Under Construction

Iconism - the Explanation of Consciousness

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education - Bertrand Russell

Index

Iconism - identical means one and the same

Dreams, Memories, Reflections - Imagination

Total Recall

Iconic Senses

Iconic Gravity

Iconic Time

Downward Causation

Free Will

Objective Icons

AI - Never any more conscious than a book

Psychic Icons

Iconism - identical means one and the same

Consciousness and its Hard Problem of Consciousness are explained by Iconism. Iconism is an extension of Virtualism that claims that consciousness of a thing is 'what it says on the tin.', i.e. the conscious object is in a true sense the real object itself, that is; it is the whole object - with the caveat that the conscious object does not contain the parts of the real object, except as other conscious objects. If the conscious object ceases to be to some extent identical with the real object, then it is no longer consciousness of that real object. Memory and imagination extend the possibilities of consciousness, by removing the requirement for the continuous sensing of some real object.

Leibniz' Law sits at the heart of Virtualism in explaining the manner of the relationships that make up everything in Existence. It should be no surprise then that it also sits at the heart of Iconism as an explanation of consciousness. Iconism can be summed up by saying that the brain creates models of objects, and to the extent that those models are the same as the objects, they are identical to those objects, i.e. the whole model is one and the same with the whole object, whole things being virtual in nature. This gives those models the behaviour of icons, in the traditional sense of the religious icon, where the icon has all the properties of the saint, and so is in fact the saint.

Perception, is the functioning of the senses to bring the objective external world into the subjective inner world of our experience, to become a part of our mind, and potentially consciousness. Perception, by one of the five conventional senses, is always as a consequence of photons carrying point-like information to our nervous system. Between those data points, but crucially, not in any singular point, is carried a virtual image of the real object that is emitting those photons; a facsimilie of the whole thing, that itself is only a virtual thing. The impulses of the nerves carry all that information, the composite of parts and whole, to the brain, and then some magic happens - or does it? No, no magic; the brain responds as dumbly and as blindly, as the plumbing in your house, and according to which chemical taps are switched on or off, and in doing so, neurons fire, and dendrites carry signals to other neurons, creating patterns of electrical activity that reflect the external object being perceived, and I claim that each such individual pattern is an icon.

The activity of the brain in response to external stimuli, is to blindly respond with guesses that form an analog of the external cause, as best it can, and that analog contributes to the mind. The mind is composed of many such analogies overlaid, each of which is an icon, each of which is necessarily connected to other icons by Leibniz' law, in a manner that effectively amplifies the importance of some icons over others. Icons should then be seen as having parts that are brain activity, and layers of wholes that are identical to some other wholes, for instance external objects. Such icons are not necessarily conscious, so we should not make the mistake of confusing mind and consciousness for the same thing, or perhaps we want to say mind is consciousness, but that consciousness is not necessarily awareness. Such issues are a matter of fashion, but is is obvious that awareness is somewhat different to subconscious mind, but less obvious whether qualia can be subconscious, or not. For my money, there is a hierarchy of consciousness, perhaps as follows:

Group Mind - an awareness that is shared with others

Mindfulness - an awareness that includes awareness of self

Meditation - an awareness that deliberates on nothing

Concentration - an awareness that forgets about self

Awareness - an everyday fragmented awareness of a number of things

Hypnotized - aware but given over to suggestion

Daydreaming - while not asleep

Conscious - an unaware consciousness that would respond, but is absentminded

Intoxicated - an impaired awareness due to drink or drugs

Dreaming - while asleep

Subconscious - consciousness that goes by unnoticed

Unconscious - either asleep, or knocked out

Brain Dead - the brain no longer functions

Many areas of the brain contribute to forming icons of mind, many of which have the potential to be conscious. We are able to be conscious of multiple icons at once, but not necessarily all of them to the same degree. I would say that it is 'as if' only those things that we are aware of, are mindful of, that can achieve the status of conscious awareness, and so which are able to form the basis of memories.

Consciousness then can be viewed as the whole of those icons that are sufficiently amplified within the mind, supported by brain activity, and body activity, to significantly alter the centre of being of the mind. That centre, the heart of the self, is no more real than is the centre of the Earth, yet it emerges 'as if' it is the facts of our being, and as it changes it lays down a trail of data that can subsequently have the potential to be recalled as memories. In short, awareness is the objective part of our subjective conscious being. This makes the objectivity of consciousness a spectrum, rather than a binary choice between subjective and objective, and the spectrum increases in objectivity the more that the icon is supported by other icons and the extent of their own objectivity.

