Home (ego death and self-control cybernetics)
There is a level of control beyond the ego that gives rise to the ego's control actions, which are not self-originating. Personal self-control is secondary-level control. The ego effectively and apparently is the only origin of its actions, but this isolated autonomy of the ego's power is illusory. The ego's power is an epiphenomenon; a mere appearance that arises as a result of the more ultimate driving factor beyond or outside the ego. The primary level of control is the underlying ground of being, or block universe, which gives rise to the ego's entire stream of thoughts and control actions.
A hypothetical control hierarchy could include a controller outside the spacetime block, the fated block universe, creatures, and finally puppets, fictional characters, virtual agents, and cybernetic devices. The same logic that implies that creatures are predetermined seems to imply that the hypothetical controller outside the system would be predetermined as well, unless that controller were exempt from the logic that collapses control agency for creatures inside the spacetime block. Systems of morality serve to bolster the delusion of sovereign autonomy of each agent. These moral systems make the mind experience life in the form of an individual moral agent that cannot logically exist so literally as it is experienced. Deterministic models of the world seem obligated to go out of their way to promote moral agency and moral freedom, to compensate for cancelling out some fundamental assumptions about freedom.
Like a programmer, a controller outside the system can disclaim direct responsibility for the control-actions of the created creatures, but the higher controller remains indirectly and ultimately responsible. When a computer artist creates a fractal image, the artist does not directly define every bit of the fractal, but defines general equations and thus indirectly creates every detail. So has the hypothetical higher controller caused every action of the agents residing in the spacetime block, while refusing to take direct responsibility for each action. Insofar as the controller outside the system avoids direct manipulation of the details of their lives, this higher control agent can give the created agents a limited form of freedom, a freedom which is largely self-deception. A controller outside the system would have to withhold the knowledge of ego transcendence from at least part of the block universe, to provide some time and mental space for intelligent creatures to live as seemingly autonomous agents.
Delusion is the sense of self-origination of one's thoughts and actions, and the experience of being an autonomous agent who is a potential moral subject. The egoic mind is arranged with the ego-entity at the center of personal experiencing and action, and assumes that the ego, the cybernetic self-control coil inside the mind, is the primary and independent origin of its actions. The ego-transcendent mind is not so firmly structured around the ego projection as an ultimate origin of personal thoughts and actions, but acknowledges the priority of the underlying block universe, which controls or gives rise to the ego's stream of control actions [gives rise to the stream of acts of will]. Moral freedom is legitimate as an experience but not as an unqualified logical proposition.
My special interest in .atheism would probably have to do with the logic of self-control and the convoluted question of the ways in which we logically can and cannot be our own prime mover.
Also, atheism exists largely as a refutation, an argument, that engages with the logic of Christianity in order to refute it -- broken logic such as the blatant self-contradictions about responsibility in the Bible. If there is one thing that is relevant to atheism, it is the accusations that Christianity makes about our status as guilty self-responsible agents. Thus any blatant contradictions that the Bible contains about guilt, and our responsibility for it in the face of God's claimed omnipotence, is of strong if not central interest to atheist thinking. I should look up this topic, and the related verses, in Asimov's study of the Bible.
I am more or less pulling out of the net for a few months to take care of business.
The few postings before mine were about "the concept of 'God', and how that god would act". You still have not acknowledged that, so it appears that you are singling me out. I am not justifying the relevance of my post to whatever was the main intention of the thread, but rather, its relevance to the 3 or so postings before mine. My posting is no more "patently out of place in sci.skeptic, and talk.atheism" than the other "postings on this subject". In defending my relevance, the first thing to do is capture and send you the postings others wrote about God, freedom, foreknowledge, and the idea of "God's plan". Then, the fairly strong connections to my posting become evident.
>I was thinking more of those people who use the excuse "It's all in God's plan."
>I don't agree with such people either. Too often they seem to assume they're clued into which events are in God's plan, and which events are contrary.
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>I agree with that.
>I wonder why God created things that were not perfect. I am glad that he did, though. Otherwise he wouldn't have created me.
