by Yohan J. John

As a neuroscientist, I am frequently asked about consciousness. In academic discourse, the celebrated problem of consciousness is often divided into two parts: the "Easy Problem" involves identifying the processes in the brain that correlate with particular conscious experiences. The "Hard Problem" involves murkier questions: what are conscious experiences, and why do they exist at all? This neat separation into Easy and Hard problems, which comes courtesy the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, seems to indicate a division of labor. The neuroscientists, neurologists and psychologists can, at least in principle, systematically uncover the neural correlates of consciousness. Most of them agree that calling this the "Easy Problem" somewhat underestimates the theoretical and experimental challenges involved. It may not be the Hard Problem, but at the very least it's A Rather Hard Problem. And many philosophers and scientists think that the Hard Problem may well be a non-problem, or, as Ludwig Wittgenstein might have said, the kind of problem that philosophers typically devise in order to maximize unsolvability.

One might assume that as a neuroscientist, I should be gung-ho to prove the imperious philosophers wrong, and to defend the belief that science can solve any sort of problem one might throw at it: hard, soft, or half-baked. But I have become increasingly convinced that science is severely limited in what it can say about consciousness. In a very important sense, consciousness is invisible to science.

The word "consciousness" means different things to different people, so it might help to cover some of the typical ways its used. The most objective notion of consciousness arises in the world of medicine. We don't usually require a degree in philosophy to tell when a person is conscious and when they are unconscious. The conscious/unconscious distinction is only loosely related to subjective experience: we say a person is unconscious if they are unresponsive to stimuli. These stimuli may come from outside the body, or from the still-mysterious wellspring of dreams.

But the interesting thing about any "medical" definition of consciousness is that it evolves with technology.

Read more »

OLD FLAME

So, I took off her blouse as she raised her arms
A trumpeter blared outside my window
She ran her fingers through my hair
I unclasped her bra

Trumpeter boomed a tune I’d heard before
“My husband will be angry if I stay”
Tip of my tongue touched her nipple
She unzipped my fly

“I should go back to my husband”
She sipped my scotch neat
Unzipped, the flame leapt
I kissed her nipples red

We savored the scotch as our lips met
My tongue trailed south from her nipples
No bush by the door bloomed
She straddled me on the king bed

My tongue brushed the door where no bush bloomed
She sighed as the epicenter shook
“Hey Hey Ho Ho: Trumpeter Must Go”
Arms raised, her hands waved double O

By Rafiq Kathwari/ @brownpundit/ rafiqkathwari.com

by Elise Hempel

I admit that Obama sometimes bored me. Not when he was fired up, almost singing, gospel-style, at a rally. Not when he was broadly smiling, affectionately joking with Joe Biden or being teased by Michelle. Not even when he was doing a serious interview with Steve Kroft, leaning forward with his hands together, deep-voiced. But during a press conference, fielding a random question – the long pauses for thought, the even longer, deliberate responses…. That's when I'd change the channel or walk out of the room for a snack. But no matter. I always knew that behind his ability to bore was a solid president, a decent man.

One afternoon last year, standing at the kitchen sink, I heard a low, almost-monotone, almost-mumbling voice that kept drifting here and there as it spoke, a voice that seemed to have no direction. I thought the radio was on in my partner's office, tuned to some daytime talk show, a soft-voiced FM deejay meandering, filling the air-space. But when I walked out of the kitchen I saw that what I'd been hearing was really the TV, a Trump rally my partner, Ray, had paused on in his channel-surfing. What I'd been hearing was really Donald Trump going on and on about something, changing from one thing to the next without transition, filling time and somehow having filled the venue with a crowd. How could anyone possibly stay awake at his rallies? (And, standing now in the living-room with the dish towel in my hand, staring at the television screen, is it possible that I noticed the possibly-paid spectators directly behind Trump turning their heads in distraction, shifting in boredom, laughing with each other about something, anything, besides what Trump was rambling on about?)

