Quantumly Conscious Quandaries

More on the philosophy behind Penrose and Hameroff's microtubule based quantum consciousness from Slavoj Zizek.

Partial and Select Nietzschean Aphorisms on Ego and Consciousness from Nietzsche's, "Will to Power"  CAUTION DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE MALWARE AT THIS LINK)

7 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

The supreme values in whose service man should live, especially when they were very hard on him and exacted a high puce--these social values were erected over man to strengthen their voice, as if they were commands of God, as 'reality," as the true" world, as a hope and future world. Now that the shabby origin of these values is becoming clear, the universe seems to have lost value, seems "meaningless"--but that is only a transitional stage.

8 (1883-1888)

The nihilistic consequence (the belief in valuelessness) as a consequence of moral valuation: everything egoistic has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of the unegoistic); what is necessary has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of any liberum arbitrium or intelligible freedom"). We see that we cannot reach the sphere in which we have placed our values; but this does not by any means confer any value on that other sphere in which we live: on the contrary, we are weary because we have lost the main stimulus "In vain so far!"

12 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

Decline of Cosmological Values...

...(C) Nihilism as psychological state has yet a third and last form.

Given these two insights, that becoming has no goal and that underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value, an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of becoming as a deception and to invent a world beyond it, a true world. But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities--but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it.

What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of "aim," the concept of "unity," or the concept of "truth." Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not "true," is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories "aim," "unity," "being" which we used to project some value into the world--we pull out again; so the world looks valueless.

( B )

Suppose we realize how the world may no longer be interpreted in terms of these three categories, and that the world begins to become valueless for us after this insight: then we have to ask about the sources of our faith in these three categories. Let us try if it is not possible to give up our faith in them. Once we have devaluated these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe.

Conclusion: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.

Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore devaluated the world--all these values are, psychologically considered, the results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase human constructs of domination--and they have been falsely projected into the essence of things. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naivete of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.

2. The Epistemological Starting Point

470 (1885-1886)

Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any one total view of the world. Fascination of the opposing point of view: refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic.

471 (1885-1886)

The presupposition that things are, at bottom, ordered so morally that human reason must be justified--is an ingenuous presupposition and a piece of naivete, the after-effect of belief in God's veracity--God understood as the creator of things.--These concepts an inheritance from a former existence in a beyond

472 (1883-1888)

Contradiction of the alleged "facts of consciousness." Observation is a thousand times more difficult, error perhaps a condition of observation in general.

473 (1886-1887)

The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be compared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know would be revealed only in the presence of "true reality," i.e., because in order to criticize the intellect we should have to be a higher being with "absolute knowledge." This presupposes that, distinct from every perspective kind of outlook or sensual-spiritual appropriation, something exists, an "in-itself."--But the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of " things-in-themselves ."

474 (Nov.1887-March 1888)

That a sort of adequate relationship subsists between subject and object, that the object is something that if seen from within would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I think, has had its day. The measure of that of which we are in any way conscious is totally dependent upon the coarse utility of its becoming-conscious: how could this nook-perspective of consciousness permit us to assert anything of "subject" and "object" that touched reality!--

475 (1885-1886)

Critique of modern philosophy: erroneous starting point, as if there existed "facts of consciousness"--and no phenomenalism in introspection.

476 (1884)

"Consciousness"--to what extent the idea of an idea, the idea of will, the idea of a feeling (known to ourselves alone) are totally superficial! Our inner world, too, "appearance"!

477 (Nov.1887-March 1888)

I maintain the phenomenality of the inner world, too: everything of which we become conscious is arranged, simplified, schematized, interpreted through and through--the actual process of inner "perception," the causal connection between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, are absolutely hidden from us--and are perhaps purely imaginary. The "apparent inner world" is governed by just the same forms and procedures as the "outer" world. We never encounter "facts": pleasure and displeasure are subsequent and derivative intellectual phenomena--

"Causality" eludes us; to suppose a direct causal link beween thoughts, as logic does--that is the consequence of the crudest and clumsiest observation. Between two thoughts all kinds of affects play their game: but their motions are too fast, therefore we fail to recognize them, we deny them--

"Thinking," as epistemologists conceive it, simply does not occur: it is a quite arbitrary fiction, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and eliminating all the rest, an artificial arrangement for the purpose of intelligibility--

The "spirit," something that thinks: where possible even "absolute, pure spirit"--this conception is a second derivative of that false introspection which believes in "thinking": first an act is imagined which simply does not occur, "thinking," and secondly a subject-substratum in which every act of thinking, and nothing else, has its origin: that is to say, both the deed and the doer are fictions.

