Our World can often seem a special place. In recent posts we have been exploring this Sensation and Judgement (See posts: The Strange Sensation and An Enchanted World). In this post let me present another outstanding case; for really, everyday and every moment is itself a bedazzlement of consciousness.

Let me quickly interject, this efflorescence (to use William Blake’s word) of the world around us is Not always a pleasant thing. I seek to avoid the status of “Pollyanna.” Often the world is lit in tragedy and pain but even then, it is our world, our Quality-Filled panoramic creation. As several philosophers and psychologists have testified, as much as the Natural Scientific Description of the world holds, Our Practical Vision and Belief in the world will be at least Something More or Other Than that hard science description.

Philosopher and theorist extraordinaire, Dan Dennett has championed what has become known as “Illusionism.” The theory that Evolution has created and sanctioned for us a highly oversimplified, but efficient, take on the world. Let’s face it, our Common Sense approach to the world ‘chunks’ microscopic things in very peculiar and interesting ways— like persons, animate things, macroscopic functioning solids (like carbon and washing machines), liquids (like Chardonnay and water), gases (like oxygen and ‘air’). This way of seeing Phenomena has not done too badly. We have science, democratic rights and values, art and The Ohio State Buckeye football team. Granted, that characterization of Common Sense is selective; Common Sense is also full of bull shit, like belief in gods, ghosts, most Republican Party politics, and sasquatch. Common Sense, though, is also always under the process of revision.

The goal, here at naturereligionconnection, is to update and rationalize Common Sense. This will involve a demystification of many concepts, such as free will, value, quality, reason, personhood and nature. We must “save the phenomena;” which is the world and ourselves in the way they seem to us, but we must revise our thinking about these SEEMINGS in the most reasonable way. Much of that has already occurred throughout History.

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Another Cool Example of Enchantment: more Bird Song, but now with Stravinsky

The Nightingale, who plays the opening role in a morning’s bird-song in Europe and other parts of the world, sings in a manner inspirational to the early Modernest Classical Composer, the Russian, Igor Stravinsky. Here is his Song of The Nightingale.

(This performance lasts over 21 minutes, do not feel obliged to listen to the bulk of it, but it is a worthy piece. Interestingly, this video shows the Musical Notation, the score itself. A Bird’s Song transformed into Human Musical Sound but also into our Written Representation of musical sound.)

(These sounds can also be displayed on an Oscilloscope which changes sound into electrical signals and then displays their pattern graphically. We, humans and other Conscious Creatures, are capable of recognizing, modifying, using and creating Patterns in Nature that are significant to us. We really work Nature over. It’s An Enchantment! Afterall, the story you tell about yourself is who you are, in many ways. It, too, is a Pattern constantly maintained and developed.)

Our Latest Songster: The Nightingale

(More melodic than the Lark, but not nearly the profusion of sound and effort. The Nightingale is known and named for its habit of song starting before The Break of Dawn. It is the first bird to sing each morning in its European, African and Asian habitats. But can it be worthy of Stravinsky or he it? You be the judge, but I can hear the resemblance!)

Bird Song

Do birds enjoy singing? Do birds appreciate the melody of their particular song? Is “song” a good thing? Similarly, do dolphins enjoy swimming? Do dog pups like to wrestle? Does“Play” and “Art” exist to non-human animals? In many ways we would say “Yes, it seems so,” and we would have good grounds for saying that. Afterall, we enjoy singing and melody; we often like to swim and dive, wrestle and frolic. We have the insight to “see” these feelings and activities develop in the creatures of the Tree of Living Things. They seem to grow from some incipient stage to more explicit and full-blown forms. These qualities are a Reflection of ourselves; “They are nature singing our song,” says psychologist Nick Humphrey (see post, A Strange Sensation).

