Mind Body

There is no mind-body problem any more than there is a program-computer or software-hardware problem. The original mind-body problem was that of early philosophers inability to reconcile the apparent immaterial nature of the mind with the physical nature of the body.

Now we 'know' that, like computer software, there are different ways to view the same thing. Software running on a computer can be though of either the way we programmers usually think of it, just as a running program 'in' the computer, or as electrons running around transistor gates on a chip.

For evidence of this nature consider the various methods of brain scanning that indicate that different specific areas of the physical brain are active during specific kinds of activities. This indicates that particular activities by the so-called nonphysical mind have a predictable (to a degree) and repeatable effects on the brain.

In the reverse direction, there are many methods of brain stimulation (ranging from transcrainial magnetic to direct, open-skull electrical and chemical stimulation) that have repeatble and (somewhat) predictable effects on both the body and the mind of the subject.

One could postulate that there is some unknown mechanism that forms a link between the substance of the brain and the 'nonphysical' mind, and that this mechanism translates causes between the two seperate entities, however, there isn't any experimental evidence that leads us to that conclusion. Our experiments pretty clearly point to the brain being, in part, the physical substrait of the mind, in the same sense that a computer chip can be the physical substrait of a computer program.

This is not to say that we understand in detail how what we call the 'self' arises from the activity of the brain, or even that we know most of the details about how the physical processes in the brain function. Just that there is evidence that the 'mind' is one aspect of the functions the brain provides.

On Religion, Part the First

As an atheist and minor philosopher, I occasionally find myself defending or explaining my belief system to others. Recently I've undertaken a background task of writing up a document explaining in detail my position and belief system. In it I will attempt to address all major questions and attacks against my position. Currently the major focus is religion, since most of the major discussions I find myself in are in regards to why I do not believe that gods exist. Part of the reason for this document is simply to be sure that my reasoning is sound. I can ensure that I understand the subject by exploring it in depth in this way.

I try not to hold a position simply because I believe it to be right, I want to hold a position because I have good reasons for it. I believe that 'having faith' in something should be limited to the smallest possible subset of ideas, similar to the concept of axioms in the field of mathematics. I also try to avoid contradictions and inconsistancies. While I recognize that it is valid to choose to allow contradiction and inconsistancy in one's personal philosophy, my personality requires that I choose to eliminate these things to the extent that I am able to do so. I don't mean to indicate that all of life can be reduced to cold logic, just that it is the basic tool of reason, and that reason is one of my goals.

The following is an excerpt from my paper, currently titled simply "On Religion". It is a statement of my position in regard to religious beliefs. What I ask of the reader (indeed, if there are any), is to read the excerpt and report to me if it makes sense; is it a clear and understandable statement of position?

My belief, and the position I am defending is that of the 'weak atheist'. The term 'weak' in this context does not refer to the strength of my conviction, but rather to the type of claim I am making. Atheism is literally 'without belief in gods'. The people who fall into this category fall into two camps, those like myself who are simply without belief in gods, 'weak' atheists, and those who, in addition to not having a belief in gods, also make the claim that gods do not or cannot exist. The latter is the 'strong' position. The term 'agnostic' refers to people who believe that we do not or cannot have knowledge necessary to know if gods do or do not exist. I am agnostic in that I do not believe that the existence or non existence of gods can be proven.

At first one might think that it does not make sense to call oneself both agnostic and atheist. However, the two terms are not at odds. Agnostisism tells us what someone believes about the 'provability' of the existance of gods, not about which belief he holds about the existance of gods. A claim of theism or atheism tells us that someone does or does not have a belief in the existance of gods. A strong atheist cannot be agnostic, as he claims to know that gods do n0t exist. A weak atheist may or may not be an agnostic. One could not have a belief in gods (weak atheist), and also believe that the existance of gods is provable (not agnostic), or that the existance of gods is not provable (agnostic). Of course, one who is agnostic does not have to be an atheist, he may believe that gods exist, and simply believe that they cannot be proven to exist; this would be an agnostic theist. I would suppose that many theists fall into this category, if god could be proven to exist then what need would there be for faith?

There it is. Comments? Note that this document is not intended to follow any rigorous format. The intention is strictly to communicate my thoughts on the matter in a comprehensible way, so its likely I will get off on tangents when explaining points.

8 Minutes to.. well, Something

I stopped by the library this weekend and checked out the 8 Minute Meditation
book that my many (har) readers may recall me mentioning in an earlier entry. While I was at the library I took about 5 minutes to skim about 80% of the book, and it seemed promising. Last night before bed I read the whole thing. I didn't get much more out of it than I got skimming it. The content is pretty spread out, lots of repetition. It advocates an 8 week program of daily 8 minute meditation sessions. Each week introduces a new technique.

