The first and a halfth draft

Lesley Prince

First and a Halfth Draft undergoing periodic editing Dr. Lesley Prince. This bite: Friday 25 May 2012 11:36:50 AM

Dr. Lesley Prince has asserted the right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This work is considered to be a work of discursive philosophy, freely circulated as all philosophy should be, and available for use by anyone who wants to make use of it. HOWEVER, because we live in a nasty acquisitive society that sees no difference between theft and research, and which rewards tricksiness rather than integrity, I, the author, would like a proper citation if anything in this modest piece of rumination is used by someone else. It is only good manners, something else, alas, which seems to be on the wane.

CAUTION: This work may contain nut residue. No animals were harmed in the production of this work. Please do not attempt to eat this work; it has been judged to be unfit for human consumption. May be used to line the cats litter tray.

Human in soft focus

Typeset in the UK by The Thirteenth Directorate, mostly in Palatino Linotype, if you find that sort of thing interesting

Conversations with a Rock

Dr. Lesley Prince.
A question that has exercised more than a few people in recent years is, is the universe conscious? In particular, is it self aware? Thats a big question, and it derives from a growing concern that we, the human race, are buggering up the planet. It also derives from a misreading of Jim Lovelockes Gaia hypothesis which has become very popular within eco circles, but thats a different discussion. As to the question of the universes consciousness or otherwise, I dont know the answer, and I dont propose to address it here. More modestly, however, we might ask if a rock is self aware. I dont know the answer to that question either, but Im willing to consider it for a while. But the reason I dont know whether a rock is conscious is because Ive never had a conversation with a rock, at least one that was not a bit one-sided. So here we are, rock and me. I have no idea if this rock has a name, or if names are simply a human predilection. Do rocks need names? I mean, we give rocks names such as amethyst or granite, but these are for our convenience. Do rocks need names for their own purposes? I suppose it must depend on the nature of their social arrangements, if they have any. But I dont know about that either. I think I will give this rock a name, otherwise its like talking about another person as person, and that seems a bit rude. I will call this rock by the name Rock. I look at Rock. I know I am looking at Rock because I have this marvellous faculty called consciousness. Now thats a real mystery. Somehow this bundle of chemicals, mostly water, that is me has managed to become aware of itself sufficiently for it to refer to me as me. More to the point this wonderful faculty seems to be located in that wonderful organ called my brain, a lump of matter roughly the consistency of grey blancmange located inside my skull. How can a lump of grey blancmange develop an ability not only to be aware of its surroundings but also of itself? If I assembled all my constituent chemicals that constitute me in a bowl (a small one would do) added water and mixed it up, would that somehow manage to develop a sense of me-ness? I dont know, but I very much doubt it. The stories we tell ourselves to help us navigate the incomprehensibility of a mute universe certainly suggest not. So, what is the difference between a handful of
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Rocks enjoying the sun

chemicals mixed with water in a bowl, and that same few pennorth of chemicals and water that is me? And what has this to do with Rock? Ill get to that later, for now let us consider the me that is writing this here. Some would claim that there is a deity at work here, and that that is what makes the difference between a handful of chemicals and me. Im not so sure. That seems to me to be a glib answer to an interesting but difficult question, and it doesnt even address the question or what it implies at all. Nevertheless, even supposing I could get all the chemicals arranged into the appropriate places and arrangements that make up a me arms, legs, skeleton, and organs, especially organs would that become a me? Not necessarily me, the consciousness that is writing this nonsense, but a me all of its own. Suppose I did a Frankenstein, and got everything from an abattoir or mortuary, using the spares from various operations. If I sewed carefully so that all the bits and pieces join up properly, each in their appropriate places and arrangements, could I make a me, even if I used a new and appropriately attached brain? Could it become a me spontaneously? Is electricity necessary? Raise the storm kite, Igor, and lets find out. Fzzzzt! Pop! Voila! A real functioning me! Somehow I doubt it. I also doubt that Id be allowed to test the idea empirically, but thats simply a matter of local and contemporary legislation which might change in time. No, electricity or not, I think something

