Final Examination

1. Name:  Mely Goodman

2. Midterm Grade:  B-

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3. Complete list of all posts:

• Extra Credit ~ The Voyage Within
• The Disneyland of Consciousness
• Consciousness as a Mobius Strip
• Agnostic Illuminations
• Radiance Without An Edge
• A Glorious Piece of Meat
• Patricia Churchland Interview
• Flipped Video Lesson # 9
• Flipped Video Lesson # 10
• Brain Burn
• Is my iPhone Conscious?
• Tangles Phone Lines
• Extra Credit ~ The Faith of Physical Causes
• Ray Kurzweil
• Stephen Wolfram
• The Time Machine
• Alan Turing Lecture
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 11
• The Codex Funeral:  Why Books Are Dead
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 12
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 13
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 14
• Gumby Land
• Voodoo Voodoo
• Mummy vs Wolfman
• Crop Circles:  Believer vs Skeptic

4. Complete list of all flipped video answers:

#9 -  Why is the metaphor of a mobius strip useful when describing the study of consciousness via first and third person narratives?

     I think describing the study of consciousness using the metaphor of a mobius strip via first and third person narratives useful because it allows for an explanation to be given from a different point of view, implementing the idea that consciousness is an endless surface that cannot be modified or by doing so it will loose its validity.  If the general population was more open-minded then these narratives would not be necessary, but that is not the case.  In general people tend to be set in there ways, especially when someone challenges such sensitive topics such as religion, politics, science, and philosophy.  Using first and third person narratives gives opens up the possibility of these people that are so set in there ways to sit back, open up their minds, listen, and study the possibility that the information being presented could hold some validity.  By doing so, they could fairly make a decision within themselves whether what they have believed in or thought to be true throughout their lives still fits in with their way of thinking to be so or do they find the new series of facts to be more credible.  Although, this film suggests that consciousness is a one directional idea and should not be attempted to be rerouted. 

# 10 - If we can be tricked by computers into believing that they have intelligence and intentionality and a sense of being, then what does that say about who we are?

     I do not think that although we are able to be tricked by computers into believing that they have intelligence and a sense of being identifies or defines who we are as people.  Our brain is constantly working and stores many pieces of information that sometimes may be confused with something else by association.  In the film for example, the old lady watching the presentation by the robot simulating Lincoln believed that he was a real actor when he really wasn't.  If we take the brain's perception of Lincoln, it already has information stored on how a human being moves, walks, and talks.  Now there is a robot that has the exact mannerism of that of a human being.  The brain does not automatically know that it is a robot, instead it forms an opinion based on the messages being transmitted and assumes it is a human being by associating what it already knows of what a human being looks like and how they speak and act.  Similar to that old saying, "if it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck."  

     I don't think that because we perceive something to be what it is not at first glance makes us gullible, foolish, or less intelligent than anyone else.  Our brain simply forms an idea and we follow and accept what we see fit until proven otherwise.

# 11 - What is the real message about finding a perfect coke?  In other words, what is the metaphorical point of this film?

     The metaphorical point of this film is that we are living our lives with a one direction way of thinking that perhaps is a mentality instilled in us from the time we were born and into adulthood. It is all we know as being "the truth" due to being accustomed to it from our upbringing and the teachings of our parents, peers, society, and our environment as a whole. Those customs or traditions more than likely have been passed down from generations preceding the era our parents were brought up in.  Many people establish a way of doing or believing in something, that they automatically close their minds to the possibility that there just might be something different, something better or more interesting to what they are used to. This film is allowing us to be open to the infinite possibilities that life can present us with.  It is also saying that we must always be aware of every detail presented as it may hold something wonderful.  We just may find something bigger and better that we can add to our minds and our lives to further excel as human beings.  Opening up our minds and accepting or at least giving a new experience, tradition, or idea an opportunity to hold a spot in our minds can be rewarding for ourselves and generations to come. 

# 12 - What is Gumby Land thinking?  Give two examples of it.  Why do we want to avoid Wolfgang Paul's witticism, "you are not even wrong?"

      The Gumby Land thinking is the belief in something that cannot be proven to be right or wrong.  It is an idea that we have accepted to be true or valid based on mere speculation rather than proven facts as they are in science.  Wolfgang Paul's statement that says "you are not even wrong" hits the nail on the head as to defining what Gumby Land thinking is.  It basically says that you have a belief or idea which you have accepted to be true, but you don't have the proof to back up its legitimacy thus that particular belief or idea cannot be classified as being right or wrong because it hasn't been tested and proven to be right or wrong hence Wolfgang Paul's statement, "you are not even wrong."