Steve Bannon has called Donald Trump "probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan." (Huh?) And I've read a handful of articles that say that people like me just don't get it: Trump speaks in a language, with a style understood by only his fervent supporters. Might it really be that, as Donald Trump rambles, his supporters are hearing, through the static and "white noise," only the bits that catch their ear, that serve their needs and wants, as I do when I'm "wool-gathering" while my partner talks, my head finally turning when he says he'll watch tonight's real-life murder show with me, or as my dog does when, somewhere in the endless jumble of my baby-talk, I speak the word "bone" or "kitty" or "walkies"?

Read more »

by Max Sirak

Happy Presidents Day, ‘Murica!!!

Ah, nothing like a made-up holiday to honor the CEO of our oligarchy.

Mmmm…drink it in. It goes down jagged with a bitter and retching aftertaste. Which is good. It means we're of a like mind and among friends.

3QD is a bastion of thought. It's a place where words still mean things and facts still matter. It's a digital, international safe space for liberal sisters and brothers. It's a place to exchange ideas, gather, and garner support.

This last point is important. It's easy to look around today, become discouraged, and feel alone.

But we are not alone. We all have friends and loved ones who are fighting or flighting. I know I've spent a good amount of time recently trying to figure out what I can do to make things better. My quest has led to me to travel in time and look back. Today I'd like to share some of what I've found.

So – whether you're running away or ‘rastling to make the world a better place – here are some things I've learned over the last month.

Read more »

by Christopher Bacas

I left a Texas college somewhere between my Sophomore and Junior years. My body and saxophone continued to attend for another year and half. Degree requirements unfulfilled, I eventually packed and left with some South Carolina buddies, padding my stereo and lps with tangled knots of dirty laundry. High on speed, we drove sleepless; taking a stealthy moonlight swim in a motel pool en route. After dumping stuff at my parents' house, we rolled on to New York City, then in its' early 80's menacing, funky glory. Greatness poured out of musicians everywhere, as Steve Wonder says "Jus' like I pitchered it". I was only visiting, though. It was all too scary.

Back home in Pennsylvania, I practiced for the big leagues. A new local eatery, with a Vonnegut-inspired name, featured fine local musicians. I went by to sit in. A trumpet player, mostly legit guy,played as well; having fun after his lawyer day-gig. He noticed the shaggy tenor player blasting away with schoolboy enthusiasm. After talking down our city (as if I didn't know it was backwards), he encouraged me to join the Musician's Union and take advantage of their bookings. They could swear me in at the next meeting.

The Union office sat between a hat shop and barber on the town's western-running main drag.

Its' interior, one large room with beat-up office furniture and framed band photos. Our local hung tough as gigs, dues, and membership declined. Its' crown jewel, a community band, once led by Music Man-monikered Elwood Sprigle, remained strong. I introduced myself to the secretary, who smiled sweetly when told I attended the city high school. As the folding chairs around me filled, I barely looked up. The men, my father's age or older, ignored me. Roberts' Rules brought the meeting to order. After sad, monotone reporting on finances and the many bars and clubs using non-Union bands, the floor went to the business agent.

Read more »

by Holly A. Case

Suzi Dada. Budapest, 2014 “plus or minus 8 years”

A few years ago someone took a photograph in Budapest of a slight young woman blowing on a street sign that appears to bend under the superhuman force. From a passing car an astonished driver looks on. The woman is Suzi Dada. She's funny, but her superhuman strength is real, and it's serious.

Dada is forever getting into the right kind of trouble. She's been confronted by police, the Hungarian secret service, and members of the extreme right party Jobbik. Unable to rely on her parents for support since starting college around the turn of the millennium, she has long been independent and self-reliant, not to mention a free radical. It took her nearly ten years to finish her university degree in history and education, but during that time she started an underground art group called Szub-Art Club for the Support of Contemporary Artistic and Subcultures, and co-founded a prankster street art group known as the Two-Tailed Dog that has since become a locus of opposition to the nationalist, anti-pluralist government of Viktor Orbán. Her attitude about almost always being the only woman who's doing what she's doing is, “I don't do it as a woman. I just do it.”

