Letter to Christa

Excavation     De Kooning - 1950

Good Morning Christa…

One of the points you make in response to Michael Graziano’s column, Are We Really Conscious? , is that personal impressions are valid.  The subjective life is real.  Consciousness exists because it is an indisputable part of our experience.  The processing of input through the use of mental models does not necessarily make conscious thought an illusion.  Our minds evaluate an apple’s color, flavor, aroma, depth and weight.  The result is that the mind identifies the object as an apple.  This information is of no practical value to our biological brains without next determining the relevance of the apple to ourselves.  We don’t determine the importance of the apple without also providing further knowledge of the self.  Are we hungry?  Is this item safe for us to eat?  Do we like apples?  Would we prefer eating something else that is available?  The process of absorbing external world information also initiates self-knowledge, self-awareness.  Deprive us of all sensory input for an extended period and we may well lose in time the nature of our own identity. 

Consciousness requires our being able to continually relate with the external world.  Thus it does derive from the processing of information.  It also makes sense for the mind to require preexisting mental models – bundles of information – if it is to be capable of any meaningful evaluation.  Let’s return to our apple.

Of what use is the apple’s color if our minds are not prepared to interpret the wavelength it reflects?  A wavelength is a physical reality of the external world.  It has many properties associated with it.  A particular wavelength captured by the mind’s eye may induce a mental construct we identify as the color red.  There would be no recognition of red without first a model to interpret that wavelength.  So it also holds true for all aspects of the external world.  It isn’t enough to provide the biological equipment for hearing if there isn’t a corresponding model in place to convert vibrations into sound.  Sound is strictly a mental phenomenon, just as is color, odor or touch.  All of these sensations have been created, modified and refined over many millions of years.  The mind needs to know only what is relevant to survival.

A model produces a rough approximation of an entity.  Graziano refers to its product as a mere caricature of the object’s true properties.  Our awareness of the color white gives us no clue that it actually contains all visible colors of the spectrum.  We have no model for this because the information has no relation to survival.  Human reason enables us to acquire information not directly processed by models.

 What if it is true that consciousness is illusion?  Are we then little more than an elaborate information processing organism?  How coldly material and mechanistic this would seem.  It hardly depicts the human spirit as we know it.  The ongoing reasoned exploration of all things physical continually changes our perception of reality.  Copernicus destroyed the notion we were the center of God’s creation.  Darwin made a pleasant fiction of the Garden of Eden.  It seems now that neurological scientists are diminishing the mystique we hold for human existence.  Are we to believe all existence boils down to simple cause-and-effect mathematical logic?

I think not.  It’s tempting for some to misinterpret the overall significance of scientific findings.  There is no shortage to the mystery of existence.  How do we explain the fact of existence at all?  There is simply no need for anything to exist.  Still we do.  What is it we know of the underlying basis of physical reality?  That question actually remains a mystery.  Our explanations of the physical world only unearth more thoroughly puzzling questions – questions that challenge the very usefulness of reason itself.  Imagine that.  The universe we know is extraordinarily complicated from beginning to end – from light years in size to infinitesimally small material elements that appear to travel through dimensions beyond our detection.  Science has reached the point of being able to scoff at the scientific validity of writings by ancient people thousands of years ago.  That’s nothing to brag about.  We actually have far bigger challenges ahead when it comes to deciphering the nature and depth of our existence.  Chances are that if we have to rely exclusively on the reasoning power of our present biological brains we will never find the ultimate answers to the how and why of our being here.  That’s reassuring to me.  I’d hate to think existence is simple enough for the human mind to thoroughly conceive.  What a sad commentary for all of creation.

Every line of pursuit we choose to take ends short of our hopes.  Big deal.  There are so many personal rewards along the way.  Let us focus on living well.  Art is a splendid topic.  It isn’t caged within the narrow framework of scientific or mathematical reason.  It is sensual.  It stretches the vistas of imagination.  It brings to harvest our many emotions.  It is, best of all, just so damned dependent on the qualities of human nature.  Amen to that.

