Consciousness on George's Blog

How History Gets Things Wrong

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Rosenberg sets out to ‘prove’ through Neuroscience that the way we understand our past, present, and future might not be based on a misunderstanding. In what is sure to ruffle the feathers of academics of every stripe, Rosenberg uses various studies as a lever to overturn several common theories of mind. For the uninitiated, a theory of mind is an explanatory framework whose purpose is to explain the mind to itself. Most common theories of mind rely on the iconic duo of desire and action. Charles is crying because he can’t get an ice cream cone. In the previous sentence, we are met with Charles’ desire and the action that results from the desire, a cause and an effect. Rosenberg then uses this as a jumping-off point to argue that this core assumption that almost all theories of mind make is flawed.

The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:36 -0500

This is essay was written documenting Huxley’s psychedelic experience while being given Mescaline (the active ingredient in peyote). Huxley’s theory was that the ego acts a “reducer valve” on consciousness and by taking a psychoactive drug he could thereby sidestep this valve and widen his experience of reality. According to the essay this is exactly what happened. He was administered the drug by a psychiatrist who had been studying the drug for some time before this event. This psychiatrist and Huxley’s wife accompanied him for the 8hr trip with a tape recorder and some questions to help document the effects of the drug. While high Huxley looks at some fine art paintings and suddenly understands that the artist could see things the way he currently was seeing things and that he could tell his consciousness had been brought up to the level of “visionary”. Among other things he later makes an argument that the relationship of alcohol and Christianity should be abandoned and replaced with Mescaline. I feel like if you were to have that conversation the response would just be laughter, but to me it was an interesting argument. People/Aldous Huxley

Biocentrism

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:29 -0500

Finally checked this one of the list, of course that raises the question of what I mean by “finally”. The word obviously indicates a sequence of events and sequence indicates time and time indicates a required conscious observer. So, in a sense I’ve read this book both before, after and not yet. Jokes aside this book raises a lot of interesting questions, making you think about things a little differently than you had before. And that is the most and best that you can ask from a book. The writing in the book is kind of poor and a little self-aggrandizing at points but the ideas are original enough to make that not too difficult to look past. This book also made me want to read Emerson. While some of his conclusions and observations have in recent years been “proven” wrong (most notably the experiment of being able to read someone’s intentions up to 10 seconds before they actually make a decision) there still seems to be plenty of latitude in the field of consciousness to allow for his ideas to have value. Good suggestion has given me a lot to think about.