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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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^^^
True that! : )
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Again, separating out content (neural product) from awareness is not a task that can be dicked from a third person perspective
I agree with this. Unfortunately, this might put an end to any reasonable conversation, for once one starts talking about the first person POV one begins objectifying, especially if one borrows concepts from quantum mechanics or mathematics as vague analogies. Perhaps we can only say things about the subjective by physical analogies - and then qualia are perceived by another through those analogies, putting an end to the purely subjective.
This line of thought is reminiscent of my earlier comments about the inherent problems of self-referential explorations. It gets you into trouble in mathematics and, I believe, in this discussion as well.
I had fun thinking about a homeomorphism between topological spaces, and there were no real impediments on the neuroscience side, but the subjective aspect seemed completely out of reach. I could not think of any reasonable way to define a topology on that "space."
Maybe you'll find some way to get around the "slippery problem". If so we await with keen interest.
;>)
Once a person has written something, put it down on paper or a record, it’s no longer in their possession
How true. Something HRC and the Democratic Party learned the hard way.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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that perspective (which seeks to formulate awareness-independent physical phenomenon).
I am not sure what is meant here by the phrase, "awareness-independent physical phenomenon."
Whose or what's awareness is being referred to?
Is this related to what I perceive as an opinion that so-called physical phenomena do not exist in the absence of an observer?
If that were the case, then so-called physical bits, like atoms, molecules, neurons, transistors, and such could not have come into existence prior to the observer and so could not be the stuff the observer is made up of.
In other words, you have an airtight argument, albeit of the circular kind.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Not quite. It proves Awareness exists.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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It is the featureless field in which all content arises
Once the word field is mentioned, a kind of weird empty space-like image appears in the mind of the reader, providing a close-to physical analogy which then contaminates the pure emptiness being discussed.
Well, that's the way I see it. I think the way to completely separate out the purely subjective must be a non-verbal discussion. Otherwise vague physical analogies pervade and disrupt.
I'm probably wrong. Show the way, Wizard!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Largo has done a lot of rubbing...
but aren't you all tired going around in circles on this... Largo hasn't anyway to demonstrate his "first person" and gave up on that, but insists that it is a science. It is not, and I am not saying that in a dismissive manner, just that what he talks about isn't science. He should get over it... science envy is unbecoming of him.
But then again, someone like Alan Ginsberg can show up at the most unexpected times and give us a twist...
...talking about his reaction to hearing Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain" for the first time:
"Poetry is words that are empowered that make your hair stand on end...that you recognize instantly as some form of subjective truth, that has an objective reality to it because somebody's realized it. Then you call it poetry later.."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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MH2, awareness without a physical body?
How about a body transcending the universe or material existence?
As in #3 here:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transcendent
We must be careful about giving God human attributes. He may not be wise or smart. He may not, "Do intelligence." Try to imagine something on the mental level of an oyster.
Follow the Transcendent Aware Oyster.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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This is like Ed’s re-writing of my writing. He didn’t like my interpretation that I was communicating to Jgill about Jgill’s writing, so he intervened and corrected my thinking and my writing to jgill.
I didn't think of it as correcting... I thought of it as participating in a conversation, my initial response was "how would I write this?" and I so I did...
I can go back and delete it, certainly, as it seems you took it as something I very much didn't intend.
there, fixed it for you...
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Nice Dylan /Ginsberg post. "Largo hasn't anyway to demonstrate his "first person" and gave up on that,"
JL is just pointing out there is something other than the discursive POV and as you point out it is up to you to become aware of it (to experience it for your self). IMO Most people don't realize there is other than their own discursive analysis.
One very effective way to see the discursive is to attempt to meditate; to sit still in one place for 30 minutes and witness your breath. You quickly find out the discursive dominates the 30 min. and that you have limited ability to actually pay attention to your breath. In other words your experience is dominated by the discursive POV.
If that realization is of interest or value to someone then they may pursue the practice to see for them selves what the experience is when the dominant discursive fades and the non-discursive POV appears. IMO The meditation tool works really well because it is sooooo boring to the discursive mind; it is like WTF are you kidding me! you want me to just sit here! I have important things to do; I could be binge watching Westworld .