That may seem like a major and unsubstantiated leap of the imagination, to claim that consciousness can be objective, but I would counter by saying that the truth of your consciousness, when true, is as true as what you had for breakfast yesterday, or any other fact from the past. The hard part of the 'Hard Problem of Consciousness' is to say why the experience of qualia is so bright, and seems so real.

Consciousness becomes bright and loud, in one's mind, when it is the whole of one's mind, i.e. its heart, and icons within the mind are capable of amplification by connection, and so are capable of assuming centre stage within the mind, although it is only 'as if' there is such a stage. The Cartesian theatre, as Daniel Dennett likes to call it, does not exist as a central place in the brain where 'it all comes together', yet it emerges 'as if' it existed as the centre of our experience, and centres only emerge from whole things. The mind, being composed of whole things, is no more real than the whole things that it models, and this is precisely because there are only whole things all the way down, metaphorically a stack of turtles, as some have joked about.

'All the way down?' Is nothing fundamental? Yes, nothing is fundamental, and from nothing springs everything, as I have explained elsewhere. All that exists are the facts of Existence, and if that sounds like a circular argument, it is because it is. There is only truth, and even lies are a form of truth, albeit inverted and so subjective. A lie is a truth that is not objectively true, and there is nothing wrong with that, it is what is done with the fiction that is important and so becomes a question of morality.

Getting back to consciousness, it is an amalgam of subjective truth and lies, it is what we think, and the only difference between those subjective truths and subjective lies is how great their objective content is. A whole country can share in a subjective lie, just consider Nazi Germany, or contemporary Russia. The lie does not become entirely objective simply by being widely shared, but a shared lie does become more of a lie by being shared, and so becomes partly objective, i.e. Nazi Germany did exist, but held numerous lies to be truths. In this way we can be as conscious of lies as we can of truths, they are very similar. Ultimately only very simple things can be entirely true; for instance, electrons being simple, all share the same truth, to the extent that only their uncertain position and energy distinguishes one from another [and spin, if we are being picky].

The self that emerges from all these icons - the subjective self - has a sense of self because it also perceives the objective self of the body as more icons, and from the combination produces, at times, icons of self, along with the icons of perception, and along with icons of memory created by the process of recall. The amalgam of all these things - the self - is both malleable and stuck with being itself. It is constantly changing, as our thoughts change, yet is imprisoned by both physical constraints, and mental constraints that arise from previous states. These constraints impose bias on just about everything we do. We just cannot think about things that we have no connection to, and find it difficult to think in ways that we are unaccustomed to think; being such lazy creatures of habit inflicts biases that alter our rather flawed in the first place perceptions, such that any two witnesses may recall quite different facts about the same event.

More about the Self

The differentiation between consciousness and the unconscious is not really helpful, because it would suggest that these are two different kinds of thing, whereas Iconism claims them to be one and the same - the parts of the subjective self. The thing we call consciousness, I'd say, is more helpfully called awareness, and that is simply an emergent, and variable, peak of consciousness. The lack of awareness that the bulk of our self has, or rather doesn't have, should be of concern to us all, because it leaves us open to every kind of subliminal messaging; from advertising to political control.

To sum up consciousness, we can say it is what emerges from the whole of one's mind as the objective sum of subjective self, the true facts of something that is always less than wholly true to the external environment, but also it is something that is as objective as the things that it is identical to, to the extent that it is identical to anything, because the identity is one and the same thing, it just has different parts.

Dreams, Memories, Reflections - Imagination

When we dream, we don't dream of the actual environment in which we are sleeping, of the bed, the pillows, duvet etc. Seldom even the same house, so dreaming is not driven [for the most part] by the sense processes that feed the construction of mind while we are awake. Dreaming, that produces recall the next morning, normally lacks the directive agency of the self, although there is still the sense that it is the self dreaming. The dream happens to the self, but that lack of control, even as we struggle to escape some nightmare, suggests that the content of the dream is originating from some part of our self that we cannot change. That part, which is certainly sub-conscious, gets released during sleep, at a time when there is nothing much to prevent it surfacing.

