Matter over mind: the organic machine

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Matter over mind: the organic machine

by aaronkendall @ 03.09.2008 – 15:10:17

I hold an irrational feeling. I know I can control that feeling such that I prevent myself from acting upon it. I can choose to think and act rationally. But I cannot stop that feeling.

I find myself in a state of mind in which I do not want to be. But what control do I have over it. What control do I really have over anything? Over my mind? Over my body? Over the course of my life? If you think about it we are all, after all, just machines. Vastly complex organic machines born as a reaction to some past action so that all action is simply reaction. A reaction to which one often thinks one has the power to cause. Pick a moment in time. There are arrayed before you at that specific moment an infinite number of possible courses of action, possible causes of your future actions. This is called choice. It is what we believe gives us free will. But this is an illusion. I never really have a choice. The cause I choose or the reaction I desire is limited to the one that I in fact take. If I could ever return to a specific moment in the past and in that moment be exactly the same person I was when first I lived it, with no hindsight and no knowledge that I had ever lived it before, I could only ever make the same decision and choose the same path as I did the first time. To do otherwise, when all internal and external environments are the same is to admit that I act randomly. If the choice is to kill or be merciful and I chose to kill is it possible that, all things remaining constant, I could ever have chosen to be merciful? No, for my mind and body, being as they were in that moment of time, fused with my environment as it was at that time and reacted. This reaction, unless random, is determined to be the same every time. I have no free will. I am controlled by the material nature of my being. I am determined.

…

I find myself in a state of mind in which I do not want to be. To act or not act upon this state of mind would be a matter of will but however strong this is I cannot help but feel in this state of mind. It is often said that ‘mind over matter’ but more often than not the truth is ‘matter over mind’. When my body is tired, when I have a headache or when I am in physical pain my thoughts turn to madness. My mind is not strong enough that I do not feel angry even if it is strong enough to stop my actions betraying that anger. We are to such a great extent as mind only as we are as matter. The material imperfections of the bodies we inhabit influence our minds (who we are) in both subtle and unsubtle ways that are out of our control. Our bodies are imperfect and so our minds are destined to feel imperfect even when they can think perfectly. It would be, or perhaps is, a work of phenomenal art to exist such that our minds act independently at all times from the influence of our bodies. So long as mind and body are mutually dependant I see no way that my mind can act perfectly for my body is destined to imperfection. I accept this fate.
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9 Comments on Matter over mind: the organic machine

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- DominicGee
- 03.09.2008 @ 15:34:18
You can accept that your body will never be perfect, but the important thing is to strive towards perfection. The fact that we have a concept of perfection obliges us to persue it.
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- aaronkendall
- 03.09.2008 @ 17:24:52
Of course we strive to be whatever it is we want to. Our personal goals for ourselves are our personal aims of perfection. But perfection is only a relative term and i do not think we are obliged to seek it. I'm not limiting myself to my imperfections, just acknowledging that they do in fact limit me. As is say, i cannot stop how my body can affect my mind by the way it can make me feel but i think i do have some power to choose not to act upon these feelings even if i have no power to stop from feeling them.

But i think you are right that even if we have limits we should do our best to break them, even if they are unbreakable.
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- willofmemory ^Pro
- 04.09.2008 @ 22:35:48
The first half sounds like a classic early Christian heresy, if I only knew which one:-) I think the position fails on the grounds either that you are assuming that choice is rational and based on complete analysis, which it isn't, or that the occurence of a reaction once turns it into a cause should the instance reoccur, which sounds absurd although I wouldn't like to try to prove it.
However, I don't think that's the point. I sense in your text that you're trying to say something about yourself. Maybe that you feel powerless to stop feelings that you have and that you cannot rationally justify. Maybe not, but it's what I sense.
Rory
- - aaronkendall
  - 05.09.2008 @ 12:02:37
  You sense right. This entry was, to a large extent, more diary than essay. But the fact still stands that i am still, philosophically, a hard determinist and do not believe in free will; only the illusion of it. Of course choice is not rational or ever made 'all POSSIBLE things considered'. But it is made 'all things available to you considered' in whatever way your being considers them. And if the same event were to be replayed your being would react/consider everything in the exact same way because all the variables are the same (i'm talking about e.g. a perfect match parallel universe where the same event plays out - it will always be the same-, or going back in time into your old body but once there you loose all memory of the future you have lived and to you, it appears you are simply living the event normally. The variables do not change so neither does the conclusion).
  
