A Tale of Two Hunters

There was a primitive jungle hunter exploring the forest one day, who came upon a magical, miraculous apparition. But he had no words to describe its function, and only a precious few to describe its appearance: "What did it look like?" his friends back in the village asked him. "It was the size of a rhinoceros, and the color of the tail-feathers of the long-calling bird. It wore ornaments that shimmered like the water of the flowing river, and its stubby, dark legs had skin like an elephant." "What did it feel like?" they asked him. "Like the large, smooth stones at the side of the river." "What did it smell like?" "It had the breath of a bog ripe with hippo dung," he replied. "What did it sound like?" "It roared like the great waterfall. And on the beast's back was a little hut with hard walls made out of air like rock. In the hut was a place for sitting that was soft like the belly of a fresh-killed tapir. And all around me - though I saw no one - were the voices of angels singing..." "What is this great thing, and what does it do?" they queried with quivering excitement. "I do not know," was all he could say.

There was a primitive mountain hunter exploring the jagged hills one day, who came upon a magical, miraculous apparition. But he had no words to describe its function, and only a precious few to describe its appearance: "What did it look like?" his friends back in the village asked him. "It was the size of a large boulder, and the color of the little blossoms on the rock-lichen. It wore ornaments that gleamed like the sun on rain-washed ice, and rested upon great skipping-stones made of the foot pads of a bear." "What did it feel like?" they asked him. "Like the small, smooth stones at the bottom of a stream." "What did it smell like?" "It had the breath of a forest ablaze in the valley of the burning water," he replied. "What did it sound like?" "It spoke with the voice of an avalanche. And on the beast's back was a little cave with hard walls made out of ice that was not cold. In the cave was a place for sitting that was soft like the belly of a fresh-killed deer. And all around me - though I saw no one - were the voices of angels singing..." "What is this great thing, and what does it do?" they queried with quivering excitement. "I do not know," was all he could say.

We probably should not expect these two men - each the product of very different experience - to conjure even remotely similar descriptions of this same - imaginary, but possible - encounter. Their descriptions, while perfectly accurate within a limited context, are misguided and simply not sufficient to the task. Both men have experienced the same real object, but the frames of reference from which these men make their observations are so far apart that they are incapable of describing their perceptions in the same way. Because the reality of this apparition is external to their experience, these two hunters are obligated to bring their own experience into any description they endeavor to make. And so, they can communicate nothing of the essence of that object in any meaningful way; in the end, such attempts to describe a great unknown merely tell us a great deal about the observer, and nothing significant at all about the observed. These hunters are not stupid. Their observations are as accurate as their experience and tools of observation allow them to be. They simply don't know - can't know - what they're looking at. A pink Cadillac with the radio playing a Palestrina Mass is simply to remote from the savage's spear. There is reason to wonder if anything has fundamentally changed since stone-age times. We see farther now, but how much further removed from mankind's tiny reckonings is the Great Unknown?

The opening parable illustrates two important points: one, that it is not surprising that our many descriptions of the mysterious dimensions of existence all sound different (and also eerily similar at the same time); and 2, that many of those descriptions might actually be of something rather more mundane than we hope. Several thousand years is all that separates those hunters from the answers they sought about the heavenly Cadillac. Our history has demonstrated - in the unfortunate stories of Pizarro and Cortez - that sometimes it is only mere technology that separates men from the gods. Armed and powerful with the knowledge we once thought belonged exclusively to a transcendent power, it is now we who are the gods, remaking the cosmos in our image. We are no longer obliged to justify our ignorance of the world with wizard's tales; we've seen into the magician's bag and now know how many of the tricks were done. These 2 hunters, who were quick to ascribe some kind of supernatural authorship to the unexplainable phenomena, demonstrate a natural human inclination: we've be plugging the gaps in our understanding of the universe with divine mortar for along time. In stone-age times, when we understood so little about the nature of things, the world was all gaps; now, in modern times, the mighty edifice of Scientific Enterprise has left precious few holes in our knowledge for a god-of-the-gaps to fill. God is just about out of a job. Or so some like to think, but some of those pernicious remaining holes are really rather large...

What is everything made of?

