The Second Apocalypse

Miscellaneous Chatter => Philosophy & Science => Topic started by: H on July 15, 2015, 03:18:07 pm

Title: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on July 15, 2015, 03:18:07 pm
Quote from: TPB (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/speculative-musings/the-elephant-in-our-skull/)
In the old proverb of the three blind Indian gurus and the elephant, one grabs the tail and says the elephant is a rope, the other grabs a leg and says the elephant is a tree, while the third grabs the trunk and says the elephant is a snake. In each case, the gurus mistake the part for a whole. This is the Blind Brain Thesis (which I simultaneously can’t stop arguing and can’t bring myself to believe): the thalamocortical system is the guru and the greater brain is the elephant. Intentional concepts such as belief, desire, good, perception, volition, action–all the furniture of conscious life–are simply ropes and trees and snakes. Misapprehensions. According to BBT, there are literally no such things.

The reason they function is simply that they are systematically related to the elephant, who does the brunt of the work. They have to count as ‘insight’ or ‘understanding’ simply because they are literally the only game in town.

Quote from: TPB (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/speculative-musings/the-elephant-in-our-skull/)
Enter what I call Encapsulation, the strange mereological inflation that characterizes consciousness. Mistaking parts for wholes, I want to argue, is constitutive of experience. Dennett wants to say we are actually experiencing the elephant. But as a matter of empirical fact, the thalamocortical system only has access to a fraction of the information processed by the brain, a fraction it cannot but mistake for wholes. We are experiencing elephant parts as opposed to the elephant, and we’re experiencing them as wholes, something they are not.

Quote from: TPB (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/speculative-musings/the-elephant-in-our-skull/)
As magicians well know, the brain makes default identity mistakes all the time: In “The Mark of Gideon,” Captain Kirk unknowingly beams into a perfect replica of the Enterprise, and so assumes that the transporter has malfunctioned and that his entire crew has been abducted. His inability to discriminate between the real Enterprise and the replica leads to their thoughtless conflation. The BBT suggests that experience seems to unfold across a substrate of self-identity simply because its margins, those points where the absence of information are expressed, must always remain the same.

By marking the limit of differentiation they endow us with the illusion of a soul.

Quote from: TPB (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/speculative-musings/the-elephant-in-our-skull/)
We are the elephant in such a way that we are a rope, tree, and snake. Anything but an elephant.

I think it's odd we don't have a thread about Bakker's BBT.  It definitely has influenced his fiction, so here's a thread for us to maybe try to piece together some of it.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on July 15, 2015, 06:02:12 pm
So the crux
Quote
Intentional concepts such as belief, desire, good, perception, volition, action–all the furniture of conscious life–are simply ropes and trees and snakes. Misapprehensions. According to BBT, there are literally no such things.

But I'm still uncertain: what, then, is the Elephant? What is the whole that we cannot comprehend?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on July 15, 2015, 07:07:55 pm
Well, if I understand correctly, the Elephant is the "whole thing" in the sense that it's what moves it all, so to speak.  I guess to use a Bakker-ism, it's the darkness the comes before...
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on July 15, 2015, 07:20:21 pm
Is he/BBT suggesting that we dont/cant know what the whole is, or just that most people don't and need to be enlightened?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on July 15, 2015, 07:30:27 pm
Is he/BBT suggesting that we dont/cant know what the whole is, or just that most people don't and need to be enlightened?

I think it's more about acknowledging that we are poorly/wrongly approximating the whole.

I think it's also fear of what happens if we can apprehend the whole (Semantic Apocalypse, etc.).

I admit I need to read a lot more to get a better grasp on it's full implications, right now my monkey brain can't extrapolate...
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on July 15, 2015, 07:53:25 pm
Well, I'm at the point as well, which is why I am asking ;).

I agree that the SA also plays a role, the whole thing where everything becomes meaningless when everything is known....
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Royce on July 28, 2015, 12:17:03 pm
I have not read that much about this either, so please arrest me if I appear ignorant.

This theory is what drives the novel neuropath, right?. "The argument" proposed by Neil.

