Dear Diary Moments:

[d63]

Dear Diary Moment 9/27/2020:

In my present immersion in Rorty’s Truth and Progress (my walk about and experiment), I came across something that is rare in a my philosophical process: an article in which I was mostly familiar with the deferred matrixes of meaning involving the work of other thinkers –something essential to understand the philosophical text you are reading. In this case, it was Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. And maybe my peers can help me out with this.

And what it brought to my attention was a conflict (or maybe even oversight (in Dennett’s” multiple drafts” theory of consciousness and his dismissal of a “Cartesian Theater”. His multiple drafts theory involves the mind passing data around to various units of the brain until a unified image of the external experience is achieved. And in this, he sees the emergence of consciousness.

(And I would note here the similarity of Dennett’s model to Deleuze and Guattari’s 3 syntheses of the unconscious: the connective, the disjunctive (to a lesser degree), and the conjunctive in which consciousness is formed.)

And I actually find Dennett’s model useful. The problem for me starts with his “Cartesian Theater”. If I understand the history of philosophy right, the main departure that Husserl and phenomenology engaged in with Descartes was the “thinking substance” that, if you think about it, seems very similar to Dennett’s multiple drafts theory. It’s like the subject and object are so intimately intertwined, there is no distinguishing between the two. So I have to question the whole notion of the Cartesian Theater –or rather Dennett’s use of it.

Furthermore, I would note that what Husserl and phenomenology (via intentionality: the recognition that consciousness is always consciousness of something (took from their criticism of Descartes’ thinking substance was the recognition that underneath all that thinking there had to be something bearing witness to it: a perceiving thing or “ultimate ego” as Husserl referred to it. And it seems to me that Dennett’s multiple drafts model would be equally vulnerable to that criticism and thereby render his concept of the Cartesian Theater invalid. Or maybe it’s just that Dennett attributed something to Descartes that wasn’t actually there.

Or am I just as confused as I must seem here?

[Meno_]

This is interesting on many / or on multiple levels. I could scribble something in a bar like You also used to, as Ifrallus was saying ones tims, like this animals with vastly superior eye sight, to accommodate for dark, or in my cass, even as a totally sightless bat, dependent on senses of verbatim heresy. or hsre-say, but the profundity that is implied needs and deserves more than a token comment.

Deferring this is far more valuable even as token recognition.
Within it's own contextual limitation. as a mere nod .

[d63]

Dear Diary Moment 10/18/2020:

Having just finished my graphic guide, Introduction to Thatcherism, I was struck by how intimately and parallel Britain’s history has been linked to America’s since the 80’s. It’s almost like we were separated at birth. As I read it (the history involved w/ Thatcher), I couldn’t help but see the similarities with what we went through with Reagan. Most notable here is their common root in Friedman and Hayek’s Neo-Liberalism. And for both the result was pretty much the same: an increase in the wealth gap and decrease in the quality of life for the poor.

And that was by design, even if the advocates of Neo-Liberalism won’t admit to it. It was noted in the book that Thatcher was considered a bit authoritarian and autocratic. As was said of her: she never met an institution she wouldn’t hit with her handbag. (Think Trump here.) And institutions are what look out for the interests of everyday people. But what was oddly missing in the book (a point that would go toward this particular description of her (was the fact that she sheltered Pinochet when other countries were seeking to indict him for crimes against humanity –and for good reason. And this would seem to be a departure between her and Reagan. But I would argue otherwise. Reagan might be the equivalent of the Republican’s Kennedy, and he might have done things with a smile and a sense of humor, but he was as attached to the inherent fascism of Neo-Liberalism as Thatcher was. He too embraced the tyranny of the functional that saw non-producers as undesirables that deserved to wallow in poverty and misery, even die due to lack of access to healthcare.

But the most interesting parallel was what followed their demise and followed from their legacy: changes in the opposing parties. It was noted that Tony Blair was the Labor party’s compromise with Thatcherism. Now: note his “special relationship” with Clinton who was the Democrat’s compromise with Reaganism. (Think NAFTA here.) Now look at the parallels between Trump and Boris Johnson.

The point is that I don’t think we can talk about either legacy without the other. It has to be, rather, the Reagan/Thatcher (or Thatcher/Reagan if you will (legacy. Once again: separated at birth.

[d63]

Dear Diary Moment 10/23/2020:

“At first reading, the concept of animal consciousness appears built into the Darwinian ‘struggle for survival’. This phrase seems to imply the presence of a person, a struggling self that really cares about whether or not it survives.” -Brewer, Stephen. The Origins of Self. Kindle Edition.

Back in the 90’s when I was a little less mature (they were the early 90’s), I found myself in what I can only call a chemically inspired conversation about whether a gnat or an ant can have a sense of self. My good friends (who were also chemically inspired (argued, to put it simply:

No!!!!!

I (being me: argued the diametrical opposite. Of course, the whole discourse being chemically inspired, it never got that heated or in depth for that matter. My argument, in that spirit, was primarily instinctive and even visceral. It wasn’t until later upon more sober reflection that I actually started to articulate it. I realized that the problem lie in the instinct for survival. It seemed to me that if a gnat or an ant were as mechanistic as my friends suggested , that instinct would only kick in if I were to directly stick a pin into them. But that is not the case. They rather tend to anticipate threats to their survival. And it just seems to me that you have to have some real sense of self (of what you are trying to protect (in order to respond to such an indirect threat.

And at no time is this more obvious than when encountering that Beelzebub Fly: that lone fly that decides to invade your private space and antagonize you relentlessly. I mean you have to ask how it manages to evade every clapping of your hands together. And think about it:

In order to finally be rid of it, you literally have to out-think it. You have to utilize the technology of holding your hands apart just above where it lands, cocked and ready to slap together when it attempts to take off.


Think about it.