would be missing lets call it life which is a mystery all of its own. Some people would say this is nonsense, and maybe it is. But I dont care. I still doubt that my putative experiments would result in a functioning me, and I find that fascinating. But, then, maybe thats just because I believe the stories we tell ourselves, the ones that say No. As I think these thoughts I look at my friend Rock, and wonder. Its sobering to think that we originally came from the same star stuff, albeit some time ago. Indeed if the stories are correct we didn't just come from any old star, but a super nova, and that sounds really exciting. I wonder what Rock thinks about it? I wonder if Rock thinks at all? If so, what does Rock think about? Not wishing to offend, I cant keep calling Rock just Rock; I need a pronoun. But, is Rock a he, a she or an it? It seems terribly rude and yet as far as I can tell Rock has no sex, and presumably therefore no gender either. Now, this is assumption. Sex, in the biological sense, is about reproduction; gender has more of a social connotation. As far as I know rocks dont reproduce, which case they have no need of a sex; it would provide no useful functional utility. But let me be honest, what Im actually saying is that I am unaware of anyone ever having reported seeing rocks engaged in any process that might be assumed to be geared to making little baby rocks (perhaps we should call them pebbles?). Perhaps rocks only have sex away from the human gaze, it is, after all, quite a private activity. Maybe rocks are just shy. A lot of rocks apparently come from the bowels of the Earth bowels! What an image so maybe that is where they do all their reproducing, well away from any observation. What some people do say, those that know about such things, is that rocks travel an awfully long way from wherever they are 'born' until they reach the surface of the Earth, and that sounds both interesting and also implies some form of birth process. Perhaps they reproduce asexually, therefore not even needing a partner. But let us assume that rocks dont reproduce at all, or at least not in any way we might recognise. The evidence, based on other peoples observations it must be admitted, certainly suggests they dont, and therefore they have no need to differentiate themselves into male or female, or something perhaps even more exotic. Perhaps rocks just are. I wish I could ask Rock directly, but it seems that I cannot. I have no answers to these questions, and although it has been a pleasant distraction wondering whether rocks have a sex life when were not looking, I dont think it is fruitful to ponder further. Lets just accept the stories that say that rocks dont reproduce, more precisely dont have sex, and move on, at least until someone comes up with a better account of the matter.

It is possible that rocks enjoy an exciting and tempestuous sex life away from human gaze

Does Rock think about these things, I wonder? Does Rock wonder what our lives are like? Is Rock even aware of our existence? Most of the stories we accept and use to make sense of it all, the scientific, religious and philosophical stories, suggest that Rock and his or her conspecifics (assuming rocks are a species) dont think at all. They suggest that Rock is just an inert lump that, who, is and nothing more. That seems a bit presumptuous to me, and many other cultures around the world would disagree. From the little I know of the culture of the North American Indians, for example, they wouldnt necessarily agree with such a view. And let us also note that not all rocks are entirely inert. Sodium, for example, gets quite lively when dropped into water, thus making some of my chemistry lessons at school quite exciting, but I dont think we are allowed to do that sort of thing any more because it violates the rights of sodium not to be dropped precipitately into water. But all of this is by the by. Our dominant stories, the ones we rely on most of the time to explain our world to us, say quite categorically that Rock and other similar things such as sodium, are unaware and therefore inert. Personally I would like to know how anyone can be so certain that my friend Rock is unaware. It seems more of a prejudice to me, rather than a well founded scientific certainty. On the other hand rocks dont seem to do anything, not of their own volition anyway, and perhaps that suggests they dont have
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an inner life. Volition is an interesting idea. We might come back to it later. Rock, and all the little rocks that weve called pebbles, even though pebbles might be to rocks what ponies are to horses, apparently do nothing, nothing at all. I know how that feels especially when Im slobbing around on the sofa watching the telly, which I do regularly. Lying inert, lacking that magical quality we call volition and even that other mysterious process called self awareness. Am I conscious then? Good question. I dont know because at that point, and in that state, Im not thinking about it, or in other words I am not thinking about being able to think, or thinking about being aware. And if I am not thinking about being aware, then am I actually aware at all? It seems to me that at such times I am more in a state of automation than true awareness and especially self awareness. At such times, therefore, I cannot even be sure of my own existence. My world becomes filled with whatever brain candy is emanating from the haunted goldfish bowl in the corner (on the wall actually). The telly fills my consciousness, and strictly speaking Im not even there. I sometimes get into the same state when listening to Beethoven or Black Sabbath or the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band. It also happens when I sit in the garden and just chill out, a process I like to call meditation so that people dont think Im just being indolent or lazy. Its like those times when I used to sit at work staring blankly out of the window; I used to call it thinking to persuade the boss I really was working, not just staring out of the window blankly. After all, what would my boss, or indeed anyone else, know about whats going on inside my head apart from what I tell them? Nothing! Ha! Aha! Even my behaviour, or rather lack of it, can only give an indirect clue from which an inference must be drawn. So, back to my friend Rock. My friend Rock apparently is doing nothing, just like me when staring out of the window. Does that mean that Rock is not thinking? No. That would be an invalid inference because what do I know of what is going on inside Rock? Nothing! Why? Because Rock doesnt tell me anything about it, even when I ask directly. Rock isnt very talkative. Perhaps Rock is shy, or self absorbed, or perhaps cant be bothered to make contact with me. Or perhaps I am simply not sensitive enough, or in the right way, to hear what Rock is saying. Perhaps Rocks language is in a form that I cant even imagine. Perhaps Rock communicates in, say, deep infrared radiation which I am not equipped to detect? How would I know? I cant detect deep infrared radiation, not unaided anyway. But I dont have any reason to suppose that Rock uses deep infrared radiation for communication, so dont get carried away and set up an experiment to test this particular hypothesis because I wouldnt be in the least bit interested in the results. It is just an example for the purposes of
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The telly: an instrument for the suspension of conscious living

