Nature’s Unrelenting Bias

Nature is harsh. There is no controlling the life you are born into. We all want liberty from nature. Kurt Vonnegut in Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons said “Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?” I remember praying to be other people. I measured myself not in terms of what I could do, but by how other experiences appealed to be. I wanted to be the genius. I wanted to walk into rooms filled with people who admired me. I wanted to have power and to do great things. I desired actualization of my most valuable faculties. However, it wasn’t until the negation of that idealized state realized after I became incredibly ill and disabled that this pursuit of self-escape stopped. I realized that without suffering I can’t know what I’m demanding of life.

Humanism as a concept has always alluded me. I was always skeptical of its premise, that humans have some inherently important position in the world. That didn’t sit well with my ethics. I read Nietzsche as my introduction into serious thinking and since that point onward I have questioned power constantly. I distrust most ideas and concepts, and humanism seems like a vestige of pre-twentieth century thought, where there was no need to clarify the distinction between man and ‘beast’. Nor was there the need to clarify the importance of man. Other than offering something akin to liberation theology to people almost guaranteed to exist within a power vacuum, I thought it was a growth on a disfigured image of the world. Today I think those arguments make themselves. We are constantly learning more about evolution, and that knowledge dissuades most from preoccupied thoughts about the superiority of human agency. And those who cannot shake the need for power bear the typical marks of a person forced through affliction by order of complete and total loss of everything . Ego is not useless, and not even always wrong. And yet inspite of knowing that almost all of the ideas and concepts from which humanism was developed, I think valuing the human is beneficial and helpful.

Humanism to me isn’t a campaign towards some idealized form. It’s a celebration of the human, in all its forms and variations. It’s a celebration of the quality of diversity at least as much as it is of individual human beings. I don’t believe it proscribes anything like what it used to, or anything like what religions do. I don’t believe it bounds us to our current states. I don’t believe the celebration of our uniqueness, the greatness and the failure, requires us to submit to mediocrity, to suffering, and to less-than what we as individuals need ad infinitum. I think humanism is a way for individuals to by their own volition separate themselves from others, in-spite of the chasm nature creates between people. It’s not a slave morality. It doesn’t involve accepting fate. It represents our power to control the information nature forces on us, however wonderful, and however harsh. Whether you were born with a brilliant mind to a wonderful, supportive and loving family in a prosperous country with equal opportunity, or whether you were born to apathetic, abusive parents, with a genetic disease and guaranteed life-long suffering, isolation and pain.

Sartre said man can always make something out of what he’s been made. I think at some time to avoid the work understanding complex ideas ensures we all wish for some cheat code or simple mnemonic that cuts quickly to a simple explanation. If a quote could capture Sartre’s existentialism, it’s that one. Freedom is the recognition of necessity. Freedom is but the cost of food. We won’t ever forget that life must be better. Lingering around the necessity for change as constantly diminishing hope as you believe yourself inadequate and life unfair still entails the pressing distinction backwards against nature that you are no less than what you are, and no more for it.

My Fate In Echo Questions

I am suffering so extremely and I hate it. I’m caught between relations, pressed by the will to survive and the will to pleasure – or to escape pain. It’s so unfair. The suffering has no meaning in itself. It’s not this enemy that I can draw in sight and attack with all my energies. It’s this morphism of failed functions of duty and responsiveness, bad luck and nature. My suffering is mapped by connectives as trails marked by heavy traffic. I’ve been traveling these roads to dependent events. I just had faith that fundamentally people have an unrestricted reserve of good-nature, and that tapping that reserve just requires the right preparation, the right questions. But pulling all E’s out of a scrabble bag is a finite exercise. The other characters produced the resources for my project, distracting me from organizing my collection of letters. My father would surprise me with kindness and I would return home feeling hopeful. The next turn he would have some reliable excuse. I’m not a supporter of behaviorism, but my fathers good behaviors were never consistent, and never full (when he was kind it was always shallow, when he promised he never followed through), and his bad behaviors were always predictable and consistent. But my well-being, my survival depends on the beneficence of my family. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done is admit to myself that my fathers behaviors, (and my family and my society in general)show his state of mind. That he isn’t the beneficent person I need him to be. That they aren’t persuaded by obligation to do their duty, or motivated by compassion to act beyond self-interest. And this wasn’t until very recently that I realized I had pulled the final E.