But how does nature sing our song? Nature starts simply and often with other motives. In biology, it is generally acknowledged that Bird Song starts for very venal reasons. Birds want to attract mates and establish territories. Bird calls do much the same, but they may also warn of danger as with the Blue Jay. These are very Functional motivations. They are not about an enjoyment of the song for the sake of the song itself. Yet as one famous biologist put it, “Nothing transcends itself like nature.” The ‘enjoyment’ of song, for the sake of song itself, is pioneered in birds and maybe realized in humans. We may also add that the enjoyment of color may start in insects, but is more fully realized in the human visual arts.

In Chapter 3 of Dan Dennett’s book (Breaking the Spell, 2006) on the scientific explanation of Human Religious Practices, Dennett askes “Why Do Good Things Happen?” That is a strange question! He is not asking about some specific ‘good’ occurrence, like the end of WWII for which we know many particular events; he is asking why anything “good” ever happens or exists. “Why do humans fight wars?” begins to get sufficiently broader; but also, “Why does Color exist?” one of our favorite fascinating phenomena here at NatieRel.

Is there an answer to such broad questions? Well, Philosophers have traditionally thought so (see the post series What is a Philosopher.) Religions have also posited Reasons for the occurrence of good things (and bad). In The Iliad, Homer wrote that King Agamemnon offended the goddess Artemis and she prevented the winds from blowing and the Greek fleet from sailing to start the Trojan War. He was forced to sacrifice his daughter to appease the goddess and start the winds, but instigating the ire of his wife. To religion, it’s the gods that are responsible for both good and bad.

Coevolution is the reason good things happen, proposes Dennett, not gods! Coevolution, and not just Evolution, because coevolution involves a specific circular relation or feedback of causes between specific kinds of organisms that stimulates a series of adaptations on each of their part. Dennett cites “the bargain” struck by some plants and animals around 600 million years ago. Seeds happened to become housed in something vaguely like a fruit, something that stored some sugar, an easy energy source for the animal. Over eons, fruits and the animals that sought them, both evolved in sophistication. That is Coevolution. Dennett cites several other examples.

Coevolution is an important cause of increasing complexity in our world. It is in Complexity that Good Things lay. It is also in the break-down of complexity that Evil and decline occur. It is in highly complex Brains that an experience of color occurs along with neural activity. It is in groups of cooperating humans that Language arises and is perpetuated, and then complex Ideologies grow — with gods, democratic rights, free choices, art, and even supposed ethnic and national superiorities.

In what we would call empty space, it really is rather empty. No good thing or bad thing happens there, that is the least we can say; maybe we should go further and say, Empty Space is a bad thing if Evil is the degradation of complexity, then this is the bottom layer. So, yes, by comparison to Complex Things and Events, no events at all is really bad. (So, The Holocaust was better than empty space? Maybe what makes The Holocaust massively evil is its disappointment, its betrayal, of all the wonderful accomplishments of humanity at and up to that point in history. We feel a tremendous Guilt with the Holocaust —how could persons have done that to other persons? We feel no such disappointment or guilt concerning empty space.)

Stay tuned for more on The Nature of Goodness———————————————————————–The famous Alfred North Whitehead takes a crack at it.

I don’t know about you, but my “Soul” could sure use some revitalizing! I have felt rather exhausted, not so much physically, but mentally and “spiritually.” It is not that I am depressed, just worn out; beleaguered by a world in which too much has gone wrong recently. I am looking for some hope once again, and maybe that is all that it is, Feeling Rather Hopeless.

British psychologist and philosopher, Nicholas Humphrey, has offered some help in the form of two books: A History of the Mind (1992) and Soul Dust (2011). Metaphysical Hope, we might call it. True, both books are rather old, but still good, and each about 200 pages long. Nice that Humphrey, in writing a history, has respect for our time and forbearance. I hope to follow his example.

A “Soul”? Surely it is farfetched to think that this ancient and regrettably ongoing superstition has any modern beneficial use. Could it possibly accurately help describe our Human Condition? Could it help me shake these blues?

