Friday, August 03, 2007
Inspecting the foundation
Premise one: Any inquiry into the nature or purpose of consciousness is highly susceptible, by virtue of the nature of the inquiry, to yield conclusions that are received, wishful, or both.
Caveat: this does not necessarily make such inquiries unprofitable. Any evidence I might cite to the contrary, no matter how uniform a body of evidence that might comprise, is purely anecdotal. My own personal experiences in this regard do not preclude the possibility of such an inquiry furthering the body of human knowledge.
Premise two: Regardless of the nature or purpose of consciousness, whether it be guided or no, whether it be a form of physical reality or wholly illusory, it remains an organizing principle that is difficult to dispense with. I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Premise three: There is, thus far, no solid, reliable evidence that any experience outside of the present consciousness I employ to organize those things I sense is likely to be forthcoming or to have preceded the present one. Taken to the extreme, this can be interpreted to take time into consideration: only the present experience exists. All others are conjecture, predicated on the uniformity of both time and self.
Accepting the above, with room for revision should it prove necessary: is happiness a choice? A viable one?
To add to Chomsky's status as "the most quoted author on the Earth" (and I'm not even going to use a particularly good quote): "Suppose that you felt that there's 99 percent of a probability that human civilization is going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, but one percent chance that it won't be, and that one percent offers some opportunities to do something. Well you commit yourself to that one percent." Take those percentages out of the realm of supposition: if you knew those were the odds, would you feel at all duty bound to commit to that one percent chance? If so, upon what grounds?
Caveat: this does not necessarily make such inquiries unprofitable. Any evidence I might cite to the contrary, no matter how uniform a body of evidence that might comprise, is purely anecdotal. My own personal experiences in this regard do not preclude the possibility of such an inquiry furthering the body of human knowledge.
Premise two: Regardless of the nature or purpose of consciousness, whether it be guided or no, whether it be a form of physical reality or wholly illusory, it remains an organizing principle that is difficult to dispense with. I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Premise three: There is, thus far, no solid, reliable evidence that any experience outside of the present consciousness I employ to organize those things I sense is likely to be forthcoming or to have preceded the present one. Taken to the extreme, this can be interpreted to take time into consideration: only the present experience exists. All others are conjecture, predicated on the uniformity of both time and self.
Accepting the above, with room for revision should it prove necessary: is happiness a choice? A viable one?
To add to Chomsky's status as "the most quoted author on the Earth" (and I'm not even going to use a particularly good quote): "Suppose that you felt that there's 99 percent of a probability that human civilization is going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, but one percent chance that it won't be, and that one percent offers some opportunities to do something. Well you commit yourself to that one percent." Take those percentages out of the realm of supposition: if you knew those were the odds, would you feel at all duty bound to commit to that one percent chance? If so, upon what grounds?
# posted by Gene Justice @ 1:58 AM 
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Upon the grounds that you can sway those very odds.
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