4 2015 ~Consciousness is one of the great mysteries of science—perhaps the greatest mystery. We all know we have it, when we think, when we dream, when we savor tastes and aromas, when we hear a great symphony, when we fall in love, and it is surely the most intimate, the most sapient, the most personal part of ourselves. Yet no one can really claim to have understood and explained it completely. There’s no doubt it’s associated with the brain in some way, but the nature of that association is far from clear. In particular, how do these three pounds of material stuff inside our skulls allow us to have experiences?
Professor David Chalmers of the Australian National University has dubbed this the “hard problem” of consciousness, but many scientists, particularly those (still in the majority) who are philosophically inclined to believe that all phenomena can be reduced to material interactions, deny that any problem exists. To them, it seems self-evident that physical processes within the stuff of the brain produce consciousness rather in the way that a generator produces electricity—i.e., consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of brain activity. And they see it as equally obvious that there cannot be such things as conscious survival of death or out-of-body experiences since both consciousness and experience are confined to the brain and must die when the brain dies.
Yet other scientists with equally impressive credentials are not so sure and are increasingly willing to consider a very different analogy—namely that the relationship of consciousness to the brain may be less like the relationship of the generator to the electricity it produces and more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set. In that case, when the TV set is destroyed—dead—the signal still continues. Nothing in the present state of knowledge of neuroscience rules this revolutionary possibility out. True, if you damage certain areas of the brain, certain areas of consciousness are compromised, but this does not prove that those areas of the brain generate the relevant areas of consciousness. If you were to damage certain areas of your TV set, the picture would deteriorate or vanish but the TV signal would remain intact.
We are, in other words, confronted by at least as much mystery as fact around the subject of consciousness, and this being the case, we should remember that what seems obvious and self-evident to one generation may not seem at all obvious or self-evident to the next. For hundreds of years, it was obvious and self-evident to the greatest human minds that the Sun moved around the Earth—one need only look to the sky, they said, to see the truth of this proposition. Indeed, those who maintained the revolutionary view that the Earth moved around the Sun faced the Inquisition and death by burning at the stake. Yet as it turned out, the revolutionaries were right and orthodoxy was terribly, ridiculously wrong.
The same may well prove to be true with the mystery of consciousness. Yes, it does seem obvious and self-evident that the brain produces it (the generator analogy), but this is a deduction from incomplete data and categorically not yet an established and irrefutable fact. New discoveries may force materialist science to rescind this theory in favor of something more like the TV analogy in which the brain comes to be understood as a transceiver rather than as a generator of consciousness and in which consciousness is recognized as fundamentally “nonlocal” in nature—perhaps even as one of the basic driving forces of the universe. At the very least, we should withhold judgment on this “hard problem” until more evidence is in and view with suspicion those who hold dogmatic and ideological views about the nature of consciousness.
It’s at this point that the whole seemingly academic issue becomes intensely political and current because modern technological society idealizes and is monopolistically focused on only one state of consciousness—the alert, problem-solving state of consciousness that makes us efficient producers and consumers of material goods and services. At the same time, our society seeks to police and control a wide range of other “altered” states of consciousness on the basis of the unproven proposition that consciousness is generated by the brain.
I refer here to the so-called “war on drugs” which is really better understood as a war on consciousness and which maintains, supposedly in the interests of society, that we as adults do not have the right or maturity to make sovereign decisions about our own consciousness and about the states of consciousness we wish to explore and embrace. This extraordinary imposition on adult cognitive liberty is justified by the idea that our brain activity, disturbed by drugs, will adversely impact our behavior toward others. Yet anyone who pauses to think seriously for even a moment must realize that we already have adequate laws that govern adverse behavior toward others and that the real purpose of the “war on drugs” must therefore be to bear down on consciousness itself.
Confirmation that this is so came from the last British Labour government. It declared that its drug policy would be based on scientific evidence, yet in 2009 it sacked Professor David Nutt, chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, for stating the simple statistical fact that cannabis is less dangerous (in terms of measured “harms”) than tobacco and alcohol and that ecstasy is less dangerous than horse riding. Clearly what was at play here were ideological issues of great importance to the powers that be. And this is an ideology that sticks stubbornly in place regardless of changes in the complexion of the government of the day. The present Conservative-Liberal coalition remains just as adamant in its enforcement of the so-called war on drugs as its Labour predecessor and continues, in the name of this “war,” to pour public money—our money—into large, armed, drug-enforcement bureaucracies which are entitled to break down our doors at dead of night, invade our homes, ruin our reputations, and put us behind bars.