I will go out on a limb, with Humphrey, and suggest that it does. “Soul” has helped return some sparkle to my outlook. This rehabilitation is based (somewhat) in the belief that we humans often ‘know’ or ‘sense’ more than we realize about these “deep,” philosophical and religious issues. The turn of the 19th century German philosopher, Hegel, certainly thought so. He argued that mythology and traditional religion were a dim and eerie form of what an accurate philosophy of the world would look like. Humphrey contends something similar, that philosophical thought and awareness is natural to human beings, at least in some rudimentary forms.

 

Our New Soul

So, Humphrey attempts to revitalize this familiar concept in a rather straightforward way. Of course he jettisons the idea of the soul’s immortality and its immaterial character, but hangs on to what may be the true point of these, the Soul’s Transcendent Character.

The soul is the self, initially “a core self” and then eventually “the Ego” which is a larger and more complex self built from the core. Any self must transcend. It most last from moment to moment, day to day, year to year. It must transcend time, not totally as if godlike, but definitely forming a fairly durable duration. Also, it must transcend space and particular events and bodily faculties. The self is a unifier, an integrator in time and space. “I” have a toe, and the pain in it is equally its pain and mine. I see red, and that sensation is equally an activity at the surface of my retina, various events in my brain, and in general an experience of mine.

This general transcendental character of the self, and especially its supposed immaterial character, is demystified by Humphrey by postulating a Neurological Loop and a progressive sequence of development in it.

But if a Self is a “Soul” why not just stick with “Self”, why up the rhetoric to soul?

Surely some magic must be added, and that is where Quality and diverse qualities enter the story. Humphrey contends that about 300 million years ago, our reptilian ancestors —predecessors to all birds and mammals— evolved a Brain complex enough to “have” Phenomenal Experiences. In other words, it was “like something” to them (these creatures) to be them and to live their life. If they were damaged, they now felt pain, that is what damage was for them. They now experienced color, for example; or even enjoyed the taste of a juicy insect just devoured. Red was no longer just an electromagnetic wavelength responded to, but an experience of redness and also a behavioral response. Food was no longer just a biochemical necessity and a series of biochemical reactions but an activity “savored,” a satiation “appreciated,” a “craving” mitigated. That is what it was “like to them.” It was a new situation for any “thing,” at least in our section of the universe.

An “interiority” was now introduced, contends Humphrey! It was the dawning of not only “selves” and “souls” but also “Minds.” A kind of “interior theater” was established where not only the events that happened to a thing were recorded but they were interpreted and represented as something to me or for me. Qualities “appear” in the world. Perspective was created, and with that a variety of perspectives appeared. There is no perspective without differences of perspective.

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Neurologically, the perception of the soul’s or self’s continuity and transcendence is naturalistically understood as an ongoing looping event occurring among the neurons in the brain. “Specialized neural circuits” exist and were selected by nature for their form as shown above. A flowing and continuous reverberation in the brain that takes time and potentially builds on itself. One that thickens and quickens at some points, but also relaxes, slows and thins at others. A loop and series of loops that may possibly offer in physical terms a kind of diagram for what an ongoing self may look like in brain activity, and what self-reflection may be based in. These kinds of self-reflective, varying but continuous events, can be mathematically described; they are called “discrete delay differential attractors.”

Humphrey admits that, in some ways, these neurological contentions are highly speculative and unusual. In effect, he is suggesting a neurological hypothesis based on its logical form, a logical form that has characteristics that seem to resemble the “shape” that consciousness and self-consciousness could take physically to be what it seems to us to be phenomenally. This is unusual, the logic of the problem of consciousness is leading the search for physical, neural, patterns.

In the above diagrams, let us say a sensation has occurred and is recorded in one small section of the brain, some small set of neurons. Its significance is ‘judged’ by the ongoing reaction of neurons around it. If it is a significant sensation, the initial pattern of responding neurons will be repeated and expand into larger sets of neurons that still maintain some of the basic pattern. Somewhat like the flower of a plant, a side-shoot of this activity may split off and ignite a repetition of that pattern in different parts of the brain. All eventually echoing back, returning to the initial sensation, as if a determination of its character and judgment of its significance. In a less significant experience, far less activity would occur but it would still maintain the above continuous, flowing and recursive character.

