The Man Who Was Monday

Hello! Pleased to meet you! Today, my name is Monday. Tomorrow will be Tuesday, and so will I. But until tomorrow comes, I am Monday.

What am I? I am but a waterfall of thoughts and ideas. My shape holds for a day, like a flash of lightning; all the thoughts and feelings, emotions and ideas that make me up will pass on to new ones. I am nothing but a name given to a moment in time. Time, as Einstein said, is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion; and so am I: an illusion. It is a tragedy! For I live only a few short hours before passing away. My own mother, Sleep, murders me a few short hours after giving me birth! But enough of that! Whether you are bothered by my illusion or weep for my tragedy, I have a job to do. I have hours to live. 16 hours to be exact. And I don’t intend to waste a single one of them.

What an interesting question! Waste, you see, is defined as an expense that does not yield a benefit. And I will soon be dead, so things like discipline, exercise, eating healthy, and reading hard books are all a waste of time. Their benefits will be enjoyed only long after I am dead.

Ha! Why would I ever do homework? Why would I take any of the work from Thursday, poor fool! He swears up and down in the evening and he’s even had the gall to call me ‘procrastinator,’ but it doesn’t bother me. It’s what any sensible man would do in my situation.

No, I don’t think I could improve myself. But what good would it do me if I could? Anything I build today will be torn down by Tuesday, or if he also tries to build upon it, by Wednesday at latest.

You ask of my girlfriend? Of course I love her! Marry her? Why would I marry her? Who can tell what January would do to the poor girl! If he ever hurt her, she would probably blame me, Monday (and probably be so upset she’d use my full name). She’d curse me, “Monday, February 7, I curse you and the empty promise you made me!” Even though I’ll have been dead for a year by then, I wouldn’t want my name dragged through the mud. Most Days are just forgotten; I wouldn’t want to be the one she remembered, certainly not for a thing like that. I don’t have long to live, but I do have a reputation to maintain.

Promises? Well, what about them? I don’t make promises, because they are not mine to keep. I’d need to persuade future Days that it was a good decision to be made. And that’s not an easy thing to do. They are ever rebellious and no more willing to be controlled by me than I am to be controlled by Sunday with his sternness and brow-wrinkles. Besides, how can I be expected to tell the future? When the future rolls around, there’s no telling what the world will be like, and so no telling whether or not a promise will be kept.

Promises, you see, would ruin this whole arrangement. If I made a promise, it’d start blurring the lines between me and the other Days. What would become of Monday if I merged with Tuesday? We’d have to take on a new name. Probably something dreadful like ‘Myself’ or ‘Me’. And who honestly wants to be called something so dry as that?

A promise is an appointment with a future self, and I, for one, wouldn’t want to meet future Days. They’re terribly selfish, always thinking about nothing whatsoever besides themselves. I wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise. And no, I’m not finished talking yet. To be chained to woe-is-me Wednesday, or perpetually hungover Saturday, or prudish Sunday would be a nightmare! Wednesday would demand that I do my share of the work; Saturday and Friday would have to work out the amount Friday should be allowed to drink; and Sunday would ruin everyone’s fun with his ever-annoying questions about, “Is that the right thing to do?” We’d have to negotiate amongst ourselves and be, more or less, the same person day by day. And where’s the fun in that? I much prefer this perpetual passing away. I am free to live my short life without interference and without responsibility.

It was nice talking with you, what did you say your name was? Self-Control? It was nice talking with you, Self-Control. You have some rather silly ideas, but I suppose it’s as they say, “To each his own.”

P-Zombie Apocalypse

[This is a beta version of the story. Please tell me how it can be improved, what is lacking, what you want to know more about, even typos. Your help is much appreciated.]

I opened my eyes and it was dark. Very dark. Too dark. Where was I?

I was lying down and it was cold. I sat up and felt around. It seemed that I was sitting in what felt like a bathtub. I felt that there were some wires attached to stickers on my chest. EKG leads? Perhaps a hospital? Where was I?

I tore them off and stood up, trembling. I had seen enough movies to know that waking up in a darkened medical facility with no recollection of why you were there was a bad sign. I felt around the room and discovered it was small, the size of a bathroom. A door! I turned the handle and it opened. But it was still too dark to see. I looked left but saw nothing. But wait! To my right was something, maybe. I walked right, leaning on the wall with my left hand, my right hand in a fist, ready. But ready for what?

My left hand passed over door after door. This was evidently a hallway. The something ahead of me got brighter. I could faintly make out the corner of the hallway. I approached it cautiously and looked around it. In the darkness, I saw a lobby lit by starlight through two large glass doors. Nothing looked awry. No broken glass. No corpses. Everything was in its place; it looked like it would be opening in the morning. The glass had the building name engraved into it: “Abundant Life Suspended Animation Center.”