Reductionism is a problem-solving method used very effectively by science to simplify complex problems. A problem is broken up into constituent categories of study, allowing researchers to solve comparatively little problems; some researchers will then assemble several smaller solutions into one larger solution, and others will break that small solution into even smaller problems. This method has been spectacularly successful. A good example of reductionism at work can be found in the study of medicine. When it first began to emerge as a legitimate, recognizably modern science in the mid 19th century, there was simply one kind of doctor who attempted to treat maladies of every kind. Soon thereafter developed the separate and distinct specialties of surgical and internal medicine. Over time, these disciplines fragmented into dozens and dozens of new specialties and sub-specialties, each one seeking greater depth of knowledge regarding a narrower range of inquiry. Neurology, cardiology, radiology, hematology, endocrinology, oncology, anesthesiology, etc., are just a tiny handful of the many disciplines found in medicine; there will soon be as many specialties in genetic science. We might even include in this list, other body-related concerns like nutrition, fitness, cosmetics, personal hygiene, etc. No one person could ever hope to understand even 1% of what we now know about our bodies, but a vast army of people working in concert has provided a truly impressive result: in the last 150 years, average human longevity has almost doubled. This is the miracle of the reductive method, and it works every bit as well in the other sciences. But there is a devil hiding in the details.

Many of the structures within the structures of the world are far more complicated than we originally thought (like that of a living cell) and many years of research will go into revealing merely some of the secrets therein. Researchers from one discipline may not concern themselves with the smaller constituent parts of their study, but there will always be another discipline trying to understand the larger parts by examining ever smaller parts. Eventually, however, scientific inquiry is confronted with a fundamental unit that cannot be disassembled for further examination, and so there the scientific endeavor stops. There is a truly staggering amount we do not know about all the micro- structures of the world which are made of these fundamental units, an enormous of amount of useful science to be pursued where objectives might be realized. And so, with so many interesting sights along the way, there are comparatively few adventurers interested in taking the trip to the last stop, to find there the unsettling fact that dwells at the terminal end of the scientific path: down inside the heart of matter - in the domain of the quark and the electron - is the impenetrable boundary at the edge of the universe.

Quarks and electrons are considered to be fundamental particles; that is, they have no structure as we commonly understand the concept, and so they simply cannot be subjected to any kind of intrusive examination. They do not have interiors, they are not made of anything, they simply are. Current reckoning believes that quarks were bundled into indivisible clumps of 2 or 3, a tiny fraction of a second after the birth of the universe, and these infinitesimal bundles now form a broad variety of other sub-atomic particles of the universe - the most common of which are protons and neutrons. Positively-charged protons and uncharged neutrons dwell in the nucleus of the atom, surrounded by orbiting swarms of the another fundamental particle, the negatively-charged electron. Scientific thinking about the quark is, perhaps, not all that advanced; we are not permitted to isolate one and easily evaluate its properties. But we know a great deal about the mighty electron: it is the humble spec upon which our entire civilization is based, the indefatigable Atlas that holds up the cosmos.

Surging rivers of them power our electric machines. The electron's associated force-particle, the photon, fills the heavens with light. The beautiful magic by which the 92 elements transform themselves into an infinite variety of different molecules is facilitated by the effervescent coupling of spherical electron clouds sharing common electrons to bind atoms into the material structures of the universe - and doing so with a potential for chemical diversity that is, seemingly, without limit. The strength of these electron bonds provides the structural integrity of matter, explaining why material objects, which are far more than 99.999% empty space, don't simply pass through one another when they come into contact. In fact, our entire experience of the universe - from the exterior data we collect with our 5 senses to our interior cognition of that information - is mediated by this infinitesimal Hercules. The electron is even more impressive than it seems because it is not really there...

The electron is very small: it is a dimensionless point, without volume or extension in any direction - it has no size whatsoever. It has been described as "nothing more than a region of space- time where the field strength takes on extraordinarily high values." Nobel laureate Leon Lederman observed that this otherworldly absence of any spacial magnitude confronts us with four inescapable questions: "What has mass, what has charge, what spins, and can I get my money back?"

Modern theoreticians are currently playing with a concept called superstrings, suggesting that perhaps the fundamental particles are made of infinitesimal loops of multi-dimensional vibration. The hope is that the monstrously complex mathematics inherent to string theory will one day explain away the serious problems that persist in the standard model of the sub-atomic domain. And superstrings seem to be made of nothing at all other than pure mathematics. So this is where the materialist endeavor ends, with a universe made of immaterial mathematics. This sounds rather like the hunter bringing his own experience to the description, and not really describing the thing at all. One has to respect the physicists and mathematicians and their considerable prowess with numbers; their magic is powerful indeed. But if the theologian says the world is made of ethereal divinity, and the philosopher says the world is made of ethereal idea, and the artist says the world is made of ethereal poetry, then is it really that much different to say that the world is made of ethereal mathematics?

