From: jessec@yang.earlham.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: What it is to be alive?
Date: 20 Nov 92 04:34:08 GMT
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

In article <1992Nov19.171801.8269@pbhyc.PacBell.COM>, 
djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes: 
> In article <1992Nov18.165819.20554@yang.earlham.edu> 
>jessec@yang.earlham.edu writes: 
> 
>>   Curtis Yarvin (curtis@cs.berkeley.edu) writes:
> 
>>>I don't know about you, Jesse, but I already have a pretty good feeling
>>>of what it is to be alive.
> 
>>   At the risk of appearing to have no operating sarcasm meter, I'll take 
>>that seriously for a minute... You think you really understand it? Human 
>>experience? We all *live* it, but what *is* it and what on earth does it 
>>mean?... These questions aren't answered by simply saying "Well, I am 
>>alive, no further explanation needed".  Not to my satisfaction, anyway; 
>>and I daresay it shouldn't be to yours.
> 
> 	...it all depends on what you mean by "understand."
> 	On a gut level, each of us probably has about as good
> 	an understanding as is possible of [what intelligence, 
> 	consciousness, free will, and "I" are], to start with.
> 	Do you really understand Bach because you have taken
> 	him apart?  Or did you understand it that time you
> 	felt the exhilaration in every nerve in your body?
> 	...probably no one will ever understand the mysteries
> 	of intelligence and consciousness in an intuitive
> 	way.  Each of us can understand _people_, and that is
> 	probably about as close as you can some.
> 			--Douglas R. Hofstadter
> 			  GODEL, ESCHER, BACH
> 
> Nuff said.

   Wow... Nice quote, there! :-) I haven't gotten around to reading 
Hofstadter yet, though I just read most of *Consciousness Explained* by 
Daniel Dennett, who coauthored *The Mind's I*, I believe.  Very 
interesting stuff about the phenomenology of consciousness, which is what 
we're talking about here...

   Anyway, I don't think that Hofstadter (from what he says here, anyway) 
is slamming the lid on the question for the writers of literature.  
Dennett, who also tears apart our concepts of consciousness, finding only 
"multiple drafts" beneath the illusory Jamesian "stream of consciousness", 
nevertheless is an admirer of writers like Joyce and Faulkner who 
attempted to plumb human phenomenology with more veracity.  As Hofstadter 
says, "it all depends on what you mean by 'understand.'" If you mean, can 
an author describe, without omission or simplification or just plain 
making mistakes, what it is to be conscious for even one minute? The 
answer (at least with the limitations of text) is no.  But authors can 
come asymptotically closer and closer to describing that experience 
*convincingly*, so that the reader stares, shakes her head, looks again, 
and says "yeah... it *is* like that!"
   And there are examples of the opposite.  Some fiction one can look at 
and groan, "oh, come on!  Surely you don't expect me to believe this.  
That's just not how it is".  On the other hand, if this is your first 
reaction, and later on you realize you were *wrong*-- that in some way, 
this *is* how people are-- then it's *terrific* stuff! :-) This isn't 
about mere imitation of perceived reality.  Some of my favorite literature 
messes with reality so much that it may not be recognizable as such, but 
nevertheless manages to contain some kind of essential truth about reality 
which comes across all the more strongly for the shock of 
defamiliarization.  Like Andrei Codrescu might say, the fantastic: use it 
or lose it. :-)


   --Jesse.