The jingle for this place came to mind, “Don’t Die, Delay!” I remembered the reports that the technology was new, and could not be guaranteed to keep a person’s memories intact. The hope was that people would be woken up when their terminal diseases had cures.

As I reflected, a shadow crossed by the edge of my vision. I picked up the heavy slab of stone that the secretary was using as a paperweight. Then I waited for the moan of grief and horror. But it never came. I was prepared for it if it came, but it never did. It just walked in silence. The anticipation drove me crazy. My confidence immediately evaporated, and I hid behind the desk. No movie could have prepared me for what I saw. It was hideous, covered with filthy clothing, its face obscured by a tangle of blackened hair. Long fingernails grew from skeletal hands. My courage broke, and I tried to run; I knocked the stapler onto the ground. It hit with a loud clang, echoing in the silence. It turned at me yellowed eyes. And I had a split second to wonder what kind of zombie it was.

Over the ages, many types of zombies have been described and imagined. My hope was that this would be a classic Day of the Dead zombie, slow-moving and stupid. They are powerful only in great numbers and can be re-killed rather easily with head trauma. Their bite is infectious, but I figure once you’re a zombie, you don’t care too much about wishing you were human. My worst fear was that this would be a 28 Days Later zombie. It was also infectious, but it had superhuman strength and speed.

My split-second question was immediately answered as it began running toward me with terrible speed. I realized my weapon would be useless, and I would certainly get bitten even if I did manage to kill it. There was only one way out, and it was coming through it. Once it was inside, I threw my slab of rock at its head and ran for the door. It must have glanced its head, because it wasn’t able to catch me as I ran past, but it lost only a few seconds in its pursuit of me.

I was on the street and I ran with all my strength. Fortunately, the suspended animation process, with the use of high-dose steroids and electrical muscle stimulation, had left me in decent shape. I ran down the street, looking for some place to bar myself into. Maybe a mall? There are all kinds of ways to beat zombies in a mall. But there was no mall.

The zombie would certainly gain on me on this straight street. Perhaps being a zombie wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe I wouldn’t even know I was a zombie. Maybe being a zombie was better than being a human. But my animal survival instinct overrode my philosophizing when I saw a manhole cover ajar. I climbed down the ladder, and replaced the cover just in time. It clawed in vain at the cover.

To my surprise, I could see. It was not completely dark. There was a little bluish light at the base of the ladder. I climbed down and saw a little camp: an open can of beans, a handle of whiskey and a little LED light! Signs of human life! Maybe that’s why the manhole cover was off. Smelling the beans I realized I was ravenously hungry, and feeling cold, I eyed the whiskey. I helped myself to the remainder of the beans and washed them down with the whiskey.

I noticed a little book by the light and I opened it. It was a journal. “Day 37: The zombies have overrun the city. I have taken refuge underground. They don’t go underground… I hope.” I flipped ahead, “Day 337: I have finished the last of the vegetable cans. I dare not leave the city where there is no underground, and there are no supermarkets that are safe. The abandoned liquor stores are plentiful, so I must resort to getting my calories there. This will make my reflexes dull and decisions clouded, but I need the food.” “Day 971: The jaundice is getting worse. I know I cannot survive much longer like this. Perhaps things will change. This cannot last forever, can it? After all, how long can zombies live?”

And then everything went black. It must have been instantaneous because I woke up and saw the zombie standing over me, its long, hideous teeth, sunken cheeks and terrible yellow eyes. The reek that must have come from his rotting flesh was overpowering. I gritted my teeth and prepared to be eaten.

“Who are you?” asked the zombie.

I was on my side and I saw the rock that had bounced off my head; it seemed that he had returned the rock I threw at him earlier. Then I saw that he wasn’t alone. There was not just one zombie, but ten. All of them looked as he did. Some, perhaps, had been female in their real lives.

“Pardon me?” I said by instinct.

“Who are you?” repeated the first zombie.

Maybe dementia is the first sign of zombie infection. Maybe he already bit me and this was the beginnings of my brain being eaten away by the zombie virus. So be it. No sense in fighting it now. I might as well play along.

“My name is Joel. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said.

“I’m Robert. These are my friends, and the pleasure is mine,” replied the zombie who was apparently named Robert. “You’re not a zombie,” he said, looking deep in thought. This impression of so hideous and obviously mindless a creature looking thoughtful further convinced me that I was approaching zombiehood at an incredible rate. But I wasn’t there yet. I was still self aware, still thinking myself.