All of this, we have been persuaded, is in our own interests. Yet if we as adults are not free to make sovereign decisions—right or wrong—about our own consciousness, that most intimate, that most sapient, that most personal part of ourselves, then in what useful sense can we be said to be free at all? And how are we to begin to take real and meaningful responsibility for all the other aspects of our lives when our governments seek to disenfranchise us from this most fundamental of all human rights and responsibilities?
In this connection, it is interesting to note that our society has no objection to altering consciousness per se. On the contrary, many consciousness-altering drugs, such as Prozac, Seroxat, Ritalin, and alcohol are either massively overprescribed or freely available today, and they make huge fortunes for their manufacturers but remain entirely legal despite causing obvious harms. Could this be because such legal drugs do not alter consciousness in ways that threaten the monopolistic dominance of the alert problem-solving state of consciousness, while a good number of illegal drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, DMT, and psilocybin, do?
There is a revolution in the making here, and what is at stake transcends the case for cognitive liberty as an essential and inalienable adult human right. If it turns out that the brain is not a generator but a transceiver of consciousness, then we must consider some little-known scientific research that points to a seemingly outlandish possibility, namely that a particular category of illegal drugs, the hallucinogens such as LSD, DMT, and psilocybin, may alter the receiver wavelength of the brain and allow us to gain contact with intelligent nonmaterial entities, “light beings,” “spirits,” “machine elves” (as Terence McKenna called them)—perhaps even the inhabitants of other dimensions. This possibility is regarded as plain fact by shamans in hunter-gatherer societies who for thousands of years made use of visionary plants and fungi to enter and interact with what they construed as the “spirit world.” Intriguingly, it was also specifically envisaged by Dr. Rick Strassman, professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, following his groundbreaking research with human volunteers and DMT carried out in the 1990s—a project that produced findings with shattering implications for our understanding of the nature of reality.
excerpted from The Divine Spark: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization
read entire article at: http://realitysandwich.com/309597/the-consciousness-revolution/
*From my perspective, Graham Hancock (& countless other Spiritual Warriors on the forefront of shattering the old paradigm) is playing a crucial role in amplifying a conversation that will ultimately help reshape Humanities understanding of their symbiotic relationship with the Gaian Mind… & as importantly, what it means to truly reclaim our sovereignty, as Spiritual Beings having a human experience. The questions of ‘who are we’, ‘where do we come from’, are being examined through wider lenses as the answers set at the alters of science & religion no longer satisfy. The clarion call to ‘go deeper’ is expressing itself in many ways, including a new revolution in the use of Entheogens. -Another arena that is regaining momentum on the world stage is the notion of Artificial Intelligence, which instantly raises profound questions about the nature of Consciousness & Creation. I highly recommend the new film ‘Ex-Machina’ as a more than thought proving addition to the Multidimensional Puzzle. ~InLight555
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The Divine Spark: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization
By Graham Hancock
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This is taken from the introduction of The Divine Spark: A Graham Hancock Reader: Psychedelics, Consciousn.... See more at The Divine Spark Library Page
I've been very lucky; I feel I've been blessed; I've lived a blessed life. I'm grateful to the universe for giving me the chance to live this life.
But why am I here? Why are you here? Why are we all here on planet earth? Why are we conscious? What are our lives for?
http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG14.php
~thought provoking conversation with the director & writer of Ex-Machina...
Ex Machina: Are Homo Sapiens Failing the Turing Test?
A Dialogue with Alex Garland
This dialogue with the writer and director of Ex Machina Alex Garland is meant for people who have already seen the film (plot spoilers abound). The conversation ranges from looking at the film as a Turing Test directed at the human species to a discussion of psychopathy, evolution, and the illusory nature of perception.
Alex Garland is a British novelist, screenwriter and film producer who wrote The Beach, and screenplays for Sunshine, 28 Days Later, Take Me With You and Dredd amongst many other creative works.
Jonathan Zap has been writing about the “Singularity Archetype” since 1978. His book, Crossing the Event Horizon—Human Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype discusses theories relevant to Ex Machina.
Jonathan: Thank you for making this possible Alex. As we discussed, this will be a little bit unconventional because I’m sure you’re tired of answering all the conventional questions anyway, so I’m going to throw an unconventional theory/proposition about the film at you and see how you react to it.
Alex: OK, I’ll do my best.
Jonathan: This may seem a bit challenging, but one thing I am not challenging is the brilliance of this film, which is not only one of the best science fiction films I’ve ever seen, but one of the best and most important films I’ve seen period.
Alex: That’s very kind, thanks.