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WBraun
climber
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to sit still in one place for 30 minutes and witness your breath. You quickly find out the discursive dominates the 30 min.
and that you have limited ability to actually pay attention to your breath.
Yes ..... the mind will wander away like crazy and accept and reject like crazy to those with untrained mind .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Go-B: . . . good writers would recede out of sight and allow the story to have its own voice and integrity.
This may have been an idea from the 1850s, but it doesn’t square with current modern literary criticism and theory. It’s now widely recognized that stories just don’t tell themselves. There are writers / artists involved, and they are not objective or neutral.
Writing is not just about content. (I need a lot of help here from Sycorax and others with this post.) The messages of communication have a great deal to do with the structuration of texts. In particular, how an author structures a narration of content (as well, of course, as the selective choice of content) are the elements of any narrative. In other words, it’s not just the content that matters to us in our experiences, but also how the writer narrates. This includes every writer here in this thread. (These ideas come from Mieke Bal, Seymour Chatman, Gerard Genette, and Wayne Booth).
Here are some words about the study of narratology (truncated from http://www.icosilune.com/2009/01/seymour-chatman-story-and-discourse/)
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Narrative is a combination of “a what and a way”, where the what is the story [the content] of a narrative, and the way is its discourse.
Poetics is not concerned with “What makes Macbeth great?” but rather “What makes Macbeth a tragedy?” Literary theory explains what the possibilities in literature are. What are the ways we recognize the presence or absence of a narrator? What is plot? Character? Setting? Point of view?” Narrative can be broken into components: story and discourse, events and existents.
Chatman’s idea of structure is divided into quadrants: expression and content, substance and form. Discourse is the expression of narrative, while content is the story. Both have elements of substance and form. It seems like both of these are content, but what identifies a narration’s world versus its modeling can be understood in terms of cultural codes and characters, and is less clear. The very experience of reading (by a reader) is very much a part of the discourse.
Experiencing a narrative requires interpretation by filling in the gaps. Readers may inject their own interpretations and supply extra details and imagery to what is being read because narratives evoke a world of potential details in one’s imagination. The text may supply some of these details, but it is up to the reader to fill-in the rest.
There is a range of artistic expression in narratives. Painting, for example, may be more or less detailed (impressionistic works forgo detail to create expression and mood). Narratives may choose to go in or out of details at whim, and every narrative is incomplete.
Statements in discourse may be interpreted, and they provide the basis for different interpretations. Discourses can show and tell, but showing and telling provide different meanings; they are different meanings. Telling increases the degree of mediation. The range of mediation and forms of narration create a spectrum of possible modes of presentation, communication, messages, imagination, and understanding between any author and reader.
————————————
The point of me presenting these ideas here in this thread means to show that any presentation of content exposes biases, objectives, and manipulations—at least according to theory on what constitutes a narrative. Not only can one not say what anything really is, but the very act of articulating (a narrative) has numerous elements which create a narrative and make it powerful or weak.
This includes the pervasive underlying narrative called modernism.
Modernism is one of the strongest of religions. With the rise of secularisms (Darwinism, attacks on Christianity), intellectuals became skeptics, and materialism’s theorists (Smith, Darwin, Marx) made it difficult to believe in any creator. Nationalism, socialism, Marxism, and economics became unquestioned pseudo religions. Modernism is general and vague and projects all sorts of sacred qualities that Christianity had absorbed. Modernism became the “opiate of the intellectuals.”
Modernism declared the following things taboo: ornament, polychromy, metaphor, humor, symbolism, place, cultural identity, urban context, decoration, and historical reference. Modernism’s one goal has been to focus on the essence of each disciplinary language (especially science) with high standards, with purity, generally rejecting the senses, broad color, multiple codes, irrationality, and history—all for abstractions in their place. Mass culture became the ultimate product of the modern world, the factory its form of organization, and rationalization its final value. Modernism’s meta-narrative of emancipation, progress, universal brotherhood, the purity of nature have all gone the way of traditional religions—relevant, sure, but not completely adequate goals for public, spiritual, and artistic lives to focus upon. Modernism has not been able to tap into the richness of human experience.