>Well, how do you define imperfect? Your God being omnipotent and omniscient, I'd be very surprised at him creating anything that wasn't perfect, at least from his point of view and for his purposes.
>I would be very surprised if an omnipotent and omiscient God did not, from time to time, do surprising things.
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>Untrue, God could have a laissez-faire policy. That is, God might not be a micro-manager.
>Also, the concept of a "plan" varies. For instance, it's the plan of the president of my company to make money. He doesn't however have planned out the exact times that things will happen and have them scheduled. The fact that I am in a certain office may not mean that there was a plan for where everyone sat, but there was a plan about what type of office people would get and a rough location of where it would be (ie, the plan is that I am placed next to so and so, not that I'm to be in room 217).
>So likewise, an omnipotent and omniscient God may know that you are going to have a fender bender tomorrow, but that doesn't mean God planned this out.
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>Untrue, God could have a laissez-faire policy. That is, God might not be a micro-manager.
>Things you don't care about aren't contrary to your plan.
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>Untrue, God could have a laissez-faire policy. That is, God might not be a micro-manager.
"The concept of a plan varies." We need more of this clarifying of concepts, rather than a simplistic, static, or rigid handling of terms. In what level of detail is planning done? There is planning and there is planning. There are many modes, many ways of delegating and controlling and causing.
>the president of my company to make money. He doesn't however have planned out the exact times that things will happen and have them scheduled. The fact that I am in a certain office may not mean that there was a plan for where everyone sat, but there was a plan about what type of office people would get and a rough location of where it would be (ie, the plan is that I am placed next to so and so, not that I'm to be in room 217).
>So likewise, an omnipotent and omniscient God may know that you are going to have a fender bender tomorrow, but that doesn't mean God planned this out.
>When you create a fractal, you don't define each point directly. You define a simple, small set of equations -- your "plan" -- and the details follow at a lower, more detailed level.
>This is how God firmly controls his plan, but not the details. He "directly" controls the plan, by defining certain events that serve as pull-handles -- those points at which God touches or handles earthly events directly. God does not directly manipulate all our "free actions" but these actions are indirectly forced by his parameters of Creation.
>This is how God can be "angry at Satan" whose iniquities have even reached up into heaven. God may have either directly or indirectly defined the conditions of Creation to include a global president who climbs onto of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of global government. God is all-powerful, yet he acts angry at this Catholic church, especially its leaders in the last days. He knows this will happen, and He is omnipotent, so he could stop it, or "could have prevented it" when he caused the Creation. But stopping this, or other, sins, would interfere with his plan, which is to grant us the sense of freedom for awhile and then re-assert His omnipotence. Since he is perpendicular to all time, he has already established these mathematical boundary-conditions on the semi-virtual universe-fractal that we are caught in.
>The only way God could be angry at parts of his own, omnipotently created fractal universe, even half-consistently, is if he does not directly cause the Roman Catholic apostasy to happen. But in defining whatever boundary conditions serve as his pull-points, and in seeing omnisciently the results that follow, he must be held somehow responsible for the actions of the harlot Church. He knew that if he defined the universe fractal this way, she would do the actions she is bound to do -- so how could he then really be angry at her? In Romans it points out explicitly that the Bible is illogical and self-contradictory on this point. The Bible explicitly deconstructs itself on the topic of God's anger at sinners in Romans 9:18:
>"So then He has mercy on whomever He wills (chooses) and He hardens (makes subborn and unyielding the heart of) whomever He wills. You will say to me, Why then does He still find fault and blame us [for sinning]? For who can resist and withstand His will?
>But who are you, a mere man, to criticise and contradict and answer back to God? Will what is formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? [see Isa.29:16, 45:9] Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same mass (lump) one vessel for beauty and distinction and honorable use, and another for menial or ignoble and dishonorable use? What if God, although fully intending to show [the awfulness of] His wrath and to make known His power and authority, has tolerated with much patience the vessels (objects) of [His] anger which are ripe for destruction? [see Prov. 16:4] And [what if] He thus purposed to make known and show the wealth of His glory in [dealing with] the vessels (objects) of His mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory..."