478 (March-June 1888)

One must not look for phenomenalism in the wrong place: nothing is more phenomenal (or, more clearly:) nothing is so much deception as this inner world which we observe with the famous "inner sense."

We have believed in the will as cause to such an extent that we have from our personal experience introduced a cause into events in general (i.e., intention a cause of events--).

We believe that thoughts as they succeed one another in our minds stand in some kind of causal relation: the logician especially, who actually speaks of nothing but instances which never occur in reality, has grown accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts cause thoughts--.

We believe--and even our philosopers still believe--that pleasure and pain are causes of reactions, that the purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For millennia, pleasure and the avoidance of displeasure have been flatly asserted as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we should concede that everything would have taken the same course, according to exactly the same sequence of causes and effects, if these states of "pleasure and displeasure" had been absent, and that one is simply deceiving oneself if one thinks they cause anything at all: they are epiphenomena with a quite different object than to evoke reactions; they are themselves effects within the instituted process of reaction.

In summa: everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end--and causes nothing; every successive phenomenon in consciousness is completely atomistic--And we have sought to understand the world through the reverse conception--as if nothing were real and effective but thinking, feeling, willing!--

479 (Jan.-Fall 1888)

The phenomenalism of the "inner world." Chronological inversion, so that the cause enters consciousness later than the effect.--We have learned that pain is projected to a part of the body without being situated there--we have learned that sense impressions naively supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, on the contrary, conditioned by the inner world; that we are always unconscious of the real activity of the outer world--The fragment of outer world of which we are conscious is born after an effect from outside has impressed itself upon us, and is subsequently projected as its "cause"--

In the phenomenalism of the "inner world" we invert the chronological order of cause and effect. The fundamental fact of "inner experience" is that the cause is imagined after the effect has taken place--The same applies to the succession of thoughts: --we seek the reason for a thought before we are conscious of it; and the reason enters consciousness first, and then its consequence--Our entire dream life is the interpretation of complex feelings with a view to possible causes--and in such way that we are conscious of a condition only when the supposed causal chain associated with it has entered consciousness.

The whole of "inner experience" rests upon the fact that a cause for an excitement of the nerve centers is sought and imagined --and that only a cause thus discovered enters consciousness: this cause in no way corresponds to the real cause--it is a groping on the basis of previous "inner experiences," i.e., of memory. But memory also maintains the habit of the old interpretations, i.e., of erroneous causality--so that the "inner experience" has to contain within it the consequences of all previous false causal fictions. Our "outer world" as we project it every moment is indissolubly tied to the old error of the ground: we interpret it by means of the schematism of "things," etc.

"Inner experience" enters our consciousness only after it has found a language the individual understands--i.e., a translation of a condition into conditions familiar to him--; "to understand" means merely: to be able to express something new in the language of something old and familiar. E.g., "I feel unwell"--such a judgment presupposes a great and late neutrality of the observer--; the simple man always says: this or that makes me feel unwell --he makes up his mind about his feeling unwell only when he has seen a reason for feeling unwell.--I call that a lack of philology; to be able to read off a text as a text without interposing an interpretation is the last-developed form of "inner experience"-- perhaps one that is hardly possible--

480 (March-June 1888)

There exists neither "spirit," nor reason, nor thinking, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor will, nor truth: all are fictions that are of no use. There is no question of "subject and object," but of a particular species of animal that can prosper only through a certain relative rightness; above all, regularity of its perceptions (so that it can accumulate experience)--

Knowledge works as a tool of power. Hence it is plain that it increases with every increase of power--

The meaning of "knowledge": here, as in the case of "good" or "beautiful", the concept is to be regarded in a strict and narrow anthropocentric and biological sense. In order for a particular species to maintain itself and increase its power, its conception of reality must comprehend enough of the calculable and constant for it to base a scheme of behavior on it. The utility of preservation --not some abstract-theoretical need not to be deceived--stands as the motive behind the development of the organs of knowledge--they develop in such a way that their observations suffice for our preservation. In other words: the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the measure to which the will to power grows in a species: a species grasps a certain amount of reality in order to become master of it, in order to press it into service.

