Consciousness - or is there anybody there?

    

This is Dave Chalmers  (much better without the barnet I think but would hate to trivialise this serious debate).

How do we explain consciousness?

Here is a link to a lively TED lecture that was the catalyst that brought this blog post together: 

How do you explain consciousness?

It's all about Consciousness in poetry, prose and philosophy.

First some poetry - this intricate little poem by American poet Joanie Mackowski gives an artist's view of human consciousness.

Consciousness

JOANIE MACKOWSKI

How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander

the halls of the skull with the fluorescents

softly flickering. It rests on the head

like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel

and awkward as soon as one stops to look.

That pile of fallen leaves drifting from

the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,

to the grooves in that man’s voice

as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves

of books with moonlit opossums

and Chevrolets easing down the roads

of one’s bones. And now it plucks a single

tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet

itself is a swarm, a pulse with no

indigenous form, the brain’s lunar halo.

Our compacted galaxy, its constellations

trembling like flies caught in a spider web,

until we die, and then the flies

buzz away—while another accidental

coherence counts to three to pass the time

or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine

strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped

in the brain’s gray pool. How it folds itself

like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds

a fraying map from the pocket of the day.

Source: Poetry (February 2012).

That's just how my brain seems some days - like a crazy birdsnest in my head, full of all sorts of bits and pieces, that sometimes manages to cradle my creativity.

And of course there was Wordsworth - 

Here's a short extract from his famous ode on immortality:

Ode On Intimations of Immortality

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;–
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

.............................

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

For many of us a couple of centuries later, immortality is not a belief that we can accept. 

Consciousness is still a great mystery of course but I have to concede that it probably relies on the brain in order to exist. I don't think that it can outlive death - but it's a fascinating idea to pursue.

I'd like to offer some quotations from recent books. The first by Denise Inge  is called "A Tour of Bones - Facing Fear and Looking for Life.  

" Contemplating mortality is not about being prepared to die, it is about being prepared to live."

The second from neurosurgeon Henry Marsh whose book "Do No Harm" has become a best-seller:

"I think most people realise that thought and consciousness are somehow produces by the brain, and that therefore they are in some way physical processes. This is completely at odds with our experience of our own consciousness which feels completely non-physical and quite different from the outside world. It is an extraordinary thought.

All human beings have a deep capacity for wonder, an awareness of how large the universe is and how small we are.  Religions are full of this sense of wonder and science is as well, even if it is constrained by the need to collect and analyse data scientifically as well as to dream and invent. I think many people share my amazement that our own brain, our own consciousness, is as wonderful and mysterious as the sky at night."

So back to the beginning and the inspirational Dave Chalmers

He says that we haven't really begun to explain consciousness or why we have it. Is it a fundamental building block ? Is it universal or "panpsychic"? I look forward to hearing some of the answers to these challenging questions.

In my consciousness today - February 19th

is the awareness that it is the Chinese New Year of the sheep.

February 19th also happens to be the date that my parents were married way back in 1944, 

The date that I moved from Warwickshire to Herefordshire in 1985

AND the date that I moved from England to Scotland in 2013 - so this is my second anniversary in beautiful Gamrie.

This seemingly significant date (for me) is probably just random chance - but my consciousness can't help but see patterns and attach meanings to such things.  Without consciousness there would be no sense of self; no capacity for creativity. It can make life seem wonderful if we stay awake to it.

The last word from Stephen Hawking:

"What puts the fire into the equations?"

Brains and Beauty

A trip to Auld Reekie or "The Athens of the North", depending on your point of view, brightened January.  

The city was looking a bit shabby I must confess - much digging up of the old and building up of the new.  But looking past that there were all sorts of compensations for being there in this dark month: no crowds, cheaper hotels and -

Turner in January at the NPG.  

There's a lovely story about the fanatical art collector Henry Vaughan who bequeathed his Turner watercolours to the nation with the stipulation that they only be displayed in January to protect them.   Edinburgh has a tradition of having an annual show of the Vaughan Turners each January.

It seems to me a piece of serendipity that the watercolours need the gloom and we need the light so everyone's happy. 
(Trivia - Vaughan also bequeathed Constable's The Hay Wain to the nation but that should probably  be displayed only in June as it's rather gloomy.) 

At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery  was an exhibition called Beauty by Design which examined fashions in beauty and provoked debate about body image and self-esteem. Fashions in beauty change as in everything else.   Currently in our culture it's extreme slenderness and youth (the 15-year-old female supermodel) and there are associated problems of anorexia and other disorders. The media sets very high and unrealistic standards of "beauty".   Meanwhile around the globe, millions of people have too little food; millions over-eat; and millions make themselves ill -and often much poorer - trying to look different.  

These ladies were thought to be the epitome of beauty (well not the respectable kind - they were probably courtesans) in 16th century Italy.  They wouldn't make the front cover of Vogue today.....