Jes kinda chillin here, catching some rays and dreamin mah dreams

discussion, not an adventurous hypothesis presented for testing. We have a prejudice when it comes to communication. We expect sounds, or marks made of sticky stuff applied to dried wood pulp, or something similar. We expect those particular symbols called letters or phonemes cleverly and systematically ordered into those other symbols called words, which are in turn cleverly and systematically ordered into those linguistic structures called sentences. In short, we expect language. We communicate by means of abstract symbols, sounds, images or movements, which we have learned to code and decode in everyday life. This, incidentally, is a genuinely marvellous ability, but one we take utterly for granted and therefore ignore in our perpetual chase for wonders to titivate us. Here I must heave a mighty 'Sigh'. Magic is all around us, but we dont recognise it. Magic is within us, is a part of us, but we seem to ignore or denigrate it in favour of external mock 'magics' such as celebrities. But back to Rock. Maybe Rocks symbolic universe is so utterly different from ours that we wouldnt recognise a communication if it fell metaphorically on our head. For all we know perhaps I should just speak for myself for all I know - Rock is quite verbose but just cant bridge the communication gap because we (I) just dont have the wherewithal to detect and decode the communication. This also raises the question of whether we would be able to understand what Rock is saying even if we could detect it. What does the world look like from the point of view of Rock? To fully understand Rocks world we should have to be a rock. Its the same with tigers, lions, crows, earwigs and so on, perhaps even the Universe itself. Even if we could hear a tigers language, for example (assuming it might have one) to fully understand it we should have to be a tiger (I think I pinched this thought from Wittgenstein). The point is that language, within which I include all efficient means of communication, is located within the cultural life of those using the language. This must include the physical environment, with all its threats and opportunities, balances and imbalances, places of safety and danger, and so on. If I cannot enter fully into a tigers life, then there will always remain problems of understanding its communications. Its the same with other people. To fully understand what another person is saying to us we must understand their world. It would help if we could be them.
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Parents of teenagers often allude to this problem when they complain that they cant understand their offspring. So this is not an altogether unusual situation. On the other hand, even tigers and teenage humans are able to communicate with us at some level and in some circumstances, because, besides other things, we are all mammals and we inhabit similar time scales. I dont know if its possible to communicate with insects and fish, or amoeba or jelly fish or other life forms (i.e. those creatures that most of us would agree to be living), but no doubt somebody has a view on the matter. Let us step back for a moment, and consider what may be a prior condition for consciousness to be present, the issue of life itself. Now I may be entirely wrong here, but it seems to me that in order to be conscious at all, let alone aware of things, and even more so to be self aware, life of some sort seems to be a prerequisite, even more so if reflexive awareness of intelligent communication is at issue. I am not a rock, and I must stress this fact, even if at times I may be indistinguishable behaviourally from one, so I cant really comprehend what life might be like for a rock. I am assuming that pretty much everyone else is in the same position vis--vis rock life. So why, in our stories, are we so sure that Rock doesnt have life or a life? Is it because they dont have organs, perhaps? I am assuming that at some level the presence of differentiated organs can be taken as some sort of criterion for life processes going on. Well, as I understand the matter the simplest life forms, those we agree are living, dont necessarily have organs either. Trees dont seem to have organs and we seem quite happy to accept that they are alive. But let us assume for the moment that having organs can be considered a reasonable criterion for judging a thing to be alive. In that case we are compelled to admit that if we cut open a rock there seem to be no differentiated bits and pieces that we would normally expect in a living organism, at least one that we might recognise as approximately like us. In general we might have an expectation for odds and ends like livers, spleens, lungs, brains, and all that gooey, squidgy stuff that living things seem to have, such as insects, worms, fish, tigers, jellyfish and so on. The inside of a rock doesnt look like that I speak in general because I am reluctant to cut open Rock to check because that would be far too invasive an intervention to foist willy nilly on a friend. I assume that the inside of Rock is similar to the insides of the various rocks I have encountered whose innards were already open to my inspection.