6. Consciousness

523 (March-June 1888)

Nothing is more erroneous than to make of psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two revelations of one and the same substance. Nothing is explained thereby: the concept "substance" is perfectly useless as an explanation. Consciousness in a subsidiary role, almost indifferent, superfluous, perhaps destined to vanish and give way to a perfect automatism--

When we observe only the inner phenomena we may be compared with the deaf-and-dumb, who divine through movements of the lips the words they do not hear. From the phenomena of the inner sense we conclude the existence of invisible and other phenomena that we would apprehend if our means of observation were adequate and that one calls the nerve current.

We lack any sensitive organs for this inner world, so we sense a thousandfold complexity as a unity; so we introduce causation where any reason for motion and change remains invisible to us --the sequence of thoughts and feelings is only their becoming visible in consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a causal chain is completely unbelievable: consciousness has never furnished us with an example of cause and effect.

524 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

The role of "consciousness."--It is essential that one should not make a mistake over the role of "consciousness": it is our relation with the "outer world" that evolved it. On the other hand, the direction or protection and care in respect of the co-ordination of the bodily functions does not enter our consciousness; any more than spiritual accumulation: that a higher court rules over these things cannot be doubted--a kind of directing committee on which the various chief desires make their votes and power felt. "Pleasure," "displeasure" are hints from this sphere; also the act of will; also ideas.

In summa: That which becomes conscious is involved in causal relations which are entirely withheld from us--the sequence of thoughts, feelings, ideas in consciousness does not signify that this sequence is a causal sequence; but apparently it is so, to the highest degree. Upon this appearance we have founded our whole idea of spirit, reason, logic, etc. (--none of these exist: they are fictitious syntheses and unities), and projected these into things and behind things!

Usually, one takes consciousness itself as the general sensorium and supreme court; nonetheless, it is only a means of communication: it is evolved through social intercourse and with a view to the interests of social intercourse--"Intercourse" here understood to include the influences of the outer world and the reactions they compel on our side; also our effect upon the outer world. It is not the directing agent, but an organ of the directing agent.

525 (1888)

My proposition compressed into a formula that smells of antiquity, Christianity, scholasticism, and other muskiness: in the concept "God as spirit," God as perfection is negated--

526 (March-lune 1888)

Where a certain unity obtains in the grouping of things, one has always posited spirit as the cause of this coordination: for which notion there is no ground whatever. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of this fact? or why should the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause?--

We shall be on our guard against explaining purposiveness in terms of spirit: there is no ground whatever for ascribing to spirit the properties of organization and systematization. The nervous system has a much more extensive domain; the world of consciousness is added to it. Consciousness plays no role in the total process of adaptation and systematization.

527 (1886-1887)

Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it increases in clarity: the clearest consciousness, the most logical and coldest thinking, is supposed to be of the first rank. However--by what measure is this value determined?--In regard to release of will, the most superficial, most simplified thinking is the most useful--it could therefore--etc. (because it leaves few motives over).

Precision in action is antagonistic to far-seeing providentiality, the judgments of which are often uncertain: the latter is led by the deeper instinct.

528 (1886-1887)

Principal error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as a lower kind of idea than the distinct: but that which removes itself from our consciousness and for that reason becomes obscure can on that account be perfectly clear in itself. Becoming obscure is a matter of perspective of consciousness.

529 (March-June 1888)

Tremendous blunders:

1. the absurd overestimation of consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity: "spirit", "soul", something that feels, thinks, wills--

2. spirit as cause, especially wherever purposiveness, system, co-ordination appear;

3. consciousness as the highest achieveable form, as the supreme kind of being, as "God";

4. will introduced wherever there are effects;

5. the "real world" as a spiritual world, as accessible through the facts of consciousness;

6. knowledge as uniquely the faculty of consciousness wherever there is knowledge at all.