Tom

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 19 January

What it means to be human

Good Morning Jessicca…

Numbers and words have no existence outside the human mind.  A world without people reveals no evidence as to the validity of these concepts of intellect.  Until recently the surface of the planet Mars simply existed, without the need to account for itself in any way that might be construed as a reason for being.  Then came machines.  They crawl about the land of Mars, occasionally stopping to break its surface and dig into the soil.  They were sent by humans inhabiting the neighboring planet Earth.  These mechanical devices are missionaries that bring the first evidence that there now exists a mental construction, fashioned from words, which humans refer to as meaning.  These roving devices are precise constructions of a preconceived purpose.  Purpose is like numbers and words.  The idea of purpose is of no consequence outside the boundaries of the individual human mind.  This mind is unique in a number of ways.  It is self-aware and wonders of the nature of its own existence.  The mind is a form of consciousness that endlessly explores itself and its perceived surroundings, armed with a revolutionary potent tool – the question.  The question is a mental device that goes beyond the biological instinct known as curiosity because it is based on a formally constructed purpose we will call intent.  Questions displaying intent rely on the analytical words how and why as well as specific fact-seeking words such as what, when and where. The intent-based question requires another tool unique to human consciousness.  This is a tool fashioned from a capability human’s have developed over time and we’ve termed it reason.  Reason is a concept founded on the growing belief that every object and every event in existence is the result of one or more specific causes and that this cause-and-effect phenomenon is potentially predictable because existence is fundamentally neither random nor arbitrary.  The human mind has grown increasingly confident that the brain’s ability to reason makes understanding existence within the realm of possibility. 

Why did human beings go to the expense and trouble of sending a machine to Mars?  There are many reasons having to do with the intent to answer arcane scientific questions and to further develop human technological capabilities but, uppermost in most people’s mind, is the question whether life has existed on another planet.  If it is determined that no life ever existed on Mars then the question becomes, “If not Mars, where?”  If, on the other hand, life or its remnants have been proven to exist on Mars then the minds of human beings are flooded with new questions.  We humans find renewed motivation to speculate on numerous intriguing avenues of possibilities.  What is the source of life?  Are there other forms of consciousness comparable to ours?  Do they believe in God?  If not, why?  If yes, then what is the nature of their God?  Is the concept of God inherent to the thought of higher consciousness?  If God is absent in the consciousness of others then what does that imply about human spiritual beliefs?  Does our hope for God’s existence have to do with our desire for meaning in life?  What is the nature of meaning without God?  A machine searching the sands of Mars for evidence of life is invested with the meaning of what it is to be human.  We don’t want to be alone.  We want our lives to have purpose beyond generating our biological offspring.  We want something of greater value than just merely existing.  The many monuments we have created throughout human history – churches, statues, a flag on the Moon, a simple blue ribbon – all have to do with instilling in us the value of meaning.  We matter.  No one celebrates the life of an individual sparrow.  Who mourns the rose separated from its stem? 

Numbers and words – we have each a name.  We each count the length of our solitary existence and share our sentiments with those close to us.  We all have ingenuity, love, happiness and fear that together makes us each somewhat unique.  Here, then, is the kernel of our meaning – modest as it may seem.

Love,

         Dad

Here I am

Letter to Jack
17 June, Sunday

I am the consciousness that dwells within this instance of an individual that has just wakened from a most fitful sleep.  I am the consciousness that has chosen to put into words the thoughts that have mysteriously revealed themselves to me as though they were my own.  You, on the other hand, are the particular consciousness dwelling within another distinguishable, finely tuned, entity that has been led along by circumstance and twists of fate to come upon and read these rather odd thoughts captured in this string of words.  You and I both share the sensation of peering through windows within a swiveling home of a head, sitting atop an elongated form capable of movement that proceeds either this way or that.  You and I are now in the act of making contact and that makes us now both we.  We are involved in the act of being familiar as one is to another when the words I choose are words you know.  Of course, the words I see and speak and hear have not quite the same weight and meaning that you choose to give these very same words that are now seen and heard and felt within yourself …yes, felt, but let’s hold that thought for later.  Actually you and I don’t puzzle through words as though they were a concept new to us.  No.  Individual words seem mostly a blur, having only the faintest register on our consciousness.  Instead we bundle the simpler ideas of singular words into somewhat grander, more sprawling and, probably, more arguable thought.  I can amuse myself by thinking I, as representative of this particular instance of a consciousness – I am clearly expressing to you now what is being made aware to me – me, once again, being a name much like I that has come to act as a pointer to this one particular instance of consciousness.  In fact, though, I would be wrong.  Your understanding of what it is I now write is probably somewhat different than what it is I have intended.   Now! there’s a word for you – intent.  Actually, whatever intent there may be is most vague to me, as it appears I have no understanding, none, of what it is I say before I say it.  Should that revealed truth alarm you and discredit me?  How am I so different from the lunatic that rambles on before you with no particular object to his discourse?  What I now say to you may well be thought of as the ramblings of someone having been twirled about a few too many times.  It is all so like the dream from which I woke tonight; I was much surprised by the twists and turns of the story recounted to me even though the story could be said to be my own invention.  That would be curious if we didn’t already know that that statement is absolutely false.  Who could believe I am capable of weaving tales with such imagination and, if I may say so, a tale filled with instances of implausible gibberish.  I would only flatter myself in thinking I could be so creative in recollecting a world having so little basis in the physics and psychology of our shared reality.  I would be more truthful by saying that I am only the recipient of the story that was related in this dream.    Maybe I should take it one step further by saying I have been the recipient of the memory of the dream that was related while I was absent.  Believe me when I tell you the details of this dream have no importance, no bearing on what it is I say.  Still, I will give you a sense of its flavor because your mind wants something here to grasp.  Quickly picture yourself a stranger among very strange people.  You have no idea how you arrived here but you are clearly discomfited by your circumstance.  How have these deeply shadowed forms any meaning for you?  You push your way through the gathered looks and murmurs until an exit appears and you quickly flee.  Soon you are driving through the darkness and, you discover to your horror, incriminating evidence lies on the seat next to you.  There follows a long journey down a nearly deserted road into the dead of night.  The headlights capture a rural mailbox and you pull up, get out, and stuff the evidence into the box.  You exhale with relief.  You’re safe; wait, no!  You’re startled to find you were never alone.  Inexplicably an individual of quasi-legal status has made his loathsome presence known.  He wants you to identify yourself.  That’s it.  It’s all about your identity. 