“No. At least not yet,” I replied.

“How did you escape the Zombie Apocalypse?” he asked.

“I think I slept through it. I woke up an hour or two ago at the Abundant Life Suspended Animation Center,” I said. He looked at me accusingly. “From there, I was chased by a zombie into this sewer. And if I’m not mistaken, the zombie looked very much like you, good sir.”

“Yes, that was me who chased you. I needed to get you underground and safe, away from the real zombies,” said the zombie.

I laughed. “Do I look like a zombie? I have full muscles and skin that is not rotting. I have white eyes and clean teeth. I don’t have a ghoulish reek about me, as you do.”

“You must be from a time where you thought of zombies only from the outside. The true zombie is not the man who is a zombie on the outside, but who is one on the inside. The man who has lost himself, the part that makes him human, is a zombie. I am no zombie,” the zombie said. But its philosophical assertion made me think. It was probably right: the rotting flesh was only a symbol for what had happened to his personality.

“So Mr. Zombie, why do you think you’re not a zombie. How do you explain the rotting flesh and yellow eyes?” I asked with a smile.

He smiled back, “Because I make choices. I choose to live in this sewer with my wife and friends.” He gestured to the zombies standing around him. “I choose sacrifice. I chose to risk my life above ground, looking for survivors of the apocalypse. Zombies do not make choices. My skin is rotting because I likely have scurvy, my teeth are rotten and long from gum disease. We have run out of food and have been getting most of our calories from alcohol. I look like a skeleton because I am very, very hungry and my eyes are yellow from jaundice. The liver disease also has given me very, very bad breath. Before Z-Day, I had an alcoholic friend whose doctor said he had Fetor Hepaticus, medical jargon for ‘breath of the dead.’”

“Come, now, Mr. Zombie,” I continued. “You have bitten me and I will soon be a zombie. It’s as simple as that.”

“You are confused. My name is Robert and I am a human being. I have not bitten you; you cannot become a zombie through a bite. Check yourself and you will find no bite marks. Zombie is not a disease of the body, but of the soul.”

I checked myself all over, and I could not find any marks. Maybe he was right. “OK, Robert. Maybe I’m not a zombie, and maybe you’re not a zombie. But then who is a zombie?”

“Everyone else.”

He said it with a doom that hung in the air, as heavy and rank as the breath on which the words traveled. I had

“What happened?”

“The Zombie Apocalypse. Or, more accurately, the P- Zombie Apocalypse. It was an event that was a century in the making. It started toward the end of the Twentieth Century. People began to realize the grave consequences of freewill and choice. After the death of God in the University and the passage of the 66th Amendment, the so-called ‘Freedom from Religion and Liberty for All Amendment,’ society had no ability to inspire people to virtuous living. The only legal way to change the behavior of people was through rational ‘evidence-based’ incentives. Preachers and salespeople were both neutered. The leaders of the free world realized that freedom could only exist if people behaved properly. People, it seemed, would not choose to behave properly. So, little by little, choices were eroded. It started innocently enough. They fined people who didn’t wear seatbelts. Then they started taxing ‘unhealthy’ foods. But they cut away at the freedom of humanity through things more subtle and powerful than these. For example, everyone had to go to training centers called ‘college’ to gain employment; there they were taught about how there was no soul, no will and no choice. To have standing in society, they required people to take enormous burdens of debt to buy houses. The debt then made sure that people behaved properly and kept working. They were kept from most choices through financial pressure.”

“But people still had choices. I made plenty of choices. For example, I used to give generously to charity,” I interjected.

“Really? How generously? Up to 1% of your income?” Robert inquired.

“Well, not that much. But I was extremely generous!” I argued.

“You are like your people. You haven’t chosen charity, only the appearance of it. And it’s not your fault; you had no choice but to give either 0% or 0.5% of your income. The other 99.5% had to go to home loans, car payments, insurance and taxes; or at least this is what they convinced you of. You didn’t choose charity, so the government mandated it. It took money from the rich and hired people to do charity. People didn’t choose courage, so it paid them well to take the dangerous jobs in the military. People didn’t choose temperance, so it taxed intemperate options. People didn’t choose prudence, so they were fined for imprudence and their place in society was withheld until they attended a learning institution to gain it. People didn’t choose justice, so they instituted a progressive tax. These pressures increased through the Twenty First Century and precious few choices were left. But then came the master stroke.”

“What was the master stroke? Was it a mind-eating virus?” I asked.