The experience of dreaming is ephemeral, and takes place as a form of consciousness that is closer to the form of memory, and indeed the form of imagination. So, how much notice should we take of our dreams? Clearly they are a part of us, so I think it better not to ignore them, yet they come from a place of abstraction and archetypal imagery, hence dreams can seldom be taken at face value, despite the fact that they are sometimes plainly straightforward.

We could usefully ask, what function do dreams serve? The answer being that they reflect icons that perhaps we ought to have taken more notice of, but were not mindful enough during wakeful hours to incorporate into our experience. However, there is often an alternative to that simple materialist interpretation, and that is that the moment has its own character, and that this has the potential to drag up one's past, however long ago, even to the extent of previous lives, and perhaps the periods between lives, as these are as much a part of our personal facts as are any day to day experiences. They are just more remote.

The experience of consciousness while awake is much more about reflecting something of the environment around us, of the things that we sense, and look how that environment has grown; nowadays we can sense what is taking place, to some very great extent, anywhere in the World [in principle], or in much greater detail than used to be the case, in places that are either very distant, or very close but that can be seen in microscopic detail.

When we remember, we perform an act of creativity, just as much as when imagining. The outcome of either is generally more static than are the creations of dreams, but all three functions of mind share the same feature of not relying on sense data to create icons. The result of this is that our creations lack much of the brightness and solidity of external sensed reality. Reality just has so much more detail - more connections between things, equating to more connections in and between the icons of mind, therefore much more amplification of those icons. The curious question that imagination raises is this: How is it that the brain knows when it has done enough? The brain has no central office to rubber stamp the memories or imaginings, or dreams that it is supporting, so how does it know when it is doing ok? We shall come back to this question.

Total Recall

Recall, and its counterpart forgetting, forms a key part to consciousness, as we have seen, and it is not just a question of how we know when we have remembered correctly. There is also the prevalent phenomena of not being able to bring to memory those simple facts that you know perfectly well that you know; they are just on the tip of your tongue, yet try as you might you can only remember the wrong names, and the wrong answers, that you know are wrong. It is as if something was holding the correct answer at arm's length. Sometimes, approaching the answer tangentially, by answering an associated, but different question, get the desired fact to pop into one's mind. Other times just giving up the quest allows the fact to present itself, although this is frequently too late to be of any use, except as some small consolation.

It seems to be an opposite to photographic memory, total recall, and perfect pitch. It is also certain that to understand how it all happens would be of great help in improving recall for us mere mortals.

More about Memory

Iconic Senses

The fly, the bat, and many other creatures, dogs, pit vipers - they all have a very different provision of senses given them by evolution, in comparison to humankind, that is. How then do they experience the World? What is it like to be a bat? as Thomas Nagel asked. The answer that Iconism gives is that for any lifeform that has sensory ability, their experience of the World is as it is. But that is only to some degree. This is as true, if not more so, for humans than for many other creatures that have greater sensory acuity, but luckily for us, our brains give us a fantastically enhanced ability to connect the dots, to join our inferior sense icons to create superior sense icons! Exactly that, we have the good sense to have common sense, should we choose to use it, so we can understand, not just the World, but the whole Universe, and even a great deal of Existence, although that is certainly still only a small part of the entirety of what is. It does, of course, raise the question, what can other large brained creatures do with their icon making faculties?

Incidentally, Thomas Nagel's point, or part of it, was that science being objective was not compatible with consciousness which is subjective. I'm paraphrasing, but he casts doubt on the ability of science to respond appropriately to consciousness. I'm not sure that this is true, as science manages to infer many things indirectly, about many other realms, however, consciousness has always been the realm of the arts to communicate. Art shows the invisible subjective inner world in an objective manner, however imperfectly.

The varied senses of different creatures provide all with some approximation of what is out there, and if we wanted to we could replicate the echolocation of the bat, or the heat detection of the pit viper, and we do so. Iconism provides us with the sound understanding that the means of sensory detection don't matter in the least, what counts is the detail and accuracy with which an iconic model of the external environment can be built.

Iconic Gravity

When icons become disproportionate.