Suzi went to university in Szeged, a quiet college town near the Serbian border with a good cinema, very good ice cream, and a lot of students. Back in the 1990s, many of them were looking outward while reflecting inward: devouring literature, learning languages, hosting concerts and dance parties, and traveling the world every chance they got. In the 2000s, Dada's generation got into electronic music, extreme sports, and street art. These subcultures were little known and barely tolerated in Szeged, so Suzi organized a demonstration of skateboarders' skills for local retirees who had hitherto viewed the youngsters as “street kids with baggy pants,” rather than the winners of international skating competitions that many of them were.

Read more »

On particle “action at a distance”: “…if particles have definite states even when
no one is looking (a concept known as realism) and if indeed no signal
travels faster than light (locality)… (and, as has) recently been
discovered … you can keep locality and realism by giving up just a little
bit of freedom.” This is known as the “freedom-of-choice” loophole.
……………………………………………………………………….. —per physicist John Bell

Action at a Distance
.

He was not looking but

she really was not an apparition
standing at the center of the room
loving him

She was standing but

being there in that spot
precisely where she was,
not on the moon, say,
nor in the wind gathering speed
toward eternity (though
that wind always blew) he knew she
loved him

They were free but

things are not always what they seem.
The world’s a funny place.
Even Einstein said parts of it are spooky,
yet we love and hate
in the places we stand
practicing all in freedom, or not

Yet he knew
.

Jim Culleny
2/8/17

by Hari Balasubramanian

Thoughts on the differences in math applied to the physical and social sciences.

The quote in the title is attributed to the statistician George Box. The term ‘model' could refer to a single equation, a set of equations, or an algorithm that takes an input and carries out some calculations. Box's point is that you can never capture a physical or biological or social system entirely within a mathematical or algorithmic framework; you always have to leave something out. Put another way, reality yields itself to varying degrees but never completely; something always remains unknown that is not easily describable.

And in any case, for the practical matter of achieving a certain outcome that extra effort may not be necessary. If the goal is to put a satellite into orbit, the equations that define Newton's laws of motion and gravity, though not 100% correct, are more than sufficient; you don't need Einstein's theories of relativity though they would provide a more accurate description. But if the goal is to determine a GPS device's location on earth you do need relativity. This is because for an observer on earth a clock on an orbiting satellite ticks at a different speed than a clock on earth and if the necessary adjustments are not made, your phone's location estimate will be inaccurate.

So there is this art in modeling, this choosing of some aspects and ignoring others, trying to create the the right approximations. As Box notes: "there is no need to ask the question 'Is the model true?'. If 'truth' is to be the 'whole truth' the answer must be 'No'. The only question of interest is 'Is the model illuminating and useful?'"

Models vary widely in the amount of truth they capture. In the engineering disciplines that exploit physical laws – mechanical, chemical, civil, electronics and communications engineering – the test of a model is whether the mathematical answers match empirical observations to the degree of precision needed and whether the results can be reproduced again and again.

Read more »

by Richard King

Not much fun is it – the age of Trump? The walls, the calls, the travel bans – it's all too much to process, don't you find? Alec Baldwin does his best to cheer us up, but this shit is about as funny as an orphanage on fire. Some mornings I can't get out of bed. My hair is coming out in clumps.

I wish I could spread a little sunshine, but I fear things may be about to get worse. Next month is almost certain to see a win for Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, where anti-immigration sentiment is running at alarming levels. Then, in April, we have the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. The National Front's Marine Le Pen looks set to progress to the second round, where she'll likely face off against Emmanuel Macron. It's possible she'll lose, of course, and that Wilders will lose or be unable to form a government, but I wouldn't put any money on it.

Trump. Wilders. Le Pen. That's three bad hombres, right there.

More worrying still, for those of us whose socialism is rooted in a qualified respect for the legacy of bourgeois liberalism (ah yes! now I'm feeling better) are the terms in which these golden-haired demagogues attempt to flog themselves to the demos, especially in the European context. Indeed, I think we need a new term with which to capture this discrete political language, a language that mashes up disparate ingredients into a sickly ideological paste, which is then forced down the public gullet like grain down the neck of a Strasbourg goose. I propose "Illiberal Liberalism".