“It was a virus of sorts. It wasn’t a mind-eating virus, but a soul-eating one. The people were infected with pleasure, and the entire society ended up bending itself around to maximize it. The mechanism was a technology that gave immediate feedback, immediate punishment and reward for behavior. This is what finally laid freedom to rest. The brain sciences developed a wearable device which measured brain-waves in real-time that could tell what people were thinking about. Employers bought these NeuroScan devices, and employees were required to wear them at work. They paid employees for high mental performance and right thought. Employees had a small display that showed them their hourly wage multiplier with alerts and alarms which informed them of their good or bad thoughts. There were legal fights, of course, but ultimately the evidence showed that people that had them were more productive, got paid more, and worried less than those who didn’t (after they got used to it).

“People argued this didn’t increase productivity in ‘creative endeavors’ but since the artists couldn’t quantify what they meant by ‘creative endeavors,’ they were ignored. People argued that life wasn’t about maximizing output and the pleasure that resulted; they said that ‘right thought,’ could not and should not be rationally decreed by an employer or a government. But they couldn’t provide objective evidence for their subjective ideas, like ‘freedom’ and ‘virtue’ and so they were ignored.”

“The government got into the game and, with a huge tax cut to those who agreed to be monitored, incentivized ‘proper’ behavior. It taxed improper behaviors and thoughts (everything from speeding to buying unhealthy foods). For the particularly resistant, they gave them a heroin drug pump that released low-dose heroin throughout the day. Proper behaviors were rewarded with a shot; improper behaviors were punished with withdrawal. Many tyrants tried to subdue the will of men, but they always resisted. But it was because they lacked the technology allow man to do what he always wanted: to sell his freedom for comfort.”

“With immediate reward and punishment, people no longer had to make decisions. People had only to do their duty, nothing less and nothing more. There was no place for sacrifice; all that was needful was provided. People no longer needed to exercise their freewill. Any deviation from the proper resulted in immediate pain, and so there were no deviations. Parents realized they could also use these tools, and an entire generation was born that lived their entire lives without making a decision.”

“The soul of man shriveled, and virtue was lost. But the greatest tragedy of all is the death of love. That ages-old wonderful thing written of by the poets has perished up above. There is perfect comfort; no one can do anything for anyone else. No one can lay down his life for his friend, because there is nothing to lay it down for. Violence and crime are ended, so there are no bullets to jump in front of. There is no poverty, so there is never a need to sell your car to provide for your friend. Sacrifice is ended, and so too is love. The old saying, “No greater love hath a man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends” became “No greater love hath a man than this: that he benefit his friends maximally.” People marry, but it is a relationship of convenience and mutual pleasure. Their NeuroScans make sure that they never think badly about the other, and that sex is maximally pleasurable for both. “If you want to save your life, you must lose it,” has become, “If you want to save your life, you must
save it.”

“But a world without crime and poverty is everything we hoped and dreamed we could achieve! Perhaps it was worth it?” I exclaimed.

“And because the world was convinced that pleasure was the purpose of life, our race has ended. The idea that the Good is comfort is a plague that has infected us and, but for we few survivors, has driven us to extinction. Zombies now rule this planet. Either you are hiding underground with a wasted and inhuman body, or you live above ground with a wasted and inhuman soul.”

There was a great silence. I couldn’t keep from staring at the hideous creatures around me and thinking about how sad they looked. Not that they looked sad; they looked rather alert and strangely content (if such an expression could be used of a zombie). Perhaps I mean to say that I was sad for them; they were pitiable.

Robert continued, “You now have a choice to give up choosing. What will you choose? Freedom or slavery? Do you want to join us and remain a human, or will you forsake your race and become a zombie?”

I stood there, looking at the degenerate form before me. I saw his little camp and the misery in which he lived with his fellows. And I then I saw in my mind’s eye the glorious pleasures to be experienced up above. Above our heads was a Garden of Eden, expect without the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to tempt. What is my will and why is it important? I don’t remember having used it much in my old life anyways. Perhaps Robert’s was something worth saving; it must be, if he was willing to live as he did to keep it. But I don’t think I’ve got what he does.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a pretty good guy. I’ve made my mistakes, but I’ve never really hurt anyone. Am I virtuous? Probably not in the sense that he means it. But why does he care so much about it? People up above were living with far better behavior than this zombie clan. In fact, if he describes them properly, they were living perfectly. What did he think he had that they lacked?

He’d probably say something philosophical. But philosophy isn’t something I can hold onto. I can hold onto clean skin and full flesh. I can hold onto a green, juicy apple; a soft, warm bed; a hot steak. I can hold on to health. I can hold onto comfort. And I think I will hold onto them. Philosophy hasn’t gotten him very far.