I've been working on my meditation on and off for about 8 years, so I've pretty much mastered all the techniques in the book, but it does have some interesting ideas about active meditation. One suggestion is to wash a dish. Basicly each step of the process is done slowly and deliberately, while keeping a quite mind and just enjoying the here-and-now. I've done this in the past with many activities, often with vacuuming or when driving home from work. I didn't realize it was a well-known technique :)

Sometimes I'm not sure what I'm accomplishing when I meditate. Over the years my ADD-like mental behaviour has caused me to develop this idea that if I'm not actively thinking about something useful then I'm wasting time. I have a very hard time not doing anything. So if I just happen to veg on the couch for a while I sometimes feel like I'm wasting time that I could be using to doing something productive. It is for thise reason that I don't often get in long meditation practice. I generally use meditation as an aid for getting to sleep. When I lay down I clear my mind and 'just be'. Since I've been practicing this for many years I can generally fall asleep in less than a couple of minutes. Curiously, this hasn't affected my waking meditation, when I meditate I don't feel like its nap-time (as part of the structure I've set for myself, I treat the bed as the only place that I sleep, and I don't get in it unless I intend to sleep, which probably helps). I suppose I ought to start trying to set a time to do it properly every day to see if I can get some more out of it.

My Kingdom for a Cheap, Efficent Vehicle

As a terminal Do-It-Yourselfer and sustainable living advocate (I'm not one of those earthy-crunchy people, but I think we should strive for steady-state existence), it frustrates me that its so difficult to live both economically and ecologically frugal manner. I've been slowly switching over to compact flourescent light bulbs to save electrical power (my electric clothes dryer isn't helping with that project), but its hard to find other places to conserve.

The engine in one of my cars seized recently (a seal I put in poorly last time I did a repair failed and dumped the oil), so I'm considering riding my bicycle to work. Its only 7 miles, which is within my physical capability (and with gasoline pushing 2.50 a gallon even the 28mpg the other car gets commuting is getting pricy), but unfortunately the roads that go where I need to go are under construction. Granted, my bicycle is a nice 21-speed mountain bike with front and rear shocks, so it can handle the lack of road sholders on which to ride, but off-roading would be a bit too much work before work. No showers available and all that. What ever happend to putting sidewalks in a city?

I'd like to reduce the costs for keeping the house cool, but it seems that people who design houses don't live in houses. Lighting is poor, air circulation is nearly impossible, no thought is given to appliance placement (ok, washer/dryer are upstairs, but who's idea is it to put something that uses water by carpet without including a floor drain? And what idiot thought that running a narrow pipe through the wall for the dryer vent? How are you supposed to clean that when it gets all coated in lint? That thing should be removable for cleaning). For a high-tech society we sure have a lot of crappy stuff.

I'm a liberal kinda guy, I think the government ought to provide a few essential services, but mostly concern itself with staying out of the way. But for some important things, it needs to take a much stronger stance. I'd sure like to get a nice, eco-friendly car, but it would cost me tens of thousands of dollars, plus more than a hundred bucks monthly for insurance. I can buy a piece of crap car for 200 bucks plus 30 bucks monthly for insurance. Until gasoline hits about 15 bucks a gallon it'll be a better deal to go with used cars and continue to dump formerly-sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere. I think lots of people are in the same position. There are so many cars already on the road that it will take many, many decades to get them off the road. What we need is not new electric vehicles. What we need is stuff like bio-diesel, fuel thats made from carbon thats already in the biosphere. We'll be dumping it back into the atmosphere, but at least it won't be adding to the problem while we do make the slow switch to more efficent vehicles.

Why can't I get an ultra-cheap, efficent commuter vehicle? I just need to get to work every day in a reasonable amount of time, without being exposed to the weather all the time. I don't need a 3000 pound, 150 horsepower beast to get me there. I little motorcycle would be great, except it would suck in the rain and snow. And besides that, they don't call them "donor-cycles" for nothing.

We've all been hearing how we're ruining the environment. Most of us would be happy to use more efficent stuff, if only we could get hold of it without having to take out loans. We get a little legislation once in a while, but corporate lobbiests usually neuter it before it gets very far. We need some real leadership. Laws with teeth. It would be expensive, but I'll take economic slowdowns if it gets us real environmental reform.

Don't even get me started on nuclear power.

Bonk! Karol? Karol? Karol?