Consequences:

every advance lies in an advance in becoming conscious; every regression in becoming unconscious; (--becoming unconscious was considered a falling back to the desires and senses --as becoming animal--)

one approaches reality, "real being", through dialectic; one distances oneself from it through the instincts, senses, mechanism--

to resolve man into spirit would mean to make him into God: spirit, will, goodness--all one; all good must proceed from spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness; any advance toward the better can only be an advance in becoming conscious

7. Judgment. True--False

In the case of Kant, theological prejudice, his unconscious dogmatism, his moralistic perspective, were dominant, directing, commanding.

The proton pseudos: how is the fact of knowledge possible? is knowledge a fact at all? what is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question whether there is knowledge.--Very well! But if I do not already "know' whether there is knowledge, whether there can be knowledge, I cannot reasonably put the question "what is knowledge?" Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he wants is a piece of naivete: knowledge of knowledge!

"Knowledge is judgment!" But judgment is a belief that something is thus and thus! And not knowledge! "All knowledge consists of synthetic judgments" of universal validity (the case is thus and not otherwise in every case), of necessary validity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur).

The legitimacy of belief in knowledge is always presupposed: just as the legitimacy of the feelings of conscience-judgments is presupposed. Here moral ontology is the dominant prejudice.

The conclusion is therefore:

1. there are assertions that we consider universally valid and necessary;

2. necessity and universal validity cannot be derived from experience;

3. consequently they must be founded, not upon experience, but upon something else, and derive from another source of knowledge!

(Kant infers (1) there are assertions which are valid only under a certain condition; (2) this condition is that they derive, not from experience, but from pure reason.)

Therefore: the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such assertions? No, how our belief is caused! But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and a very narrow and limited experience often produces such a belief! It already presupposes that there is not "data à posteriori" but also data à priori, "preceding experience." Necessity and universal validity could never be given to us by experience: why does that mean that they are present without any experience at all?

There are no isolated judgments!

An isolated judgment is never "true," never knowledge; only in the connection and relation of many judgments is there any surety.

What distinguishes the true from the false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly!

Necessity and universality can never be given by experience! thus they are independent of experience, prior to all experience! That insight that occurs a priori, therefore independently of all experience, out of sheer reason, is "a pure form of knowledge"!

"The basic laws of logic, the law of identity and the law of contradiction, are forms of pure knowledge, because they precede all experience."--But these are not forms of knowledge at all! they are regulative articles of belief.

To establish the à priori character (the pure rationality) of the judgments of mathematics, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason.

Hume had declared: "There are no synthetic à priori judgments." Kant says: But there are! Those of mathematics! And if there are such judgments, perhaps there is also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by pure reason!

Mathematics is possible under conditions under which metaphysics is never possible. All human knowlege is either experience or mathematics.

A judgment is synthetic; i.e., it connects different ideas.

It is à priori; i.e., every connection is a universally valid and necessary one, which can never be given by sense perception but only through pure reason.

If there are to be synthetic a priori judgments, then reason must be in a position to make connections: connection is a form. Reason must possess the capacity of giving form.

531 (1885-1886)

Judgment is our oldest belief, our most habitual holding-true or holding-untrue, an assertion or denial, a certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, a belief that here we really "know"-- what is it that is believed true in all judgments?

What are attributes?--We have not regarded change in us as change but as an "in itself" that is foreign to us, that we merely "perceive": and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a "quality"--and in addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e., we have regarded the effect as something that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept "effect" is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion: "every change must have an author";--but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say "lightning flashes," I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, "is" and does not "become."--To regard an event as an "effecting," and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.

532 (1885)

Judgment--this is the belief: "This and that are so." Thus there is in every judgment the avowal of having encountered an "identical case": it therefore presupposes comparison with the aid of memory. The judgment does not produce the appearance of an identical case. Rather it believes it perceives one: it works under the presupposition that identical cases exist. Now, what is that function that must be much older and must have been at work much earlier, that makes cases identical and similar which are in themselves dissimilar? What is that second function, which on the basis of the first, etc. "Whatever arouses the same sensation is the same": but what is it that makes sensations the same, "accepts" them as the same? There could be no judgments at all if a kind of equalization were not practiced within sensations: memory is possible only with a continual emphasizing of what is already familiar, experienced.--Before judgment occurs, the process of assimilation must already have taken place; thus here, too, there is an intellectual activity that does not enter consciousness, as pain does as a consequence of a wound. Probably an inner event corresponds to each organic function; hence assimilation, rejection, growth, etc.