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But the magic continues and escalates when a final observation is added. The self is better described as a soul when its absolute uniqueness is recognized. At no other point in all of history — past or future — will the same perspective exist that is The Basis of You. What the world seems like to you, who you seem like to yourself, seems to us to be a complete and irreplaceable creation. Not immortal in its physical existence, but immortal in its uniqueness. It is comparable to other Souls, but incomparable to them in strict identity. A Soul is a world-historically unique collection of Seemings and observations of Seemings themselves. Each is a perspective all its own. “The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself,” writes Douglas Hofstadter. This self-reflective loop is what we have come to highly value.

This Unique Approach

This approach was pioneered years ago by Artificial Intelligence researcher Douglas Hofstadter and philosopher Dan Dennett. They co-authored a successful book called The Mind’s I in 1982. Previous to that, Hofstadter wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning and NYTimes Bestseller, Godel, Escher, Bach in 1979. Each book features the new insight that a self, and any “product of Mind,” has a looping, continuously self-referential but varying character.

Godel: Mathematics Turns in on Itself

In about 1930, Kurt Godel (pronounced with a long “o” and short “e” and equal emphasis on each sylable) proved that self-reference was impossible to avoid in any theory of the basis of mathematics. In response to Bertrand Russell’s and Alfred N. Whitehead’s voluminous Principia Mathematica, which tried to show math as built up from the bottom based on self-evident principles in a kind of pyramid form. Godel proved that all theories of math’s foundations could not have this form but contained Self-Referential Statements. They seemed to ‘hold themselves up by their own bootstraps,’ we could say.

Yes, self- reference or self-reflection is a strange kind of thing. It often leads to paradox. Hofstadter contends Godel’s work was an application to math of linguistic puzzles such as the statement “I am lying.” How are we to take this? Standing alone, and on its face value, it cannot be either True or False! Or, how do we take this pair of statements? “The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.” They are “Strange Loops” that throw us out beyond them in search for further Context, or indicate to us a closed and circular form that is both logical and paradoxical.

 

M. C. Escher: Reality as if Turning in Upon Itself

 

A Dutch graphic artist working in the early to mid 20th century, labored in obscurity until he was almost 70 years old. His works are an exploration of the concepts of infinity, symmetry, reflection, perspective, and tessellation, says Wikipedia. Hofstadter values them as powerful portrayals of the effect of Self-Reflection. Each is a demonstration of a Strangely Looping Process.

Hofstadter contends Print Gallery displays three kinds of “inclusion.” The seaside town is “in” the picture being viewed by the boy, the boy and the picture are pictured “in” Escher’s work, and the entire idea of it is “in” Escher’s mind as represented by the void.

Bach: Bouncing a Theme Back Upon Itself in Many Different Ways

Hofstadter uses Bach’s piece A Musical Offering and its historical context as the background for his final example of Reflection, Variation, Recursion, and Self-Enclosure as displayed in his book’s title, Godel, Escher, Bach. I can barely begin a description of this piece’s musical character, but I will try. In the end, I will present a simple example of this musical form that will make sense to all, as it did finally for me.

A Musical Offering is a Fugue involving six parts! Reportedly even a four part fugue is difficult and a five part is rare; Bach himself only accomplished several of these in his collection The Well-Tempered Clavier. In a Fugue, each part, or ‘voice’, has a distinct melody to play, but all melodies are craftily designed to fit with each other as all are played at some points simultaneously. In this sense, each note of each part has multiple roles to play; it has its primary role in its own part, but secondary roles in relation to all the additional voices. A Fugue is an intricate work, like a finely woven tapestry.

A Canon is the simplest kind of Fugue, explains Hofstadter, and the simplest kind of Cannon is The Round. We all should be familiar with singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round. That is the simplest Cannon, a variety of voices sing the same song over against and in contrast to itself. It creates a delightful effect.