The foundation of the world is emptiness; the cosmos is all gaps.

Can We Make a Decision?

Free will: nothing is so well-validated by experience and so invalidated by the facts. Those who are unfamiliar with this ancient and most vexing problem in philosophy, usually respond to such a question with vehemence: "Of course I have free will!" But, it turns out, the notion of free will does not survive close scrutiny entirely intact. In fact, some exceedingly clever people, including Albert Einstein, do not accept the reality of free will, believing it to be only an illusory projection or artifact of consciousness. The proposition that Man has Free Will involves some conceptual paradoxes that cannot be explained away. The problem has nothing to do with the limits of our knowledge about the neurophysiology of the brain, but, rather, with the limits of our understanding of logic. Perhaps the mind has not yet sufficiently evolved to grapple around the logical contradictions inherent in the idea of self-determination. If free will is indeed a fact, and not merely some trick our brains are playing on us, then there is some very strange kind of magic going on in the human brain. The problem is old and complex; no new arguments will be found here. The 2 illustrations that follow are meant simply to introduce the paradox to those who may not have encountered it before.

The first approach to the problem could be called: Compulsion and Culpability, or, perhaps, "Who or What is Responsible?" We call something an act of free will if, by some inscrutable magic, we decided to do it. If we could not have done otherwise, if we have been compelled by some caprice of nature and not by our own sovereign volition, we do not call it free will; we call it cause and effect. Our laws recognize this spectrum of culpability; they are a statement of our belief that there are degrees of responsibility. As an example, let us look at several different imaginary scenarios involving the death of a man who has been hit by my car:

1) If I am driving down the road and a man throws himself in front of my car, I am not held responsible for that action: it was beyond my control and I could not have done otherwise. In fact, in this case the man would be held responsible for his own demise.

2) If I am driving down the road and a psychopath leaps into my passenger seat while I am waiting at a red light and then subsequently orders me - at gunpoint - to crash into a man walking down the sidewalk, I am not held responsible for that action: it is the crazy man with the gun who is deemed to be responsible for the accident.

3) If I am driving down the road and a sudden blow-out causes a complete loss of control of my car which then veers into the man, we say that no one is responsible: as long as I have not been driving on dangerously worn and unsafe tires, we are inclined to say that the catastrophic failure of the tire at that unfortunate moment was beyond my control, and the chaotic whim of natural law - in this case, compelling the runaway vehicle - is responsible for the accident.

4) If I am driving down the road and have a sudden heart attack, lose consciousness, and my now un-piloted vehicle veers into the unfortunate man, we also say I am not responsible. It is unquestionably a defect in my nature, albeit a physiological rather than mental one, that has caused this accident, but the defect was beyond my power to control. And so again, it is the caprice of nature that bears the responsibility for the pedestrian's death.

5) If I am driving down the road blind drunk and unintentionally swerve onto the sidewalk to strike the man, I am held responsible for this action, but my responsibility is somehow diminished: choosing to drive under the debilitating influence of alcohol was something within my control, even if drunkenly losing control of my vehicle was not. That I did not intend to strike the man is a mitigating factor. I may be charged with manslaughter in this case, but I will serve less time in prison than for other more serious offenses. Nature - in this case manifest as the consciousness-altering mixture of alcohol and human blood - seems to bear about 50% of the responsibility for this accident.

6) If I am driving down the road and suddenly and intentionally careen into the man, I will be held only almost fully responsible for that action. Why only "almost?" Because we accept the possibility that I may have been struck with a sudden and otherwise inexplicable mania; in the absence of any history to otherwise explain an isolated crime, we may choose to believe that the evil act in question was not necessarily caused by an irredeemably evil person. In this case, Nature - manifest as, perhaps, the mis-firing of motor neurons in the brain - still bears about 10% of the responsibility for the death.

