Plague Journal, For Don
For reality is an illusion, and any thought must first try to unmask it.
For this purpose, reality itself must remain masked and must shape itself as a decoy, without even thinking or caring about its own truth.
Reality must place its pride in never being an instrument of analysis, or a critical instrument, because it is the world that must proceed to its own analysis.
It is the world, not reality, that must be revealed not as a truth, but as an illusion.
Excerpt, Radical Thought by Jean Baudrillard
It was a most interesting discussion last night. Our discussion arose from an article by Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher of mind and Michael Levin, biologist. Dennett and Levin offered the thesis that mind, computational adeptness is endemic to all levels of living organisms. This is a revolutionary hypothesis counter to the binary assumption that minds, brains guiding purposeful behavior is limited to humans and a few animals. The standard assumption is of a distinct line. Cross that line you are using metaphor to anthropomorphize.
We probed the hypothesis in our discussion. We wondered about research on forcing cancer cells back into biological connection with their neighbors, in order to “turn them off.” They’d once again become normal, dedicated to tissue upkeep and maintenance.
In the course of our exchange of views and questions, a member of our group asserted that ideas were illusion, and that we homo sapiens were nothing but an evolved, concatenated biological complex. Those are my words to describe what Don asserted. Then, at the very end of our session of exchange, another participant asked Don if he thought there was anything at all that was not illusion? Don indicated the glass of scotch in his hand, the photons registering on the retina of his eye were examples of non-illusion. Our session together reached conclusion…
The session finished on a productive note. The question: what is real, what is illusion, in what ways do we use those terms? — the nested inquiry, a tease that animates, that energizes us onward…
3 thoughts on “Plague Journal, For Don”
Some questions are never resolved. That may be closer to Truth than any possible answers. We sort of assume the shadow pictures on the wall, though imperfect, are cast by something we call Real. The validity of the senses seems a weak argument for reality, at least if we expect Reality to have some consistency; through time, through space, for different beings watching the shadows. Is Don the same being he was yesterday? How does he know? If all ideas are Illusion, how can he even ask?
And yet…we do keep asking.
As I mentioned last night, in the Buddhist view we have our five senses and we have five sense consciousness’ to interpret all that our senses receive.
The belief is that we also have a mind consciousness that interprets our thoughts. A sixth sense. Call this enhanced introspection if that’s easier to grasp. It’s nice as Don said that we have found agreement on something!
Blessings