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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2016 - 11:48am PT
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Reality is indescribable? Could you please give an example?
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The "indescrible" aspect that Mike talks about and which is ubiquitous in the esoteric literature comes from a compound insight derived from sitting in the middle of raw experience for long enough to see that there are no stand-alone "things" that exist separate from any thing else, that all this stuff we call things and experience is a giant interconnected flood comprised of impermanent components that the closer we look, the less tangible they all become. Our discursive minds can latch onto the seemingly fixed "trees" in the forest, and say, "There. You see that oak. It is this and that and is comprised of this and that. And THAT is what it is and we can define it in this way." But even the oak is impermanent and ever changing.
We can define things in a temporary way, but ultimately, everything is "empty" of inherent or permanent nature. Even causation becomes redefined in this sense because the elements that apparently "caused" or impacted present "thingness," so to speak, are themselves in flux, or on close inspection, exist only as energy or glitch in and out of existence.
Pretty much the opposite of what our sense data and discursive minds tell us is so. Without getting hold of the ontological theme of impermanence, such talk will always sound like gibberish. Same goes for the notion that there is only the present moment, the infinite now. So long as these insights exist only as concepts, or ideas, they will never find much traction in someone's life.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 14, 2016 - 05:55pm PT
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. . . sitting in the middle of raw experience for long enough to see that there are no stand-alone "things" that exist separate from any thing else, that all this stuff we call things and experience is a giant interconnected flood comprised of impermanent components that the closer we look, the less tangible they all become
When you say "see that" I presume you mean "another way of perceiving" and not "this is the only true vision". Fifty years ago I drifted in and out of this state, although clearly not to the extent you have reached. It's an interesting perspective, as long as one doesn't propose this is the "true" way of seeing reality. There is no such thing.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2016 - 06:16pm PT
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There is only one way of perceiving, and none of us DO anything. Experience just pours in unbidden. None of us can ever nail down experience as a definite thing or object because it's all a roiling sea of moving and morphing (fill in the blank). The reason the esoteric traditions insist that death is an illusion is not to refute that we have a body that gets old and dies, but rather we were never alive as some stand-alone, separate "thing" or being in the first place. Ergo there was/is never any independent existence, no-mind independent, immutable stuff that is "really" out there. It's just this ceaseless flood of experience which ultimately is totally ungraspable.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 14, 2016 - 06:30pm PT
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Nevertheless, you have not accounted for the scientific record. If the physical world is wholly dependent on human consciousness, why do we see evidence the universe has been operating as it currently operates long before man arrived on the scene?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 14, 2016 - 06:54pm PT
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We can define things in a temporary way, but ultimately, everything is "empty" of inherent or permanent nature.
Temporary seems to describe me. How does knowing that ultimately everything is "empty" of inherent or permanent nature affect what you do in a typical day?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2016 - 06:57pm PT
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Ward, your appraisal posits consciousness as some independent, stand-alone source but consciousness is no such "thing," IMO. It too is wound into the whole shebang and is as unexplained and ungraspable as all get out. That's not to say we can't provisionally isolate out apparent objects "out there" and pull measurements and make predictions - technology and our lives depend on us doing so. But the operate word here is "provisionally."
Everything is impermanent, and nothing stands alone. But granted, our discursive minds say otherwise.
And MH2, you asked the 1,000,000 dollar question. Let me consider a response.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 14, 2016 - 07:24pm PT
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It's not so much I posit consciousness as a standalone, but that I posit the physical universe in its broadest sense as same. I regard human consciousness as being wholly dependent on physical processes and not the other way around..That we can measure these processes by employing a type of method and discipline is not any sort of a disqualification ( ultimately leading to a false view of man or nature) but rather a bit of a bonus.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 14, 2016 - 08:18pm PT
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There is only one way of perceiving, and none of us DO anything. Experience just pours in unbidden (JL)
I think I'll coin a new word to represent this strain of philosophy:
Passivitism
Thus, Platonic ideals and universal logical structures pour into us, giving rise to mathematics and the physical sciences with little or no effort.
If only graduate school had been so easy, with knowledge pouring into me, a relaxed and non-doing vessel.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 14, 2016 - 08:44pm PT
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Tabula rasa refers to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception (Wiki)
The part to which I refer (and object) is the "none of us DO anything". Therefore no thought or physical effort is required.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 15, 2016 - 07:31am PT
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If memory serves (a doubtful assumption) I was more in the school of Activitism once upon a time. Now, whatever gets into me is most often poured in.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 15, 2016 - 10:44am PT
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I regard human consciousness as being wholly dependent on physical processes and not the other way around.
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This is to give matter a avored nation kind of status in that stuff, objects, and so forth are really and truly there in some sense that is different and more fundamental than mind etc.
The esoteric traditions say, no. Provisionally we can look at causation and say this came from that, but this and that are totally impermanent.
There is no "real" thing to which reality is anchored. It's all a flux, energy, space, emptiness, however you want to frame it. That is, no thing or stuff or object or mind or (fill in the blank) is any more fundamental than any other (fill in the blank). One item in the flux does not source the other items in the flux. It's all flux. Nothing has more fundamental nature than anything else.
Again, from a purely discursive standpoint this makes little sense - till we try and nail down what matter and energy and all these rest of the apparent things really are. We always have to refer to some other thing or phenomenon to try and describe a given thing, which in and of itself is no-thing. But these are not easy concepts to get hold of.
And John, when I say you don't "do" anything I am not saying we don't make effort, but rather the appearance of reality and our experience is not something we do or accomplish through person effort of agency. It happens of its own. Try and STOP the flow of experience and being if you believe otherwise. The flood just keeps on gushing forth, and there is no stand alone, independent source for any of it.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 15, 2016 - 12:13pm PT
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Why Biology is Beyond Physical Sciences?
