any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

Get taught how to listen to music

I was browsing the web in my usual fashion, whatever that is, and came across these lecture videos from Yale.  The course is about “listening to music,” though I really have to listen to the course to figure out what exactly the professor means by that.  Here are some of my reactions to some of the things this professor says.

Does knowing musical theory improve listening?

First the professor recalls asking his son to listen to something and then asked him “Well, what’s the mode of the piece?  What’s the meter of the piece?  What’s the bass line doing?  Can you identify any chords?”  And of the son had no response.

Woah!  Woah!  What the heck?

Do you really have to be conscious of all that?  Or, I guess the real question is: what’s the point of being conscious of all that?  Does being conscious of all that make you enjoy the music more?  If so, would you argue that not being conscious of that makes other people enjoy the music less?  That seems like an incredibly condescending argument.

Now, if you want to analyze music for your own interest (say, perhaps, you’re a composer), then of course it can be a great mental exercise to be conscious of that stuff.

But you certainly don’t need to if you just want enjoy the music.  Which is really what the entire point of music is.

And no matter how much you analyze that stuff, it’s not like you’re going to figure out how the human perception of music works.  At least not just with analysis alone.

So the professors “experiment” with his son here seems incredibly pointless.

Why would we want to listen to classical music?

So the professor asks.

What?  Really?  You don’t know?  Why does anybody want to listen to any music?

Does he mean “why would we want to listen to classical music instead of pop music?”

You’re not implying that some type of music is objectively better than other music, would you now?

He says that the Nation Public Radio asked this question, and one of the big responses was: for relaxation.  Not a whole lot of relaxing rock n’ roll or pop music out there, huh?  (Maybe someone out there can start a new genre… lullaby pop, or something.)

Some of the other responses: it helps people concentrate, and it provides a vision of a better world.1

I want to change your personality…

Says the professor.

That seems pretty snobby to me.  “I’m going to make you better!”  How arrogant of you to assume you have that ability.  Actually, this seems a pretty important point for all teachers, and all people in general:

DO NOT PRESUME YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE BETTER.

That’s condescension.  It’s an insult to others, and an overestimation of yourself.

I hope to instill you with a love of classical music…

After hearing that, I would’ve dropped this course right away.2 Why would he hope to do that? If he was a classical music artist selling an album, or a record store owner, I might understand. Instead, it seems like “I like classical music, so everyone else should too.” Now there’s nothing wrong with desiring other people to agree with your opinions (I love when people agree with my opinions, who doesn’t?), but to think it’s worth actively pursuing seems, again, quite condescending. That would be like if I said “I like Danny Elfman, and if you don’t, allow me to enlighten you on the brilliance of the Alice’s Theme track…” No! That’s a terrible way to think and act, as if you have to actively pursue “converting” people to your subjective opinions. It’s not like people have different musical opinions because some people are just dumber and need to be instilled with some knowledge that will change their opinions to the “right” ones.

If I were a professor teaching such a class, I would definitely want to inspire others to listen to more of the same kind of music I loved; who doesn’t like sharing the things they enjoy?  But I wouldn’t have my mind set on changing people’s personalities and lives to be more like mine, as if there was an objective right and wrong about music preferences…

The end

That was only the first 7 minutes of the course, and I already disagree with this professor’s teaching philosophy.  Ha.  Though maybe I’m just misconstruing everything he’s saying.  It looks like a pretty educational course, though, once you get deeper into it, and actually get to the meat.  The first 7 minutes, though… yikes.

Anyway, I gotta go to bed now… I get to go to work all weekend!

——————–

1 I wonder if this has more to do with the fact that most non-classical music includes lyrics. There aren’t very many purely instrumental pop or rock artists out there.

2 But maybe not, if it was going to provide an easy A. I’m not the one that made grades matter.

By S P Hannifin, ago

My new business model: Get lucky

As I was daydreaming today of all the businesses I’d like to start if only I had enough money to hire other people to do all the work, I got to thinking… nobody really knows how to succeed, do they?

In my last post, I said my dream was to own a theme park.  But how many people who achieve their dreams1 were really working toward them their entire life?  It seems like the super rich and famous just kind of fall into place.  They really have no idea how they got there.  They can say generic things like “attitude is everything” and “don’t be stupid with your investments,” but there’s still no objective science to the process.  There are still no specific steps one takes.  Really, you just do whatever you want while being as smart about it as you can.

