from the 2nd quarter of 2019, a new metaphor for mind that needs some further work
Consciousness/experience* (and/or thought) produced by a brain/mind is a liquid pooling on a surface, first forming in tiny droplets like condensation, and continuously spreading if left unchecked by sober/rational mechanisms that stop the pool’s growth. If unchecked, the pooling consciousness eventually touches and joins a surrounding ocean… An island in an ocean, the island’s shores keeping the ocean out and the island a dry, safe, enduring haven and platform, and somewhere on or in the island is a freshwater spring. The spring continuously produces water, and this water gives rise to its own biology and micro-climate, while the geology of the island insulates the spring water from the ocean. A normal human’s mind is, whilst sober, isolated from the outside, from other consciousness, but with the ability and potential to modulate and expand consciousness, intentionally or unintentionally, and to unforeseeable extent with unknown outcomes. Right now I prefer the simpler form/level of the metaphor – the liquid appearing on a surface and merging – despite being more abstract and less thorough than the idea/picture of the island in the ocean.
A related metaphor was introduced somewhat famously by Aldous Huxley: that the brain is a ”reducing valve”*. I’m suggesting that the individual brain/mind isn’t itself purely eliminative of consciousness – instead the brain/mind produces consciousness – it is one source of consciousness – while processes of sobriety/rationality perform the function of a reducing valve on the material produced by the brain/mind.
Both the metaphor of Huxley and its logical relationship to mine maybe unclear for the reader at this point. Before I go into more detail on Huxley’s writing, I suggest the difference between our two views maybe manifests in this difference on the level of the island metaphor: for me, the brain/mind is identified with something complex that is made out of and/or fed by the freshwater spring, while the insulating shore of the island that keeps the ocean away is external to the brain/mind, whereas to Huxley, the brain/mind directly receives the ocean, and the insulating shore of the island is identified with the sober/rational brain/mind processes.
Huxley writes that he tends to agree that ”[…]the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of […] perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain […] is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that […] selection which is likely […] useful.”*** And that each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. […] Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain […]. What comes out […] is a measly trickle[…]. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has […] those symbol systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. ****
Based on these passages I think it’s clear that Huxley thinks the source of our consciousness/experience is the universal mind, i.e. the universal Mind at Large is provided to the individual brain as material to shape/work with – and with our individual brain/mind performing a function of reduction/elimination on this received universal consciousness. So our brain/mind’s function is first passive reception of mind and then [negative/critical] reduction of mind.
Meanwhile, I think the individual brain/mind starts not with received universal consciousness/Mind at Large, but with much less: maybe just a tiny spark of consciousness that may be produced entirely by the brain itself or may be the brain’s permanent – albeit tenuous and astonishing – connection to universal consciousness. And that the evolved body/mind performs operations on this spark that shape it into all the forms of consciousness that biological life has and experiences, potentially growing and expanding until it [re-]connects to other or universal consciousness. (stated more directly in terms of a kind of spiritual cosmology)
*In this context, ‘consciousness’ and ‘experience’ are synonymous.
**see Huxley’s short book The Doors of Perception (1954)
***Italics indicate me quoting the book, and within the quoted passages Huxley was quoting and agreeing with a passage attributed to a Dr. C. D. Broad of Cambridge.
****from p.8 of the 2011 edition by Thinking Ink. Huxley connects the quoted sections to succinct critical epistemological comments that I recommend and think fit perfectly with Feyerabend’s philosophy – especially criticism of what I would currently call rationalist epistemology.