Ornoth

I really enjoyed reading “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain” by neuroscientist David Eagleman, so much so that I’ll probably return to it again and again as time goes by.

It is an interesting overview of the current state of our knowledge about the brain, and Eagleman’s views on the implications both for society as well as for the individual.

One of his premises is that most of the things that make us who we are occur below the level of conscious thought. We already knew that vast swaths of the brain control autonomic behavior, but Eagleman asserts that more of the things we consider “us”—including our behavior, beliefs, motivations, and what we are allowed to think—are learned and burned into the brain’s circuitry at a level that is simply inaccessible to conscious inspection, modification, or control.

To paraphrase the popular philosopher Hamlet, “There are more things in your speech and behavior, Horatio, than are thought up in your consciousness.”

I find this dovetails nicely with the Buddhist belief that the unexamined life is ruled by long-established habit patterns from our past, and that most of our behavior is a straightforward, linear result of the coming together of conditions: specifically the intersection of those established personality patterns with the external conditions we find ourselves in.

Amusingly, this echoes something I theorized a good 30 years ago. In a document I titled “Orny’s Hypotheses”, entry number one reads as follows:

No organized religion can never reflect the true beliefs of its nominal adherents, for each such individual must learn the tenets of the religion from an external source and accept them without any possible reservation. In truth, individuals cannot consciously modify or mold their beliefs; faith comes from within the individual, and what is in his heart is his true faith, no matter what his professed faith. This faith may be discovered through introspection and be consciously acknowledged or it may remain hidden in the subconscious of the individual. One cannot decide what one believes, merely discover it, although this does not prohibit change in beliefs over time.

Getting back to Eagleman, his view of the human mind differs greatly from the popular conception of a single conscious entity. He regards the brain as what he terms “a team of rivals”. In his mind, the brain has different factions, each of which wants to influence the mind’s single output channel: our behavior. Even the language is familiar to us: we’re “of two minds” because part of us wants to eat that bowl of ice cream, but part of us says we shouldn’t. Rather than a unified single computing machine, the brain is more like a parliament or a family. But your conscious mind is only made aware of this when there’s an unresolvable conflict between factions that requires an arbiter, when a decision needs to be made.

All this sounds like Eagleman has a dim view of our vaunted concept of free will. We think we’re in control of our body and our mind and our personality, but that is largely false. Freedom—choosing to think and act in ways that are not influenced (if not determined) by our biological, chemical, and material makeup—is an illusion.

Eagleman diverges briefly into a discussion of the implications this has for criminal justice, based as it is on guilt, blameworthiness, and personal responsibility. For most people, there is an ethical difference between a responsible person committing a premeditated crime and someone whose brain chemistry causes them to perform socially proscribed actions. As we understand the brain better, our justice system should drop such outdated concepts as blame, responsibility, and punishment in favor of altering the criminal’s conditioning and mental habits such that in the future they will act in accordance with the law.

The thread that most interests me in Eagleman’s book is his demonstration that who you are and what you think is extremely closely tied to the chemical and biological state of your brain. He illustrates how easily the brain can be changed by various means: narcotics, viruses, genetics, neurotransmitters, hormones. We tend to think that we all share the same basic brain function and capacity, but that’s very much not true. We aren’t even guaranteed that our own brain performs consistently from day to day. And those changes can have dramatic effects upon our personality, outlook, opinions, speech, and behavior.

At the same time, Eagleman isn’t a strict material reductionist. While we are inseparable from our physical componentry, he views consciousness as a kind of emergent property that might indeed be something greater than the sum of its parts. But the parts are a whole lot more important than we’ve been led to believe.

For me, the book prompted a lot of soul-searching (or mind-searching). It brings up the idea that the ego—the self—is ultimately nothing more than a very convincing illusion. In that respect, I must admit that it’s a much more accessible introduction to that concept than all the esoteric writings and talks I’ve seen regarding the Buddhist concept of not-self.