>(written by Paul -- Amplified Bible)
>Notice the blatant violation of logic here, a flashing beacon. This is not even consistently shaped like an argument. Right in the middle of what should be a reasoned argument, Paul pulls a classic Deus ex machina, dropping a God down to the stage to bridge the logical gap by divine fiat. Paul says essentially "this system of responsible moral agency is blatantly self-contradictory -- but in the contradiction between God's omnipotence and his blaming us, you must submit to this contraction for the following reason: God is omnipotent and so you are in no position to reject his system of moral responsibility. You have no choice but to accept the blame that this omnipotent, almighty god places on you."
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>There is 'contrary', and there is 'contrary'. Are Satan's actions 'contrary' to our omnipotent God's plan that God himself created and forced to happen in its entirety, with all its ramifications? Obviously, in some sense, nothing could possibly be 'contrary' to an omnipotent god's plan. There must be some other, weaker sense in which some things can be called 'contrary' to a god's omnipotently realized plan.
>I wonder why God created things that were not perfect. I am glad that he did, though. Otherwise he wouldn't have created me.
>Well, how do you define imperfect? Your God being omnipotent and omniscient, I'd be very surprised at him creating anything that wasn't perfect, at least from his point of view and for his purposes.
>I would be very surprised if an omnipotent and omiscient God did not, from time to time, do surprising things.
>In some sense, everything in the Creation is perfect, because it is all, in some sense, God's responsibility. But in a weaker sense, God gave away some of his responsibility to make beings that had, in some sense, 'freedom', and the corresponding imperfection and delusion. On some "higher" or "underlying" level, you are 'perfect'. In some ways, though, we may say you are 'imperfect'.
I have expounded upon the idea of "God's plan" and have shown that his anger at Satan and at the false church of the antichrist contradicts the assertion that "everything is in God's plan". If everything that happens is in God's plan, and He is omnipotent, then it is inconsistent for Him to be angry at Satan, antichrist, and the false church, which are all in his plan. How could an omnipotent entity ever be angry?
I trust that you have considered the thread as well as you say. If this review of it fails to demonstrate the significant relevance of my postings, then I must conclude that you are either biased against my posting, or a rigid thinker. I have contributed at least as much insight into the idea of "God's plan" as the postings which introduced the idea.
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
>Untrue, God could have a laissez-faire policy. That is, God might not be a micro-manager.
>Also, the concept of a "plan" varies. For instance, it's the plan of
Good expression! We need more of this clarifying of concepts, rather than a simplistic, static, or rigid handling of terms. In what level of detail is planning done? There is planning and there is planning. There are many modes, many ways of delegating and controlling and causing.
>the president of my company to make money. He doesn't however have planned out the exact times that things will happen and have them scheduled. The fact that I am in a certain office may not mean that there was a plan for where everyone sat, but there was a plan about what type of office people would get and a rough location of where it would be (ie, the plan is that I am placed next to so and so, not that I'm to be in room 217).
>So likewise, an omnipotent and omniscient God may know that you are going to have a fender bender tomorrow, but that doesn't mean God planned this out.
When you create a fractal, you don't define each point directly. You define a simple, small set of equations -- your "plan" -- and the details follow at a lower, more detailed level.
This is how God firmly controls his plan, but not the details. He "directly" controls the plan, by defining certain events that serve as pull-handles -- those points at which God touches or handles earthly events directly. God does not directly manipulate all our "free actions" but these actions are indirectly forced by his parameters of Creation.
This is how God can be "angry at Satan" whose iniquities have even reached up into heaven. God may have either directly or indirectly defined the conditions of Creation to include a global president who climbs onto of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of global government. God is all-powerful, yet he acts angry at this Catholic church, especially its leaders in the last days. He knows this will happen, and He is omnipotent, so he could stop it, or "could have prevented it" when he caused the Creation. But stopping this, or other, sins, would interfere with his plan, which is to grant us the sense of freedom for awhile and then re-assert His omnipotence. Since he is perpendicular to all time, he has already established these mathematical boundary-conditions on the semi-virtual universe-fractal that we are caught in.
