists participate in that kind of verbal energy -- a pat on a paddle of a ping pong ball. Not fresh, not creative, not really seeing anything. 

The Times article talks about how we cannot create cells, yet, and how without the already extant cell, the implanting of artificial DNA would not have succeeded.  The DNA, with over a million steps, was copied from existing natural DNA.  So talk about creating life, so the article says, is not accurate. The article points out that the scientist involved did not design the million plus bases, merely copied them.  That scientist pointed out that he was not creating life, but his humility is phony, it is the way you are supposed to act, when you accept congratulations. He knows how to behave in public. 

This I point out to sketch the scientific mind.  With all the incredible progress made during the last five hundred years, the humility that characterizes the real giants of human progress, such as Isaac Newton, is uncommon even among that niche of the intelligentsia.

As an example, it is my guess that most scientists would say we are closer to understanding the major mysteries of the universe than we were during the European renaissance. It is possible however,  that compared to  the amount we do not understand, the amount of knowledge of the renaissance scientist, who thought the earth could not move because if it did move, people would fall off, and today's quark jugglers--the difference between what these folks, separated by centuries,  really know, is so small as to be, statistically insignificant.

...

Not all people who are happy, know.

All people who know, are happy

A scholarly look at the word scholar

Jan Cox said once that you cannot use a word correctly if you do not know its etymology. The example he used was the word "cakewalk." Learning about the Indo-European root of words like scholar, and hectic, gave me a glance of the connection between---scholar and hectic. The root of both 'scholar' and 'hectic' is the same indo-european word : "segh",  translated as "to hold." 

What I am today calling the monkey mind, which may be a eastern phrase itself, is the verbalizing aspect of the mechanical mind, generally assumed by modern scholars to be the most important function of the mind of man. What this monkey mind does, is hold--hang on to-- words, --- if it did not "hold" words, the monkey mind would glimpse something beyond itself.  If the monkey mind did not hold words, the words could become, transparent. So, for self preservation, and other reasons, this grasping of words is necessary and because of its necessity, is also hectic. 

The scholar must verbalize, (hold words) and must, doing so, at the very best, ignore other aspects of mind. This multiplicity of functions is one reason the scholar's monkey mind, is also---a hectic mind. The scholars mind must stay  full of words, while juggling various functions. Easy to see why scholars need words (as long as you don't immediately associate scholar with knowing something). The hectic comes too from the nature of words; words are pushy, loud, bumptious, with garish ties, --a fair description of words qua words. And this is all before you notice any connotative features. Hectic is a good word for ---words. 

This exposition acts like the the functioning of the monkey mind is difficult---that would be a misleading effect.  Our monkey mind is the default on the planet, the default for grown ups. 

Slumming

Philosophy can be a hobby, and that is the only excuse for the following.  We are looking into how it is that men apply different standards to themselves than they do to gods. If you are allergic to a certain kind of verbal vapidity, read no further. 

All this came back to me after reading a recent article discussing A. J. Ayer's so-called mystical experience.

This happened before certain chemical interactions and sites in the brain were the stuff of pocktail ponversation. (He died in 1988.) But now such accounts often get reductionistic comments along the lines of  a site in the brain that needs god, or whatever, a certain chemical has the same effects. Such "explanations" are worthless in that the same could be said about any experience, so pointing this out has no cognitive value. Because something might be programmed in the brain has no direct bearing on its ontological status. (Told you I was slumming. Jan Cox found such philosphical chatter amusing at best, useless at most.)

But this is fun, so let's talk about what the 20th century fondly referred to as the "verification principle.")

This was the idea that if you could not verify something  empirically your statement about whatever was nonsense. Ayer was a leading expositor of this idea.

(I haven't read enough to know how he explained metaphor.) But using this rationale the positivists threw out metaphysics.  Okay with any card carrying mystic.  And the threw out the past. Check. External world, need that. good. Hmm, maybe we are logical positivists after all. I. But wait---all this and you retain, not just the external world, (good) but you keep, that monkey in the skull, the chattering, oh let's call the rational mind, what, say, a "freddy." (No personal references here, freddy just has a certain simian similarity.) 