I’m not sure I can really claim to have a “business model” since I don’t have a business, but if I ever do, I will probably think in terms of luck.  That’s not to say I wouldn’t try to be smart in my decisions, but I wouldn’t get too hung up on trying to understand how to dominate the market, how to become as huge as Disney or Microsoft or Google.  It is tempting to attribute their lofty positions to the mind powers incredible business geniuses, but they’re actually the product of quite a lot of luck, of being in the right place and the right time, and not being too stupid.  (Of course, after you get that lofty, you can afford to hire geniuses to try to keep you there.)

You can envy the people who win the lottery, but there’s no science to it.  All they did to win was to play like everyone else.

Finally, here’s a pretty interesting article on the art of business-ness: 10 things you won’t learn in school.

It has nothing to do with what I’ve just been saying, but it’s still interesting, I think.

——————–

1 And I mean big dreams.  If your dream is to write a novel or run a marathon, that’s something directly up to your willpower.  Big dreams are dreams that require certain decisions being made by other people, like whether or not to buy your book.  You have no direct control over these decisions.  And I hope you like my use of notes in a blog.  It makes me feel trendy.

By S P Hannifin, ago

The price of your dreams

I was thinking about Shark Tank, that ABC show that we’re still not sure whether or not they’ll make a second season of, and I noticed one of the sharks had uploaded this pic to twitpic.  “Every dream has its price.”  How quotable.

Price can of course mean more than money.  There’s all the time it will take to pursue it, all the risks you’ll have to take, all the gambles, all the questioning yourself, all the uncertainty… dreaming dreams is a blissful business, but pursuing them is a nightmare.

My dream is to own a theme park.  Gah, where do I even start?  I don’t know.

And then you have people who say “you should be goal oriented!”  OK, if I want to own a theme park, what should be my first goal?  Get rich?

And then people say “forget the money, do what you love!”  But I can’t, I need money to do what I love!  Or doing what I love is leading me nowhere; I’m still miserable from having to go to work everyday and having too little time left to do what I love.

Is that the price of dreams?  Going mad because you don’t know how to pursue them?  Because you’re stuck at work or in school staring at the clock wanting to go home and work on something fun?

How do you make those times enjoyable?

How do you relax when you know you have so much work ahead?

Should you live in the present or be planning the future?  How do you do both and stay sane?

I don’t know.

Thus is the price of dreams.

When is my vacation?  Will I ever be alone?

By S P Hannifin, ago

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

irish

Whew, the month is really flying by… already St. Patrick’s Day!  I think March should be Irish history month.  Let’s talk about some Irish history for a minute.  Why, I believe it was in the 1880’s that a very important Irish man came to America.  His name, Timothy O’Donovan or something.  He was a very important man, mostly because his great great great (great?) grandson was eventually born… and it was me!  Wow, what a great look into Irish history.  Join me next time when we look into the history of another Irish guy, James (or John?) Hannifin… bet you can’t guess what he’s famous for… (clue: something to do with me).

But enough about old dead guys from Ireland.

Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day with some potatoes, a bit of Mozart on the stereo.  Oh no wait, he’s not Irish.  It’ll have to be Hannifin then on your stereo.  Oh well, rules are rules.  Wear green and dye your hair orange.  Eat lucky charms for breakfast.  Speak with fakey Irish accents.  Put an O in front of your last name.  Try to get a job at “no Irish need apply” shops.

Enjoy!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Short Wicked review and other boring things

Seeing Wicked

My family and I went to see the musical Wicked yesterday.

wicked The bad: Going in, the lady person (at the Landmark Theater in Richmond, VA) handing out the programs wouldn’t give me one. She said “Oh, it’s only one per family! Snicker snicker snoody-doo!” I made that second sentence up, but $55 for way-in-the-back seats and you don’t even give me a program?! You pathetic loser booger-heads! We did end up getting more; who doesn’t like to collect programs of the performances you’ve seen? One per family. Tsk tsk. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Secondly, the seating at the Landmark Theater in Richmond, VA is just pathetic; at least up in the balcony seats. (I think the place was built in the 1920s or something.) It was like stadium seating, but extremely squished. Not designed for tall people at all.  The seats in front of you dig into your knees. It’s just really poorly designed. I would recommend nobody ever going there again for anything. Pathetic, you fail, Landmark Theater!

The good: The musical itself. After familiarizing myself with the Wicked soundtrack for the past few years, it was great to finally see the entire story behind it, which was a quite engaging story (should make a good movie someday – I doubt much story editing would be needed). I loved the whole fantasy feel to the whole thing, in the set designs and the costumes and the lighting. The big talking Oz head is just awesome. You don’t get that stuff on the soundtrack.