Hostadter’s point is, in all these cases, Nature and Human Nature has ‘twined’ and intertwined itself about itself, and Reflected back itself, in ways that has set a foundation for more complex phenomena to appear to occur at what is called Higher Levels. New Things Happen, based on The Foundations of The Old. Hofstadter: “a higher-level view of a system may contain explanatory power which is absent on the lower level.” Like music, like art, like ethics, like science, all happen at levels beyond the microscopic. Its a more interesting life at this “chunkier” level!

Stay Safe, Stay Connected. The naturereligionconnection.org

 

(A follow-up to the post The Strange Sensation, where psychologist and philosopher Nicholas Humphrey contends that we should think of this world as “painted in our soul dust” or “singing our song.” Yes, he believes that the Qualities of our world — its color and smell; its goodness and badness; its joy and sorrow — are all added by Conscious Beings, as if we are painting atop a canvas of molecules, waves and atoms. These Qualities include Complex Actions like singing and writing poems, but also creating scientific theories and testing them. Here, a little bird that is a powerful songster and one of my favorite poets will be featured; both of them helping to recoup some positives in our world already painted in too much sadness and tragedy. Please try to Enjoy!)

Yes, the world is an amazing place, often. And as amazing as it is, our human response to it is amazing, sometimes. Case in point, The Lark (Eurasian Skylark) and William Blake’s poem, The Lark’s Song. As amazing as this small bird is, Blake’s poem is its equal.

But, it is not an easy poem to read. Let me walk you through it, as I have had some experience reading poems, and teaching students poetry, and have worked with this poem for a while.

Its punctuation is very important. Closely watch the commas for only a slight pause, but a period is a full stop. The semicolon at the end of line two is much the same as a period. Interestingly, there are only two periods; the first occurs at the end of the 13th line. Yes, the first 13 lines are one sentence and should be read as such! No punctuation at the end of a line is no stop in reading at all. So, the spacing is peculiar and important (and I fear it may be distorted on a cell phone), but then so are many things about Bill Blake (Englishman, 1757-1827). Why is “Spring,” “Corn-field,” …”Expanse” and “Bird,” all lines unto themselves? Why is each capitalized? This poem is visual as well as linguistic. It must be read several times, to develop its full impact.

So, here it is. I just love the ending where “the awful Sun…With eyes of soft humility and wonder,…stands still” to watch this little bird sing.

The Lark's Song

Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of
          Spring;
The lark sitting upon his earthly bed, just as the morn
Appears, listens silent, then springing from the waving
          Corn-field, loud
He leads the Choir of Day-trill, trill, trill, trill,
Mounting upon the wing of light into the Great
          Expanse,
Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining
          heavenly Shell,
His little throat and breast and wings vibrates with the
          effluence Divine.
All nature listens silent to him, and the awful Sun
Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little
          Bird
With eyes of soft humility and wonder, love, and awe.

Can the lark’s song live up to this hype? Is it an “effluence Divine” to which “All nature listens silent”? Judge for yourself.

(It often seems as if too many sounds are coming from this one mouth! The second section of this video starting at 1:00 is the most convincing to me. A true “effluence Divine,” “His little throat and breast and wing vibrates” with each sound.)

Common across Europe, it is the male Skylark that sings. Hovering at about 150-300 feet (50-100m) is where much of the singing occurs (“Mounting upon the wing of light into the Great Expanse,”) and lasts for as much as a minute (“Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining heavenly Shell”). More prolonged outbursts occur while perched. Many a person is surely correct in NOT finding its song beautiful as much as impressive in its vigor, variety and effusiveness. Surely we must agree, it is a true outpouring!

A small bird, about the size of a robin; it is around 7 in. or 18 cm. It nests on the ground and thus Blake’s line, “The lark sitting on its earthly bed.” Settlers to North America have tried at various times and places to introduce the bird to this continent, but with almost no success. A small colony was established on Vancouver Island in Western Canada, but today it is in serious decline. The skylark is abundant in Europe and Asia, and is not endangered.

