Music for a missing orchestra:Variations on a discontinuum idealism

The universe generously doesn’t care; it is its nature. Only when you have living beings, you have a sort of care. And when you have minds, you have the representation of being there to care, that is, to be a consciousness. One of the side effect of being a consciousness is filling gaps. A cognition detects gaps in the uncaring universe and it is puzzled, because from the caring point of view, everything is either friendly or hostile, but there is a horror vacui for interest. So the consciousness will ignite a narrative construction of habitable narrative environment. This is the mind-terraforming of brains. Because when a cognition accelerates itself in a narrative construction, it manufactures his own minding generation: giving meanings to events is also giving a meaning to the perceiver of meanings.

Things surrounding you can tell you something, because your mind extended itself in the environment as a narrative developer; hence everything is telling that you are the narrative recipient of the stories around you. Asking for consistency is unfolding the narrative. Indeed there is a narrative because a mind is unfolding its cognitive deployment. This is the narrative continuum.

Very easily a mind will deduct that because everything is the story told to a consciousness and the tale is generated by the consciousness itself, then the universe is the mind. This is crazy and the conclusion of the German idealism from Hegel. But…first of all: is it that crazy? Yes. Ok, reformulate is that wrong? No way. Nonetheless, it is wrong. And the reason is that there is a confusion between mind as the deployment of narrativity and mind as the author of narrativity.

Your accelerated brain projects itself as mind through the deployment of narrativity. But it is not the author of the consequent narrations. In other words you generate your narrations but you are not the owner of them. So consciousness is the spirit and it is universal. But it’s not absolute. Is the spirit absolute? I don’t know, I’m just a dude…But consciousness is the representation of the spirit. Because the spirit is a narration. And the narrative representation is “universal” for the human beings; your single consciousness is the individual instance of this technique, handed down from generation to generation. Your mind actually appeared for the first time, roughly speaking, between 50 and 150 thousand years ago. It did appear because the convergence of a bundle of stories generated by a flock of brains.

But if you draw the line of continuum you’ll see the universe as a consciousness. Actually as your consciousness. But the universe is much cooler: it doesn’t care. It’s like the struggle to make your mind blank: no effort is required.

The orchestra finally starts to play in sync. No effort now.

Puppet’s Ghost

Many talks about consciousness and what is left? Science and modern philosophy (moat of all, Anglo-Saxon) tell you that there is no such a thing as consciousness. This is mythological talking, it’s past, it’s French. There are no spirits. It’s a belief for primitive people, poor guys from the old times, a tribe thing. Take the Australian aborigines: it’s not them, they are not stupid. They lack appropriate knowledge, that’s it. Now we have science, we have neurology. We have quantum physics (which we don’t understand, by the way. I mean: no human being understands it, properly). We have big bang theory (bang a gong).

So is brain just electrocuted soft tissues?? Actually,yes, I agree with this option.

Our brain is a biological puppet, maneuvered in cognitive postures by the narrative forces in which is immersed. The narrative environment radiates on his cognition the response of a character. A brain in this semiotic atmosphere is accelerated in a mind: the semiotic rays turn cognition in narration. That’s it.

What else???

Oh, I forgot. When a brain turned in to a mind, it represents itself to itself in a narrative mode. He becomes a long journey chasing the narrative tracks that generated him. He runs on the semiotic trails, that are the passage of a consciousness. Finally he reaches the source of the narrative radiations: a mind telling a story. Or a brain self-representing to itself. Meaning???

You can say that a brain to explore appropriately the permutative and multiverse complexity of his own architecture, needs to project itself in the extended environment generated by other mate brains.

Or you can say that the narrative forces haunt the brain and the cognitive infestation evokes hallucinations and deliria in the neuro-architecture. A cerebral fever calls the projection of a ghost. Is it real? Like any ghost…( I think that the Anglo-Saxon audience has a problem with ghosts: Hegel was really meaning that ideas are more real than stones: spirit is more real than matter. Catholics really believe in the transubstantiation of the wafer. Ontic as pragmatic in Heidegger is bad in comparison to ontological or theoretical…).

I’m confused: brain is a puppet, consciousness is a ghost…. Don’t tell me that….

Yes.

Mind is the puppet ghost.

I mark two red strips under my eyes, beating my chest. Outside there is battle of ghosts. And gods and demons. And I don’t want to miss it. Hóka-héy.