  As always, thanks for reading and thanks very much for commenting.
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- willofmemory ^Pro
- 05.09.2008 @ 23:40:43
Mmm, it is intriguing what you say, but it still doesn't seem to add up. Here's another rebuttal: you seem to put determinism and choice into an either/or system. But what if they co-exist?
In other words, you can recreate a situation to the point of possible divergence. A subsequent path is then followed. This divergence is either under the control of the human agent involved, their choice, or under the control of the totality of forces and influences, the determinist position. The point is that the former can take either path, the latter can't. A human agent can choose to follow random chance theory and follow whichever it indicates, which will vary from time to time. Determinist forces will never vary.
However, your position could also be seen as a defence mecchanism against those feelings you mention. When we are overwhelmed by our instinctual self, we have a strong inkling towards determinism. It can easily make us feel we have no choice. In my case, I've been knocked senseless by my own feelings on suicide, sexuality and close relationships. My feeling of powerlessless has sometimes felt like I am prey to falling into a river that only ever flows in one direction. And I could join that flow. Although the subject of your feelings and worries will vary, it sounds as if you may also be struggling with a similar forcefulness that overwhelms. Why not share some of what troubles you? It might help.
Rory
- - aaronkendall
  - 06.09.2008 @ 12:58:28
  I do not think the former path exists. The faculty of choice is an illusion. I appreciate your comments. I think there are strands being touched upon. The first is a feeling that your life is out of control and the second is knowing that your life is out of your control but feeling that it is under your control. I feel that i have free will and control over my life, it's just that when i have my philosophical hat on i accept that free will is an illusion, even if it is a nice one that suits me very well. I think that when we feel powerless over our lives we have to exercise our illusion of free will and tell ourselves that we do have power and try our best to steer our lives in the direction we want and not the one external, and often internal, influences seem to force us. Whatever happens is determined, but don't forget that you are a determining force (though you are determined to determine in whatever way you determine). Thanks for your post and i appreciate your comments Rory.
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- willofmemory ^Pro
- 06.09.2008 @ 18:49:20
Aaron
Your agnosticism, for that is how it sounds to me, and no more, feels as if it were crumbling. The contemplative would respond that the great determining force you allude to is none other than his or her god. And that such a godhead resides also within each of us. And that both, though seemingly of an illusion, are possibilities, and still nothing more, worth placing our faith in. You are more than your scepticism would allow.
Have you tried listening to the other side of silence?
Rory
- - aaronkendall
  - 06.09.2008 @ 20:16:34
  I promise you i am as staunch an atheist as they come. I do not believe in God for there is no reason to. The answers to the questions that lead people to God are either the wrong questions (what is the meaning of life or what hope is there without God) or have material answers. I believe that at the atomic level the universe is deterministic. Any voice in my head is simply a product of particals running their courses in accordance with the fixed laws of nature. I have no faith in anything for faith is irrational. I believe and know many things as well as anyone can know anything. I falsify my beliefs through material evidence and experience. The christian God cannot determine lives if he is as the bible describes as that takes away the free will he gives us. Therefore A judeo-christian conception of God and a belief in determinism are incompatible. I have the illusion of free will but i believe all things are determined by i)the state of the universe and all the particles in it at a given moment in time and ii)the laws of nature.
  
  I promise you that i am resolutely atheistic.
  
  As always, thanks for your comments and debate. Please do not hesitate to keep them coming.
  Aaron
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- willofmemory ^Pro
- 07.09.2008 @ 14:26:51
Aaron
When I mention the contemplative, I'm not necessarily invoking the Judeo-Christian god, that hoary old goat. Most religions have their contemplatives and most would reject representation of the godhead, or ascribe to it much specificity.

But, like Einstein's straight line being bent by time until it meets, in the end, itself at the far side of the universe, so it seems my end of contemplation meets your determinism.

Your staunch standing up for your atheism, your almost fundamentalist belief in it, is a far stronger statement of faith than most contemplatives would contemplate. Theirs, in a way, is a lost world, beyond reason and evidence, and, quite possibly, in quest, as they must accept, of the non-existent. But, as if it led one to touching the charged void that is also, paradoxically, your determinism, it is real and rationally justifiable in the sense that it allows us to be, to exist, in a way that normally, in our daily lives, is not open to us.

But also, you say you have no faith in anything because faith is irrational. You've hit an important point with precision. Faith, the nub of it, is irrational. Yet our instinctual selves are also highly irrational. So, when you say you have no faith because it is irrational, that could be read as saying that you do not grasp, you do not have, your own irrationality. Your own instinctual self. Your own wayward imagination. Reason is a strong force, but unreason is wild and dangerous. It is that which makes the rationalist quail. For it takes faith to go there, to the wilder shores of the rule-less imagination, where your terrors, your memories, your overwhelming loss, your fantasy, your soul, wait below the onrushing waves.

And now? I'm off to 6 hours of a Messiaen opera fantasy at the Proms on the life of St Francis of Assisi. To the wilder shores of the imagination indeed.

Take care of yourself.
Rory
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Matter over mind: the organic machine

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