Most people have a visceral reaction against the idea that who we are is wholly determined by this three-pound bag of neurons. After all, their sense of self is real and immediate, and giving up that view comes with a very powerful sense of loss. Perhaps future humans will equate those emotions with what people felt back in the 17th century when Galileo’s observations disproved the Ptolomaic view that Earth was the center of the universe.

Over time, that earlier fall from primacy opened our eyes to the incomprehensible scale and majesty of the solar system, our galaxy, and the known universe. If neuroscience winds up evicting our conscious minds from the central seat of our internal world, it will simultaneously reveal the brain’s truly incomprehensible complexity and renew our sense of wonder at the unbelievable natural achievement that is the human mind.

I’d like to know “what you think”.

As noted earlier in this journal, I've recently embarked upon a study of philosophy in an attempt to validate and possibly extend my own personal belief system. Having found little of interest outside my core philosophy, which owes a great deal to my existentialist readings in high school, I decided to proceed with a more in-depth study of the existentialists, to see how their opinions supported and supplemented my own. To that end, I recently finished reading Walter Kaufmann's "Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre", which includes the original writings of several of existentialism's most prominent thinkers, including, in addition to the ones named in the book's title, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, Camus, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Karl Jaspers.

What follows is a general discussion of the points where I felt most in agreement with the ideas that were presented, along with attributed quotes.

What is Philosophy?

One of the points which I most agreed with was Jaspers' concept of philosophy. He states that philosophy is not an obscure intellectual exercise, but that it is the natural outcome of life when lived with reflection and thought. Furthermore, he argues that it by definition a very individual thing, not an aligning of oneself with pre-existing doctrines. Kaufmann's introduction describes Jaspers' "conviction that genuine philosophizing must well up from a man's individual existence".

Jaspers:
Philosophical thought is a practical activity ... Philosophizing ... is not a profession or application of a doctrine, but the practice of being human.

What is Work?

Nietzsche had some wonderful things to say about work, and how distracting it can be.

Nietzsche:
Behind the glorification of "work" and the tireless talk of the "blessings of work" I find ... the fear of everything individual. At bottom, one now feels when confronted with work -- and what is invariably meant is relentless industry from early till late -- that such work is the best policy, that it keeps everybody in harness and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. For it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, brooding, dreaming, worry, love, and hatred; it always sets a small goal before one's eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions.

Nietzsche may sound like a slacker who expects his parents (or patrons, in the case of 19th century philosophers) to support an idle lifestyle, but what he's really trying to say is that being overworked isn't conducive to philosophical reflection, and that the preoccupation with work has been used as a way to suppress individuality. And all this was written nearly 125 years ago!

What is God/Faith?

One of my own personal beliefs is that only the deluded can have any degree of certainty about the answers to life's great philosophical questions. Because "faith" is the belief in something for which there is no proof, by definition "faith" cannot be used as evidence of the existence of God. Nietzsche was particularly skeptical about the existence of God and the motives behind those who believe.

Nietzsche:
Weariness that wants to read the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

Nietzsche:
'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true.

Stevie Wonder:
When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer; superstition ain't the way.

For Nietzsche, faith in God equated to inability to face the hard facts of life and the needfulness of taking responsibility for one's life's purpose. Sartre, of course, saw the whole question of God's existence as somewhat meaningless.

Sartre:
Even if God existed that would make no difference ... we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.

Sartre:
We are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point.

Sartre, like Nietzsche, clearly believes that those who seek God are on an absurd, futile quest. From his refutation of diety and its pertinence, he derives a very clear conclusion.

Sartre:
The existentialist ... finds it extremely embarassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven ... Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior.

Does the concept of absolute, objective ethics die in the absence of God? Not necessarily, but it does erode most of the validity of the objectivist's position. With no God, there is no governor on man's behavior, and there are no ethics save for what we create or adopt. This is the heart of existentialism's subjectivity.