This notion that "self" is illusory and that perception/consciousness can be altered through neurological experiment is hardly breaking news?
Haven`t people all over the world figured that out through the use of psychedelics and deep meditation/yoga?  Another example is the experience called "satori" in zen buddhism.

Can someone explain what the difference is? Is the BBT something else entirely?   If all sensory experience is just "neurons firing", isn`t that observation also illusory?  If everything derived from the "self" is illusory, isn`t the BBT also just as illusory as santa claus?

Again, if the "self" is illusory, then everything the "self" says/does is also illusory. At this point everything is a dream. If all linguistic concepts are illusory in nature, then the "darkness that comes before" is unfathomable. There is no way to know what that is. If we try to describe it, we immediately enter the dreamstate of illusions.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on July 28, 2015, 12:31:38 pm
The truth is, I don't know.  My limited cognitive skills start to break down at the level this conversation tends to enter, so it becomes really hard for me to make solid points on it.

Here is another post where he outlines his theory (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-crux/).  Maybe that will help to clear things up, I'm not sure.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on July 28, 2015, 02:18:28 pm
Royce, I don't think that logic really connects. Either we live in a world that exists, or it doesnt, and if you choose to think it doesn't, there's really nothing else worth talking about, or even anything that you can talk about with someone who thinks otherwise.

However, if you believe that you exist, you can continue having a conversation. If you and/or the world exists, then things are happening in it, pretty much by definition. While you might argue that the way you perceive these things is 'illusory' that doesn't mean they aren't happening.

Anyway, i have no answers for your questions, only partly because i feel like we are on two total different wavelengths.

Regarding Neuropath, yes I believe you are correct.
As for altering perception, yes, old news.

But  "This notion that "self" is illusory " I cannot make sense of in any real way. If you exist, you must be a self somewhere in there, right? As an atom is to a molecule, the large whole does exist in a definable fashion regardless of whether or not you can break it into smaller parts. I don't know how to discuss consciousness, but certainly there is a difference between living things and non-living things, and that difference is largely some ability to recognize 'self', isn't it?

Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on July 28, 2015, 03:41:52 pm
But  "This notion that "self" is illusory " I cannot make sense of in any real way. If you exist, you must be a self somewhere in there, right? As an atom is to a molecule, the large whole does exist in a definable fashion regardless of whether or not you can break it into smaller parts. I don't know how to discuss consciousness, but certainly there is a difference between living things and non-living things, and that difference is largely some ability to recognize 'self', isn't it?

Well, I think that really depends highly on what you define "The Self" as though.  Certainly consciousness exists, because we experience it.  The question is though, is it (really) what we feel it is?

I can tend to agree with the wide ascertain that what we experience as "The Self" (as a director, as the operator) is indeed not what it actually is.  Our brain does what it wants when it wants, whether we are conscious of it or not.  In fact, research has kind of shown that our brain (without thought, consciousness, The Self) actually runs the show, not the reverse.  Decisions are made, then consciousness is informed, with the feeling of "I made this choice" (I being The Self, here).

I kind of started rambling there, but does that help?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Royce on July 28, 2015, 04:52:05 pm
Wilshire, I never said that "the world does not exist". The world is definitely real. All I am saying is that you should never confuse the map for the territory. The map being the world as humans perceive it through interpreting sensory data and described through conceptual language, and the territory is the world as it is behind all the labels.

You mention logic, but isn`t logic a concept too?  One of my favorite philosophical ramblers Terence Mckenna said that the world is literally made of language. It took me awhile to really understand what he meant by that, but now(after certain convincing experiences) I have to agree with that statement.

Your reality tunnel is a learned one. That reality tunnel can be altered if you want it to.

If you really think that the world is  what our descriptions of it tells us it is, then you are entering solipsism, and I really think that our minds/consciousness is way more weird than we might imagine at this point.

For the record I do not go around telling people I meet that "I do not exist". That would be crazy. I play the game as everyone else, and it really does not affect my day to day life if I ,on a philosophical level, do not exist.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on July 28, 2015, 06:14:02 pm
Royce, I'd respond, but I'm at almost a complete loss. I lack the learning to participate further along this discussion I think ;). I don't think you don't believe we exist, I'm just not playing the word games it seems.

I kind of started rambling there, but does that help?

