Mental 03: The Anxiety Unto Death

    On 14 October, 2012, my mother returned home from running some brief errands to find my grandmother, her mother, fallen outside. She suffered severe brain trauma; she was 90 years old. My mother did everything she thought to do - called the ambulance, stayed by her side, notified family (including me) as she rode with my grandmother in the ambulance to the hospital, etc. 2.5 traumatic days later, Beatrice Weiss passed away, never having regained consciousness, surrounded by family.

    I'm not very ashamed to say it - I fear death. Most of us do. It is a final, inevitable end to our subjective experience. Many of us deal with this fear by turning to our religious beliefs - heaven, reincarnation, spirits, etc. I however can have no recourse in these beliefs - I have vowed for myself the ideal of a rationalist, evidence-based world philosophy, and so far I have been presented with no compelling evidence for any here-after. These arguments have been beaten to death, as it were, and I feel no need to get into them here. Similarly, I will not take up space justifying the nonsense question of "why do you live, then, since you don't believe in a higher power?".¹ 

    My beliefs have been a source of contention between my mother and me, and so far I am glad that we have not fought over the details in the time since my grandmother passed. But, as a humanist, interested in what the effects of something as traumatic as death has on our psyche, and always curious about the belief systems people create to contextualize themselves in the larger universe, I cannot help but speculate about the relationship between death and religion. Especially in the light of the events I mentioned, pondering humanity's relationship with death has become the next best thing to a consolation for the deaths of my loved ones and my own death.

    I am of the opinion that religion serves partly as a coping mechanism for our fears of death. I have heard it speculated that, at some point in our evolutionary history, we became sufficiently cognizant to forecast our own death. The anxiety this caused must have been great. Religion, whenever it developed, came to serve, among other functions, a way of identifying our ego, our sense of self, with something eternal, thereby relieving us our fear of death, of ourselves and of others.

    Whether or not this is true historically, something of it seems to be true today. A recent study implies that, when primed with thoughts of their own death, non-believers are unconsciously less certain of their own disbelief, even when they are consciously more adamant about it.² For religious folks however, this prompting increases both conscious and unconscious conviction of their belief.

    This, of course, is no evidence for any religious claims, much like the claim that "there are no atheists in fox-holes" fails to be rationally convincing. A good friend whose opinions I highly value once told me that he most resists adopting those beliefs which he is most emotionally inclined to agree with. Emotion is no substitute for reason in deciding what you believe is true.

    As an atheist, what greater, lasting purpose(s) do I identify with, if any? I don't actually think it is necessary that we identify ourselves with some eternal project - religion, fame, lasting benefit to mankind - in order to deal with our anxiety about death. For myself, I take some comfort in the fact that I appear to be made of the same matter, the same cosmic star-stuff, as everything around me; that I am "the Universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while,"³ looking into and reflecting on itself. When I die, I am returning to being diffused into the whole of existence.

    Contemplating death does not just make you more religious; it can also makes you more considerate of others, and more likely to engage in healthy behaviors.⁴ Far from devaluing life, death seems to make us find it more precious, and care about the lives of ourselves and others. This is why I found my grandmother's funeral service somewhat disturbing. My mother wrote the only work celebrating her life and her experiences - her compassion for others, loyalty to family, and yes her quirks and faults. This reading contrasts sharply to the sermon give by the pastor, the message of which seemed mostly to be that life only exists so that we prepare for death, and that Beatrice was an example to us for preparing her funeral before hand, just as she had prepared her immortal soul for the afterlife. I was reminded of why Nietzsche considered Christianity nihilistic.

    Preparing for death is important, of course. My mother is already making plans to walk myself and my brother through the medical and legal procedures we will need to know when she passes away. To do otherwise is to ignore reality, something which I fear my brother may prefer (he has expressed strong reservations to learning this process). However, I see this process as a wake up call to really take control of my life, to take better care of my physical and mental self, to love and cherish those around me, to move on from a recent and somewhat painful end to a relationship and just throw myself into the things I love - programming, music, art, food, etc.


