virus: "Intelligence" Self-Design

Michael R. Brown (michael@marymaclane.com)
Fri, 02 Oct 1998 16:35:46 -0700


Rightsboy wrote:

> Prepare to experience a paradigm "shift":)

That was all well and good, but all such approaches (Alan Watts said much
the same thing) are torn by a fatal contradiction: they self-devour: if
everything we perceive and believe to exist is a projection or construction
of the brain, then one of the two following must hold:

1 - the brain is a projection or construction of the brain, which is an
endless loop;

2 - the brain is a not a projection or construction of the brain, which
contradicts the thesis.

Either way, the theory is a good poetic device for shaking up simple naive
realism (and that break with direct attachment to sense experience is the
beginning of spiritual progress), particularly when it is expressed as
suavely as Alan Watts phrased it - but it's just not tenable.