The world is often a marvelous place, especially when persons seek to enhance it. Persons or selves can be called “Souls,” contends psychologist and philosopher Nick Humphrey, because of our psychological and metaphysical ability to convert the seeming raw materials of matter into “an enchanted” and “magical” display of Qualities and Abilities. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Skylark; thank you Mr. Blake! Thanks for our physical and metaphysical situation that offers so much and potentially offers more!

No atom ever sings, And though we may roughly associate A Group of Atoms to an event we call Singing, the heart of the song is lost when we do so.

Stay Safe!

(In the series The Philosophical Issues in Everyday Life. What “is” Consciousness? It is the most familiar “thing” and the strangest “thing” all at once! And is it wonderful? —– Thanks to my readers for their patience. I took some time off from this blog this summer to do some reading, some reflection and recharge my batteries. Also, I have some new ideas for the site that will be rolled out soon, I hope.)

A strange thing happened the other day. A particularly mysterious sensation did not come over me. Rather, I realized that any sensation is a strange kind of “Thing.” So I really came out on top of this, my feeling of mystery and amazement about sensation was now generalized to my life overall! I don’t know about you but I can use a little more positive spin in my life right now, too many things going wrong in this world of ours. Or is that just my take on things, just my individual sensation?

So what is so strange about having a sensation? Is not sensation and our experience of it the most normal, constant and automatic thing in our lives? Is there really some kind of philosophical issue here, something ‘deep’? I will let English psychologist and philosopher, Nicholas Humphrey, be our guide, using his books A History of the Mind (1992) and Soul Dust (2011).

What’s the Issue?

Well, we talk about sensations and feelings differently than we talk about any other kind of thing. Hell, after all, we all kind of know that sensations are not things that exist outside in the world, but “things” that exist or occur in our head or “mind.” Or so at least traditionally we have been told.

Humphrey points out that we often don’t even try to explain in words what we are experiencing, we simply suggest “Come here and look for yourself” or “Try this (food, for example) for yourself, see what you think.” And for many sensations, feelings and even evaluations, agreement between persons is not necessary at all. “Taste this steak; it is delicious.” “No thanks, I hate red meat.” But we then do not reply, “You are wrong, it is delicious!” It is as if each of us, the individual perceiver, “the person with the front row seat” (Humphrey), the “experiencer,” are the only one with access and authority about these peculiar kinds of ‘objects’ — “a sensation” of delicious or disgusting, “an evaluation” of good or bad, “a perception” of red or green. “It sure seems red to me,” you might say, and who can contradict how it seems to you? A sensation is a ‘thing’ that is a “pure seeming,” we might say.

Humphrey contends that some sensations and feelings are “just beyond words”, “ineffable.” We are rendered “awestruck,” for example, by the sun setting over the ocean. We may try to express this in words, but words fail us. “To stand in awe” is one of the original senses of this term, in other words, speechless. It takes a rare poet or artist to capture a sensation in words. Painter Wassily Kandinsky is quoted concerning our sensation of color: “Color is a power that directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes the hammers, soul is the piano with many strings.” And I will continue Wordsworth’s reflection upon that field of daffodils:

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

For most of us, we would just say, “you had to be there.”

So that is peculiar. A sensation and a feeling are only what they are to you, their sole observer. They are a private object of yours. And some sensations demonstrate the truth of this but only in degrees. The sensation of a far off object, barely seen, can be discussed by two observers. It “seems as if it is..,” they say to each other, but as they come nearer and nearer to the object in the world, they come closer to agreement not on how it seems, but on what it is. It is almost a necessity: “Yes, it is a hawk flying high,” they now agree. It no longer seems like anything; it now is. “How do sensations and feelings exist at all?” we might ask. They are a ghostly kind of thing!

