The Philosophy of Rick and Morty

No worries at all, my friend. I don’t mind my threads being derailed, so long as they produce fun conversation. Of course, I’ll continue to post my analysis of Rick and Morty around these conversation, but I’m not going to stop them.

For the most part, you’re right–no optic nerves, no vision; though there are cases of sensory deprivation in which the subject ends up seeing an amazing light show. I think the occipital lobe, where vision occurs in the brain, has a tendency to “light up” after a while of no signals coming in on the optic nerves. But the point is, there is always some brain activity going on to give us vision and all the qualia that goes with it.

Well, that would definitely be closer to my view–especially about the quality/qualia being directly in the physical info–this fits into my pantheism quite nicely. All physical info is, well, physical, and as I said about physicality above: it is a sensory representation of qualia going on somewhere in the universal mind–or, to put it another way, it is a sensory representation of qualia going on in the physical system itself (i.e. the qualia is the system’s mind).

Now if you take that phrase: qualia being directly in the physical info, and drop the “physical”, you’d be even closer to my view. Physicality is just a representation, remember, and it exists only in the human subjective reality (I shouldn’t say “only”–who knows what other conscious beings out there experience physicality). What it represents is a kind of mental substance (the qualia of other systems’ minds), and I define this substance as a trio: 1) quality, 2) being, 3) meaning. ← It is a “stuff” composed of these three aspects all wrapped up in one. You can see how consciousness ties into being here: it is the stuff of being. And you can also see how info ties into this: “info” is just another word for “meaning”. ← So you can do away with the physics (or rather leave it in its proper place–the human subjective reality) and keep the info. Info is everywhere, melded with being and quality–the stuff of reality.

Yes! What you’re talking about is “flow”–the tendency of mind to be in flux, for qualia to change from one form to another–this is essentially a communication process, mind talking to itself so to speak.

Meaning is always there in experience–it is the info you’re referring to–and it is responsible for the flow of mind. Take a rational thought process, for example:

All grass is green.
All men are grass.
Therefore, all men are green.

The above syllogism is a good example of the flow of thought. One thought enters the mind: All grass is green. Then another thought enters the mind: All men are grass. These two thoughts are qualia just like anything else in the mind. They definitely have a kind of “cognitive” quality (or feel) to them, and they project as something real (truth*) thereby showing that they have being, and of course all our thoughts have a meaning. But now notice that it’s only in virtue of this meaning that we can draw the conclusion in the syllogism above: the meaning in one thought is “All grass is green” and the meaning in the other thought is “All men are grass”, and this allows us to draw out a third thought: “All men are grass”. Meaning begets meaning. This is why our thoughts flow.

(Why flow feels like the passage of time for creatures like us is another matter).

  • I suppose “All men are grass” doesn’t always project as true.

Well, if we start with how I defined the “substance” of mind above, we know that everything is an instance of some quality, some form of being, and some meaning. Red is an easy one. It’s obviously qualitative, and it has being (it’s always experienced as the property of an external object), and it contains a meaning: “the object is red”. ← That’s what red is. If we start by thinking of it as a quale, as something in the mind, then all we need in order to understand it’s relation to red qua physical property is that the latter is simply the projection of the former. As for this quale’s relation to the brain, again, the brain which supposedly produces this quale is not really producing it at all. Rather, it represents the quale. The way this works is as follows: the quale red flows like any other quale (thanks to its meaning), and one of the ways it can flow is by transforming its quality (flow is just change, after all) until it takes on the quality of a specific kind of brain activity–that is, it morphs from the perception of red to the perception of a brain process (the very one that represents the red). And it does flow this way (not all paths of flow are conscious) as evinced by how it works with the physics. The way you end up seeing a brain is by way of light reflecting off that brain and entering your eye. This is a physical process that represents the manner by which the red morphs and flows into the perception of a brain. The transmission of light is the quale morphing.

Right. I would just add that the device has that color only because we project it from our perception of the color.

You mean nothing projected by the observer?