7) It is only if I am driving down the road and I swerve - with malice of forethought - onto the sidewalk to strike that particular man, that I am held fully responsible for this action. My premeditation of this crime, my rejection of reason after careful and deliberate contemplation, places the entire burden of responsibility upon my shoulders; nature is off the hook for this one, and in this case I will suffer the harshest penalty provided for in the law.

In each case the man is just as dead, in each case killed by impact with my car, but I am said to be fully responsible only when I consciously choose - when it was my free will that compelled me - to strike the man with my car. If I drove into the man purposely, then we are not able to blame a reckless pedestrian, a gun-wielding madman, unsafe tires, poor coronary health, impairing liquor, random brain activity, or any other factor that was beyond my control. It is precisely because I was in control - because I made a decision - that I am held fully culpable. But what kind of process is at work when we make a decision? What mechanism is it that produces intention? If we are unable to define this mechanism (and we shall see that we cannot), then how can we be sure that this process truly is something that is under our control? And if intention is not entirely under our control, where, then, does true responsibility lie?

No reasonable person would dispute the fact that such laws as the Prohibition Against Murder are fundamental to the existence of civilization. But our laws have no basis in the natural world; they are derived from a philosophy of ethics that is our own invention, designed to separate and protect us from the brutal world of nature whence we came, and make our ambition of a peaceful, organized society possible. Ethics are not facts, they are not science. And so, if we disregard the subjective ethics of the matter and examine the problem of free will analytically, we find that is considerably more difficult than we might originally suppose to find the agent (the thing that makes something happen) truly responsible for the pre-meditated crime...

When we say a decision has been made, we mean that a mind made a decision. And a mind is the product of two - and only two - things. The first is the genetic composition that we inherit, fully formed and utterly unchangeable, from our parents. This composition determines athletic, intellectual, and creative ability, emotional inclinations and temperamental dispositions, and in general a certain potential to achieve some things but not others. The second thing by which a mind is produced is the interaction of that inherited, interior nature with the vast exterior nature beyond our skins. This interaction with the world will determine many important features of our identity. It will be possible to meet many people who will significantly change our future development, and it will be impossible to meet many other people who might also have had a significant but different effect upon our subsequent experience. We will encounter certain teachers and certain books, and be affected to varying degrees by them; and we will be entirely oblivious to knowledge we never acquired that might have changed our thinking - and subsequent actions - dramatically. Good and bad things will happen to us, both altering the way we subsequently interpret the world. In general, we can see that there are a great number of events and opportunities that direct a life in one way, when other unrealized possibilities did not. And we must concede that there is a vast caprice in our experience of the world: any actual experience might have been profoundly different if we had been somewhere 5 minutes earlier - or 5 minutes later - than we were. This experience of the world, collected and classified in the mind as memories, beliefs, and ideas, will combine with inclinations inherent in the psyche to form our Identity - that entity we refer to when we say "I".

This seems correct and not at all controversial, but there is a quiet problem in this two-part way we are made. The empty vessel given to us by our parents, and the contents the world outside pours into it, are both entirely beyond our control; we are in no way responsible for either. We are born empty shelves, waiting to be filled by books already written. "That doesn't sound right," we say. We want to believe it is our choice that we become what we are; we choose what we learn, choose who we know, choose what we do. But is it choice to learn pre-existing facts, meet pre-existing people, or pursue pre-existing activities introduced to us by others? How do we make those kinds of choices? We have our innate inclinations, and our experience of the world, which combine into a personal identity. And that identity resonates positively with some things and not with others. We don't choose the way we are, we don't choose the way other people and things are, and we don't choose to have some kind of attraction to - or repulsion from - them. This holds true for every other kind of knowledge or experience we can have with the things of the world. A pre-existing fact of the exterior world resonates with some aspect of our pre-existing identity and then that resonance makes a decision. We don't choose to find something interesting; we have an affinity for something or we do not. We can develop new affinities, and we can deny existing affinities, but such actions are merely satisfying other different resonances within other regions of our complex identities. Choices do indeed seem to get made, but the question is, do we as individuals make choices, or is it fantastically long chains of causality, great histories of processes, that choose?