The only way God could be angry at parts of his own, omnipotently created fractal universe, even half-consistently, is if he does not directly cause the Roman Catholic apostasy to happen. But in defining whatever boundary conditions serve as his pull-points, and in seeing omnisciently the results that follow, he must be held somehow responsible for the actions of the harlot Church. He knew that if he defined the universe fractal this way, she would do the actions she is bound to do -- so how could he then really be angry at her? In Romans it points out explicitly that the Bible is illogical and self-contradictory on this point. The Bible explicitly deconstructs itself on the topic of God's anger at sinners in Romans 9:18:
"So then He has mercy on whomever He wills (chooses) and He hardens (makes subborn and unyielding the heart of) whomever He wills. You will say to me, Why then does He still find fault and blame us [for sinning]? For who can resist and withstand His will?
But who are you, a mere man, to criticise and contradict and answer back to God? Will what is formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? [see Isa.29:16, 45:9] Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same mass (lump) one vessel for beauty and distinction and honorable use, and another for menial or ignoble and dishonorable use? What if God, although fully intending to show [the awfulness of] His wrath and to make known His power and authority, has tolerated with much patience the vessels (objects) of [His] anger which are ripe for destruction? [see Prov. 16:4] And [what if] He thus purposed to make known and show the wealth of His glory in [dealing with] the vessels (objects) of His mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory..."
(written by Paul -- Amplified Bible)
Notice the blatant violation of logic here, a flashing beacon. This is not even consistently shaped like an argument. Right in the middle of what should be a reasoned argument, Paul pulls a classic Deus ex machina, dropping a God down to the stage to bridge the logical gap by divine fiat. Paul says essentially "this system of responsible moral agency is blatantly self-contradictory -- but in the contradiction between God's omnipotence and his blaming us, you must submit to this contraction for the following reason: God is omnipotent and so you are in no position to reject his system of moral responsibility. You have no choice but to accept the blame that this omnipotent, almighty god places on you."
>If you believe that god is omnipotent and omniscient, then there _are_ no events that are contrary to his plan.
There is 'contrary', and there is 'contrary'. Are Satan's actions 'contrary' to our omnipotent God's plan that God himself created and forced to happen in its entirety, with all its ramifications? Obviously, in some sense, nothing could possibly be 'contrary' to an omnipotent god's plan. There must be some other, weaker sense in which some things can be called 'contrary' to a god's omnipotently realized plan.
>I wonder why God created things that were not perfect. I am glad that he did, though. Otherwise he wouldn't have created me.
>Well, how do you define imperfect? Your God being omnipotent and omniscient, I'd be very surprised at him creating anything that wasn't perfect, at least from his point of view and for his purposes.
>I would be very surprised if an omnipotent and omiscient God did not, from time to time, do surprising things.
In some sense, everything in the Creation is perfect, because it is all, in some sense, God's responsibility. But in a weaker sense, God gave away some of his responsibility to make beings that had, in some sense, 'freedom', and the corresponding imperfection and delusion. On some "higher" or "underlying" level, you are 'perfect'. In some ways, though, we may say you are 'imperfect'.
The fractal/holographic universe precludes substantial moral agency
>[Basically, it's a discussion on how "God" could act in certain circumstances.]
>This is patently out of place in sci.skeptic, and talk.atheism. Please leave talk.atheism out of future postings on this subject.
It is not out of place. It is not a discussion on how "God" could act in certain circumstances. It is a model of spacetime that precludes responsible moral agency. It points out probably the most deliberate, blatant contradiction of logic in the Bible, regarding God holding us personally responsible for what He forced us to do.
My model of the universe-as-fractal or Creation as as fractal defined by boundary conditions is original because it shows the implications for agency.
You should read it more carefully if you are interested in Bible contradictions about agency, and moral implications of the Cosmic Anthropic Principle. I should lay out these connections more... I can't blame you for skimming and waving it aside. But there are highly original ideas there - they cannot be bracketed off as irrelevant.
I don't know what the original concept for the thread was, but the past few posts were concerned with issues close to these.