This headpiece was also part of the exhibition and like the black lace jackets was intricate and strangely beautiful in a timeless way. Pattern is as much about absence and space as it is about motif.
If these ideas interest you see more here:
Beauty by design SNPG

Keep young and beautiful ....
I will not be having a face-lift but I want to be able to lift my feet for as long as possible.  As we grow older it seems that the body becomes more demanding - so I intend to look after the bod as best I can and develop the brain on the "use it or lose it" principle. 

The jewel in the toad

I'm not saying that ageing is all about adversity but it can require extra fortitude! 


I've been thinking a lot about brains and skulls and trying to put a positive spin on ageing. The hardware and the software are so utterly different and completely complementary:

                                          For the Love of God - diamond encrusted skull by Damien Hirst 

Braincase

The skull I carry isn't jewelled

(a bit heavy-handed with the symbolism there Damien)

I know there’re no pockets in shrouds

And I can’t take it with me

I want less of it nowadays anyway

Diamante is good enough for me

A bit of everyday sparkle

Where was I?

Yes – that skull I carry

It’s just an imaginary one

But I drink from it from time to time

Remind myself to seize the day

Drink to absent friends

And turn back to the party

The Party

And it’s quite a party –

We’ve paid off the mortgage

The kids have left home

We retire with our pensions

Still able-bodied (well sort-of)

Free of the toad work

We build the meaning

For *T.S.E.  it was the church

But each to her own

And mine is being alive now

Life before death

Not just hanging on in there

Finding openings within

Expanding inside while the casing

Is getting flakier by the day

Using the brain for fear

Of losing it and reaching out

In all sorts of ways
  

*T.S.Eliot - "Choruses from The Rock"

Love

Do you know enough about love?

I am still learning about love

This is one meaning

Trying to love better

To accept better

To connect better

When one offers you a gift

Can you receive it?

Giving is the easy part

©sallygivertz2015

This picture was a gift to me from a loved one and I am giving it to you.  Who can fail to love a baby penguin?

January is nearly over and sunrise is getting earlier - something to celebrate.

 

Next blog will be more about brains I suspect and the Hard Question of consciousness.

There's a Time and Place

 Ruth Nicol: 'Bayble, Lewis, Iain Crighton Smith'

Landscape artist Ruth Nicol came to Duff House, Banff last November.  http://www.duffhouse.org.uk/

Since then I have been thinking over the conversation she had with portrait artist Alexander Moffat and poet Alan Riach,about people, place and identity. 

Scottish identity and definitions of "Scotland" as an idea, were at the centre of the exhibition.

As 2014 was also the year of the Scottish Referendum, a political drama that gripped the whole nation for several weeks, this was a timely project. As an Englishwoman living in Scotland do I define myself as English? British? European?  Am I a migrant - an incomer, or a Scot-by-adoption? 

At one time any child born on British soil had the right to a British passport. That rule has changed and we have all become more mobile and affected by multiple cultures and wider experience - real or virtual.  Does place still matter to identity? 


Ruth Nicol was inspired to paint her huge landscapes by the portraits of seven important Scottish poets created by Alexander Moffat a few years ago. They were: Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan, Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, George Mackay Brown, Robert Garioch, and Iain Crichton Smith.

His series of portraits culminated in the celebrated painting "Poets' Pub" on display in the Scottish NPG in Edinburgh. Moffat was commissioned to paint each of the poets but threw in this wonderful imagined gathering of all seven poets for good measure.

I have mentioned this picture before in the blog as it made such an impression on me when I first saw it last spring.  When an email popped into my inbox (thanks to local artist Bryan Angus) saying that a talk was taking place just along the road and featuring one of my favourite painters and some of my favourite Scottish poets (especially Norman MacCaig) - I felt it could have been planned with me in mind.

Living here we are accustomed to making a considerable trek each time we want to access some art and culture.  It was such a joy to have it brought to us for a change and Duff House made a worthy setting on a November evening for such people and such paintings. 

These poets are all strongly connected with certain places: MacCaig with Edinburgh and Assynt:

Edwin Morgan with Glasgow:

George Mackay Brown with Orkney:

and so on. One of the recurring ideas is that individuals, and especially artists, can feel deep love for particular places and that these places inspire their work. This is not a new idea of course - we almost take it for granted - and yet millions of people (the vast majority of the planet's population) are obliged to live in cities and spaces they don't love in order to have work.  Maybe that's why artists are so important to our collective psyche - they are able to express what we don't have time or space to express while we are busy getting and spending.  If we don't live in a place we love we can create a mental landscape to sustain us and art can help us with that.

The work of these poets and painters is almost all about Scottish identity and experience yet has a far wider appeal.  Who owns the land?  Where do we most belong?

Here is an extract from "A Man in Assynt" by Norman MacCaig, my favourite of the seven poets featured here:

I can't pretend

it gets sick for me in my absence,

though I get

sick for it. Yet I love it

with special gratitude,since

it sends me no letters, is never

jealous and, expecting nothing

from me, gets nothing but

cigarette packets and footprints.

