Not literal magic but more like wonder. But if you read the links I posted you’d see how that doesn’t work. Even the parts about love especially, talking about how it’s just a chemical that facilitates survival and nothing more and how it’s something to transcend. You even posted that video about people waking up from illusions.
I even gave like 5 links that explained why romantic love is bad and limited and should be transcended. Just google: “beyond love, beyond human love, transcending human emotions, love beyond human limits, transcending love, etc”.
Came across this guy in a talk about how we get along with people who are not like us. His work is physics though, and he has a non-technical way of presenting it. He says we still have reconciled Relativity and Quantum, and maybe it’s our approach. For centuries science had an idea that we would come up with a list of exactly how everything is. Instead, he says we need the right “conceptual scheme” to best understand nature. We don’t need to be “attached to this misleading idea of there being an ultimate truth.”
“If this leaves you with a sense of emptiness about reality, that’s fair. But it’s precisely by knowing that our knowledge is limited that we are able to learn. Between absolute certainty and ignorance there’s all this interesting space in which we live.”
I like his reconciliation of philosophy and science too, “A philosopher who doesn’t think about science is not willing to engage with the knowledge we have… And a scientist who refuses to look at philosophy is trapped always in ways of thinking.”
Especially the section about the outside world and how our perception of it is entirely constructed by the brain. We don’t perceive reality or light or sound so much as experience the brains guess of what it is. It’s a controlled hallucination, much like the self (which is also part of it).
he might talk about a sense of freedom that comes from it but he doesn’t really offer much support for that claim.
Like…I’m giving evidence for my view about how the more you learn about reality the more impossible it is to be happy because it undermines the notions we have that make it so. You haven’t really given much counter evidence to that.
I’ve agreed with this from the beginning. We disagree on degree and how that construction happens. There isn’t consensus on that.
What else could we experience? We have senses, not some omni aware sense of the entire universe
He talks about what we can do, knowing that we don’t have a perfect picture of reality. You skip all that.
You have given no evidence for why you shouldn’t be happy, that’s your personal conclusion. Nor have you described how some type of knowledge would make you happy.
I believe you about the construction of reality. You keep acting like I don’t then arguing about not being happy as if that is the only possible conclusion. It’s not.
There is, I literally gave you video after video and link after link proving it…
Neuroscientist David Eagleman does not say the physical world doesn’t exist, but he argues that we never experience it directly. [1, 2]
He explains that our brains are locked in the dark vault of the skull and only interact with electrical signals. Therefore, our perception of color, sound, and shape is a “controlled hallucination” the brain constructs to help us navigate. In the outside world, these things don’t inherently exist; they are simply the brain’s internal interpretation of data like electromagnetic radiation and air pressure waves. [1, 2]
If you checked like section on the Subjective Consciousness link I told you about you’d see that the word “experience” is doing some heavy lifting.
I didn’t skip it, but he fails to understand that his advice doesn’t work in light of current neuroscience. He ID’s the problem but gets the solution wrong.
Again I give link after link that shows that neuroscience undermines the standards by which we live life happily. Perceiving reality is one of them, the experience of a self is another, the chemical nature of much of our emotions, the list goes on. You’re not really addressing them, just insisting they don’t matter.
I think you are underestimating the degree to which it is actually constructed, the video about the brain being a story teller proves it. Memory for example gets more and more distorted the more you recall something. In the Perception Deception video the middle segment on pain shows that it’s a construct of the brain.
I found the Perception Deception episode, but you accidentally linked to the end of “Who’s in Control?” I assume you watched this. It says all the things we’ve been saying:
“You can’t control everything that makes you who you are.”
So, we know that. Maybe not great news, but it leaves room for some control, and that there is a “you”.
“But, the unconscious you is still you.”
I can’t really add to that.
Then it talks about how most of the brain’s work is outside of consciousness, and that to excel at some things, like music, we have let go and tap into something commonly called “flow.”
And, the conclusion:
“It could be scary to say and scary to hear, but we are not just our own. We are all multifaceted and multi-dimensional people. And by becoming more aware of the unconscious processes in your own brain, you can become more aware of what drives you, and what you ultimately can control.”
I know I don’t appreciate the scariness, the thing that seems to terrify you and block you from being happy. We see the same science, but you take it to mean something that it doesn’t mean for me. This PBS doc, that you linked, says what we have accomplished these last couple of centuries is to become more aware of how we process the information from reality that filters through our bodies and brains. That, to me, is the path to greater control, greater awareness of ourselves and our universe, and greater happiness.
