Agnostics, Inaction, and Consciousness

Evolutionary biologists who make their living studying life hate the idea of living consciousness. It simply doesn’t fit any equation. They need biology to be a hard science, one that defines functions and structures and explains their dynamics over time. Consciousness does neither.

Science demands objectivity. Since consciousness is subjective, it cannot be classified objectively. Biologists who are adamant in their denial of consciousness make fossils of living things, the better to study them. Reason demands that life be reduced to machines. But when reason forces subjectivity into its mold, it petrifies thought. Petrified thought is mere fossilism. It may be convenient for technologists to reduce subjects into objects, but by negating consciousness we avoid the question of meaning. So, science in its quest for objectivity becomes devoid of meaning.

Apparently objectivity is noble. If we leave meaning aside we can get at the facts. Facts are more important than truth. The search for truth involves taking sides, and since taking sides is partisan, it is best to be neutral.

But inaction is not a virtue. As Edmund Burke put it, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal also warns us against the refusal to act. According to his wager, If God doesn’t exist and we do nothing, no harm is done. But if God exists and we are neutral, we are doomed to spiritual stagnation.

The problem of accepting the idea of consciousness is obvious. While consciousness exists everywhere in nature, it transcends nature. For atheists and agnostics there can be no transcendence. Everything must be explained by physical events and natural phenomenon. The very idea of consciousness implies the supernatural, for if consciousness exists, then surely there is higher consciousness and Divinity exists. For this reason evolutionists must deny the existence of consciousness even while it is self evident. They insist on a scrupulous “objectivity” even when such neutrality becomes intellectually dishonest. They must remain neutral, because they understand the consequences of accepting the reality of consciousness.

Pascal challenges this neutrality. The reality of consciousness implies the divine reality. And if God exists, Inaction becomes unacceptable. Neutrality is not an option. If Divinity exists, we cannot be neutral. We must act. Inaction will have consequences. At best, agnosticism rewards us with nothing. At worst, we may miss the opportunity to develop higher consciousness. Neutrality is not acceptable, for inaction is also a form of action. By doing nothing, we risk our souls.

Shakespeare signals as much in Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat.

And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Darwin’s law of the jungle traps the birds and beasts in a struggle for survival; yet the human form of life offers the chance to seek out meaning. Scientists eschew meaning: it has no place in the universe. With study we can extract the secrets of nature; we can use our craft to exploit the earth. With fire and steel we can conquer the elements and rule the animals. We can create wealth and value. But meaning has no value other than for amusement.

By avoiding meaning, atheists robed as scientists refuse the call of the human form of life. This is cowardice. Apparently neutral and “objective” Agnosticism is clad in the cloak of innocence. But a sinister neutrality has its consequences. In his Jungian analysis of mythology Joseph Campbell points out that the hero’s refusal of the call to adventure results in tragedy. ( Campbell, Joseph (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 23.)

"Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or 'culture,' the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire or renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration."

The Agnostic Hero: Inaction is Tragic

Homer’s Achilles, was the principle among the warriors of Agamemnon, who strove to tear down the walls of Troy. A demigod, the son of Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis, he refused to fight, sulking in his tent as the war raged about him. His refusal to act is the tragedy of the Iliad.

In the more ancient Mahabharata of Vyasa, When Arjuna is called upon to act and press the battle to his rival cousins at the battle of Kurukshetra, he hesitates. His neutrality is ridiculed by Krishna who points out that it is impossible not to act. One must act; to fail to seize the opportunity is cowardice. The human form of life is an uncommon gift. Arjuna’s inaction is agnostic: he has good reasons for not committing himself. In the end, his most heroic struggle is within himself. He renounces his inaction and dedicates himself.

Arjuna despondent

In the end objectivism leads either to hedonistic action in pursuit of sensual enjoyment or inaction. Hedonism is meaningless; animal sense pleasure. Inaction is apparently noble, but in the end, it is mere stagnation. Arjuna’s heroism is exemplary: Action in dedication is superior to inaction.

The idea of consciousness as transcendent substance, then, has consequences both moral and ethical. It is a game-changer. If we come to the conclusion that consciousness exists apart from matter, that it has some supernatural being, we must move beyond ordinary logic to see the consequences of consciousness.

Reason may have a useful purpose in exploiting the virtual reality that surrounds us. But when it comes to consciousness, I must learn to transcend the use of reason. Reality plus consciousness refers to an augmented perception of the world. Reason is only a function of consciousness: it cannot reveal the whole.

The eye cannot see itself. It can intuit or infer its existence through the power of vision. With a mirror I can infer the power of eyesight from the mirror image. But the eye cannot see itself. I need no rational explanation to “prove” that the eye sees. Nor am I an agnostic until such proof is made. In the same way, reason may reveal many things through logical vision, but cannot understand from whence it arises.