A bit of trivia (that I found online; probably old news to die hard fans): the first seven notes of the tune “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” are hidden in the musical. Stephen Schwartz used them for the “Unlimited” theme. The rhythm and harmonies are different, so you don’t recognize it at all, but it’s awesome that they’re there.

Album art

In other news, here is a preview of what my first album’s cover will probably look like. The manufacturers are estimating they will be done manufacturing the thing by March 31st. That’s, of course, just an estimate, and then it will still require some time to ship. But we’re getting closer and closer! Maybe this whole process becomes more mundane after you do it a few times, but for a first time it’s extremely exciting!

Alice in Wonderland soundtrack

alice Speaking of albums with awesome music (heh), I recently bought Danny Elfman’s score to the newest Tim Burton film, Alice in Wonderland. Even though the movie as a whole was kind of meh, the music is fantastic. It’s some of Danny Elfman’s best work in a while. The first track is kinda like the first track on the Coraline soundtrack, except in Elfman’s score the children’s choir is singing in English (in Coraline it sounds like they’re singing in gibberish). Both utilize children choirs singing hauntingly beautiful melodies with delicious epic orchestration. Ahhh… awesome stuff. So… you should buy it.  At least buy the first track “Alice’s Theme” on iTunes or something.  It’s Hannifin recommended.

Blah blah

It still feels like it should be an hour earlier…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Yet even more long blatheryness about consciousness

My family and I are off to see the musical Wicked tomorrow.  Should be fun.  It will be the closest to thing to a vacation I’ve gotten and will get for a while, methinks.

The rest of this long blathery post will be yet some more thoughts I think I thought while reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett.

Funny little story

Here’s just a funny little story from page 59 of Conscious Explained by Daniel C. Dennett:

A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy … [he was] making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced … one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: “It’s ‘Outta Get Me’ by Guns N’ Roses, my favorite heavy metal band!”

I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how ‘high fidelity’ the provoked memory was.  Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? … The surgeon hadn’t asked the patient to sing along.  “Why not?” I asked, and he replied: “I hate rock music!”

Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along.  “I can’t do it,” replied the neurosurgeon, “since I cut out that part.”  “It was part of the epileptic focus?” I asked, and he replied, “No, I already told you — I hate rock music!”

I wonder if I could make everyone in the world love my music and hate other people’s music by operating on their brains?  I wonder if I could also religiously convert them too, so that they will all think I’m a god.  But, of course, I believe that would be morally wrong, so I would have to operate on my own brain first.  Then I will believe it to be right.

Ha ha ha!

On page 62, Dennett writes:

There is a species of primate in South America, more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.  The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering, under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them.  Far from being aversive, however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them.

When I realized he was talking about humans and our habit of laughing, I could not help but engage in involuntary convulsive respiration myself.  When you laugh at the thought of how strange laughter is, you can create an internal infinite laugh loop.

Thoughts on the whyness of things and such

On page 64, Dennett writes:

We can give a perfectly sound biological account of why there should be pain and pain-behavior … what we want is a similarly anchored account of why there should be hilarity and laughter.

I think one has to be careful in asking “why?” because it can mean two different things.  There’s the cause-and-effect why and the purpose why.  For example, if I ask “why does the heart pump blood?” you could either answer “to get blood to other parts of the body, duh” (purpose why) or “because the brain tells it to, duh” (cause-effect why).

The thing is, purpose why applies only to human actions (and perhaps animal actions); consciousness and planning create purpose why.  Nature works only with cause-effect why.  But we tend to project a purpose why understanding of the world sometimes, especially on things like evolution and living systems.  Why do we have hands?  Not to grab things; nature doesn’t know anything, and it doesn’t care about grabbing.  You could argue that being able to grab things has provided an evolutionary advantage.  OK, but that still doesn’t answer how hands came to be.  Before creatures could grab things, nature didn’t say “it would be nice to have a body part that could grab things!”

Ultimately I think the reason we have hands, the reason we laugh, the reason we cry, feel pain, etc., all lie in the complexity of DNA replication over many millions of years (and the effect of having physical advantages (which is not to say that all elements of the human body have some evolutionary advantage; I doubt they do; why only one thumb, for instance?  There’s no advantage to having only one thumb)), and since that system is too complex for us to understand at the moment (and there are things about it we may never be able to fully know anyway, like the entire DNA structures of all of our ancestors), we might as well say that it’s random, that there is no reason.