    We are very brief, very small, very beautiful improbable things. Let's make the most of it together.


1: If you're interested, however, here's a start

2: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120402094322.htm
3: Eckhart Tolle
4: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419102516.htm

Meta 02: The Semantics of "Symbols for Secular Humanism"

    Let me begin by discussing a phrase that's popular with my generation: When asked what they believe, people often respond, "Oh, I'm spiritual but not religious." I said this once, without really thinking much of it, to a good friend of mine to (who happens to be religious) when she asked me about my beliefs. I was quite surprised to get a response along these lines: "Chris, please don't tell me you're just another cliche!"

    I was quite taken aback (and thought this was a little rude), and muttered something back in my usual, flustered¹ way whenever I'm surprised. It's been a moment that's stuck with me for 2.5 years now, for a while because I thought it was a moment of uncharacteristic unpleasantness from an otherwise good friend. Lately however, as I've been thinking about this blog, I've realized that the reason I haven't forgotten this exchange is part of me thinks she's right - that is a rather cliched answer.

    It's not that I think there's anything wrong with being spiritual without religion, but the problem is that this is given as an answer when it answers nothing. It's a short, accessible, and generic meme² for a very personal question. Were I in her shoes, my current self would have asked this earlier version of me, "OK, but what do you believe?" And here is how I might respond if asked that today.

    I have three isms which make up my foundational beliefs: humanism, skepticism³, and symbolism. Let's look at each of these in turn.

    Humanism: in its simplest terms, this is simply a belief in the value of human life and dignity. Everything about humans fascinates me - human interactions, achievements, intelligence, love, social organizations, and even just the experience of being human. This is a highly biased position to take - I am, after all, human myself. This does not mean I approve of everything humans do - for instance, groups are often very quick to "de-humanize" other groups, and use this to justify war, violence, and genocide. I do find the psychological mechanisms by which we are able to do so fascinating, but the actions themselves, which deny the human nature of the "Other", misguided and appalling.

    Skepticism: this is an attitude of doubt or caution when assembling new knowledge. This includes "strong skepticism", which is the denial that we can know anything about reality at all. While we must be able to entertain this point of view if necessary (bearing resemblance to the the position of "philosophical absurdity"), practically it is very unsatisfying and epistemologically it is a dead-end. I therefore often entertain the empirical assumption (the idea that our senses are valuable methods of discovering truth, and are sometimes correct) again because I am strongly biased for it. Taken together, this means that I try my best to make the strength of my belief in the trueness or falseness of some proposition proportionate to the evidence I have for my position.

    Notice a consequence of this: I do not believe Humanism or Skepticism or Empiricism themselves to be true. I pull either Skepticism or Empiricism to truth-hood by pulling them up by their bootstraps (aka circular logic). Similarly, no amount of evidence can ever support the claims "Mustard is objectively delicious" or "Humans are objectively valuable." I can make persuasive arguments - describe the tastes of mustard and occasions for use, or argue that Humanism is a natural philosophical extension of human empathy - but these cannot be 100% logically satisfying for a consistent⁴ yet resistant opponent.

    Symbolism: my favourite, since this is, as far as I'm aware, my own personal philosophy, and not one already established. At some point in our development, the human species gained an unprecedented ability - the ability to communicate using the abstraction of language. We developed other abstractions - logic, mathematics, scientific theory yes, but also art, literature, and music. We are creative analogy makers, over-active pattern recognizers. It is not simply that we draw truth from our senses - we are able to generalize, notice patterns, and make predictions. These abstractions let us touch the infinite, the eternal, the total. Our ability to contemplate these through the use of abstraction is transcendental, and is (bringing us back to my original answer, those years ago) the source of my spiritual feeling.