These are notes to help me edit this later on. You can look if you like, I hope theyre illuminating
Bacteria and viruses? No organs simplest life doesnt have organs. Bacteria reproduce by dividing. Viruses reproduce by hijacking DNA (?).

What are the 7 (?) criteria of life?

Reproduction, Respiration, Elimination, Eating, Movement (and the rest?).

Hutchinson Dictionary of Science:

the ability to grow, reproduce, and respond to such stimuli as light, heat and sound.

6 criteria of life?
1) Reacts to the environment; 2) adapts to its environment; 3) reproduction; 4) growth; 5) obtains and uses energy; 6) made of cells

So, how many criteria of life are there? Are viruses alive?

When I have seen the insides of a rock, I have never encountered anything intrinsic to the rock that could be called gooey or squidgy (Im trying to exclude odd bits of seaweed and other detritus that often attaches to rocks, although I must admit that I have no idea if these apparently irrelevant additions to the rocks might not be involved in some sort of symbiotic relationship with the rocks to which they are attached. Perhaps, for seaside rocks, seaweed performs the function of a symbiotic set of lungs? If you are short of a topic for a PhD thesis perhaps you could check it out. Theres no need to thank me for the idea). Im not really sure that gooeyness is a necessary criterion of life. Neither is it a sufficient criterion, but Ill leave that aside. The inside of a living tree is not gooey, although it will almost certainly be sticky; the difference between sticky and gooey might just be a matter of semantics, however. But Im bored with this; I dont really think gooeyness is a necessary or sufficient criterion for the presence of life. Even those guardians of scientific verisimilitude, the writers of StarTrek, have posited the possibility of silicon based life, and I think some bona fide scientists have considered it too. I dont think silicon is gooey, at least it isnt inside my computer which I suspect of being wholly aware of whats going on. Let us return to organs. Perhaps we need to see structural differences in the insides of a rock to conclude