Well, you’re right, the self is ultimately real. If it is experienced at all, it must have being (right?). But my point is we define the self based on the experiences we know we’re having. As I said, it all begins with knowledge. If I have a pain in my hand, and I acknowledge that pain cognitively (Ah-ha! My hand hurts!), then I have just identified an experience and claimed it “mine”. It becomes “my” experience. The self, ultimately, is that which knows about (acknowledges) all its experiences. Not all experience can be known, and so there ends up being a divide between this self which is defined by way of acknowledging experiences and everything else which is not being acknowledged (because it can’t).

The mind generates this experience for itself–the experience of being a “self”–and as such, it projects like any other experience–existence suddenly acquires a “me”.

I’m going with the notion that quale are in the world and not only mental ~ they do exist on the TV screen. I’ve been having a look around at the science on light in the brain, and the links in the below thread, suggests to me that it is exactly the same thing in the brain as on a monitor/TV…

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190446

light may not be the universal medium, but it does a great deal of the communicating between other informational parties.

yes. :slight_smile:

lol did i write this #-o

Well, pretty much everything emits and absorbs photons. From a previous post, I gather you believe the color is “carried” by the photon, correct? With the TV, electron streams turn on tiny florescent lamps, giving off certain frequencies of light. So you believe the color is carried by the photons in this light? How do you suppose it gets there?

Well, I suppose this is where we differ then.

Yep. :laughing: It wasn’t hard to figure out what you meant though, given the context.

If there is a “physical TV screen” in the brain as Daniel’s book suggests…

Consciousness cannot simply “be” inside the neuronal electrical pathways themselves.

For such a thing…could not percieve the actual TV screen, only the 3 dimensional tunnels of the circuits…not the 2d dimensional image itself…Unless
time factored in and it was rendered…all of the microlayers, as an abstraction…
But there would always have to be some outside entity doing the conversion…Ultimately it could not be done by the brain, in the tunnels themselves…

There is a mystic cloud inside the brain…perceiving the brain…the orb, soul, whatever you like to call it…
That is the only rational geometric explanation.

Tv’s emit light waves, this is then converted into electrical waves. The material is different, but their shapefunction is the same.

Sounds emit atom waves, this is then converted into electrical waves. The material is different, but their shapefunction is the same.

The kind of electrical waves in the brain move through the nuerons. Through this method they can be able to be in a format compatible and read by the observer.

The question remains…if the observer is just but an inherent wisp…why is this inherent wisp localized to me…and if each inherent wisp is unique, and not able to be read by me…can it be read at all? Is it simply a case of wiped memory…or the memory never ever occuring? Because thats 7 billion supposedly unique localized wisps that will never read each other, supposedly active…yet only one is active…quite a unique puzzling fog…

I agree with this. Consciousness and all the qualia that compose it are metaphysical. They don’t take place in space, let alone physical objects. But we can say that certain experiences, like vision, correspond to specific neural events.

Yes, if we’re assuming that a conscious being exists in the tunnels of the neural pathways–like a man standing in an actual tunnel.

What do you mean by this? How does time being factored in result in an abstraction of the “conscious bits” (for lack of a better term) which would count as the perception of the image on the TV? Do you mean there would have to be a separate consciousness residing in/around the brain to do the abstracting? If so, it would have to be an unconscious abstracting, for I certainly don’t experience myself deliberately taking the little consciousness bits and drawing out an abstraction of them in order to perceive the TV.

Well, this sounds like what I just suggested. The geometry of your consciousness however (if what you mean is: where consciousness is located) is not really determined by where you experience yourself to be in time and space. Yes, it seems reasonable to suppose that our consciousness exists somewhere within the cranium, behind the eyes so to speak, because that seems to be the point in space where we look out and perceive the world. But this is just the point of view, the origin of our perceptual coordinate system. Our visual experiences need this in order to be, well, vision. But the spatial coordinate system in which we perceive the objects in our world are contained within the visual experience which in turn is generated by consciousness–in other words, consciousness doesn’t reside in space, space resides within it. I do think this is enough to say that the self is located here, but our consciousness, being metaphysical, has no location in space. It’s like a security camera setup in the stairwell of some building. ← Just because the point of view is setup wherever we put the camera does mean the security guard who is watching the stairwell through that camera also exists at that point. Only difference is that the security guard himself is physical, and thus must also reside somewhere in space, but our consciousness is metaphysical, and therefore is not the type of thing to have a spatial location.