It seems on the face of it that when a new icon is created in the mind, that then the balance of the mind may only shift to halfway, or partway, between where it was and where the new icon is, but this may be to fall into the trap of Zeno's Paradox, and the reality, or truth rather, is that we think at a certain speed or rate depending on the urgency of the thought, which itself is analogous to the gravitational pull between two masses. Well, at this moment I suspect that this is how it is, but really it needs a bit more consideration.

What is obvious is that some events in life have little impact on the psyche, while other events are life changing - they are so enormous in their meaning for the individual, that most other considerations pale into insignificance. However, objects with mass, being boosted must naturally coalesce, given sufficient proximity, but icons, being non-spatial, have no boost, and so it is only meaning, and the connections thereof that connect icons, so whatever causes change of mind, is not perfectly analogous to gravity.

I'm not really meaning physical events either, unless it is for their psychological impact on the mind, rather it is events of consciousness that are under consideration. All the words used, such as impact, enormous, and pale, all point to some kind of scale being applicable to iconic events. Those scales are what enable some events to affect us more than do others.

One mechanism which we employ, in order to help us judge the personal magnitude of icons, what some event means to us personally, is to bring in emotional responses. Here I am going to make a big claim, that all emotions are mediated by the body, rather than the mind. There may be many different mechanisms, often involving chemical transmitters, but the essential point is that thoughts on their own are rather bland and mechanical. It is only when icons are sufficiently amplified to become a significant part of our whole being, that some extra step kicks in, and it is not a conscious thing, at least not immediately. It is 'as if' the mind asks the body 'what do you feel about this?', and the body replies with adrenaline, dopamine, oxytocin, or some other mood altering substance, and maybe we draw the right conclusion as to what cause has which effect.

Iconic Time

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana - Groucho Marx

We have seen how Virtualism and Emergence provide an explanation of objective time, but while the interaction between brain and mind must always be tied to the limitations of that objective time of physical processes, is there another way to think about subjective time? This being the time that is experienced by individuals - time that frequently seems to drag, or to fly by.

Personal Time

Like icebergs, the vast bulk of icons sink beneath the waters of the unconscious. So, while each icon is supported by a host of other icons, all we really notice are the big pictures. For instance, we may have a car, and know all kinds of facts about its history, servicing, performance, and what needs doing to it. We also see tyres, lights, doors, windscreen, the badge, etc. but we don't normally consciously think of all those facts, unless some become particularly pertinent. Most of what we know passes by unrecognised by awareness, and we simply just think 'car'.

A new idea arises as an icon, and is then potentially the biggest and brightest, by dint of being the most connected of all our current icons, and if it is, it follows on as the centre as the old central icon recedes into the same virtual past of what was as emerges for every real thing. From that, it is abundently obvious that the icons of thoughts are as real as the atoms of the neurons that fire as we have those thoughts. There is no problem of dualist interaction, the thought is both very real, and has very real parts. Just like any other real object.

The departing icon of an idea is not going anywhere, after all it is a virtual whole, but it does lose its real parts. However, just as the truths of the past of real material objects remain true, also being virtual wholes, so the truths of the past of icons also remain true. What is more, the truth of an icon's past is able to have influence over the course of the brain's activity, because the brain is not only able to compare its present state of icons to the realities that it is currently sensing, but also to the icons of its remembered past; that is recall, and however it is done, wherever the memory resides, we undeniably do it.

However it is that we perform recall, it is thought that the brain performs a guessing game, possibly at all times, attempting to anticipate the production of the required icon(s) relevent to the moment. The interesting question is this: How is it that the mind can confirm to the brain that it has done well?

The answer to that is the answer to the mind/body problem of dualism. But, when we see icons as being just as real as the objects that they match [with Leibniz' identity], and also just as true as the quantum wave functions that permeate all of Reality, then there is no hard problem in seeing that consciousness forms a part of the wave function, and that this is how the brain receives confirmation that it is doing the right thing for the situation - the answer fits. The difficulty for the individual is that the process of recall starts with an empty shape, a silhouette that is a question, and many invalid answers may still occupy an ill-defined abstract space without causing any troublesome cognative dissonance. I hope it is clear enough in my explanations such that all whole objects are understood to be virtual, with it being their differences that give the 'as if' impression of material or factual truth reality, thereby making their virtual centres as meaningful as the virtual centres of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. All things contribute to wave functions, and the activity of the material brain is undoubtedly subject to wave functions, just like anything else.

