The Self Illusion

Sam Harris has to vowed to publish a book on the self sometime next year. The idea is to show is that self, or a sense of self, or whatever about that, is inherently an illusion. I hope that I would be able to read it and reflect on it. In the meanwhile I have found a rather suitable image that was floating on facebook. The image has a verse from the holy Quran that literally means that "life of this world is nothing except an illusion." It is interesting to note that Sam Harris agrees with the Holy Quran in some sense. It would be interesting to read his argument and to see how he would systematically disagree with religion on this issue, on which the religion basically almost assumes the same position as that of Sam Harris.  This image is a part of my preparation to read, and hope to understand, his upcoming book.

This is the 85th verse of the third surah of the Holy Quran, named surah Al-Imran. Imran (AS) was the father of prophets Musa and Haroon (AS) (Moses and Aaron). Al-Imran means the family of Imran.

 
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Will of God

Thinking too much has its own benefits and drawbacks like any other thing. Long time ago I used to have really excessive thinking habits. I used to think about almost any thing. Think about it for the while that if you are thinking for a very prolonged time on things that are seemingly so petty. Just think about it for a while that you restrain your natural spontaneity of carrying out apparently trivial tasks by devoting an additional portion of your thought process to, no matter what you do, to think about additional, and apparently, useless things. For instance, if you are thinking about on as to who has the control of your hands as you type in the keyboard. Or think about something so fruitless as when you are going to blink your eye next time as you read this article. Clearly, if you are trying to acquire conscious control over the timing of your eye blinks and, moreover, also thinking about some could-be consequences of that blink, you have naturally, unnecessarily, restricted yourself and there are many practical disadvantages about that. To name but a few, you have sacrificed your focus, attention and a great deal of enjoyment that you could otherwise have availed if you were not thinking like this. 

But think about it like this that there is a person who is trying to optimize his/her life and wants to take all the steps very carefully. If you are living in a socially perilous, for instance, you may also start thinking like this. Well, of course, you may not think about the consequences of your  each and every eye blink, or even a few of them for that matter, but you would definitely be wary of some other things. For instance, consider that you are living in an area that is highly prone to undergoing a bomb explosion. You will be quite watchful about most of the moves you make. You will be watchful about your surroundings as you go outdoors. And possibly, given to the lack of predictability, you might also wonder about the will of God in your moment by moment experience of life.

One may think that this is quite true about the highly religious people, irrespective of whether which religion they come from. That a religious person would be wary about the will of God in, say, predicting the favorability, or lack thereof, of outcome of things. However, one may argue that an atheist would also wonder about will of God, albeit in other ways, and often also possibly quite critically.

For instance, an atheist or an agnostic, or a student of theology for that matter, may wonder about the will of God in connection with his/her ability to step his/her feet. How did I acquire an ability to step my feet in the first place? That who does it, apart from me? How does it happen? How did I learn to step my feet in the first place? How can I become better at this? And for how long, in the distant future, I would be able to keep on doing this? All of these questions may be considered naive at times and cogent at others. However, they can be posed to pass time in a good way over a cup of tea.  

It may sound like a very naive idea to scribble down one's thoughts like this. However, while we wonder about a topic so esoteric, and apparently pointless, as whether or not we have free will or not, it also make quite a lot of sense to wonder about will of God. After all what the folk out there believe about free will is that human beings have free will and have all the freedom to do whatever pleases them. So why wonder about free will? One of the answers possibly is to dig deep into human personality.

Around a year ago I came across an article by famous Urdu writer and philosopher, lat Sufi Ashfaq Ahmad. Sufi Ashfaq Ahmad was worth listening to always and he was very highly educated and well travelled across the world. He was also extremely well read. The article I found was in his book Zaawiyya. It is a collection of his short stories, inspired by his sensitive experience of life. The article was titled Ahkaam-e-Ilaahi. Its literal meaning in English would perhaps be commandments of God. However, after reading the whole article and appreciating its theme, I would rather call it Mansha-e-Ilaahi, or Will of God in English. The crux of the article is as follows in my own words:

We see weird things happening around us in every day of our life. For instance, we see that a crooked person keeps on climbing the ladder of success as his life progresses (and also keeps on becoming more and more crooked). On the other hand, we also see a very nice, and possibly extremely pious, man drenching further into problems and so on. Sufi Ashfaq Ahmad argued that this phenomenon has been been widely studied both in the West and in the Orient. At the end he argued that West finds alternative reasons for it (such as studying it from different perspectives), oriental people refer to it as the will of God. 

I liked the approach of the writer a lot. Although what he wrote was not universally true, but he did make a point. Allah Karim!

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  by  eviljohnius 

Consequences of the Lament

In response to Reflections on Free Will, by Daniel C. Danett, Sam Haris wrote The Marionette's Lament. In this Sam refutes with the criticism of Daniel about his book Free Will. In the beginning Sam is quite vociferously reactive of the style and tone of Daniel's criticism. In particular Sam finds the reflections of Daniel quite sneering. This may not have been the case with an ordinary reader whose native language is specially not English. In reality, an ordinary reader may have been unglued by a lot of intricacies of the subject as soon as he/she may have started reading the reflections. For instance, on one occasion Daniel describes the reflections as a museum of mistakes. An ordinary reader may not have noticed it as sarcasm or ridicule. Sam did! And responded quite vociferously to it. The fact is that a reader whose native language is not English might have found it quite difficult to appreciate this and other such comments specially because of lack of familiarity with the sense of sarcasm used in the English language or English cultures. A museum is just a museum at the end of the day. And there are so many museums around the world. So why make so much of a big deal about a museum of mistakes, which is just another museum. Isn't it? Oops! I have started to sound like Al-Capone!

