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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 80.4.12.3
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 02:50 pm:   

I've always been intrigued and bothered by the fact we are stuck inside our own skulls, that our consciousness is localised and individual. If our identity is determined by our thoughts, and our thoughts are epiphenomena of the workings of our brains, why doesn't an identical set of thoughts in the brain of some other person mean that we temporarily become that other person?

For example, if I have a set of thoughts in a certain order, a, b, c, d, e, f, etc, and later someone else has those identical thoughts in the same order, why doesn't my subjective identity suddenly appear inside that other person's head?

This may seem like an obscure thing to worry about but I have puzzled over it for years...

Anyway, I have just started reading The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. Before starting the first chapter, I turned to the Afterword by Richard Dawkins. A paragraph in that Afterword jumped out at me. Here it is:

"A related point, of deep scientific and philosophical significance, is that the subjective individuality that each of us feels inside our skull depends upon the slowness and other imperfections of the channels of communication between us, for example language. If we could share our thoughts instantly by telepathy, fully and at the same rate as we can think them, we would cease to be separate individuals. Or, to put it another way, the very idea of separate individuality would lose its meaning. This, indeed, is arguably what did happen in the evolution of the nervous system..."

I am staggered by this notion. Dawkins is saying that it's only the slowness of communication that keeps us locked inside our own heads... I've never come across this idea before, but it ties in with certain notions of Wittgenstein about the "non-public mind" and universal consciousness and about how our identities are really just an illusion. I certainly never expected Richard Dawkins to provide something that can almost be taken as a mystical insight!

Anyone out there have any thoughts on this that they would care to put into my brain in the form of an ultra-slow (and thus subjective and individual) message on this thread?
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 03:00 pm:   

Just a quick thought, Rhys, as I'm in a rush as usual, but re that quote: I can understand the idea that it's to do with channels of communication, but isn't it also about the way we *perceive* things around us? We all perceive the world differently. If you and I were to look at identical objects at the same time, who's to say that we would both "see" them in exactly the same way?

Add those individual differences in perception to the fact that when we try to communicate with each other we are encoding and decoding (ie. using our perception) that communication differently, and I guess that's why we all have completely individual things going on in our brains?

That's my psychologist's view anyway.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.29.126.12
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 03:10 pm:   

A perspective on pre-reflective embodiment and its role in intersubjective relations is at the heart of this. Merleau-Ponty has much to say on the matter. Read, study, absorb and wrestle with Phenomenology of Perception, Rhys. A work of art.

George Herbert Mead's work on the social self is also relevant.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:03 pm:   

My own theory to answer the question, "Why am I me, and not you?", is that all thought processes are varying degrees of sensation to a single organism; after all, no one would ask the absurd question, "Why am I experiencing this sensation, and not someone else?"

When you touch something hot, the sense of touch communicates heat. Love and hate are sensations, along the same lines, one step removed. But then memory too is a "sensation": else, how do we "remember" things in dreams we've never before seen? And so, as everything becomes ever more subtle and complex, complex thoughts are the organism's ever more exquisite wringings of sensations.

Your question, Rhys, is oddly puzzling... but if all our thoughts are stimuli sensations - like a single plant, responding to its own sensations of light, and reacting accordingly - then the mystery disappears....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:04 pm:   

I recently looked into remote viewing. An ex official from the military in an instruction manual I downloaded proclaimed there was an eternal soul and that we are not fixed in time or space, and that everyone was connected. He said our brains interfered with this connection, and that we are free from it when we die, just join up with everyone else.

The other week I texted the words 'upped the anti' to a friend in part of a discussion. A second later in the next room this woman my wife was talking to said 'Upped the ante'. These little things really spook and amaze me.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:05 pm:   

'after all, no one would ask the absurd question, "Why am I experiencing this sensation, and not someone else?"'
- autistic people do. I do. :-(
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:21 pm:   

When all is said and done we are horribly alone, aren't we?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:24 pm:   

We feel it. Maybe it's our test, to break down that illusion.
What scared me on that military guy's site is that he suggested we were living in the same place and moment, that we could see and be anywhere we wanted. Isn't that strange?
I tackle this stuff in my stories - it was good to hear, even if from a possible wacko.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:31 pm:   

I'm rather chuffed to read that quote from Dawkins as it agrees with my own theories on reality and belief in the existence of a universal consciousness - to me the only logical conclusion to the acceptance of an infinite universe.

I'm sure people on here are tired listening to me go on about how individualism and the concept of linear existence are merely illusions, made necessary by the universal consciousness's attempts to perceive and make sense of itself. First it splits in two to look back on itself and from there the whole cosmic shebang takes shape as a surfaceless sphere of all that can possibly be imagined and formed out of unlimited energy and matter. I believe the ultimate or ONE consciousness moulds matter by becoming aware of it, looking at it and defining it - which chimes with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that matter changes its state based on whether we are looking at it or not. Ultimately we are all inseperable parts of the ONE, made of the same stuff and obeying the same laws.

Within the conglomeration of ALL, things like space, time and individuality become "real" for the conscious entities, limited in their perceptions, that reside therein i.e. You, I, It, Us & Them. Consciousness demands perception which demands knowledge, understanding, meaning and something to fill the time. All that we can perceive was inevitable and all we will never be able to perceive equally so... infinite consciousness, infinite awareness, infinite perception, infinite form.

The opposite, a single universal consciousness that never allowed itself to fragment, would be a frozen infinitude of all-knowing boredom, what I call the Zero State - a universe frozen in an eternal "get me out of here" howl of cosmic loneliness.

