Welcome to My Overactive Mind

Last night, as I was lying in bed falling asleep, I was listening to my chronic tinnitus (ringing in my ears). I found that the ringing was less noticeable if I turned my mental mp3 player to a song in the key of the ringing. After a while I was unable to distinguish the ringing from the music playing in my head. Sometimes when I listen to music on lower quality speakers and I can’t hear all of the layers of the music my mind fills the missing parts in and the experience is not dampened. Likewise, I sometimes will hear a song that I have loved for years on a different stereo and discover that my favorite little details of the song weren’t really in the song. Makes me wonder how much of world I experience is just my overactive mind filling in the gaps and creating its own features.

According to the Santiago Theory of Cognition, put forward by neuro-scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, all living systems are cognitive systems. Life cannot be separated from the process of cognition, the process of knowing. In the Santiago theory, mind is not a thing(like the brain) but a process of knowing and cognizing. In most theories of cognition, it is assumed that there is an objective, material world which the mind identifies and reflects in the consciousness of the observer. In these theories, the mind is a thing, often either the brain itself or some emergent property of the brain. The Santiago theory understands the mind to be the very process of cognition as opposed to the conscious part of the body.

While proponents of the Santiago theory do not deny the existence of a material world, they understand that the world of our everyday experience is not an objective reality. As philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett explains in his Ted Talk there is nothing intrinsically sweet about sugar or honey, “if you looked at glucose molecules until you were blind you would not see why they tasted sweet.” Sugar, according to Dennett, tastes sweet because, biologically, we like it. We do not like it because it tastes sweet. A similar concept holds true for our perception of smell, color, temperature, and beauty. Color does not exist objectively in the material world. Objectively, color is frequency of vibration of the electromagnetic field, the same as heat, microwaves, radio waves, and x-rays. It is only within our physiology that these frequencies of vibration are recognized as having color.

An old Deepak Copra piece titled What is the Nature of Reality? explores some of the limits of sensory perception.

“…our initial sensory experiences and how we interpret them or how they are interpreted for us actually structure the very anatomy and physiology of our nervous system in such a way that ultimately the nervous system serves only one function: to keep reinforcing the initial interpretation. Anything that doesn't reinforce the initial interpretation doesn't even get into the nervous system. So if you don't have a concept or a notion or an idea that something exists, then your nervous system won't even take it in.”

Just as my overactive mind fills in and amends the music that I hear it also manufactures beauty when I look at my girlfriend and taste when I eat. This is one of the most amazing and beautiful capacities of the mind which gives meaning to the human experience. With this understanding it is interesting to ask, how much of what holds us back from creating the world we want to live in, the institutions we want to study and work in, and the communities we want to share our experiences with are the limitations we have been cultured to see? How many of the limitations to human progress are the result of an overactive mind?

I Divided Myself by Zero . . .

(Actually it was a while ago, 5/22/09, and things have been different ever since. Persons taking Calculus 2 and other math classes should exercise caution when such temptations come to them.)

I divided myself by zero,

So now I'm undefined,

And assuming I was a finite quantity to begin with

Now I'm infinite

(And by the way this isn't a poem, I just like writing in equation-esque if-then-therefores)

So since I'm infinite I'm everything

Which means the only thing I can now divide myself by is myself.

So I'll divide myself by myself--

Infinity by infinity--

But anything divided by itself is one.

(Although infinity divided by infinity is still infinity.)

So now I am infinity, but I may also think of myself as one.

But now I have two ways of conceptualizing myself,

And I myself am separate from either conceptualization,

So that makes three

And really I'm not sure who or what I am

If not everything

Which is what I was to begin with!

Well, ever since I divided by zero--

I'm undefined, and defined also,

Which somehow seems even less defined

Than being simply undefined entirely.

But now I have an identity crisis on my hands--

It is very dangerous to divide oneself by zero.

It's just that it's so pleasant to call oneself infinite,

Though rather disorienting.

I suppose it is good to be both infinite and finite,

For to be finite alone is unsatisfying.

Yes, I think I must be both.

That is why I must be y=tanx--

So that I can swoop off to infinity,

Reappear racing towards the x-axis from negative infinity,

Slow down and leisurely observe the finite realm in which I find myself,

And swoop off to infinity again.

(Oh dear. I am not so sure now.

Is this a poem? Perhaps it's undefined.)

Discovery v. Creation (as it pertains to me)

This is my first post here, but it is certainly not the beginning in the continuum of an ongoing series of conversations I have with myself and anyone who cares to join me.

Prior questions include: "What is Real?" "How do I know what is real?" "Is there absolute Truth?" "Can anything be known for certain?" "What assumptions (or beliefs) are most useful?" "What are the consequences of my assumptions/beliefs in my own life?" Or, "IF one believes A, THEN how will one interpret the world and behave in it?" "What is my relationship to reality?" "What is my niche?" "Who am I?"