The general concept makes sense, its what was described above in your/my original posts. I get it on general terms but appear to lack the knowledge for deeper understanding.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Camlost on July 28, 2015, 08:40:54 pm
Quote
I can tend to agree with the wide ascertain that what we experience as "The Self" (as a director, as the operator) is indeed not what it actually is.  Our brain does what it wants when it wants, whether we are conscious of it or not.  In fact, research has kind of shown that our brain (without thought, consciousness, The Self) actually runs the show, not the reverse.  Decisions are made, then consciousness is informed, with the feeling of "I made this choice" (I being The Self, here).

I have done no research on the topic, not even Bakker's blog to be honest as I often get mired in the language and lose the meaning(but language is 9/10 of any expertise if you ask me), so my understanding may be dramatically off of what he is trying get at. Preface aside, my interpretation whilst reading Neuropath is that the notion of Self is misrecognized by that which I call my Self. The most succinct and precise way I can describe it, again my interpretation, is that we (read "I"/Self) mistake ourselves for the authors when we are in fact only narrators. Using another of Bakker's fictions as a referent, this gap, infinitesimal as it is, delineates the darkness that comes before from our conscious experience of such. It sounds far to familiar for myself to have come up with it, but I think that's the crux of the notion that our thoughts precede " us".

As to the hurdle of the Self being illusory, I don't think the argument is necessarily that the Self doesn't exist(it seems a bit bootstrap to me, self-refrencing itsself for its own existence), but rather that we can't point anywhere and say that this is the origen of consciousness. If I had to guess, I'd bet there are camps of neuroscientists divided by the theory that consciousness is an emergent principle, a by-product of a wildly firing thicket of neurons, and those that might argue that our observational tools aren't exact enough to locate consciousness.

I don't know. Thought I'd throw my two cents in on an argument none of us really seem to have a complete grasp of lol

EDIT: Sorry H, I think all I've gone and done here is reiterate the point you were trying to make. If I'm interpreting you correctly that is.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Madness on July 29, 2015, 06:13:52 am
As a little warm up to my possible TPB guest post, I'm going to try wading into this thread... after work (which essentially means I'm dead tired - but I have my laptop back and typing is pleasing).

So the crux
Quote
Intentional concepts such as belief, desire, good, perception, volition, action–all the furniture of conscious life–are simply ropes and trees and snakes. Misapprehensions. According to BBT, there are literally no such things.

But I'm still uncertain: what, then, is the Elephant? What is the whole that we cannot comprehend?

'The Elephant' is everything your brain is doing that you don't experience "directly." Science is hard-pressed to coherently express how much information the brain processes and how it does so (mostly a mixture of chemical and electrical activity, maxing out the basic heat potentials of an organ like the brain by dispersing its energy output). But what "you" or "I" directly experience is a fraction of what's going on in the brain at any given time (though, I might argue that we can train ourselves to experience more of that going's on).

As a segue, one of my favorite introductions to the brain was the Default Mode Network (because computer metaphors won't die, despite the brain defeating analogy by every historical comparison ever) and the Connectome.

Bakker's picked the thalamocortical because it is a structure at the crux between many "higher cognitive functions" neural-correlates of consciousness we might associate with "the self" in this discussion and unconscious, non-conscious, mammalian, reptilian, functions of the brain stem, cerebellum, etc.

Again, we can argue that you can work to experience more. But as a commonality, we aren't able to articulate the majority of our brain's functional life because it just doesn't exist to "us." One point that really changed my outlook on all of this was the variety of brain dysfunction and degeneration. Blindsight, prosopagnosia, akinetopsia, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Dysfunction and degeneration can be so, so selective and one need only read My Stroke of Insight to have a clear example of the old adage "few are lucky enough to diagnose themselves." And yet in almost every case, people cannot articulate their own absences. For instance, it was a common demonstration in the psychology textbooks I read to showcase our blindspot, where our visual field actually has an absence where the retinal nerves exit the eye.

This notion that "self" is illusory and that perception/consciousness can be altered through neurological experiment is hardly breaking news?
Haven`t people all over the world figured that out through the use of psychedelics and deep meditation/yoga?  Another example is the experience called "satori" in zen buddhism.