    Throughout our history, we have looked to some higher power - religious, familiar, social, etc - to give our lives meaning, but it is always our own self which crafts this meaning. I believe that this ability of abstraction lead us to contemplate our own death, and the anxiety this caused prompted proto-religious feelings of identifying your own self somehow with something eternal. But I do not think this is the only response - mine, for instance, is the realization that I am just bits of the universe, expressing itself as a human for a while, and the values I hold and the meaning I give to my life are human, tempered with respect for and interest in that which I am a small part of, and filled with awe about what we know, what we do not yet know, and what we can never know.

    This is how I am spiritual without religion.


1: I'm often not nearly as eloquent "live" as I am "rehearsed", like these blog posts.
2: I have a theory about memes and thoughts. Briefly, the effects of the former on the latter can be both good and bad, and this would be an example of bad.
3: So why not "Symbols for Skeptical Humanism"? I wanted to emphasize my non-religiosity and my belief that magical thinking has negative consequences. Plus, I wasn't sure if it would come across that I was skeptical of humanism, which is not what I mean.
4: It's a different matter if you present a perfectly logical syllogism, but your opponent fails to grasp the logic of your argument, or denies logic altogether. Either of these would make the individual rationally inconsistent.
5: Don't think this is the only form of communication - many mamals, like dogs, have "body language" just like us.

Mental 02: Identity, Part 02: Towards a Solution

    As the title gives away, I am not ambitious enough to say I know a full solution to the problem of philosophical identity. I do hope, however, that I have laid sufficient groundwork, in identifying the problem, to point to a possible solution.

    I do wish to point out one more kind of identity important for our own self-conception before proceeding: conscious identity. For instance, consider our friend S. Another copy have been made of S¹. Both remember exactly what was on their minds at the time of the S-singularity, and to both it seems that was a moment ago. However, if we claim that both are consciously identical to the single-S, we get a violation of the principle of transitivity, as follows

1. S-Left is consciously identical (ci) to S-Single, hyp
2. S-Right is ci to S-Single, hyp
3. S-Left is ci to S-Right, 1,2, transitivity of c.i.
4. S-Left is not ci to S-Right, since the former is aware of being on the left, and the latter of being on the right, definition of consciouness
5. Contradiction, 3,4

    There are a few ways to go about analyzing this. For starters, we can consider that consciousness doesn't have an identity relationship defined on it. We could argue that conscious minds have the appearance of continuity, through access to memory (short and long)², but that we are not consciously identical to previous moments, because we weren't aware of the same experiences.

    This would be denying the sensibility of ci, and therefore hypothesis 1) and 2). The other approach would be to argue that either or both 1) and 2) were false, depending on whether S-Right or S-Left or both were constructed. If S-Right were the only one constructed, we might argue that while S-Right believes themself³ to be the same self as S-Single, that in reality S-Right's consciousness only began at the moment of construction. You could do this by arguing that conscious identity is linked to animal identity, or that a significant break of consciousness, like deconstruction/reconstruction, cannot be bridged by the ci relation.

   To those whom believe the first: do you believe you are consciously identical to yourself at age 3? 5? 15? a year ago? If so, how do you define ci? (Remember that I have made a distinction between personal and conscious identity, so if you're argument relies on being the same person, you have to refute that first). To those whom believe the second: how do you qualify the "break"? Does it occur when we pass out? sleep? are knocked unconscious? How about when we shift our focus of attention?

    I wrap this discussion up with two more things. First, I don't think, despite what some Eastern philosophies may hold, that identity through time doesn't make sense for people. This simply requires a highly nuanced understanding of ourselves, especially our psychology and biology, one I think we do not yet have. The identity relation we're looking for may not take the form we expect. Do you remember my "in the same room" relation? That's not at all like an identity relation we're accustomed to, yet it does satisfy our intuitive definition of what identity is.

    Finally, I want to offer a tool for use while we lack (and may always lack) an exact model: fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is like mapping 'true' and 'false' to numbers 1 and 0, and allowing all versions of grey in between. We might re-state the requirements of identity relations like so.

