October 28th, 2018 1:03 PM
EXPLAINING CONSCIOUSNESS INDIRECTLY
—“Where does “the present” (initial, whole experience) as opposed to memory and the rest (post hoc, partial translations) fit into your model?”— Ben Quimby
We create the latter in order to increase our chose and volume and intensity of consumption of the former.
—“But it *is* something that stands alone outside of all these categories, yes? Part of each moment, necessarily, does not carry over into any translation, making said parts, by definition, “ineffable”, correct?”— Ben Quimby
Well, you know, if you ask it that way I have to defend against misinterpretation. “experience” is our ultra-short-term memory continuously learning and forgetting the cacophony of stimuli from our nervous system, and the ‘echoes’ that they produce in from our memories, and the consequent chemical responses (feelings) that those echoes produce
Memories require we merely ‘choke’ our senses and focus on (not sure how we do that, but I assume it’s the hippocampus) the echoes rather than the perceptions (senses). I know it’s related to how we focus our vision, and I know it’s an evolution of the prey drive, but that’s all I know.
So there is no difference except focus. All experience is RECONSTRUCTED from the combination of sensation and memory. We just bias our focus on present(sense) vs past(memory) within that stream of stimulation.
So there are not two separate things, but simply the resources devoted to senses vs recalls so that we experience greater now than the past.
GIven that our brains allow us to do both of these at the same time only enhances the illusion.