Some people have. Supposing that a majority of people adopt this perspective is foolish, though. In many cases, many of those realizations are attributed to "the mind," instead of "the brain," etc. As you wrote, our articulations dominate every domain.

Lol - now that I've read the thread, I see that you all haven't taken this too far.

So to finish up for the moment, though I feel this has been good warmup for tomorrow, if only as a short introduction, our experience of what we call consciousness is truncated, no matter how we cut that discussion. Whether or not one can truly maximize their experience of the brain's function is another guess, entirely.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: SilentRoamer on July 29, 2015, 10:39:38 am
As a child and indeed through most of my teenage years I subscribed to the idea that I was the only real "conscious" and all else was illusory - part of the holographic world. At the time I was and am still fairly convinced of the holographic theory.

Anyway it took me a long time before I began to understand this extreme form of Solipsim and to come to terms with it both personally and academically.

Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Francis Buck on July 29, 2015, 11:09:11 am
As a child and indeed through most of my teenage years I subscribed to the idea that I was the only real "conscious" and all else was illusory - part of the holographic world. At the time I was and am still fairly convinced of the holographic theory.

Anyway it took me a long time before I began to understand this extreme form of Solipsim and to come to terms with it both personally and academically.



That's actually super interesting. Holographic theory is something I've never been able to really grasp, though I've tried to read about it numerous times with little success. The mentioning of solipsism in particular caught my eye, since I don't ever recall seeing that mentioned when reading theories of a holographic universe (which is probably just because I haven't read much past cursory "explanations" I never understood). I'd love to hear you expand on that if you don't mind. How do you feel BBT fits into your model, if at all?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Royce on July 30, 2015, 05:15:45 pm
Some time ago I used to meditate on different koans(or something similiar) and I almost went crazy at times. I mention this here because it might have something to do with the brain being "blind".

For example, have you ever wondered what a thought is? It is a weird thing when you start to look at it, and it is not even a thing since a "thing" is a thought. Anything we can know is within thought activity, but what is a thought?

I don`t think there is a rational answer to it, because any rational answer would only be more thought and that doesn`t lead one outside of thought.

So whatever how much you try, you are still inside thought, and I wonder if that has something to do with the brain being "blind"?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Francis Buck on July 30, 2015, 06:56:21 pm
Some time ago I used to meditate on different koans(or something similiar) and I almost went crazy at times. I mention this here because it might have something to do with the brain being "blind".

For example, have you ever wondered what a thought is? It is a weird thing when you start to look at it, and it is not even a thing since a "thing" is a thought. Anything we can know is within thought activity, but what is a thought?

I don`t think there is a rational answer to it, because any rational answer would only be more thought and that doesn`t lead one outside of thought.

So whatever how much you try, you are still inside thought, and I wonder if that has something to do with the brain being "blind"?

From my understanding you are correct, particularly the bolded point. So to phrase it a different way, a brain as we know it cannot comprehend all of the parts of itself as a whole, and even if for example we imagined a "second" or "higher" brain that could understand the first one, that higher brain would still have an incomplete perception of itself, and so on and so forth. Thus, the inherent blindspot. 

I'm playing fast and loose with phrasing/terminology there but hopefully it makes sense. Perhaps substitute notions like understand/perception for: a brain cannot consciously experience the true illusory nature of itself, since conscious experience IS the illusion.

I actually kind of dislike the word "illusion" in these contexts, even though it is obviously useful (and so is commonly used in discussions on this or similar topics), but I'm not sure how to articulate why I dislike it in a way that makes any goddamn sense so I will just leave it for now, lol.


Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: SilentRoamer on July 31, 2015, 09:49:48 am
This is interesting.

Olaf Stapledons Star Maker posits something similar - how other consciousness may be so alien to our own as to be almost incomprehensible. Essentially externalising this argument - I mean really, how do you know your thoughts are the same as mine?

Touching on Solipsism again with this line of thought. 
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: JRControl on August 28, 2016, 11:45:52 pm
Some time ago I used to meditate on different koans(or something similiar) and I almost went crazy at times. I mention this here because it might have something to do with the brain being "blind".

