Nobody is watching the movie of your life, or mine, or anybody's

Every morning I try to read one of the short chapters in Thomas Metzinger's fascinating book, The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness -- Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports.

I particularly enjoy passages that intuitively appeal to me, yet rationally challenge my ability to comprehend exactly what Metzinger is saying. Below I'll share an example from the "Nonidentification" chapter. 

First, though, this introductory mention in the chapter of the traditional movie theatre metaphor.

One classic metaphor for this process [of de-identification], found in many places in the popular literature on meditation, is the image of being fully immersed in a movie and then suddenly realizing that you are not the hero, disengaging from the perspective from which the story seems to be told.

Metzinger then says "we can also imagine another scenario," offering a possible variation on the classic metaphor.

Imagine the cinema is dark and completely empty. All the seats are empty. Running on the screen is a movie of someone watching a movie, a person who is deeply immersed in the plot of this movie-in-the-movie most of the time, but who sometimes has glimpses and vague intuitions that she might actually not be the protagonist, but might instead be a passive viewer in some sort of cinema.

Or that she might even be the whole cinema itself. Not seated in the middle, but somehow everywhere. From time to time, the viewer in the movie even has fleeting and slightly complacent philosophical fantasies that she might be some sort of empty space in which the movie becomes aware of itself, or that she might be the beam of light coming from the projector.

Suspended in the dark, as it were, this movie containing the movie-in-the-movie is the only thing that can be seen. But nobody is watching. Now, very slowly, the light is being turned on, in slow motion as it were. The cinema as a whole emerges out of the darkness, slowly fading in, empty seats and all. Now the lights are on. The movie is still running. Nobody sees it. 

I'm not sure if this additional passage from the "Nonidentification" chapter bears on the above modified metaphor, but it sure is provocative. Turns upside down some common assumptions meditators have.

Perhaps you have already discovered how, phenomenologically, it is not we who get identified or fused with some content (e.g., an arising thought)? In my own experience, I find that it is awareness that gets identified.

"We" -- as the agentive sense of self -- come into existence only after the fact, after awareness has already contracted into a specific content (like the mental image of a future goal state to be reached, a subtle feeling of mental effort, the ensuing sense of control, etc.) -- after, as it were, open awareness has already been lost to itself. 

The breakdown is not your fault. You are not the cause, but the effect. You are the way in which the brain explains away something that was slightly unexpected. That "something" is the surprise of suddenly being able to control a part of the world -- your body, your attention, your thoughts. 

Might as well throw in one more passage relating to this theme.

From a scientific perspective, "being conscious" or "appearing" is a property of a complex, internal model in the brain: What really is conscious is simply a certain part of an organism's model of the world, a specific processing layer in its internal model of reality -- which typically also includes the organism itself plus other agents in the world... At the very least, this is a rational and evidence-based theory, one possible view from the outside.

But from the organism's inner perspective, things are very different. The model is transparent; therefore, the representational medium is invisible. Yet this model is all the organism has. This means that what it experiences is experienced not as a world-model or some sort of inner image, but simply as the world itself.

Consciousness is the appearance of a world; there is full immersion, plus the phenomenology of direct realism. In addition, because the internal model is not being experienced as a model, it now is the organism that seems to be conscious, not the world as a whole or some complex image in the organism's head.

Phenomenologically, the property of "being aware" has been contracted. Now, consciousness is something personal. Now you are conscious.

Comments

[um]

It is underlined in English ..Not of the best quality, but I guess it is enough to folloe the gist of what he wants to discuss. Hearing him speak in his own language, the intonation etc, makes a heck of a difference in understanding what his intentions are behind his work.

It needs close listening, because what he intents to say has gone before you noticed it .. so keep some coffee at hand.

Podcast with Dr Metzinger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=o73mJF2UUYc

[Appreciative Reader]

Enjoyed reading that. Mind-bending stuff. Even though he's not really saying anything new here, that hasn't already been said a hundred times over the last many centuries. But still, like I said, mind-bending stuff. Nice.

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When reading and discussing things like these, I think it is important to keep in mind that analogies only go so far. They are marshaled to explain very specific things, and to stretch the analogy beyond that small point is to break it. Further, analogies are not proof; they are ipse-dixitisms, except stated more elaborately. (Although they can sometimes fill in as the thought experiments so beloved of Einstein.)

Where analogy diverges from reality in this case, is in the fact that what the mind builds is a MODEL. While what the movie projector shows us is FANTASY. (Regardless of the genre of the movie being shown! Even if it is a very true-to-reality documentary feature, even then, in as much as it has nothing to do with the cinema hall per se, therefore in that sense the movie is simply fantasy.)