The soul may see the self through spiritual introspection, but reason is a poor instrument for spiritual revelation. Reason advances towards proof through the process of elimination and doubt. By understanding what something is not we can grope our way through the dark and discover what it is. Reason tells us what is not and by doing so helps us to arrive at conclusions. But it is difficult for reason to discover what the mind is. Reason can only say it is not this, not that. The very analytic power that helps us uncover the inner workings of the atom tends to self-destruct when trying to understand the human mind. We can only dissect and dissect further until nothing is left but a bloody mess. To watch the mind thinking is an exercise in endless regression, the espejismo of Jorge Luis Borges. If I sit in the barber’s chair and look at myself in the mirror I can see a mirror behind me. My own image is reflected endlessly in mirror after mirror. When I think, who is thinking?

And if I can catch myself thinking of the thinker who thinks the thought, who is thinking of that? The infinite regression ends in a paradox that paralyzes thought.

It is cumbersome to be metacognitive about metacognition; thought becomes petrified and fossilized. Vaudeville genius W.C. Fields had an amazing juggling act. As “The Great McGonigle” he would juggle 49 cigar boxes at a time. When asked later in his career why he had given up juggling, he explained, “Well, I used to be a great juggler. But when day I read a book on it. After that I thought about what I was doing, and I couldn’t concentrate. I had to give it up.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDUqOwrtvI If a juggler stops to think about each motion he goes through, he can no longer juggle. Too much metacognition kills our ability to think. Once we fossilize consciousness we can no longer see it. The dissection of thought creates a bloody mess. A virtuoso violinist must not stop to think about the technique involved in playing each note. He must play music. We cannot possibly slow thought down enough to see where thought comes from, how it flows, or how the thought dynamic functions.

The monitoring of mental processes is called metacognition. Of all mental processes that defy scientific understanding, memory is king. The dismantling of memory may be attempted in retrospect; Marcel Proust spends three volumes of his novel “La Recherche du Temps Perdu” in reconstructing the memory that flows from the fragrance of a madeleine, a kind of sponge cake. In Ficciones, Argentinian writer and philosopher Jorge Luis Borges gives us the story of Funes El Memorioso, the story of a young man with a photographic memory. Irineo Funes has such powerful metacognitive capacity that he can remember in complete detail everything that takes place in the course of a random day gone by; but the memory of a day requires an entire 24 hour period to reconstruct. James Joyce is more celebrated for his Novel Ulysses in which he reconstructs a day of consciousness in the life of his hero Stephen Daedalus, which takes him 700 pages to unwrap.

Metacognition is no small feat. If it took the genius of James Joyce seven years to recapitulate a day in the life, or Irineo Funes 24 hours to reconstruct a day of memory, we would take lifetimes to recapitulate a life of conscious thinking and memories. The attempt to unwind the labyrinths of consciousness through metacognition is similar to Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Turtle. It was this kind of espejismo or infinite regression that fascinated Borges and was often the subject of his stories as for example The Library of Babel.

The reduction of consciousness to a formula or meme leads to a number of espejismos such as those found in Borges, because consciousness is infinite. As long as we focus on the infinite problems presented by the finite world, we can at least console ourselves with progress when the secrets of the finite elements unfold themselves. But to begin studying the infinite and we fall into a vortex.

Infinite divided by infinite is infinite. Infinite minus infinite is infinite. This is described in the Śrī Iśopaniṣad:

oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate

pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate

Take the infinite. Divide by infinite. What do you have? Infinite. Add infinite to infinite. Is it any less than infinite? Multiply infinite by infinite and infinite remains.

How to analyse the infinite? It is impossible. The scientists resolve the question by saying, “Infinite is impossible. It does not exist.” But simply because something defies analysis does not prohibit its existence. It merely means that you lack the tools to dissect the infinite. It is hubris to think otherwise. The scientific method presupposes that infinite does not exist and that consciousness does not exist. Since these assumptions prohibit a priori any understanding of consciousness, science is insufficient as a method for understanding.

This has not prevented many thinkers from doing their best to apply the scientific method to an analysis of consciousness or providing us with a taxonomy of consciousness.

Ken Wilber, author of Integral Psychology

Ken Wilber for example created his so-called “Integral Psychology” as a tool for harmonizing scientific and psychological paradigms with the mystic knowledge of the east, especially borrowing from the Bengali thinker Sri Aurobindo.

Wilber's analysis of the infinite within the infinite brings him to think of reality as a system of “holons” nested individual compononets that encompass and transcend an infinite system of components and particles. His holons evolve from particle systems to atomic systems and cellular entities under the influence of consciousness. In the life sciences, cells evolve towards organisms, which include cells and transcend them as they evolve toward living beings in societies, and more complex entities such as civilizations. But even Wilber’s system of quadrants tends to depend on the materialistic paradigm that considers consciousness a function of matter.

What if the conscious world were not a function of physical reality. What if it were the other way around? What if instead of accepting a priori that “matter” is the basis of reality, what would happen if we base the infinite regression of holons on a conscious integer?