What part of us is it that chooses? What part of us is it - that is subject neither to the physical nature we inherit nor the empirical nature we inhabit - that is able to make a decision that is truly our own? We like to say, "my decisions are subject to my will." But if everything I am (including my will) is entirely created by my parents genes and the action of the world upon the product of those genes - both antecedent facts which I am utterly powerless to change - how can I be anything other than compelled by nature in my thoughts and actions? We can confront a convicted criminal - the maniacal driver in example #7 - with the admonition, "You could have chosen differently." Ands so it seems. But to what responsible part of him are we appealing that is not determined by his innate potential - which is not his fault - nor compelled by his experience of the world - which is also not his fault? Are we correct to blame him for being the unfortunate end effect of a faulty causal chain? The question is not so much whether the criminal could have acted differently; the question is, rather, is it the criminal, or the vast chain of events that preceded that criminal moment, that is responsible for the crime? If what we are is beyond our control, and could not have been otherwise, how can we be held responsible for what we do? We certainly do have the cognitive sense - we believe - that we are able to make a decision, that we could have done other than what we have done; but if we are not free to perform an act for which we are genuinely responsible, we are not free. When I make a decision, I hope it is me, and not just the random jumbled mixture of my parent's genes and a chaotic world that's doing the deciding. But where am I, if not in those things?

Think of a choice you believe you have made. How many hundreds, if not thousands, of entirely random events beyond your control precipitated the circumstances that presented you with the opportunity to make that decision? Whenever possible we make decisions in accord with our character, and a specific biochemical orientation in the brain corresponding to our identity responds in a predictable way to a particular external stimulus. On those occasions when an in-character decision is not among the available options, when the situation is beyond all experience, we simply roll the cognitive dice. The fact that our interior nature (a pre-determined collection of genetic predispositions sculpted into a set of characteristic inclinations by events in a pre-determined world) reacts to exterior nature in a particular way, sounds less like what we want free will to mean, and more like what we think a machine is: merely action and reaction, a certain initial cause will result in a certain inevitable effect.

Of course, if we were to foolishly rewrite our laws so that responsibility did not lie with the individual, but rather with the chain of events that lead to that individual, that would introduce another causal effect into the chain, leading individuals to act in different, quite possibly uncivilized, ways...

This first approach does not so much question whether decisions are made, as whether it is we individuals that make them. The second approach to the problem is more direct, and could be called: Chance and Fate. Our world is surprisingly predictable. The behavior of living things, especially humans, still presents some difficulties, but our mathematical models of the mechanical universe serve quite well for most other applications. One of the cornerstones of our mechanistic understanding of the world is causality: every event in the universe is preceded in time by some other event that made it happen. This model also does not work quite so well in the quantum domain of the atom, but the random, probabilistic nature of the very small evaporates at scales larger than the atom. At the scales of our everyday perception, the world seems entirely deterministic: that is, the universe is a dynamical system that changes according to certain laws and principles, and events in the future are bound to events in the past by chains of causality. Two of the simplest things demanded by determinism are: 1) there are no uncaused events, and 2) there are no random events.

Before quantum mechanics dramatically changed our world view, it was generally thought the world was entirely deterministic - a vast clockwork mechanism bound in a matrix of cause and effect that extended from the beginning of time to its end. We always understood that limitations in our scientific devices made measurements of infinite precision impossible, but we did not doubt that complete precision actually existed. Even in apparently unpredictable processes, some process of cause and effect invisible to human inquiry must determine the actions of things. We now believe that infinite precision is - in principle - impossible; the world gets a bit fuzzy in the sub-atomic domain, a chaotic and entangled world where the macroscopic rules of cause and effect do not apply.

We still recognize, however, that systems can only be of these 2 kinds: random or deterministic. A simple example of the 2 can be found on a billiard table (for the sake of this example, we assume there are no flaws in the table surface or balls which might adversely affect the results). Classical determinism says that if a pool ball strikes the cushion at an angle of 45 degrees, it will bounce away at an angle of 45 degrees. The ball has no choice in this matter; it can only follow a path that has been predetermined by the initial trajectory. If we know with precision all of the initial conditions (velocity, spin, friction, air pressure, altitude, elasticity, etc.), we can calculate the exact path of that ball from beginning to end. The entire subsequent history of that pool ball is contained in the initial conditions. That's determinism. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, says that we can't measure the initial conditions with complete precision, and there will always be some uncertainty in our knowledge. If a pool ball strikes the cushion at an angle of 45 degrees, it will bounce away at an angle somewhere between 44 and 46 degrees (the uncertainty in this example has been wildly exaggerated so that decimal expressions of 20 places are not necessary). Tiny uncertainties in the initial conditions become ever larger uncertainties over time; it is simply not possible to know at exactly what angle the ball will deflect. The path followed by the ball does not even exist with complete precision and so is determined by nothing more than chaotic chance. That's indeterminism. These are the only 2 options available: the world is pre-determined or it is un-determined.