Now that _Metaprogamming_ by Lilly is available on the web, I was able to find my key interest, true 'cybernetics' (control and feedback, and control-agency) within it. The following trimmed material is probably the essence of Lilly's book, including motivations and conclusions.
http://www.city-net.com/~mbt/pamithb.html
http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed/asc/drugs/self.metaprogramming.html
From chapter 2 of _Programming And Metaprogramming in the
Human Biocomputer_
John Lilly, M.D.
1967, 1968
Excerpts:
To become impartial, dispassionate, and general purpose, objective, and open-ended, one must test and adjust the level of credence in each of his sets of beliefs [about personal control and being controlled by higher entities]. If ever Man is to be faced with real organisms with greater wisdom, greater intellect, greater minds than any single man has, then we must be open, unbiased, sensitive, general purpose, and dispassionate. Our needs for phantasies must have been analyzed and seen for what they are and are not or we will be in even graver troubles than we are today.
Our search for mentally healthy paths to human progress in the innermost realities depends upon progress in this area. Many men have floundered in this area of belief: I hope this work can help to find a way through one of our stickiest intellectual-emotional regions.
Most of these beliefs are ones which have been abandoned in the fields of endeavor called science. Such beliefs continue to be found in the field known as religion. Some of these beliefs are labeled in modern psychiatric medicine and anthropology as superstitions, psychotic beliefs, etc. Other persons present these beliefs in the writings called science fiction.
This set of basic postulates (or beliefs) is conceived and used to program several sessions with LSD-25 plus physical isolation in solitude. Above all these metaprograms to be experimented upon is one metaprogram of value to this subject: his overall policy is the intent to explore, to observe, to analyze. Hence there is an important additional basic metaprogram: analyze self to understand one's thinking and true motives more thoroughly. This is the conscious motivational strategy. At times this metaprogram dominates the scene, at times others do. The resolve exists, however, to generate a net effect with this instruction uppermost in the computer hierarchy.
Preliminary to the experiments in changing basic beliefs, many experiments with the profound physical isolation and solitude situation were carried out over a period of several years. These experiences were followed by combining the LSD-25 state and the physical isolation state in a second period of several years.
Basic Belief [about controllership] No. 2
The subject sought beings other than himself, not human, in whom he existed and who control him and other human beings. Thus the subject found whole new universes containing great varieties of beings, some greater than himself, some equal to himself, and some lesser than himself.
Those greater than himself were a set which was so huge in space-time as to make the subject feel as a mere mote in their sunbeam, a single microflash of energy in their time scale, my forty-five years are but an instant in their lifetime, a single thought in their vast computer, a mere particle in their assemblages of living cognitive units. He felt he was in the absolute unconscious of these beings. He experienced many more sets all so much greater than himself that they were almost inconceivable in their complexity, size and time scales.
Those beings which were close to the subject in complexity-size-time were dichotomized into the evil ones and good ones. The evil ones [potentially controlling, moral agents] (subject said) were busy with purposes so foreign to his own that he had many near-misses and almost fatal accidents in encounters with them; they were almost totally unaware of his existence and hence almost wiped him out, apparently without knowing it. The subject says that the good ones thought good thoughts to him, through him, and to one another. They were at least conceivably human and humane. He interpreted them as alien yet friendly. They were not so alien as to be completely removed from human beings in regard to their purposes and activities.
Some of these beings (the subject reported) are programming us in the long term. They nurture us. They experiment on us. They control the probability of our discovering and exploiting new science. He reports that discoveries such as nuclear energy, LSD-25, RNA-DNA, etc., are under probability control by these beings. Further, humans are tested by some of these beings and cared for by others. Some of them have programs which include our survival and progress. Others have programs which include oppositions to these good programs and include our ultimate demise as a species. Thus the subject interpreted the evil ones as willing to sacrifice us in their experiments; hence they are alien and removed from us. The subject reported with this set of beliefs that only limited choices are still available to us as a species. We are an ant colony in their laboratory.
