JITOTM02: Science and Subjectivity
How can objective science study subjective experience? Believe it or not... Jay says it's an act of faith. Plus, why bother with cosmic consciousness when daily consciousness is far-out enough?
Jay Ingram takes a swing at these issues and more in this week's episode of Jay Ingram's Theatre of the Mind.
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posted by David Newland at 2:00 PM
1 Comments:
Greetings Jay
I now have finished reading your book - Theatre of the Mind.
I feel compelled to drop you a little note. Sincerely not in the vain of a critique or venting and I hope it doesn’t appear to you as such. Just an observation or two.
BUT , first let me introduce myself . I’m not an academic (no degree) although I do work as an instructor at a remote campus of SIAST, the Saskatchewan governments’ version of a Community College.
I teach trades , mechanical and computer related subjects. I’m past my 55th year in age and have been doing this peculiar job for 6 + a bit years. The majority of my working life has been ‘on the tools’ as we like to say.
My cultural background is Mennonite, not very evangelical but just enough to notice a few things about the spiritual.
Well I’ve gone and spilled the beans ‘ spiritual ’ – a dirty word in science ehh ?
I used your book as bedtime reading material , to Calm The Mind , and energize myself with a bit of non-technical refreshment before sleep. Honestly I never fell asleep reading your book.
I found myself fascinated by the many examples of how the mind is thought and even been proven to work - or not.
I occasionally wonder if some of the young minds I’m charged with on a daily basis are ever conscious or just in various states of sobriety.
OK , to my main point.
You mention many times the puzzle of consciousness and it’s location and even the very nature of the beast.
Yet you seem to almost ignore another obvious explanation of the mystery – a spiritual one. Granted you do make casual remarks about god, meditation, strange experiences and such. Why dance around the obvious ?
How about God as one alternative to human or even non-human consciousness. You could have explored a vast amount of material relating to this aspect. I think this point has as much validity in a common sense way as any of the other explanations you made great pains to explore.
God as the source of that elusive spark of consciousness residing everywhere but almost impossible to definitively locate seems a reasonable answer “until we know for sure “.
Hey - for all I know you may have attempted to include these points of view and been shot down.
I do realize that being a scientific type of guy writing a scientific type of book these ideas may have been rather foul but sometimes we just have to accept these things until we can evict God from the picture without a doubt.
Yours , in all consciousness
Len Kroeker, l.kroeker@sasktel.net
3:29 PM
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