How did this happen, how is it that you are not bothered that the vp  (verification principle) itself  cannot be "verified." You are applying a different standard to god, than to man, is one way to put it.  Another way is to analyze the freddy for a certain regal, don't question my authority, aspect of the rational mind. 

When you lop off the past, philosophy (metaphysics), theology, and the subjective interior world, and leave just the monkey swinging behind bars, you could be accused of throwing out the ocean with the mermaid.

(For instance---there is nothing subjective about man's internal world----there is no accounting for human communication without assuming some similarity between minds. Because words referring to the external world do not apply internally does not deny the consistency and studyability of the interior side of man.)  It is like, having lopped theology off of reality, the chattering mind grabs some of its attributes for itself, like a coup de dieu. 

What the VP leaves is an incomprehensible world, with just a monkey clinging to a crown.  This leaves unexplained the critical structure of this mechanical mind, the filephilia of our kind of monkey, the motive for viewing reality as a table tennis table and asserting against all the evidence that this flat green table is all there is, as if it could hang suspended in (what?) and not evoke questions.  And what about those monkey bars? They in themselves (the reality of being confined in a physical space.) should provoke curiosity. To say nothing of a topology of humanity which includes such goings on in its so-called centers of learning.  (Ayer was Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford.) Least I submit to an agneurism, let's close with the thought of Thomas of Aquinas, the above

is just straws in the wind. (Too bad he wasted most of his life.)

Placing Product Placement

The ordinary mind casually and comfortably draws a distinction between art and advertising.  For most the distinction is clear, no matter how clever and effective, and inspired, the advertising, -- the design of the advertisement may require a genius -- the fact of the purpose, which must hang out, typically, if the ad is to be effective at all, the fact that advertising is seeking to affect what the viewer does--- all this sights down a rift plane which most view as ultimate--that art and advertising are separate.

And that there is a distinction between art and advertising  is not what I would put under examination.  What I would point out is that first---what is the point of that aspect of advertising called product placement.  Is it not to hide the fact of the advertising, to render the advertising more effective, more likely to result in your doing what the ad purchaser desires?  Is it not possible that a whole movie be designed around one scene where the star ---- eats a particular brand of -- say, french fries. Perhaps you could conclude that the less prominent the purpose of the ad is, the more effective the advertisement is.

Of course the attention of the viewer must be retained. Hence the art that must go into product placement.  

It is almost as if the advertisers are learning from reality: what is it that maintains attention, hides its purpose, and (statistically speaking) universally succeeds? 

The answer is: the ordinary consciousness that characterizes all of us some of the time. The fact of the perspectival bias called 'me' is almost never noticed.  But the attention of the observer is, for all practical purposes, constantly maintained.  And due to the cleverness of the product placement,  the advertising hook is not noticed.  The advertising copy is that you are a unique and independent agent. Is it not possible that this belief, of one's autonomy, is just, a pitch?  A pitch made most sucessful by product placement within -- human consciousness. 

The pitch --is that there is no pitch.

And who is writing the copy, who is placing the ad, and why? 

The first thing must be, on a path of understanding, to perceive your prison.This sentiment was best expressed by Jan Cox.  If these larger questions cannot be answered, at least verbally, be aware of the part of the advertisement which says you must never admit you do not know something.  Who knows whether these larger questions can be verbally answered.  There are options you cannot even imagine from the viewpoint of ordinary consciousness. 

Just, now, toss around this idea, that your consciousness may be a site for product placement, and what this could mean. And what would it be like if your consciousness could, actually, become -- art.

The Difference Between Physics and Philosophy

The Difference Between Physics and Philosophy could be phrased this way:

Philosophy (at it's purest, as in the radical empiricism of Jan Cox) is distinguishable from physics by the fact

philosophy has wheels.