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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Culminating in:
Epiphenomenal ectoplasm
Supervenience seems a little like a function from set B to set A that is not one-to-one.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Is supervenience a meme?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jill said "Although empty awareness may be fascinating I don't think it leads anywhere. "
It sets the stage ,like clearing a calculator . If you don't clear the calculator for the next calculation you get flawed results. If you can't clear your view from your conditioned mind you get conditioned results. Empty awareness is letting go of your opinion, condition and situation and perceiving clearly(letting go of I oriented view).
Then comes clear action/function.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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OK, so it's like the janitor who comes in before the performance and sweeps the stage floor, while we stare at the cleansed and empty stage. And somehow this provides a vital insight into the play's performance or into anything really?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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I explained the "some how". perceiving with the unconditioned mind. Similar to a good the scientist not having bias when reviewing data. Not being distracted by self oriented desires or influence.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Similar to a good the scientist not having bias when reviewing data. Not being distracted by self oriented desires or influence.
I think this is a misconception of the practice of science. What a "good scientist" knows is that they are biased, and good practice of science then requires that scientists include checks for these biases.
While some have been amazed that nature is accessible through science, I think it equally amazing that the "scientific method" allows humans to do science at all.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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While some have been amazed that nature is accessible through science, I think it equally amazing that the "scientific method" allows humans to do science at all.
How true... which implies, and rightfully so, that human beings are amazing for the realization of a method that can transform the information inherent in the structure and material of the universe into knowledge... the remarkable nature and mystery of human consciousness and its ability to know!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Okay this is fun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience
mind-body supervenience holds that "every mental phenomenon must be grounded in, or anchored to, some underlying physical base (presumably a neural state). This means that mental states can occur only in systems that can have physical properties; namely physical systems."
...and maybe now really over the top and really... super tedious!
btw, how supervenient to have a mind thread on a climbing site!
:)
Great read so far...
Moral Tribes, by Joshua Greeene
"This book is an attempt to understand morality from the ground up. It's about understanding what morality is, how it got here, and how it's implemented in our brains." -Joshua Greene
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Paul: . . . human beings are amazing for the realization of a method that can transform the information inherent in the structure and material of the universe into knowledge... the remarkable nature and mystery of human consciousness and its ability to know!
A few millennia ago, some wiseass took this realization and ran with it to the end of the line. (It wasn’t called “the scientific method” then.)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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`Emergence, Not Supervenience', Philosophy of Science 64 (1997), pp. S337-S345
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=http://people.virginia.edu/~pwh2a/emergence%2520not%2520supervenience.doc&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1oAiWBgysShgh_yZ9sknF8YoF4vw&nossl=1&oi=scholarr
From the conclusion of the article:
5. Conclusion
I believe that the arguments given here reveal three things. First, that emergent properties are probably quite common in the physical realm. If this is true, it will be likely that there will be no sharp boundary between the physical level and other levels. In turn, this will require refinement in terms of what we mean by physicalism, and in our reasons for holding it. Secondly, that the existence of these detailed models at the physical level dissolve the air of mystery that has traditionally surrounded emergentism and has led clear-headed philosophers to stay away. Finally, that the level of detail available in these models makes the use of supervenience relations seem simplistic. And it is for these three reasons at least that we need emergence, not supervenience.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Godly Sorrow
For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.
2 Corinthians 7:10
Recommended Reading
2 Samuel 12:18-23
A British geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, first used the phrase “mind over matter” in 1863 while writing about the development of the animal mind throughout history. Today, that phrase is often used to describe elevating reason and will over emotions in stressful situations.
Nowhere is that more important in the life of a Christian than in the wake of sinful choices and behaviors. Wallowing in guilt and shame over sin needs to be replaced by the truth of God’s love and forgiveness. Take King David, for instance. After his sin of adultery, God’s judgment was the death of David’s infant son. For a week, David fasted and prayed that God would spare the child. But when the child died, David’s grieving stopped. He accepted God’s judgment and forgiveness; he knew that further grief and groveling were pointless.
The apostle Paul detailed two kinds of sorrow: godly sorrow that leads to repentance, and worldly sorrow that leads to death. Let your grief over sin lead you to repentance and to the love of God in Christ (1 John 1:9).
Godly sorrow is a gift from God. No hand but a divine hand can make the heart soft and tender under the sight and sense of sin.
Thomas Brooks
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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The Bearable Weight of Being
Of what I recollect
I think I know my life
Philosophical beliefs do not affect
What past actions I've taken
What past thoughts that I have had
They are my musings and my deeds
I chose to own them directly or implicitly
Emergence being well and good
And relevant to science?
Supervenient occurrences being
More relevant to amending history?
For more than that to me is fiction
Which does well to serve as entertainment
And though humor is indispensable
The difficulty in that
Is in seeing the irony of my becoming
The butt of my own joke
Without pride infecting the interpretation
That being my greatest weakness
And so easily seen by me in others
A trait to which they might
Likely be consciously unaware
Of what I know of life
The fear that my convictions
Are weak or just conjecture
Brings a strange limited comfort
Because of the temporary nature of existence
Which brings other pertinent factors
Both emotional and subconscious to bear
-bushman
02/08/2017
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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mind-body supervenience holds that "every mental phenomenon must be grounded in, or anchored to, some underlying physical base (presumably a neural state). This means that mental states can occur only in systems that can have physical properties; namely physical systems."