What do you mean by “shapefunction”?

Still grappling with the ol’ question of other minds, huh Trix?

Gib

When physical things have a given behaviour, that act changes the energy. Like if you swing a ball on a rope and forces centrifugal/petal ‘appear’, then if you make photons behave at the given wavelength, then colour magically appears also. I can only conclude that the principles and qualities are all part of one thing. So you got colour quale because it is a facet of energy or whatever that one thing is, though strangely the innate or base colour is 100% transparency [e.g. photons themselves are transparent].

Mind I think is also transparent, and when it behaves in a given way perhaps those behaviours also create colour qualities/quale. Whatever the case, you got something affecting light and when that happens you get the respective quality. If mind could also do that then that may explain dreams, although that might also be the brain producing photons. I guess we will eventually have the sophistication of devices to know the answer to that, because that would be measurable.
I would go out on a limb and say that without any light e.g. with the optically blind [like e.g. Maia], then the brain doesn’t produce a light image for the consciousness, and then it appears that the mind equally cannot make its own? Hmm could be a thing of physical info/internal knowledge, the mind has to know what light is and observe its features/colours, such to make images manifest?

_

I would say the visual field has spatial properties, therefore it takes place in it’s own space.

Perhaps this space is not in the same 3d space of the brain, since I don’t think you could put a camera inside the brain and observe the conscious visual field. It could be in some other 3d space or perhaps another dimension branched off located from the same 3d space.

Yes it would be an unconscious mechanism. We aren’t conscious of the men in tunnels, we are conscious of the final result - the collection of the data of the men in tunnels compiled and arranged into a 2d frame format. Time is needed, since even though it is the speed of light it is not in all places at once, it must travel through the tubes.

Actually my original thing was incorrect - I assumed vertical scanline technology, when it could actually be more like a simultaneous projection…thousands of pixels appearing at once, which i shall call pixies. We are not conscious of any one pixie in the the tubes, but all thousands at once.

Could be 50/50. Consciousness might just be receiving. and it could be a fold in space branched off from the 3d space where our brain is that is why cameras cant see it.

They are both sinewaves which have the same functions. just different materials (one material is readable by consciousness, the other isn’t.)

Yes.

All the sinewave is a sinewave that is compressed in different amounts.
Color is a spiritual, not physical property. Same with taste…simply attranging sinewaves and compressing them in different amounts should not create taste…yet some how we taste. My hypothesis is that the spirit actually has an inherent property of taste, which is activated by different code structures. Ie…the sine waves are like codes that are fed into the spirit as input, then the spirit generates the taste. But then we are left at square 1 - what about the spirit causes the inherent property of taste?

The visual field generates its own space.

In my view, the 3d space we are familiar with exists in consciousness. The system of qualia that make up our minds consist of all the experiences you would need to behold a fully layed out spatial extent laying there before you.

That’s interesting. Kind of makes you think of a micro-unconscious.

True, this is possible, but I don’t think the real space “out there” would be anything like the space “in here”–though I believe they would be isomorphic.

So you mean the sinewave motions of neurons are readable by consciousness but the sinewaves motions of sound and light aren’t? Do you suppose sound waves and light waves could be readable by consciousness? ← Could that be what the hippies and astral projectors call “consciousness expansion”?

I’m in the middle of a discussion with Chakra Superstar that I think might help you out, particularly the part about the “density” of consciousness (reminds me of how you described the “locality” of consciousness).

Interesting. Why do you say that?

Well, if we’re done discussing the metaphysics of consciousness and the cosmos, let’s move on to…

Rick and Morty - S1E2 - Lawnmower Dog

Check it out: Rick and Morty - Lawnmower Dog.

This one’s not too exciting. The first few in the series aren’t. They’re kind of getting the point across that these are the kinds of adventures Rick and Morty are going to go on, but they’re kind of isolated and self-contained adventures at first. Later we’ll see some continuity between the episodes, at least continuity of themes and a thicker plot line.

In fact, Rick doesn’t use his portal gun until Episode 5: Meeseeks and Destroy ← That’s when things start to pick up. The first three episodes after the pilot feature other ways besides dimension hopping that Rick and Morty go on adventures, each different, sort of signifying that this isn’t going to be just about Rick and Morty’s crazy adventures through different dimensions.

