Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 00:06:53 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Spectre of Madness


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

such passivity. such faith. once its was a belief in god. then it was 
eugenics, then it was a gay gene, then it was cyborgs...

laughs - didn't anyone tell you that we are entering the 
post-information society, that all the information society theories are 
collapsing before your eyes,  as the work flees to india.

steve

anonymous wrote:

>Anonymous quoted Thomas Pynchon: "But you had taken on a greater, more
>harmful illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false.
>Completely. No one can *do*. Things only happen."
>
>And Steve replied:
>  
>
>>Life like politics is an experimental activity and the danger of the
>>Pynchon quote (a great novel i agree) is that you cannot live in the
>>thrall of the Wordsworthian  nach-drach-tory. This fateful toryism is
>>the great danger of existing in the 21st C... postmodern world.
>>    
>>
>
>What danger? What you? "You" don't exist. Neither do "I". What "you" are
>is an assemblage of roughly a hundred trillion cells, of thousands of
>different sorts. The bulk of these cells are "daughters" of the egg cell
>and sperm cell whose union started "you", but they are actually
>outnumbered by the trillions of bacterial hitchhikers from thousands of
>different lineages stowed away in your body (Hooper, et al, 1998,
>"Host-Microbrial Symbiosis in the Mammalian Intestine: Exploring an
>Internal Ecosystem"). Each of your host cells is a mindless mechanism, a
>largely autonomous micro-robot. It is no more conscious than your
>bacterial guests are. Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows
>who you are, or cares. "You" don't exist, except as yet another false
>reification.
>
>The more we learn about how we evolved and how our brains work, the more
>certain we are becoming that we are each made of mindless robots and
>nothing else, no non-physical, non-robotic ingredients at all.
>
>Are decisions voluntary? Or are they things that happen to us? For a
>neuroscientist, the answer to this question is pretty clear.
>
>While it's true that literary intellectuals no longer communicate with
>scientists, Pynchon is that rare exception, a literary intellectual who
>actually possesses a keen interest and a sophisticated awareness of
>science. And the quote above merely expresses his awareness that for a
>cognitive neuroscientist, believing in a fictional mental construct called
>"free will" is kind of like believing in leprachauns or UFOs.
>
>So to repeat: "No one can *do*. Things only happen."
>
>No psychic walls of I's. No incommunicable mass of we's. A finite world of
>words: a sense of limit, a limit which does not energize subject matter,
>but penetrates it, dissolves it, creating both dream and reality, life and
>death. A finite world of words: you can't tell where the subject is, you
>can't tell what the subject is.
>
>For the reply we make to ourselves is assuredly never anything other than
>the question itself. Reject world as unit. There is no phenomenal world as
>an external point of reference, of support. There is no possible
>communication between these illusory points. Communication is impossible:
>the thing said and the thing heard have a common source. And it's not an
>inventing mind, a thinking subject. Metaphysical I instead: no part, but
>limit.
>
>A world full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It points to nothing
>other than the fact that it is. It's not a metaphor. It's nothing you can
>believe in. It is. The moment you let it out of your head, it's dead: it's
>real.
>
>Reject life in any number of 'worlds' or 'universes' or in trifling
>delusions such as 'past,' 'present,' or 'future.'  It's all denied.
>Finite man in a finite world. Or, finite man as finite world.
>
>Not Wordsworthian nach-drach-tory at all. Whatever that means. But
>cybernetics, communications theory and cognitive neuroscience.
>
>  
>

HTML VERSION:

Anonymous quoted Thomas Pynchon: "But you had taken on a greater, more
harmful illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false.
Completely. No one can *do*. Things only happen."

And Steve replied:
  

Life like politics is an experimental activity and the danger of the
Pynchon quote (a great novel i agree) is that you cannot live in the
thrall of the Wordsworthian  nach-drach-tory. This fateful toryism is
the great danger of existing in the 21st C... postmodern world.
    

What danger? What you? "You" don't exist. Neither do "I". What "you" are
is an assemblage of roughly a hundred trillion cells, of thousands of
different sorts. The bulk of these cells are "daughters" of the egg cell
and sperm cell whose union started "you", but they are actually
outnumbered by the trillions of bacterial hitchhikers from thousands of
different lineages stowed away in your body (Hooper, et al, 1998,
"Host-Microbrial Symbiosis in the Mammalian Intestine: Exploring an
Internal Ecosystem"). Each of your host cells is a mindless mechanism, a
largely autonomous micro-robot. It is no more conscious than your
bacterial guests are. Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows
who you are, or cares. "You" don't exist, except as yet another false
reification.

The more we learn about how we evolved and how our brains work, the more
certain we are becoming that we are each made of mindless robots and
nothing else, no non-physical, non-robotic ingredients at all.

Are decisions voluntary? Or are they things that happen to us? For a
neuroscientist, the answer to this question is pretty clear.

While it's true that literary intellectuals no longer communicate with
scientists, Pynchon is that rare exception, a literary intellectual who
actually possesses a keen interest and a sophisticated awareness of
science. And the quote above merely expresses his awareness that for a
cognitive neuroscientist, believing in a fictional mental construct called
"free will" is kind of like believing in leprachauns or UFOs.

So to repeat: "No one can *do*. Things only happen."

No psychic walls of I's. No incommunicable mass of we's. A finite world of
words: a sense of limit, a limit which does not energize subject matter,
but penetrates it, dissolves it, creating both dream and reality, life and
death. A finite world of words: you can't tell where the subject is, you
can't tell what the subject is.

For the reply we make to ourselves is assuredly never anything other than
the question itself. Reject world as unit. There is no phenomenal world as
an external point of reference, of support. There is no possible
communication between these illusory points. Communication is impossible:
the thing said and the thing heard have a common source. And it's not an
inventing mind, a thinking subject. Metaphysical I instead: no part, but
limit.

A world full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It points to nothing
other than the fact that it is. It's not a metaphor. It's nothing you can
believe in. It is. The moment you let it out of your head, it's dead: it's
real.

Reject life in any number of 'worlds' or 'universes' or in trifling
delusions such as 'past,' 'present,' or 'future.'  It's all denied.
Finite man in a finite world. Or, finite man as finite world.

Not Wordsworthian nach-drach-tory at all. Whatever that means. But
cybernetics, communications theory and cognitive neuroscience.