Notes - private road rally(e) / boredom / not indifferent / hard problems

         1022 hours. Very exciting morning. I drove the hybrid to the doctor’s office about eight miles away and played road rally. I stayed at the speed limit and watched the fuel stats. I got 41.3 miles per gallon to the office and 44.0 per gallon coming home. This ‘game’ is so much fun with the Avalon. For one there wasn’t much traffic going, but coming home I was in a line of it most of the way and the head person wasn’t going that fast. Plus there are quite a few hills as it is where the Great Wisconsin ice sheet ended some thousands of years ago. The only economy road rally I ever won was in 1965 or 66 with my 1965 VW beetle; I got a little over 40 miles per gallon. I road rally my way on our various trips but it is not always economics. Driving is so much fun, always has been for me.

         I do observe, orndorff. Mostly you are bored, always have been, and like to dress the world up in your own fashion. You are hardly alone. It is very human. Most people though wouldn’t admit to boredom because it sound arrogant and uncaring about the world, but that is not the point. The point is, and you are grateful for it, that you have the setting for boredom and have the time (a part of the setting) to enjoy it just as some people enjoy watching the shapes of clouds, i.e. all the sciences and the humanities. Mostly you are bored with yourself – this ironically comes out in your taking the time and the pleasure that comes with writing. Post. - Amorella

         You have worked up about five hundred words on Dead Four. – Amorella

         1209 hours. This is not going as I planned; it is as if the segment is writing itself.

         I put the pieces up in your mind, you make the choices, mostly unconsciously, then put them down and work with them. If you liked the lines in book four you like them now and want them to work. I have no objections. This is your work boy from your head. My intent is that you complete this series because you will be more content having done so. I will be more content having it public to keep you privately transparent. This is the writing process when you have a wet spiritual hand, so to speak. -  Amorella

         1213 hours. I cannot say, but I am not indifferent to your words.

         Post. - Amorella

         Mid-afternoon. Carol chose Potbelly’s in Kenwood for lunch and coincidently it is close to Macy’s which is where you are in the south lot waiting. – Amorella

         1443 hours. I think this shopping venture is also related to Craig and Alta’s arrival next Friday and the trip north on the following Saturday. Jim wrote the other day and Craig wrote today. I also have to remember the story with Aunt Patsy and Edward McCoy, Jimmy’s uncle – when Aunt Patsy and he dated one another one summer when she was fourteen or fifteen.

         You are home thinking on the conclusion of Dead Four. You want it to have to do with this article from Wikipedia in particular:

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Hard problem of consciousness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes.

David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness, contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc.

Easy problems are easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function.

That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he argues that the problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers.  Providing an answer to this question could lie in understanding the roles that physical processes play in creating consciousness and the extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of experience.

Several questions about consciousness must be resolved in order to acquire a full understanding of it. These questions include, but are not limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the brain.

If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems and require an explanation of nonphysical means. For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains a question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.

Selected and edited from “Wikipedia – Hard Problems of Consciousness” for study and use in dialogue with Socrates and Merlyn

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         1915 hours. Nearly dusk. Carol is taking a shower and I am next. We spent over an hour tonight mowing and trimming the yard. It is still terribly hot. I am nearly complete with Dead 4 but I will wait until tomorrow to put near final draft of chapter four on the blog. I have to catch up with the chapter stats also. Another chapter and I’ll be one-third done with book two. I am glad Amorella had me work on those first two chapters before completing book one. Psychologically it is much better. Of course it is all much easier since I had the basic essentials of all three books already.

         Post, orndorff. - Amorella