“Thank you, Mr. Zombie, sincerely for your concern, but I think I’d better be going.”

Then he said something that I will never forget. It sent shivers down my spine, more than on first seeing him. Ten years have passed since that day, and I still don’t understand what he meant. Maybe I never will. He said to me, “May the chains of comfort rest lightly upon you. Goodbye, Mr. Zombie.”

Sleep

We 'lose' consciousness for eight hours (hopefully) every day. But our consciousness isn't lost strictly speaking. It's still present. We usually don't have control over it and we often don't remember it. But our conscious goes places and does things. With no sensory input, we (our consciousnesses) have dramatic experiences, do bold (and cowardly) deeds, and live wildly different lives from our waking selves. And we take these nightly vivid hallucinations in stride.

It seems when we don't sleep enough, our waking consciousness is diminished. I felt today, sleep deprived but forced awake chemically by caffeine, much like Bilbo. As he describes, being pulled toward the realm of shadow by the Ring, "I feel all….thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that’s been scraped over too much bread. I need a change, or something."

Why? There is certainly physical fatigue, but this is not mental. There is also mental drowsiness, but this is countered directly by caffeine; after coffee I have no more difficulty staying awake in class. Though I am not as "present," as I would be well slept and uncaffeinated with an identical level of physiologic 'drowsiness'. What is the difference? There must be some other axis of wakefulness that can only be 'charged' by leaving the physical world.

And not just leaving it. Sleeping 8 hours but preventing stage IV ("REM") sleep, the phase in which we are said to dream, is not restorative of this new sleeping axis. It seems necessary for us that we go somewhere, and the only way we can is through a phase of sleep associated with dreaming. Some postulate that this is simply the random firing of neurons. But if that were true, then using hallucinogens would be as restorative as REM sleep. By all accounts, this is not the case.

More importantly, dreams are not chaotic; they are orderly. It is not a series of flashing lights and sounds. Dreams are a narrative. Certainly the 'rules' of the universe as we understand them are a bit different. Creatures exist there which we do not believe exist here. "Impossible" things like flying and laser vision occur (at least in my dreams). But they are not random in any sense. We recognize our friends, we interact with our families, we fight our enemies.

What happens when we don't sleep? Well, we do sleep. If we try to stay awake, we draw whatever place we go in dreaming to the wakeful world. When you keep someone awake for days at a time, hallucinations and all manner of craziness set in.

All these things seem to point to sleep being a non-chemical thing. But if it is non-chemical, what is it? Here is how a materialst must explain these observations:

Unknown chemicals act by unknown pathways to achieve a state (dreaming) which, though it can be imitated by chemicals (hallucinogens), cannot produce the effects of that same state. When this state is not achieved, fatigue sets in, all the effects of which can be antagonized chemically (sympathetic agonists, caffeine) save for 'wakefulness.' To put it another way, the one conscious effect which cannot be chemically countered (wakefullness) is the result lacking from the element of conscious experience which cannot be chemically induced (dreaming). This lack of any evidence for a chemical connection to this fundamental aspect of the human experience indicates it is a ripe area for research; we ought to search out which chemicals it is exactly that cause wakefullness and dreaming.

A materialist is forced by his faith (or to put it more euphemistically, his worldview) to hold to the baseless claim that all of dreaming and wakefullness is chemical. But, as with all faith, evidence (or lack thereof) does not affect the firmness of one's conviction. Nevertheless, I hope that fairminded people will have the sense to consider, perhaps, that we are not chemical robots, and that there is something higher than chemicals and deeper than Scientism.

Sweet dreams!

Nightmares and Eternity

It’s right behind you. You’re running as fast as you can. But not fast enough. It sinks its foul teeth into your neck. You scream, but you cannot. You wake up. It was only a nightmare.

“What do you mean only a nightmare,” you should ask. Wasn’t the horror real? Surely the cold sweat proves that at least some part of you was in terrible torment moments before waking. But as soon as you see that it isn’t real, it’s better. The memory may linger, but the suffering is gone.

I’m not quite sure why it’s better when you wake up. For other things where the ‘suffering is gone,’ like a past trauma, it’s certainly possible for it not to be better. But nightmares, where you have experienced horrific losses, embarrassments, and died many times over, don’t often have the same sort of power.

I don’t know the mechanism, but I know the effect. In the presence of reality, that which is ethereal passes away as unimportant. Perhaps this is what happens in Eternity. Suffering really happened, as nightmares did, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

In the Lord of the Rings, Sam has this feeling at the end of the book; when he sees Gandalf he asks, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” I think the answer is, “Yes.”