External time can appear to slow down when you concentrate, allowing speedy personal activity and quick reactions, because you hang on to a sequence of ideas, thereby letting the ideas of external time pass by 'as if' slowly. Your subjective personal time becomes devoid of external considerations, and their associated drag, even though you may be interacting with such external happenings. This is assuming that you notice external time at all; sometimes the reverse is true, because you simply fail to notice external events, with the consequence of external time seeming to pass quickly while you inhabit your own world. Equally, when you are bored, and not having much to think about, percieved internal time appears to run quickly in comparison to the clocks around you, with the consequence that you wait for the hands to move on those clocks. Time is always relative, even between the speed of one person's thinking and another's. Our thinking, the icons we produce, affect our whole being. This is how it is possible for my Aikido Sensei to be as light as a feather, or to be immoveable. There is, in Japanese martial arts, the concept of mushin, empty mind, which is a state of extreme concentration that permits no unnecessary thought, merely an awareness of what is. This allows the adept person to approach an immoveable oneness with the Earth, or a highly moveable dissociation from the Earth. This, at least, is my own explanation of the phenomenon of Ki, one that I can attest to from personal experience. Mushin is not dissimilar to the admonition of Tai Chi instructor Scott Meredith to 'relax'.

Downward Causation

How Icons Cause Action

The question for philosophers of consciousness is how exactly does mind affect body?

The answers given depend on the point of view of the speaker/writer, but in general there are physicalists/materialists who only recognize matter as known to Physics, and who have the hard problem of explaining how consciousness arises from simple structures such as the neurons of the brain. Then there are dualists/idealists who like Descartes claim that consciousness is not a material phenomenon.

For Virtualism consciousness is explained with the help of Iconism and these icons are very much objects of res cogitans, this despite the undoubted fact that much of the time their parts are of res extensa.

Somewhere within our grey matter there are wheels turning, and they turn toward memory for the most part, so I claim. That is, the metaphorical wheel is composed of analogue behaviour of neurons, partly in response to external stimuli, and partly in the 'rolling' of the icons so produced toward iconic memory. The icons roll in the same way that the wheel rolls, in response to time emerging from change, but where external time causes the emergence of gravity [explained elsewhere], internal time causes the emergence of thinking - the process whereby ideas from memory and imagination are drawn into mind by the 'force' of thinking, which is no more than the natural attraction [drawing together] of similarities of mind. The emergent configuration of mind, just like the emergent configuration of gravitational bodies, has its own centre of being, around which, and towards which, all other icons of mind are drawn. This centre of being is what gives continuity to an individual mind, and being the most amplified by connection [of all current icons] is the point of consciousness.

Just as body space [res extensa] is ultimately found to be a virtual arena, so is head space [res cogitans], its virtual nature accommodating many dimensions, although not too many at once, and responding in much the same way as external space. How then, one might ask, does the icon affect the physical neuron?

It is well known that the brain attempts to interpret what it experiences, and moves toward identification of objects by trial and error, so the question is really how does conscious mind confirm the successful guesses made by the unconscious brain, thereby encouraging it stepwise to a final outcome? Or, put another way, how does the unconscious brain recognise when it has recognised properly?

The answer is that, just as the photons that mediate the electromagnetic forces within Sperry's Wheel are in fact virtual, the icons of minds are composed of virtuality, that is they are already made of the same stuff as the photons that move in and between neurons. They don't add to the energy content of the brain, but they shape the movement of icons towards the point of consciousness, amplifying them as they go. The brain is continually guessing at what icons to model, discarding those that do not fit the actual icons of mind. How does it discard the mistakes? Simply by failing to re-fire neurons, in comparison to others firing more - the quantum probability of firing being enhanced by the virtual constraints of mind. In this way, the brain guesses at mind, just as much as it guesses at the meanings of sensation, and it is 'as if' the iconic mind encourages correct physical brain action, because the matching of virtual patterns of icons creates a constraint of truth on subsequent neuron firing [not necessarily actual truth, but the truth of similarity between brain and mind.], and so the mechanism of memory is also guesswork, with the brain doing the guessing, and mind confirming the veracity of the guesses. The difference between memory and imagination is solely in the distinction between which part of the virtual self is centre stage 'in' the mind, and so is constraining the activity of the brain - these parts being either the facts of what was experienced, or the facts of the current state of the self.