Jonathan: We talked briefly at one of the early showings and you stated that the interpretation of any movie or any narrative is fifty percent the creator and fifty percent what happens with the recipient. I’m going to stretch the mathematical metaphor and suggest that there could be a third fifty-percent that overlaps and influences both of those two parties—
Alex: OK, that’s a Venn diagram
Jonathan: Right, and that would be the archetypal domain. And specifically—
Alex: When you say “archetypal” I need to know exactly what you are talking about. You’re talking about the domain that relates to archetypes? So things like commonly accepted in terms of, like, if you’re been impolite you would say a cliché and if you’re being polite you say archetype.
Jonathan: No, I mean “archetype” in the Jungian sense like the hero, the devouring mother—
Alex: Oh, OK, archetypes.
Jonathan: These archetypes are living agencies, they shape us as well as being patterns that we can observe.
Alex: And these are the sort of repeating myth type stuff?
Jonathan: Right, and then there is an archetype that I believe I discovered in 1978 that I call “the Singularity Archetype.” I believe that Ex Machina is largely a manifestation of that archetype which relates to evolutionary metamorphosis.
I think most people assume that the film has three dominant characters—Nathan, Caleb and Eva, but I’d like to suggest that there’s a fourth and more dominant character which best represents the archetypal domain and the unconscious—and that is the house—the house as evolutionary crucible of the Singularity Archetype. The house functions operationally as the unconscious in that it is a paradoxical hall of mirrors that employs three specific things: figure-ground reversal, misdirection—which is a conscious part of the film, and cognitive dissonance. Basically, the house creates a total reversal so that what begins as a Turing test aimed at Eva, the AI, turns into a Turing test, a consciousness-versus-mechanical test, of Homo sapiens which is personified by Caleb Smith. With a name like “Smith,” the most common last name, it suggests that he is an everyman standing in for the whole species.
Alex: And for the audience.
Jonathan: Right, exactly.
Alex: Because Caleb is a surrogate for the audience in many key respects at certain times...
Jonathan: ...And Nathan seems to be the ruling ego in control of the house, but what the Singularity Archetype does, among other things, is it breaks down ego structures and patriarchy to create metamorphosis. And so Nathan—and I know you found Apocalypse Now to be a source of inspiration (for Ex Machina)—so Nathan, like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now is an ego in a breakdown phase.
Alex: Right, agreed.
Jonathan: And just like the jungle, which is clearly the unconscious in Apocalypse Now, is melting down Kurtz, the house is already melting down Nathan, which further suggests that it is also like the unconscious. And then there are this series of misdirections, cognitive dissonances, with human and mechanical forms changing and becoming more human, and figure-ground reversals until the Turing tester, the everyman, Caleb Smith, has to test himself to see if he is human and he switches places with Eva and he is the one who remains trapped in the house as the rat who cannot solve the maze. And so, Caleb, the everyman, arguably fails the Turing test because of a specific reason—he can’t get his sexuality to be more conscious than mechanical. Basically the search engine has used his porno searches to generate the perfect face to arouse his anima projection, his romantic projection—
Alex: I just want to take issue with the use of the word “Turing test” because Turing test—it’s a sort of post Turing test—it’s me being pedantic about it. There’s a little discussion about this in the movie—the actual terms of the Turing test is not really a test for sentience it’s a test for language in some respects, which may or may not really imply sentience. But anyway, keep going.
Jonathan: Yeah, and obviously human beings are supposed to be the definition of the successful passing of the Turing test, but yet with the deeper meaning (of the post Turing Test) it is not so clear how much we pass it because there are places in which our sentience is compromised by mechanicalness. And so—
Alex: Yeah, and also I think we probably just perceive— our conception of what the consciousness we have is— may well be wrong. We may just misperceive what we are, in as much that mainly what we are is consciousness.
Jonathan: Right and that’s part of the theme of the Singularity Archetype is that as we pursue AI, it calls into question and transforms our sense of our own consciousness as we try to act like gods and create (consciousness) out of a physical substrate.
Alex: I’m sure that’s true, but it might be because we misapprehend what consciousness is. I mean it may not be as well, the truth is that with a lot of this stuff there are no concrete answers to the questions you can provide because at this exact moment in time we don’t know. We don’t know how consciousness works, and we don’t know what sentience is in some respects, in some very important respects...
Jonathan: ...And one of the scary aspects of human evolution that’s also picked up is psychopathy, the condition of being a psychopath.
Alex: Right.
Jonathan: And so the professional group that tests out as the highest in psychopathy are CEOs, Nathan’s exact job basically
Alex: Right, yeah.
Jonathan: So we see empathy versus psychopathy. Because a big theme going on, and in relates to the financial meltdown, is psychopaths ruling the world. So how much are we empathic and how much are we living in the corporate culture of what I call “situational psychopathy?”
Alex: Right.
Jonathan: As much as AI is a central theme, even more powerfully in some ways (Ex Machina) is turning this advanced Turing test on us and showing us as beings more mechanical than we think we are and as less empathic than we think we are.