Mind Terraforming

When a brain lands in a narrative environment, it starts the cognitive terraforming. Everything is alien and harsh. And new. The neuro-connections spread their experience to entangle the environment. Wave after wave of cognitive exploration, a brain infects its world of its cognitive extensions; the narrative world answers shaping the soft tissues of a will-be character. Day after day the narrative forces manipulate the brain to assume cognitive posture and manoeuvring the strings of neuro-projections in the environment, a brain starts to walk like the representation of itself: a character. The prolonged acquaintance with narration gives a brain the practice to experience the being of a human figure: stories are shaking brains until they drop out minds.

Conversely, when narrations detect a brain, they inoculate the practice of living like humans: the colonization of stories begins. A brain is an alien world and the stories need to work out the cognitive atmosphere to survive. Step by step a brain is mind-terraformed by narrations and when the process is completed a consciousness rises.

Indeed the mind is a narrative technology handed down generations by generations. Narrations are mind-terraforming newly born brains. This was the urgency provoked by an immense representational capacity by the Homo Sapiens Sapiens cerebra and the cognitive magnitude found the way to stabilize the frantic tendency to represent itself by narrations. A mind is the viable and sustainable way for a brain to represent itself and this technique is handed down in human communities.

Ozness of Mind

A mind is the centre of gravity of concurrent cognitive forces (at least this is the explanation given by Dennett...) and the stream of subjective experience is narrativity (at least this is the misinterpretation given by me...).

So your experience of being an I, is stretched all along the narrative your life is. As you might have observed, your life looks like a continuum, with a strange plot that deploys itself while you live. Sometimes the thread seems repetitive, sometimes pointless. It's not uncommon to perceive of being in control of the events in your life, exactly as it's not uncommon to feel the opposite. And not matter how messed up you're, or how many fella do you hear in your head, it's incorrigible the sensation of seeing the world from the first person.

The thing is, your accelerated brain, (or the cognitive projection it gives to itself) in order to interact with others projections in a virtual semiotic cultural environment is forced to exercise the practice of being a mind. The effect is to produce narrativity. And quite logically, where there's a narration, there's a narrator.

And so, yes my little friends, probably you already gotcha: narrativity produces the side effect of authorship. It's just our misguided perspective that when it sees a generation, thinks to a generator. Quite the opposite: a generation casts the shadow of a generator.

Not that this distinction really matters: if there's no one who cares, what is exactly the point? Nonetheless, we are completely convinced of being there. We have the incorrigible belief to be a consciousness. It's like in kingdom of Oz: your action are giving significance to entity you could call courage, or intelligence, or love. Our narrative interaction with the world makes us thinking there's authorship and we are searching it in our lives. With our lives.

We are artists, believers, researcher, easy-goers, because we are forced by how our brain is shaped to see us as minded bodies. So what we can do know? I mean apparently if we are fictional, then our job is done? Rub your little red shoes and fly away to help other children-like metaphysical entity with problems....

Stranger than your brainAn unlikely,long line between Delphi and Johannesburg

Moses told me the story of Vera the Ghost, a perfect urban legend with a thrilling twist. He was more entertained by his own storytelling rather than stating a proper commitment about the belief; nonetheless he is convinced that ghosts do exist. I giggled a bit, condescendingly to his naivety. Then I remembered the Greeks. Long time ago, the same very wise men who discovered the technique of investigating the true nature of fact, many times said that along the streets of Greece, you could meet gods, heroes and other semi-divine creatures. Should I respect more Heraclitus than Moses (Moses intended as my friend...)? Xenophanes was metaphorical, while my Zulu friend simply lacks a good western education? Or maybe am I really arrogant both with the Greek bunch and with my friend?

What does it mean that the stranger you meet along the way could be a god or a ghost? Pump up the metaphorical interpretation: your attitude with a stranger generates goodness or evil; this powerful reaction can shape your days AS IF you met a god or a ghost (ghosts could be like values, take morality or virginity...). Because we know for sure that no material entity matching a semantic description of a god or a ghost can be encountered on a physical street.

But maybe calling something a ghost is a good strategy to name a feeling your brain grab, without a clear correlation, something like a phantom feeling. Which of the following do you choose as a good naming:“I'm still scared: I'm sure a ghost was following me” or “I'm totally in control: I know that my brain is sending me hallucinations after my nervous breakdown.Though one second more with their company will prove unbearable for my mind and I'm seriously thinking to terminate this agony with a logical, metallic, non-metaphorical bullet in my brain, I perfectly know this is not real...”

