Susan Blackmore and the "illusion" of consciousness

A posting and comments in View from the Right about widespread atheism undermining British and European civilization cites Dr. Susan Blackmore as an example of "materialist nihilism" (scroll down to near the end). Commenter Michael Jose brings up her writings in connection with "anti-existence atheism," and links to his own blog, which declares, "Start with denying that God exists and you end up denying that you exist," and in turn links to an article by Susan Blackmore published in the New Scientist titled, "The Grand Illusion: Why consciousness only exists when you look for it." (My apologies for this two-degrees-of-separation lead-in; I'm just trying to give everyone their due by linking to them individually.)

Susan Blackmore wonders if consciousness is inexplicable
because of how we think about it.

Blackmore includes in her piece a version of the mind-body problem that has plagued philosophers and scientists for centuries: how can the experience of consciousness arise from matter? They belong to different realms of existence. Blackmore then goes one better as she analyzes consciousness itself, and can't find any "there" there, either:

Could it be that, after all, there is no stream of consciousness; no movie in the brain; no picture of the world we see in front of our eyes? Could all this be just a grand illusion?

She does not deny that consciousness exists, which would be absurd, but suggests that the way we conceive of it — as a continuous stream of perceptions, complete with an unseen basement where things we're not aware of are stored until we haul them up in some neurological bucket or they spontaneously climb the stairs into our mind's eye — is an illusion.

Perhaps … there is no stream of conscious experiences on which we act. Instead, at any time a whole lot of different things are going on in our brain at once. None of these things is either “in” or “out” of consciousness but every so often, something happens to create what seems to have been a unified conscious stream; an illusion of richness and continuity.

It sounds bizarre, but try to catch yourself not being conscious. More than a hundred years ago the psychologist William James likened introspective analysis to “trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks." The modern equivalent is looking in the fridge to see whether the light is always on. However quickly you open the door, you can never catch it out. The same is true of consciousness. Whenever you ask yourself, “Am I conscious now?” you always are.

But perhaps there is only something there when you ask. Maybe each time you probe, a retrospective story is concocted about what was in the stream of consciousness a moment before, together with a “self” who was apparently experiencing it. Of course there was neither a conscious self nor a stream, but it now seems as though there was.

Is this a call for "materialist nihilism," as Michael Jose charges? It might be useful to fill in a little of the background here.

Susan Blackmore's field was for many years psychical research, in which I also have an interest. I knew of her for that reason and read some of her articles, even her sort-of autobiography. Unlike many other scientists doing similar research, Blackmore says she consistently got negative results in her experiments. That is, she could come up with no evidence to indicate that paranormal abilities were demonstrated. She was aware of the "experimenter effect" — skeptical scientists performing tests seem to be wet blankets who scare off psi abilities in subjects, who produce better results with experimenters who are sympathetic to claims for the paranormal — but Blackmore claims that she was initially quite the believer, even having had an out-of-body experience herself.

Eventually, she decided that she was wasting her time with psychical research, and quit. You have to credit her with courage in making a move that distanced her, and in some cases provoked rejection, from former colleagues.

Even after her anti-conversion, though, she retained some connections with the Society for Psychical Research. (SPR is not an advocacy organization and has no corporate views. Its members include a few skeptics.) Blackmore and I both attended the SPR annual conference in 1999 in Northampton, England, where she gave a presentation. It was called "Horses for Courses" and, if my recollection is correct, was about an experiment she particpated in where a clairvoyant who was said to have precognitive powers was tested on his ability to forecast the winners of horse races. No statistically significant record of correct predictions was found.

I wanted to talk with her, but she seemed (understandably, I guess) defensive and constantly surrounded by a coterie, and I chickened out from trying to strike up a conversation. Incidentally, at that time she had already adopted the multi-colored hair style you can see in the photo above and which apparently she's kept. She's attractive enough to carry it off without looking goofy.