I don’t know what to do. I’m just so alone, so lost, so broken. I am those things but I am also strong, reserved, wise. We are all broken. We can see what we need to be, but rarely can we transform into it. My doctors have failed me. My family has failed me. They are obligated to certain actions by their entitlement to certain rights. But they are blind to the causes that give them the resources they have to survive and to live well. Their garbage disposal depends on garbage men, their infrastructure, on road-workers, engineers, politicians and economists. Their health-care on philosophers, administrators, mathematicians, pharmacists, doctors and businessmen. Their market is maintained by self-interest alone. Most of those people aren’t acting according to their duty in this sense. Most of us have never engineered transactions, just utilized the structure. Like economics, an invisible hand guides duty. That hand is self-interest. When you’re unlucky, as I am, and your freedom to choose is taken from you by physical disability or illness, then all you have is the beneficence of others. And I don’t have good people in my life. They see me broken and judge me for it. As they should partly. I too have a duty. But the tragic irony is that they see me failing in my duty to provide for myself, and contribute to society, without recognizing their role in that, causa sui.

I don’t know, man. I’m just so fucking fucked.

Sarte, Grand Theft Auto Five, Summertime, and the Concept of Place

When I think of Sartre I think of three things: Grand Theft Auto Five, the summer and his concept of ‘place’.

The memory of Sartre is placed in-between the summer of 2014 and the enjoyment of playing grand theft auto. I’m synesthetic. I see numbers occupying a landscape like a track. They have moods, emotions, and colors. The number forty two is my favorite number. It’s composed of the operands six and seven. Six is brown, seven is blue. Together, forty two makes a cedar colored deck. I can tell you why.

Five is the easiest operand to work with in any expression. When learning my multiplication I often confused the sum of the relative expressions. Five multiplied seven times is thirty-five. Five multiplied six times is Thirty. Six multiplied six times is thirty Six. Six multiplied by four is twenty four. I often confused this expression with eight and three.

When I was in school we were taught multiplication by rote memorization and practice.

Eight and five is 40. Nine and five is forty-five. Nine is red. The color red often represents danger. When something needs to catch our attention it is often written in red. Matadors use red capes to draw in a charging bull. But red also designates success on a test. A ninety percent or greater grade is often written in red, in my mind – or at least, it was when I attended school.

Eight is yellow. It is caution. I spent a lot of time swinging on our families’ back-yard swing-set after dinners, just before bed. We grew up in a beautiful neighborhood, and our orientation of play at dusk was always west. Embodying the optimism of youth, always anticipating the range of activities the next day could allow, we would search between the arch of each swing for the measurable quantities we were aware of. Red skies at night, sailors delight. Red skies in the morning, sailors warning. Kids on swings never want it to rain. When the setting sun promises to rise the following day equal to our measures of its value to us, its yellow glow would slowly fade forming crimson red and pink. Painting the sky and entailing the procession of youth.

So nine has this bivalent, dangerous quality; often frightening, yet always elusive to determination. And eight, which symbolized an approximation of academic aptitude. Like an insouciant courtier operating properly beyond affectation, as if even the most extraordinary comes as naturally to her in movement as breath to sleep, to excitement.

Seven is cold. On paper it represents mediocrity or disappointment, depending on the context. If it was received after effort, the latter. If it was received after indifference, the former. And yet it is also an enticing number. It’s blue. Like the above-ground pool in our west-facing back-yard. Or like the tease of spring, when shorts don’t quite keep you warm but you wear them anyway hoping that by doing so nature will find your sacrifice worthy and concede. Spring and roller-blading street-hockey are mutually exclusive. In our nice neighborhood, the street cleaners rarely cleaned the salt off the road in time for our desire. Spring means summer, and summer means summer-break.

Six is brown. A grayish-brown. Six represents my guitar. It is the struggle of music, the guitar-lessons and the practicing. Academically, anything starting ‘six’ is unacceptable. I got my first guitar when I was in the sixth grade. Six is not my favorite number.

Five itself is black, always. Simple. Easy. Empty.