Interesting. A while ago I used to meditate in a completely dark, mostly quiet room for an hour or two. Around the second hour I would get this feeling like my consciousness was spinning around its own axis if that even makes sense. Very disturbing and I am loathe to even ponder on the experience today. I am certain it is a byproduct of the brain trying to deal with a lack of appreciable inputs, but it was a very strange feeling. Almost like just existing as a single thought, completely bodiless, just spinning in existence and trying to get a grasp on it's own...revolutions I guess. Gah.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Callan S. on August 29, 2016, 03:22:12 am
Blind Brain Theory (http://i.imgur.com/UNhWQiV.gifv)

A: What you think is happening (picking up the balls)
B: What is actually happening (the balls keep rolling out)

When consciousness is largely or entirely made up of A, what is consciousness? Consciousness is an illusion. Or say what it is as you'd put it.

Quote
What is the whole that we cannot comprehend?

The idea is that there is a whole that is uncomprehended. Surely that's the first thing to consider - just that there is X and you don't know about X.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: jamesA01 on November 16, 2016, 10:45:31 pm
I will never be able to thank Bakker enough for elucidating BBT in the way that he did. I already understood it, at least intuitively, but it is deeply traumatic, and I could never have hoped to express it with the same technical precision that Bakker did.

The more I ponder BBT and its implications the more emboldened I become in my moral fanaticism, I want to viciously persecute the intentionalist scum as the maniacal fundamentalist I am.

We don't talk about it now, but mainstream psychological thinking, even in the 20th century, held that diseases like cancer were caused by personality failings. It is indeed a tremendous accomplishment that the state can now overrule the wishes of christians who wish to pray away disease or jehovahs witnesses that refuse blood transfusions. But the intentionalists still rule, and dissenting from them is still heretical.

The fear is that if we accept that people do not have a magical, supernatural will, then we would have to excuse them their crimes. Bakker even laments this from a pessimistic conservative perspective.

But why should we worry? The strain on intentionalism is accelerating by the day - the obesity crisis is getting so bad and we are contorting ourselves to produce the ideological fiction that there is a supernatural element to overcoming it. We will be forced to accept that everything that happens to us is due to material causes, so we'll actually be able to stop these things from happening.

We will actually be able to SOLVE issues like addiction and violent crime!

But the intentionalists don't want this, they just want to point fingers and judge, forever, because of the feelings of power and control it assuages them with. Intentionalists make claims like "anorexia is due to bad self esteem!" - well natural selection will weed out these fucking imbeciles if they try and ignore the scientific refutations of their bullshit just like memetic selection has gotten rid of the christian scientist movement.

For me, BBT is a true innovation in the war of naturalism versus religion. BBT and the implications of the semantic apocalypse and techo-science will allow us to re-engineer humanity. We will be able to destroy the sick patriarchal murder machine (and it's cuntocratic support team) that fuels the violence of this world and the boners of fantasy readers.

The eternally recurring political defeat that pacifism has suffered could, for the first time in history, be reversed if we alter ourselves in our most fundamental forms.

Every aspect of our trad biological bodies are being obsolesced by technics. This is becoming a part of our daily lives, as the rates of transexualism attest. We are experimenting on ourselves in ways that were hitherto-fore unimaginable. These are breakthroughs that can lead to MATERIAL ethical achievements, which are the REAL kind.

The potential for doom and savagery that techno-science produces and will likely deliver does not foreclose its possibility. We've managed to murder, rape, torture and cruelly destroy and savage ourselves as a species for our entire history and many humans proudly enjoyed and still enjoy it. In the age of nihilism, when everyone suffers their own pointless existence, I sometimes feel that the game we play is a kind of dare with each other - I can enjoy causing you the pain and allign myself with indifference! Doesn't it traumatize you and embolden me? I don't think that these kind of games can go on indefinitely when every human is becoming a piece of technically manipulable code. Everything about us is changing, heterosexual reproduction is even becoming non mandatory. We are mutating in ways that noone in history imagined and the only sure thing is that the past will not continue indefinitely, so i'm excited af.

And there just ISN'T a way to turn back the clock on this, extinction is not good enough since some other species will get to this level. IMO Extinction was the only moral horizon in our history until post humanism.