Following her withdrawal from psychical research, I have read only second-hand reports about her new interests, but for a time it seemed she had reached a quasi-Buddhist outlook. In Buddhist psychology, there is no "I," no eternal or even temporary ego or center of consciousness that experiences things. There is only a stream of consciousness without anyone who is conscious, and the ultimate reality is described as a Void, shunyata. It can be inferred from Blackmore's New Scientist piece that she has now gone beyond Buddhism — she's not even convinced that consciousness is a continuous stream.

There does not seem to me any ground, then, for holding her up as a terrible example of materialist beliefs: Buddhism puts no stock in anything material, or even mental or spiritual in the sense those words are often used, and the same can be said for her "illusionist" take on consciousness.

Okay, but how about "nihilism" and "anti-existence"? There are various definitions of nihilism, including "a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake; complete denial of all established authority and institutions; and the delusion that things (or everything, including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal." The third or fourth might conceivably apply to Blackmore's world view, depending on the interpretation of unreal, a discussion of which would take us into a lengthy digression. From the tone and context of Michael Jose's comment, though, it seems likely that it was the political meanings that he had in mind.

Personally, I don't find Blackmore's trans-Buddhist position, so to speak, much help in understanding the mystery of consciousness, of how "dead" and "unconscious" matter can become aware of itself. To suggest that consciousness may actually be intermittent in some fashion or only there when we (but what's "we"?) decide for it to be there doesn't solve the basic problem. It just kicks the can down the road a bit farther, as she herself seems to recognize in the last paragraph of her article. Whatever — we've come a long way from any kind of "nihilism" or "non-existence" that can sour a nation's pride or will to survive.

Jose has another complaint against Blackmore, although he's not too specific as to what it is, which he bases on this column. But, although I am automatically suspicious of anything published in the dreaded Guardian, and Blackmore's premise is at least debatable, nothing strikes me as philosophically or morally objectionable.

If you accept for the sake of discussion that we have damaged the planet we live on (undeniable) to the point where ecological disaster is now unavoidable (highly questionable), there is nothing wrong with considering the choices that will entail; it's highly responsible, as long as you remember the alternatives are all hypothetical. Why not discuss as rationally as we can who or what we will choose to "save" in the worst-case scenario? It's no different from emergency medical teams performing triage at a disaster site.

I guess this comes down to a defense of Susan Blackmore, whose conclusion about psychical research I don't share and whose ideas about the psychology of consciousness I can't well connect with. But it's pretty far-fetched to blame her for contributing to British dhimmitude or rejection of God.

Radical cultural repression

Dennis Dale at Untethered quotes from a news story in The Independent (which requires payment or subscription to read the full article on line -- sod off, Independent):

A branch of one of the world's biggest banks has been found guilty of racism after a senior member of staff told a colleague she would be voting for Robert Kilroy-Silk at the last general election because she said he promised to "get rid of the foreigners".

The remark was overheard by another employee, who sued the bank, HSBC, for race discrimination. Ruby Schembri, 35, a Maltese national, reported the remark. This week an employment tribunal ruled the remark could be construed as racist and ordered HSBC and the supervisor to pay compensation. The case is one of the first to find that a comment not directly made to another person can constitute racism.

The HSBC employee had fallen afoul of one of Britain's strictures against "hate speech":

She said: "Debbie asked Rosemary if she supported the Tory or Labour Party and bluntly stated, 'I am against immigration'. My ears pricked up and then Debbie added 'I hate foreigners'. I was shocked and offended. Debbie made her statement with real conviction." Ms Johnstone had made no reply.

(...) In her witness statement, Ms Jones said that all she had said was that she would vote for Mr. Kilroy-Silk because he would get rid of immigrants. She denied using the word foreigners. But the tribunal considered her contemporaneous statement, made in 2005, when she admitted she had said she would vote for Mr. Kilroy-Silk because he "would get rid of the foreigners". The tribunal chairman said it was reasonable to infer that the remark showed a "substantial dislike of foreigners". [Emphasis added by Dennis Dale.]