What do I mean by "Illiberal Liberalism"? What I don't mean is the tendency of liberals and progressives to assume that their values are universal and true and to shout down anyone who doesn't share them. That is a thing, and it's irritating – as irritating as columnists who begin their articles with sentences like, "Not much fun is it – the age of Trump?", as if anyone who can read is bound to regard The Donald as a pus-filled boil on the arse of humanity, which, by the way, he absolutely is. But it's not what I'm referring to.

Read more »

by Mike Bendzela

The Smiling Toads of Darwin's Bluff

An obscure species of Bufo inhabits a remote point of land called Darwin's Bluff. Long ago, one of these toads learned to "smile," but this was a fluke: It was born with a congenital defect of the jaw. Like most toads, it spent its days in an inconspicuous spot in the dirt, just sitting. There it smiled.

Some crickets fresh from molting had been schooled in the appearance of various predators of the bluff — a disturbingly long course of study for these nymphs. Upon emerging from the earth these crickets fed cautiously. But a few of the more amiable insects were attracted to the new smiling thing in the dirt. The same went for some grasshoppers, slugs, flies and beetles. Even some spiders and small mice were attracted to the smile in the dirt.

And now all the toads of Darwin's Bluff are smiling.

The Flounder's Eye

The Atlantic herring (Clupea) lived wisely in schools and indeed never left them. Excitedly they darted above their flatfish neighbor, the flounder (Pleuronectoidei), and informed him of their newest lesson:

"It seems hard to believe, but we are one and the same! Your kind once swam upright like us and had eyes on the right as well as the left side of the head."

Gazing up at these herring the flounder quipped, "Right and left are myths. The world has two directions — fore and aft — as anyone with eyes can see."

Moral: Evolution bestows upon us no native insight into our makeup.

From Froglet to True Frog

Their metamorphosis now completed, the froglets (Rana) migrated out of the pond en masse and immediately set about gobbling down every Caelifera grasshopper nymph they could see. But as these baby grasshoppers emerged from the earth they molted and began to grow and hopped out of the froglets' reach. "Whatever shall we do?" shrilled the froglets, "the grasshopper nymphs have outstripped us!"

"Hop harder!" their mothers cried.

As these froglets matured they could galumph forward with more elan and gobble down the grasshopper nymphs again. But the grasshopper nymphs kept molting: they shed their exoskeletons and grew larger bodies, which allowed them to outstrip the froglets.

"The grasshopper nymphs have escaped us again!" shrilled the froglets.

Their mothers just repeated, "Hop harder!"

And on it went, the froglets growing and galumphing forward, gobbling up nymphs, which molted and outstripped the froglets . . . until one day some mature frogs caught up with adult grasshoppers — which up and flew away!

And in this way the frogs learned Darwin's great lesson: The better you become, the more incompetent you be.

* * *

Mike Bendzela grew up in Ohio and currently teaches English at the University of Southern Maine. He is also a seasonal apple and vegetable grower and an Old Time musician. These fables are from a book-length manuscript, Fit for Darwin: Evolutionary Fables and Other Emblematic Tales.

by Thomas R. Wells

The left has been at war with neoliberalism since the 1980s. The result has been intellectual, political, and moral collapse.

The first problem is that there is no such thing as neoliberalism. It exists entirely as a critique by the left. It thus mirrors the fantasy of political correctness that the right rages against – indeed the resemblance is so great that I can repurpose Moira Weigel's elegant turn of phrase in her essay ‘Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy'

[U]pon closer examination, "political correctness neoliberalism" becomes an impossibly slippery concept. The term is what Ancient Greek rhetoricians would have called an "exonym": a term for another group, which signals that the speaker does not belong to it. Nobody ever describes themselves as "politically correct neoliberal". The phrase is only ever an accusation.

