In this case, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
It was not vanity that drew her to the mirror; it was the amazement at seeing her own "I." (41)
Tereza felt her soul rushing up to the surface through her blood vessels and pores to show itself to him. (48) ... The crew of her soul rushed up to the deck of her body (50).
What was screaming in fact was the naive idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of body and soul, banish perhaps even time (54).
What [her mother] meant by her injunction was: Your body is just like all other bodies; you have no right to shame; you have no reason to hide something that exists in millions of identical copies (57).
...all Sabina's paintings, past and present, did indeed treat the same idea, that they all featured the confluence of two themes, two worlds, that they were all double exposures, so to speak (63).
It's 12:48. I'd analyze these now, but I'm tired...I guess you'll just have to wait for a prewrite or the Lit X paper. O the suspense!
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Lit X: A Beginner's introduction
If I *have* this body, then I guess I'm something *other than* this body. When I say "I own my body" I don't mean "This body owns itself" - probably a meaningless claim. Or does everything that no one owns own itself? Does the moon belong to everyone, to no one, or to itself? What can be an owner of anything? I can, and my body is just one of the things I own. In any case, I and my body seem both intemately connected and yet distinct. I am the controller; it is the controlled. Most of the time. [...] (6) // This passage illustrates the difficulty in establishing a relationship between mind and body
The idea that *what you are* is not simply a living body (or a living brain) but also a soul or spirit seems to many people to be unscientific, in spite of its ancient tradition...But not all versions of the idea that you are something distinct from your purely physical body are so vulnerable to ridicule and refutation. Some versions, as we shall see, actually flourish in the garden of science. (7) [...] // This passage shows that pure scientific/biological reductionism does not dismiss the concept of body and soul.
To discern what went on in one's mind one just "looked" --one "introspected" --and the limits of what one thereby found were the very boundaries of the mind. (11) // The true problem.
-The Mind's I
This last quote is the crux of the matter. How can one examine itself fully, if it is limited by the very limitations that it is trying to observe? See the madness quote from Shadow of the Wind in a previous blog. The Mind's I argues that "the mind begins to emerge as a self-designing system of representations, physically embodied in the brain. (15)
Other notes:
Definition of soul: "the perceptually unbreachable gulf between principles and particles...the incompressible core that determines how you are, hence who you are."
"What is it like to be a bat?" Examining self-reference in a different way. We want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat, not for a human to be a bat. This is probably impossible given our limitations.
Much more on this to come...in my Lit X paper. Hopefully you're interested now...and hopefully I have some ideas now.
The idea that *what you are* is not simply a living body (or a living brain) but also a soul or spirit seems to many people to be unscientific, in spite of its ancient tradition...But not all versions of the idea that you are something distinct from your purely physical body are so vulnerable to ridicule and refutation. Some versions, as we shall see, actually flourish in the garden of science. (7) [...] // This passage shows that pure scientific/biological reductionism does not dismiss the concept of body and soul.
To discern what went on in one's mind one just "looked" --one "introspected" --and the limits of what one thereby found were the very boundaries of the mind. (11) // The true problem.
-The Mind's I
This last quote is the crux of the matter. How can one examine itself fully, if it is limited by the very limitations that it is trying to observe? See the madness quote from Shadow of the Wind in a previous blog. The Mind's I argues that "the mind begins to emerge as a self-designing system of representations, physically embodied in the brain. (15)
Other notes:
Definition of soul: "the perceptually unbreachable gulf between principles and particles...the incompressible core that determines how you are, hence who you are."
"What is it like to be a bat?" Examining self-reference in a different way. We want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat, not for a human to be a bat. This is probably impossible given our limitations.
Much more on this to come...in my Lit X paper. Hopefully you're interested now...and hopefully I have some ideas now.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Lit X...quickly...a preprewrite?
A quick thought about focusing my Lit X topic:
Reading stories from "The Mind's I" has taught me a ton about the Mind-Body Problem, and I have begun to realize how gigantic the problem is.
In large part due to "Godel Escher Bach," I have decided to focus on how the Mind-Body Problem is affected/viewed in terms of self-reference.
Also reading "The Mind's I" has triggered another thought that could really determine what I work towards in my Lit X paper. I would like to know how God, a belief in God, or atheism, for that matter, changes a personal view on the mind-body problem. Of particular interest is the story from The Mind's I "Is God a Taoist." It is an excellent, witty dialogue that came closer to my true beliefs in God than I would have thought. Google it and read it if interested.
I do have quotes for these ideas; I will add them when I have the books, perhaps in a Lit X prewrite.
IN any case, I don't have much time now, I just wanted to put these thoughts down.
Reading stories from "The Mind's I" has taught me a ton about the Mind-Body Problem, and I have begun to realize how gigantic the problem is.
In large part due to "Godel Escher Bach," I have decided to focus on how the Mind-Body Problem is affected/viewed in terms of self-reference.
Also reading "The Mind's I" has triggered another thought that could really determine what I work towards in my Lit X paper. I would like to know how God, a belief in God, or atheism, for that matter, changes a personal view on the mind-body problem. Of particular interest is the story from The Mind's I "Is God a Taoist." It is an excellent, witty dialogue that came closer to my true beliefs in God than I would have thought. Google it and read it if interested.
I do have quotes for these ideas; I will add them when I have the books, perhaps in a Lit X prewrite.
IN any case, I don't have much time now, I just wanted to put these thoughts down.