Consciousness

The human realization that we are self-aware has
plagued humans ever since they became, well, conscious. Humans realize that we
realize. Why? One answer, more scientific and mechanical than philosophical or
epistemological, is simply because all the elements that make up our brains
talk to each other, thus creating the mind. And the mind is conscious. It's a
neuronal thing according to Francis Crick in his book, Astonishing
Hypothesis. This explains nothing regarding how and why we are conscious.
It only verifies that our brains are made up of various and many tiny things
that in combination allow our brains, and by reference, us, to know stuff.

Another proposed solution is a philosophical one: that
we simply aren't smart enough to ever understand our minds (Christof Koch, The
Feeling of Life Itself). Seems to me that that begs the question unless
one believes that the evidence that we don't understand our minds IS the
evidence that we don't understand our minds.

One that truly baffles me is a book by Donald D.
Hoffman titled The Case Against Reality. Basically we all are in a
computer game that hides (protects?) us from reality--on purpose. Sort of like,
"You couldn't handle the truth." What we perceive to be real, really
isn't. And then, somehow, this all relates to "fitness". This is
justified reasoning because Kant and Plato suggested something similar a very
long time ago. And we all know that if ancients thought it, it must be true.

Michael S.A. Graziano’s book Rethinking
Consciousness is on target to be even more silly than Hoffman's. The idea
in his "attention schema theory" is that when we (pay attention, we
model the world. This supposedly occurred some 350 million years ago.

There are many more more reasonable theories of
consciousness that also don't answer the question, "How do we know that we
know?" It's a hot topic within the scientific community looking for an
atheistical answer that maybe can only be answered by God.

(I would also be interested in researching a bit into
whether other living things might also have a degree of consciousness and what
the possibilities are for consciousness in machines.)

Morality

From a rather young age, I have been concerned off and on with how moral values are decided. Who determines what is right and wrong, good and bad? And how are gradations determined between apparent opposites or even among each opposite? Complicating the understanding is how the execution of rights, wrongs, goods, and bads are accepted, rewarded, and punished differs among individuals, groups, and cultures.

The recent death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a Muslim cleric and leader of the so-called terrorist group ISIS, reminds me that I have yet to resolve my concerns regarding morality. The ISIS goal, by any means necessary including beheading, is to establish world domination and rule informed by Sharia law. We, at least in the United States, consider that goal, in and of itself and particularly the means of attaining it, as bad, even evil as measured against our values. Consequently, killing al-Baghdadi, is considered by most non-radical Muslims a good thing. Worse, by most values, he took the lives of three of his children with him.

Where did the concept of good, bad, etc. come from anyway. Nietzsche sort of (hard for me to understand him) blames religion. For this to be the case, religion had to come before values; not a logical cause and effect. God or gods, it seems, came about as a means to justify the existence and enforcement of the first and probably few values. As the values piled up, many weaker ones (logically) were adopted and codified demanding more complex religions, rules, and laws. Back at the beginning, Ugh has a son, Ugh-Ugh, who is killed by Awg-Awg, a neighbor boy, probably Ugh's nephew, of about Ugh-Ugh's age who lusts after Ugh-Ugh's spear. Ugh feels pain, not physical pain, yet serious emotional pain. He calls a family meeting where Awg-Awg sits with a smug look and Ugh-Ugh's spear. You can imagine what happens next. Hence two particular values, that of human life and that of retribution, are encoded in the earliest sapiens' genome and brains. (See Braintrust. What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, by Patricia S. Churchland.) How we got from here to paying taxes being arguably good and not paying taxes being arguably bad is a long and convoluted story.

Back to al-Baghdadi. What exactly makes his and ISIS' exercise of their religious values wrong? Actually from an evolutionary perspective, nothing. I believe that those committed to ISIS are following the only path they can. "My genome and brain made me do it." What made ISIS wrong was that they, in effect, declared and executed a violent war against all peoples that did not believe or at least profess to believe in the same values that they did. That is in direct opposition to the most Americans' values, so their leader had to be killed.

So where am I going with this? Is science the answer to the morality question? A reasonable counter-argument to evolution being the source of morality is from Christain talk show host, author, and speaker Greg Kouki: "Evolution may be an explanation for the existence of conduct we choose to call moral, but it gives no explanation why I should obey any moral rules in the future. If one countered that we have a moral obligation to evolve, then the game would be up, because if we have moral obligations prior to evolution, then evolution itself can't be their source." In my example above, Ugh and the other members of the family recognized that what Awg-Awg did was wrong BEFORE it was imprinted in their genomes and brains, therefore, evolution cannot be the source of morality. This is the "oughtness" argument. Hmmmm. Maybe a Deist can move beyond this muddle.

Just One Philosophy of Teaching...

or is it more a philosophy of learning?

I guess I am philosophically a constructivist or constructionist if you will. As pedagogy, constructivism appeals to me intellectually and practically and I make every effort to facilitate the learning experience according to those broad tenets. That is how I learn and that is how I prefer to be taught but I also respect the need for others to learn differently. I strive to develop a positive and open learning environment, to guide students toward understanding and developing their own learning styles and philosophies and to help them realize their potential as active, reflective, and evolving critical thinkers. However, on occasion, hopefully only when the situation dictates, I tend to revert to a more didactic approach, the result of my military experience, I am sure, wherein understanding often took a backseat to rote process memorization and practice. I find that this approach has its benefits, especially when teaching technology applications and processes which frequently involve sequential exactness.

My mantra when facilitating technology professional development sessions is that the key to enhancing student achievement lies at the confluence of curricular content, differential pedagogies and technology integration--that the interoperability of these three elements will foster engaged learning, encourage students to accept accountability and responsibility for their own education and consequently prepare them for success in the 21st Century. I believe that and I believe that my enthusiasm for learning, developing authentic, engaging curricula, customizing my teaching style to fit the situation and student and integrating appropriate technological tools has allowed me to have a long-term positive effect on students. It has taken me a while to figure out how to combine these. As a technology teacher, initially I naturally began by focusing on the technology (the tool) and proceeded to integrate the content into the technology. When I was teaching word processing, for example, the focus would be on the application--"click here," "click there"--and not on purposeful output. The tool (technology) was driving my teaching. I have long since learned that the focus belongs on communicating through writing and that the learning process should provide students with opportunities to express themselves by way of various technology tools. The results are exciting and rewarding. I am a firm believer in project-based learning. I experience great satisfaction from facilitating and encouraging students as they experience realistic self-discovery successes yet I remain aware of my obligation to guide them in their journey toward discovery of self.

More broadly, my extra-curricular goals as a teacher include helping students learn to be authentic, to accept who they are, to find the right career, to hold life, learning and their faith as precious, and to make the right choices. Students bring varying and rich cultures and experiences to the classroom. As a teacher, I believe that not only I am obligated to celebrate and build upon these cultural and experiential platforms but to help students to go beyond in order to develop a multicultural word view. As St. John Bosco wrote, "Instruction is but an accessory, like a game; knowledge never makes a man because it does not directly touch the heart. It gives more power in the exercise of good or evil; but alone it is an indifferent weapon, wanting guidance."