Confabulation
My semester is going to be busy. I'm overloading with an extra course.. but I'm taking it pass/fail, so it shouldn't be too bad.. if by chance I do fail it.. I can't graduate though... so let's hope it goes well. I really love the subject matter though, so it should be okay. Today alone I was out of my room from 10:15 until 8:15 at night... I had a class... then errands and lunch.. then another class, and another class, and then 2 hours at ILL and had to run errands to do some shopping... i was out of sugar... which should never happen.
I think of this semester.. the animal learning class is going to kick my ass... and possibly the work in the two philosophy classes grade wise.
Health Psychology looks like it will be fairly easy. And I will spend most classes with Laura making fun of our two favorite people together for the first time in the same class... the girl who asks stupid questions and the girl who makes stupid comments. It sounds mean... but really.. it's frustrating. The stupid question girl used to drink smart water in class.. which I found incredibly amusing. And the stupid comment girl was just naive... she was the one who thought pot made you crazy and that the propaganda videos of the 30s were fairly accurate. Besides those 3 people, I'm not overly familiar with anyone else in the class.
My Romantic Relationships seminar seems very interesting... I really like the professor too. And he guessed that I just got engaged before I said anything when we were supposed to say something interesting... which surprised me.. but I guess he is always very observant of "human mating" issues as he refers to them. Laura is also taking the class pass/fail.. so we are going to be partners on everything and slack off together. And that girl who is superficial but intelligent and who annoys me because of that.. is in that class too. hmm. as well as Captain Jack Sparrow.. and some others from the last seminar.. so that's nice.
And I think I'm going to enjoy my Free Will class even though I don't really know any of the people and it ties my brain into knots. I like Nadelhoffer, the prof,.. he insists that we call him Thomas and he seems so genuinely interested in what he's talking about that he talks really fast and makes it more interesting to listen to him. He also knows all these fascinating psychology stuff because he's also an experimental psychologist. So yeah.. it'll be fun. And Guy is in my class.. I've always wanted to have a class with him to see what he was like as a philosophy major.
Oh and in my free will class... Amy Eardley is there.. which is very weird for me.
Speaking of free will... that class today made me think a lot... he merely asked us to define freedom of will.. and we couldn't come up with a satisfactory definition that seems to work for most circumstances... so we tried it from the other side.... deciding what would be it be to be unfree so to speak.. what is an unfree choice.. and we had difficulty with that too...
And I got to thinking... really... we are unfree in our freedom.. by which I mean that we are forced to be free.. we are forced to always make choices... even if we don't make a choice... that is a choice.. so we are always chained by this freedom of will. Or at least the illusion of freedom of will. And this is an unfortunate view for me to take if I want to go into existential therapy... as the field typically finds that it is our freedom to choose which is the great part and it encourages us to take responsibility for our choices. Although in general I suppose existential literature finds it rather negative at times too.. I mean look at Sartre with the notions of anguish and despair... these were related to the fact that we are chained to freedom... that we must rely on our own choices.
Sartre:
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth."
In related news, on a whim tonight I ordered Camus' notebooks.. which are really just scattered bits of his thoughts and observations... but there is something about his words and his ideas that I find endlessly intriguing.
Although, to be fair, I also ordered several Garfield TV specials on DVD. So I don't know what that says about my intellectual prowess.
In other news... we discussed something quite intriguing in free will... in regard to what one man believes it to be... as many already know... the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain and the left side of the body to the right hemisphere. And the area of the brain that forms speech is in the left side... so, in terms of milliseconds, the brain can articulate about something its holding in its right hand faster than it can for something its holding in its left because otherwise it has to cross sides and that takes time. Now here's where it gets interesting... in cases of extreme seizures or other medical reasons, sometimes the kind of brain highway connecting the two sides is surgically severed... these people are considered to have split-brains. Here's where it gets fascinating... if you put some kind of barrier out from the nose so that the one eye sees one thing and the other eye sees another.... and then you place an object in each of the hands... the person will be able to articulate what is in the right hand.. but not what is in the left. And more interesting yet... let's say the object in the right hand is a chicken.. and the object in the left is a shovel... the person will afterward only consciously at least.. remember seeing the chicken... but if the objects are put in front of him with other objects... he will pick out the shovel too but he won't remember having seen it.. if you ask why he picked it... he will immediately come up with some kind of association of the two.. like "oh because the shovel would go with the chicken so you can clean the waste out of the coop" .. and he honestly believes that's why he picked the shovel.... this making up reality is known as confabulation... this making something up to try to form coherence in one's mind. And that is what the scientist that worked on these studies i believe.. felt that free will or its illusion.. or perhaps just consciousness itself really is... just the brain being presented with stimuli and confabulating things in order to create order or something coherent that it can follow even if that is not really how things are.. maybe that is all our idea of free will stems from.. we can't fully understand how all the circumstances of our lives determine all of our decisions.. so we have created the illusion that we are freely choosing everything.... an interesting thought at least.