Well, seems like everywhere I turn lately its news about the Pope. It's kinda weird, having something like that come to an end after so long. As an athiest I don't have any particular affinity for the man, so I can only imagine how this affects many Catholics.

Since I don't pay much attention to the Church and its activities, nor much to political activities or recent European history, I didn't really have much of an idea of how Pope John Paul II had affected the world. Obviously any pope is important and in a powerful position, but in order to expand my horizons I watched a few of the specials that are playing on the cable channels. Turns out this guy was pretty remarkable. Regardless of what one thinks of his beliefs (obviously at odds with my own), he certainly had a large impact on the political world. Who knows where Poland and Germany would be if he'd hidden away in the Vatican like some other Popes.

Sure, he made some dumb mistakes (birth control, woman priests, poor handling of abuse issues, etc), but I guess when you work big, sometimes ya gotta fail big too.

Maybe the next guy is will be more of an organizer. Evidently John Paul II was a performer, knew how to play the political games and how to get people to react. But he wasn't so good at managing a large organization, and the Church has suffered for it. Thirty percent fewer men are entering the priesthood, causing availability problems, and yet women are still denied access. On the other hand, they money is still pouring in, so I guess they're still doing something right.

It would be great if the church would reverse its stance on birth control and women priests. Both because those things are right for todays society IMO, and because I hope that major changes in church position like that might encourage believers to see that its not a god thats handing down the rules, but a man. Sure, it can be explained away just like anything else (God will make the policy changes that are right for His Plan when it is time to do so, regardless of wether or not we mere men can understand), but maybe the more cynical of them will see it as a clue.

Not that I think my path of rationality is the only way; how boring would the world be if there were only one belief system? But it sure would be nice if more people would adhere to a more social beneficial ethical system (not to mention more environmentally friendly ).

I'm rambling, its late, and I don't think I'm making sense anymore. Presuming I started out making sense. Eh. Thats all I got.

Fools and Their Money

Some days all it takes to restores one's faith in the entrepreneur in the more creative of us is a quick visit to Ebay.

For example, this incredible 3 generation stone is fetching quite a price.

The item description says "this stone will bring peace to all parts of your life". If it doesn't, perhaps something like this would come in handy.

Some day I aspire to extract money from fools as well as some of the artists one encounters on Ebay.

Here it comes.

It is my believe that its too late.

Its not that we don't have the technological ability.

Its not that we don't have the economic ability.

Its just that we who care are too few, too late.

One fine summer day in the midwest when I was a child of about 10 a friend and I were walking down the street near my house when I saw that a man tending lawns had parked his truck and neglected to set the parking break. While the road was mostly flat, the very slight slope had allowed the vehicle to begin very slowly rolling backwards down the street, toward some unsuspecting trashbags on the curb. The owner of the vehicle was running a string trimmer and was oblivious to the situation as he could not hear my warning cries. I went to the slowly moving truck and mustered all the strength in my then-85lb frame in a futile attempt to slow its course. I was, of course, bowled aside, slowly. I then stood sheepisly by and watched as the truck continued on its way toward the hapless trashbags. A few moments before the collision, which was now as obvious as it had been inevitable, the owner of the truck came dashing down the street in a desperate attempt to stop his lethargicly rampaging equipment. Although he made a valiant attempt, sprinting through the late summer afternoon, he was simply too late. The vehicle collided with the turgid white bags, goring them with a sooty exaust pipe, slowly stretching and tearing asunder their filmy skins before dragging their distorted forms along the cooling black asphault, leaving behind a gory trail of damp coffee grounds and greasy black banana peels

The report.

If you don't feel like reading any of the 2500 pages of the report, which was compiled by 1300 researchers from 92 nations, don't feel bad. Nobody else will either.

A New Season

So, its almost Easter again. As an athiest the Christian celebration of Easter doesn't mean much to me, but as a cultural point of reference it feels like something that I should be a part of. I've decided that from now on I'll treat it as a celebration of the changing of the seaons. Sometimes I wish I lived close to a place where those tree-hugging, earthy-crunchy people live, they usually have nice fresh perspectives on celebrations like this. So I think I'll starting having a small party at the times of the solstice and equinox. We'll offer burnt animal sacrifice, burn pungent incense and consume lots of beer. Yah, right, IOW, grill some steak, have some good cigars and drink beer.

Today was uneventful, but good. I played video games with the kids, took them to the library, skimmed through a book called '8 minute meditation' or something similar, colored Easter.. er, I mean, Vernal Equinox eegs with colored pencils and dye, printed some photos from Christmas.. er, I mean Winter Solstice vacation (I can see that this is going to take some getting used to), and made a short entry on this blog thing. As if anyone besides myself cares. But thats not really the point.