When I think of six and seven I think of the thirties. Thirty to thirty nine is a harsh area. Is Eight times four thirty-two? Is nine times four thirty six. Though six times six is thirty six, too. Six plus six is twelve. Twelve is a great number; four times three. Nine plus four is thirteen. Thirteen is a prime number. Seven plus six is thirteen.

In contrast, from forty to forty-nine, the feeling is much different. Everything is bright and spacious and light. The thirties are cramped and dark and uncertain and empty. Yet inside three moves you have a base-ten; eight, nine ten (as operands multiplied by five). And in the first quarter of that area  you have seven and six. Forty-two. This brown and this blue. Each associated with the first view of a final obstacle. In the first hand music, and in the other, spring. Intimately related and yet often opposing each-other when they function.

Available to me now are far fewer potential places because the space of available interaction due to my illness and its consequences (both direct (physical) and indirect (emotional, social, etc…) has diminished significantly. Even in such a short period of time, as summer-January is.

The diminishment of place contributes to psychological well-being tremendously. Especially when it is due to a diminished space of available interaction. That distinction is an important one because although the diminished-effect could have been prevented, it wasn’t. Diminished of place can be due to many things, but rarely is it strictly due to the diminishing space of available interaction.

That space of interaction is the space in which I can interact with the world. But more specifically, with those things which give you place (family, education, work, activities, hobbies, knowledge. Even geographic freedom), and also the quality of the interaction.

For most people, all they are likely to experience is a diminished quality of interaction without their space being limited. It may feel limited, and they may limit themselves. But not irreparably. As is the case with me (where repairability is the capacity to repair, oneself, not the quality of the object being acted on, or repaired). For me, the quality of the object has diminished beyond repair, and thus the space has diminished.

This is a significantly distinct aspect of life with a complex chronic medical condition that is overlooked. There’s always lots of talk about the ‘experience’ of chronic illness. There’s never a shortage of stories. Some of which involve very precise and very creative metrics (social networks, pain, autonomy, quality-of-life (specific government metric for determining disability status). The spoon theory is a convenient and fairly reliable explanation.

We are all in some sense synesthetic when it comes to place. We create relations between objects (ideas, people, places, memories etc…) and ourselves giving us a sense of place. When kids invite friends over they say ‘wanna’ come over to my place’. Linguistically, they mean their home. But semantically they mean their personal place within that home. The relationship they have with the property, with the home, with the objects in the home. The relationships with the people; as a son, or a daughter, a brother or a niece. And quality, not just quantity, affects their place too. Particularly in relation to social standards. If you come from an abusive home you might not feel a place. Or you might feel your place is among that group of people like you, or whom society excludes or disregards. You may experience this directly, or sense it from the absence of rewards typically received by people with better places – which often most importantly include the opportunity for more ‘place’. For more friendships, relationships and jobs. And for the quality of those as well.

When it comes to place, hierarchical ordering is wonderfully largely absent. It’s like 42, each associated with the first view of a final obstacle, within a landscape often blindingly open and inviting, or dark and unexplored. Place is somewhat always both.

Obligation And Disease

I feel an entitlement to help and with it cognitive dissonance. So many people have perished asking for the same help I need. Why should I expect my case to be any different, and why should I expect moral altruism from a system that randomly chooses victims to save? If the whole landscape changed, and there was this moral atmosphere to never leave anyone behind, then I’d readily accept and expect and fight for help. But in this world where only a few actually get help, when everyone asking (almost everyone) really truly deserves help – and morally requires that justice – how can I expect to have access to any help? I can’t, and that makes it all the worse.

We retract our desires and requests for help, our pleas, because we know it’s wrong. We know it’s wrong not because we hurt less than others, and those others don’t get help. We know its wrong because they don’t get help, and neither do we. We feel where only a limited few get help, we have to either offer that chance to them, or be cautious about overestimating our own suffering lest we shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot and become part of the problem. We retract our personal cause for a larger one that we feel might never result.