After addressing Daniels reflections Sam goes on to explain his own conception of free will. This is done specially nicely when he tries to change the topic in his section "changing the topic". Otherwise, at least I would still have been baffled about the notion of free will he is trying to project. Free will is free will at the end of the day and we all have it. Some of us use our free will in one way or the other depending on how we wish to choose. (More Al-Capone!)

Sam's vantage point becomes specially clear when he distinguishes between first person and third person experiences or influences that shape the personality of a person. For instance, according to what a common person may understand about his notion of free will can be explained with the help of the following example. 

Consider a person who has chosen to become a cobbler. He chooses to become a cobbler because he thinks that it is a benign man's profession. A man can mend shoes and also be safe from many a distractions and dangers in his daily life. All he needs to do is to learn to sew and stitch the shoes well. He hones his motor skills to suit for speedy stitching. This way he gets better and better at making/mending shoes and becomes better and wealthier day by day. Doing so he also evades many chances of getting involved in unnecessary conflicts he would have been involved in otherwise. Had he been a truck driver, he might have been dead already in a road accident. Had he chosen a more sociable profession, such as that of a car mechanic, for instance, he may already have been badly injured due to a dispute with a client or burnt due to exposure to radiator overheating. As a cobbler all he needs to do is to find a solitary corner, sit there and hone his skill to stitch shoes and not his own hands. Pretty safe!

Common man, or folk, would obviously think that the cobbler made some really nice decisions in his life and became what he became, a successful cobbler. Does not the cobbler then have free will? To the common man, he really has that. He thought about a career choice at some stage of his life. Then he took a step to starting working on that. And as he started working he also learnt to have better self control and added to that, better motor skills due to which he can stitch more shoes in a given span of time that he would not have done otherwise.

Sam argues that this is really the illusion of free will the common man, or folk, suffer from. Daniel comes along to agree with the folk for their respite. According to Sam's framework of free will, however, the cobbler exactly does not have that freedom. Sam would argue that the circumstances, that shaped the cobbler to become a cobbler, have/had been governing his decisions throughout. The external environmental threats and influences forced him to become a cobbler. For instance, the cobbler may have feared at some stage of his life that taking up a more sociable profession was hazardous for him in some sense. His yearning for personal security urged him to take a professional choice he would not have taken otherwise. What if the cobbler had wanted to become a news editor instead but was too shy to have become that.

Sam would also argue that the cobbler's yearning for becoming something other (a mechanic, a driver, or a news editor) than what he actually became (a cobbler) also does not show in any way that the person had any free will. All his desires emerged from circumstances and influences that were out of his control. To this end, Sam indeed does have a point and he also takes us out of the misery of endlessly wondering about the real point of his argument.

How does then Sam's theory of free will cope up with the cobbler's acquiring better motor skills. His decision to learn to become a better stitcher can be ruled out using the same reasoning as above to show that free will is an illusion. The fact that he somehow acquired motor skills can also be ruled out same way. It is just a part of his decision to learn better shoe stitching and since he made that decision under the influence of external factors (factors emerging from events happening in systems other than his self), he simply does not have free will. However, how about his experience of dextrous stitching. The experience one can observe fast, near perfect mechanism of stitching shoes, with almost no flaws. How does one account for this fast stitching process as one observes it as what Sam calls a moment by moment experience of life? Sam would argue that this also suggests that the cobbler does not have free will. 

The robot-like skills that the cobbler has acquired through years of hard work and practice also suffers from third person influences. Actually, as any experience does, it may as well suffer from bunch of external influences. 

Grave Consequences: By suggesting that people do not have free will what Sam intend's to show is that people cannot be held responsible for their actions. Here, Sam's intention can sound both innocent and astute at the same time. Does not it make sense to say that since people are not the ultimate designers of their decisions and actions, it is irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they do.

Actually Sam has a deeper point when he suggests this. In a meaningful sense, he wants to liberate people from many things, such as a sense of guilt and sin and to free them out of prisons when they have been considered wrong and morally defunct by the society and the judiciary. This is done by saying that since people do not be held responsible for their actions it is absolutely irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they have done. In some sense this is what it means.

It is, however, not understandable at this point that how Sam actually thinks or would propose a newer judicial system to look like. A person who has murdered now is considered a murdered presently and accordingly he is sent to jail. If Sam's framework became applicable at some stage, how would that take into account this aspect and the associated repercussions at some latter stage.

A Deeper Point: I thought about Sam's work for quite a while. I have been reading him for quite a few years now and I know that he is an atheist. Indeed, as it appears from his writings, it is one of the life goals of Sam Harris to systematically argue against religion and hence existence of God. I seriously hope and pray that that would change at some stage of his life. But this is not the point I am trying to make, it is just a comment. So, as Sam is an atheist, one can wonder that how would Sam argue about an act of, let us say, terrorism (a bombing or whatever, we know of many such things) committed by someone. In particular how would Sam argue about the action of the person in light of his framework of free will? This is a very cogent question indeed. If a person does not have free will and he has committed a heinous crime such as creating a huge bombing event, how would Sam propose a justification of that or of his conception of free will. I propose, that Sam would propose, that that person, like all the other people, also did not have any free will. The person did that under the influence of things that have influenced him over his lifetime. More explicitly Sam would argue that it is not the person who should be held responsible for his action. Instead, it is the religious teachings he had had during his lifetime that should be attributed responsibility to. In short, Sam would argue against the religion instead of the person. This point would have far reaching consequences specially if his theory of free will is to be taken seriously. Allah Karim!