     Our world is so diverse that Gumby Land thinking can be found at every turn of the corner, especially when you look into religion and old customs or traditions.  For example, in the Jehovah's Witness religion there is a belief that a number of 144,000 people will be chosen to go into heaven.  I am not a Jehovah's Witness so I am very ignorant to all the details that goes into this belief, but generally speaking, even for a believer in God like myself, that idea does not make sense to me.  Members of this religion devote many hours of their lives to practice and spread the word of their religion, trying very hard to recruit more and more people to join them in their belief.  All that time and effort and you will never know for sure that you will be one out of the 144,000 people chosen to go heaven?  This is much like my own belief that everyone has a place in heaven, I believe this to be true, yet it hasn't been tested and proven because it is impossible to do so and for that very reason my belief or that of Jehovah's Witnesses is neither right nor wrong.  Another example, is the belief in reincarnation. Personally, I have mixed feelings on this particular belief.  This is yet another subject that I am somewhat uninformed on so I can't say much on it rather than questioning its validity.  I have heard from different people that the reason we experience deja vu is because we have been here before in another form of life.  Obviously this has not been proven nor can it be proven, but again, the fact that it hasn't or it can't be does not make a believer in it right or wrong.  It is just another way of Gumby Land thinking.

# 13 - "I am an octagon of contradictions which may in itself be no contradiction."--Errol Flynn, MY WICKED WICKED WAYS

My interpretation of this film is that its focus is on the wide range of existing beliefs, ideas, perceptions, interpretations, and views of life.  People in general have a difference of opinion on various subjects. Subjects that have been accepted to be true to each individual which differs to that of the next individual. Basically, our universe is made up of an unnumbered amount of contradictions due to the existing human, social, and environmental diversity.  As quoted in the film, "No contradiction has a place in human nature, in social values, just as it has in mathematics.  Contradiction is either true or false. It is." and "Truth is sometimes an octagon and that I am one.  Contradiction is a cardinal element in life and of itself may be no contradiction."  Perhaps what we believe to be contradictions in life based on difference of opinions are not contradictions and with further investigation it can be determined whether such contradiction is really a contradiction, true or false.

* Please note that there was no window on TedEd onto which I was able to directly save this response*

# 14 - Why do we mistakenly believe that chants or prayers or petitions work?  How does science explain such coincidences?

We believe that chants, prayers, or petitions work due to faith, the confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.  When there is an intense desire for a certain outcome and the results satisfy that desire we tend to hold chants, prayers, petitions, wishes, and miracles accountable or them actually becoming a reality.

Science explains such coincidences with Littlewood's Law of Miracles. Littlewood suggests that the probability of a miracle occurring is once per month.  They occur due to odds, chance, and probability, but there is no real granting of wishes or miracles.  There is an unexplainable connection between wishful thinking and probability that makes us believe that the desired results were possible due to miracles rather than them simply taking place due to chance or our "once a month miracle."

5. How much of the reading did you do?

• Is Consciousness Physical?
• The Physics of Awareness
• Is My iPhone Conscious?
• Tangled Phone Lines
• Agnostic
• The Disneyland of Consciousness
• Inside / Outside
• The Neural Basis of Consciousness
• The Voyage Within
• On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
• Computing Intelligence and Machinery
• The Horizontal Urge
• The Future of Information and Memory
• Global Positioning Intelligence
• The Codex Funeral, Books Are Dead
• The Mystical Dimensions
• Mysticism and Logic
• The Politics of Mysticism
• Littlewood's Law of Miracles
• Apophenia
• The Himalayan Connection: UFO's and the Chandian Effect
• Paranormal Adventures:  The World's Oldest Astrological Book
• Believer Skeptic and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
• The Subtlety of Physical Cues

6. How many of the films did you watch?

• The Disneyland of Consciousness
• Consciousness As a Mobius Strip
• Radiance Without An Edge
• A Glorious Piece of Meat
• Brain Burn
• Patricia Churchland Interview
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 9
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 10
• Ray Kurzweil
• Stephen Wolfram
• The Time Machine
• Alan Turig Lecture
• The Codex Funeral
• Is the Universe An App?
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 11
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 12
• Gumby Land
• Voodoo Voodoo
• Mummy vs Wolfman
• The Zahir
• Flame On
• Believer vs. Skeptic / Crop Circles
• The Octagonal Philosophy of Errol Flynn
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 13
• The Flipped Video Lesson # 14