Enter the postmodern, artistic soul.
Postmodernism has always been cultural and aesthetic. The postmodernist tends to seek and find enchantment in life. Postmodernists’ interests concern a sense of fashion, often focusing on images, styles, tropes, etc. The individual is encouraged to become fragmented, rather than conform to one monotheistic being or another, or to act with consistent reasons in every moment. Instead, we would rather transcend all monotheisms and live each moment without the “dominance of any one regime of truth.” We see no one lifestyle—only living to the thrill of the current here and now. Postmodern subjects (i.e., me) hence becomes de-centered, groundless, and polytheistic (seeing gods and goddesses in everything). I see the individual (me, others that I know well) embedded as products in discourses and practices, but not necessarily centered in them. (Life is messy.) Postmodernists place value on being interesting rather than right, and we place high value on paradox, contrast, counter-intuition, relevance, and indeterminancy.
Looked at closely, language, texts, narratives, discourses, theories, scientific processes, etc. all appear to expose the indeterminancy of who we are, what we are doing (even here in this thread), truth, and of “the cold, hard facts of life.”
We’re just talking.
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WBraun
climber
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Mike L -- Modernism declared the following things ......
Modernism created an ultimately clueless sterile world masquerading as full of knowledge .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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skisimism..
let's go!
rah-rah for the humanities!
rah-rah for the sciences!
trash-talkin' on your opponent... win one for the gipper!
team colors, representing
college bowl, fruit bowl, the heavenly bowl, bowdlerize in your eyes, for the prize!
na-na-na
my monkey write, or song
Eddington's army,
defeated,
Borges told us who told us it was so...
whata team, that!
let's go Big Blew!
run that post-modernist route and touch that goosey down
science the crap out of it on the red plant-it
live to fright another day
science as hero
rah-rah-rah
I am become Death... destroyer of worlds
science as anti-hero
rah-rah-rah
fiction!
fact!
subject!
object!
bicameral mind
pushing and pulling
to get us over
the
end time
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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The individual is encouraged to become fragmented, rather than conform to one monotheistic being or another, or to act with consistent reasons in every moment
I enjoy watching various series that come up on the premium channels, and I see this reflected in the multi-layered personalities of the characters. I came to intellectual maturity in the 1950s where, to my recollection - and I could be wrong, heroes were heroic in all aspects and villains evil in all ways. Perspectives changed of course in the Vietnam era and the appearance of spaghetti westerns. I really appreciate the complexities of many TV dramas these days.
(Yes, Sycorax, I still read a little as well and realize this sort of thing has been around for awhile)
Very good post, Mike.
Not bad, Ed! A new career may await you post retirement. I like it!
;>)
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Well, I think it's pretty nifty. But I am a quasi-lab coat. Paul might give a more unbiased appraisal.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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the appearance of spaghetti westerns.
Hahaha. I've never seen Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood elevated to this sort of terrain but you are right. Eastwood's movie Unforgiven is a more recent case in point. The protagonist is neither good nor bad, moral or immoral. He is incapable of standing up for any ideal other than his own existential survival. It was the same thing in the Spaghettis -- which stood in stark contrast to the white hat vs. black hat that hitherto had defined the genre .
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I have important things to do
This seems a pre-retirement viewpoint, to me.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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^^^^^^^
LOL
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.
(John Berger. 1972. Ways of Seeing)
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/arts/design/john-berger-provocative-art-critic-dies-at-90.html?
Nothing in the nature around us is evil, Berger wrote. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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^^^
Thanks MikeL for the lesson,
I like the narrative at the start so they can set the scene like in Star Wars! There is first person narrative but I don't like it when they talk to the camera like in House of Cards and say what their thinking myself. And narrative as a fly on the wall, but what motivates and makes the characters tic is important like love or revenge etc. Having and telling a good story with dialogue in a real way grabs you in and holds you! I just watched Deepwater Horizon A dramatization of the April 2010 disaster when the offshore drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded and created the worst oil spill in U.S. history (IMBd). This just unfolded the way it happened and it was intense! All work in telling a story, the Bible has the Greatest Stories Ever Told! : )
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