In other words: In the case of the movie, you can "wake up" and walk away from the movie. In the case of reality, however, while you might disengage from the model itself, but you cannot actually disengage from the reality that the model approximates. (That is, you can do that, but if you did it would be a form of psychosis.)

I think it is very important to clearly understand this, and to emphasize this. Understanding the model-building thing is good, in and of itself. Philosophically, it equips us to deal with the world more sanely, and without getting obsessed about identity, and identification with peripherals. And that's about it. There's no stretching the analogy beyond that point. There's no pot of enlightenment waiting at the end of that rainbow; not unless that relatively entirely commonplace understanding one chooses to dramatize by calling it enlightenment. Let's never lose sight of this sobering thought, to temper our flights of philosophic fancy.

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Before someone starts wanking off about epistemological indeterminacy, yes, you cannot philosophically establish with certitude that reality is real. However, let's recall how science cuts that Gordian knot by using Occam's Razor, and accepts the best fit model as the closest idea anyone can ever have about reality. Anyone claiming otherwise carries a very heavy burden of proof, a burden that no one has, so far, ever managed to satisfy.

[Appreciative Reader]

Actually, you can't even disengage from the model, can you? You can only, at best, understand the nature of the mind-model; and you can disengage from the overly obsessive identification bred by the model; but you cannot ever step outside the model.

So this is how reality differs from analogy: In the movie theater, you can not only disengage from the fantasy, but you can leave the theater as well. While in reality, you can only understand the nature of the model and so temper its influence, you can never actually leave the model unless you're psychotic (whether spontaneously psychotic, or deliberately induced). And in any case, reality itself, that the model approximates, is something you are always part of, even if full-blown psychotic.

Enlightenment? It isn't this, or that, or that other thing. There is no enlightenment. Enlightenment is a myth. (Unless one plays word games, and labels this fairly pedestrian understanding as enlightenment.)

No, no one has taught this, neither the Zen sages, nor the Daoists. Hence their obscurantist verbiage, that never once clearly spells this out. They may have grasped part of it, but then got carried away into imagining way more than warranted into it. Which is fair enough, in a time before the scientific method was codified, and a scientific worldview established, no blame attaches to them. But let's never ever fetishize their partial, incomplete understanding.

[um]

@ AR
>> In other words: In the case of the movie, you can "wake up" and walk away from the movie. In the case of reality, however, while you might disengage from the model itself, but you cannot actually disengage from the reality that the model approximates. (That is, you can do that, but if you did it would be a form of psychosis.)<<

The reality ALLOWS any model to be made.
There has never been a model that approximates the reality
Such a thing is not possible.

The car does not know he is a car and why he is made as he is made and for what purpose.

.........

No ....hahahaha

[um]

Brian if you deleted my last contribution I have no clue why you did so.

[Appreciative Reader]

um, a model by definition approximates what it represents, in certain respects. Yes, it falls short of the full complexity of what it represents, but that simplification also is kind of the point of models in general. ...And the fact that our brain models the reality we apprehend, and that we ourselves engage with that model and not with reality directly, also is mainstream neuroscience, it's been discussed here in great detail already.

Now, in light specifically of the above: What makes you think and say that there has never been a model that approximates reality?

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As for the car analogy: We humans possess the faculty of self-awareness, to an extent spontaneously, and also such that we can finesse that faculty and that specific awareness by various means. That entities that do not possess that faculty do not exhibit that awareness, in no shape or form speaks, in this context, to entities that do possess that faculty.

So that the point of your car reference is also something I'm going to have to ask you to clearly elaborate.

[um]

@AR

I will do my best but honestly i believe, think etc that my words will not be able to show the reality of what the analogy means,..... someone said ... it is only caught, it cannot be taught ...but not fully aware myself I cannot stop myself trying it.

What I wrote about the car is just a hint, a direction of thinking.

The car has no knowledge. Not only about itself but also not about how it came to be in existence. It is just there and has no idea about its purpose or use.

Humans have are a kind of living, automated vehicles. They have an inbuilt drive to keep themselves alive.. On the surface it seems that they are free to do that as they deem fit, but on closer observation, that freedom is not there at all ..they are also bound to their surroundings for survival as the flora, the fauna does, they have only more choices, choices all restricted to layout, that is not in their hand.

So yes humans can survive the artics by recreation of the circumstance of their original natural habitat, but they cannot change that inner need nor the outer circumstances of the artic

As we are aware of that inner drive of survival, we HAVE to, we are MADE TO, what ever we do, whatever we think, whatever we feel is ultimately related to it or has its roots there. It can be simple, it can be weird, it can be scientific, it can be religious it just can be anything but it is all related to survival and attributed to something that is beyond our understanding or grasp.