Who owns this landscape? –

The millionaire who bought it or

the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning

with a deer on his back?

Who possesses this landscape? –

The man who bought it or

I who am possessed by it?

False questions, for
this landscape is 
masterless
and intractable in any terms
that are human.

Who are you?  Where is your place? I hope you have one to love.

Almost two years since I moved to beautiful Gamrie I have come to love my chosen place and feel very privileged to live here overlooking the Moray Firth.  The community here is mixed and welcoming and this is now my home. One doesn't have to born in a place to belong there. 

Reindeer Dreams

This remarkable press photo sparked my interest in reindeer last winter and I realised on reading the newspaper article that I had a herd of these magical creatures right on my doorstep in the Cairngorms. 

I added the reindeer centre to my Wish List and finally got to see them this October on a golden summery day when the mountains were especially beautiful. 

Reindeer were reintroduced to Scotland in 1952

by a Swedish reindeer herder Mikel Utsi who recognised that this terrain was ideal for reindeer and couldn't believe that there weren't any tucked away anywhere. They had been extinct in Britain for thousands of years - it's not known when they died out.

The herd in the Cairngorms is now going strong and thousands go to visit them every year.   http://www.cairngormreindeer.co.uk /

I created a poem about reindeer inspired by the herd near Aviemore, but it's not a patch on the one featured further down the page.  I also brought home a reindeer that doesn't need feeding.

A re-introduction

(Reindeer were re-introduced into Scotland in 1952)

  

Here’s one now!

Let me introduce you –

Meet the smaller-than-you imagined furry animal

Friendly because food-focused

Hoovering up bran and *black gold

Like a soft-mouthed vacuum cleaner

A deer with sink-plunger feet

Deciduous signature antlers -

An annual make-over

Of bespoke headwear

A triumph of form over function

Challenging the neck

Food all gone she

Merges back with the herd.

Sensibly shod but with high-fashion headgear

Stylishly sporting bibs of extra fur at the neck

There they go in all their soft colourways

Beige and sable, blonde and mink

Cairngorm reindeer

Perfectly dashing!

*black gold – a serendipitous by-product of the Scottish whisky industry

  

Sally Givertz©2014

  

But why did reindeer become associated with Christmas?  Was it the famous poem by Clement C. Moore?  Originally entitled, "A visit from St Nicholas"  it is now better now as "The Night Before Christmas".

Poor Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863, U.S.) was a heavy-weight scholar and theologian and looks like a fairly serious creature. He would probably be surprised to know that he is now most remembered for a light poem he wrote to amuse his children.  He even gets movie credits on Wikipedia!

Yes reindeer are used to pull sledges through snow but where did CCM get the flying reindeer sled idea?  It must have been a dream I think. Apparently we all dream of flying at some point. It's in the collective unconscious somewhere.  Think of all those wonderful paintings by Marc Chagall.There is nearly always a flying creature somewhere if you look closely.

However it came about, it's a great poem and an annual treat to share with children:

The Night Before Christmas

by Clement C. Moore  (1779 - 1863)

  

TWAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there;

THE children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And Mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

WHEN out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

THE moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of midday to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

WITH a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name :

NOW, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

AS dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

AND then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

HE was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedlar just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

THE stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

HE was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying a finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

HE sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

AND TO ALL     

A GOOD NIGHT !

 

So, as dreaming is a source of creativity, let you mind range free like the reindeer in the Cairngorms and feed your imagination.  

Marvels

One of my favourite poets, Seamus Heaney, became fascinated by the idea of the miraculous to be found in the mundane.

Denise Levertov writes too about the importance of paying attention in her well-known and much-loved poem, Witness.

Witness

Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

Over the summer I became fascinated by the idea of the marvellous and the need to pay attention to the here and now.

Scotland opens up and shows many new colours as the light changes and intensifies our everyday responses to nature. And not just to nature - we stumbled upon a group of people dancing on the street in Edinburgh back in September when we had a small heatwave. 

A poem came out of this thinking:

Marvels

You’re so lucky, they say

To live here, to have seen

Dolphins and puffins and guillemots

But I think,

No – we put ourselves out

We went in search

We climbed over Troup Head

And braved the steep paths, the vertigo

We took a boat and braved

The seasickness, the discomfort

But then I thought

What about the peacock

That just appeared from nowhere

And crossed my path

Popped out of a field

And flaunted its colours

In the morning sun:

Electric blue neck

orange striped flanks

The outrageous tail

It fluttered up onto a post

And posed there like a model

(Transvestite perhaps?)

In an evening gown

Showing off its gaudy train

With its little fan comb stuck

On its pea-head.

Sometimes we have to put ourselves

Into the way of seeing things

Othertimes marvels just appear

Sally Givertz©2014

I'd like to think that we can retain our capacity to marvel at the world no matter how tough it becomes to live with the reports of misery brought to us by the media.  This is real too of course; but only part of the picture.