that there might be a functional difference aiding the processes we call life. And maybe these differences are there but we just dont recognise them. Even in our own marvellous brain the structures are not always obvious; sometimes we have to watch over time, not just look, to see if something is doing something important. The inside of a rock is not uniform; there are differences of shading, colour, even sometimes density, composition and texture. Let us suppose that these differences are indicative of functional differentiation. Let us further suppose that in the case of rocks, functional differentiation is at least partly indicated by differences in colour. Put another way, let us suppose that a rock has internal organs that are detectable in the first instance through colour. How would we know if this were the case? Well, I think we would have to watch, over time. Now heres a thing. A rocks lifespan is considerably longer than the ephemeral comings and goings of the gooey water bags that we are. My friend Rock will still be here many, many (many, many, many) years after the last vestiges of my gene pool have vanished or transformed beyond all present recognition. So, trying to comprehend Rocks life from the point of view of my own puny existence (and yours too) is probably quite futile, perhaps even impossible. Consider two things: first a process that takes place over millennia, say a rock taking in a deep breath; second, an observing life form whose lifespan is, say, and let us be charitable here, roughly 70 years, with the first third of that
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life being taken up with learning to live, the last third taken up with preparing to die, and the intervening third being concerned with coping with the distractions of idiot managers and incompetent governmental intrusions into life itself. Add to this technological equipment that changes rapidly over very small periods of time, and which is prone to breaking down at frequent intervals, and finally ideas of appropriate measurement which also change rapidly according to fashionable intellectual ideologies. So, I ask again, how would we know if the patches of different colours we observe inside a rock are not functioning as organs, if those organs are operating on a time scale that is so incomprehensibly different to our own time scale, so different indeed that a single process is still incomplete after several generations of humans have come and gone? Let us leave aside the fact that actually no-one seems that interested in the problem in the first place, and that therefore no-one is looking any way (it is, after all, a problem with no obvious economic advantage, so why would anyone be interested?). Let us return to thought and communication. Maybe a thought or communication for my friend Rock is so slow and ponderous compared to our mercurial flash of being, that we could never get even to the end of one word, let alone a complete sentence, even were we inclined to watch and listen for that long. Let us get this into perspective. Compared to the lifespan of stars and the universe, we are not only momentary flashes in the greatness of being, we are also incredibly impatient. Perhaps it takes Rock several millennia just to say hello, by which time, of course, the human species, and several other species as well, have come and gone (possible destroyed in the meantime by human hubris). To get a sense of what I mean, try playing a recording of a human voice at progressively slow speeds. At some point it will stop making any sense; at another it will stop sounding remotely like a human voice. Finally the sound itself will be so distended that it will be difficult even to recognise a particular and distinct sound at all - infrasound. The same effect will be observed if we increase the speed of the recording. Its pitch will increase, and eventually it will be such that we dont even notice its sound - ultrasound (incidentally a principle used in secret communications between SAS units and their headquarters as well as the observation of young humans in the womb). In either circumstance unaided communication is impossible; to recover it we need to bring the original sound back to our own temporal frame of reference, which is our frame of understanding.

Life - marvellous!
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Coming back momentarily to gooeyness, perhaps Rock is gooey after all, in its own time frame. Take glass, for

example. It is not solid; it is a liquid, technically a supercooled liquid. That is why very old windows are thicker at the bottom than the top, because they are pooling under the action of gravity. Left to their own devices these windows would eventually form pools like a pool of water on the floor. How do we know this? Well, glass has, at least, the good grace to move within a time scale that we can observe a mere couple of hundred years rather than millennia. In other words, we can observe the gooeyness of glass over a time scale that is not too dissimilar to our own, just a little bit longer, thats all. With a rock, who can tell? How? To the ephemeral beings that we are, glass mostly appears solid; to glass it is not, but unlike rock we are able to observe it for long enough to know it is really a liquid. We can observe a similar phenomenon with water, as anyone who has ever done a belly flop in a swimming pool can attest. Jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute from a couple of hundred feet over a stretch of sea (not recommended for amateurs, incidentally). You will need enough room to reach terminal velocity before making contact with the water. With these conditions satisfied, you should hit the water at such a speed that the molecules of the water do not have time to move out of the way and accommodate the shape that is you. It will be like hitting a concrete road way, and that is because you will by interfacing with the water within a time scale that does not allow the water to be its normal accommodating self it has no choice but to imitate concrete. To observe or experience movement, and all life involves movement of some sort, we need to do so within a time frame that is within our perceptual or conceptual grasp (with or without aid), otherwise it will be outside our frame of reference, and therefore outside both our immediate perception and ultimately our understanding. If we dont know it is there, how can we comprehend it? This can be a problem. We cannot really understand anything unless it is within our frame(s) of understanding which is dependent on our own timescale. And it cannot be otherwise. We are, it is true, blessed and cursed with a large brain that, amongst other things, gives us imagination. We can imagine things that dont exist. With some of the things that dont exist, we can imagine ways of bringing them into existence, of making them happen. It is an ability of surpassing brilliance (although we have often wasted it by inventing things like banking, economics, accountancy, capitalism, management and reality TV). Imagination allows us to conceive of worlds other than our own, to play with ideas of how it could all be different, and, inter alia, to try and construct for ourselves some sense of what it might be like to be a rock, or a tree, or a sloth, or a bowl of