Even an atheistic worldview is no exception to that rule as it answers questions related to birth, life and death but it has not the power to take a stand to look at these three, why they exist, how they exist etc etc etc etc.

Does that diminish the value of things humans do, think and feel ...not at all ... as they are or can be a great HELP

Finished ... I do realize AR that what I write is in no way satisfactory for you as I am not a logician ..these things just came to me, drinking coffee, standing behind the window, gazing at the crows and the trees.

creation or birth, maintenance of live of what was born, and death, the destruction of what was born and alive, are all interlinked in someway, form a unity, that is beyond everything. Some say that it can be experienced. Well if so, it is only experiential and it can never be explained, proved. The very demand for explanation and/or proof is related to the way humans are made.

Hahahaha ...writing and re-reading what I wrote is all together different energy,

[um]

@AR

I forgot the model thing

It is related to the survival thing, the existence things and is best to compare with clay ...
the model can not bring the clay in existence, nor is responsible for what clay IS, but it can be MODELED in endless forms.

All explanations of birth, life and death, can or do end in an trap, when we believe it is a model an approximation of reality. They are like the sirens of the old Greeks and the only protection is to be bound to the "mast" of the "sailing boat". What was once an help to survive becomes easily something to defend for survival.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hey, um.

Struggling to understand you here, I’m afraid!

As far as the model thing: Agreed with everything you say here. Agreed, our brain-mind-model is fundamentally a survival mechanism. Agreed, the model cannot, in and of itself, fashion reality. Also agreed, it is entirely possible to get so entirely wrapped up in our mental models and narratives that the whole thing ends up hindering us, sometimes catastrophically, rather than being of help.

What I don’t get is how you get from that to what you’d said to me earlier, which is, “There has never been a model that approximates the reality… Such a thing is not possible.” What you’re saying now doesn’t seem directly related to what you’d said earlier.

(That said, and like I’ve said, I do agree with what you’re saying now, taking it as stand-alone.)

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As far as the car reference: Agreed, free will is fundamentally an illusion, and we’re at mercy of primal urges and impulses inherent to us, to a far greater degree than we generally realize. That’s been discussed here, a lot. Also agreed, the fact that we’re pattern-seeking creatures is itself the result of evolution, and that pattern-seeking is fundamentally a survival mechanism.

But again, I don’t see how you get from there to what you’d originally said to me, which is, “The car does not know he is a car and why he is made as he is made and for what purpose.” That doesn’t seem to have any bearing with what I’d said in my original comment (and to which you were replying), at least not as you discuss this now.

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In short: I agree largely with what you’re saying now, um, absolutely; but I fail to see how you link that to what you’d said to me initially, or to what I myself had said originally. (For context, refer my earlier response to you, where I’d clearly spelt out this discordance.)

Hell, let’s just do this: Just refer back to my original comment, and maybe just re-state, from the beginning, the content of what you were trying to say in your original comment? Except in clear words this time, and sans the cryptic hints and analogies? That might make for better understanding, for both of us.

[um]

@ AR

In Dutch there is a HAIKU of an by passer asking a man in the field, reaping carrots, the way. After hearing the request the farmer gets up and and in doing so he pulls a carrot out of the soil and uses it to point the direction as to where the by passer should go.

The carrot gatherer
with a carrot in his hand
he showed me the way

I realize it must be unsatisfactory for you ...

[Appreciative Reader]

Come on, um, you're just saying random things, and cloaking it up in mysterious sounding words for no good reason.

It's cool, I don't in the least mind a joke. But I thought you were commenting seriously about this, hence the confusion.

No issues, all good. Cheers.

[um]

@ AR

Grandma, peace be upon her soul, used to say:"little one, you can see the heads of people, you cannot see inside"

If you could AR you would react otherwise. You see when things are inside and even in the proces of describing what there is, that view that understanding, then there iare all sorts of feelings of understanding, awe and much more ...most important its liveliness.

Once out,..the retaliation is there of many other things ..losing something, losing in many ways. Words becoming flat, stone like and al sorts that are not at all pleasant.

The painting is never what the artist had in mind. ..mind being a more then miserable words as is his painting that will be judged as good or bad.

I do not want to share these things but I am as now not strong enough to keep mum.

Coffee is ready...hahaha

[777 - 87toGo]

UM
Pls don t go

A fulfilled Soul,
A Sat Sat Guru

Like asked here about what s left
I guess only the Love is seen / remembered / reflected

They must be protected against the underway filth of creation s Souls
I guess reading minds totally will make CRAZY instantly

777