Now, where were we...

I've enjoyed an extended hiatus from blogging for quite some time now because I've had better things to do with my time.

Alright, alright...that was only a joke.

Kind of.

But really, the entire mileu of blogging has taken on a sort of negative connotation with which I happen to agree, for better or for worse. It's one of the many embodiments of what manages to be at the same time both endlessly exasperating and simply tragic about my generation: we expect that our particular views or opinions are somehow special, and that everyone in the civilized world is entitled (nay, privileged!) to read them. To "blog" is to willingly participate in this self-indulgent spiral of cultural or intellectual musings that are, at the end of the day, masturbatory. Very few of us are paid or reimbursed in any way for this time spent, and very few of us are ever bettered for having read any particular blog entry. So why do it? Again, the answer is simple. Masturbation - of the ego, that is. Everyone loves a little nudge in the direction of "I'm important," and if they claim otherwise, they're more than likely lying to you, themselves, or both.

Perhaps this raises the question of why I'm writing this right now, and rightfully so. If you're expecting an Atticus Finch-esque exculpation, I'm sorry to disappoint you - I'm a child of the "me" generation, probably like yourself, and I'll have mine.


With that said, this is what I've been up to lately:
School and work, which are no longer separate entities. I am plunging headlong into the world of professional research, and for some sick reason, I couldn't be happier. I suppose I'm on my way to becoming a neuroscientist, and with any luck, I will soon be accepted into a decent graduate program and on my way to earning a PhD. This field excited me as a natural result of my fascination with consciousness and mental events, which is, I'm told, not an uncommon occurrence among students of philosophy. However, I seem to have taken a bit more of a proactive approach: I've all but abandoned philosophy in any professional regard. I have done this for two important reasons: 1) modern "philosophers" seem far more interested in winning intellectual pissing contests than in actually making progress in any field, much less their own, and 2) philosophy itself has been absorbed into its related fields to the extent that one is largely better off in simply studying one of those related fields. For example, modern physics has become theoretical to the extent that it is often indistinguishable from metaphysics (save for ridiculous theories about enormous boats being from another dimension, etc.), and modern neuroscience is coming to merge with epistemology such that studying epistemology alone is now ironically philosophically limiting. Neuroscience is at an extremely important position in the history of our species. We are quite literally on the brink, every single day, of discovering some feature of the brain that gives rise to a particular behavior or cognitive state. These things separately may mean little, though taken together, complex behaviors and cognitive states may be explained. So on, so forth until the level of complexity that we understand approaches that of reality.

Given many a mental wrestle and discussion I have had regarding the mind-brain relationship, it may strike those who know me as odd that I am so fervently interested in the ability of neural activity to produce behaviors. Have I resigned to the notion that the brain is the mind? Well...yes, and no. It is, at this point, quite ignorant (or at the very best, unfounded) to hold that the mind is independent of the brain. On the other hand, it's quite clear to me and to many researchers that there is no such one-to-one relationship to be found. The brain's sheer power as a machine and storage device is such that such a relationship is not physically possible or even conceptually plausible. The mind, then, is not to be found in the brain, but is an emergent property of it, of some sort. This relationship may never be wholly understood. But even so, we're getting close enough to be excited.