This is all closer to a 'Sperry's Waterwheel' than the original wheel envisaged by Roger Sperry, the Waterwheel constrains the diverted river water that reaches it via the mill race, and what emerges is rotational energy that comes from gravity acting on the water passing through the wheel.

Similarly, the mental 'wheel' of the mind constrains the photons fired up by the neurons, and those carry the icons in their move towards consciousness, impelled by the force of mentality. Firing neurons then do what they do, the interesting point is that with this description the interaction of mind and brain is recogniseable as barely any different from gravity, and ultimately the mere interaction of like media, thus overriding Elisabeth's interjection. The meaning inherent in the photons emitted as neurons fire, is actually no different in principle from the meaning inherent in the photons recieved by the eye, or any other sense organ.

Ultimately the products of neuronal activity and iconic activity are both virtual, and so interact via the same medium. That implies that thought is subject to some kind of QM laws, but the difference is that the parts of neurons [not their activity] are real, and subject to external time, etc. Whereas the parts of icons are only ever other icons, albeit reinforced by neuronal activity, and usually these are very ghostly due to their lacking the benefit of direct sensation, when they are simple memories.

Ultimately, the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of dualist interaction, and it becomes resolved by exactly the same elemental mechanism as produces love. We could even say that the brain knows when it has done well [as much as a brain can know anything, which is not at all], entirely because of the love of the mind. That is, there is always a particular relationship between any part of the mind, any icon, and the activity of the brain, and the brain will faithfully keep firing away, as long as it basks in the glow of the mind's approval, i.e. the mind produces consciousness, as the truth of its state, its centre, and that wholeness of mind will be either the same as some whole of some brain activity, or not, and where there is a match there is sameness, a positive relationship between mind and brain, encouraging more of the same; where there is difference, and the brain is producing a mistake, a duck not a rabbit, or a man running into the woods not a dog running out of the woods, then the relationship between mind and brain is negative, one of non-sameness, causing the brain to try something else. Of course, the something else is based on competing models within the brain, and they all interact with corresponding icons within the mind, such that there is a lot of competition in all that activity, giving a very mixed and changing stream, much of which is too dim, too small, too remote from our mind's centre to attain the pride of place that gives consciousness. Remembering memories, for instance, or listening to one's own small still voice, both require attention from mind to icons that are initially unsupported by brain activity, but which at least act 'as if' they crowd in from the storehouse of previous consciousness, connected to current consciousness as produced by mind, by the continuity of the stream that is bound to any one inividual. Then the connection between mind and brain functions in exactly the same manner of downward causation, such that it is 'as if' the brain's activity then fills in the unsupported icon, amplifying it with appropriate patterns and connections of firing neurons.

To re-iterate, because this is the nub of the philosophical problem, the mind-body problem, the activity of the brain is as mindless as plumbing [my Dad used to describe it has having a mad librarian offering all the wrong books], yet it must act within the constraints placed upon it. The brain is evolved to reflect perceptions, as best it can, yet the 'guessing' it does in making sense of individual photons, by combining them to create icons, tests those icons against the facts of previous experience, and a successfully constructed icon, one that matches the perception well, makes a comfortable fit, while poorly fitting icons create cognitive dissonance. Ultimately, that difference, or not, between brain produced icons and whatever facts of earlier icons seem relevant, are causal on the persistence, or not, of the icons concerned, i.e. those produced by the brain. How the brain knows it has got it right, is the wrong question; it never really knows, it just acts blindly, but, and this is the big but, the dissonance filters out the obviously incorrect icons, and they fade away. Because the brain's activity is fundamentally quantum, just like everything else in Existence, it seems logical to suppose that the facts of prior experience form as much a part of the various wave functions involved, as do the physical components and constraints.