Keywords Aristotle, Consciousness, Darwinism, Determinism, Kant, Species, Evolution, Vedāntic philosophy
In the framework of materialism, the major attention is to find general organizational laws stimulated by physical sciences,
ignoring the uniqueness of Life. The main goal of materialism is to reduce consciousness to natural processes, which in turn
can be translated into the language of math, physics and chemistry.
Following this approach, scientists have made several attempts to deny the living organism of its veracity as an immortal soul,
in favor of genes, molecules, atoms and so on.
However, advancement in various fields of biology has repeatedly given rise to questions against such a denial and has supplied more and more
evidence against the completely misleading ideological imposition that living entities are particular states of matter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292906679_Why_Biology_is_Beyond_Physical_Sciences
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 15, 2016 - 12:26pm PT
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And John, when I say you don't "do" anything I am not saying we don't make effort, but rather the appearance of reality and our experience is not something we do or accomplish through person effort of agency
OK. Thanks.
One item in the flux does not source the other items in the flux. It's all flux. Nothing has more fundamental nature than anything else
Too bad Dr Ed is on sabbatical.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 15, 2016 - 02:19pm PT
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Nothing has more fundamental nature than anything else
So. It could be all turtles. That woman was smart.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 15, 2016 - 05:52pm PT
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For what now, the millionth time...
This is to give matter a favored nation kind of status in that stuff, objects, and so forth are really and truly there in some sense that is different and more fundamental than mind etc.
Exactly. Just as it should be. Just as it actually is.
lol
....
Here...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCMDawKCBkk
Keepin' it fresh.
...
"Under naturalism, there isn’t that much difference between a human being and a robot. We are all complicated collections of matter moving in patterns, obeying impersonal laws of physics in an environment with an arrow of time. Wants and purposes and desires are the kinds of things that naturally develop along the way." -Sean Carroll
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 15, 2016 - 10:16pm PT
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But these are not easy concepts to get hold of (JL)
I'm not so sure they are concepts as much as epiphanies. Extensive meditation does seem to incur an alteration of perception, that is then difficult to describe.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 16, 2016 - 08:18am PT
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Here is an attempt to clarify a few issues in my own mind.
One of the disagreements we have here may arise because of the difference between information and meaning:
"Intuitively, it’s hard for us to separate information from meaning. Informally,
we consider them to be the same thing. But in information theory, they’re very
different. As I said above, meaning is what happens when you interpret
a piece of information in some context."
from
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/09/21/information-vs-meaning/
I remember a class in which a physicist at Brown talked to us about information theory and he mentioned that the theory says nothing about any meaning that may be contained in a message.
It occurs to me that when JL talks about ‘objective processing’ he might be referring to information transfers, which can occur in the absence of anything we would call meaning.
Trying to see our world as information exchanges, without considering the meaning of the information, puts everything on a simple level. A human is a system that sends and receives information, and the human brain sends and receives information not only to the world around it but also within itself. Trying to separate the brain into conscious and subconscious parts might be irrelevant.
(Could we distinguish human information-processing from non-human, or life from non-life, based only on information transfers?)
Maybe we could view the brain as an information processor and the mind as a searcher for meaning.
At the moment I don’t want to look closer at how meaning could become attached to information, except to say that meditation could be a way to alter that connection.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2016 - 10:12am PT
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This is to give matter a avored nation kind of status in that stuff, objects, and so forth are really and truly there in some sense that is different and more fundamental than mind etc.
The description you proffered as to a universe chiefly characterized as an amorphous "flux" is a little like some of the favored theories as regards the very early universe. It is suspected that this universe as it expanded and "cooled" began to differentiate into subatomic particles. Thus in turn, as the universe continued its expansion, began to accrete and further differentiate, leading to "things" like molecules,galaxies and stars and so on.
This process continued, eventually forming planets, plants, zebras, and apes with big brains. All this occured, and still occurs, on the same original energy budget, but in the form of discrete packages, governed by probability. Apparently this universe made one light bill payment to cover the entire residence in perpetuity. The residence is expanding ( like an old "balloon-frame" house) and it's not exactly certain at this stage what will happen to "things"
At the end of the day we are still faced with "things" . They are the direction in which the universe progressed. Simply because they consist of the same fundamental building blocks, paid in the same energy bill , does not render them as chimeral illusions--which are mistakenly too often seen as merely products of the human mind and its perceived need to categorize things and give them a fleeting superficial appearance. Things are profound and real, for the reasons I've given. They are distinct differentiations and are a main facet of existence.
different and more fundamental than mind
The mind is a thing like other things (a complex differentiation). However it came along late in the game. This tells me that the physical universe is more fundamental than mind.
No?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Oct 16, 2016 - 06:50pm PT
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Maybe we could view the brain as an information processor and the mind as a searcher for meaning.
I like that definition although I would say it belongs only to the discursive left brain. Emotions are also a part of the mind, the so called right brain, and are heavily influenced by brain chemicals. They arise unexpectedly and may or may not be explained later.
Personally, I think they are all functions of the evolved meat brain, representing different phases of evolution. The question raised by meditation is if there is a level of mind above all that or it is a reversion back to the most primitive level of mind? The other question raised by meditation is if that level of mind is connected to any other dimension of mind in the universe? It feels like it but is this just the mind playing tricks on itself? How you interpret it is a matter of faith whether it be in the physical world explanations or the spiritual world explanations. That's what I've concluded after thousands of posts.
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