If you use the example of Toledo here the theory makes little sense insofar as the molecules that make up the painting, that is its physical elements, are arranged as a manifestation of an original thought. If you are then able to copy or replicate that painting perfectly so as to produce the same effect the original achieved you have assumed that only physical structure is at the base of that affected experience, when, in fact, that painting is really a manifestation of mental or psychological processes that include the thoughts and speculations of El Greco as well as the myriad of influences on him from Byzantine Icon painting to Venetian color-ism to the Mannerism associated with Michelangelo each of which is a process and deliberation of the mind ignored and superfluous in the act of copying.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2017 - 03:16pm PT
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Fifty-six years before Ex-Machina, perhaps the essential look at the conundrum of Hard AI. Mythical, almost certainly, but one of the great sci fi themes of all times, brought to you courtesy of Rod Serling and Twilight Zone. Behold, "The Lonely."
https://vimeo.com/141205172
Also, when applied to mind and consciousness, supervenience, emergence, and realization are all terms (with an exhausting and deadly boring heritage in philosophy) seeking to DESCRIBE the relationship between phenomenon within a closed system.
None of the terms explain, poorly or at all, how, or why any conscious state - let alone awareness itself - should emerge from physical/biological phenomenon.
At one time, superconductivity was a phenomenon many described as an emergent function, but describing it in those terms is not the same as saying superconductivity occurs because of a phase transition, that is, abrupt changes in various physical properties.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that when examples of supposed supervenience, emergence, and realization are cited in the physical world, they are dealing with strictly physical properties, not conscious phenomenon.
People default out with identity materialism, which claims that brain states are identical with psychological states, but again, this philosophical position is a description, not an explanation of how conscious phenomenon should emerge from physical/biological phenomenon in the first place.
What's more, all discussions about supervenience, emergence and and realization are usually about states, or the content of experience, and when awareness is already postulated a priori to the content itself.
No attempted explanation about awareness based on information, mirror neurons, processing, computations, functionality of moving parts, et al, is comprehensible the deeper you look into what is actually being said or claimed. In virtually all cases the claim is being made based on WHAT we are aware of, not the brute fact of awareness itself.
Below, Kim on supervenience (missing a few key pages but you get the idea). Sh#t is dense as poundcake but clear, if biased.
https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=X_YrvFsL4oIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=supervenience+and+mind&ots=4T5J4gNCLh&sig=Z2ccY8Wq7eYVVNbI5jedSFS3IjE#v=onepage&q=supervenience%20and%20mind&f=false
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Supervenience is roughly like a function F:B → A, that is not necessarily one-to-one. That is to say, there may be multiple b's such that F(b)=a ∈ A. Emergent phenomena supervene on physical processes and most if not all emergence is weak emergence, meaning the path of development is somewhat mechanistic and the emergent quality might well be predicted given enough data and computational power. To me it seems to be purely speculative there are instances of strong emergence, where such analysis is theoretically impossible. Speculation: Consciousness is strongly emergent from the brain.
In virtually all cases the claim is being made bases on WHAT we are aware of, not the brute fact of awareness itself
And that should say a lot about the nature of awareness. Without necessarily being an illusion, awareness may be so illusory - as you say such slippery stuff - that no amount of philosophy and science can fully describe it. Apparently you experience what you think it is in a meditative trance, but investigating it under normal conditions is impossible. So you may be stuck with a conundrum.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Fifty-six years before Ex-Machina, perhaps the essential look at the conundrum of Hard AI. Mythical, almost certainly, but one of the great sci fi themes of all times, brought to you courtesy of Rod Serling and Twilight Zone. Behold, "The Lonely."
C'mon, we already covered that, both of us agreeing - great story and a very beautiful she-bot.
"Alicia" if memory serves. Yep, just confirmed.
And apparently this episode "traumatized" Paul for ten years, lol!
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=834799&msg=2223501#msg2223501
I hope you didn't forget already.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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JL:
Also, when applied to mind and consciousness, supervenience, emergence, and realization are all terms (with an exhausting and deadly boring heritage in philosophy) seeking to DESCRIBE the relationship between phenomenon within a closed system.
None of the terms explain, poorly or at all, how, or why any conscious state - let alone awareness itself - should emerge from physical/biological phenomenon.
At one time, superconductivity was a phenomenon many described as an emergent function, but describing it in those terms is not the same as saying superconductivity occurs because of a phase transition, that is, abrupt changes in various physical properties.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that when examples of supposed supervenience, emergence, and realization are cited in the physical world, they are dealing with strictly physical properties, not conscious phenomenon.
People default out with identity materialism, which claims that brain states are identical with psychological states, but again, this philosophical position is a description, not an explanation of how conscious phenomenon should emerge from physical/biological phenomenon in the first place.
What's more, all discussions about supervenience, emergence and and realization are usually about states, or the content of experience, and when awareness is already postulated a priori to the content itself.
No attempted explanation about awareness based on information, mirror neurons, processing, computations, functionality of moving parts, et al, is comprehensible the deeper you look into what is actually being said or claimed. In virtually all cases the claim is being made based on WHAT we are aware of, not the brute fact of awareness itself.
Alas. The Wizard is lost in a wilderness of his own making.
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