Supercooled: where a thing is still in liquid form and has not formed crystals

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breakfast cereal. But even then, even though we are able to transcend some of the confines of how it might be as opposed to how it is, we are still irrevocably confined by our own frames of reference and understanding. (I suspect this is why so many science fiction monsters appear risible and pathetic; if they are too far from our experience we just cant understand them). We may be able to imagine what it might be like to be a rock or a tiger, and this is important because it underlies our related ability to feel empathy and compassion, but we will never know for sure. We cant even be sure of the actual existence of a world beyond our immediate perception, whether tables and chairs and George Bush really exist beyond our imagination. Most of the time we just take it for granted, and hope it is real (sometimes I wonder why), and dont think too much about it. After all, if we are hit on the back of the head by a house brick, even if it is merely illusion, the resulting pain and discomfort, again even if merely illusion, is still not nice. When it comes down to it, we just take it for granted that other people exist and that they have a consciousness that is something like the consciousness we seem to have. Thus, the question of rock consciousness is a problem even at the most basic level. But even if we are able to take it for granted that other people exist and have consciousness, even if we can take it for granted that other animals have consciousness, what of rocks? If rocks have consciousness and communication but only on a time scale way beyond our temporal frames of reference, on a time scale that eludes the scope of our perception even if aided by powerful tools of detection and analysis, then I suspect we will never really know, even by inference (which is the way we usually satisfy ourselves that other people have minds). Because my friend Rocks