The current episode, for example, is a spoof on Inception–Rick invents a dream device that, when stuck in Mr. Goldenfold’s ear (Morty’s math teacher), causes him to fall asleep and dream, and meanwhile, similar devices are stuck in Rick and Morty’s ears, and they too fall asleep and dream–the devices coordinating their dreams together such that they experience being in each other’s presence in each of their respective dreams. They go several layers deep in dreams, of course–5 layers deep to be exact (not sure how many layers deep DeCaprio went). ← All to convince Morty’s teacher to give him straight A’s in math so that Rick can continue to pull him from school behind his parents’ backs.

^ But that’s all we’ll ever see of Rick’s inception device throughout the whole series. ← An isolated episode.

While Rick and Morty are gallivanting through dream worlds, Snuffles, the family dog, is getting smarter. Jerry bargains with Rick and convinces him to invent a device that makes dogs smarter (maybe other animals too ← I don’t know). Jerry’s sick and tired of the dog being too dumb to figure out not to pee on the carpet. So after whipping up something in 5 seconds from kitchen utensil and such, Rick comes out with a helmet that, when applied to Snuffles, makes him smarter. Then they go on their inception adventure. While they’re gone, Snuffles gets smarter… and smarter, and smarter, like Lawnmower Man. He eventually invents a walking mobility contraption and a voice synthesizer so that he can speak to humans and possibly overpower them with electronic and hydrolic appendages:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFev2BmnhE[/youtube]

This happens quite often in sit coms: there’s the main plot line (inception) and then there’s a parallel secondary plot line (lawnmower dog), and the two needn’t have any relation to each other, but in this case, I suspect there is a connection (I can’t quite put my finger on it). The title of the episode is “Lawnmower Dog” even though that subplot is the minor one (or maybe it isn’t, maybe that’s just my perception, but it would be odd if the main characters, Rick and Morty, weren’t involved in the main plot line). Also, after Rick and Morty come back from their dream escapades, securing straight A’s for Morty in math, they go on one more dream escapade into Snuffles’ dream in order to convince him not to enslave humans. ← So there is a connection, but not a “moral of the story” so to speak–they just happen to tie two plot lines together in a trivial/meaningless way.

Actually, come to think of it, the moral might be this: the theme of the Frankenstein Monster will recur more than just a few times in the series. This is one example: Rick invents the intelligence boosting helmet for Snuffles, and while Rick has his back turned, Snuffles becomes a monster. Just like young Victor Frankenstein, Rick completely neglects his responsibility for creating the monster–he obliviously allows it to go so far while he and Morty completely ignore it for the sake of doing something equally irresponsible: helping Morty cheat in school. ← But this is not entirely fair. At least young Victor was aware of the damage he created and ran away from the problem in order to escape his responsibility. Rick, on the other hand, was oblivious during his absence. On the other hand, when they returned, Rick did say to Morty:

“Well, it’s possible that your dog became self-aware and made modifications on the cognition amplifier then turned on Jerry, Beth, and Summer after learning about humanity’s cruel subjugation to his species, but your guess is as good as mine, Morty.”

…indicating that he might have been aware of this possibility all along, but then again, he only whips up this spiel after seeing the dogs surrounding the Smith’s house and shipping boxes in and out. But in the end, Rick does handle the situation (through inception on Snuffles), which, though dampening the theme of the irresponsible Victor Frankenstein, highlights the other theme I mentioned before, namely that for all the damage Rick causes, he still pulls through and saves the day in the end. So maybe the theme is that while Rick’s escapades seem irresponsible on the surface, they can be put to good use in solving the problem that they, in a sense, helped create.

Another major theme that shows up in this episode (unrelated to the Frankenstein theme) is Jerry’s arrogance–we catch a glimpse of Jerry’s character in this episode (presumably to set the stage for how we’re supposed to feel about Jerry throughout the series) as kind of having a “master” mentality with respect to Snuffles (and by implication, with respect to his entire estate–including wife and children ← You know, the man of the house). This is not to be confused with Nietzsche’s master morality, which might be more characteristic of Rick, master of his own destiny. But Jerry is definitely portrayed in this episode as the cruel master over a victimized Snuffles. This theme actually picks up and goes to extremes, touching on political issues like slavery and racism.