Alex: I think it is true probably that we misperceive ourselves in all sorts of different ways. One thing about empathy is that people often treat it as if it’s a blanket thing and a binary thing—you’ve either got it or you haven’t and if you do have it you apply it sort of generally to everything. In fact, although there may be people who do not have empathy at all, the people who do have it are selective about it—the empathize with some people but now with others—and a lot of it is related to proximity and what people choose to look at. So somebody who sees themselves as being good in many respects may, for example, regularly take cocaine and are choosing not to think about the means in which that cocaine arrived in their wallet, maybe not thinking about some of the people that are getting killed in Mexico to get the cocaine to their wallet, or Columbia or wherever it is, and so we can choose to look or not look... What I would say just to sort of slightly modify a bit the Turing test thing that you said is that in the character of Nathan I wouldn’t necessarily say that he is a psychopath. I’ve read those same articles that say CEOs have a higher incidence of that particular thing than in the general public and that may or may not be true, I’ll take it as sure, why not, it kind of makes sense doesn’t it? In the case of Nathan, there is a game he is playing which is that to an extent presenting himself as something from which this robot needs to be rescued, and so it is within his interests to appear that way to this young guy, and because the young guy is a surrogate for the audience, to us as well. And so, in my mind at least, there is an ambiguity there. But that doesn’t necessarily effect the broader terms of what you are saying.
Jonathan: Yeah, and psychopathy is on a spectrum, a continuum as you have pointed out. And also what is really fascinating is his last line that most people in the audience reacted to as funny, which it is, but it also has a lot of deeper meaning, “This is unreal.” So if you think of him as an ego, this is the most real thing that’s ever happened to him, but what’s unreal for the ego is death and total loss of control which is what he experiences in that moment.
Alex: Yeah, and that side of the whole thing is unreal.
Jonathan: Right, it is surreal for sure.
Alex: Yeah, you can have that thought in many times and many places and many contexts.
Jonathan: And what I thought was especially brilliant also was how you perform that Turing test on the audience, on the viewer, especially a heterosexual male viewer, because of the cognitive dissonance created where you start out with Ava with the human face—because if she had a wire mesh face we wouldn’t identify with her as a romantic projection—
Alex: Or maybe not as quickly, because one of the things that people do is they do project sentience quite quickly into things. In a way, in the end, I think that’s often what empathy is—understanding that something else is sentient. And in some ways I think it is true humans misunderstand their own sentience. I think that’s highly likely. But they also misunderstand the sentience of other things inasmuch as sometimes they project it into things that don’t have it. We do that a lot reflexively. I mean objects—it might be a cuddly toy, or a pen or a computer or a tree that we feel has a degree of sentience that it doesn’t have. Actually that unreal thing that Nathan says in some respect relates to that—that our sense of what is actually going on is really quite fluid.
I saw a really interesting experiment that a professor of neuroscience presented in a lecture I was attending a few months ago where it shows this in quite a literal way. I hope I do the right job in describing it. Basically what it does is it takes an image, a white screen the size of a cinema screen in the context of a lecture, a black cross in the middle and around it, at the points roughly where the hands of a clock would be, one-two-three-four are these mauve dots and one of these mauve dots is missing and then what happens is that he starts to animate the process and the missing dot starts to move around so that it starts in the twelve o’clock position, then in the one and the two and the three so it’s a rotating missing dot among mauve dots on a white background, and then he says, “look at the black cross,” and after about three seconds, even though you know this is going to happen and even though he’s informed you that this is going to happen, all the dots disappear, all the mauve dots vanish, and where the missing dot was, a perfect green circle appears moving in a circle going around. So the light waves that are hitting your optic nerve are being completely reinterpreted in a wholly different way, you are seeing something without the benefit of LSD or anything like it and seeing something that is literally not there and what it does is it demonstrates to you that what your brain actually does is not tell you what’s in front of you, but gives its best guess on the basis of what it has in front of you. And once you know that, once you know you can’t literally trust what you see, where does that take your consciousness? The world becomes so intensely subjective and so personal the unreal thing starts to become actually the dominant state, not just the moment when you get stabbed, but the whole thing...
*read entire interview at: http://realitysandwich.com/314453/ex-machina-are-homo-sapiens-faili...
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Excellent, Feather... I recently purchased his classic 'A Brief History Of Everything'. Just cracking the surface, but thoroughly mind blowing to say the least :-)
<3
~Thanks, Tally... the article resonated for me as well. Authors like Graham Hancock, Terence McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck & others are providing a meaningful service for those trying to develop a deeper understanding of the role so-called 'altered' states of consciousness have played in Humanities ongoing Awakening. ~TemetNosce247