Did this help you?  I think not.  Remember, I am but the mere consciousness that inhabits this form that I have come to think of as being comfortably mine.  Yes, if nothing else, I am emphatic that this one thought be treated as fact... for now.  This form from which I peer should rightly belong to me.  Were that not the case and I should be displaced then… where would my place of residence be?  I am lost without my form.  There can be no residence waiting for me in oblivion.  Were this most intimate habitat within which I reside to become nonfunctioning - a post-biological structure decaying under the pleasant sun of our heartless physical realm – well, I can’t imagine how I would proceed.  I cherish having awareness of my own particular instance of consciousness.  It seems so inextricably wrapped with this organic form, chemically optimized to stir life from the otherwise remnant molecules of unspectacular odds and ends.  After all, if consciousness alone could see why is it we have eyes?  If consciousness alone could harbor thought why is it we rely on the mind generated by this brain of which I confidently feel I now inhabit?  A brain, mind you, built atop a foundation left by reptiles, amphibians and the humbug likes of insects.  And now it seems an appropriate time for me to also insist that you share this concern of mine.  You are not only fondly attached to your own consciousness but you also believe that your own consciousness is, in fact, the real you - the very limited extent of all that there is to just being simply you.  You of the no frills you.  You without the calliope serenade… you, you, you are just you.  You are a separate consciousness from me.  What purpose does consciousness serve, if any, in this realm of existence?  I have no idea.  It appears it didn’t seem fit that I should know.  Instead, I am left with the belief that I am a singular identity, separate from other singular, isolated identities, acting out their own existence before me just as I proceed with my own favored act before them.  Why is it we should so strongly feel this to be true?  Is there benefit to believing an illusion?  I believe that illusion is a fundamental part of our experience with existence.  The question I would like to ask is just what that illusion might be?  I have spoken as though I am a consciousness inhabiting a particular mind, but that I may also be an entity separate from this brain, separate from this physical form.  Yes, I have expressed my fear that I am too intimately linked with a fragile physical being, destined eventually to break down, cease functioning and eventually to disintegrate into some organic ooze that becomes an enticing soup of nutrients for our simplest life forms.  Can it be that my illusion is that I only inhabit this form and that, truth be told, I am but one and the same as the form itself, a mere expression of an instance of biology, and that my sense of consciousness, my sense of identity, is but a misunderstanding?  It is an unintended consequence that results from our  degree of self-awareness which, incidentally, is not shared by other animal types that inhabit this earth.  By the way, who says consciousness requires specific identity?  Let’s concede for the moment that consciousness survives physical death.  The need for the survival of a corresponding identity that was associated with a particular instance of a species at a particular point in time seems irrelevant to consciousness.  It might just bring all sorts of useless baggage into the spiritual pool. 

What meaning have these thoughts for you?  Have they touched you?  Earlier I said that we not only see words and hear words but that we feel them, as well.  I believe that you, like me, share an emotional reaction to most every idea formed by words.  That is not to say we share the same emotional response to an idea, but that we do react emotionally, and not just rationally, in our understanding of ideas.  Ask yourself why.  Why is there no purity in our reason?  That is a different question as to why we are fallible in reasoning through facts.  We are ever companions with our emotions.  Doesn’t it seem obvious to you that we are more likely to corrupt our own reasoning ability when the result leads to something that we believe violates our own self-interest?  So now we tread upon the idea of self.  I think my belief that consciousness is my identity is rather incomplete.  How can I hold onto the belief that I am an expression of transcendent consciousness harbored within a physical form when my actions are so easily influenced by feelings of desire, fear and need?  These emotions are responses defined by physical reality and require no conscious thought.  They strongly suggest that if you want to survive you behave in the proscribed manner.  Thank God for that.  As I said, where would I reside if this form I inhabit didn’t have an opinion one way or the other regarding its continued presence.  Of course, given that I am the resident decision maker of this habitat it seems natural I should consider existence important to me and my body a necessary prerequisite to my further existence. 