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  by  BrynJ 

A Reflection on Reflections

I managed to read the "Reflections on Free Will" by Daniel C. Dannett twice. This is a review of the book of Sam Harris named Free Will. I read the book twice due to the concern that I may have missed the point. Keeping in mind to not to miss the point is very essential in my point of view specially concerning this type of philosophical work. There are at least three cogent reasons for keeping in mind that the point not be missed. 1) This is a very delicate topic. On a superficial level it may sound artistic and, thus, easy to comprehend, but in reality it demands a lot of attention. 2) Sam Harris is a very elegant writer. There is no doubt about that. In as much as there might be a lot of his critics, I am sured he is admired by many due to his way of writing and the way he translates his thought process on paper (or a computer based book or blog for that matter). I also admire his writing its style and content. He poses very cogent questions at times. But there is one thing about Sam Harris's writing style that at times it appears that he swings his whole argument. He moves his discourse in a sort of a spiral and comes back to square one. One may really wonder at that instant on as to what is his point. That is why I believe that it is very important to re-read and to try to fully understand what he has really written and implied. Pun not intended! 3) Sometimes we can be shallow readers. Our not too good reading comprehensions, short attention spans, lack of focus, time varying interest, and dwindling energy can actually play a role in us missing the whole point altogether in an otherwise such an engaging and lengthy discourse. 

However, reflections has been written by Daniel C. Dennett and not by Sam Harris. And this one is actually not very confusing. In reality it really demystifies many of the conceptual caveats one may have about the subject of Free Will (while possibly creating others in the form of various esoteric thought experiments or whatever). So the point number 2 (among the 3) listed in the above paragraph might not really hold true in this case. However, since reflections on free will is actually a reflection of the work of Sam Harris, point 2 might begin to hold true to some extent for this book as well.

So what is reflections really all about. Reflections refutes the argument of Sam Harris that free will is an illusion. What Daniel argues about is that we human beings really have free will. This is the whole idea of this book. However, I was interested in understanding the subject in a bit more detail and on a deeper level. I was interested in understanding if there is something really deep about the subject of free will. And indeed there are a few really deep things about the subject of free will. I shall point out three things here that I came across in the book for the purpose of brevity. The real purpose in writing this (sort of a) summary is to create a stub about the subject so that I can revisit it latter at some stage for my own perusal, at least. In what follows, I am trying to write my concerns from memory. The reason for this is that I am already trying trying to struggle with other distractions as I am writing this.

The first thing I have noticed and I find worth commenting and contemplating about has something to do with the mention of immaterial souls. In the start of reflections, Daniel tries to defend the position of Sam Harris by somewhat suggesting that when he asserts that human do not have free will, his theory applies to our immaterial souls. And since we do not have immaterial souls (and since we are just lumps of biochemicals), the theory does not apply to us. This is what I have inferred at least. I admit that I could be wrong. My understanding could be flawed. Specially since I am writing this from memory and I do not have the draft of reflections opened in front of me. My concern is that irrespective of the fact that we have immaterial souls or not, what would be the repercussions of applying a similar scrutiny that whether we have free will or not if we actually had immaterial souls.

The second aspect about the book is the spectrum of various positions we can assume between free will and determinism. I have still not really understood the deep meanings of various positions such as combatilism, incombatilism etc. I do understand that combatilism implies that determinism and free will are compatible; both of them can exist (I wonder if exist is the right word) at the same time. Incombatilism is the converse. It means if free will can happen, determinism is false and vice versa. The problem is that it is really important to deeply understand these notions.

The third is the understanding of free will. The position Sam assumes is that free will is an illusion. That I have decided to read about free will. That I may have wondered at some stage on as to what it really means to have free will. That I eventually managed to find some thinkable reading material on it. Eventually I am writing about free will now. According to Sam's framework, I was not really free in choosing to come up to this point. According to Sam, there must have happened events in my life that were beyond my control that may have urged, motivated or influenced me to do all of this. For instance, I may have been impressed by philosophy at some stage. And at some stage prior to that I may have been told that philosophy was an enterprise worth getting impressed about. Daniel has argued that this does not imply that we do not have free will.

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  by  Tomas Sobek 

Does Willpower Exist

Almost for the past one month I have been thinking about writing about willpower. The idea may sound trivial to the casual reader. However, it is interestingly not so. Why am I interesting in writing about this curiously has a very cogent reason. That is that while we are not so sure about whether we possess free will or not, how can we assume that possess willpower.

Quite interestingly my curiosity has coincided with the recent publication of Daniel C. Dennetts Reflections on Free Will. Sam Harris recently wrote a book titled Free Will. In response to that Daniel wrote a possible rebuttal to that. I have not been able to read Free Will possibly due to shortage of time and lack of access to a decent library that would host such books. I am sure it must be a very interesting book. On the other hand Daniel's rebuttal also sounds promising. In Sam's own words the rebuttal itself is as long as the book. 

Luckily I have been able to give it an initial eye-ball, something that I could possibly only do given my tough routine over the past few weeks. Daniel has some very interesting reflections on Sam's notions of free will. I could not comprehend everything, but one definitely gets a good deal of an idea even through casual reading. It is interesting to note that both Sam and Daniel hold interestingly opposing positions on existence of free will. While Sam argues that we as humans do not have free will, Daniel proposes the converse. However, the argument is not that simple. It becomes quite obfuscated specially when we involve compatiblist and incompatiblist theories into account. It is true about me at least that I find a lot of things difficult to comprehend. It might not be true for many other readers (or students). However, I presume that a more focused reading may help in alleviating my problem of understanding the whole gamut of "free-will" "no-free-will" theories. 

Assuming this knowledge of free will as a basis one may pose another interesting question: Does willpower exist? Often we hear success stories about ordinary people who dealt with extra-ordinary situations and came out as victorious. We tend to say that so and so person has tremendous willpower simply because he/she struggled very hard against so many unprecedented and unfavorable circumstances and eventually came out as victorious.

Mountaineers climb high mountains. In the due course they fall off high and rocky cliffs. They get emotionally shattered and physically crippled. However, they do not give up on their ambition to climb. Is this determination and audacity an exhibition of willpower?