When we attempt to define the mechanism of free will, to explain the biochemical process by which we make a decision, we must do so within the context of one these 2 scientific regimes. The brain is made of matter and subject to material laws; any process of the brain is also subject to natural laws. The methodology we use to successfully describe the actions of atoms and molecules in every other substance, must also successfully describe the actions of atoms and molecules in the brain. Whether we are talking about the geometric nature of pool ball trajectory, or the chemical nature of molecular interaction, the problem is the same: such nature must be pre-determined by the initial conditions or it must be randomly determined by chance.

Now, if we suggest that these pool balls bouncing around the table correspond to atoms and molecules bouncing around in the brain (stating, simply, that laws of geometry are analogous to the laws of chemical interaction) the problem of free will becomes apparent. In a predetermined world, the deflected trajectory must equal the incident trajectory; there is no room for choice: the atoms and molecules in the brain can only follow paths already decided by the initial conditions. In an undetermined world, the deflected trajectory must be smeared across a range of random possibilities; again, there is no room for choice: atoms and molecules in the brain will haphazardly follow a path randomly decided by probabilities. Both options sound wrong to us. My actions are determined by initial conditions unfolding falling like dominos from the beginning of time? Nonsense. My actions are accidental, chosen at random from among many possible actions by fuzzy molecular dice? Ridiculous! Neither option satisfies the conditions necessary to produce that brain state which everyone believes they possess: The movements of the molecules in my brain are determined...by themselves.

What we want a decision to be is this: the pool ball strikes the cushion at an angle of 45 degrees and deflects away at a specifically different angle - for example, 45.432 degrees. Free will must be a very specific outcome that is not pre-determined, not un-determined, but self-determined. We don't have any science to explain that. What force in that little pool ball/brain cell/neuron molecule compels it to deny the laws of physics and not deflect at the incident angle, not deflect randomly within a range of possible angles, but deflect off at a specific angle of its own choosing? What possible mechanism gives this Promethean billiard ball - or a vast collection of willful billiard ball neurons in the brain - intention more powerful than the forces that bind the universe? The processes of the world are determined or they are not. Either way, a decision is impossible. If free will is not an illusory artifact of consciousness, and we actually possess intent capable of making a decision, then we are truly magicians - wizards, every one of us.

Where is the Observer?

There is another curious aspect of consciousness that eludes understanding: the simple awareness of ourselves as distinct and existing entities. In many ways we are machines, made of organic bone and tissue rather than bolts and steel, but machines nevertheless. But it is not anything to be a machine as we commonly understand the term. The super-computer may or may not be smarter than me - although it certainly surpasses my abilities in many respects - but it has no experience of itself. The super-computer does indeed seem smarter than my dog, but it is something to be a dog; it is not anything to be a computer. If I smash the computer to pieces, its experience of itself is unchanged. Not much soul gets into machine parts; quite a bit more of whatever it is that is aware gets into a dog.

It seems that the predominant thought in modern philosophy is that the mind is simply the activity of the brain, the incessant hum of data gathering and processing which, by virtue of some critical threshold of sophistication we have evolved beyond, becomes self-aware. Free will is an illusion; consciousness is an illusion. Such chimeras are mere byproducts of brain activity, the accidental effluent of cognitive number-crunching. Organism is synonymous with mechanism; the general pattern is the same, only the materials are different. Or so the theory says.

