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MH2
climber
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that day will never come because you cannot kiss your own lips.
Crushed in the iron grip of logic.
Unless...didn't we hear from jogill and Tom Cochrane about out-of-body experiences in which they might have kissed their own lips?
They say to never say never.
There is an interesting discussion of ontology in connection to physics found via the link which ∇ x provided. It has to do with whether the wave function only represents our knowledge of a system (the epistemic point of view) or is itself a "real object" (the ontological point of view).
"The question is whether a scientific realist can interpret the quantum state as an epistemic state (state of knowledge) or whether it must be an ontic state (state of reality)."
 Matt Leifer commenting on a recent preprint
http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/
In the context of the wave function the different camps have been called psi-epistemicist and psi-ontologist.
However, neither physics or brain science are brought to a halt by philosophical issues.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Crushed in the iron grip of logic.
It would be if you bought into qualia and thought it was a hard problem.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2011 - 01:40pm PT
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that day will never come because you cannot kiss your own lips.
Crushed in the iron grip of logic.
Unless...didn't we hear from jogill and Tom Cochrane about out-of-body experiences in which they might have kissed their own lips?
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No cigar. You guys are still whiffing on this one. The above is right out of the physicalist camp because it assumes that the real and authentic I or person is the physical body, where I say it is the non material, experiential mind. And said mind cannot kiss itīs own metaphorical lips.
You getting that_
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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where I say...
Exactly.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Just a quick note that would make following this thread a lot easier.
When you are posting a reply to the thread there are a series of six boxes right above and to the left of the box you type in. The fourth box from the left is [ " ] a quote image. If you click it you can then just CTL-V to paste in some text from another ST'er and it will appear in your post as an actual, easier-to-read quote separating their text from yours.
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Yet another interesting tangent:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=out-of-body-visit-lab-master-illusionist
Out-of-body experiences are just part of Ehrsson's repertoire. He has convinced people that they have swapped bodies with another person, gained a third arm, shrunk to the size of a doll or grown to giant proportions.
However:
Not everyone succumbs. Ehrsson suspects that people who can expertly localize their limbs without sight, such as dancers or musicians, would be less susceptible than the students with whom he normally works.
Probably not too much of a stretch to include climbers in that list.
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allapah
climber
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stone does not exhibit mental process because stone is a low-entropy zone, (mental process, a stochastic interference pattern, needing a combination of entropic and nonentropic forces, which only manifests in certain places) nevertheless, stone carries potentiality for mental process at every sub-nucleic "quantum foam" entrance point-- feel the weak acausal transtemporal organizing force of the stone's MIND manifesting slightly through delicate touch of fingers and toes, or perhaps the intimate cheese-grater of intestinal crack-wriggling-- so, no, stone not truly exhibiting mental process, but if EVERYTHING around exhibiting mental process, than stone involved in mental process
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2011 - 09:00pm PT
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that day will never come because you cannot kiss your own lips.
Crushed in the iron grip of logic.
Unless...didn't we hear from jogill and Tom Cochrane about out-of-body experiences in which they might have kissed their own lips?
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
No cigar. You guys are still whiffing on this one. The above is right out of the physicalist camp because it assumes that the real and authentic I or person is the physical body, where I say it is the non material, experiential mind. And said mind cannot kiss itīs own metaphorical lips.
You getting that_
JL
Edit
Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
And every fool knows, a dog needs a home, and...
Dec 7, 2011 - 10:41am PT
Nope. Makes no sense at all no matter how many times you write it.
DMT
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Okay, see if you can get your mind around this one.
We have a physical body, and we have mind-subjective experience. One is physical, one is not. They are likely two sides of the same coin, but heads are not tails and visa versa.
Now there are those who insist that experience and brain are the same things. And there are those who say they have had out of body experiences. In fact, these are so commonly reported ' especially in ER and surgical environments, that they are not even news. I donīt have any out of body experiences so I donīt know. But if they are true, then mind, in some manner or another, must exist above and beyond the body. I wouldnīt offer this as anything remotely definitive, itīs just something interesting to consider.
Whatīs more, you NEVER hear of someone having an out of the mind experience, whereas the body experiences itself existing outside of the mind. Ergo the seat of self is not the body but the mind.
Getting that_
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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we don't know why we have an "in body" experience either...
or what that experience is...
so you are a bit quick to conclude that body and mind are separate
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WBraun
climber
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Ergo the seat of self is not the body but the mind
Sorry ...
The mind is still material although a subtle body.
The seat of the self is located within the heart.
In Sanskrit it is called the manah, or material
mind, which is distinct from both the brain and the conscious self.
It (mind) serves as a connecting link between the brain the conscious self.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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JL, have you ever replied with anything but no? Must get tiring.
I have been thinking about this. Driving to work I realized that I was not processing everything that my senses saw, in a complete sense. I viewed other cars as objects to avoid and navigate my way around. Kind of like working your way through a crowd. Unless I saw the president, I couldn't tell you the face of anyone I wandered past face to face.