For objects x,y,z and for fuzzy margins f,u,v each between 0 and 1, inclusive

1. x is identical to itself, with fuzzy margin 0, (where f  > 0, of course)
2. If x is identical to y with fuzzy margin u, then y is identical to x with fuzzy margin u, where
   f  > u
3. If x is identical to y with fuzzy margin u,  f  > u, and y identical to z with fuzzy margin v, 
   f  > v, then x is identical to z if and only if  f > u + v

    I encourage you to look this over. Notice how fuzzy margin f is "policing" identity. That is, our proposed identity function, if it were to use fuzzy logic in this way, would require some value to distinguish "threshold identity", as well as a way of numerically assigning identity. This might be too tricky to actually implement, but the idea of relaxing our identity relationship might be of help in future discussions about what it means to be ourselves.


1: This is the version in which S is not deconstructed, only constructed at the other end
2: I concede that working memory might be necessary for consciousness to occur at all
3: Before you get upset about my bad grammar, allow me to justify myself in a later post for this intentional decision.

Mental 01: Identity, Part 01: Sounds like a Personal Problem

    Consider the following scenario: you know a couple, both of whom are very kind, funny, intelligent, have many memories together, love each other, etc. Well call them A and B¹. One day, a horrible tragedy occurs; they are in a car accident. B makes it out with relatively few injuries, and none of them serious, but A suffers severe brain trauma. It manifests itself quite strongly in A's personality in some way, although I am not concerned too particularly about how - A becomes vegetative, or can no longer remember anything about his past (including B), or some fundamental aspect of A's personality changes - say, A becomes terrible cruel or constantly angry, in ways never shown before. You're talking to and trying to console B, who is devastated. You hear B say: "A just isn't the same person anymore!"

    What are we to make of this? There are many reasons we could argue that the A in the hospital bed shares identity with ("is identical to")² the A prior to the car accident - sharing the same genes, being the same organism, being the same legal entity, etc. Disregarding the fact that it would be incredibly insensitive to be so coldly rational in the presence of B's grief, we would also be missing the point of what B said: pre- and post-accident A differ in fundamental ways, which are rather crucial to B's conception of the "person" A - dissimilar memories, dispositions, responses, etc.

    Locke outlined three different types of identity: the physical, the animal, and the personal. In this hypothetical conversation, it seems as though there is confusion between "animal" identity - is A the same organism as before the accident (I'm thinking yes) - and "personal" identity - is A the same person as before the accident (not so sure about this one, either way).

    Here's another example: consider a human test subject of the very first teleportation device, called S. The device scans the configuration of every particle³ of the subject, deconstructs the physical subject, sends the scans of the configuration to the other end of the machine, and reconstructs the individual. Imagine the subject goes through the process relatively satisfied - no experience of pain or abruptness. One moment over here, the next over there. S remembers everything those close would expect S to.

     Would you use this device? Would you let someone you loved? Despite our possible reservations, we would be hard pressed to say S pre- and post-teleportation were not the same. If a close friend were not aware of the experiment, not only would they not think to questions S's S-ness, but from this scenario, no consequence of the act of teleporting could never possibly inform someone of post S's non-identity to the person of pre S. I am making a careful distinguishment. We can conceive of a phenomenally skilled imposter, R, who pretended to be S, memorized all facts about S's life, and somehow thwarted every DNA test made, etc, etc, to convince us all that R is S. But we could conceive of what it would take to recognize that R is not S - R is revealed as an imposter, willingly or otherwise, or has a memory of something S could not have, etc. There is only one thing which might call us to question post S - the teleportation - and even so the ground is not as certain as with R.

    Again, a strictly physical response is unsatisfactory - whether or not post-S was re-assembled from the same particles seems immaterial⁴. We could argue that S is no longer shares "animal" identity, but our first example shows that, at the very least, a good argument needs to be given to couple "animal" and "personal" identity.

    A final pair of examples: suppose that the teleportation machine malfunctions. No, S will be fine. In one scenario, the machine correctly scans S, and S is assembled in the other platform - all this without first deconstructing S! So who is the real S? Similarly, imagine that S is deconstructed, and reconstructed at both ends of the teleportation machine? Is this substantially different from the first case? If so, why? What if no one noticed S's initial deconstruction in the starting chamber? Then the first scenario would be nearly identical to the second, would it not?