What is Life?

Those who dismiss existentialism rarely get beyond those two points and their negative implications. What a dreary, scary place the existentialist must live in! However, the existentialists themselves disagree. Life has its own meaning.

Dostoevsky:
Although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life.

Kafka:
That life lends itself to many different interpretations is of its essence.

Laibach:
Life is life.

What is Man?

Okay, what do the existentialists suggest we do with our lives, since they are apparently without any cosmic meaning?

Sartre:
At bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is -- is it not? -- that it confronts man with a possibility of choice.

Ortega:
Man ... has to make his own existence at every single moment. ... Man is the entity that makes itself. ... whether he be original or a plagarist, man is the novelist of himself. I am free by compulsion, whether i wish to be or not.

Devo:
Freedom of choice
Is what you've got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want

Basically, the answer they provide is that you have the freedom to decide what meaning your life is going to have. Or, rather, you are forced to decide what your life's meaning will be. What really surprises me is that people criticize existentialism as pessimistic, then are willing to turn around trade this basic, yet incredibly empowering freedom in exchange for a hope in an afterlife that has to be taken purely on blind faith. It's entirely their choice, but abdicating their freedom of choice doesn't seem like a very attractive or rational alternative to me!

From this, we understand that a man's life is almost entirely of his own making. Sartre takes great pains to highlight that this is an immense responsibility -- one that that most people never accept.

Sartre:
Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism ... Man is responsible for what he is. This, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders.

Sartre:
From the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does ... Man is responsible for his passion ... Man is therefore, nothing else but the sum of his actions.

In the middle there hides an interesting point: Sartre believes that a man is entirely responsible for his emotions, as well as his rational acts -- that his emotions are controllable affectations.

But the overall message is one of complete freedom to create meaning in a world that has no inherent meaning. How this is a pessimistic philosophy, I don't know.

Is Existentialism Pessimistic?

Well, that depends on what matters to you. Too many people focus on existentialism's atheism, subjectivity, and denial of an afterlife. However, existentialism provides man with the ultimate in freedom in how to live his life as he chooses, and focuses us on making the most of each moment as we experience it. Rather than a depressing, fatalistic philosophy, existentialism can be an incredibly powerful, liberating mode of thought.

Kaufmann:
Secular existentialism is a tragic world view without, however, being pessimistic.

Jaspers:
Nietzsche ... found in atheism not simply a loss but rather the greatest opportunity.

Jaspers (speaking of both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche):
At the limits of life's possibilities came not any heavy seriousness, but rather a complete lightness as the expression of their knowledge.

Nietzsche, as well as Sartre in his concise and insightful "Existentialism is a Humanism", both agree: existentialism is not a philosophy of despair. While they see mankind's state as absurd and somewhat tragic, it's clear that they would have agreed with my 2/24 entry "Philosophy for Dummies" that asserted that nihilism does not need to produce distress, pessimism, or despair.

Amusingly, as I compose this, I am participating in a conversation with Inna. When I teased her about having a mid-life crisis, she asked if I were having a mid-life crisis. My philosophical reply?

Ornoth:
I'm an existentialist; life is a crisis.

By which, of course, I meant something specific. Typically, a mid-life crisis is brought about when someone realizes that they've been living on autopilot, and because their days are dwindling, they change their life to make the most out of the moment. As an existentialist, I believe that all of life should be lived in such a way: treasuring each day, living fully in the moment, and saturating yourself with experience. Death is real and unavoidable, and all of life is a form of "mid-life" crisis. Your life's span is all that you are given; that's a wonderful gift, and you should enjoy it to its fullest!

So what's the concluding statement about "Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre"? Well, there have been some insights along the way, but they're very much limited to fine-tuning of the philosophy that I've derived from my own experience of life. Still, it's a good thing to examine those values periodically, lest you forget what the grand old man said:

Socrates:
The unexamined life is not worth living.