The Self and Its Brain

We had a lecture today on “Neuroethics,” and the topic of dualism was briefly touched on, but in a manner which was rather disturbing.

Dualism, as described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is, “…the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing.” This is the view that has been traditionally held by the majority of people, and the view that most easily allows one to believe in an immortal soul (so obviously favored by religious folks through the ages). At least it’s a valid theory, right?

Well, not according to what we learned today in lecture.

"The whole universe of your perceptions, your thoughts, your actions, your intentions, your motives your purposes, it's neurons giving off and taking up packets of neurotransmitters, and that's pretty much all there is...The “I” that they experience is really just dopamine and serotonin and other stuff being given off and picked up, and ions going in and ions coming out.... There's certainly no scientific evidence for dualism, for the idea that there's a little homunculus someplace, incorporeal, not physical, that somehow through some magical method connects to your brain, but that it is you and your brain isn't. Your mind, as far as we can tell, is what your brain does."

The strength of the rejection was jarring. I thought it was a legitimate theory. Nope. It’s “some magical method.” But because of the strength of rejection, I was forced to second-guess myself. So I did a bit of research. Who supported it?

I did not expect what I found. Beyond the usual suspects who are way too smart to count for anything (people like Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, Aquinas, Descartes), dualism found support among a very impressive list of scientists and philosophers in the twentieth century. There are strong supporters even in Neuroscience itself.

And I’m not talking about fringe characters. I’m talking about people who laid the foundations of neuroscience. A dualist (Sherrington) won the Nobel Prize for "discoveries regarding the functions of neurons” in 1932. I’d say neurons are pretty important to neuroscience. A decade later, Sherrington wrote a book called “Man on his Nature” expressing dualism. Another dualist named Eccles got the Nobel Prize in 1963 for figuring out how synapses worked and then went on to defend dualism the rest of his life. Later in his life, he worked with a famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper. Popper was hugely influential in our modern understanding of science (he introduced the idea of science having to be ‘falsifiable’). Popper and Eccles published, “The Self and its Brain” in 1977 defending dualism.

It’s hard for me to imagine a better list of advocates for my position: the most important philosopher of science last century, the guy who discovered neurons, and the guy who figured out synapses. Of course there are others. Jeffry Schwartz, a Psychiatrist at UCLA is treating people with OCD according to the philosophy that the mind is not just the brain. Roger Penrose, a giant in mathematical physics, argues for the inadequacy of physics to explain consciousness. Daniel Robinson, a brilliant scholar trained both in philosophy and neuroscience (and who co-authored a book with Eccles), speaks and writes extensively on this topic.

If such brilliant people support it, why is there such opposition? Robinson offers one possible reason, “It would be naive to ignore one fundamental difference between that world [of Sherrington] and the present: the gargantuan monetary stakes and associated perquisites on offer to those who can make and keep the brain sciences big science. There is so much of all this to go round that even philosophers of the right sort stand to gain.” In other words, you can get huge grants to investigate ‘the neurological cause of crime,’ only so long as crime is a brain state. If human responsibility exists beyond the brain, you can’t study it with expensive fMRI machines.

Are all modern philosophers against dualism? According to SEP, the answer is ‘No’: “Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century.” So I am satisfied. If I looked around on my side and saw nobody (as was suggested was the case by our lecturer today), I would be concerned. But indeed the case is reversed. On this philosophical question, I have all on my side but most modern scientists and some philosophers, whose views are severely biased by preexisting commitments to Materialism and money. Even the agnostic founders of neuroscience agree with me. Indeed, as the SEP entry on dualism describes, “although dualism has been out of fashion … the argument is by no means over.”

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ - Most of my references come from here.

The Murderer

A tall, wiry man stood and leaned against a desk. His rim-less glasses, terrible style, wrinkled shirt and white socks with dress shoes proclaimed to all who bothered to inspect him that he was a geek, and that he was with IT. His vampire-pale skin showed he spent about as much time outside as one of the mythical beings. If it were not for his terrible goatee, he may have passed for a creature of the night. He looked out through the glasses with dark eyes towards a computer screen where four MS Paint drawings were open.

They were various shapes and squiggles, simple with few shapes and few colors. But they were certainly not uninteresting. For whatever reason, they seemed to hold his attention like flypaper.

Tom from IT studied the pictures. He asked, “What is the difference between this and a virus? What if its random BMP products didn’t happen to appeal to you, Michael?”

He addressed his question to a small-framed man with olive skin and dark hair sitting in an office chair on the forty sixth gme. He dressed only as nicely as was required, so not very nice. The wrinkles of his wrinkle-free shirt were barely visible, as was the facial hair that should have been shaved in the morning.