    More in a third, and final, post.


1: Notice I'm trying to avoid any assumptions about what constitutes a "normal" couple
2: In the last post, I sketched an argument for why exact physical identity is not incredibly enlightening.
3: Please ignore Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This is philosophy, not physics
4: A really, really bad joke.

Physical 00: Meditation

    It occurred to me that in my previous post on Physical resolutions, I failed to more fully justify with evidence some of  the changes I proposed. It's a common fallacy: somehow it has entered my head, whether it be through conversations with people online or IRL, or through some article I happened across, that all of these things were "good", and did no further research. Some of these shouldn't need justification - I do not think there is any controversy in claiming that exercise is good for your health. However, I would not be surprised if some skeptical readers out there doubted the claim that meditating has any benefit.

    First, what prompted me to seek meditation? I was raised Christian, so I was not exposed to it as a part of my cultural upbringing. I learned about it most in high school, through maybe a few paragraphs in my World History textbook, but mostly through my conversations with a good friend, who was in the midst of her own spiritual journey at the time and whose mother attended a Buddhist organization. Still Christian at this time, I found it no more than a curiosity.

    Sometime after my de-conversion, I began my own "spiritual"¹ quest, a part of which was developing my meta-cognitive abilities. I became very aware that a deficiency in my ability to attend to things - conversations, my environment, etc - obstructed some of my academic and personal goals. Another way to say this: my attentions span wasn't as long as I'd have liked. My mind has a tendency to wander from idea to idea. In it's way, this is a good thing, since I've often had great insights into problems during these moments. But I also find myself having hypothetical conversations or puzzling over certain implications of new material when I'm trying to prepare for school or work, almost always causing me to forget something. My mind also wanders in class or even during a conversation, even though often I do want to pay attention, and even when the topic is crucially important.

    I researched the long-term effects of common ADHD medication, and while they're mostly benign - dependence, volatile temper, and possibly a slight decrease in memory over the long term - I decided I preferred not to spend money on a prescription drug (and not to take something which my exaggerate a genetic heart arrhythmia). I do not think I have ADHD, anyway, so I turned to meditation instead.

    Pulling from Wikipedia again, mindfullness-based meditation was described in the following way:

The first component [of mindfulness] involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance

    The two components are, in brief, awareness and orientation. I believe that this practice enables people to identify their patterns of thought, and allows them to interpret these patterns in non-emotional ways, even leading them to change unwanted thought patterns.

    Research suggests that the act meditation triggers the "relaxation response", which is a decrease in arousal. This response has been used clinically to treat the stress and pain of the chronic or terminally ill. Stress, as you may know, has a few short-term benefits, but over the long term may cause or aggravate many negative conditions, including decreased immune system activity. Researches are now looking into whether this same stress-reduction benefit can be replicated in the workplace, and the initial results seem to be positive².

    Now, before I stop attending to the original point altogether, what about attention span? We live in a world of constant distractions - novel information in the form of a text message, a Google search, or an email notification can constantly bombard us. You constantly hear that this is a generation of multitaskers - and of the negative consequences of some forms of multitasking, such as texting and driving. It's sometimes difficult to find activities to strengthen your sustained-attention "muscle," so is meditation a viable option for this?

    Again, the research seems to suggest so³. Perhaps it's not surprising that making sure you're focused on the present moment for extended periods of time increases attention span. Scientists created two groups, gave both a demanding test of attention three separate times, and sent one group off to a meditation retreat, over the course of three months. The results showed a positive gain for the experimental group, and even maintained gains 5 months after, especially for those who reported they continued the practice of meditation.

    What about my experiences? I can't say I've done it for long enough to know or not, but I will say, paraphrasing the words of the Dali Lama, I find meditation to be hard work⁴.