Since no one admits to being neoliberal – unless they are trolling leftists for the lulz – the entire theoretical apparatus of neoliberalism is written by leftists, either for each other or for the general public. The theory of neoliberalism thus consists of whatever you want to argue against right now – it is a classic man of straw, invented anew by every critic. Some claim that neoliberalism is something to do with how neoclassical economics look at the world (Foucault), or else US capitalist imperialism (David Harvey), or else selfishness masquerading as meritocracy (George Monbiot), and so on. Neoliberalism has been terribly convenient for the left. They can blame it for anything they hate about the modern world.

But that very convenience is a problem.

Read more »

by Kent Willard

With the inevitable addition of a Supreme Court Justice, Republicans will control all three branches of federal government. Yet Democrats have some advantages going forward. They need to win 24 seats to gain control of the House, and Republicans won 23 seats in districts where Clinton beat Trump. If Democrats run compelling candidates in every Federal legislative race then they have a chance. And Trump is increasingly unpopular with the majority of people who don't watch Fox News. If Democrats can overcome the narrower margins of victory in state legislative contests which are created by gerrymandering, then they could in theory gain control of state legislatures and craft their own Congressional districts after the 2020 Census.

But Democrats appear to think they can run out the clock on Republicans. Protests against Trump are keeping moral high for now, but there's a decent chance that Trump won't be in office in two years due to health problems, invocation of the 25^th amendment, or impeachment. The problem for Democrats is far bigger and older than Clinton's loss. Over the years they have lost control of the majority of state upper and lower legislatures and governorships, plus the US House and Senate. In last year's election, Republican Congressional candidates got more votes in aggregate than Democrats. Clinton's victory in the popular vote, along with Trump's outrageousness, conveniently enable Democrats to not study themselves in the mirror too long.

Democrats can't wait for years until minority populations reach their middle to senior ages, when voter turnout is typically high … and hope that those minorities still vote Democratic. Worse, Democrats are historically bad about not showing up to vote in mid-term elections, particularly among younger voters. If they can't get young voters to show up in 2018, then Democrats have little chance of taking control of the House and rebuffing the Republican agenda.

Read more »

by Paul Braterman

How Darwin's name is taken in vain, with mini-reviews of some of the worst offenders

From Darwin's Notebook B, 1837

Don't say Darwin unless you mean it. Don't say theory when you mean historical fact. And don't say you believe in evolution, when you mean you accept it on the basis of the evidence.

Don't say Darwin unless you mean it. Above all, don't say "Darwin" when you mean "evolution". It's like saying "Dalton" when you mean atoms. Our understanding of atoms has moved on enormously since Dalton's time, and our understanding of evolution has moved on similarly since Darwin's. Neither of them knew, or could have known, anything about what caused the phenomena they were talking about, and both would be delighted at how thoroughly their own work has been superseded.

From John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808)

Imagine if a lot of people decided that atomic theory was against their religion. We would see a parallel world of sacred science, in which molecules were "intelligently constructed", and real chemistry would be referred to as Daltonism, or possibly, these days, neo-Daltonism. The scientific dissidents from Daltonism would invoke Dalton's name on every possible occasion, and draw attention to the many inadequacies of atomic theory as he presented it in 1808. Dalton didn’t know anything about the forces that hold atoms together, which depend on electrons and quantum mechanics. In fact, he didn’t even know about electrons. Worse still, he was hopelessly muddled about the difference between a molecule of hydrogen and an atom of hydrogen. He thought that the simplest compound between two different elements A and B would have the formula AB, so that water must be HO, not H2O. And of course he knew nothing about the origin of atoms, a problem not solved until the 1950s, over a century after his death. Shot through with errors and inconsistencies; nonsense, the lot of it!

Darwin was ignorant of transitional fossils, and in words still quoted by creationists deplored their absence as the greatest objection to his theory. He was equally ignorant about the origin of biological novelty, which comes from mutating genes. In fact, he didn't even know about genes. And because he did not realise that inheritance occurred through genes, he could not explain why favourable variations were not simply diluted out.