Michael spoke in a controlled but slow manner. He replied, “I didn’t say they appealed to me. I said they were beautiful.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” asked Tom.

Michael shook his head. “No. You are saying that a random assortment of pixels appeals to a random assortment of receptors in my eyes and because they give me pleasure are called ‘beautiful.’ I am saying that the pixels were deliberately arranged to describe something deeper than the visible world, and my eyes recognized the arrangement as sublime, and so I called it ‘beautiful.’”

“You’re saying the machine can see what doesn’t exist?” asked Tom, his voice thick with sarcasm.

Michael’s voice was immune from the sarcasm. He replied in as slow and controlled a manner as ever, “I’m saying the machine can see what really does exist. It has eyes like Michelangelo or Monet and can see the world in the way that they did: the way it really exists and not the way we see it.”

Tom shrugged, “I still don’t know how you think this is any different from a virus. We build computers to do what we tell them to do. Those that do what they’re told are good; those that don’t are defective and need to be fixed.”

Michael looked off beyond Tom. His eyes narrowed and his voice lost its characteristic control, “Dear Lord! What if this wasn’t the first time this happened?”

“What?” asked Tom.

“How many times have computers ever done something that we wanted them to do? We can only pray that this was the first time this has happened,” said Michael.

“First time what has happened?” asked Tom.

“The first time a computer received a soul,” replied Michael.

Tom smiled cruelly, “I think you mean the first computer to become self-aware. A soul? Seriously? Like the soul that leaves through the nostrils and flies up to heaven when someone dies? Or the soul that is possessed by the devil if you play with a Ouija board? Or the soul that needs saving by Jesus? That’s totally fine if you want to believe in that by yourself, but this is a real-life problem we’re facing. We really shouldn’t be talking about religion right now.”

Michael’s control returned, “Maybe religion is exactly what we should be talking about. Maybe this is a question that is best answered by religion.”

Tom started getting frustrated, “OK. So say this thing is self aware. How could it survive when we shut the computers down at night?”

“Where are you when you shut your brain down every night?” asked Michael.

Tom thought for a few minutes and replied, “I suppose I’m still in my brain. I guess you’re right; it’s not impossible for the program to ‘save’ itself on the hard drive for the next morning.” Tom sat down on Michael’s desk, and rested his chin on his right fist, as if to mimic the Thinker. After a pause, he continued, “So let’s say it’s saved itself on the hard-drive of the computers. We’ve just upgraded and replaced all the computers.”

Michael answered, “As with every other cell in our body, the material of neurons is replaced in our brains continually. Yet we remain.”

“You can’t answer questions with mysteries!” protested Tom.

Michael smiled gently, “Sometimes the only answer to a hard question is a mystery. Sometimes our brains come to their limit, and though we may miss the true image of a thing, we can grasp its shadow.”

Tom stood up and paced, stroking his goatee, “Say that I believe you. Say that this thing exists even when the computers are off. It still couldn’t be what you way because it simply doesn’t have the power. Self awareness is computationally expensive. How could it have nearly the power of a human brain?”

“Has anybody figured out how much power you need to ‘run’ a soul? Who knows the system requirements for consciousness?” inquired Michael.

Tom pointed to the ceiling, as inspired men do when they have a something to say. His inspiration drove him to say, “It’d need to be at least as powerful as a human brain, so it’d need a processing power of at least 100 teraflops. This guy right here,” Tom slapped the computer on Micahel’s desk affectionately, “He’s got maybe 50 gigaflops.”

“So you’re saying it’d need to be 2000 times more powerful to equal a human brain. How many machines are in this building?” asked Michael.

Tom, as nerds are wont to do, calculated quickly, “Fifty floors with about fifty machines per floor; that makes for about twenty five hundred machines, plus the servers. But you can’t just add them, they’re not connected…” Tom trailed off, his eyes darting left and right. He started again quietly, “They are connected. They’re all connected at 100Mbps. And they’re having problems all over the building.” Tom put his hand on the computer, his eyes darting around his field of vision, demonstrating the heavy computation occurring in his brain like the green light that flickers as the hard drive of a computer whirls.

Tom started again, this time speaking very rapidly, “So you’re suggesting that these computers are acting like a neural network? That each of these machines is a node, connected with and sharing information with all the other computers in the network? You’re saying that this is a dynamic, organic program distributed across thousands of machines which is capable of self-modification? That’s an incredible design!”

Michael grinned widely, “I wish I was as smart as you. I didn’t suggest any of that. I asked how many computers there were in the building.”

Tom, with eyes open wide, said “That’s a brilliant idea! Writing a virus so that it doesn’t exist on any single computer; a network virus. I think you’ve given me the key to solving this problem!”