1: Using the definition I gave in a previous post.
2: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/mindful.htm
3: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/maclean.cfm
3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meditation-on-demand

Mental 00: Identity, Part 00: The Problem

    Recently, I got into an argument with a good friend of mine about the nature of identity. She said that my idea was interesting, but that it lacked substance, i.e. it required more evidence. A Google chat conversation is not the best place to lay out well-thought, detailed arguments, so I promised her I would write a blog post about it, and invited her to comment on it publicly or talk to me in private about it. I know I've said that my first Mental post would be about Un-arguments, but this may serve as a good introduction to my view about reality, and how we experience it.

    A quick look a Wikipedia shows me that I must clarify what I mean by "identity." I am not referring to social identity. Social identity is a "self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group," which can be based on sexuality, ethnicity, socio-economic status, country of birth, etc. Philosophical (or mathematical) identity is much simpler: when are two things the same thing? This is an important concept: the idea of identity is a certain kind of relationship between things. We call this an identity relation.

    A mathematical identity relation must satisfy three conditions. These are:

1. Reflexivity. Given some x, x is identical to itself.
2. Symmetry. Given some x and y, if x is identical to y, then y is identical to x
3. Transitivity. Given some x,y, and z, if x is identical to y, and also if y is identical to z, then we have that x is identical to z

     All very cute, but not very interesting. So, what's the problem with identity in the Universe?¹ Well, nothing if you take a freeze frame. If I could somehow take a 3-dimensional photograph, I could point to any object and easily say it's identical to itself. Identity relations can also be looser: I could use the identity relationship of "in the same room." Then, I would have all three properties satisfied: my keys are in the same room as themselves; if they're in the same room as my water bottle, then my water bottle is in the same room as my keys; and, if my keys are in the same room as my bottle, and my bottle is in the same room as me, then I'm in the same room as my keys!

Exciting, right?

    The problem may or may not become apparent to you when we factor in time, so we now turn the the famous "Ship of Theseus" paradox. This is stated by Plutarch as follows:

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."
—Plutarch, Theseus

     Simply put, if I take a ship, and over the course of time slowly replace old planks with new planks, after a certain amount of time the ship is made only of planks which it did not have when I began. So in what sense is it the same ship? If you argue it is, consider the possibility that I remove planks before they become unusable, and instead perfectly preserve them some way. When all the planks are removed, I build an exact model of the ship of Theseus from these planks. Now I have two ships, each with rather strong claims to being "The Ship of Theseus". If your answer is, "'The ship of Theseus' is whichever one he owns," then you're just mincing words. We are just interested in the object itself, not the nature of it's verbal description.

    If our identity relationship is strictly physical, then of course these objects are not the same. However, choosing that identity relationship is problematic, because objects are always changing. The molecules change their arrangements, the wind and the waves erode the wood and cause it to be caked with salt and minerals, bacteria which eventually cause the planks to rot slowly germinates, etc, etc. It's clear that based on what we know about the laws of physics, from moment to moment nothing is ever exactly physically identical to itself a moment ago.

This problem is summed up nicely in the following quote (taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, attributed to Irving Copi):

1. If a changing thing really changes, there can't literally be one and the same thing before and after the change.
2. However, if there isn't literally one and the same thing before and after the change, then no thing has really undergone any change.

    Do objects persist through time, or are brand new ones just popping into existence moment to moment? This becomes increasingly important when we talk about the identity of people, for in a way we are also like the Ship of Theseus - many (thought not all, I'm told) of our cells die and are replaced by cells which came from outside sources, like food. We are never exactly physically identical to ourselves a moment ago, and yet we have this strong intuition that we are in fact the same self. Are we wrong, and the identity of the self through time simply doesn't exist, or is there something meaningful to our intuition? I believe it's the latter of these two, and I will explain why in later posts.


1. It's for another post to describe how I view the structure of persuasive argument. Suffice for now to say that there's no argument if there's no problem, which can be either tangible or conceptual in nature.