Ms. Jones, the offending employee, "had since been given race awareness training," the article says. In addition, "Lawrence Davies, of Equal Justice Solicitors, ... said: 'The intention or aim of the maker is irrelevant, it is sufficient that it caused offence.'" In other words, if counsellor Davies and his ilk have their way, you can be brought up on charges or sent to a re-education camp -- excuse me, given "race awareness training" -- if you're talking with friends in a pub and a person at a nearby table takes offense at an overheard remark.

The European Union has something called the "Race Directive" that says, "The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races." That's right, attempt to determine the existence of human races. Dale comments:

The Directive has been described by some as expanding rules against discrimination in employment mandating the European version of affirmative action, "positive action", to a broader mandate against "social discrimination", hence the apparent outlawing of "racism" in general in the U.K.

It's not hard to foresee the mammoth problems Europe is set to foist upon itself; setting up a vigorous "positive action" program while liberally importing cheap third world labor and at the same time outlawing any frank discussion of why these groups seem less amenable to education and the professional classes; all this while making no effort to assimilate a growing, intolerant Muslim underclass that isn't held to the same standards of restricted expression.

For the record, I think that Debbie Jones's remark was not appropriate in a work setting, regardless of who was or wasn't in hearing range. (In a social setting, she should have the right to speak her mind and accept any hostility she receives in return -- hostility but not punishment.) There are valid reasons why people in an office or place of business ought to stay clear of religion, politics, and extremely personal issues. If I'd been Ms. Jones's supervisor, I would have given her a private, friendly word to the wise. That's how the situation would once have been handled anywhere.

But of course, today's official speech code zealots react differently; they view such behavior like the authorities once did signs of witchcraft or heresy, so dangerous that they must be stamped out ruthlessly.

I'm not, by the way, picking on Britain or even the European Union. The whole Anglosphere is going in such a direction, although it has been carried farther in the U.K. and might not be stated quite so explicitly in the United States.

Make no mistake: this is not just more political correctness but a form of government clamp-down on the rights of free citizens. When the term "political correctness" came into vogue around 1990, it mostly referred to silly euphemisms ("differently abled," etc.) and affirmative action. The first twisted language and thought; the second was reverse discrimination, but at least it was more or less voluntary outside government agencies. Today's legal codification of matters of opinion as "racism" is something else again, a dagger driven right into the heart of individual liberty.

We really need a new expression to cover this tendency to use the force of law to suppress people's right to say what they think. Calling it "political correctness" makes it sound soft and eccentric, rather than what it is, tyranny. The infection began with political correctness, but it has spread throughout the body politic and reached this end stage in which the Western tradition of civil discourse, first developed in ancient Athens and later painfully lost and won and lost and won again, is once more on life support.

The term "cultural Marxism" has been brought to bear on the phenomenon, but I can't see that it has much to do with classical Marxism. "Cultural Stalinism" would be more to the point, but even that doesn't quite work: many Racism Inquisitors could sincerely deny any sympathy with Uncle Joe's brand of Communism.

So I suggest, for your consideration, that we call it "radical cultural repression," which doesn't link it with any established political philosophy, or even the Left per se. Many so-called conservatives, as Lawrence Auster continually points out, have made their peace with the race/ethnic grievance industry. The description "radical cultural repression" makes it clear that this is not just a position on the political spectrum that we disagree with, but an assault on fundamental human rights in a free society. As a bonus, it can be abbreviated to "RCR," which slides easily off the tongue.

Maybe there's an even better combination of words to express the idea: anyone want to have a go at it?

UPDATE 7/20: The great essayist Fjordman has thoughts along a similar line, which you can find here.

The numbers game

Playful art from Mathematical Imagery by Jos Leyes.

Most of us have no idea what brilliant mathematicians are on about when they talk of the beauty and elegance of their science. Computer visualization offers a clue.

Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love"

A little while back, dazzled by Wong Kar-Wai's "2046," I suggested it might be "the first great film of the millennium." Now I've caught up with one of Wong's earlier films, "In the Mood for Love," made about four years earlier than "2046."

The camerawork for "In the Mood for Love" again uses a rich color palette in an odd, but striking, counterpoint to the rather sad and minor-key story. (The English title, which suggests a frivolous comedy, runs counter to the film's style — a poor translation, maybe?) There's nothing here like "2046's" science fiction inserts and time slips; although a period piece, taking place in Hong Kong in 1962 (quite interesting to see how things looked there and then), it moves forward with a stately gravity in conventional time sequence.

The screen belongs to its two stars, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. They are just about all that matters in "Mood," and they're more than able to carry it by a nuanced portrayal of reticent passion. (Here's a plot summary, if you're interested, though there's a loose, semi-improvisational feel to many scenes.) In spirit, though not technique, this is an old-fashioned and unashamedly romantic film that treats its characters' feelings in a grown-up way.

Cheung and Leung — both, apparently, big stars in Hong Kong — have the magnetism to lift a fairly ordinary story out of the ordinary, and their presence is augmented by visual radiance. (Whoever designed the seemingly dozens of gorgeous cheongsam dresses for Cheung is a true artiste.) Wong and his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, occasionally fall into banality (they have another go at that dramatic-meeting-in-the-rain business), but more often than not their vision is fresh and pleasantly, not vulgarly, offbeat.

"2046" is technically a sequel to "Mood." Tony Leung's character, Chow M0-Wan, a few years older, reappears there, and for someone who sees the first film second as I did, there are sudden flash-forwards. The door of Chow's hotel room in "Mood" is numbered … well, I don't have to tell you.

Right now a film student is probably writing a thesis on all the connections and variations in the two movies, but no big deal. If both are new to you it's probably better, but far from essential, to see them in the order they were made. "In the Mood for Love," albeit less boldly imaginative and darkly haunting than "2046," casts its own spell and will likely leave you eager for the wonders of its successor.

Cost and necessity in Lebanon

I make no pretense of being any sort of expert on the madhouse that is the Middle East — indeed, with each passing day's news and blogs I realize more how ignorant I've been — so these comments should be taken well diluted. Why post them at all, then? Just for readers who like to gather as many different views as possible so as to sift them.

Why is Israel cracking down hard on Hezbollah? Ralph Peters thinks "the Israelis began to miscalculate — reacting impulsively and emotionally themselves. Attacking Hezbollah was fully justified and necessary, but Israel's frustration with the Lebanese government's toleration of terrorists boiled over into folly."

No doubt the Hezbollah raid sparked high emotions in Israel, with several of their soldiers killed and two taken hostage, probably dead by now or held under appalling conditions. But it seems highly unlikely that a major operation in Lebanon was undertaken impulsively. My guess is that Israeli intelligence had become aware of some seriously threatening development in Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon: new, high-tech toys for boys supplied by Iran to the Shiite militants (the rocket that struck an Israeli ship lends credence to this idea); maybe even a plan to invade Israel.

Peters is probably right that Hezbollah's raid was not part of a grand strategic plan. More likely, in my view, it was intended by some Hezbollah faction to show off its boldness and capability to other Hezbollah elements. The warlord who pulled it off probably didn't expect Israel's reaction, not knowing that a very worried Israeli IDF high command and prime minister had been looking for a reason to take down the major threat coming from Lebanon's direction that it had become aware of.

Will the situation blow up and bring Iran into the mix? Probably not. It's hard to see how it could advance Iran's interests. Iran's strategy seems to be continuing to develop its nuke capability while fending off any kind of multi-state action against it with diplomatic wiles, keeping Gulliver tied down in endless negotiations about resolutions. For Iran to dive into the fray now would provide an opening for instant retaliation which would surely include crippling its nuke development.