Basic Belief No. 3
The subject assumed the existence of beings in whom humans exist and who directly control humans. This is a tighter control program than the previous one and assumes continuous day and night, second to second, control, as if each human being were a cell in a larger organism. Such beings insist upon activities in each human being totally under the control of the organism of which each human being is a part. In this state there is no free will and no freedom for an individual. This supra-self-metaprogram was entered twice by the subject; each time he had to leave it; for him it was too anxiety-provoking. In the first case he became a part of a vast computer in which he was one element. In the second case he was a thought in a much larger mind: being modified rapidly, flexibly and plastically.
The subject described the projected as-if-outside beings to be cognitional carnivores attempting to eat up his self-metaprogram and wrest control from him. As the various levels of metaprograms became straightened out in the subject, he was able to categorize and begin to control the various levels as they were presented during these experiments. As his apparently unconscious needs for credence in these beliefs were attenuated with analytic work, his freedom to move from one set of basic beliefs to another was increased and the anxiety associated with this kind of movement gradually disappeared.
A basic overall metaprogram was finally generated: For his own intellectual satisfaction the subject found that he best assume that all of the phenomena that took place existed only in his own brain and in his own mind. Other assumptions about the existence of these beings had become subjects suitable for research rather than subjects for blind (unconscious, conscious) belief for this person.
Progress in controlling the [otherworld] projection metaprogram resulted from the other universes experiments. Finally the subject understood and had become familiar with his need for phantasied other universes. Analytic work allowed him to bypass this need and penetrate into the cognitional multidimensional projection spaces. Experiments in programming in this innermost space showed results quite satisfying to a high degree of credence in the belief that all experiments in the series showed inner happenings without needing the participation of outer causes. The need for the constant use of outer causes was found to be a projected outward metaprogram to avoid taking personal responsibility for portions of the contents of his own mind. His dislike for certain kinds of his own nonsensical programs caused him to project them and thus avoid admitting they were his.
In summation, the subjectively apparent results of the experiments were to straighten out a good deal of the "nonsense" in this subject's computer. Through these experiments he was able to examine some warded-off beliefs and defensive structures accumulated throughout his life. The net result was a feeling of greater integration of self and a feeling of positive affect for the current structure of himself, combined with an improved skepticism of the validity of subjective judging of events in self.
Some objective testing of these essentially subjective judgments have been initiated through cooperation with other persons. Such objective testing is very difficult; this area needs a great deal of future research work. We need better investigative techniques, combining subjective and behavioral (verbal) techniques. The major feeling that one has after such experiences and experiments is that the fluidity and plasticity of one's computer has certain limits to it, and that those limits have been enlarged somewhat by the experiments. How long such enlargement lasts and to what extent are still not known of course. A certain amount of continued critical skepticism about and in the self-metaprogram (and it its felt changes) is very necessary for a scientist exploring these areas.
Obviously this point of view does not test the "objective" validity of the experiences. It merely assumes that, if one plugs the proper beliefs into the metaprogrammatic levels of the computer that, the computer will then construct (from the myriads of elements in memory) those possible experiences that fit this particular set of rules. Those programs will be run off and those displays made, which are appropriate to the basic assumptions and their stored programming.
Another way of looking at the results and at the metaprogramming is that we start out with a basic set of beliefs, believe them to be "objectively" valid (not just "formally" valid) and do the experiments and interpret them with this point of view. If one proceeds along these lines, one can quickly reach the end of one's ability to interpret the results. One finds that one cannot grasp conceptually the phenomena that ensue. With this metatheory, this type of experience is not just the computer operating in isolation, confinement and solitude on preprogrammed material being elicited from memory, but is really in communication with other beings, and the influence on one's self by them is real.
Thus in this case one is assuming the existence theorem in regard to the basic assumptions, i.e., there is objective validity to them quite outside of self and one's making the assumptions. This epistemological position can also be investigated by these methods. This is somewhat the position that was taken by Aldous Huxley and by various other groups. For example, pursuit of certain non-Western philosophies as the Ultimate Truth was generated by these persons.
One cannot take sides on these two widely diverse epistemological bases. On the one hand we have the basic assumptions of the modern scientists and on the other hand the basic assumptions of those interested in the religious aspect of existence. If one is to remain philosophic and objective in this field, one must dispassionately survey both of these extreme metatheoretical positions.
