September 2nd, 2010 posted by Dwight Furrow
David Hirschman at Big Think summarizes recent views on the nature of consciousness:
Dr. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist from the University of Southern California who has studied the neurological basis of consciousness for years, tells Big Think that being conscious is a “special quality of mind” that permits us to know both that we exist and that the things around us exist. He differentiates this from the way the mind is able to portray reality to itself merely by encoding sensory information. Rather, consciousness implies subjectivity—a sense of having a self that observes one’s own organism as separate from the world around that organism.
“Many species, many creatures on earth that are very likely to have a mind, but are very unlikely to have a consciousness in the sense that you and I have,” says Damasio. “That is a self that is very robust, that has many, many levels of organization, from simple to complex, and that functions as a sort of witness to what is going on in our organisms. That kind of process is very interesting because I believe that it is made out of the same cloth of mind, but it is an add-on, it was something that was specialized to create what we call the self.”
It seems to me there is something missing from this all-too-brief summary of Damasio’s account. To have a self (and thus to be robustly conscious) is not just to be a “witness to what is going on in our organism” or to recognize that one’s own organism is separate from the world.
To be conscious is to have the felt sense that something matters—has significance or import. A sophisticated computer might know that it exists, that things around it exists, and that there is a difference between it and the world. But I doubt that such a machine would have a felt concern for something because it is not a biological organism with needs embedded in feeling states. Self-awareness is not merely a “witness” but an active sorter of what to attend to and what to ignore in light of what matters. It is hard to imagine a consciousness without this sorting ability.
Tags: Antonio Damasio, Mind Body Problem
Posted in Philosophy, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 31st, 2010 posted by Dwight Furrow
As a philosophy professor I am very seldom without words; but this video clip leaves me speechless.
Last weekend Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin staged a “rally” in Washington, DC. From reports, it isn’t obvious what the rally was about.
Here is clip full of interviews with people in attendance. After watching the clip I am even less sure what the rally was about.
I challenge anyone to find a shred of reasoning here. Political thinkers often say that democracy requires an educated public.
How about a public has maintains some connection with reality?
Here’s what those in attendance had to say.
Tags: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin
Posted in Watching the Conservatives | No Comments »
August 30th, 2010 posted by Dwight Furrow
Democrats and Republicans have competing views on how to end this recession. Democrats want more stimulus and government spending to increase demand for goods and services; Republicans want to cut taxes to encourage more spending on consumer goods.
But there is reason to think neither strategy will work.
Over the past 30 years, consumers have been spending more by going into debt assuming that increased value of assets such as homes will keep them solvent. But that created artificially high prices, especially in real estate and real estate-backed securities, that collapsed when the financial crisis hit. Thus, there has been a massive loss of wealth since the beginning of the recession which makes it harder for people and businesses to borrow money and makes it harder to service the debt they have already incurred. Until the level of debt held by individuals is brought into line with current income levels, spending will be sluggish no matter what the government does. According to some economists, it may take 10 years to work of the excess debt in the economy.
So what to do about the recession? William Galston has the right idea:
A different era … How long will it take our policy makers and political parties to absorb the implications of that stark, undeniable phrase? When they do, they will realize that we have only two strategic options: Either we accept years of sluggish growth and high unemployment, or we shift to a new model that mobilizes the record level of private capital now sitting on the sidelines for public investments that will boost economic activity and employment in the short term, and economic productivity and growth in the long term, while generating rates of return sufficient to interest investors.
This is why we need a national infrastructure bank as the linchpin of a public investment strategy driven by economic analysis rather than congressional politics. Rather than bridges to nowhere, we need a bridge to the future. It’s time for hide-bound appropriators to get out of the way.
Our nation’s infrastructure is old and deteriorating. Now is the time to mobilize capital to rebuild it and put people back to work as well.
But what Galston fails to mention is that conservatives are likely to see a government supported infrastructure bank as more “socialism” since the idea is coming from Democrats.
Why would they be more welcoming toward this idea that any of the others Democrats have floated?
The problem is not a lack of ideas; the problem is Republican intransigence fed by public ignorance.
Tags: The Great Recession, William Galston
Posted in Economics, Governance, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