All that said, asking [the right kind of] why might still help us learn something, but we should realize that it might be something we can never know.  Dennett might call this “defeatist thinking” … but oh well.  (Oh well?  More defeatist thinking!)

Knowing thyself

On page 67, Dennett writes:

Perhaps we are fooling ourselves about the high reliability of introspection, our personal powers of self-observation of our own conscious mind. … We are either “infallible” — always guaranteed to be right — or at least “incorrigible” — right or wrong, no one else could correct us.

This reminds me of a post I wrote a long while ago in which I blathered about why I hated being a teenager.  (It has nothing to do with a “maturing brain” and everything to do with society and parents trying to continue to maintain power and control over “teens,” which is a pretty new word/concept in the scope of human history.)  If you read the comments, someone says:

Though I can’t say I agree with the phrase “That’s why” in cases like this… “That’s what made me moody and depressed” — I really don’t think anyone has the authority on how their responses work to stimuli. If you’re on that level, you ought to be able to supersede them and establish control over your mind; however, I think that inability to control goes hand in hand with deficit understanding.

To which I responded:

Yikes! But then, who does? Does anyone? Shouldn’t I be the authority on how I feel, if I speak for myself at least? Can’t I know what’s making me miserable?

Now, I’d still defend the notion that teens being forced to do things makes them miserable. I think it makes just about everyone miserable.  Would parents in their 30s or 40s really want to trade places with their teens? I think not (though some might not admit it). But then, how many teens would agree with me? What are the reasons teens give for being so “moody”? The world is stupid and no one understands them?

So, I still agree with myself on the issue of “the myth of the teen brain” (and the myth that there even is a “teen” stage of psychological development), but I also agree that in many circumstances (uh… except this one) we should be cautious of thinking we can understand why we feel what we feel.

In fact, I think this is kind of exploited in works of fiction like the show House, when a character might say something like “I’m trying to help you!” and House will say something like “no, you don’t care about me, you just feel guilty about about what you said to Chase” or some other psychological twist that sheds new light everyone’s motivations, which is one of the reasons the show is fun to watch… the characters’ true motivations for everything is almost always in question (OK, maybe not always, but still).

How well can we truly understand our own motivations and causes of our feelings and our own thought processes and whatever? How are we to know?

On a side note, I’ve always thought it not only useless, but also a bit dangerous to too deeply psychoanalyze yourself (or believe someone else’s psychoanalysis of you). You’re probably likely to be wrong about yourself, and then acting on your own psychoanalytical conclusions, you may destroy yourself even further whilst thinking you’re helping yourself.

Though maybe I’m just saying that because I’m uncomfortable being too self-conscious… oh wait, oops, I was psychoanalyzing myself there…

But, really, if someone tried to convince me that they knew how their own mind worked, and what their subconscious desires were, I’d think “oh brother” and not believe them. Unless they agree with me on the teenager issue, of course.

That’s all folks

OK, is that enough?  I think so.  I kind of rambled, and I’m not sure I’ll fully agree with everything I said a few days from now, but writing all this helped the spare time go by today at work, and it made me feel as if I was doing something useful with that spare time, even though you can probably tell that that was not case.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Started an Android game review blog

In my continuous efforts to get my mind off of the manufacturing of my album, which makes me restless, I have started yet another blog (that I probably won’t keep updated for very long, because I have a habit of letting things die). The blog is creatively called “Android Games” and features reviews of games for the Google Android OS. And here is the blog.

OK, nothing too special, but should be fun to maintain for a few days at least.

I seem to find installing and setting up WordPress blogs to be a bit addicting… but maintaining them is another matter…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Be nice to other people

Not long ago I realized that Derek Sivers is on Twitter after someone retweeted a tweet of his. The tweet was:

Smart people don’t think others are stupid.

And I thought, uh… yes they do. Everyone does. So I tweeted:

Smart people don’t think others are stupid. They know.

OK, I know, lame, not funny. But still, at one time or another, everyone thinks that at least a few other people are stupid, or at least their actions are, or their ignorance about something is. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone thinks they are better than everyone else, that the human population is made up of arrogant snobs.

However, I would say that a smart person is nice and polite to everyone. Just listen to those Leo Laporte calls in my last blog post. He’s talking to people who obviously don’t have much of a clue about certain things. In the privacy of my home, I can laugh my head off. Are those people stupid? Or is that way too harsh, and we should try to understand where they’re coming from? After all, not all people have nearly the same level of experience with computers… and if Leo Laporte, who’s making money off of people’s ignorance (you don’t call in to have a question answered if you’re not ignorant about something, and we’re all ignorant about somethings), started laughing or belittling his more-ignorant-than-usual callers, people might fear calling him and he wouldn’t be in business for very long.