When we complain about our pain and feel guilty for complaining that guilt isn’t born of a rational evaluation of the practical disadvantages between individuals suffering – weighing some more severe than others based upon the limitations. We are, sort of, but not principally. We feel ‘guilty’, or we ‘withdraw’ our petition for pity, because we realize in some sense that the system is not set up in a way that justly helps those deserving – only those who are lucky, or immoral enough to make themselves appear ‘more’ needing, or to create their ‘own’ luck (luck they steal from other people suffering). So although the ‘poor me’ selfish inner monologue that runs through anyone’s head who is in pain seems, well, selfish and at least amoral, is in actuality at least partially (if not majorly – as I contend) moral bereavement. An acknowledgement of an unjust system of help, an inadequate moral atmosphere, and a reaction to the loss of similar people going through similar things who never saw any restitution.

Whenever you hear someone broken defiantly saying ‘help me, why can’t I get help’ to deaf ears what they’re really saying is ‘until we all get help, none of us can’.

I could resolve various sources of my individual pain. I could find the means to reconstruct relationships, I could shut off my empathy and fight for myself. And I might resolve those sources of my individual pain. But I know that I’m not really solving the pain. Just my pain. Even if I were given some magical gift, by some immesurable stroke of luck waking to find everything beginning to heal, I still would not feel satisfied. Because I would have simply solved one instance of the pain, not the cause. Nor would I have established conditions that generalize to all people sharing my affliction. When I see these ‘inspiring’ people with chronic medical conditions I see lies, I see deceit, I see ignorance, and I see foolishness. I know I will never resolve my pain until I can resolve the pain, causa sui.

The Relationship of Respect

Time is valuable, if you don’t respect your time, you don’t respect your responsibilities – your job, others, etc… Respect is more than just an acknowledgement that something or someone isn’t of a negative value. Often we consider variations of that answer adequate. You’ll often hear kids say stuff like this. And while they’re wrong, it’s interesting to point out that kids, especially teenagers, don’t process empathy-related information (‘putting yourself in others’ shoes’) in the same way that adults do. Teenagers when scolded for showing up to class late, with incomplete homework, or for disrupting a lesson or lecture, accused of being disrespectful demonstrate incredulity, scoffing and saying things like ‘It’s not that I don’t respect you, but…’.

Compassion is a feeling of empathy or pity, an acknowledgement of someone’s suffering as valid and unjust. That’s true. But that’s just part of compassion. Compassion is also an action. It’s the action of taking smart, or else intentional and calculated steps to help X with their problem, with that thing that you acknowledged which made you feel the ‘feeling’ part of compassion. Respect is like compassion in this ‘respect’ (cheeky… cheeky. Jeesh! You can tell I’ve been watching a lot of QI lately). It’s both a feeling, an acknowledgement that someone isn’t of a negative value, and also the fulfillment of the purpose of the thing respected – the referent. Or that thing that doesn’t leave someone with a negative value. Respect is the proper, just, fulfillment of a job, or a responsibility, or a function. Respect isn’t just vapid veneration. It’s not just the consequence of power for the powerless. That’s foolishness.

If it’s (that job, responsibility or function) useful, wisely constructed, the best of all the options (best solution) – in conception and application (theoretically and practically), if it’s the ‘best the best of us could possibly do in theory, and the best this individual could possibly do in practice’, then there’s respect – you can’t accomplish all of that without respect; the respect X person has for that job or responsibility or function will necessarily exist, but so should the respect of the benefactor of X’s hard work. That’s where respect should exist; in this relationship. But as you can see respect of this sort requires knowledge of X’s hard work, of the nature of respect, and generally of X’s job. That’s a hard thing to do – to know all of that. Especially considering all of the different jobs out there. That’s why respect is a social norm – a standard, a pro-social form of behavior generously rewarded. The path of least resistance when you don’t know all of that stuff is simply to be ‘respectful’. Which entails being kind, being polite, being responsible and being courteous.

It is a problem that we don’t all know enough to be properly respectful – both of others and of our own jobs. That’s why I believe we all have a responsibility to learn as much as we can about all of the things we regularly interact with which required some service from someone else. (‘As much as we can’ doesn’t mean as much information as we can shove into our minds, but as much as is allowed – by our responsibilities, by the things we ‘respect’, etc… following the rule ‘make good decisions when consequences matter’ helps). So if you regularly see a doctor, which we all should, learn as much as you can of the practice of medicine as your ‘life’ allows. We should all know of the civic duties we share and of how our societies’ function; how garbage collection works, how sewage systems work, how electricity works, how taxes and the economy works, how shop owners and small-business work etc… This is a way in which our education fails us and is responsible for the very sorts of people it so regularly chastises and villainizes.