After creating a whole supply line of intelligence enhancing dog helmets, Snuffles manages to form an organized army of dog rebels, all of whom have, so to speak, awoken to the horrible truth of their state of slavery, and work almost effortlessly towards overtaking the White House and (we are to presume) all humanity. If Rick represents the Conservative’s hero: the capitalist, then Snuffles represents the typical stereotype of the Liberal (seen from the point of view of the conservative creators of Rick and Morty, or so I speculate)–in a position to righteously rebel against an evil oppressor.

In an effort to play the dogs at their own game, Jerry thinks he has a clever strategy. He walks in front of their guns, stock piled in the corner of the Smith’s house, whips open his fly and pees on them, saying “See that?! I’m peeing all over your special guns! That means I own them!” ( ← Kind of homoerotic, now that I think about it… wait til we get to Total Rickall). But this does nothing but subject his face to being shoved by Snuffles into his own pee, as Jerry did to Snuffles at the beginning of this episode. ← To me, this hinted at Jerry’s faith in stereotypes, adding to his arrogance.

Morty, on the other hand, is seen in this episode in a whole other light. While Jerry is pictured as the cruel slave-driving master, Morty is pictured as Snuffles’ only friend. He protects Snuffles from his dad when Jerry pushes Snuffles’ face into his own pee, and near the end, Snuffles tells Morty that he will spare his testicles while the rest of the world will be neutered and that Morty will be his best friend and sit by his side. Morty reluctantly accepts, on the one hand feeling relieved, but on the other, worrying for his family. ← Morty here is depicted as the only worthy person, morally speaking, and this will show in later episodes. If Rick is the hero we look up to and want to be, Morty is the character we love and want to praise.

Anyway, to wrap it up, Rick and Morty come back from their successful mission to get Morty straight A’s in math to find themselves stuck in the middle of a dog rebellion, and being kept hostage in the Smith’s house. Rick comes up with the ingenious idea of incepting Snuffles with the idea that the superior thing to do, the high road to take, would be to let the humans free and find a better world in which to live using Rick’s dimension hopping portal gun ( ← So I lied–Rick does use his portal gun in this episode, but not to go on one of his crazy adventures… and technically we only see the portal’s open, not Rick using his gun.) ← So there you go, Rick comes back to find the mess that he’s made and uses his inception technology to clean it up.

(Not sure what Mr. Goldenfold did with the inception device stuck in his ear, or Snuffles for that matter, or when they found it–assuming they did at all–and it makes me wonder: did they ever explain this in the actual movie Inception, or did people just wake up not noticing the thing in their ear.)

Finally, I just wanted to point out that while this episode counts as the first “isolated” adventure, it is continuous with the first in the sense that this one in particular is a kind of “preliminary” adventure. Rick has to find a way to fill Morty into the roll of side-kick without his parents finding out he’s pulling him from school, which is a condition Jerry and Beth imposed on Rick at the end of the pilot, and in reaction to which Rick sarcastically placated Jerry with the “you’re the man of the house” bit. ← Well, he had reason to be sarcastic. But more to the point, this inception thing turns out to be a preliminary necessity that got in the way because Morty’s parents found out he was missing school–Rick wouldn’t have done this otherwise.

I was just thinking: Mr. Goldenfold is black.

Now, is this in any way linked to the theme of racism in episode 2? I mean, on purpose? I’m thinking of how Mr. Goldenfold was watching a black soap opera when Rick and Morty incepted him. Could the creators of Rick and Morty have been mocking themselves? Saying: Look! We use stereotypes too. When black people watch soap operas, do they actually prefer black soap operas? Well, they probably do, but it could be construed as a stereotype.

Rick and Morty - S1E3 - Anatomy Park

Rick and Morty - Anatomy Park.

As I said in a previous post, the first 3 episodes after the pilot are a bit lame; this one especially. Not that the notion of an entire theme park built into a hobo’s body isn’t halarious, but there’s not much to analyze in this one. It’s a pretty skin deep episode.