Our philosopher and psychologist accentuates this distinction between these ‘inside objects’ and our less paradoxical ‘outside objects.’ With the physicist as the expert on the objectivity of the world around us, Humphrey says that “you perceive a physical object to be something more or other than what the physicist would say it is — a piece of paper as a dollar bill, a pattern in the clouds as the face of a cat.” Yes, a dollar bill as a monetary unit has a very human and social kind of existence, none of which Newton’s three laws can explain or describe. Or, how is your experience of the color red different from the color green? It is very hard to say, and we may be led awkwardly to say things like the quality “redness” is not the quality of green, but saying that red has a different electromagnetic frequency than green does not seem to help describe how they look to us at all.

We may start to get the feeling that there is more to our world than just objects in space. In fact, the Qualities that these internal objects convey to us are commonly held to exist in their own kind of place. We say, they exist “In Mind,” and we only vaguely, roughly and inconclusively associate that with our Brain.

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Perceptions, sensations and feelings even exist in their own Time, we tend to think! Some of our experiences “last forever,” we say. “Time slowed down” and though on the clock the event only lasted five minutes, to us “it seemed much longer.” Other experiences seem to pass more quickly than the clock records as ‘true.’ “Time flies when you are having fun,” we say. Yet for many purposes, an exact and objective time is what we use and insist upon. Physicists like to think of the universe in instants. When you clock in and clock out at the factory, no matter how long the day seemed, you only get paid by our objectively agreed-upon standard of time. Is this standard time the only real time, the only true way to think of time?

Well, Humphrey goes so far as to contend that “inner objects” —sensations, feelings, even evaluations (“It is bad.”)— suggest to us the existence of a different world! He sites Plato, the granddaddy of all western abstract thinkers, and his Analogy of The Cave. The world that we humans sense and perceive is “as if” a projection on the wall of a cave —shadows of the real things that we cannot see. The world as it appears to us is an illusion, Humphrey says, by comparison to the world of physics and chemistry. And it is an illusion largely created by ourselves, “a self-illusion”! It is the world as it “is like” to us as conscious human beings. We have a term for this, it is the Phenomenal World.

Lets end this briefly by saying that this is exactly What Consciousness Is. Humphrey follows philosopher Thomas Nagel in his precedent-setting paper, “What Is It Like To Be A Bat,” and agrees that consciousness is just for things to be “like something to us” or for things to be like something to a “subject.” Consciousness, feelings, and ideas are ‘objects’ that do not exist in the space and time we often use for other purposes! They exist in the Mind and for a subject; they have their own necessary duration and place. That is a very different kind of objectivity! Sensations, feelings, evaluations are created by us as a “commentary” on the real things of the physical world that impinge upon us, concludes our psychologist.

What Can We Make of This?

Well, Humphrey makes the best of it! The shadow world of Plato, this illusion, becomes “an enchanted world,” he tries to convince us! “Things are singing your song,” Humphrey writes (his emphasis) and he quotes many a poet, artist and mystic as witness. It may be “a philosophical error” to attribute “phenomenal qualities to impersonal objects,” but “what matters is psychological impact, not philosophical rectitude.” The illusion of color, taste, and joy; even pain, disgust, and evil, tend strongly to attach to the things in the world. It is what they seem to be, in themselves, to us. And this illusion sticks, even as we have a growing awareness of our own role in it. “It is indeed you who are the enchanter, you who are, as it were, coloring things with the fairy dust of your own consciousness.”

The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; and all the World was mine, and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.

Thomas Traherne, 17th century English poet, Anglican minister, and mystic; quoted by Humphrey

“Interiority”: The World from The Inside of It!

This talk of “inner” objects and “a subject’s unique access and authority” to them leads Humphrey to introduce the idea of “interiority.” It is a cumbersome term but one trying to express a situation we are all very familiar with. My “self,” this GregWW, and your self, who ever you may be, are a sole and only strange kind of thing.