It's time that we burn the intentionalists at the fucking stake and dance in their ashes!
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: MSJ on November 17, 2016, 03:06:13 am
Yea, Science and shit is great. You know, until we become space rape aliens and shit.....  :)
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Hirtius/Pansa on November 17, 2016, 06:34:28 am
lol I imagine that if the Inchoroi were in an actual eliminitavist material existence they would just stay on their home planet and fuck tekne sex-dolls all day, every day, for eternity.

It's the intentionality of the universe that compels them to war against the fact of damnation and be interstellar rape-aliens.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on November 17, 2016, 11:15:41 am
lol I imagine that if the Inchoroi were in an actual eliminitavist material existence they would just stay on their home planet and fuck tekne sex-dolls all day, every day, for eternity.

It's the intentionality of the universe that compels them to war against the fact of damnation and be interstellar rape-aliens.

That presupposes that along the way to becoming Inchoroi they didn't fuck the environment of their home planet.  If Inchoroi are indeed something of an allegory to trans-humanism, well, it certainly seems plausible that they made their planet unlivable (whether through neglect, intentionally, or even just fucking around with the Bios too much).  Shit, we are on the fast track to that same spot and we don't even have interstellar space travel, or the Tekne.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: jamesA01 on November 17, 2016, 11:33:40 am
Look at ISIS, the contemporary worlds premier patriarchal rape gang. Aggressive young men in their prime, at their psychological peak for in-group identification - they did the usual thing of murdering and raping their way around, claiming territory and enslaving or killing anyone weaker than them. And of course it worked and they took power - but then they all got murdered by ROBOTS controlled by people on the other side of the planet, sitting in comfy chairs, fueling themselves with Monster energy drinks and Doritoes.

That is not something that has ever happened before in history. And who wants to be on the side of the agricultural slaver primitivists like ISIS?

We have ever growing masses of starving and potentially violent or terroristic/suicidal people on this planet and growing access to weapons. Someone will detonate a dirty bomb or hand nuke or something sooner rather than later. The surveillance state will extend into the neurological level, and people will be programming their own brains with DIY kits soon enough. IMO all points towards the obsolescence of our traditional biological bodies and thus everything that happened in our political and sexual lives as a consequence of them.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on November 17, 2016, 02:48:02 pm
Look at ISIS, the contemporary worlds premier patriarchal rape gang. Aggressive young men in their prime, at their psychological peak for in-group identification - they did the usual thing of murdering and raping their way around, claiming territory and enslaving or killing anyone weaker than them. And of course it worked and they took power - but then they all got murdered by ROBOTS controlled by people on the other side of the planet, sitting in comfy chairs, fueling themselves with Monster energy drinks and Doritoes.
Best summary of those events that I've ever seen. 

That is not something that has ever happened before in history. And who wants to be on the side of the agricultural slaver primitivists like ISIS?
Every zealot ever, religious or otherwise, right? Also, isn't the death robot angles side the same as the primitivists, just with robots?

We have ever growing masses of starving and potentially violent or terroristic/suicidal people on this planet and growing access to weapons. Someone will detonate a dirty bomb or hand nuke or something sooner rather than later. The surveillance state will extend into the neurological level, and people will be programming their own brains with DIY kits soon enough.
I agree with this vision of the not so distant future.

IMO all points towards the obsolescence of our traditional biological bodies and thus everything that happened in our political and sexual lives as a consequence of them.
I don't think I agree that because our traditional biological bodies will become obsolete that our experiences - ie what happens in our lives - become obsolete as well. Or is that not what you're saying?

Nice to see you back, jamesA01
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on November 18, 2016, 02:48:49 pm
I don't think I agree that because our traditional biological bodies will become obsolete that our experiences - ie what happens in our lives - become obsolete as well. Or is that not what you're saying?

Perhaps welcome to Westworld?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on November 21, 2016, 03:23:53 pm
Mmmm, Westworld. Through bits in there about consciousness, the brain, sentience, and something that sniffs of BBT.