True, the face Iran presents to the world is Ahmadinejad, a free-range lunatic. It's not clear to me, though, how much he can call the tune. If he looks to be about to bring down Goetterdaemmerung on the country, a coalition of mullahs might see to it that he is led away, thanked for his efforts on the nation's behalf, and shot.

Should Israel respond "proportionately"? No, nothing could be more foolish. What would a "proportionate" response mean? A quick over-the-border raid to kill a few Hezbollah militants and take a couple of hostages? Israel's enemies don't value human life the way Israelis do; they couldn't care less if they lost a few men. Hezbollah, or whatever faction started the ball rolling, could still crow about how they'd scored a victory over the Little Satan.

Setting a modern military into motion to perform its function is a terrible business. Once you've done that, you can count on losing some of your own at best, or some unexpected nightmare at worst; for certain, plenty of innocent civilians caught in the line of fire will die. All this will be for nothing if the end is to just return to the status quo, like a shoving match between schoolboys. The aim of a military response must be to change the situation, if possible drastically, in your favor.

If my guess is right and Israel is cleaning up a major new and credible threat that its intelligence operations have detected, then they have to neutralize it. Count the cost. But count the necessity.

Language and thought,
light and rapid as wind,
man has taught himself these, and has learnt
the ways of living in town and city,
shelter from inhospitable frost,
escape from the arrows of rain.

Wise though his plans are,
artful beyond all dreaming,
they carry him both to evil and to good.

Sophocles, Antigone

Sweden's suicide note

Fjordman at Gates of Vienna says he has confirmed from independent sources that Jens Orback, Democracy Minister (!) in the Swedish government, said during a radio debate: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”

Let's hit rewind and play that again.

“We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”

In other words, a government minister takes it as foreordained that Swedes will become a minority in Sweden, and Muslims the majority. To him, it's just a fact of life. It's not as if the indigenous population could do anything about it, or should want to do anything about it.

Orback pins his hope on a Muslim majority being open and tolerant, just like they are in … in … help him out here.

It's one more ominous confirmation that much of "old Europe" is sick unto death. It doesn't want to preserve its national identities, its ethnic majorities, its traditional cultures, its system of government (except for the welfare state). God is dead; tolerance is God. If Sweden is to become part of Dar Al-Islam, well, who are Swedes to say that their way of life is better? It might cause offense.

Better to simply write the suicide note and make sure that the beneficiary is clearly spelled out in the will.

Can this really be happening — a modern nation welcoming with smiley-face-button idiocy the replacement of its ethnic majority by another with utterly different and (sorry, Mr. Orback) supremely intolerant values? History is full of examples of one culture (oddly enough, often Muslim) conquering another by cannon and blade, but I cannot think of any precedent for a country just rolling over for an invasion it could easily put a stop to.

But it's going down, and not in Sweden alone. Several European countries are already clocked, kaput, buggered. Because they have adopted the dhimmi mind, it's only a matter of a little time before the latest Muslim invasion succeeds where the previous ones were resisted and overcome.

Here's how the state of play looks:

Sweden: No more needs to be said.

Norway: The same as Sweden.

Spain: Waffling, but not prepared to put up a serious struggle.

France: The issue will probably be decided by a civil war.

Germany: Apparently starting to find its backbone, but resistance hindered by deeply entrenched left-wing ideology.

Britain: It'll be a closely run thing (as Wellington described Waterloo). Given the dhimmi mentality prevalent today, I think the U.K. will be a Muslim country within 20 years. Needless to say, I hope I'm wrong, but the country looks to be past the point of no return unless its homestyle Muslim terrorists do something unbelievably stupid like exploding a nuclear device in London.

The rest of Europe, I'd say, has at least a decent chance to avoid the catastrophe of becoming Muslim theocratic states under sharia law. The former Soviet satellite countries, especially, know what living under tyranny is like.