Evolution vs Capitalism

Evolution is mindless, economics is mindful,

collectively and individually. 

Every act has consequences that change that world in some way, no matter how modest, and those actions will go on changing the world for millennia after we are gone. But to remember the details of every action is to invite madness, to paralyze our brains and our communities with memory.

Gavin Francis, The Dream of Forgetfulness (NYRB, March 9, 2023)

 

A man -- a viewing-point man -- while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man thinks of Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he regards them with love because they are the symbols of the good he admires, and he hates the symbols of the bad. But actually he would rather be successful than good. In an animal other than man we would replace the term "good" with "weak survival quotient" and the term "bad" with "strong survival quotient." Thus, man in his thinking or reverie status admires the progression toward extinction, but in the unthinking stimulus which really activates him he tends toward survival. Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness: Perhaps, as has been suggested, his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming, bound by his physical memories to a past of struggle and survival, limited in his futures by the uneasiness of thought and consciousness.

 John Steinbeck,  The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species…. We have made our mark on the world, but we have really done nothing that the trees and creeping plants, ice and erosion, cannot remove in a fairly short time.

John Steinbeck,  The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Per Spinoza

The human mind is not simply an instrument of conscious cognition that can be detached from its organic base. It is a locus of feeling, conscious and unconscious, flowing directly from a somatic foundation.... Where humans differ most from other animals may be in our capacity and need for illusion.

John Gray, The Mind’s Body Problem (NYRB, December 2, 2021)

On Consciousness as MetaThinking about Thinking

It seems much more accurate to say that consciousness is along for the ride — watching the show, rather than creating or controlling it. In theory, we can go as far as to say that few (if any) of our behaviors need consciousness in order to be carried out…. the obstacle we face here once again seems to be a case of confusing consciousness with the concept of a self....[we are] machines that think about thinking.

Annaka Harris, Conscious : exploring the mystery of consciousness

Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;  It thinks it discovers at a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the motion.

Montaigne

He who knows not what the Universe is knows not what is his place therein. He who knows not for what end it was created, knows not himself and knows not the world. He who is deficient in either of these parts of knowledge cannot even say for what end he himself was created.

 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (VIII,52)

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.  I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

Ted Chiang, Exhalation

To be is possible and not-to-be is impossible.... Thought and being are the same.

Parmenides, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)

It is a marvel that our perceptions are so often correct, given the rapidity, the near instantaneity, with which they are constructed.

Oliver Sacks, The River of Consciousness

 

Man's knowledge is imperfect, but the wisdom of god is faultless. 'He sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole.'

Bruno Snell on Xenophanes

Montaigne on Death

But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can give us no assistance at all.  A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we can experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.  There have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that they have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who have bent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, but they are none of them come back to tell us the news....
 

Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having been condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides many marvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was just going to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a philosopher, a friend of his: “Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now? what is she doing?  What are you thinking of?”--“I was thinking,” replied the other, “to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and whether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it.” 

Michel de Montaigne

There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.


Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)

Retracing your steps can help you remember what you were looking for.  Your memory of a thought is married to the place in which it first occurred to you.

Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds

Natural Teleology

Natural teleology would mean that the universe is rationally governed in more than one way—not only through the universal quantitative laws of physics that underlie efficient causation but also through principles which imply that things happen because they are on a path that leads toward certain outcomes—notably, the existence of living, and ultimately conscious, organisms.

Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos


See also:  http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2018/01/if-there-was-cosmological-design-what.html
 

The existence of conscious minds and their access to the evident truths of ethics and mathematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our place in it has yet to explain.... A satisfying explanation would show that the realization of these possibilities was not vanishingly improbable but a significant likelihood given the laws of nature and the composition of the universe.

Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos

All of our memories are subjective.... The loss of pleasure and pain is a loss of subjectivity, of an ability to relate to objects, to persons, and to oneself.... All of our memories are subjective—they are created from the point of view of the individual who is remembering.

Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff,  The New York Review, August 17.2017

The real benefit of complex inferences like weighing uncertainty may not be apparent unless the uncertainty has complex structure.

Quoted in Science News, "There’s a long way to go in understanding the brain," 7/25/2017)

Voices in My Head

[W]hat a meditative poem contributes to the history of consciousness is a reenactment in real time of the volatile inner life of a human being. Such a poem does not present itself as plot or character portrayal or argument, but rather ... as a hypothesis .... and include[s] waverings, self-contradictions, repudiations, aspirations, and doubts; they are not offered as a philosophical system.

Helen Vendler,  The New York Review of Books (February 23, 2017)