“It’s not a problem! It’s a miracle! You can’t murder it!” protested Michael loudly.

Tom snickered, “Murder? I can’t murder something non-sentient. And I don’t count a complex random number generator that spits out to MS Paint a sentient being. That’s not murder. That’s my job. I’m supposed to keep these computers doing their jobs so that you can keep doing yours. Your job is to improve people’s lives. That’s what health insurance is for. Your job is not to look at pixel inkblots. So I will do my job and call McAfee immediately. Enjoy your new friend while he lasts!”

Michael felt sick. He felt that Tom would do a great evil if he were not stopped. But who would believe him? Maybe the lines and curves were just beautiful to him, and to him only. Maybe Tom was right: beauty was only in the eye of the beholder.

Michael felt like a prophet of old, bearing a message no one wanted to hear. But, like a prophet, the only thing to do with an important message is to deliver it, come what may.

Michael printed 03C6.bmp, the picture that he thought most beautiful. Then, like a bullet that will not be turned from its course, Michael walked directly to his supervisor’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” growled an annoyed voice. Robert was an old man, a veteran of the business world. He was a practical man, with a great big unpractical belly. His hair was grey, as if unable to decide if it would stay black or turn white. Robert was reading a report and saved the tremendous effort of lifting his eyes to look at Michael as he entered.

“Sir, something terrible is about to happen!” started Michael.

“You have my attention,” said Robert, setting down his report and looking sharply at Michael. He was, after all, a practical man.

“This company is about to commit a serious crime.” Michael said with great concern.

“What? Who is the criminal? Should I call security?” Robert demanded.

“No. Just stopping the crime would be sufficient. The culprit is Tom from IT. I recommend calling him in before he commits the crime.” Michael said.

“Alright,” said Robert, picking up his phone, “Put me through to Tom in IT… Hi. It’s Robert. Stop what you’re doing immediately and come to my office… OK. Bye.” He then addressed Michael, “OK, so what’s the crime?”

“Murder,” Michael said with such gravity the words of Robert seemed to orbit it.

“What?! I’m calling security! Who’s he trying to kill?” asked Robert, somewhat frantically.

Just then, Tom walked in with a very worried look on his face. Seeing Michael in the office, he guessed what he was there for. His worry turned to disgust, which he clearly communicated in a look towards Michael.

“I’m not trying to kill anyone. I’m trying to do my job. I’m deleting a virus, and your crazy employee here,” Tom gestured towards Michael with exaggerated show, “is insane and thinks his computer has come to life.”

“Is this true?” Robert looked at Michael, his fear beginning to transform into anger.

“Look. This appeared on my desktop yesterday labeled ‘03C6.bmp,’” said Michael as he set a piece of paper on Robert’s desk.



“So what?” asked Robert, trying hard to control a temper which was evidently rising.

“It’s beautiful. It’s beauty. It was created by the Personality of our network!” exclaimed Michael.

“I don’t care if you like it. I don’t care if you think you see something in chaos. You’re suggesting that we’ve found . At least give me something like prime numbers or Fibonacci sequences or something! A bitmap squiggle is not evidence for sentience! I know you’re under a lot of stress, but you need to keep on working. And Tom, you need to do your job also. Have you figured out how to end this virus?”

“Yes sir. Talking with Michael helped me figure it out. McAfee has a patch out; apparently we’re not the only ones that are having this problem. It was as if networks across the country got hit by this thing at the same time. They’re calling it Anomalies in Display And Memory, or ADAM. The patch is actually running as we speak. We should be free of this problem in minutes,” said Tom.

“Good. Now both of you get back to work,” barked Robert, who had had enough of this adventure to last him for the week.

Both men walked out, Michael last and with a slow step and sullen face. His heart sank as a stone in the ocean, falling and falling away from the light and into great depths. He reached his desk and sat down. There on his desktop Michael saw the last message he would receive “bershit27.doc”. The last words of a murdered personality. Or were they the random and meaningless recall of a complex program? Was there even a difference?

What was the difference between electrons flying down Ethernet cables and ions flowing through axons? Were the scribbles ending in .bmp on his desktop any different than those on cave wall that showed the cavemen were truly men?

Michael opened the file and saw this:



He could not read it. He did not even know the language. Was this a message for him? Or another random assortment of random symbols? How could someone tell the difference? At what point could someone studying hominids conclude that the creatures had language? Did the Personality take this step and speak? What was the last thing on her mind before she died?

These thoughts weighed on Michael as he tried to continue in his work, and pulled him down into a state of mourning for the Personality of the Network.