If you asked me to describe everything that my senses poured in, I would be at an almost total loss. The interesting thing was that the whole time I was thinking about a problem I have been working. It could have been a girl, the superbowl, whether I left the coffee maker on, anything. So I am using the time to think about "higher" things, often totally abstract, while I am full blast navigating my way around.
It seems like we process sensory input in different ways. Driving is old hat, so it frees up a little time for heavier thinking. Now when you jump El Cap or free some route, in my experience there is nothing BUT the moment.
I can remember the smell of the day I first jumped El Cap. Time seems to dilate, and every single thing is branded into your mind. It is also fairly easily accessable even decades later. I have spent my entire life trying to collect those kinds of experiences. Some short lived, like a ten second track off of El Cap, and others that last much longer, like spending a summer wandering through the Brooks Range alone. On those longer trips, your mind just empties. No speech. You are just in the moment and very aware. Those are cool experiences and I have sacrificed a lot of the "normal" life collecting them.
What I don't get is that you say that there is the physical brain, yet something else that is in no way physical. Hopefully I am not putting words into your mouth, but where does this non physical mind reside? Is it spirit or soul?
Mike L is just churning. I can't go as far as he does.
Although you would probably describe me as a physicalist, I would protest. There is something about those intense experiences that have caused me to seek more and more throughout my life.
I believe that the mind has a physical basis at its roots in the brain. How that lump of flesh works is a whole nuther problem.
I insist that the brain is flooded with sensory information at all times, and that it is subjective. Subjective in the sense that it relies on the observer. The first person. Heavily, but perhaps not completely.
My work is highly interpretive. I work the stratigraphy of carbonate rocks (limestones, etc). I don't even pull out a calculator. I follow them throughout a sedimentary basin and identify sequences based on lithology and depositional environment. It is super duper intuitive. Engineers are no good at this kind of work. It is extemely exhausting mentally. I come home and am just fried. It is hard to turn off and I actually dream about it.
There is so much here that I just don't know the answers to all of it. Or any of it. Who knows?
The difference is that unlike some others here, I readily and happily admit it. Not knowing is cool. It means that there are things to learn.
Jan and I come from different perspectives, but i find her perspective similar to mine in a general sense.
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hossjulia
Social climber
Eastside (of the Tetons)
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I'll give it a stab.
"Mind" is a term people use when I think they really mean "spirit", or "self" which to me is at our etherial core, who we really "are". And since we are NOT our mind, it is indescribable, fully, in the material words of our material world. (This is where the metaphors in the bible came from?)
To me, mind is a construct of our assimilation into the society our physical bodies are born into. Or in other words, mind=ego.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2011 - 11:30pm PT
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we don't know why we have an "in body" experience either...
or what that experience is...
so you are a bit quick to conclude that body and mind are separate
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Im in venezuela with a funky keyboard so excuse the weird typing.
I actually agree with much of what Ed says, I just need to translate a few words here and there.
His first statement I would translate to ... we have no measurements to explain an in body experience either, or what experience is. I agree.
So you are quick to conclude that the body and mind are separate.
Now I said that I didnīt have OOB experiences like Dr. Gill and millions of others so I donīt know if the mind and body are separate. Clearly some if not most of mind and body are connected, otherwise my grandmother would still be talking and shes dead. But if OOB experiences are boni fide, then there has to be some part of mind that extends beyond the evolved brain, unless the brain is doing a kind of ventriloquism and is shooting me, myself and I out yonder just for laughs and giggles.
I surely do not know.
JL
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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i have lots of 'in-and-out-of-car' experiences; usually only entering or leaving the car when it is not moving and not running
(when the car is running and properly managed; it provides certain transportation advantages)
however i am not a car
i have lots of 'in-and-out-of-airplane' experiences; usually only entering or leaving the airplane when it is on the ground and not moving
(when the airplane is running and properly managed; it provides certain transportation advantages)
i also have hundreds of 'out-of-airplane' experiences where the airplane was flying at 12-18,000 feet...the primary advantage being fun
still, i am not an airplane
(although the FAA considers me legally to be an aerial vehicle while flying without an airplane)
i have lots of 'in-and-out-of-body' experiences; some of them human bodies, as well as various other body types
(when the body is alive and properly managed; it provides certain various advantages; such as that you can tell i am there)
(particularly fond of birds...being the most fun)
(in my experience, humans have no great advantage in intelligence; and are often distinctly disadvantaged in the awareness and athletic departments; although humans have developed various domains of specialized expertise in manipulating tools and language and hubris)
i am not a body
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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I surely do not know.
Admitting this is a crucial part of critical thinking.
The obverse to this is the fatal error of hubris, as Tom mentioned above.
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WBraun
climber
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How can that be critical thinking when we already know we don't know.
Critical thinking comes from being able to actually take to a real bonafide scientific process and being able to intelligently assimilating the knowledge presented.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The brain, from what we know so far, is functionally distributed, flexible, and able to adapt and re-purpose functional areas of the brain to new requirements (such as blind folks re-purposing visual areas of the brain for echo location).