In order for a doctor to properly respect his job, his patients have to respect him and his job – and themselves (although respecting him properly, and his job, necessarily means to some extent greater than otherwise, they will respect themselves too). So in this way respect is sort of a duty. Not some rigid duty from now until the end of time. It’s only a duty in the sense that it is a very functional solution to the problem respect addresses – the problem of functioning as best we possibly can in any job, relationship, system etc…

If you were a car manufacturer and you created a car that shut down every mile, when there are plenty of cars which don’t, and in a market in which that information is public knowledge, and when you could have created a better car, you’d be a bit of a fool – at least it would be a foolish model. If the car was not the product of insouciance, indifference, and laziness, then perhaps it’s not really a problem that it doesn’t function like the other cars.

Do the best you can possibly do in anything you’re doing. Or do the best you can possibly do in those things which really matter. We have limited resources. Don’t worry too much about the way you sweep – the arch of the broom and the angle of your hand – if you don’t really need to. If you’re a student writing a paper, it then makes sense that we have this disinclination to throw all of our resources at some menial activity like sweeping or picking up trash. Sweeping, as cleaning, and picking up trash, as cleaning some environment, are important goals. But it’s important to put them in perspective. Which fortunately is not something we actively have to do very often.

A Primer On Eugenics – and why it’s stupid

Roughly, Eugenics is the philosophy of using science to improve the general human population by controlled breeding, and/or genetic therapy/ intervention to increase the inheritance of desirable heritable characteristics – intelligence, height, looks, health etc… Eugenics pictures the perfect human as having optimal health and optimal intelligence. But trans-humanism has similar goals. Where Eugenics forks from philosophies like trans-humanism is in that it is devoid of any meaningful moral insights, save for those literal and foolish interpretations of Nietzschean phrases like ‘life itself is power, nothing more’.

The Eugenic view of humanity is very narrow – too narrow. All our capacities are built upon the success of ‘failures’ – by their own terms. Mutations are often bad, but the good comes with the bad – or perhaps on the heels of it… Nature is built on failure. The thing that keeps us alive in a world filled with things that want nothing more than our death (viruses, bacteria, parasites, predators) is our genetic variability. In self-replicating asexual organisms that can also sexually replicate, the ones who asexually reproduce have a lower life expectancy, are more susceptible to illness, and have poorer health than their sexually reproducing counterparts. That’s because when you have sex, your offspring has two new copies… and so on. The variability of the distribution of genes gives us an upper hand against all those things that want us dead. But this function that keeps us alive also keeps many back. I have a genetic mutation that will kill me in a few years. luckily only about five thousand people in Canada share this mutation, and luckily it’s multifactorial – can be ‘handled’ with nurture (the most dangerous genetic diseases are not ’caused by many factors’ and usually end life in the first year – if not sooner).

Our capacities to do any of the things we associate with properness are entirely arbitrary in a grand cosmic scale. They make sense in our world, but that’s about it. My capacity to see these words, to recognize them, to understand language, is not the ‘proper way to exist’, it’s just one of many – and it’s entirely determined by my biology. Eugenic ideas are in this way very ill-informed and grounded on (often a religious) a belief that there is an essence to humanity, and the best version of us must be preserved. It’s ill-informed, meaning it’s a misunderstood, foolish interpretation of Darwinism.

Even the most healthy still feel pain, even the most healthy can be hurt. Strength is a quality of a process; it’s indexical. You can be physically strong, you can be intellectually strong. But strength is measured by comparing a function to a goal. Measuring physical strength by miles ran, or weight lifted, and intellectual by… Eugenics forgets the mental function, and thus mental strength. It views any deviation from the ‘best version’ of humanity as weakness – as a vulnerability. But the mental functions we index are not health dependent; they are not lost when someone becomes ill, even gravely, even fatally. If the person ill can no longer appreciate their mental function, others can. Human beings are by their limited nature weak and vulnerable. Eugenics aims to patch up physical and intellectual weakness, but not mental weakness. We don’t train soldiers in the best conditions; assuming because they’re fit and clever that they need only basic training. We train them in the worst conditions. If Eugenics is concerned with the human condition, the worst conditions offer the best training. You can learn no more about life, about humanity, and about existence, than when you’re suffering – and the graver the suffering, the more value the experience; and the stronger the person.