I invite you to play with all of them. Here are my thoughts for today. Please note that they do not conform to standard English grammar. (Most of my writing does, but this came out in a stream of consciousness style. I say came out, because I don't know where thoughts come from. "Where do thoughts come from?" is another question I recommend.)

My old question where I left off in the string of precise questions was the relationship between discovery and creation and my role.

To pursue reality--presumably an independent reality which included little me--was to be a discoverer of things as they are. Science. Stepping back to observe, or carefully interacting. Wishing for nothing in particular except that things be themselves and let me know them as they are. Freedom to appreciate, to find underlying dynamic principles, to understand, to be stable and directionless, open. Intrinsic & relational values of everything.

Then seemingly at odds with this, creation. Meaning-making. Taking direction, creating definitions, pulling the finite out of the infinite, seeing shapes within the void. Goal-setting--self-alteration, deciding to be more this or more that or less that. Wanting external things to be different; conflicting directions, creative forces at odds. Responsibility and power. Art. Freedom to create, to plunge into a specific form of bondage, to synthesize the old into the new. Interactive reality. Neurolinguistic programming, opinions, choice. Co-creative reality soup. Relativity; perspectives vying for power. Aggression. Attachment. Wants. External constraints, internal constraints. Doubt. Failure. Immersion, and stepping back. Discovery inevitably part of creation: "Curving back on my own nature, I create again and again."

(Thus ends Art and Nature, minus doubt and failure. On to Classical Mechanics.)

Squirrels' flowing bounds: parabolas or sinusoidal functions? Does science know what it's talking about? Are Newtonian diagrams socially responsible entities? Tools, neutrality-->frustration. I can approximate the path of a football with this equation, but I do not know how to kick a football.

(Back to Art and Nature conclusions)

I am the outcome of every process I engage in. I am my own artwork haphazardly pieced together by this discussion and that experience and those stories. Each discovery I make re-creates me into something new. I am a process. I influence other processes, I initiate other processes. (Fast-forward to present) When did I last extract myself to slip into Being and discovering, when did I last close my eyes to concerns that they might be refreshed and see the world anew? Stop thinking? Can one be responsible and do these things? Yes . . . but the current social perception seems to be 'no.'

"Seems to be"--the ever ambiguous world, the ever unsure reality where to be certain is to be wrong and to succeed requires assumptions empirically grounded.

(Back to Physics--Classical Mechanics; Solids, Fluids, and Thermodynamics)

"Why" retired to a grave; the world dimmed; and "How" became ghostly pale as the "Why" was replaced by mundane descriptions of increasingly smaller-scale "What"s with no apparent reason or purpose. Humans became predictable variables who made perfect sense to themselves; others' agreement indicated capacity to understand, rather than degree of sensibility.

The unknown became associated with failure. Failure became associated with unhappiness. The world spun west to east and day became night.

I do not know what I am writing anymore, so now I will stop.

Upon reading through I have discovered it, I shall proceed.

There is direction in life: accumulation of energy. (Presumably universal) laws of thermodynamics interact with human desires, with biological, chemical, and geological processes. We all are processes, aren't we?

Perhaps the only question is whether we are accumulating energy via an external energy source or some infinite internal dynamism of a metaphysical nature. If so, then we are alive, physically or metaphorically, respectively.

What does it mean to live metaphorically? Associatively, connecting A to B in a web of meaning. Associating intrinsic values of distinct entities . . . How can one identify intrinsic values from an external vantage point? How can one declare entities distinct aside from perception which is by its nature interpretive?

Bahumbug }:( "Chop wood, carry water." Life as an experiment, or series of experiments, or series of simultaneous experiments on experimenting. That which knows cannot prove itself hypothetically. Empirical evidence gathering requires tweaking the experiment.

How can one be a discoverer and a creator, a scientist and an artist (is there any difference between a scientist and an artist? I think not,) how can one be still and at once active, receptive and dynamic (another surprise--dynamism spills out of receptivity. How can one be receptive?) how can one be free yet play within boundaries?

This is a test

dfd

Testing

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Welcome

Paradigms Lost exists as a collection of authors who contribute thoughts, feelings, ideas, and research as well as comments and feedback to each other as we individually and collectively explore our paradigms. Paradigms lost is a bit of a playful idea that suggests we may have lost or are looking for our paradigm(s).

A paradigm could be defined as: a philosophical or theoretical framework or a pattern of thought that serves as the container in which our assumptions, beliefs, theories, etc. about how the world works exist in.

It might also be claimed that what we are attempting is an intentional paradigm shift, or, since it could be argued that this a continuous (and also sometimes sudden) process that we are documenting the process of our paradigm(s) shifting.

Paradigm paralysis 

Perhaps the greatest barrier to a paradigm shift, in some cases, is the reality of paradigm paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking [9]. This is similar to what psychologists term Confirmation bias. (from wikipedia)