One can easily be panicked by the invasion of the self-metaprograms by automatic existence programs from below the level of one's awareness, programs which may strike at the existence of self, at the control of self, at the origins of self, at the destinations of self, and of the relations of self to a known external reality.
Those who must find a communication with other beings in this kind of experiment will apparently find it. One must be aware that there are (as in the child) needs within one's self for finding certain kinds of phenomena and espousing them as the ultimate truth. Such childlike needs needs dictate their own metaprograms.
I am not agreeing with any extreme group in interpreting these results. It is convenient for me to assume, as of this time, that these phenomena all occurred within the biocomputer. ... At the moment this is the position which I find to be most tenable in a logical sense. I do not wish to be dogmatic about this. I wish to indicate that this is where I stand as of the writing describing this particular stage of the work. I await demonstrations of the validity of alternative existence theorems.
If ever good, hard-nosed, common sense, unequivocal evidence for the existence of currently unaccepted assumptions is presented by those who have thoroughly attenuated their childish needs for particular beliefs, I hope I am prepared to examine it dispassionately and thoroughly. The pitfalls of group interlock are quite as insidious as the pitfalls of one's own phantasizing. Group acceptance of undemonstrated existence theorems and of seductive beliefs adds no more validity to the theorems and to the beliefs than one's own phantasizing can add. Anaclitic group behavior is no better than solitudinous phantasies of the truth. Where agreed-upon truth can exist in the science of the innermost realities is not and cannot yet be settled. Beginnings have been made by many men, satisfying proofs by one.
XI -- UNKNOWN (above and in Biocomputer)
X -- SUPRA-SPECIES-METAPROGRAM (beyond metaprogramming)
IX -- SUPRA-SELF-METAPROGRAMS (to be metaprogrammed)
VIII -- SELF-METAPROGRAM - awareness (to metaprogram)
VII -- METAPROGRAMS METAPROGRAM STORAGE (to program set of programs)
VI -- PROGRAMS PROGRAM STORAGE (detailed instructions)
V -- SUBROUTINES SUBROUTINE STORAGE (details of instruction)
IV -- BIOCHEMICAL ACTIVITY - NEURAL ACT. - GLIAL ACT. - VASCULAR ACT. (signs of
activity)
III -- BIOCHEMICAL BRAIN - NEURAL BRAIN - GLIAL BRAIN - VASCULAR BRAIN (brain)
II -- BIOCHEMICAL BODY - SENSORY BODY - MOTOR BODY - VASCULAR BODY (body)
I -- BIOCHEMICAL - CHEMICAL - PHYSICAL....EXTERNAL REALITY (external reality)
Each part of each level has feedback-control relations with each part, indicated by the connecting lines. Each level has feedback-control with each other level. For the sake of schematic simplicity, many of these feedback connections are not shown. One example is an important connection between Levels VI through IX and X; some built-in, survival programs have a representative at the Supra-Self-metaprogram Level as follows: "These programs are necessary for survival; do not attenuate or excite them to extreme values; such extremes lead to non-computed actions, penalties, illness, or death." After construction, such a Metaprogram is transferred by the Self-metaprogram to the Supra-selfmetaprograms and to the Supra-species-metaprograms for future control purposes.
Levels IV through XI are in the brain circuitry and are the software of the Biocomputer. Levels above Level X are labeled "Unknown" for the following purposes: (1) to maintain the openness of the system, (2) to motivate future scientific research, (3) to emphasize the necessity for unknown factors at all levels, (4) to point out the heuristic nature of this schema, (5) to emphasize unwillingness to subscribe to any dogmatic belief without testable reproducible data, and (6) to encourage creative courageous imaginative investigation of unknown influences on and in human realities, inner and outer.
Lilly's concern about beliefs about controlling-entities or agents on a higher level ties into the essence of most systems of relgious belief, as well as the venerable hypothesis of higher, space-dwelling beings. Notice the emphasis on control, beliefs, and control of beliefs and assumptions, including the problem of meta-control -- how can you control beliefs about control of beliefs, and so on? Doesn't the whole system seize and freeze into a cosmic epiphany, as the head spins round and crashes?
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