Aside from all of the ethical arguments against eugenics, the argument for the value of suffering to the philosophy of eugenics is self-defeating for the eugenic philosophy. Life is built in suffering like theories are built in frustration and ignorance. Suffering is a thing gone wrong, and although it’s a difficult and ethically important experience to endure, it offers an opportunity to search for important answers – questions you wouldn’t otherwise ask. Eugenics is foolish. The ill, the sick, the ‘weak’ aren’t useless because they’re not clever, or healthy, or ‘strong’. On the contrary, they’re the most valuable members of society. When our culture is capable of realizing that, humanity will change forever. Eugenics is driven by self-preservation, and by fear masked as power. They want a world where only the best survive, because anything less is undesirable and depressing. As a philosophy meant to ameliorate weakness, it’s built on weakness – mental weakness.

Existence

It is easy to feel disconnected from other people. Naturally consciousness requires us to think of ourselves as separate entities from the group. With our education placing basically no emphasis on teaching existentialism, or philosophy, we are left wanting. When great tragedies happen, or when groups of people act together perilously, that divide, the apprehension of others, melts away. Soldiers form incredible bonds, as do police officers. When tragedy strikes, people know who they are, and identify others (and themselves) by their roles of survival. Finding acceptance and love is as ‘easy’ as doing a kind thing, saving a life, being loyal. Safety is the goal then, and safety is the reality now. But safety, like everything else, is multi-dimensional; people complicate things. We don’t feel connected to each-other, we don’t feel connected to ourselves, and most spend their entire lives failing to divine some grand purpose, or design to their lives. I live a perilous life, but I live it alone. I have a different take on things than most do.

I love everyone. I find fault in most, and have very few friends and no real family to speak of. But I love people. Central to my working ethical theory is the belief that anyone could have been anyone. I can say it in more complicated terms, but basically that’s what it boils down to. You could have been anyone, you could have been any number of versions of your own self as well. To me that’s the explanation, the instructions, to the Golden Rule (do unto others…). When faced with an ethical dilemma, I do not what benefits most, not what increases the most well-being, not what has the best consequences, and not what benefits me. I evaluate what’s right based on the notion that anyone could have been anyone (generalized other, or a not-so-immoral-person-hood-ethics). I get into trouble some times. People like to qualify their selfishness with the idea that they have only a responsibility to themselves. It’s this popular notion that ‘your own happiness matters the most’. Well, you could have been anyone means that you act according to ethical outcomes that ensure the world is a better place for everyone; you could have been a disabled person born in a third-world country. It gets much more complicated than that, but basically that’s what it boils down to.

When I look at people I see myself. The goal is understanding life. The products of that understanding are the same as the products of my understanding; they might be a little better, a little worse, much better, or much worse. They’re not income, status, or power. When I think about relationships I picture two people bonded like the soldiers in battle, or the cop and his partner, trying to figure out life and sharing things they find along the way. Status, looks, or money don’t weigh in at all. We’re all living differently framed lives, with different temperaments and different priorities. I feel a tremendous sense of identity in my life, I just unfortunately don’t have anyone to share that life, or that identity, with. But my loneliness, my isolation, does not change that belief, or my identity. It’s comforting to live this way. I have the best of both worlds: the sense of purpose and identity at war, and the resources and safety at peace.

“Oh while I live, to be the rule of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.”

 

Qualia, Consciousness, and The Conceivability Argument

The conceivability argument says that if you can conceive of something it is metaphysically possible. Cartesian dualism suggests that the mind and the brain are two different things, and that the mind can exist independent of the brain. I will show through my own arguments that the argument for an immaterial mind was improperly conceived, and thus by its own terms, metaphysically improbable.