I stopped blogging almost a month ago due to other important chores that I was supposed to undertake. As I stopped blogging I made a vow to myself that I would think about a few ideas about writing and come back and write with more zeal and passion as soon as I got a new idea. The very fact that I have somehow managed to come back and written off this article, is this suggestive that I possess some level of willpower in some  meaningful sense? 

In order to understand this we would initially have to understand what willpower simply means. In its simplest interpretation willpower can mean the ability to execute one's will. To this end, one should have the ability to have will or to will, irrespective of how a philosopher may believe that it is suitable for us to have it or not. Anyhow, if we agree with Sam Harris that we do not have free will at all, how can we have willpower? 

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  by  joiseyshowaa 

Your Best Self

Your perception of your "self" can play a great role in how well or poorly you do in various endeavors you undertake in your life. I am using the term "self" with quotation marks particularly to pay emphasis. First of all it is important to have an almost precise understanding of the term "self" itself, if not "the self". Here I have used the term "self" to refer to the topic or to the self in general, whereas the term "the self" is used to refer to a particular self. The self has been a subject of considerable philosophical scrutiny since millennia. Many thinkers have thought and written huge treatises on it. The topic also draws great attention in teachings of various religions. So what does the self mean?

It is your inner personality that distinguishes you from others. The self is something that makes you unique. The strength of your character, things you are good at, your virtues, your fears, your audacity, your goals, your memories and the way you respond to various stimuli on a moment by moment basis in your life forms your self. 

This is possibly a brief and a comprehensive explanation of the term self. If you have understood this explanation well, it should not be very difficult to understand your own self. However, the story is not that simple. Bewildered? Even if you are not confused at the moment I promise that you will be quite confused by the time you reach the end of the next paragraph. And if it does not confuse you or shake your beliefs about your "self" or "the self" as a topic, you are either a well read person with an elevated acumen for philosophical thinking or you are a bit too naive to comprehend all this academic mumbo jumbo concerning the self. Don't mind, many people are like that.

Even if you have tried hard to understand your self, you may be living in an illusion about it. Actually there was an article in The Scientific American Mind recently that was titled The Self Illsuion. According to this article everything you experience in your life is merely an illusion. In simple terms this means that you are living in an illusion no matter whatever perception you have about yourself. A more complex explanation is that the pain you have due to a severe injury is also merely an illusion. Would it be alright to infer from this that your whole existence, or the very fact that you believe that you exist as you are reading this article and your whole being is merely an illusion? You'd rather that this is the right conclusion.

Looking at the self from the vantage point of contemporary philosophers and the article posted in Scientific American Mind is definitely perplexing. However, you can simplify this discourse by making a few ordinary assumptions. You can assume that you are real and that all of your pains and pleasures are also real and consequently your self is also real. Having agreed on these simple assumptions we now try to see on as to what forms a good or a bad self. You will find that things are still quite complicated. Keep on reading to learn more.

Your self deceives you in many ways. You can do a few simple thought experiments to find out the various deceptions it plays on you. Stand in front of a mirror while you are combing your hair and while you are all dressed up in the best clothes you have. You do such a thing everyday. Now listen to that inner voice that tells you all the great and cool things about yourself. That is how your self is being dishonest with you while trying to beguile you about all the good stuff that you are actually not. Do you feel like disagreeing with this judgement? Let us see why you should not.

At once tell yourself to deliver a speech to an audience comprised of arbitrarily chosen people on a randomly and instantaneously chosen article. Think about it very strongly that you have to perform this activity very soon. As soon as you give this command to yourself you will find your self telling weird things to you about yourself and the speech you have to undertake. Indeed, if you do not have any public speaking exposure or if you are a novice speaker, a myriad of negative thoughts must definitely have stampeded through your mind at this moment. 

You are getting nervous. You try to find an excuse. You think that you are obviously great but making a speech is totally out of question. You tell people that you are good at cracking jokes with friends but you are definitely not going to make this speech because you believe that there is something really so bad about public speaking that it should not be done at all. You may even say that this whole public speaking is completely crap and that everyone should abandon it. 

These are all lame excuses. The truth is that deep inside your self is telling you that you really can not make this speech at all. It is telling you all the bad things about your voice and appearance. It may as well be telling you that how goofy you may look like when you actually stand up on the stage to make that speech. Just imagine yourself standing behind the dice while the clamor of claps from the audience strikes your ears. You think of your self as a dumb donkey, a designer's dummy standing on the stage with absolutely no clue about what you have to say. You even curse the moment when you stood in front of that mirror and thought about yourself as being something of value. It all started from there.

However, the truth is that your self is playing against you again and telling you all the bad things about you that you are actually not. This is the illusion of the self when you believe with considerable confidence in the assumption that you made earlier that you exist along with all your mental faculties intact and in good order.

The crux of the discourse we have had so far is that your self tells you good things about yourself while in reality that might not be the case. At the same time it can tell you bad things about yourself while actually you are not too bad either. Actually as a matter of fact, by continuous practice in trying to improve upon a few things you can become better and better.

Now try to relax! If you have read it so far, you have made great progress. Even if you have not understood everything in this article, it is alright. The mere fact that you have been reading this article till this point means that your curiosity has drawn your considerable attention to the subject matter this article is trying to cover. You need to be complemented about this. Congratulations!

Assuming that you have understood that your self deceives you in ways that you do not understand well, you have to find some remedies. In this paragraph and in what follows we can try to find a few remedies. First of all try to learn to relax. having a relaxed personality can enhance your performance manifold at many tasks. In order to develop a relaxed personality that you can do many things. However, I presume that meditation is one of the best cures. There are many meditation techniques that are available online and you can choose the one that suits you the best.