7.  Is consciousness physical?  Answer with complete quotes from the required readings on this subject.

     There is undoubtedly a relationship between consciousness and the physical world, but the bottom line is that consciousness is not physical.  The main reason is because consciousness cannot be studied using objective experimental methods.  Consciousness is defined as a the full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life as well as internal knowledge.  These things can be rather difficult to test and conclude that consciousness is in fact physical.  Similarly, as it is stated in the film Consciousness as a Mobius Strip, "perhaps Wittgenstein should make an entrance here and suggest that the real difficulty in studying consciousness is a language issue and that some things simply cannot be addressed by our symbolical logical systems."

"In Eastern philosophy, particularly certain strands of Advaita Vedanta, the world is indeed an idea and whatever physicality we attribute its causation is merely an illusion - a maya, something which betrays its real origin." - Is Consciousness Physical?  

"Perhaps this may explain why some scientists feel that the most promising way to tackle the subject of consciousness is by a process of eliminative materialism.  Simply put, if the phenomena cannot be explained fully and comprehensively by mathematics, then one turns to physics, and if that too is incomplete, then to chemistry, then to biology, then to psychology, then to sociology, etc.  The old joke is that if none of these academic disciplines can explain it then it is perfectly okay to say, "Well, God did it." - Is Consciousness Physical?

"Quite simply, if consciousness is indeed beyond physics or anything within its known laws, then no matter how hard we try to ground mind to its neural structures there will always be something missing in such reductions. And, interestingly, this gap will loom even larger because our physical science will be unable to adequately explain it." - The Physics of Awareness

8.  Why does Patricia Churchland argue that the "self is the brain?"  Quote her directly from the readings to support your answer.

Patricia Churchland argues that the "self is the brain."  She states that what they are discovering about the brain are important on how we think about ourselves and how we connect to other people.  She is focused on determining what it is that causes decision making in the brain.  The following quotes support Patricia Churchland's visions about the brain:

"The traditional questions that philosophers have wanted to answer from Plato on have had to do with the nature of knowledge and the nature of consciousness and I'm assuming that if we do understand the brain, we will understand  the nature of knowledge, learning, memory, and so on and that we will understand the nature of consciousness. How it's possible that you can take just a brain..just a brain..and yet it has awareness, and yet it can introspect, and yet it can talk"

"So my feeling is that when the body dies, and when the brain dies, that's it. I mean, there isn't any

else to hang around"

"Science is open, science is critical, science review and revises itself and that's what makes science science."

"So, perhaps if we knew more about how the brain works, then we might be able to achieve a greater degree of tolerance and understanding of one another, and I would think that that would be for the benefit of mankind"

"...for example, the nature of memory, or perception or reasoning, or use of language, I have no doubt that we will understand those processes in terms of the way the circuits in the brain function."

"And I think it'll be very exciting, because we'll be able to understand ourselves--why we have the thoughts and feelings we have, why we're conscious, why we're aware."

"And then if it turns out that you just are "stuff," that your brain just is meat, then wanting it to be different isn't going to change it.  Why not accept it for the glorious piece of meat that it is?"

9.  How has technology changed old traditions of learning?  Reference required readings in your answers, including the Codex Funeral and GPI.

     Technology has not only changed, but it has murdered the old traditions of learning and with all the continuing advances in technology, it will soon become extinct.  "The iPad is, as other commentators have mentioned, the Swiss Army Knife of Information,"is a statement made in The Codex Funeral: Why Books Are Dead, How the iPad Killed Them.  The iPad, along with an abundance of other gadgets such as the Nook, Kindle, laptops, and smartphones are what is to blame for the extinction of  old traditions of learning.  The times when we used to go to the library to check out a book for the pleasure of reading or to do a research paper or picking up the yellow pages to find a phone number are rarely heard of these days.  Most people these days, myself included, rather enjoy the convenience of having everything you might need at any given time in the palms of your hands.  Whether it is to find a phone number, check the weather or traffic, get directions, or buy a last minute gift, we can do it all.  A lot of people resort to doing a Google search in order to get information on something that in past times they would have had to go to a library to research it or seek a professional.

     "We are going to let the world in because we want to be known; we want to extend Warhol's 15 minutes of fame to a 24/7 online availability."  "As Huxley rightly pointed out we are going to let us ourselves be controlled because are going to entertain ourselves to death" - found in the readings of Global Positioning Intelligence.