I can safely say I have resolved nothing.  Still, what a refreshing stroll I've just had.  The puzzle remains out of my grasp but I feel I have added some clarity for myself by nicely organizing the puzzle’s pieces just a bit.  Also, there are a couple of new topics tempting me to ponder despite the fact they have no chance of being answered.  How inscrutable is the Western mind.  Did you just say the more appropriate word might be confused?  I remain a consciousness, startled by a dream and wakened from a fitful sleep.  

Green Isn't

Letter to Christa
Green Isn't

C L I C K     T O     E N L A R G E

R O B E R T       M O T H E R W E L L

The world isn’t as your eyes and ears tell you.  Existence is beyond our imagination without the interpretation of our own biology.  What we believe to be first hand fact is, in reality, our subjective interpretation.  The physical realm is most likely as our scientific instruments suggest, but its perception varies, depending on the survival needs of the particular life form.  The tree outside probably has green leaves in summer.  The sound of thunder can be startling.  Sugar is sweet.  Those seem basic facts describing our world.  Yet none of these phenomenon exist outside biology.  They are all subjective, mental interpretations enabling us to know an existence that would otherwise be beyond our understanding.  Without our senses we would have no reason to assume we exist – or should we want to.  In fact, can we not hypothesize and say death may be a form of existence robbed of the ability to perceive?  Our body’s enable us to interact with the physical realm.  Whatever conceivably survives the wearing out of this mechanism is left without the means to know physical existence.  It’s cut adrift.  The senses are gone, and the brain is unavailable for mental thought.  Of course, existence transcending one’s physical identity is left for conjecture alone.  Our essential, nonphysical being has yet to register on any apparatus constructed for science.  We are more evanescent than Higgs boson, the God Particle, in that regard. 

We think of our senses as being our eyes, ears, the touch of our skin as well as our ability to taste food and smell cookies baking in the oven.  It’s true they are all receptors, sending simple nerve impulses to their own, corresponding specialized portion of the brain.  That message alone, though, is like the zeros and ones that make up computer information.  It’s meaningless data without interpretation.  The brain receives rudimentary impulses and manifests light in an existence devoid of this appreciation.  The mind not only fabricates sound, it editorializes the experience, lending it emotional value.  The same can be said of all our senses.  We seek sweetness and salt because they have biological benefits.  We avoid putrefied meat because the smell is unpleasant, instinctively warning us away from its sickly contents.  Another form of animal may thrive on this meal and the smell entices it to have its fill of this ghastly road kill rotting in the sun.  In many instances, involving all of our senses, our biological minds use the sensation of pleasure to encourage activities benefiting life and creates for us a feeling of revulsion for that which endangers our existence.  The mind does what it can to find order and meaning in a physical realm that provides only the raw basis for existence… whatever that turns out being.  Yet from this environment, revealing no sign for concern of any kind, comes life.  Life responds, acknowledging existence.  Life protects life, valuing its separateness from that being absent of life.  From life comes consciousness.  We are probably the best representative of conscious life on this planet.  We want always to know and we investigate most everything.  We have questions for what is knowable and we wonder over thoughts having no possible answer.  We invent instruments that enable us to slip beyond the deceptive veil of our biological sense.  We create the language of math because words alone are incapable of portraying the world we come to know.  Existence that avails itself to our minds seems best explained with the tools of logic and reason.  How fortunate for us our minds have that ability.  Chances are good, though, that we are not complete for the task of knowing, comprehending, all that there is to know.  Our biological brains, honed on survival based reasoning skills, couldn’t anticipate the ambition of our quest.  The brain’s limitation won’t stop us.  We’re already finding ways to enhance our biological potential.  We’ll tamper with our minds.  Our curiosity will be too great to do otherwise.  We will undoubtedly lose some of our humanity in the process.  We will take that risk because the human’s nature is to risk its own existence in the desire to know more and to be more.  We’ve known that about ourselves since ancient times.  It is the temptation of the Tree of Knowledge.  The Garden of Eden seems never enough.  What put that seed in our brain?  Is there somewhere in this realm of matter and energy an inherent need for Existence to find a way to look back onto itself?  The mechanism of life may well be purely physical but how do we explain consciousness?  How do we explain the desire of our consciousness to know what it is we have no need for knowing?  We’ll find the Higgs boson and describe how it creates the physics of mass.  The question remains, though, what is in the nature of the atom that sent us on this search in the first place?  

L  E  T  T  E  R  S

M O R E

  COLD VALENTINE