Read more »

by Michael Liss

I was in a 7-Eleven last Sunday morning for a restorative post-jog donut, when a big, late-middle-aged man with a MAGA hat and a matching red face came in. He grabbed a few tall-boys and a bag of ice, and made his way to the check-out line. To my reasonably educated eye (and nose) those particular tall-boys weren't going to be the first of the day.

In all the kaleidoscope of images from the first two weeks of Trump's reign, there is something about this man that I cannot get out of my head. To say he seemed out of place in my 83%-for-Hillary Congressional District would be an understatement—but there he was. Wow—a perfect specimen of a stereotypical Trump voter as if drawn in an editorial cartoon! Obviously, I wasn't actually going to interact with him, but this rara avis had somehow wandered into my cloistered neck of the woods and even allowed himself to helped by the Pakistani staff in the store.

I know this sounds idiotic, like the crowing of a rock-hound who found a really exciting piece of quartz. But I'm a politics junkie, and I had just finished reading Barron's Magazine's annual Roundtable. Several of the ultra-wealthy panelists were absolutely giddy about the possibilities of a Trump Presidency. All they could see was the banquet of tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks and unlimited drilling, without those nasty environmental rules. In my naiveté, I expected some concern about international trade agreements, immigration, engagement with Europe, relations with China and Russia, and just "Presidentialness," but these shrewd businesspeople seemed quite blasé. Trump was going to be good for the balance sheet, and everything else was irrelevant.

Read more »

by Paul North

At key moments in policy speeches, Margaret Thatcher used to say "there is no alternative." After a few years and too many repetitions, the phrase became a joke. Journalists abbreviated it: TINA. There Is No Alternative. When TINA became a reflex, after it became her signature phrase, it lost its bite. Before becoming an empty slogan however, when Thatcher really meant it and the UK was listening, it was formidable. And it was already questionable too. One of the ironies about TINA was that Thatcher could only really say it in a situation where there was in fact at least one viable alternative. Why would you say There Is No Alternative if things couldn't possibly be otherwise? That would indeed make it a joke.

So, you only say TINA when there is another alternative so strong that you have to pretend it doesn't exist. A prime piece of rhetoric, TINA also alludes to a dearly held belief. The phrase was—and is—a statement about how we think things are, a belief about how the world is made. Say TINA and you imply this belief. As I say, you don't really call it an alternative, if there is only one. That is called reality. And this is just the point: TINA implies a single world with a single theory that fits all of the facts. So, if someone says TINA, listeners are reminded of their belief that, yes, there is one way that things are and one correct account of it. We can in good conscience ignore anything else. There is no decision left to make. The belief that goes along with TINA and which TINA reinforces we can call TOOT: There's Only One Theory. When she was saying TINA, Thatcher was implying TOOT at the same time. Mine workers striking? TOOT: there's only one theory and it tells us to break the back of their movement because the free flow of labor is best governed by the market. Jobless rate high? The same theory—the only one—says: inflation is the greatest evil in a post-industrial economy. That economy sluggish? The very same theory says: privatize national industries and increase worker productivity. Question is, can there really be only one theory covering human matters?

Read more »

..[Listen below]

Pattern Language

I take the sidewalk a step at a time,
shards of its exposed aggregate form archipelagos,
and there’s Jesus in a cloud, or is it Lao Tzu
explaining Is without a word

Deep clefts in the bark of a tree just passed
define the humps of Appalachians.
I saw Scranton strewn along a gully on the lichen side
of the fat trunk of a sugar maple when I glanced

A net of angst chokes a birch in the side yard
of a small house, but it’s just Bittersweet being a garrote.
Its hot orange berries are incendiary cherries.
Its network of vine is untamed thought

A wall of desiccated siding, its south face
so in need of paint some of it is dust
some parched raised grain, is the surface of Mars.
What’s left of its spent red pigment
is the feel of utter space

Hairline cracks in river ice in the dam pond
are rifts of splintered glass silvered on one side
full of mere reflections falling to the sea

A crow measures distance between
gutter pebbles with her beak
aligning as if she were a smart array of atoms
laying out the footings of a house or universe

The patterns in her brain must be
the forms she seeks

.
Jim Culleny
1/2/17.