Phantom feelings are clearly projections of our imagination, which we suppose is a product of our brain. Our brain extends its informational ecosystem wiring neuro-connections with the semiotic infrastructure of the narrative environment hosting him. The being there of your brain and his representation to play with, is your mind. Though it sounds odd, your brain encounters his mind as a stranger on his way. And gradually accept it, becoming you. You are the encounter of a brain with his mind.

Technically speaking, you are haunting the brain of a Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Moreover we face the hardcore self-esteem question: do you believe in yourself (in your existence)? Say that the response is positive (no matter how insecure you feel at the moment: I'm sure you think you exist!). Now: how ghost are you, in comparison to the entities on the street of Delphi or Johannesburg? Speaking of meeting the strangeness:

On which side of the physical clarity of your brain do you sit?

Master of the Universe: When a fellow with impaired equilibrium grabs a lamppost, does he it for standing or for spinning the world?

What is that makes the world goes round? There are sex and money. And generally all the serious business. Right. So we see a world as meaningful because we are occupied in serious activities. Ok tell me what are the serious activities: working, loving, fighting, having fun? Is that all? For sure then our shaky fellow is just one of the unfortunate (for that night). You can pass by, no problem. But what if the meaning of the world comes from the pure gratuity of being there? What if the meaning is just the absence of a goal in being there? What if being there were already the completion and its representation an eternal fractal interpretation?

Try to see the world of men as a wheel of stories. Try to see all the pain and the joy as (true!) projections of representing brains. Try to see goals and targets as painted background on stage.
Now look at the shaky fellow. He grabs a lamppost because this is his job. He pushes walls and blows boulevards, because he's moving the world. Seriously. I'm sure you're nauseated by this confusion of metaphorical speech.

The answer is: do the disarticulated gestures of our friend make the planet accelerate? Do they play a big part in human society? No. This is the simply answer. Still they are spinning the world: they are spinning the meaningfulness of the world. The meanings you consume are not eternal ideas, nor some sort of quanta: there is not a single meaning in the physical world (and outside lie pure spirits!). So, where our concepts come from? They haven't been there since the beginning, so they moved. Someone moved them. Meanings are spun by human beings, actively playing their form of life. But when you are totally in to your character, do you play your role or do you move meanings? I suppose you already got it. Yes my friend. All the “normal” persons are playing their roles. Some mystics are playing the meanings.

The very posh ones are poets, but all the queers, weirds, addicted, all the life juggler, all the convention acrobats, all the monotony burglars are precisely blowing the meanings. Their unstable, staggering steps, with hands barely grasping a hold, are moving the world. Next time a man falls down, help him: you'll be lifted!

The Story of Neuro-ecological Connectivity:A Semantic Esoskeleton

The complexity of human brain is not an adaptive response to a multiplicity of information to be understood. Quite on the contrary the complexity of the environment WE perceive is the reflection of OUR brain complexity. Am I saying we create things outside? Am I? Bloody German slippery idealism...No no, we are not creating the stuff (of course: a momentary lapse of Anglo-saxon empiricism relief...). Like the demiurge is just manipulating basic matter of the universe, the khora, not creating it. Ops...demiurge is a platonic concept! Maybe I'm really slipping in to idealism...By the way this is precisely not the point! “Outside” complexity is a reflection of “inside” complexity of the system,able to detect such complexity.

Our brain shapes itself with re-entry information and the circumnavigation of its own complexity extends with its environment. Neuro-connections self organizes their relationships and project in their surroundings a tracking system of their interaction. Surroundings in the context of a brain is a broad term: eyes are in these surroundings, as well as hands; but with a stick in your hand you can perceive how deep is the water in a pod. The bottom of the pod is in the brain surroundings. Moreover, our brain perceive its pertinent hands(and sometimes he's even wrong about which is its proper hand; an experiment from phantom limb master Ramachandran proves this), not its own neuro-connection. Or better, the representation of its own projection, us, perceives his own hands, not his own neuroconnections. So “brain surroundings” is a fluid term.

Our brain marks its surroundings to track its projection in the environment. The brain tracking system of the interaction with its surroundings is semantics. And the practice of living with other minded beings produce the context, the stability and the sense of interacting with the environment. This is the projection of the brain in to its surroundings: the ecological esoskeleton, a brain wears to understand its environment. Your brain wears its world to perceive it.
The semantic environment is the story of the passage of a mind, tracking its interaction.

Therefore the semantic esoskeleton is the space time extension of the brain in its own projection: a mind. We have a backbone to support our posture; arthropods have external structures to do the same. Cartesian dualism has an inside backbone to support thinking, we have a semantic esoskeleton to support the deambulation of our brain in its surroundings. Would you call it this idealism?