I suppose we can analyze Jerry’s character a bit more. We had fun analyzing most of the characters in Lawnmower Dog, but that was more in the vein of getting to know the characters, setting up a background for what to expect in later episodes. What Anatomy Park offers is a bit of an extension of this with respect to Jerry.

Jerry is depicted as a rule follower in this episode. It’s Christmas time and his parents are coming to visit. The door bell rings and Jerry says to his family:

“Ok, there’s my parents. Now remember, no TV, no phone, no laptops, we are connecting this Christmas, like old school Jews on a Saturday.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting to connect during the Christmas holidays, putting away all distractions (electronics and other gadgets), but Jerry’s desire to “connect” is depicted more as doing what one is “supposed” to do during Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be a time of celebrating love and the gift of giving, of appreciating and spending time with family. It’s what “normal” people do. ← This is the way Jerry sees the world, the way things are supposed to be, a set of rules.

The rest of the family is a little less than enthusiastic (to put it mildly), especially about putting away their gadgets. They may understand that Christmas is supposed to be a time of connecting with family and loved ones, but they just don’t feel like it, so they are a little reluctant to follows Jerry’s program.

The irony, in this episode, is that it’s the rest of the family who end up connecting with Jerry’s parents (and Jake) while Jerry has an incredibly hard time connecting once he hears the news about Jake. Jake, the latest addition to the family, comes along with Jerry’s parents. No one knows what his connection to the family is at first, but then at dinner, we learn that Jake, who seems no older than half the age of Jerry’s parents, is Jerry’s mother’s lover (who, when making out with her, is watched by Jerry’s father while wearing a superman outfit). Jerry has no idea how to take this news, and quite evidently has an extremely hard time accepting it. The rest of the family, on the other hand, reacts with support and happiness for them.

The contrast here between Jerry and the rest of the family is that while Jerry is a rule follower, always doing what one is “supposed” to do, the rest of family just goes with the flow. Jerry’s difficulty connecting with his parents, and with Jake especially, is a consequence of how this arrangement between Jake and his parents is not the kind of thing people are “supposed” to do. It’s strange, it’s unorthodox, it’s very awkward. So Jerry doesn’t know how to feel about it. Actually, he thinks he does know how to feel: contempt. Meanwhile, the rest of the family has no problem accepting this new arrangement. Why? Because they have no expectations of the way things are “supposed” to be. They just go with the flow. They see that Jerry’s parents and Jake are happy with this arrangement, and as Jerry’s father says in the beginning of the episode, “Then Jake came into our lives, and we’re learning to live again.” ← What reason is there, beyond the strangeness of this affair, to object to that?

In any case, after a bit of drama and a lot of friction between Jerry and the family, Jerry comes to realize that maybe his uptight attitude towards this whole “connection” theme was a mistake, and he gives back the electronics to the rest of the family (taking a device for himself as well). But just to add insult to injury, once everyone is finally relaxed in the living room, playing with their gadgets, and once Rick rescues Morty from inside a dead and festering (and enlarged-to-the-size-of-the-Moon-and-soon-to-explode-all-over-the-US) Ruben, the dynamic duo come into the living room only for Rick to lambasted the device absorbed family:

“Oh unbelievable! We’ve got a punch of robot, computer people sitting around with their faces stuffed in their computer screens. Do you guys realize that Christ was born today? Jesus Christ our savior was born today! Ar-ar-are you people even human? What kind of Christmas is this?”

To which Jerry just shrugs his shoulders. ← Irony upon irony, especially coming from Rick.

==========================================================================================

Now a little note on what to take out of this–and not just this but all episodes of Rick and Morty:

I would like this, in the final analysis, to touch on philosophical subjects. I’m leaving it mainly to the reader to do so if he/she finds that the events and character developments inspires certain philosophical thoughts. And there are plenty of opportunities for this in the Rick and Morty series. This episode in particle, not so much (at least not for me), but I might (if I feel like it) offer some philosophical questions for discussion at the end of each post covering the each episode.