In other words, it’s just good manners to not treat other people as if you think they are stupid, even if that’s what you think, and everyone is bound to think it now and then.

Also tweeted by Derek Sivers was this article: Are you capable of being ruthless to get ahead?

Go ahead and read the article, it’s a pretty quick and easy read.

OK, are you done? What took you so long? You must be stupi… uh… I mean… very good.

There’s nothing really innovative about a person like Saul. There have been people like him since the beginning of mankind. There are probably monkeys like him. And while I envy their power of success, I ask myself: could I do something like that?

Well, if I wanted to, I don’t think I have the social skills. I don’t think I have what it takes to pretend to be interested in what someone else is interested in to get ahead. I’m just not sure I could make up something interesting to say about any topic on the spot. I could pretend to be interested in some people, if such an act is mainly comprised of asking people questions about themselves. (Some people feel honored and important when others ask a lot of questions about them, others can get annoyed and suspicious.) But I couldn’t keep up the act that I’m interested in, say, fishing, or NASCAR, or gospel music. Perhaps trying to research those things to get myself ahead would simply be too much of a sacrifice of my time.

But I also just think it’s wrong. I mean, isn’t that using people? As much as I might joke about thinking other people are stupid, I could never in good conscience become someone’s friend for only the sake of business.

And I know that that might be how a lot of businesses work, especially when there’s a lot of power and money involved. Perhaps in Hollywood, where rich producers and celebrities can never know the difference between true fans and the people who just want to kiss their… you know.

So maybe not playing that social game is bad for business and won’t do you any favors in terms of getting ahead.

But, come on, wouldn’t businesses everywhere be better if no one was being “ruthless,” if no one was playing some social game, if people were pursuing their true interests and not trying to climb some power ladder?

And I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that agree with me, and those are the people I’d rather work with.

But only if they’re interested in Mozart.

By S P Hannifin, ago

A little thought on consciousness and stuff

I hope this blog isn’t becoming too self-conscious… aha… ahahaha…

Ahem…

On pages 39-40 of Daniel C. Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained, Dennett writes:

Some people are convinced that we can’t [understand consciousness] in any case. Such defeatism, today, in the midst of a cornucopia of scientific advances ready to be exploited, strikes me as ludicrous, even pathetic, but I suppose it could be the sad truth.

It might be the sad truth, but that won’t be the failing of science, it will be the failing of consciousness itself. For example, we can theorize about the big bang, about the nature of time, about string theory, but we can’t conceive four or more spatial dimensions, we can’t think about time not existing, we can’t even imagine ourselves not existing. (If you’d like to get religious: we can’t understand the nature of God.) These are the limits of our mind. Why do these limits exist? Are they based on limits of the real physical world, or are they purely mental? A dog can’t conceive suicide, yet he might run out in front of a car. Just because he can’t conceive it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Is it the same with humans?

So… what if consciousness fits into this category? Well, we know it exists, that’s not the issue. The issue is why? How? Perhaps that is beyond our consciousness’ ability to know; it is not a failing of our reasoning or our science, it is just a limit of the nature of our existence.

Funny Leo Laporte videos

Lastly, since I’m now going to post Stuff I Found stuff here (and kill that blog), here are some funny videos of clueless people calling Leo Laporte (former host of that wonderful show of my yesteryears, The Screen Savers). Enjoy.

Phantom of the Opera sequel

I’m listening to the Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies, on Rhapsody right now and it’s… uh… interesting. I hate how musical soundtracks these days have no reverb. I like the old musical recordings, when it sounded like the singers were on a stage, when it made me feel like I was in a theater. Music wise, it’s good, but not very Phantomy… or at least with a huge atmospheric twist, since the story takes place on… Coney Island. Not very… gothicy… more like the haunted fairgrounds of a Scooby Doo episode. It’s just… odd. A very different spirit to thing.

I wonder if they can get Michael Crawford to sing some of the songs… just to hear what it would’ve been like.

Gah, so annoying with no reverb…

By S P Hannifin, ago

More boring thoughts on consciousness

I’ve heard that later this month, Google’s Blogger will be discontinuing the FTP upload feature, which means my other two blogs, Stuff I Found and Book Quotes, will sadly have to come to an end. I could convert them to WordPress or move them to something.blogspot.com, but I think I will just kill them off, and integrate future posts that would’ve belonged to them into this blog here. It’s probably a better idea just to have everything in one place anyway, yes? So I shan’t be using Google Blogger ever again; it’s all WordPress from now on.