Let’s assume that Descartes is right and the mind and body are not causally dependent, what is he saying. Substance Dualism is a position that states that mind and the body are radically different things. Dualism is the idea that in a particular domain there are two fundamental kinds of things, or principles (good vs. evil in the context of theological dualism). Descartes believes that there are then two types of properties, properties of the mind, and properties of the physical. Inspecting the relationship between the mind and the body raises many questions. For example, If the mind can exist independent of the brain, and each mind is unique, does the creation and formation of the mind depend on the brain? A person suffering from dementia loses her capacities; her capacity to think, her capacity to remember, and to form long-term memories, her capacity to reason, her capacity to think critically. Even people with more advanced cases of dementia still have days where they ‘snap out of it’. The dust settles for a moment and like a spectre, they assume their former identity.

In the future we will be able to prevent dementia, and treat dementia. We will in the future be able to regrow neurons and lost cells, re-form damaged areas of the brain, and give people back the mental functions they have lost. As it stands now, though, we are not capable of those things. We have medications to slow the progress of dementia, and some treatments, but the most promising studies and experiments and theories are not yet near completion. If you suffered for years with complex dementia and died before science could ‘turn back the clock’, what would happen to your immaterial mind?

If the immaterial mind is effected by changes in the material brain, and the experiences of the individual, could it return to its original state (prior to dementia)? If the brain shapes the mind, and the mind depends on the development of the brain through an individuals lifetime, wouldn’t the immaterial mind of the dementia patient continue to exist after death as it had near the end of the individuals life? Would it exist immaterially as the mind of a late-stage dementia patient?

If there is an immaterial mind, why bother at all with a material body? If the immaterial mind can transcend the limitations of an afflicted physiology, why attend to a corporeal form in the first place? If the immaterial mind can survive unscathed by diseases like dementia, then what purpose does life as a biological organism provide?

The immaterial mind has to (conceptually) causally depend on the material body – for its formation and creation. The normal stages of development in an infant are of necessity to the development of the infant. If a child is deprived of social contact, it will not become a ‘person’; that is, it will not learn to speak, to walk, to reason, to identify language, to survive. It wouldn’t become what it would’ve become. The adolescent life of that child would be indistinct from its infant stages. The immaterial mind is affected by the biology clearly.

We might attempt to solve this problem by assuming that there exists a benevolent, omniscient, creator. That might solve the proximal problem described above, but it begs the question: why bother with a biological body? We cannot at present hope to answer this question – if it’s a question we’re capable of answering at all.

Could the immaterial mind of a dementia patient correct itself after death? Even if we assume it can, it still offers no hope to the dualist or the idea of an immaterial mind. It is a self defeating proposition. All the changes in our mind are products of both growth and decay. An infants brain imperfectly prunes the neurons. That imperfection shapes the child. We suffer damages to our brains throughout our life without ever knowing it. Those changes determine who we are. Forgetting we are determined by our brains, by our biology, and indirectly by our experiences, how could the immaterial mind identify which things needed to change and which things didn’t – if the process of growth is constrained and fostered by mechanisms similar to those in pathological processes. The immaterial mind theory necessitates biological determinism, and causal determinism.

The changes in our brains don’t ameliorate our consciousness, and so perhaps the immaterial mind could make similar changes too without ameliorating consciousness. But if the immaterial mind doesn’t causally depend on the biological brain for its creation and formation, wouldn’t it be blank if an infant died? Or rather wouldn’t the immaterial mind survive as an infant? Or is the immaterial mind a conscious being, unique to itself like the (notion/ theory of) brains of biological beings which produce conscious minds unique to the individual. Does the immaterial mind provide consciousness, or act upon consciousness? If it provides consciousness, then it is functionally indistinguishable from the material theory of consciousness. Because in both cases the mind of an infant at death is the mind of an infant, and the mind of a dementia patient at death is the mind of a dementia patient. Even if conceptually the interaction between the immaterial and material could go one way and not the other, we know that it can’t be limited on the material end – infants without social attention develop adult bodies in time but never adult minds. But the interaction isn’t necessarily limited to one direction (material -> immaterial). In fact, it’s necessarily unlimited; by its own terms the immaterial mind is responsible for the material consciousness, thus interacting with consciousness. If the immaterial mind is necessarily effected by changes in the material mind, then the immaterial mind interacts with the material as well.