In the last episode (Lawnmower Dog), I made it explicit that themes of racism and conservatism vs. liberalism could be gleaned from it, which are loaded with philosophical potential. In this episode, I glean the theme of trying too hard vs. going with the flow. This is sort of a Buddhist theme for me–the idea that sometimes we perform at our best, or accomplish our goals most effectively, when we simply don’t try (as master Yoda once said: Do or do not. There is no try.). Sometimes trying too hard, like Jerry trying to connect, only causes us to stumble, like a dancer trying to focus too hard on performing the right movements, whereas just going with the flow, which requires very little “trying”, often increases our performance or accomplishes our goals far more effectively than consciously trying (although I’m not sure how well the family could have “connected” if they had their faces stuck in their electronics the whole time).

I suppose there’s also the theme of going with the flow vs. rule following: what’s better, doing what you’re supposed to do or doing what you want? which can be a rich philosophical topic, but I’ll leave that one, amongst any others, up to the reader to follow up on.

I just realized something: the theme park being constructed inside Ruben is not just a money making scheme on Ricks part–it’s the cure for all Ruben’s diseases. Remember what Rick said:

“You don’t agree to have a theme park built inside you if your life’s going great.”

And right after informing Rick that the “exhibits” are unlocked, Dr. Xenon Bloom explains to Morty:

“Anatomy Park’s greatest attraction, young man, isn’t the music or the food or the Pirates of the Pancreas… It is first and foremost a living museum of humanities most noble and ferocious diseases.”

In other words, before they escaped, all Ruben’s diseases were locked up in one way or another; the whole theme park would be a flop if they had hepatitis-A or e-coli on the loose; no one would pay a dollar to visit the park if that were the case.

So not only do they lock all the diseases up for the sake of attracting visitors, but Ruben gets cured of all his diseases in the process.

Of course, Rick has one motive and one motive only–to make money–but this is the old theme of the greedy, selfish capitalist bringing a great benefit to others through his greedy, selfish acts, which we will see more of as the episodes progress.

I’d say, the space is generated for it.

What is a micro unconscious?

Hold up. The xyz value of conscious could be located in the same xyz of the brain, just only visible in another format. Consciousness could be in the space between atoms, so to speak, thus not detectable using conventional “reflective em ping” means.

Sound waves are the motions of atoms through time. We are Time itself, so we can hear sound, but on a technical standpoint, we cannot hear it until it is converted into neuronal communications. We do not directly hear the sound, we hear the sound only until it is converted into neuronal communications. Either we are connected to/in the same format of, or are, the neuronal communications themselves. And neuronal substance we detect, is either the chemical substance, light substance, electrical substance, or unique Pattern ID of the neuronal configurations, or some other substance akin to a mystery substance, or all 5.
But we know we are not linked to the original format sounds(motions of atoms) because our consciousness is limited to our brains…we cannot hear once we are deaf. If consciousness could hear sounds before they are converted, deaf people could hear the outside world and consciousness would not be limited to our brains.

Interesting. Why do you say that?
[/quote]
Don’t remember.
But I can guess what I meant by that.

I am starting to wonder that perhaps the rainbow+black and white is all we can see, because we are spiritually limited to those colors and there is not possibly any way to experience other colors, even if we had the power to modify our brains or consciousness.

What do you think it’s generated by?

This was from your comment about consciousness existing in the “tunnels” of our neurons. It’s like each one is a little micro-consciousness. But to me, they are unconscious (I’m certainly not aware of any individual consciousnesses inside my neurons); thus, the micro-unconscious.

Well, if by xyz, you mean spatial coordinates, then sure, but that’s (perhaps) all they have in common (it’s what would maintain their isomorphism). Color space is a good example of this idea. You can think of colors as three dimensional: each color is just a certain degree of red, green, and blue. You can vary the amount of red, green, or blue for any color. These primary colors are the “dimensions” in which colors have room to “move around” (i.e. become different hues). But for a color to vary like this doesn’t require literal space (even though we have to draw color spectra in at least one dimension on paper, but this is only so that we can see all colors as co-present). You can see a single pixel go through all the colors of the rainbow without budging an inch. Maybe the “space” outside our perception of space is something like this: a field in which things can vary along at least 3 independent but non-spatial dimensions (call them x, y, z), and it comes through into our subjective world as the vast emptiness between solid objects that we see everyday.

Right, so it sounds like the expansion of consciousness.