If nothing else, our 'mind' is fragmented, compartmentalized, layered, and even more adaptive than our brain. What Largo considers our 'subjective self' to me is probably more like a standing fractal wave of what might better be considered 'awarelets' of varying capacity and which act as an integrated 'whole' to a greater or lessor extent from one moment to the next. The mix, 'amplitude, 'coherence', and influence of those 'awarelets', and the wavefront they assemble, is likely a constantly churning affair.
I also think this involves a remarkable number of levels of architectural, functional, and logical abstraction within the brain, mind and in the mapping between the two.
The idea there is a monolithic 'self' to me is an illusion at best and part of the reason pinning it down in isolation tanks, meditation, or in flow isn't necessarily a simple or easy affair.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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...we have much to learn...
(i would like to mention that 'String Theory/M-Theory' has major implications for this discussion that don't seem to be addressed by either side of the discussion)
Edit:
The brain, from what we know so far, is functionally distributed, flexible, and able to adapt and re-purpose functional areas of the brain to new requirements (such as blind folks re-purposing visual areas of the brain for echo locations).
If nothing else, our 'mind' is fragmented, compartmentalized, layered, and even more adaptive than our brain. What Largo considers our 'subjective self' to me is probably more like a standing fractal wave of what might better be considered 'awarelets' of varying capacity and which act as an integrated 'whole' to a greater or lessor extent from one moment to the next. The mix, 'amplitude, coherence, and influence of those 'awarelets', and the wavefront they assemble, is likely a constantly churning affair.
I also think this involves a remarkable numbers of levels of architectural, functional, and logical abstraction within both the brain and mind and in the mapping between the two.
The idea there is a monolithic 'self' to me is an illusion at best and part of the reason pinning it down in isolation tanks, meditating, or in flow is n't necessarily a simply or easy affair.
very interesting description
could it be that we are reaching into some middle ground between the rather contrived physical vs metaphysical dichotomies?
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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There appears to be plenty of wonder about how to make material artifacts explain what does not appear to be material, but there is little wonder for experience or non-material artifacts (e.g., consciousness, culture, art, ethics, etc.) in this thread. It's as though material things are more important than anything else. I honestly don't get it. Material artifacts and the theories and metrics that define them are the results of cleverness but not wisdom.
For just a very few of us (it seems), material artifacts (things created by intellectually parsing the universe) just aren't nearly as interesting as the non-material things. Subjectivity and experience is what the universe is (and beyond) before it get parsed, turned into constructs, and delimited through abstractions and modern scientific approaches that eschew all other points of view. Rather than taking the universe apart, a few of us want to grok it in its entirety.
Base, is this churning?
Apparently very few people here are aware or care about what science really does, its analytical processes, and its philosophical underpinnings. (Science has many, Healyje.) People believe that words, constructs, metrics, ideas, theories correspond directly and exactly to the things they refer to. That is, words etc. have 1:1 correspondence with "things" in reality; but people forget that "things" are constructed socially and analytically in a scientific sense.
I'm so sorry, but words, numbers, equations, mathematics don't correspond to reality. That's not what science really intends to accomplish anyway. Rational processes are conceits, cleverness, mirages, the result of unbounded creative energies, . . . totally artificial and artifactual (they are the dregs of human behaviors). Sure, rationalism and science are conventionally useful and productive, but don't make the mistake of conflating reality for things, concepts, constructs, words, etc.
Want to know what reality really is? You don't need a Ph.D., an advanced degree, or have read umpteen journal articles. Just look. Reality is right in front of you. All the time. You can't turn it off. You can't shut your eyes to it. You can't sleep it away.
About the only thing one can do to "evicerate" reality (within a mind) is to measure it, describe it, delimit it, label it, divide it, etc. That's what the contemporary, mental, rational mind does so very well.
On the PBS newshour today I heard a commentator report that activist groups were up-in-arms because Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blocked the FDA from allowing girls under 17 to buy the Plan B morning-after pill without a prescription. According to the commentator, those up-in-arms claimed that the government let politics get in the way of a scientific decision.
I don't care to debate the plan or ruling one way or the other, but I use these comments as an example of how far rationalism and science has evolved to become value systems. Science was not supposed to become a value system. Science was only meant to describe, measure, and classify. It was not supposed to be the criteria for decisions, life, living, society, etc. It was supposed to be just a tool. It was not supposed to become the blob that ate reality. It was not supposed to absolutely define what is good, beautiful, and the truth of everything.
The rational mind has gone too far with every science known to Man. You name a pet science, and people are using that science to tell them and others how to live, be, what to think, what to do, and so forth.
But most of you don't think of it that way. You're fine. The more you learn about the most recent scientific discovery, the more you'll know how you should live your life and what you should do and think.
I say think for yourself. See for yourself. Just look at what's right in front of you.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The more you learn about the most recent scientific discovery, the more you'll know how you should live your life and what you should do and think.
Being kind, I'd say that there is a fairly crass projection...
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