We are all a part of that entity and seperate like the cells in our body. I believe it is possible to tap into the wellspring of common knowledge that resides in the higher universal consciousness - in our dreams and imaginings - both consciously under certain conditions that the ancients would equate with magic and unconsciously as Jung, in my view, rightly propounded.

One of the reasons I found William Peter Blatty's 'The Exorcist'/'Legion' such a profoundly frightening work of literature is that it takes this idea to its ultimate conclusion with regard to humanity. I'm also finding echoes in Poe - read his short philosophical piece 'Mesmeric Revelation' followed by 'The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar' and you'll see the ideas of Jung & Blatty in embryo form.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:39 pm:   

Wow!
Did you see, Stevie, at the end of the Exorcist Director's cut the addressing of this stuff, with the detective prompting the same answer from the priest to his joke that Father Damien had given him? That really moved me, that.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:45 pm:   

I still have to watch the Director's Cut of 'The Exorcist', Tony, but the references to Jung were littered throughout both books.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.10
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:45 pm:   

You know Blatty tried to sue the makers of Columbo because he believes Columbo is a direct rip off of Kinderman...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:50 pm:   

I had heard that, Weber. Kinderman is one of the great unsung detectives in literature imo.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:51 pm:   

He is! I thought that straightaway!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 04:52 pm:   

Ooh, are we entering the zone, here? 'Woo...h' country?
Yum!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 05:22 pm:   

Before you know it Lovecraft's blind idiot god will have bitten us on the bum lol.
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Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker)
Username: Stephen_theaker

Registered: 12-2009
Posted From: 62.30.117.235
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 07:37 pm:   

How did that work, Weber - I thought Columbo predated The Exorcist by a good few years?
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 08:59 pm:   

From an interview with Blatty:

"The novel [The exorcist] predated Columbo. It was close but what people forget is that after I had submitted my manuscript to the publisher, another six to eight months went by, not to mention all the time I slaved over the manuscript a year before that. I feel quite strongly that Columbo ripped off Kinderman. There's very little doubt in my mind. I asked Peter Falk: he said, 'No, it had been planned before your book came out.' But my manuscript was circulated all over town, all the agencies and production companies and studios, and somebody said --- and I know who that somebody is --- 'Wouldn't this be interesting for our detective?' I must say it does tick me a little. I had planned my own little TV series for Lt Kinderman --- not any more.
I've downplayed that aspect of his character --- the constant forgetfulness --- in the script. I saw a Columbo episode --- I could go on and on about this --- in which they did the 'autograph this for my daughter' bit --- straight out of The Exorcist. But God bless Peter Falk --- it wasn't his fault."
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Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.136.28.188
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:26 pm:   

@Rhys

Wittgenstein said that "One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads".

In the back of my mind I vaguely remember one of his thought experiments about a tribe that only had one personality to share between every five people...
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.29.126.12
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:33 pm:   

Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty had much to say about this issue. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre, building on these earlier bodies of thought, thinks the reason why we never meet Columbo's wife is because he's gay.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.77
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:50 pm:   

The way quantum computers works probably reflects the workings of our brains. Without a multiverse we wouldn't be able to think.

I think, therefore multiples of me am.

Linearity doesn't exist. Time doesn't flow. It clanks along in ratchet-like clangs at the plank levl. Our perception of time flowing is akin to cartoons doodeld in the corner of pages of a notebook, progressing as the pages are flicked through.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.77
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:51 pm:   

In other universes I'm really good at spelling.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.77
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:54 pm:   

Funny you should mention The Black Cloud, Rhys. I saw a lovely Penguin paperback in a secondhand bookstore the other week. Would've bought it but for the fact I'd just run out of dosh. Bah.
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Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker)
Username: Stephen_theaker

Registered: 12-2009
Posted From: 62.30.117.235
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 10:33 pm:   

Thanks, Gary. From what I've now read about it elsewhere, it sounds like Blatty acknowledges the character of Columbo was around ages before The Exorcist, but thinks that when the series proper began they incorporated stuff from The Exorcist.

Aaargh.

That's the sound of me going to get the 1968 episode of Columbo out - to see if Columbo was really all that different in it - and realising that the complete Columbo collection we have doesn't include the pilot episodes - unlike the season one box set we gave away. Very frustrating.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.128.220
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 10:43 pm:   

Reminds me of Steve Green's theory about why Columbo spent his entire career as a Lieutenant: none of his cases ever resulted in a conviction, since they all depend on imaginative reconstruction around facts that are only significant evidence if you are telling the story. None of it ever stood up in court.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.139.28.203
Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 10:49 pm:   

Stevie, I also find tons of knowing references to these philosophical ideas in the stories of Algernon Blackwood and Lovecraft, among others. Take the famous couplet for example:
'That is not dead which can eternal lie' (Infinite Consciousness)
'And with strange aeons even death may die' (The understanding that YOU ARE Infinite Consciousness which contains everything that is perceived. Death cannot exist in infinite awareness)

Or, 'We' do not exist in the Universe. The 'Universe' exists in us (awareness). It's all about perception.

'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell is a great work for explaining how stories and myths throughout the ages, in all cultures, have propounded this truth.

Writer Tim Freke has explained it best for me in his numerous books and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAmEQ_3AOE4&feature=related
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.132.93.28
Posted on Friday, November 12, 2010 - 12:34 am:   

So - in theory Columbo existed even before Blatty put pen to paper, then.
'Hey - you nicked my theory of the pre-existence of all ideas!'
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.249.184.196
Posted on Monday, October 26, 2020 - 12:28 am:   

Wow.
And I do seem to shut people up.

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