JENELLE SALISBURY
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Phenomenology of Being "Lost in Time"

12/7/2016

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This post has been copied over from my old blogspot blog.
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I wrote this a couple weeks ago but forgot to post it. Surprise, surprise, more thoughts on "Arrival." 

Here I'd like to talk about what it would actually feel like and be like to experience time in this alternate world. One thing I'm interested in is what the nature of consciousness would need to be like. I find myself imagining, for a creature that "sees all of time at once" - that they are like, on the outside, looking in at their life, seeing the whole thing play out. Is that plausible? Is there no longer an actual conscious experience associated with each particular moment?

I didn't read the book, but this quote from it is relevant:
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When the ancestors of humans and heptapods first acquired the spark of consciousness, they both perceived the same physical world, but they parsed their perceptions differently; the worldviews that ultimately arose were the end result of that divergence. Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all.

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Metaphysics of "Arrival"

11/26/2016

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The recently released film "Arrival" is a powerful story of alien first-contact. Radical translation from an alien language raises many important issues regarding meaning as well as cognition; could humans really come to understand a language so fundamentally different from any on earth? In what follows, I will first go through the general plot and storyline of the movie, including my initial thoughts and reactions as I watched it. Next, I will go over the important features of the alien language that differentiate it from typical human languages. Then, I will discuss in detail the metaphysics in the world represented by this piece including the nature of time, space, causation, and fundamental reality. Finally, I will explain what this metaphysical framework means for cognition and consciousness, autonomy, value, and the future of humanity.

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    Jenelle is a grad student interested in philosophy of mind.

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