10. Is the Universe an App?  Explain your answer.

The concept of the universe being an app is quite an astonishing analogy. After carefully reading the material and watching the films associated with the universe possibly being viewed as an app, it made sense to me that it is very much so like an app.  Especially when neuroscience has established the brain is a simulator, that what see, hear, touch, and smell are the results of how our central nervous system processes both external and internal stimuli and then reconstructs a virtual environment in which we react accordingly.  Due to the ability our brain has to dream without our control or knowledge of how dreams occur we can say that our brain and our consciousness is a virtual simulator.  We only have a limited amount of information and sources that tell us otherwise, meaning our perception of life and reality is basic and very limited.  There is an entire universe of unexplainable visions and occurrences that are far out of our reach to.  Just within ourselves our brains are able to create illusions that we interpret as dreams.

"If we accept that consciousness can be simulated, at least in principle, it is then only a small step to imagining that something like a conscious human being could be simulated." - Paul Davies

"Even though we think we see the world so fully, what we are receiving is really just hints, edges in space and time." - Frank S. Werblin

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless..." - Jorge Borges

11. Explain Stephen Wolfram's "new kind of science." Give examples.

     Stephen Wolfram's "new kind of science" is  an empirical and systematic study of computational systems focused on the study of simple abstract rules.

     “Well this is rather amazing.  We have a very simple rule, we’re starting off from single black cell, but what we’re getting out is an incredibly complicated pattern, seems in many ways random. So it just doesn’t seem right, we put so little in, yet we’re getting so much out.  It’s not what our ordinary intuition says should happen.  I mean, in our everyday experience in say, doing engineering, what we’re used to is that to make something complicated we somehow have to start off with complicated plans or use complicated rules, but what we’re seeing here is that actually even extremely simple rules can produce incredibly complicated behavior” - (Stephen Wolfram)

     His creation of Mathematica was the tool used to make A New Kind of Science possible.  His book, A New Kind of Science was released on May 14, 2002, was primarily written to a wide range of fundamental problems in science such as the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the development of complexity in biology, the interplay between free will and determinism, and the character of intelligence in the universe.  His goal was to have three big things emerge:  a new area of basic science concerned with understanding what is out there in the computational world, many applications to science and technology amongst other things that nature can do, and to obtain a conceptual direction to be able to better understand the fundamental characters of science and mathematics and the places we have in our universe. 

12.  What is Littlewood's Law of Miracles?  Give some examples.

John Littlewood's law of miracles is a calculation which says that a typical person will experience a miracle about once a month during his or her lifetime.  He based this calculation on assuming that the typical person is awake and alert about eight hours a day and that events occur at a rate of about one per second.  

For example, a few years back due to financial hardships I was about to loose my home to foreclosure.  The people from the county had already came by to take pictures of our home and post a sign on our door that said it was being foreclosed. We were about three days away from our home being put up for auction, there was a scheduled date and time set and we were completely devastated.  I told my husband that the only thing we could do is pray about it and leave in the Lord's hands because he knew why he was doing what he was doing.  The following day, we went off to work and my husband called me because he stopped by our home on his lunch break and asked me if we were expecting any letters from the IRS and I naturally and unaware of what he was talking about said "No."  It wasn't tax season and we had nothing to discuss with them.  He then says, "Well the Lord has answered our prayers because this letter states that after their review of our tax documents from over a year ago, they found an error and they owe us $3,500 and the check is attached to this letter."  This was exactly what we needed to save our home and put us back on track and we are still in our home today.  To this day, I personally believe that it was a miracle from God, I have no other explanation for it, but according to Littlewood's Law of Miracles, this could be classified as being due to chance and it was our "once a month miracle."

Another example of Littlewood's Law of Miracles is this old chant that my mother knows about because her Great Grandmother used to practice it.  Much like the one described in Flipped Video Lesson # 14, except that this chant is used on cloudy days just when it looks like the rain is going to begin pouring down you begin this chant in Spanish which I'm unsure of the wording to, but you start the chant and raise your hand towards the sky and motion with your hands as if you were holding a pair of scissors and it is supposed to prevent the rain from pouring down.  I recall one day when my mother took my siblings and I to the park to play and have a picnic.  The weather had suddenly changed from partly cloudy to very cloudy and dreary, we thought we were going to have to pack up our things and go home, but that's when my mother told us about this chant her Great Grandmother used to do, mainly on laundry days since she hung her clothes to dry on an outdoor clothes line.  As my mother was telling us about this chant, she begun saying it and raised her hand up to the sky motioning as if she was holding an invisible pair of scissors.  I suppose that was her "once a month miracle" because shortly after the clouds parted and it was partly cloudy once again making it possible for us to carry on with our picnic and play for the remaining of the day.

