Written by Mette Leonard Høeg
By way of the bizarre state of being, we’re already creators in essentially the most profound approach, creating our expertise of actuality and composing the world we understand.
Rick Rubin, The Artistic Act
Phenomenal consciousness continues to be a extremely mysterious phenomenon – primarily subjectively accessible, and there may be removed from scientific consensus on the reason of its sources. The neuroscientific understanding of the human thoughts is, nevertheless, deepening, and the chances of technologically and biomedically altering mind and thoughts states and for engineering consciousness in technological methods are growing quickly.
The scientific and technological advances include thrilling alternatives in addition to new ethical and existential questions and uncertainties. Lots of them entail a disruption of among the most elementary philosophical and anthropological concepts on which our understanding of people and the functioning of societies rely – such because the expertise of the self as an important and delimited entity, a centre of company and a supply for consciousness – and undermine the standard distinction between thoughts and matter, between human people and the environment and between people and different sentient organic and technological methods. They bother the anthropocentric worldview and the concept of the ethical superiority of people to that of different species and convey into view doable trans- and posthuman futures.
Neurocentrism is on the rise. A brand new understanding of what it means to be human – a brand new neuroanthropology, as Thomas Metzinger has referred to as it – is taking type. The moral and existential vacuum that was opened up by the good non secular disillusion of the late nineteenth and twentieth century right now continues to widen, and with it the area for flourishing of each hopes and fears, pleasure and fear about the way forward for humanity.
Some neurophilosophers are anticipating a deep neuroscientific disenchantment and intensive socio-cultural disruption and observing indicators of a brand new neuroexistential nervousness of Kierkegaardian dimensions in up to date tradition. There are requires neuroanthropological danger evaluation and for a formulation of a brand new consciousness tradition and ethics. Owen Flanagan and Greg Caruso current the potential psychological and emotional disruptions by way of a 3rd wave of existentialism – a ‘neuroexistentialism’ which they outline as: “a latest expression of existential nervousness over the character of individuals, brought on by the rise of the scientific authority of the human sciences and a resultant conflict between the scientific and the humanistic picture of individuals.” They current this existential problem as essentially the most urgent challenge in trendy consciousness analysis – “the actually laborious drawback” – describing it because the “particular drawback for these of us residing within the age of mind science; of creating sense of the character, that means, and goal of our lives provided that we’re materials beings residing in a cloth world.”
Can that means and existential consolation be supplied to people inside the framework of the non-anthropocentric paradigm, the rising neuroanthropology and neurocentrism? Opposite to the widespread view that reductionist and materialist explanations of the human beings and existence are anti-humanist, I’ll argue that these are the truth is suitable with among the most compelling humanist concepts of existential emancipation and ethics in our tradition.
Once we look to literature and narrative fiction, it turns into clear that humanism and existentialism already coincide and mix with materialist and anti-essentialist philosophical concepts and outlooks – and this isn’t simply in obscure works with marginal enchantment, however in among the most canonised and admired works of all time that have interaction audiences and communicate to folks throughout time and cultural contexts. Reductionist and materialist explanations of the human being and existence are built-in within the humanist concepts of existential emancipation and ethics in among the most seminal literary works from the Modernist interval, reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and Robert Musil’s The Man With out Qualities.
Extra not too long ago, the reception of Rick Rubin’s The Artistic Act has proven how these notions are already resonating strongly and positively in tradition and society right now. The famend music producer’s e-book depends on an anti-essentialist, non-anthropocentric philosophical view. It’s extremely metaphorical and lyrical, clearly strongly knowledgeable by Buddhism, however in a up to date non-religious approach that roughly coheres with trendy neuroscience, particularly the predictive processing idea of consciousness – though it additionally has affinities with panpsychist theories. The Artistic Act explains human creativity inside a determinist and non-anthropocentric theoretical framework, preserving individuality, private id and humanism.
“Consider the universe as an everlasting inventive unfolding. Bushes blossom. Cells replicate. Rivers forge new tributaries. The world pulses with productive vitality, and every part that exists on this planet is pushed by that vitality. Each manifestation of this unfolding is doing its personal work on behalf of the universe, every in its personal approach, true to its personal inventive impulse. Simply as bushes develop flowers and fruits, humanity creates artworks … We’re all collaborating in a bigger inventive act we’re not conducting. We’re being carried out.”
And:
“The world is the doer and we’re the witness. Now we have little or no management over the content material.”
Determinism and creativity are linked right here – people are described each as being carried out or created and as creators. The human inventive act is introduced in holistic phrases, as embedded within the bigger pure act of creation, whereby everybody turns into an artist. The inventive act is a apply wherein people participate along with and as a part of nature, and a apply by which they’re shaped and decided and to which in addition they contribute. The work exhibits how being a part of decided chains of trigger and impact doesn’t solely imply that we’re brought about and decided by forces outdoors of our management; the flip aspect of that is that we even have impact.
Rubin thus explicitly connects the bizarre state of being of people to a elementary inventive drive – or determinism:
“To create is to deliver one thing into existence that wasn’t there earlier than. It may very well be a dialog, the answer to an issue, a observe to a good friend, the rearrangement of furnishings in a room, a brand new route dwelling to keep away from site visitors jam. … In every second, we’re immersed in a area of undifferentiated matter from which our senses collect bits of data. The surface universe we understand doesn’t exist as such. By way of a sequence {of electrical} and chemical reactions, we generate a actuality internally. We create forests and oceans, heat and chilly. We learn phrases, hear voices, and type interpretations. Then, straight away, we produce a response. All of this in a world of our personal creation. No matter whether or not or not we’re formally making artwork, we’re all residing as artists. We understand, filter, and gather information, then curate an expertise for ourselves and others based mostly on this data set. Whether or not we do that consciously or unconsciously, by the mere truth of being alive, we’re energetic contributors within the ongoing means of creation.
Attuned selection by attuned selection, your whole life is a type of self-expression. You exist as a inventive being in a inventive universe. A singular murals.”
Alternative needs to be understood deterministically right here, in keeping with the bodily legislation and logic of trigger and impact, because the mind’s responses to influences, quite than as by way of having free will. Like Musil’s The Man With out Qualities and Woolf’s The Waves, Rubin exhibits how particularity, distinction, private id and individuality will be preserved in a materialist, anti-essentialist and non-anthropocentric existential framework.
“Once we create, we’re not simply expressing our distinctive individuality, however our seamless connection to an infinite oneness.”
These literary works present us how there are methods of reconciling and making a relation of mutual assist between humanist views and philosophical reductionism and neuroscientific materialism. They usually recommend that literature has an vital function to play within the growth of significant and viable moral and existential frameworks for human life within the neurocentric age, and in a probably trans- or posthuman future.