The only sense in which I can imagine color being spiritual is in the sense that it is typically thought to be purely subjective (thus, of the mind, of the spirit); but in that sense, I would think anything would qualify as spiritual. In a sense, I believe this. I believe that all is spiritual (ultimately) as it is all rooted in subjectivity, but that includes physical matter and objectivity. ← These are reducible to sensory perception after all (and maybe rational thought for objectivity), so they too are spiritual. What this means, for me, is that though color may indeed be spiritual, as a property of objects, it is also physical.

Well, the way I see it, if we modify our brains, we modify our behavior and our speech. If we modify our brains such that we act and talk like we can see other colors, then those very modifications count as neural circuitry for seeing other colors. The wiring of the brain is what causes us to act and talk as we do. The mind supplies the accompanying reasons and justifications.

“expansion of consciousness”
Show me one enlightened guy who can hear without ears.

“Well, the way I see it, if we modify our brains, we modify our behavior and our speech. If we modify our brains such that we act and talk like we can see other colors, then those very modifications count as neural circuitry for seeing other colors. The wiring of the brain is what causes us to act and talk as we do. The mind supplies the accompanying reasons and justifications.”
Ridiculous nonsense. Are you even trying?

I’m not saying without ears, I’m just analyzing the concept of “consciousness expansion”. ← I don’t even know if it’s possible.

Given my views on consciousness, there is a way to interpret “consciousness expansion” (but I admit up front that I have no idea how this would be possible): my views say that there is subjective experience accompanying any physical action (i.e. qualia of an inconceivable sort), including sound waves and light (and everything else in physics that can stimulate the senses). The problem is not that our consciousness is disconnected with these other forms of experience (corresponding to sound waves, light, etc.); it’s that our epistemic reach is disconnected. If our brains could somehow form a direct epistemic connection with the experiences accompanying sound waves, light, etc. we might be aware (directly) of these experiences. ← That would be “consciousness expansion”. But I have no idea how the brain would accomplish that.

Now, when you say it’s ridiculous nonsense, do you mean I haven’t supplied enough information or that it conflicts with something you already believe? If the latter, I can’t always predict what’s going to conflict with another person’s belief system. If the former, give me a break. I wrote a whole book on this. On ILP, I can only deliver it piecemeal.

Utter nonsense.
The whole tenant of conscious expansion is that it expands outside of the brain. So you are trying to circumvent the foundational premise of what it’s saying.
We already have a direct epistemic connection.
It’s called our ear drums.
Like I said earlier I don’t believe sound waves have an inherent experience of their own, they must be converted into a spiritual substance to be experienced (associated with neuronal communications).

I mean what it says, that it is utter ridiculous nonsense.
You are saying if you program someones verbal system (in essence, causing them to spout delusions) it means that by virtue of speaking the delusions, the delusions exist.
So if I type write now that I just saw colorX, a color that doesn’t exist and noone has seen before, by the power of word I make that color come into existence.

Yep, that’s the schism between you and I. And I’ll fully concede your point given your views on consciousness. Won’t stop me, however, from expressing my views and what they say about the topics we touch on. ← Remember, it’s not a “I’m right, you’re wrong” game to me.

I thought we were talking about re-wiring the brain, specifically re-wiring the color perception centers in the brain. I’m say that if you take the “red” centers in the brain, for example, and re-wire them such that you end up speaking and behaving as if you see a new color X where you used to see red, then what we have re-wired the red centers into is a neural circuit for perceiving color X.

But you brought up a good point: although actually seeing a specific color like red is a reasonable justification for why one might say things like “I see red” or behave as if one sees red (stopping at red lights, for example), it needn’t be the only reason. One might wish to lie. Or maybe one is acting in a play. But these alternate reasons for speaking/acting come along with alternate brain activity. If you were to scan the brain of someone who said “I see red” because they actually do see red, you’d get a different signature than someone who said “I see red” because they were lying or performing in a play.

Sounds like a macguffin to me.

You expect to be able to rewire the brain to see a new color with little to no resistance.
Now lets say its they year 3000 and we can rewire the brain very easily with the press of a button.
I suspect there is still no possible way to reconfigure it, when you try to do it you are just gonna loop around to one of the old colors, I suspect its at max cap.