Meta 01: The Physical/Mental Divide

    Recently I have thought that some readers of this blog (besides myself... wait a minute, isn't that the empty set?) might be confused at where I draw the line between the physical and the mental. For example, I surprised a friend of mine when I revealed that I did not believe in the existence of a soul. To paraphrase: "I'm not concerned about the issue of whether we're bodies with souls or souls with bodies. To me, it's all bodies." Now, the soul is not the same as the mind, but supposing a soul, the distinction between mind and body would (appear to) clarify. Lacking that, what do I mean by these words? Let's turn to a dictionary!

men·tal/ˈmentl/

Adjective:	Of or relating to the mind. Carried out by or taking place in the mind.
Synonyms:	intellectual - spiritual - psychic - psychical

phys·i·cal/ˈfizikəl/

Adjective:	Of or relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
Noun:	A medical examination to determine a person's bodily fitness.
Synonyms:	adjective.  material - corporeal - bodily - corporal noun.  physical examination

    Greatly unhelpful! It looks like I'm on my own for this. I am not using these words strictly in the way these definitions suggest - again, the idea of the mind as "opposed" to the body, and not an emergent property of the brain, which is a part of the body. Here's how I make this distinction:


Mental: The organization of the categories used to process sensory data about the sensory world and the "world of ideas". (This latter part includes belief, worldview, philosophy, and designated purpose, as well as the use of rational analysis in examining these).

Physical: the resources available to the purposes of the mental, and the knowledge accumulated about them, as well as those things which the mental must overcome to achieve its purposes.

    Much of this has overlap - for example, I exercise my body (physical) because I believe (mental) it good to maintain good health. However, there is some counter-intuitiveness: my memory, attention span, and willpower would all constitute as physical, even though these are things which mostly take part in the brain. This is consistent to me: I exercise my body to improve overall health, and exercise my attention span through meditation to give me better focus when solving problems.

    What about the third category, "Meta"? It is not independent: the ability to step back and evaluate what I'm doing is a Physical resource, and the belief that "the unexamined life is not worth living" is a Mental feature. Despite this, I want to treat it separately, for while I conceive the Mental to be about my views and categories for understanding the world, the Meta should be an examination of the categories I use to view myself, as well as a way to focus, track, and clarify the purpose of this blog.

    I've already made a post about physical changes I am making in my life. To better illustrate the differences between the three categories, I plan on making the next post Mental, specifically about the dis-satisfactory nature of what I call "Un-arguments." See you then.

Ego 00: Resolutions

    This is a list of some physical changes I will be making in my routine. I distinguish the physical from the mental for ease of discussion; they are, however, part of the same Whole, and so the changes to my physical environment and schedule will, hopefully, clear my mind of distractions, useless thoughts, and open the way a new paradigm on the world. I attempt to justify each change with a brief description.

    Meditate twice daily, for 15 minutes each, once after rising and once before sleeping. In the first I shall focus on how my will can achieve my goals, and sharpen my dedication; in the second, I shall focus on compassionate feelings for all living things, and my fellow humans especially. Meditation is known to reduce stress, to increase focus, and pairing this at the beginning and end of each day gives me a nice symmetry.

    Every day I shall perform some kind of physical exercise. So far, I alternate between running and calisthenic (body weight) training. I will make sure that I spend an appropriate amount of time running, and that I keep a consistent schedule for push-ups, pull-ups, planks, etc. Physical fitness increases mood, health, memory and focus.

    I shall write four times a week: twice in this blog, on Monday and Friday, and twice in my private journal, on Sunday and Wednesday. I wish to leave behind physical artifacts of my subjective experience to track my progress.

    I shall keep track of the hours I spend on activities. I had previously implemented this, but the death of my grandmother on the 14th of October has thrown that and many other things off. My grief and helplessness at her loss is part of what motivates this blog (this belongs in a Mental post).

    These are my decisions. I shall try to implement them in the coming week, and report back my progress. I don't imagine I will have time to explore more of the mental until the holidays come around.

Addendum:
    Reduce the consumption of alcohol to no more than one standard drink a day, three drinks a week. Moderately increase the use of caffeine. This is for greater productivity, focus, and health, as well as an exercise of willpower.