Given our current level of technology, we can imagine a very human-like machine that is not, in principle, beyond our ability to construct, and let us say that money is no object here - we have unlimited funds. Prosthetic limb designers already build functional arms and legs. We could certainly apply very sensitive pressure-sensitive pads upon those limbs to emulate a sense of touch. We could even apply a veneer of skin-textured latex to give our Pinnochio a more human-like appearance. Cameras serve as eyes, and current scanning technology certainly enables the machine to perceive grades of lightness and the full spectrum of color. Gas chromatographs can analyze the chemicals present in solids, liquids or gases, and provide an analog to our senses of smell and taste. Microphones record sound, and little speakers in the synthetic mouth reproduce it. Motor control and the gathering and processing of data is all performed by our most sophisticated computer, and we can give the aspirant an enormous hard-drive pre-programmed with 1 million standard responses to 1 million standard questions. We might even program the machine to emulate certain behaviors corresponding to certain emotional states (he "flips a bird" when asked about his sex-life). To finish the package, we invite Hollywood special effects wizards make the overall appearance as realistic as possible. In a dark room and a tightly controlled situation (no funny business), this silicon-chip Frankenstein might actually fool people for a while. But this pretender has no identity whatsoever. If I melt it down, it will think of itself in exactly the same way - which is to say, not at all. Such a thing is nothing more than an abacus with more beads, and has the same experience of the world as a stone - none whatsoever.

It is not surprising that organisms capable of gathering data, and subsequently processing that data into useful survival-ensuring information, have evolved. But nothing in that equation requires the existence of self-awareness. Our walking calculator can easily be programmed to flee from predators; an object larger than a certain threshold size, approaching faster than a certain threshold speed, will trigger a specific "turn and move away at maximum velocity" response. Such an inclination in the programming would ensure that the machine endured to witness other days. There is no need for the machine to be aware of what it is doing; it only needs to act, not think about it. In fact, awareness is entirely superfluous and, quite possibly, detrimental: it is just another signal interfering with the data stream.

We now have the imaging technology to actually observe the ways in which the brain acquires and uses the data it encounters, and we can watch streams of information moving around on the synaptic highways of the brain. But where is the observer? Something that is known - data - is not at all the same thing as something that knows - awareness. Somehow the data knows itself? A bound stack of paper wonders whether it is a good book? If this awareness above the data is not made of data, can it exist in our brains? Or is it somewhere else, poking into this world through the peep-hole of human consciousness?

People are like clothing that this mysterious observer wears. Some clothing is fine and clean, and some is worn and dirty. The observer experiences these realities, but is untouched by them. Our identities, our memories, our interior experiences of ourselves, are all clothing - they are not permanent, and are, in fact, highly mutable. They are a way for a mightier presence to inhabit and experience the universe.

Cathedral of Illusion

And the magician became lost, wandering aimlessly in the Nowhere Realm, bound between 2 awesome, stupefying vistas...

There was the world: dark and brooding, musty and aging, weary and bewildered. The uneven bustle of listless movement was interrupted by a gasping wind, foul with decay, scattering bits of rancid detritus into growing piles of rot. Mournful noises ricocheted from every direction: rustlings of sorrow and misery, clatterings of greed and deceit, detonations of anger and violence. Far away the sound of vast, invincible machines pounded a martial rhythm like the battle drums of an advancing army, and a relentless apprehension oozed over the ground like a creeping putrefaction. A gurgling spasm shuddered beneath the world, and everything was dragged down. The very foundations of the earth decomposed, and inexorably succumbed to a hideous ravening maw mercilessly sucking the living flesh of the world into a swirling hole of necrotizing filth. Down, down the world fell, into the bowels of time, digested slowly, still alive. A withering little flame fluttered in the deep, and was extinguished into sleep.

There was the world: saturated with light, opulent with life, mysterious, beckoning, vivifying. The River of Life poured into the world, a shimmering, many-channeled ribbon that gently meandered across a misty dreamscape as ancient as the foundations of the earth, binding the world to some infinite and unknown Wellspring. There were many ferrying waterways to be explored in the vast forest sanctuary, but the unknown courses were by far the greater part of the River, flowing ever smaller into the flesh of everything that moves, flowing ever larger towards its unseen ocean destiny. A luminous apparition at the distant end of the visible wood appeared, a great window gleaming pure, as though cleansed of any worldly aspect, allowing the sacred light beyond to shine through into every evaporating shadow. The image of eternal regeneration, of the source and destination of all things, flared incandescent in the forest. In the surging swell of light, a great verdant cathedral emerged from the gentle mist of the forest, shimmering like a timeless paradise of holiness. In the cathedral garden, 2 lovers danced. One was a great red hawk, soaring around the lofty regions of the wood, strong and vigilant. The other was a fragile white dove, beautiful and wise, waiting peacefully below the circling hawk. And all the living things of the garden were their children, each one an extension of the living light beyond that never dies.

And the magician wondered if the form of the world was his to choose...