13. How does the Mummy and the Wolfman movie explain the differences between Western and Eastern religions?

In Western religion they saw the physical body as the object that housed life and they believed they could preserve it with the process of mummification and in doing so they would be successful at avoiding individual extinction.  Preserving the body was their way of embracing the afterlife.  An example of this can be seen in the film The Mummy.

In Eastern religion there was a desire for unconditional death, or Thanatose, hence a sense of preparation for death took place with hopes of reincarnating.  They held a notion that the soul may ascend to higher regions of existence such as reincarnation. Some believed it was a transition of consciousness from one manifestation to another hence the comparison to the film The Wolfman.  The Wolfman is used to represent these beliefs because he too had the desire for unconditional death, or Thanatose.


14. Why is critical thinking so important in becoming a philosopher?  from required readings, use three examples where skepticism helps separate facts from fictions.

Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication.  Philosophy simply put is the love of knowledge and in order to gain that knowledge you must dig deep in order to reach the pot of golden information hence the use of critical thinking.  Critical thinking is highly important in becoming a philosopher because the study of philosophy is based on an in depth study that consists of having enough doubt and an interest for the bottom line truth that you use techniques such as analyzing, evaluating, and experimenting information that has been gathered by direct observation, reasoning, and experience to assert the legitimacy of the existence of such ideas or beliefs.  Skepticism, or doubt as to the truth of something, helps greatly separate facts from fictions.  Because doubt is the main source for skepticism, it forces fictitious information to be completely disregarded and only taking facts into consideration.

In the film, Crop Circles:  Believer vs Skeptic, there is a debate between a skeptic, David Lane, and a believer, Jeff Cooper, regarding the existence of crop circles and the explanation of how they came about. The believer defends his position by saying that he believes a non human form is responsible for their creation because it is impossible for a human being to create such a sophisticated and intricate designs of their magnitude with pieces of machinery and in such a short period of time.  The skeptic believes that the crop circles were created by humans. The skeptic argues that if those geometric patterns be done with a pencil and the right instruments on a piece of paper, then they can be created in large field given enough time.  The fictitious assumptions by Jeff Cooper is that the crop circles appeared overnight and it is impossible for a human being to produce those geometric patterns, instead he insists that it was a non human force that created the crop circles.  The facts presented by David Lane are that it is possible for the crop circles or geometric patterns to be carried out in a field by human beings given the proper instruments and sufficient time.

In the reading, The Politics of Mysticism, the existence of God is challenged with statements such as, "What do we really know about him?  Not much." and "The point is obvious:  what we know the least about is the very thing we make absolute statements on."  A believer believes in the existence of God based on scriptures and culturally influenced traditions and ideas.  A skeptic raise questions with the goal of seeking facts to prove his existence such as, what did he look like?  What did he do for some fifteen years in his teens and early twenties?  These questions along with the contradictory and entirely insufficient biographical details contained in the gospels is what separates facts from fiction.

In the film, Mummy vs Wolfman, there are opposing views between the perception of death in Western and Easter religion.  In Eastern religion they believed that the physical body is the object that houses life and so they attempt to preserve it by mummification.  In Western religion there is a desire for unconditional death and a belief that the soul may ascend to higher regions of existence where there will be a transition of consciousness from one field of manifestation to another. Though we know that it is impossible for mankind to experience death and much less to enjoy it.  Along with that, the human body cannot be preserved.  This is yet another example of how skepticism helps separate facts from fictions.

15. Favorite reading.

• The Voyage Within

16.  Favorite movie.

• The Disneyland of Consciousness

17.  Extra Credit:

• The Voyage Within
• The Faith of Physical Causes

18. What grade do you deserve?

I feel I deserve an A or a B at the least.  This class was very challenging for me and I have many long hours making it a point to put in my best effort in deciphering and interpreting the information presented,  watching all the required films, reading all the required reading material, and giving my most honest opinion in all of my posts.

19. Any questions?

I don't have any questions at this time, but I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be in your class and learn about a different way of thinking that is rather different than what I am accustomed to and I really enjoyed it.