To get icons to affect the world directly takes an enormous effort of mind in aligning not just the conscious icon, but all [many of] the icons of one's extended being, such that one's whole truth is on board with the objective in mind. NB. Effort of mind is achieved by the relaxed non-existence of contrary icons, rather than by any strenuous activity of any kind. This is [I believe] something like the process that happens during Ki projection in Aikido, or any chi phenomena surrounding Tai Chi. Essentially the effect of meditation and the practice of relaxing is to halt any infighting within the person, such that they are effectively unopposed in their efforts. That is when the magic happens. Neuroscientists tell us that the same area of the brain, the Amygdalae, is involved in recall and imagination [decision making], and emotional responses in general. I would guess that a lage part of that is to subdue the importance of external sensory impressions, in order to allow more notice to be taken of the self.

Free Will

The reason that we do have free will - ceteris paribus - within the self, at the heart of you, all things are equal, when you are not being pulled to and fro by daily life, so say when you meditate; at this time you have balance, and the choice of any direction within your own being. This choice may well be limited by the content of your self, but from those possibilities you can direct your own future possibilities, and at least aim for whatever growth direction your totality, i.e. you, cares to choose.

So, while your will is limited by who you are, in the sense that Arthur Schopenhauer meant, who you are includes special features such as curiosity and inquisitiveness, the desire to grow that always arises from the obvious fact that you are not already omnipresent, nor omniscient. Those qualities drive all of us to exercise free will every day of our lives. Robert Sapolsky may claim that our circumstances and conditioning give us no choice, but I disagree.

It may be a case of 'I wouldn't start from here!', but at each moment we restart from where we are, and necessarily, via channeling Mercury, Venus, and Mars [in the sense that I use those terms], aim to fill the gaps in our own experience of our own self. Those parts of the self - icons - that define the gaps to be filled [the desires], those parts are the self, they define probabilities for what may fill the gaps, and to the extent that they enable choice, and reflection, and mind-changing, they allow a certain flexibility of purpose that, contrary to Schopenhauer, does allow you to will what you will. Maybe not in all respects, but I claim that Free Will is possible.

More about Free Will

Objective Icons

Objective Idealism refers to Plato's conception of the actuality of the world of ideals, while Subjective Idealism is the suggestion that ideas are only ever belonging to the individual. Iconism, along with Virtualism says that the icons that form ideas in the mind are themselves virtual, so as truly existent as any other phenomenon. Being true, in this sense, they are there to be remembered by anyone who can connect to the virtual event, which usually is just the individual who had the thought in the first place. But, these ideas, being virtual, are out there forever, just like our physical actions. Everything has an abstract content, at least in part, and so is eternally a part of the world of ideals.

AI - Never any more conscious than a book

With the rise of AI tools such as ChatGPT, it is beginning to look like machines might one day soon become conscious. Is that really a likely possibility, and how far off is it?

The answer to that question is that looks can be decieving. Iconism leads us to this very precise answer, showing us exactly why AI is a million miles away from reality, but also what AI would have to do to achieve AC.

The problem for AI is that at no point do all the factors come together as any kind of coherent whole, except in the final analysis of the output. The architecture of computers as currently produced prevents that happening; the data may be linked by being part of a neural network, but the same could be said for books on the shelves of a library; the data may be rearranged and give useful and appropriate answers, but this is done bit by bit, each part independent of the other, and never with anything corresponding to a conceptual whole that accommodates question, answer, and all points in between. The output is always something like a document, a file or some such, and so has no more hope of consciousness than does a book.

I'm not at all sure I want a world full of conscious machines, but progress being what it is, I suppose we will end up with that. Lets hope it turns out more like Star Trek than Terminator. To achieve AC, the very first step that needs to be taken is to re-engineer the computers that run the AI system. The new computer would have to operate much more like a brain, i.e. it would have to be a massively parallel processor that not only held enormous amounts of data in memory, but enabled that data to be constantly interactive, i.e. the computer would have to in some sense be alive; to be capable of creating its own emergence, just like we do when we create that trail of consciousness that informs our memory recall that we have it right.

Psychic Icons

Does the mind extend beyond the body? Yes, most certainly. Each time we are conscious of an external thing, we create an icon of that thing, the parts of the icon are elemental air, based on material brain activity that is elemental earth, while the whole is a combination of elemental water and elemental fire, subjective and objective truth. The fire, being objective is identical with the external whole, and that is external to the brain. The same thing happens with well remembered events from the past, or well imagined events that may yet occur.

Psychic events are possible because the icon of one mind not only can be identical with real objects, and memory objects, but also imagined objects, and these may be anywhere including another's mind.