Epilogue: The Quandary Jim DeLeo

1
Epilogue The Quandary Jim DeLeo

• The idea that the human brain is a physical
  structure obeying physical laws made him loopy.
• Is consciousness an outcome of physical laws?
• Either answer leads to disturbing unacceptable
  consequences.
• Dualism posits consciousness an invisible,
  immeasurable, undetectable aspect of the universe
  possessed by certain entities.
• Dualism gives rise to notions of self and
  others.

2
Hi! Im Serge Prokofiev.
3

• His wife, Carol died recently.
• He played Serge Prokofievs 1st violin concerto
  at her funeral.
• Carol adored this music.
• It provoked ascending soul imagery.
• He can fall for such imagery yet in rational
  moments it makes no sense.
• Dualism leads to a long list of unanswerable
  questions (Chapter 22).
• The belief that consciousness obeys physical laws
  is simpler and appeals to scientific minds.

4

• In the introduction he wrote of the miraculous
  appearance of selves and souls in substances
  consisting of inanimate matter.
• This model supports a nondualistic view by
  allowing both animate and inanimate objects.

inanimate
animate
low-level particles
high-level cerebrum
5

• Animate entities exhibit some level of loopiness
  recognized by ability for abstraction.
• Full bloom when self-representation appears.
• Self-representation is a story told by the entity
  to itself in which the entitys I plays the
  staring role, as a unitary causal agent driven by
  a set of desires.
• The above idea is supported in Minskys book The
  Emotion Machine.
• An entity is animate to the degree that such a
  loopy I pattern comes into existence.
• This is not all or none but fuzzy.

6

• If there is an I pattern there is animacy.
• If there is no I pattern the entity is
  inanimate.
• Now the hard question Where does me-ness come
  from.
• He mentions nonphysical dualism.
• Is there a nonmaterial soul that lives outside
  the laws of physics?
• What could make a mere physical pattern be me?
• David Chalmers calls this The Hard Problem.
• There never has been an answer.
• John Searle says computer can never be conscious.

7

• Theres magic in these self-reflecting,
  self-defining patterns.
• You ad I are mirages who perceive themselves, and
  the sole magical machinery behind the scene is
  perception the triggering by hugh flows of
  data, of a tiny set of symbols that stand for
  abstract regularities in the world.
• We human beings are macroscopic structures in a
  universe whose laws reside at at microscopic
  level. As survival-seeking beings we are driven
  to seek efficient explanations that make
  reference only to entities at our own level.

8

• We draw conceptual boundaries around that which
  we easily perceive and create our reality
  staring the I,
• This I is shorthand for that which we are
  unaware.
• We live in a state of blessed ignorance and
  marvelous enlightenment.
• We self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in
  mirages are little miracles of self-reference.
• Our nature prevents us from understanding our
  nature.

9

• We give up our childlike sense of things being as
  they appear for an appreciation of how wildly
  different we are from what we seem to be.
• To him the loss is worth the gain.

10
Hi, Im Ambrose Bierce and I define philosophy
as a route of many roads leading from nowhere to
nothing.
11
Hi, Im Eckhart Tolle and I want to say that
the majority of scientists are not creative not
because they dont know how to think, but because
they dont know how to stop thinking.
12
Hi, Im Carl Leonard and I just want to say
never argue with a crazy person because when you
do its not so clear to bystanders who the crazy
person is.
13
Philosophy Strictly for amusement.
Engineering We build useful things here often
from inspirations from philosophy.
14
A cage went in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
15
Dougie! This is God. You think too much! Stop
it!
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
Thats all folks!
20
Thats all folks! Its time to ascend.
21
I am a Strange Loop
I
by Douglas Hofstadter
22
Gerald McLaughlinCh 13 The Elusive Apple of My
"I" Ch 14 Strangeness in the "I" of the
Beholder Ch 15 Entwinement Nada VydelingumCh
16 Grappling with the Deepest Mystery Ch
17 How We Live in Each Other Ch 18 The Blurry
Glow of Human Identity Bill MooreCh 19
Consciousness Thinking Ch 20 A Courteous
Crossing of Words Ch 21 A Brief Brush with the
Cartesian Egos Ellen BicknellCh 22 A
Tango with Zombies and Dualism Ch 23
Killing a Couple of Sacred Cows Ch 24 On
Magnanimity and Friendship Jim DeLeo Epilogue
The Quandary

• Jim DeLeo
• Introduction
• Preface The Author and His Book
• Prologue An Affable Locking of
• Horns
• Jerry Chandler
• Ch 1 On Souls and their Sizes
• Ch 2 This Teetering Bulb of Dread
• and Dawn
• Ch 3 The Causal Potency of
• Patterns
• Kim Thompson
• Ch 4 Loops, Goals, and Loopholes
• Ch 5 On Video Feedback
• Ch 6 Of Selves and Symbols
• Chuck Selden
• Ch 7 The Epi Phenomenon
• Ch 8 Embarking on a Strange-Loop