The second thing is to work hard. There is no shortcut to hard work. And with hard and persistent effort you can achieve anything you can conceive and that your heart can believe. The third thing is to do what you love to do. This has been emphasized by many gurus and success preachers. It is a self evident truth that there is nothing you can do well than what you love to do. 

Having said this, the fourth advice is to try to pursue decent goals and develop humane ambitions. This is quite self explanatory. The fifth thing is to try to learn to be confident. Actually if you pay due heed to the above advice, self confidence will automatically follow. Never mind if you are low on self confidence right now. Just try to console yourself with the idea that everyone suffers from this syndrome time and again. There are a few who are perpetual sufferers and there are many who have recurring episodes of low self confidence. The sixth advice is that while you should not overestimate yourself you should not do the converse as well. 

The last tip is to try to understand that your self plays tricks on you. This means that while you should not believe that you are Hercules, you should also not think about yourself to be completely irrelevant. When that happens with you, think that anyone can have these kinds of feelings. Even as I am approaching the end of this article, there is already a plan developing in mind to tell me that how the heck did I manage to write this article at all. Always remember that your best self is when you are cool, calm and confident on the day when you actually have to deliver that speech you were really scared of.




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  by  GaggieITMI 

Understanding Human Consciousness

I recently patched up a small research proposal titled Understanding Human Consciousness. It is a five pages long draft in pdf format. I think it is nice and can be improved by the passage of time. My interest in neuroscience grew between 2008 and 2009 while I started reading books about self help. Awaken the Giant Within was the first book that I read on this subject. It is a brilliant book but I believe that there is a lot more to neuroscience than feeling good alone. 

As I progressed further on the way I cam across ideas of Ray Kurzweil about downloading human consciousness on to computers. I also came across the books of Marvin Minsky which I think are very nice. Emotion Machine and Society of the Mind are two of his really nice books that are worth mentioning. Unfortunately I could not finish reading both of them.

The journey did not stop here. In 2011 I had a chance to read Sam Harris. I would again like to mention that he raises very cogent questions in his The End of Faith. It is indeed a very thought provoking book. Specially the questions he raises about why people believe in one religion or the other are rousing. His concern that such beliefs should be explainable by reason is rational. The other question he raises is that whether any afterlife exists or not. Although I would like to assert that he himself is quite judgmental about that question already.

As the reading journey continued I had a chance to read Irfan. Irfan introduced me to Western Spiritualism. From Irfan I came to know about the various contemporaries of Charles Darwin who were spiritualists and believed in an afterlife. Most notable among these are Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Conan Doyle. It was quite interesting to read from The History of Spiritualism that he attributed much of the world's misery to materialism and advocated for the adoption of some kind of religion by the humanity. It was quite interesting for me to know this as I thought materialists, or so to say atheists, to be a lot more benign people before this.

Anyhow, introduction to spiritualism gave me a chance to read and skim through many academic papers regarding invocation of spirits and souls, and other aspects related to spiritualism. For instance, there are quite a few tracks in spiritualism that study the ectoplasm, a viscous material that possibly comes out of the mouths of the mediums as they communicate with the dead. Similarly, there are also papers that study the minds of mediums to figure out what sort of people are more conducive for becoming mediums. 

I do not remember the source of the papers but I am sure they can be found through the website of Society of Psychical Research. In the meantime I have also been reading papers on neuroscience from the point of view of mental and physical health as well. They are quite numerous. The conclusion they draw is that most of the mental and physical functions of human body and personality are localized in the brain and that there is no evidence for the presence of a non-physical mind i.e. a soul or a spirit. The burden of coming up with a proof is normally left with the reader.

So given this I thought that I should at least write a research proposal that could sum up all the reading I have been doing over the years. I think that it looks nice. It does not have any citations or references at the moment and I hope to be able to add a few citations by the due course of time. Here is the link to the proposal.

  by  ezhikoff 

Understanding Consciousness

One of the topics that is quite hyped these days is the study of human consciousness and its possible survival after death. The argument that human beings have souls that depart to a certain afterlife once we are dead is one of the major tenets of almost every religion. The materialist view, that we human beings, along with all the other life forms. are merely flesh and bones defies any such notion that human beings have souls or that they depart to some other world once we die. To this end, they also argue that there is no such divine entity, such as a godhead, that may have created life. The religious doctrines of creation of universe can be explained away with the help of theories of astronomy, cosmology and astronomy. Similarly, the religious doctrines about the creation of life and humanity can be explained away with the help of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

Rationalists try to understand and study the nature of survival of human consciousness with the help of various ways in which they can try to tap into the afterlife and communicate with the dead. There might be a possibility that some religious people may have the ability to do it already. I heard (or possibly read somewhere) that Jews have been prohibited to do it according to Torah. Given that it is considered the old testament for Christians and a holy book to be revered by the Muslims, it may be supposed that the followers of these two religions are also prohibited from tapping into the so-called unseen world. Particularly, Muslims are advised to follow a set path and believe in the unseen and are advised not to long for miracles. 

Whether or not there is an afterlife, or whether or not people survive bodily death cannot be proven by believing merely in someone's word of mouth. A religious scripture no matter how convincing it may be is not a proof of any of the extraordinary claims it makes. The claims must be proven from sources other than where they have been claimed. Thus, objectivity demands an honest scrutiny.

People who are interested in knowing about human consciousness and its survival of bodily death leverage mostly from the research of near death experiences (NDEs). As the name suggests, in an NDE a person is subjected to a clinical death of sorts in which electrical activity in the brain of the subject stops. Once rehabilitated back to normal life, the subject is asked to describe his/her experience. A keen survey reveals that there are hundreds of thousands of NDE stories. A review of the NDE research also indicates that NDE research has become a mature field of study with considerable adoption of scientific method.