A housebrick

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temporal frame is so different to our own, Rock and all the other rocks will remain inert and lifeless to us. On the other hand, within Rocks frame of reference life might be quite racy. To share that, however, we should have to experience life at the pace of Rocks own frame of reference, over aeons not mere years or centuries or even millennia. It is said, and I believe it, that there are parts of the universe that are completely beyond our immediate detection. They are so far away that the light or other radiation emanating from them hasnt had enough time to reach us yet. It is also said, and I believe this too, that when we look up into the night sky we are looking into a past that probably predates the existence of humanity, of life on Earth, or even of the Earth itself. Some of the stars we see may no longer exist in the present. This is interesting. In our present, the star is still detectable, our spatio-temporal frame is not entirely co-ordinate with the spatio-temporal frame of the star in the sense that the cosmic now which we share with the star, is different from the spatio-temporal frame of the star itself. We are both in the same cosmic now, but at the point where the star exists or existed things have moved on and we havent yet caught up. This is because light, like us, is subject to physical constraints. It takes time to get from the farthest reaches of the universe to this remarkable bluegreen third rock from our sun even if you are light. Everything is constrained in some way or another, otherwise we could not experience a universe that (apparently) behaves in a relatively consistent and law-like manner. Without some constraint we should have to relearn our world and ourselves each moment of our waking existence. Clearly we dont have to do so and that means, at least from our own frame of reference that things are relatively stable, and therefore relatively predictable. Lucky us ! But it also means, or at least implies, that there may be, and probably are, things out there beyond our present comprehension. If we cannot experience the cosmic now with a star, but only experience the stars cosmic then a long time after its instantiation, then what else are we missing? It is said, and I believe it, that bees are able to see ultraviolet light. What must the world be like when seeing ultraviolet directly? Not the same world as we see it, although here I am assuming that we (people) look out on more or less the same world as each other. For all I know you actually might be able to see into the ultraviolet or infrared ends of the spectrum even though I cant. If you are younger than me, chances are that you can hear a greater range of frequencies than I can. Its like the old question of whether the blue I see is phenomenologically the same as the blue you see, that is, is whether the internal experience
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is the same for both of us. Its an interesting question, but one we may never have a definitive answer to (even if we are eventually able to hook up all our clever computers directly into our clever brains). Actually I suspect that the answer is no. I think we experience colours very differently from one another (perhaps dependent on eye colour?) and that accounts for why some people have such an appalling colour sense , unlike my own which is naturally aesthetically quite perfect. We already know that some people find it difficult to distinguish red and green, that others have problems distinguishing blue and yellow, and other sighted people, I understand, are unable to distinguish colour at all. Some people have claimed even that the colour world of the Ancient Greeks is very different to our own, usually on the basis of obscure literary references to the sea being the colour of wine (although maybe Ancient Greek wine was slate grey rather than deep red or a mellow cream colour). It is said, so Im told, that dogs look out on a monochrome world. What must that be like? I can only imagine, and that imperfectly (I need a black and white television to give me even a superficial understanding). So, what am I unable to see that you can; and what can I see that you cant? It all makes the old saying seeing is believing a bit problematic. What are we seeing, and on what grounds can we believe it? More to the point, what are we not seeing? All of this suggests that the universe may be, and probably is, full of mystery in the sense that there are some things beyond our comprehension, some only momentarily, some over longer time spans, and some possibly forever. I quite like that. A universe that we fully understand would be dead boring, and I mean dead. It would leave nothing for the scientists, poets, writers, artists, theologians and, I suppose, journalists to occupy themselves with. I could have included politicians, bankers and bureaucrats, but they seem to live in a self-contained fantasy lallaland of their own creation which leaves no room for wonder, so I dont think they count. Actually lets not get too carried away here. This doesnt give us carte blanche to believe anything we like. None of this should be (or can be) taken as evidence for the existence of angels, demons, gods, the market and other mysterious entities that run the show while were not looking. To be unsure about what we do know (and how we discover it), and to assert that there are (self evidently) things we dont know, and some things we may never know, does not mean that we can fill the gaps willy nilly with anything we like. We may speculate, but not assert. We are entitled to suggest that angels might exist, but without some kind of compelling evidence we are not entitled to assert that they do exist. We have rules about that sort of thing. Although our favoured rules of evidence might be partial,
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incomplete and sometimes misleading, having them as a filter against our wilder flights of fancy is better than a laissez faire situation in which any old nonsense can be advanced as truth with equal status alongside more considered accounts. Im not claiming that science, and similar approaches to truth, necessarily leads us to ultimate Truth because it might not. But at least it is systematic and careful and aims at the exclusion of avoidable bias, even if occasionally it sometimes misses. Untrammelled fantasy, on the other hand, has no such safeguard against nonsense, and the danger with nonsense is that there is always someone who is quite happy to exploit gullibility for profit, or worse. No, not knowing is not evidence for anything; it is just an absence of incontrovertible, or at least good, evidence for or against something. We might argue about what counts as good evidence, but that is a legitimate part of the process, and admittedly what we might dismiss today as nonsense we may accept as established fact tomorrow, and vice versa. But that is irrelevant if the change of mind has at least gone through some kind of filtering process to keep the charlatans at bay. I am still free to believe, if Im so inclined, that the bad weather on my holiday was caused by a malevolent demon (or an unkind universe) who had it in for me, but just because some scientist or other cant give me a precise and incontrovertible explanation for the bad weather in terms of meteorology, or indeed refute my claim that it was all down to a malevolent demon, does not mean that my demon is a sufficient and equal explanation to one drawn from meteorology, even if the latter is partial and imprecise. Besides, an alternative explanation might be that the bad weather was caused by my walking under a ladder on the day I set off for my holiday. But this takes us into the realm of causal explanations, and ideas of causation, and I dont really want to go there. What about my friend Rock, whom I have rather neglected in the last few ramblings? Am I trying to claim that Rock has or shares in consciousness? No. Am I trying to claim that Rock is able to communicate? No. What I am claiming is that within our frame of reference Rock does indeed appear to be inert and lifeless. However, that is to assume that our frame of reference is the only one from which to judge. Rock, on the other hand, can be viewed from an entirely different frame of reference, one so totally different to our own in terms of time, that it is possible for Rock to be conscious and communicative, but such that we are not in a position to know, even inferentially. We have no choice but to judge from our own frame of reference, or one that we can imaginatively construct, but it is nevertheless very partial, and the Truth might be completely other than
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we think it to be. On the other hand I am emphatically not arguing that we are able therefore to smuggle in any old nonsense under the cloak of inevitable ignorance. Although I recognise that the rules of evidence we have created for ourselves are partial, often incomplete, and sometimes misleading, they do have one virtue that is unsurpassed; they bring phenomena out of the obscurity of personal experience into the light of community scrutiny, which is to say out of the personal into the social. This allows many people to take part in the process of identifying truth and well away from the insights of individual gurus. I regard this as a very good thing. So where does this leave me and my friend Rock? Is Rock a communicative being or an inert lump with no consciousness whatsoever? Well, within my own frame of reference Rock appears to be inert and lifeless, but because Rock really lives (or not) outside my frame of reference and understanding I am really not entitled to any definite view; I really can have no opinion about it one way or another. This is sad, but it is the way it is, for the moment at least. Perhaps one day someone will come up with a clever way of telling one way or the other, although no-one has done so yet. But Rock and I can still be friends because that is more a matter of attitude not evidence.

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