think therefore I am."
He clearly went through what would nowadays be diagnosed as depression.
People who think about their existence at such a profound level are
usually depressed or depressed by the question. In fact there were tales
of Descarte having buckets of water thrown on him in the monastery when
he was younger. He liked to sleep in late and found rising from bed
difficult. He'd often lie awake under the covers in what's termed a
hypnogogic state where all the world senses are shut off and the mind is
free to exist as the totality of conscious experience. It's been
suggested that it was these states that lead him to ask the questions
that result in answers such as cogito ergo sum.
I remember discussing Descartes with a good friend of mine when I was at
university. He studied Descarte's work whereas I'd just picked up bits
about his life ands work from my own pursuits in learning. He didn't
know that Descarte invented the x-y type graph and that's why they were
called Cartesian coordinates. I didn't know that Descarte had a series
of truths of which cogito ergo sum wass but one. The first truth was,
surprisingly, god exists.
My own journey was somewhat different. I went through an experience
which is pathologised today by psychiatry. There were a variety of
experiences over the years but there was a short, intense period where
my internal conscious experience shifted drastically. The period would
be described as psychosis at the very least. It was intensely
distressing but I somehow managed to keep working at a part time job at
a mental health charity. I coped by withdrawing as much as possible to
hie externalising what I was going through, though outside the office
I'd self-harm and I was parasuicidal - suicidal but couldn't manage to
do it.
In that time my consciousness experienced many changes. Some days I'd
think people could read my thoughts and events were being controlled,
controlled by a force or power outside and above what is commonly known
about. I'd been through the experience before and had been hospitalised
because of it so I stayed away from mental healthcare services.
What was clear through my experience was our ideas of consciousness and
reality are....wrong. They're simplistic, inadequate and don't encompass
the possibility of ..something else.
In my stream of consciousness - the chatter of thoughts or voices in my
head, the committee in my head, the internal dualogue - there is an "I"
and this is what I am. This is my self. People are taught their "I" is
the entire chatter or the dualogue. Psychologists might say the other
consciousnesses are the sub and unconsciousess minds expressing
themselves directly rather than through metaphor in dreams and the like.
I think they miss the point.
What happened to me was a change in awareness as well as a change in
experience. It's very hard to separate the two facets of the change. I
became aware that my thoughts and my actions weren't under my full
control. There was another part controlling "I" which I didn't notice
before. What was clear was that my "i" was neither fully in control of
my body, voice, movements and mind. The internal chatter also became
clearly from another rather than from my own "i" and this was significant.
This is why I am "we" because my "I" has many contributors. I came to
question my very existence and I wanted to kill myself because of it
(one of many reasons) back when I was going through the acute
experience. I'm still not 100% sure but I think I do exist.
But so does this non-corporeal entity. I'm very careful not to use the
term god but it's synonymous. A higher intelligence, a non-physical
based thing that has influence on me, my life and everything around, a
power so in advance of human understanding that it it's power may as
well be divine. However it could be many things. It could simply be an
advanced alien intelligence. It could be lizard men with psychitc
powers. It could be humans from the future influencing the lives of
their ancestors. Or it could be a divine being that ,made and controls
the entire universe - and that's what god is. I don't know what it is
which is why I refer to it as a non-corporeal force or entity.
Anyway, the change in the state of awareness was the important thing.
Lots of people have an inner conversation or a voice in their head. Like
me they accepted these thoughts as their own. They never considered that
a conversation is usually formed by two consciousnesses or two "I"'s
discussing or commenting or whatever. There are some religious
understanding where this inner conversation (usually if it says the
right thing) is the voice of god. This perspective was explained to me
by one of the staff when I was in a children's home.
It really takes feeling your consciousness to start seeing that there is
more than one individual sentience in there. It can be quite frightening
for some people to think that the thoughts in their head aren't all
theirs. Some people think this is achieved by government control or
secret organisations. There are many perspectives.
What "I" know is Descarte was wrong. That I think is not proof that I
exist. Certainly not all my thoughts are mine. To me it is not a truth
that I exist. Not an absolute one, which was what he was seeking.
very interesting...
ReplyDeletei spent some pretty useless time in supported housing as a young man, and i always remember in one place this other resident, who'd been "diagnosed" with "schizophrenia", who I would sometimes see walking round the place alone in deep thought, once in the lounge suddenly saying to me that Descartes was wrong wasn't he, it's not I think therefore I am, it's I feel therefore I am. I was shocked when told, a few months later, that he'd hung himself in his wardrobe.
I feel he had a point.
I've also often thought the "I" in the sentence is problematic. "Something is thinking/feeling, therefore something exists, whatever exists means"??
But I'm curious. You mention 'non-corporeal' (supernatural?) explanations for the other separate forces and dialogues that you experience as part of 'your' consciousness, or that some suspect they originate from outside organisations.
But how do you relate all this to the current scientific work on the modularity of mind, showing all the ways in which the whole "I" appears to be a narrative illusion in humans.
That conscious experience seems to cohere from the activity of partially connected but partially unconnected parts of the brain. And those parts seem to have different functions, perhaps partly evolved ones.
And human conscious experiences, such as the feeling that you are making a decision, seem to occur quite a long time (in neuro time) after the activity in that shows which decision/behaviour has been selected.
And people are very often not aware of what factors actually caused them to make the decision the deed, even to the point of apparently obvious things like preferentially choosing clothes from the end of a rack then from the middle, if I recall the experiment correctly.
I think it gets very interesting when you factor in some of the social issues, such as empathy and our internal mental representations of other people; or the nature of language and what exactly is the difference between the conscious experience of words that have actually been heard and those which have been spontaneously created within the mind using much of the same neural circuitry, and the complexities of monitoring the source of internal dialogue, and cause and effect.
This has got me thinking actually about why the research I've seen always seems to assume that there is only one consciousness within a brain, and then unconscious brain processes that can nevertheless influence it, or float in or out of it depending on their level of activation/coherence. But maybe it's possible to take the vantage point of those other processes, and that could also be a distinct conscious experience, which would expecting the other consciousness as if a separate force mysteriously controlling it?
Or maybe this is just all too monist, or too naively monist based on an unrealistic physics and crude brain imaging technology.
A
typo fix:
ReplyDeletewhich would EXPERIENCE the other consciousness as if a separate force mysteriously controlling it
Apologies for the late reply to this.
ReplyDeleteI use the term non-corporeal entity/ies because I'm not sure what it is. It is the same experience as what happened to people who experience contact with god. It's also been similar to experiences of mind control.
During my first experiences I went through delusions that is was a humankind organisation and while there's research to show that this could be possible I think in practice it's highly unlikely. I never found an answer to what it is. It could be humans from the future projecting back through time or it could be an alien but corporeal consciousness with power far beyond our own such that it would be magic to us.
I agree with a lot of what you say. There's certainly an assumption that our stream of consciousness is all our own. This was a delusion that was brutally taken from me.
But many people recognise they have a voice in their head. This is something they consider normal but never talk about nor acknowledge. They have the feeling of self and the conversation or whatever with another within their mind but never, ever make the leap to think that having a conversation takes two consciousnesses.
I'm afraid my knowledge of consciousness in relation to neurobiology is very poor. It's something I'm slowly learning about. In this piece I'm talking about personal experience. Certainly considered that I think there I feel may make sense but for me it was going through the experience where my thoughts weren't my own that shattered me. There were times when I felt my emotions weren't my own either, i.e. they were under something elses control as well as my body and speech and other things. As you can imagine it's quite a frightening experience. I'm sure psychiatrists would attempt to fit it in a biomedical explanation however for me it was just pure experience that informs my views, and continues to.