Another discipline that tries to tap into afterlife is spiritualism. Spiritualism is rather old and established itself in the late nineteenth century. In simply world spiritualism entails methods to communicate with demised soul and to tap into the spirit world. A wide variety of literature is available by various contemporary and prolific scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Older people include Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russell Wallace and William Crookes, to name but a few. History of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably the best resource on the subject.

If the findings of NDEs and spiritualists are correct that human beings survive bodily death, and that human beings do indeed have souls that depart to another world as we die, it means that materialism and its related theories of evolution etc. have already been explained away. For skeptics it means that they would have one less dimension to think about as regards existence.

    

Applications of Free Will

A keen study of free will would suggest to you that it does not really matter whether you have it or not. What would matter most is that as long as you have some degree of freedom in choosing and doing things in one way or the other, you would prefer to pursue your goals. If you are an athletic type, you may want to enroll in a gymnasium and develop a great body. You may also train to become a kick-boxer. And as soon as you have learnt something about the art, you may find your heartiest adversary and you may apply a perfect flying kick right on one of his jaws. This, however, depends on how you define virility. Even if you do not care much about the masculinity of your approach, or rather if you are a person of a nonviolent type, even then you may want to do something with your newly learnt martial arts skills and your toned body. You might at least go to a beach, take your shirt off and stand in the knee-deep water. All of a sudden you stretch and raise your right leg above your head,  so quickly so as to create a great splash in the water. You get yourself photographed. Congratulations! You are in the news now!! You are Jean Claude Van Damme!!!

The above narrative was one of the many examples of how a person can hone and use one's mental and physical faculties. It was supposed to be funny! The debate that whether humans have free will or not is a totally different one. In as much as the subject may sound trivial or insignificant from a practical point of view, its study has rather serious applications in various scientific and academic disciplines that concern human development and well-being in one way or the other. These are social science, psychology, human behavior, neuroscience, law, politics, philosophy, war and religion, to name but a few.

For the purpose of brevity it may be worthwhile to look at the importance of this subject from the vantage point of its relevance in studying neuroscience. I believe that neuroscience is one such area which has started to dominate many other spheres of life in today's interdisciplinary world. It attempts to study things as simple as emotional well being of humans to issues as complex as motivations behind peoples actions and their repercussions on social order and legislation.

Consider psychology and mental health, for instance. Why do people choose to be angry when they can smile? Why do people choose to steal things from others while they could simply have helped an old person cross the street?

A very interesting reason for studying free will is to understand human consciousness. Analysis of human consciousness is a very hot topic these days. On a coarse level it tries to understand the human consciousness and along with that whether or not it survives bodily death or not. In either case, that is, whether or not human consciousness survives bodily death, it becomes quite interesting and important to understand as to how to live this earthly life happily and peacefully? What forms a healthy coexistence? What is the role of religion in our lives? This and many other interrelated questions urge us to study the nature of free will. May Allah help us all to live and coexist peacefully.

Understanding Free Will

The subject of free will has fascinated me for a long time. I have wanted to learn about the subject for a number of reasons. The first time the subject drew my serious attention has a rather boring description. But the event was that a few acquaintances had broached up the topic and were trying to explain to each other what it means for a person to have free will. I had to remain quiet because I had no concrete explanation of the subject in my mind. However, that was the first time the subject drew my serious attention. Ever since then I have been interested in studying about various other reasons too. Why do people behave in one way or the other? Why do siblings fight with each other whereas they could be affectionate with each other at the very same time. Similarly, why should we be jealous of a friend or cousin when he/she tells us about his/her recent achievement, whereas we could have felt happier and could have had a congratulatory appearance at the same time?

Why should we prefer to choose one thing over the other? Are we free to make our choices and act on them? And what are the consequences of acting upon our choices, no matter how good or bad they are? Why does a good person end up in a jail and a person who is perceived to be mean by people become a member of the parliament? These and many other questions inspired me to read and understand about the subject of free will. This article is a summary of my understanding that I developed after reading articles from various writers. I must mention that the explanations I have found most lucid about this subject are those of Sam Harris.

On a very coarse level free will can be defined as the ability to make choices under certain constraints. This means that a person is both free to choose and also act upon his/her choices while not violating the constraints which define boundaries for his/her actions. A more refined definition of free will is the ability to choose. The ability to act is called as volition. Another term that is associated with free will is determinism. The theory of determinism suggests that everything we do or choose to do is already predetermined and that we are not free either in making choices or in acting upon them. Between free will and determinism there is a spectrum of positions that vary between soft and hard determinism. However, to keep the discourse simple, for me at least, I will stick only to the presence or absence of free will. The position that free will does not exist can be explained with the help of the following example.

Assuming that you have read this article up to this point this can be done fairly easily. Assume that now I ask you to judge this article on a scale between 1-- 5 for its quality of content. Depending upon whether you are a casual or a seasoned internet user you may find this task absolutely boring or quite interesting. You may also have a mixture of feelings. On one hand you may feel like totally abandoning this article as crap and doing something else instead. At the same time you may think that it may be an interesting thing to rate an article for its content. You might think that it may hone your skills as a reader and a reviewer. At the same time you think that it is absolutely trivial and useless both to write and read about something as monotonous as free will. But then you think to give it a try. You may get motivated by thinking that you may grasp a few nice ideas for writing something more interesting. At the same time you are aware that you have to attend to the eggs that you have put on the stove to boil. You feel like leaving this computer of your's and going to the kitchen. But then you decide to hang on for a few moments till the time you reach the end of this paragraph.

If I have portrayed your thought process to some degree of accuracy while you were reading the above paragraph then indeed you have had a stampede of thoughts. A midst all of those thoughts, ideas and feelings you have managed to read this blog post to this point. You don't know exactly why you are reading it. But your eyes are slipping through line after line and you think that it is worth reading it. Indeed, if you have read it through to this point, you are pretty much engaged with this article by now. You do not know exactly why you are reading this or whether you like it or not. You even do not know exactly why you opened this article in the first place and started reading it and kept on doing so, whereas you had other tasks to complete too. Bingo! You have finished reading another paragraph.