To me it seems experience is the only thing that is. Even if its just happening in our minds or whatever, its still the only thing. Without experience - there simply isn't . Like Descarte's "I think, therefore I am". Yeah?
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: H on November 21, 2016, 04:05:18 pm
Mmmm, Westworld. Through bits in there about consciousness, the brain, sentience, and something that sniffs of BBT.

To me it seems experience is the only thing that is. Even if its just happening in our minds or whatever, its still the only thing. Without experience - there simply isn't . Like Descarte's "I think, therefore I am". Yeah?

Well, the further quote, "dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum" ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am") is a bit closer to what he really meant.  That's really an aside though.

Experience can't be all though, or can it?  Something about that seems not right to me and yet, I have no idea what...
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: ender on December 18, 2016, 03:25:01 pm
Experience can't be all though, or can it?  Something about that seems not right to me and yet, I have no idea what...
The major problem with Descartes, which you're pointing if i understand you well enough, is that he ends his hyperbolic doubt with doubt itself. But doubt is still a concept, it is still something that refers to something else (the language you use to express it, you doubt something...) therefore you can never have pure thoughts. Experience is experience of something which you can't get rid of.
As for the BBT, i am currently reading his paper (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-archive/the-last-magic-show-a-blind-brain-theory-of-the-appearance-of-consciousness/ (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-archive/the-last-magic-show-a-blind-brain-theory-of-the-appearance-of-consciousness/)), which is quite "velu" as we would say here. Thx for bringing this
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: jamesA01 on January 07, 2017, 05:47:31 pm
IMO experience is precisely the opposite, it's nothing.

our experiences are really technical processes.

we are staggeringly blind to these processes. experiments have already been done where someones brain is accessed without their knowledge and their movements are altered. what happens? the person doesn't even realize.

none of this has been officially publicized but it has leaked among those in the know, even slavoj zizek knows about it.

i'm willing to bet that we just come up with reasons to justify everything we do after the fact and that if you start wirelessly hacking a humans brain (which shouldnt be all that difficult in future since its one machine among others and it's already being done as we speak) the human will arrogantly affirm that he does, in fact, know what he's doing and he's doing it because he CHOOSES TO. show him your machine and he'll keep claiming he chose to move his arm left a milisecond before you typed the move arm left command.

our experience is so goddamn hallucinatory that we'll go along with anything. we have enough trouble explaining ourselves already.

i'm not a solipsist. there is definitely an external reality. but it was not created by a god and it is not altered one bit by our intentionality. we're just a component.


Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on January 07, 2017, 06:56:35 pm
That seems like a fair claim I suppose, its not like I have any thing to refute you.

Are you saying that the world around us is real, but our experience of it is basically hallucination? Then, how can you be sure that its even there? I'm just don't get how you can claim both.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: BeardFisher-King on December 03, 2017, 02:56:57 am
Removed by moderators. Please see the Building Better Communities (http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2270.msg41997#msg41997) thread for further discussion.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: TLEILAXU on December 03, 2017, 04:27:36 pm
IMO experience is precisely the opposite, it's nothing.

our experiences are really technical processes.

we are staggeringly blind to these processes. experiments have already been done where someones brain is accessed without their knowledge and their movements are altered. what happens? the person doesn't even realize.

none of this has been officially publicized but it has leaked among those in the know, even slavoj zizek knows about it.

i'm willing to bet that we just come up with reasons to justify everything we do after the fact and that if you start wirelessly hacking a humans brain (which shouldnt be all that difficult in future since its one machine among others and it's already being done as we speak) the human will arrogantly affirm that he does, in fact, know what he's doing and he's doing it because he CHOOSES TO. show him your machine and he'll keep claiming he chose to move his arm left a milisecond before you typed the move arm left command.

our experience is so goddamn hallucinatory that we'll go along with anything. we have enough trouble explaining ourselves already.

i'm not a solipsist. there is definitely an external reality. but it was not created by a god and it is not altered one bit by our intentionality. we're just a component.
Do you have anything to back up this claim? Note, I agree with many of your points.
Title: Re: Bakker's Blind Brain Theory
Post by: Wilshire on December 03, 2017, 05:07:11 pm
Just FYI, the posts you guys are responding to are from  November 2016 and January 2017 respectively.