Essential: to start from the body and employ it as guide. It is the much richer phenomenon, which allows of clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit.

"No matter how strongly a thing may be believed, strength of belief is no criterion of truth." But what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life? In that case, to be sure, strength could be a criterion; e.g., in regard to causality.

533 (Spring-Fall 1887)

Logical certainty, transparency, as criterion of truth ("omncillud verum est, quod clare et distincte percipitur." Descartes): with that, the mechanical hypothesis concerning the world is desired and credible.

But this is a crude confusion: like simplex sigillum veri. How does one know that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect?--Could it not be otherwise? that it is the hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, that is most preferred, valued and consequently characterized as true?--The intellect posits its freest and strongest capacity and capability as criterion of the most valuable, consequently of the true--

"True": from the standpoint of feeling--: that which excites the feeling most strongly ("ego");

from the standpoint of thought--: that which gives thought the greatest feeling of strength;

from the standpoint of touch, seeing, hearing--: that which calls for the greatest resistance.

Thus it is the highest degrees of performance that awaken belief in the "truth," that is to say reality, of the object. The feeling of strength, of struggle, of resistance convinces us that there is something that is here being resisted.

534 (1887-1888)

The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power.

535 (1885)

"Truth": this, according to my way of thinking, does not necessarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the posture of various errors in relation to one another. Perhaps one is older, more profound than another, even ineradicable, in so far as an organic entity of our species could not live without it; while other errors do not tyrannize over us in this way as conditions of life, but on the contrary when compared with such "tyrants" can be set aside and "refuted."

An assumption that is irrefutable--why should it for that reason be "true"? This proposition may perhaps outrage logicians, who posit their limitations as the limitations of things: but I long ago declared war on this optimism of logicians.

536 (Jan.-Fall 1888)

Everything simple is merely imaginary, is not "true." But whatever is real, whatever is true, is neither one nor even reducible to one.

537 (1885-1888)

What is truth?--Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc.

538 (1883-1888)

First proposition. The easier mode of thought conquers the harder mode;--as dogma: simplex sigillum veri.-- Ditto: to suppose that clarity proves anything about truth is perfect childishness--

Second proposition. The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development--

Third proposition. Logic was intended as facilitation; as a means of expression--not as truth--Later it acquired the effect of truth--

539 (March-June 1888)

Parmenides said, "one cannot think of what is not",--we are at the other extreme, and say "what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction.''

540 (1885)

There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes-- and consequently there are many kinds of "truths," and consequently there is no truth. Spencer.

541 (March-June 1888)

Inscriptions for the Door of a Modern Madhouse

"What is thought necessarily is morally necessary." Herbert

"The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the conceivability of its negation." Herbert Spencer.

542 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

If the character of existence should be false--which would be possible--what would truth, all our truth, be then?--An unconscionable falsification of the false? The false raised to a higher power?--

543 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

In a world that is essentially false, truthfulness would be an antinatural tendency: such a tendency could have meaning only as a means to a higher power of falsehood. In order for a world of the true, of being, to be invented, the truthful man would first have to be created (including the fact that such a man believes himself "truthful").

Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, durable, remaining always the same, without wrinkle, volt, concealment, form: a man of this kind conceives a world of being as "God" in his own image.

For truthfulness to be possible, the whole sphere of man must be very clean, small and, respectable; advantage in every sense must be with the truthful man.--Lies, deception, dissimulation must arouse astonishment--

544 (1885-1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888)

Increase in "dissimulation" proportionate to the rising order of rank of creatures. It seems to be lacking in the inorganic world-- power against power, quite crudely cunning begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The highest human beings, such as Caesar, Napoleon (Stendhal's remark on him), also the higher races (Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); a thousandfold craftiness belongs to the essence of the enhancement of man-- problem of the actor. My Dionysus ideal--The perspective of all organic functions, all the strongest instincts of life: the force in all life that wills error; error as the precondition even of thought. Before there is "thought" there must have been "invention"; the construction of identical cases, of the appearance of sameness, is more primitive than the knowledge of sameness.

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