Granted, this subjectivity is tightly associated to a particular living physical body and certainly its brain activity. We are a particular “somebody,” says our psychologist and philosopher; we say and know we are not just “anybody.” But in spite of that, our particular body and our psychological self are not strictly ‘the same.’ Consciousness and subjectivity are More Than and Other Than any physical description of a body or a brain! I am sure that you anticipated this contention in my argument, and Humphrey’s, long ago.

“Interiority” is “the insider’s view” of life that we also seek to describe more objectively, sometimes. This post itself, and Humphrey’s theory in general, are an attempt to square the circle, we might say, to as objectively as possible describe and communicate something that is almost indescribable and so very basic as to be the presupposition of our lives and not a direct topic of it. Nagel is quoted: when we try to eliminate “the content” of experience, “what remains when these are set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive...The additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself, rather than by any of its content.” Lord Byron writing in the 18th century is quoted: “The great object of life is sensation—to feel that we exist,” and this being the case even with pain as one of our most noted experiences.

So, you are and I am, at first and primarily, what Humphrey calls “a core self.” This self is not a thinking self nor one that is self-aware, but a self that is only starting in that direction. There are several significant characteristics of this rudimentary self.

“Ownership” is one of them. To the core self, many things are considered a part of “itself.” An infant slowly develops a vague sense that “‘these’ (feet or hands) are ‘mine.'” That “‘this’ (pain in the stomach) is ‘mine.'” “Control” is another feature, as the infant’s arms begin to reach out for things, its sensation of Self develops as an awareness of its control of some things but not of others. And finally, there is the state of simply “being there,” which Humphrey describes as “an in-your-face mystery.” The core self is simply “the subjectivity for which the sensation appears.” “I see; I feel.” It is, for us, “a human way of being,“ he explains, and importantly that is how we refer to ourselves; we are “a Human Being.“ For a bat, maybe there is a Bat Being. It is the way things are to them; it is how things seem to them!

And this core self —as already contended— is unique and isolated, a “sole and only.” Our core self is just that direct access to sensation, to which there is no other access but through our attempts at communication. And even with this communication — sensation, feeling and even some evaluations retain their absolute privacy. As a self-aware consciousness you are “a closed individuality.” In all of history, in all that has gone before us and all that will come after, there has been and will never be Another You, it seems acceptable to believe. Humphrey says that each of us is “an inescapable singularity.” Contrary to poet John Donne, at the core of our self, we must acknowledge and understand the implications of our isolation: each man, woman and child “is an island entire of himself.”

Now, we do have very good reasons to believe that my sensation of red, for example, is the same or very similar to that of yours, but still we face the psychological and metaphysical reality of the element of absolute individuality. We have faced up to it in many ways, including our great fear and respect for the reality of death. In other ways we do not face it so well, as when we currently and historically speculate about super humans and immortals — gods, ghosts, demons and other scientifically implausible kinds of supposed external objects. With these kind of beliefs, some of us attempt to evade the end that death surely is.

But this is where Humphrey, himself, introduces the possibility of using the term “Soul.” There are other similar terms, like “self” and “person;” each are, like a sensation, an inner object — but Humphrey likes “soul” in spite of its baggage because of its connection to spirituality. For him, Spirituality predates Religion, and the latter is “parasitic” on the former. Our sense of the spiritual is our social recognition and Natural Selection’s recognition of the Value and Importance of “the Insider’s point of view,” of Consciousness, of our sense of an enchanted world.”

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A Soul Land?

We started with the simple idea of a sensation or a feeling —“I see red,” “I feel pain”— and end up with “a society of souls” and “a soul land,” argues Humphrey. We will Eventually explore these ideas further, but they are based in an analysis of our current set of beliefs. Many of us do believe in, and live lives that recognize, the irreplaceable and invaluable quality of each individual consciousness and the natural and social apparatuses that support that way of life. This is the “enchanted world,” says Humphrey; but we should ask, is it true? In this realm of “Seemings,” if you can believe it and live according to it, and if other conscious beings do too, then it is true, a truly enchanted world — Our Way Being! That is the answer!

Thanks and Stray Safe! The naturereligionconnection.