RE: why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?
January 3, 2019 at 5:30 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2019 at 5:32 pm by bennyboy.)
(January 3, 2019 at 4:25 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote:(January 3, 2019 at 12:19 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me that both the sense of consciousness, and the sense of self, are a kind of supervenient narrative-- a spontaneous mythology if you will: "Benjamin" is a conglomerate of ideas attached to a name, and while not nearly as pure as the Jesus idea or pagan god ideas, isn't really more representative of anything real than those are.
-and if that's what consciousness is, you possess that. The multiple drafts model posits exactly this. You're not actually experiencing things in the way that the cartesian model posits (no more than the robot is)...it's a story about what happened. You, are a story about what's happened. It wouldn't be difficult for a machine to possess an aar lik this (they already do)..and that aar would/could be what it used to respond so convincingly.
Maybe. If so, then suicide is literally just the ending of a bad narrative-- an unwillingness to play out a fairy tale that's gone irrevocably wrong for some reason (I'm never going to be prima ballerina after all, and I can't unfuck my dog!). Those are pretty high stakes, though. It would be nice to have something other than an arbitrary philosophical position upon which to base that decision.
Why do suicidal people go through with it? Is it because they are irrational, and do no have access to the obvious truths revealed by objective observations? Are they blinded to all the joys that life offers in recompense for their suffering? Or do they just understand that permafucked is permafucked, and that the entire fairy tale was never real to begin with?
I'm beginning to suspect that material success may contribute greatly to suicide for this reason-- people get to the top of their personal Everest, whatever it is, and say, "Meh. . . just a bunch of clouds, really. And fuck, I'm cold!"