Modern neuroscience has unveiled remarkable and unexpected aspects of our minds (Gazzaniga 2011, p. 102):
The view in neuroscience today is that consciousness does not constitute a single, generalized process. It is becoming increasingly clear that consciousness involves a multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes, the products of which are integrated in a dynamic manner by the interpreter module [the conscious narrator in our brains]. Consciousness is an emergent property. From moment to moment, different modules or systems compete for attention and the winner emerges as the neural system underlying that moment’s conscious experience. Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly […].
This has unexpected consequences. The neurobiologist Robert Provine summarizes (quoted in Brockman [2015](Subjective Consciousness: What am I? | Springer Nature Link "Brockman, J.: This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress. HarperCollins, New York (2015).
"), p. 157):
We fancy ourselves intelligent, conscious, and alert, thinking our way through life. This is an illusion. We’re deluded by our brain’s generation of a sketchy, rational narrative of subconscious, sometimes irrational, or fictitious events that we accept as reality. These narratives are so compelling that they become common sense. […] Indeed, we may be passengers in our body, just going along for the ride and privy only to secondhand knowledge of our status, course, and destination.
Behavioral and brain science detect chinks in our synthetic, neurologically generated edifice of reality. Research on sensory illusions indicates that percepts are simply our best estimate of the nature physical stimuli, not a precise rendering of things and events. The image of our own body is an oddly shaped product of brain function. Memory of things past is also fraught with uncertainty; it is not the reading-out of information from the brain’s neurological data bank, but an ongoing construct subject to error and bias. The brain also makes decisions and initiates action before the observer is consciously aware of detecting and responding to stimuli.
In essence, everything in my personal subjective stream of consciousness is fabricated, especially my perception of the world “out there.” This gives rise to a momentous enigma—a truly existential puzzle. In the words of Chalmers ([2014](Subjective Consciousness: What am I? | Springer Nature Link "Chalmers, D.: How do you explain consciousness? TEDGlobal (2014).
")):
On the one hand, it’s a datum that we’re conscious. On the other hand, we don’t know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world. So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don’t yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically.
We have witnessed a breathtaking series of human dethronements, eclipsing the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions. Our theories of reality are contingent and constructed and so is our knowledge of the universe. The deeper we probe reality with our minds, the more questions emerge (Chap. 9). Indeed, reality itself turned out to be a radically different structure than our intuitions and beliefs would have let us imagine. There appears to be no foundation to it and it is an inherently elusive phenomenon. Notions of space, time, matter, and causality seem to crumble under closer inspection (Chap. 10). But the hardest blow comes perhaps from neuroscience. Incomprehensibly, our own sense of identity and freedom are illusions conjured up by unconscious subroutines in the brain. Consciousness is a post hoc narrator of decisions emerging from the vast non-conscious depths of the brain. My perception of the external world is an internal construction, akin to a simulation. In the final analysis, the current scientific worldview is telling me that I am fictitious and an anomaly incarnated in an otherwise incomprehensible and inaccessible physical reality. The Book of Nature (Chaps. 2 and 5) was a grand and elaborate farce. The most profound questions of existence:
Q1
What can I know?
Q2
What is reality?
Q3
What is consciousness?
now have very disheartening answers:
A1
Nothing.
A2
Inaccessible and/or illusionary.
A3
Illusionary.
Where do we go from here? The universe appears pointless, callous, hostile, and cruel for tricking us into believing the illusions of the self and the external world. The inquisitive human mind seems to have reached a dead end. Disenchanted and alienated it is left to its own devices, forever trapped in a stream of delusions.
But how inescapable is this conclusion? One fundamental question remains:
Could there be something we don’t yet know about ourselves and the universe, the knowledge of which could change everything?
Are we making erroneous assessments and coming to wrong conclusions because we are assuming a faulty worldview? If so, what needs to be adjusted in order to regain a fuller understanding of ourselves and the universe? This is the topic of Part III. A new existential foundation is explored, centered around information (Chap. 13) and a novel understanding of consciousness (Chap. 14). The final conclusion is presented in Chap. 15.
This is very unsettling. Not only are our perceptions of reality hallucinations, we can also never be sure about the nature of any experience we are having. In other words, the entirety of synthetic experiences—be they dreams, psychosis, or psychedelic trips—are indistinguishable from “real” experiences. In fact, experiencing a self and a world constitutes reality-independent consciousness.