If you are a neuroscientist, or you know someone closely who is a neuroscientist, you may get an explanation from the point of view of electrical activity in your brain. You may be told, or you may have learnt, that your choices are governed by complex electrical activity in your brain that take place on the level of synapses and neurons. You may argue that it is actually the chemical reactions in your brain that govern your behavior in the present moment. Let's call it the electrochemistry of your brain for the sake of simplicity. You may even believe that you are not consciously choosing to read these words as they slip before your eyes. Instead you may believe that the decision to keep on reading through moment by moment has already been made by the temporal lobe of your brain a few microseconds (or milliseconds) in advance of what you are currently reading. This kind of reasoning is brought forward by the opponents of the existence of free will camp to argue that it does not exist. Irrespective of whether you are a proponent of this line of reasoning or not interested in it at all, it might be altogether mysterious to you as to why you have read this article through to another paragraph.

In the same way as I have tried to explain my understanding of the non-existence of free will, anyone can try to explain its existence. Consider now to look at things from my vantage point. In the same way as you may be baffled about why at all have you read this article, I might be confused on as to why I have written it in the first place. Is it all about electrical impulses, auroral charges, and whims of the mind through which I have grown out to write this. Among a myriad of things on my to-do-list for today why did I write this article at all? Indeed I thought about writing about free will a few months ago. This has al most been a year that I thought that I should write my thoughts about the subject of free will. The reason is that I find the subject both fascinating and challenging. Indeed, one of the most challenging things in the world is to satiate the intellectual curiosity of a philosopher. And free will is a subject that very much falls under the umbrella of philosophy.

In as much as I wanted to write about free will, I kept on postponing it. I have listed the reasons why I wanted to write about it above. But what are the reasons due to which I have been postponing it to this point. Well, there are quite a few reasons indeed. One of them is procrastination. Another is the fear that I may end up writing something stupid. The underlying guilt that I want to gain attention is another reason for holding back for so long. Another reason is that it sounds all the more pretentious to be publishing one's thoughts in the public domain. It is a blog post that I am writing after all!

But no matter what the reasons may be, I have at last chosen to write about this subject. This, out of the choices I had (i.e. to write or not to write about free will), and irrespective of all the reasons for writing or not writing about this topic, I have at last chosen to consciously write about it. And as you have reached the end of this article I would conclude it by saying that this ability of humans to make deliberate choices suggests that we do indeed have free will. May Allah help us in using it well.

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  by  Picture Perfect Pose 

Shaykh-ul-Islam

Shaykh-ul-Islam, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, is an Islamic scholar and a political and a social worker from Pakistan. He is the founder and CEO of Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI) which is an NGO aimed at promoting religious moderation, quality education, and interfaith dialogue. Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri is a cogent thinker and writer who has written many books on various topics about Islam. Recently he has written a very interesting book titled Fatwa on Suicide Bombings and Terrorism. This is supposed to be a very interesting and inspiring book. In this book, according to Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri himslef, he has left no stone un-turned in the theology of Islam in order to argue against suicide bombings and terrorism. This means that he has turned every page of Quran and Sunnah and claims to have argued against terrorism in light of that. This is quite interesting and remarkable. Presuming that the writing of this book is motivated by rationality and reason, it could be a great resource for understanding true Islam. The book is being reported to have been translated in other foreign languages too. Furthermore, I have heard that the book has already been translated to Danish language.

I remember having met Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri when I was an undergraduate student. I suppose it was back in 1,999 or 2,000. Current era of terrorism had not began yet and the world was a peaceful place in some sense. The reason for meeting him was quite interesting. Two of our very dear friends had become atheists. I would not disclose the names for the purpose of confidentiality. Another one of my friends was very concerned about this. He was affiliated with MQI and proposed to us to take both of them for a dialogue with Dr. Qadri. After much efforts we reached MQI center in Lahore. We were a group of around more than 50 people as I remember. Dr. Qadri was somehow not expecting us. He nonetheless greeted us warmly and we had our meeting and dialogue with him. As the meeting progressed, incidentally the two of our dear friends chose to keep quite. This was rather strange because they used to be very vociferous about their atheistic ideas on the campus. After all the idea of taking them to Dr. Qadri ensued due to this. And they had agreed to having an open dialogue with Dr. Qadri prior to going there.

Seeing their silence and the consequent gravity of the situation, I decided to ask all the atheistic questions that I thought could be the most compelling about the existence of God. I found it interesting because I had recently started to learn to speak in English those days. I used to form a sentence in my mind and then utter it. It used to be questions normally. I learnt to become a bit more spontaneous over the years due to my interaction with books, movies, the Internet and various people. Similarly, my knowledge about atheism was also very limited. I remember that the friend of mine who had reverted to atheism used to keep a thick book along side him. I remember that it posed questions about the existence of God. The idea that someone would read something about the existence of God used to appear very weird to me in those days. I think it would be just as if an atheist or a materialist would find it hard to grasp the idea that God somehow existed. But for me, just like many religious people, God simply existed. There was no question about that!

So as the discussion proceeded, I asked many questions and they were answered and the congregation listened. Most of the questions revolved around the existence of God Himself, creation of life and of universe. Dr. Qadri answered each one of them in the light of Quranic verses. There were other questions like if God created the universe and all the life then who created God. Such a question has a basis in philosophy and the cosmological argument addresses it. There were also other typical questions of the sort that why does an onion have so and so number of peels and why not any other number. For instance, a typical question could be that why is God not like this or why is He like that. Or, why cannot God be seen if He exists. Such questions were also answered. But a problem with such questions is that no matter how much one dwells in to their explanations, the answers can never quell the concerns. Latter in my life I took atheism seriously and read it. This gave me a clearer perspective on what atheism was all about.

