[Image: “I Know I See You, I Just Don’t Know When,” by Thomas Hawk; found on Flickr.com, used here under a Creative Commons license. The photograph shows one view of the Stata building at MIT, designed by Frank Gehry. The building houses various facilities in support of research into computers, information science, intelligence, robotics, and related topics. More in the note at the foot of this post.]
From whiskey river:
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity—yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of the Me in the centre) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look’d upon, it expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven.
(Walt Whitman [source])
…and:
It would be an endless battle if it were all up to ego
because it does not destroy and is not destroyed by itself
It is like a wave
it makes itself up; it rushes forward getting nowhere really
it crashes, withdraws and makes itself up again
pulls itself together with pride
towers with pride
rushes forward into imaginary conquest
crashes in frustration
withdraws with remorse and repentance
pulls itself together with new resolution.
(Agnes Martin [source])
…and:
To open our eyes, to see with our inner fire and light, is what saves us. Even if it makes us vulnerable. Opening the eyes is the job of storytellers, witnesses, and the keepers of accounts. The stories we know and tell are reservoirs of light and fire that brighten and illuminate the darkness of human night, the unseen.
(Linda Hogan [source])
Not from whiskey river:
You can see how there is no limit to truths. We should be prepared to master all of them. In being prepared to accept any and all truths, we are able to relax and be in our lives as they are. If we are willing to accept truth just as it comes, without trying to change it to suit our needs, we become free of the anxiety that comes from the urge to change and control. By master I mean receive with our full minds, open and without resistance. It doesn’t mean that you know everything. Rather, it means that you may not know anything at all in a situation, but you may have become so open to the infinite possibilities that you can approach and accept anything. Even pain. We have to be just as willing to touch and acknowledge the pain as we are to feel joy. Why? Because one doesn’t exist without the other. Who needs “up” if there is no “down”? They are so linked together that they are the same thing; different perspectives on the very same thing.
(Angel Kyodo Williams [source])
…and:
Song of Myself
(excerpt)In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.
(Walt Whitman [source])
…and:
A zombie is a creature that is physically identical to a normal human being, but lacking in conscious experience altogether. There is nothing it is like to be a zombie, just as, presumably, there is nothing it is like to be my laptop computer. Now whether zombies are even metaphysically possible is a matter of considerable controversy, but many would agree that the very idea of a zombie is internally consistent and coherent. However, if appeal to one’s physical states did explain why one had the conscious experience that one has, then zombies should not be even conceivable. It should be clear why a creature with our kind of physiology would have to have conscious experiences, and of the kind we have.
(Joseph Levine [source])
About the image: The photographer provided no hints about the photo’s title, “I Know I See You, I Just Don’t Know When.” But I think it’s relevant, intentionally or not, to the building’s function as a center for information and related sciences. It addresses the question: what makes an “intelligence” conscious? At the least, for instance, the “you” might refer to a digital camera’s subject of the moment (building, person, whatever), while the “I” is the not-quite-conscious camera itself. (Of course, the analogy is not perfect: at one level, the camera does know when — it’s recorded in a digital photo’s Exif data. Whether this constitutes actual knowing, well, that’s a debate for a later footnote.)
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