At the conservancy’s annual general meeting, dried-up old equestrians and amateur botanists talk of their battles with developers and planning commissions.
“Special guest speakers will include...”
I’ve known them for years and still don’t understand them.
“A comprehensive history of working people and their organizations in... A national teachers’ poll was conducted on behalf of... It reveals the views of educators on workplace issues such as workload and hours of work, abusive parents...”
What about abusive teachers? Anyone take a poll on dat?
“... class size, integration of special needs students...”
I got quite a few students wid special needs, da’s for sure.
“... the extent of participation in and spending on professional development activities. The survey indicates that 83% of... have a higher workload than four years ago. They also report growing class sizes and, at the same time, larger numbers of special needs students are being integrated into their classrooms...”
Now is dat increasin class-size due to the number of special needs students being integrated or what? How bout some more freakin percentages here.
“Although a significant number of teachers reported witnessing at least one incident that they would classify as physical assault or verbal abuse, there is an overwhelming view that our schools are safe places.”
I beg to differ wid’at one, hun. Another grizzled eco-veteran slips in and takes a seat. Then de next speaker o’d’hour, good old Hobson, rises to begin his’hit.
“The level of any conscious state in the brain rises and falls in response to the degree of electrochemical activation supplied by the reticular formation in the brainstem core. Whatever consciousness is, and however its components are mediated by the specialized structures of the upper brain, the LEVEL of consciousness is set by an internal electrochemical drive system that has been called the ‘nonspecific reticular activating system’ since its discovery by Moruzzi and Magoun in 1949.”
Hobson might take quantum mechanics a little too far, but at least he seems like he’s talkin sense today. 1949? Sure was a long time ago.
“The main idea is that for the brain to be conscious, its nerve cells must maintain a certain level of electrochemical activity... Consciousness is virtually obliterated during sleep, which leads to the surprising insight that consciousness operates within a very narrow range of activation. Put another way, consciousness is exquisitely sensitive to even slight changes in activation level... By altering the tension in our muscles and by focusing our internal awareness on one channel of data or another, we can navigate into the more peaceful harbors of the conscious world. When we do this, we bring our reticular formation partially under the control of our will, probably via the prefrontal cortex.”

CHALMERS gotta get his two cents worth in here...
“Computational hypothesis...”
He cites Wolfram’s New Kind of Science.
“State of cell at one time is a function of the state of a cell at a previous time...”
Well, as if we didn’t all know dat. Still, I can’t help thinkin o’Kim’s new version o’functionalism. Or at least, I guess it used to be new, probably back when I was a student or something.
“This hypothesis would not require massive revisions in other beliefs.”
David Chalmers has the stench of the desert all over him. I’s in his hair, on his shirt and socks. His mind is thoroughly ensconced in it. The sun and the sand in conjunction with too much dry air has entered his bloodstream. The madness o’Castenada is coursing through his veins. His eyes are seething with a sky that remains unfettered by rainclouds. There are sunsets roaming free in his beard. There’s rock dust spilling from his cuffs and nostrils... Windtunnels forming in his mouth and drilling into his skull. How much longer can he keep them at bay? They are gradually wearing down his abutements and crags. I used to want to be just like him.
“What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.”

The problem with experience is that we cannot seem to figure out how or why such feelings arise from physical processes.

“This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function. Perhaps it will even turn out that in the course of explaining a function, we will be led to the key insight that allows an explanation of experience. If this happens, though, the discovery will be an extra explanatory reward. There is no cognitive function such that we can say in advance that explanation of that function will automatically explain experience.”
I’m gonna get up de courage to actually ask a question myself, now:
“What is a mental state?”
Hobson takes it upon hisself to answer: “It follows that, given sensation, awareness could emerge simply as the sensation of sensation. With the emergence of vocalization and language capability in higher primates and humans, this sensation of sensation could then be represented abstractly in verbal descriptions and drawings.”
I feel like I didn get much of an answer to my question there. Maybe I’ll try something else: “How do we know that it is verbally reportable?”
Hobson’s gonna try again: “What began as mere sensation becomes -in a series of seamless bootstrapping steps- first our sensation of sensations, then our awareness of sensation, and finally our awareness of awareness...”
What the F is dis guy going on about?!
“... The gradual building up of symbol upon symbol upon symbol as brain circuit is added to brain circuit is as palpable in the development of individuals as it is in the elaboration of species.”
I don’t’hink dat answers my questions at all. Sounds like a lot o’bullshit to me, bringing in Darwin like dat. Shame on you. Da’s blasphemy in my book. Besides, I think der’s no reason why understanding the brain basis for consciousness should eliminate or even limit further phenomenological investigations on the subject. I believe dey go hand-in-hand, like two peas in a pod. But no one really listens to me anyway.
“How can such a verbal report be verified?”
He probably ain gonna like me no more. Oh well, I’m fuckin used to it. How long is dis fuckin presentation gonna go on for anyway?