The meditation book was interesting. The author claims that the daily 8 minute meditation sessions he advocates are sufficent to achieve the 'be here now' state (for lack of a better term. This could probably also be described as the Clear Light or any number of other terms). He spends quite a bit of time on the initial stages, wherein one is attempting to clear one's mind of subvocalized thought. Fortunately my on-again-off-again meditation practices have made me quite proficent with this already. The book describes this in terms of 'catch and release', but I found more effective the Buddhist concept of picturing oneself as a mountain and the occasional thought as a small cloud scuttling by. The mountain is unaffected by and soon left behind by the cloud. The author goes on with several other meditation techniques, most of which I found farily intuitive, or designed to allow one to more effectively disregard physical discomfort. Unfortunately I didn't get to the last section of the book in which he describes some possibly interesting combinations of techinques. I'll skim that section next time I'm at the library.

A few months ago I stopped by a local spa and took a half-hour soak in their flotation tank. This is basicly a bathtub 4 feet wide and tall and 8 feet long, filled with 96degF water that has been saturated with an epsom or sea salt solution to increase bouyance. The inside of the tank is black and sealed against external light and sound. When immersed in the water one's body floats like a cork, with the ears just submerged. The conditions are highly effective at isolating one from sensory input. By remaining still with arms over the chest or above the head (if left at the sides the elbows tend to rise and twist out at an awkward angle that quicks makes the sholders unconfortable) I found that conditions were perfect for deep meditation. It was interesting that I found it difficult to meditate with eyes open, although it was just as dark outside as inside my eyelids. Near as I can tell my brain knows when my eyes are shut and when they are what I percieve as visual input switches from what my eyes see to some kind of internal screen. Its hard to describe. The blackness I see with eyes open in a dark place is different from that of closing my eyes. I suppose its common, so I expect the reader probably knows what I mean. Since I always practice my meditation with closed eyes I found it impossible to achieve a deep state of meditation with my eyes open, even in this very isolated place. Eventually I started to get board. I generally don't meditate longer than 15 or 20 minutes, so I'd guess that no more than 10 had passed before I started to get ansy. I found that the body seems to start to get starved for input after a while. Not anticipating this I figited enough to give it the necessary input. I believe that next time I'll have to exert better control and remain absolutely motionless. The isolation tank did not assist in bringing about an easier 'clear-light' state (a state I rarely reach in meditation, I think I've reached it maybe 4 times in several years). I think that with some practice with the tank it would be a fairly powerful meditation aid (not to mention being a highly effective relaxation device). With more time I'm quite certain one would start to see the hallucinations or visions often attributed to isolation tanks of this sort.

It concerns me when people who experiance hallucinations, be they induced by drugs or physical rigors or isolation, take their visions at face value. Rather than considering that their mind is 'playing tricks' or is simply not working as they are used to, people frequently will leap to what I consider to be unfounded conclusions. For example, experiances of perceiving a god-like being are not uncommon. Some people take this as evidence of the existence of such a being. However, the same individual will disregard similar induced effects, such as 'breathing' of walls or crawling of the grain patterns in wood. Why accept one as real and one as imagined? A sense of the profound is also very common. Often this sense is taken as evidence that one is seeing 'Truth' or the divine. I rather think that it is this sense that takes even the most mundane bits of existance and lends to them the sense of profound truth. Often as one returns to normalcy one can't remember exactly what it was that was so profound. I believe it is because nearly everything was, and so there was no one thing to recall, no special thing one can point to and say, 'there, that is the thing that holds the Truth of the universe'. For some, this might point to the idea that it is indeed everything that holds this truth. I rather believe that it is an artifact of our mental processes. Sometimes these experiances are called 'mind expanding'. But I wonder. Might it be instead that they are mind reducing? Our normal mental processes are capable of grasping an incredible amount of information with very little effort on our part. But if one were to reduce that capacity to the point where only one single, fundamental fact could be retained, what would that feel like? I think it would be a single spark of being that hung on to that one defining property: 'I Am'. Beyond that point lies only the unconscious mind, capable of action and reaction, but not of self-awareness. Balancing oneself on the edge of this abyss this one single idea, 'I Am' fills everything and would be quite profound. I wonder if we as infants experiance a transition from unthinking thing to self awareness at some point.

The Reason for Existence.

Well, that sounds very profound doesn't it?

The sole purpose for the existence of this blog is to allow me to post to other blogs that do not allow anonymous posts.