Ok.. anyway.. I best get to bed... all my days are busy... sigh.
I think of this semester.. the animal learning class is going to kick my ass... and possibly the work in the two philosophy classes grade wise.
Health Psychology looks like it will be fairly easy. And I will spend most classes with Laura making fun of our two favorite people together for the first time in the same class... the girl who asks stupid questions and the girl who makes stupid comments. It sounds mean... but really.. it's frustrating. The stupid question girl used to drink smart water in class.. which I found incredibly amusing. And the stupid comment girl was just naive... she was the one who thought pot made you crazy and that the propaganda videos of the 30s were fairly accurate. Besides those 3 people, I'm not overly familiar with anyone else in the class.
My Romantic Relationships seminar seems very interesting... I really like the professor too. And he guessed that I just got engaged before I said anything when we were supposed to say something interesting... which surprised me.. but I guess he is always very observant of "human mating" issues as he refers to them. Laura is also taking the class pass/fail.. so we are going to be partners on everything and slack off together. And that girl who is superficial but intelligent and who annoys me because of that.. is in that class too. hmm. as well as Captain Jack Sparrow.. and some others from the last seminar.. so that's nice.
And I think I'm going to enjoy my Free Will class even though I don't really know any of the people and it ties my brain into knots. I like Nadelhoffer, the prof,.. he insists that we call him Thomas and he seems so genuinely interested in what he's talking about that he talks really fast and makes it more interesting to listen to him. He also knows all these fascinating psychology stuff because he's also an experimental psychologist. So yeah.. it'll be fun. And Guy is in my class.. I've always wanted to have a class with him to see what he was like as a philosophy major.
Oh and in my free will class... Amy Eardley is there.. which is very weird for me.
Speaking of free will... that class today made me think a lot... he merely asked us to define freedom of will.. and we couldn't come up with a satisfactory definition that seems to work for most circumstances... so we tried it from the other side.... deciding what would be it be to be unfree so to speak.. what is an unfree choice.. and we had difficulty with that too...
And I got to thinking... really... we are unfree in our freedom.. by which I mean that we are forced to be free.. we are forced to always make choices... even if we don't make a choice... that is a choice.. so we are always chained by this freedom of will. Or at least the illusion of freedom of will. And this is an unfortunate view for me to take if I want to go into existential therapy... as the field typically finds that it is our freedom to choose which is the great part and it encourages us to take responsibility for our choices. Although in general I suppose existential literature finds it rather negative at times too.. I mean look at Sartre with the notions of anguish and despair... these were related to the fact that we are chained to freedom... that we must rely on our own choices.
Sartre:
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth."
In related news, on a whim tonight I ordered Camus' notebooks.. which are really just scattered bits of his thoughts and observations... but there is something about his words and his ideas that I find endlessly intriguing.
Although, to be fair, I also ordered several Garfield TV specials on DVD. So I don't know what that says about my intellectual prowess.
In other news... we discussed something quite intriguing in free will... in regard to what one man believes it to be... as many already know... the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain and the left side of the body to the right hemisphere. And the area of the brain that forms speech is in the left side... so, in terms of milliseconds, the brain can articulate about something its holding in its right hand faster than it can for something its holding in its left because otherwise it has to cross sides and that takes time. Now here's where it gets interesting... in cases of extreme seizures or other medical reasons, sometimes the kind of brain highway connecting the two sides is surgically severed... these people are considered to have split-brains. Here's where it gets fascinating... if you put some kind of barrier out from the nose so that the one eye sees one thing and the other eye sees another.... and then you place an object in each of the hands... the person will be able to articulate what is in the right hand.. but not what is in the left. And more interesting yet... let's say the object in the right hand is a chicken.. and the object in the left is a shovel... the person will afterward only consciously at least.. remember seeing the chicken... but if the objects are put in front of him with other objects... he will pick out the shovel too but he won't remember having seen it.. if you ask why he picked it... he will immediately come up with some kind of association of the two.. like "oh because the shovel would go with the chicken so you can clean the waste out of the coop" .. and he honestly believes that's why he picked the shovel.... this making up reality is known as confabulation... this making something up to try to form coherence in one's mind. And that is what the scientist that worked on these studies i believe.. felt that free will or its illusion.. or perhaps just consciousness itself really is... just the brain being presented with stimuli and confabulating things in order to create order or something coherent that it can follow even if that is not really how things are.. maybe that is all our idea of free will stems from.. we can't fully understand how all the circumstances of our lives determine all of our decisions.. so we have created the illusion that we are freely choosing everything.... an interesting thought at least.
Ok.. anyway.. I best get to bed... all my days are busy... sigh.