And now on to our regularly scheduled blog post. On page 24 of Daniel C. Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained, Dennett says:

Love is one of those phenomena that depend on their concepts, to put it oversimply for the time being. There are others; money is a clear instance. If everyone forgot what money was, there wouldn’t be any money anymore; there would be stacks of engraved paper slips, embossed metal disks, computerized records of account balances, granite and marble bank buildings — but no money: no inflation or deflation or exchange rates or interest — or monetary value. The very property of those variously engraved slips of paper that explains — as nothing else could — their trajectories from hand to hand in the wake of various deeds and exchanges would evaporate.

Basically I think he’s saying that things like money and love are things of the mind, concepts that come from the mind. How we act in relation to them is dependent on how we think of them, how we understand them. And we can disagree about our philosophies toward them, but there’s not some tangible non-psychological objective evidence in the outside world we can ever use as evidence to support our position. For other things, this is not true. The examples the author uses are diseases and earthquakes. Our understanding of those phenomena can and has changed through the years, but those phenomena remain the same. An earthquake doesn’t shake differently when you understand; but how you spend your money does change depending on how you understand it. Money’s very existence is dependent on our understanding of it.

Of course, the author is then planning to apply this concept to consciousness. Is consciousness more like love or an earthquake? The author will argue it’s more like love… but to me it seems a confusing question, and may require me to think differently about the concept. I’ve always thought of consciousness as a purely physical phenomena, right? What if love is understood as a purely physical phenomena, as an emergent property of chemicals moving around in the brain? Is love then like an earthquake?

The trouble is, creating this dividing line between things like love and money and things like earthquakes and diseases seems a bit fake. It’s like, there are these physical things that tangibly exist, and then there are concepts, emergent properties in the mind. Usually I’m OK with creating that dividing line, but consciousness sits right on it, it links the two. It leads to the philosophical questions of solipsism… everything you see, everything you feel, hear, sense, they are all physically in your mind… what is the nature of existence in general? It’s like asking on what side the dividing line is in relation to itself.

So I disagree with the author and would say that the question is invalid; it’s too oversimplified. Still, its implications are worth exploring, and oversimplifying may be necessary to get anywhere, so I’ll keep reading.

As I was reading this part of the book, I also thought, hmmmm, what about religion? Where would God fit into this? Is God like love or an earthquake?

Atheists and theists argue about whether or not God exists, but not about the nature of the existence of money (or at least don’t argue about it nearly as often). We don’t say that money isn’t real, though we do understand that it’s more a psychological concept than a tangible property of the world. We don’t say that money’s existence is relative to our beliefs, yet we have no problem in having different understandings of it.

Whether or not you believe in God, you’d probably believe that the nature of His existence doesn’t change with your beliefs, but how you act in life and towards God (or lack of God) and other people does depend on your beliefs.

So it’s like God is perpendicular to the dividing line between psychological concepts and tangible worldly concretes. Both theists and atheists treat the belief in God more like it’s an earthquake on some distant planet nobody can see, and that makes it like love, because that sort of understanding is all that’s left.

Confusing?

And then the question is: so what? What can we do with this way of thinking about the nature of the existence of God? Anything?

Perhaps understand that the dividing line itself doesn’t exist? That we are part of both understandings of the world, both psychological and physical beings, and, most importantly, that both understandings of the world are the same world? Can that understanding change the way we act?

Or, if you don’t feel like thinking about God, what about the nature of an objective difference between moral right and wrong? What about the nature of Truth itself?

Obviously, I don’t really know, and I’m really just confusing myself. Argh!

The author says on page 24 and 25:

If the concept of consciousness were to “fall to science,” what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were “reduced” somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy?

…

I am confident that these fears are misguided…

… let us remind ourselves of what has happened in the wake of earlier demystifications. We find no diminution of wonder; on the contrary, we find deeper beauties and more dazzling visions of the complexity of the universe than the protectors of mystery ever conceived.

Yes, yes, I agree, because I are smart. I’ve heard similar fears from composers and music lovers who think that if we could explain why we think certain melodies sound so beautiful then they might not sound beautiful anymore, as if the beauty is in the mystery of why it’s beautiful. A “we-murder-to-dissect” kinda thing, understanding it might kill the wonder of it. Nonsense! The only beauty I see in a mystery is born of the desire to solve it, to one day truly know.

By S P Hannifin, ago