Meeting Dr. Qadri was otherwise a pleasant experience. He is a simple and a courteous man. I hope his new book on terrorism is read by every Muslim and non-Muslim.

God of the Orient

The other day I came across an Urdu novel titled "Khuda-e-Mashriq", literally meaning "God of the Orient" in English. I casually browsed its pages and I could not resist reading a part of it with a lot of concentration. I shall talk about that latter. But first I would like to briefly describe what the novel is about. The novel is written by Muhammad Zahid Afghan. As the name suggests, the writer is most possibly from Afghanistan. The central character of the novel is a British female who travels all the way from England to various Eastern countries and probably lands up somewhere in the subcontinent. Her name was Salomi. I am not sure though, but I think that I should reconfirm. There she makes friends. And she has her perplexities and bewilderment typical of a traveler.

The part that I found the most interesting was that the favorite personality of Salomi was the renowned German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In her conversations with her friends she talks about Friedrich Nietzsche and his nihilism. This was the part that I found most interesting. I heard about Friedrich Nietzsche  and a few about his quotes a long time a go from friends. Names such as Friedrich Nietzsche and others can be quoted in educated circles as a symbol of intellect. But after a long time, I started wondering what his really philosophy was. After all it is important to know what someone really contributed as a philosophy as opposed to merely quoting from his/her quotations. I came to know that Friedrich Nietzsche was an atheist and that much of atheism of the present day can be attributed to having a background in Nietzsche-ism. Well, I could be wrong but I suppose that Friedrich Nietzsche still has an impact. Latter I came to know that Friedrich Nietzsche was a nihilist about the existence of God. And I wondered what were the reasons that led Friedrich Nietzsche in to nihilism.

Salomi explained the underlying reason very clearly. At one point she starts narrating about the life of Friedrich Nietzsche to her friends with an emotional vigor. She says that as Christianity arrived, for some odd reason the West started indulging in barbarism. As a consequence Friedrich Nietzsche became agnostic about the existence of God. He abandoned his civil life and went somewhere in the alps to live there. There he created a new God. Zarathustra! 

Latter while having a discussion with her friends, they ask each other that then who was the God of Zarathustra. One of the characters proposes that the God of Zarathustra was the God of Hazrat Ghulam Moi-ud-din Chishti (RA). He (RA) was a sufi saint with a substantial following in the subcontinent. It is interesting to note that Zarathustra (AS) was himself a prophet of Islam. Overall the novel is nicely written and tries to address various philosophical curiosities. It is interesting to note also that there are people in Afghanistan who try to do such delicate and creative work.

Bunny in the Clouds

Muhammad (PBUH) written naturally in the clouds.

I remember having read an article a few months ago in connection with Dr. Eben Alexander's much hyped book Proof of Heaven. I don't remember exactly but I think that the article was published in the scientific American magazine. The article had a mention of a phenomenon of seeing a "bunny in the cloud" in it. According to my extrapolated understanding of it the term is related to wishful thinking. That no matter what random shape the rather amorphous clouds acquire, if a person is adamant about seeing a bunny in the cloud, he/she will eventually see it. This is a nice analogy to explain the idea of wishful thinking. That no matter what a person sees or feels in his/her dreams, hallucinations, spiritual trances or commas, if a person is hellbent on perceiving it as heaven, he/she will eventually do so. 

Laa Ilaaha Illa Allah written in a farm in Germany.

It makes a lot of sense to wonder that whether the phenomenon of seeing a bunny in the cloud is always a visual illusion or can it also be attributed some authenticity at times. Here I presume the use of the term "bunny in the clouds" to be metaphorical. This means that both bunny and the clouds can mean anything that can be seen or observed. For instance, bunny can mean a flower, food, drinks, a knife, a sword, Jesus (PBUH), Marry (PBUH), Muhammad (PBUH), Allah, a garden, heaven or fire. Similarly cloud can also mean anything like a cloud, a dream, moon, a potato or a watermelon. 

Religious people have a great propensity for seeing different types of such metaphorical bunnies in different types of those so-called clouds. Thus, it is not uncommon to see visual appearances in the clouds that resemble Jesus Christ (PBUH). Some of them are vague and there are others that seem to be made up. But there are indeed a few that appear to be shadows of a standing man with a staff in his hand. I have chosen one of such pictures of the clouds to post here. 

Jesus (PBUH) in the clouds.

Obviously it is no proof that it Jesus standing in the clouds with his staff in his hand. One cannot even claim that it absolutely looks like as if a man is standing in the clouds at all. These are just randomly arranged clouds. But still if we look at these clouds closely, they do appear to have a human head with rather thick and curly hair. A left arm. The bends of the chest. and something that resembles a stick. But whether this man is Jesus (PBUH) or not cannot be claimed. But this is only one picture. There could be other more vivid pictures on the web that may be easily claimed and classified to be containing Jesus (PBUH) in them. 

Allah written on a cactus.

Muslims also have a tendency for finding names of Allah and Muhammad (may Allah's peace be upon him) written on clouds and other things. Indeed, there are many pictures on the Internet in which the word Allah has appeared to have been written naturally in the clouds.

Muhammad (PBUH) written on a goat

Similarly, a simple search query reveals that pictures with the word Muhammad (PBUH) in Arabic appearing on clouds and other things like stones, bread, or in a fruit are also quite numerous. At some points such appearances are vague but at others they are quite vivid. 

Allah written on foreheads of newborn twins

Such phenomenon has also been termed as pareidolia. There is also religious paredolia in which names or figures of religious figures visually appear in various natural phenomena.

Allah written inside a pomegranate

It is quite wonderful to observe that many of the appearances in the pictures are extremely vivid. One can only hope that these pictures are real and not forged.