Even this link saying common sense should be retired: Edge.org
We fancy ourselves intelligent, conscious and alert, and thinking our way through life. This is an illusion. We are deluded by our brain’s generation of a sketchy, rational narrative of subconscious, sometimes irrational or fictitious events that we accept as reality. These narratives are so compelling that they become common sense and we use them to guide our lives. In cases of brain damage, neurologists use the term confabulation to describe a patient’s game but flawed attempt to produce an accurate narrative of life events. I suggest we be equally wary of everyday, non-pathological confabulation and retire the common sense hypothesis that we are rational beings in full conscious control of our lives. Indeed, we may be passengers in our body, just going along for the ride, and privy only to second-hand knowledge of our status, course and destination.
Behavioral and brain science detects chinks in our synthetic, neurologically generated edifice of reality. Research on sensory illusions indicates that percepts are simply our best estimate of the nature of physical stimuli, not a precise rendering of things and events. The image of our own body is an oddly shaped product of brain function. Memory of things past is also fraught with uncertainty; it is not the reading-out of information from the brain’s neurological data bank, but an ongoing construct subject to error and bias. The brain also makes decisions and initiates action before the observer is consciously aware of detecting and responding to stimuli. My own research found that people confabulate narratives to rationalize their laughter, such as “It was funny,” or “I was embarrassed,” neglecting laughter’s involuntary nature and frequent contagiousness.
Not to mention there was a quote by Thomas Metzinger in the link about how he experienced a false awakening, when he woke from a dream only to wake up again and it still impacted him. I had that happen to me too and it was terrifying because I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming or not.
Eagleman calls the constant activity in the subconscious parts of the brain—steering much of the conscious decision making—alien subroutines (Eagleman 2011, p. 133):
Not only do we run alien subroutines; we also justify them. We have ways of retrospectively telling stories about our actions as thought the actions were always our idea. […] We are constantly fabricating and telling stories about the alien processes running under the hood.
In effect, the conscious self is relegated to the role of a grand narrator, without much actual power or control. Your conscious mind feels like the center of control, but, in fact, it is just retelling the stories of control it is hearing about (Eagleman 2016, p. 73):
Your brain serves up a narrative—and each of us believes whatever narrative it tells. Whether you’re falling for a visual illusion, or believing the dream you happen to be trapped in, or experiencing letters in color [i.e., synesthesia] , or accepting a delusion as true during an episode of schizophrenia, we each accept our realities however our brains script them.
Moreover, much of our mental makeup is contingent (Eagleman 2016, p. 76):
It’s not simply that you are attracted to humans over frogs or that you like apples more than fecal matter—these same principles of [evolutionary] hardwired thought guidance apply to all your deeply held beliefs about logic, economics, ethics, emotions, beauty, social interactions, love, and the rest of your mental landscape.
So yeah…kinda blows a hole in what makes for human happiness.
Nothing you have ever linked says that. Everything you link have statements of uncertainty, something that all science should. You keep posting the same stuff over and over, people presenting their incomplete arguments and stating the need for further study.
Of course we have. That’s progress. What would you like? To dial it back to some point of ignorance?
So, you agree. Every time I say this, you say I’m wrong and link another link.
Then what is doing all that processing?
And again, you miss your chance what to describe happiness is, or was, or could be.
This was a good summary. You jump around so much, maybe I have missed addressing some of these explicitly, so, here goes
I’m trying to take a broad look here, because I can’t figure out what it is you want, so I’m thinking about the history of humans. Most of our last two million years of evolution are undocumented, but cave paintings and figurines tell us we had thoughts about symbolism. Shamanic traditions have been passed on, so we know there has been this idea of something “beyond” our perception since before recorded history. Yet, people have led happy lives that entire time. Happiness comes and goes, sure, but knowing that we aren’t perceiving perfectly has not been a reason for unhappiness. Buddhism is explicit about knowing we don’t know, yet not letting that us cause suffering. For me “having my eyes opened” to a new reality, makes me happy.
The experience of self has also changed over time. When we early humans had fewer interactions, self was more about our relationships and our role in the group. Before Descartes, we didn’t think so much about “I”. The soul as defined by religion has never been right, but it’s something we feel. That’s a longer discussion about what spirituality is. In short, even though I know I am a body and brain, I feel a connection to everything. Neuroscience doesn’t take that away, it tries to understand it.
Chemicals, well, a lot of people have been diagnosed with a chemical imbalance that causes them anxiety and depression. They’ve been happy those chemicals could be adjusted. But, that’s not the end of it. Once the weight of depression begins to lift, the person needs to talk, to find people and things that make them laugh, they need to discover happiness. It doesn’t just flow from the heavens.
I don’t think I’ve ever insisted none of those matter. I think I’ve asked you to make a logical connection between them and unhappiness.
