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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 10, 2017 - 12:10pm PT
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Wow, this thread goes on and on. I think you all are over thinking this topic. Mostly verbose semantics arguing definitions of words that make it seem like there is some mystical, higher thing going on in your brain. What is mind?
Funny how that works. If you add in that definitions are also morphing as we speak then you wonder if perhaps Werner is correct in that we are all basically bat-shit crazy.
There is something glaringly missing in all this. the proverbial elephant standing there.
Gee, what the hell is that?
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 10, 2017 - 02:49pm PT
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We have forgotten more than we know.
Hermeneutics?
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 10, 2017 - 03:14pm PT
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It is acessable as a scientific or intellectual investigation. You just have to do it
The problem here is categorization of "intellectual investigation". Regarding the mind, one can participate in community investigation or indulge in internal investigation. The former includes all the scientific progress and can be communicated from person to person. The latter is entirely internal and takes one deep inside one's self and is poorly communicated if at all to others. There is no way to bring these two modes together other than neuroscientific investigations into the underlying brain processes related to these inner experiences.
Attempts to correlate raw awareness to quantum phenomena and other noetic efforts have gone nowhere, apart from producing the wildest metaphysical speculations.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Feb 10, 2017 - 03:21pm PT
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Awareness is the realization that death is a possibility. Awareness, is therefore, a tool for survival and has evolved in all living things. So yes. Oysters are aware.
It is not clear whether those believing some part of them will live forever, are aware. That belief is not a tool for survival.
Believing one will live forever definitely is a survival tool, but one that only helps when the holder of those beliefs is at a much higher level than an oyster. Humans being social animals with higher level intelligence, create problems for themselves that oysters never thought of. These problems - failed love affairs, not living up to parental expectations, seeing innocent children suffer and die, and from a woman's perspective seeing otherwise sensible men slaughter each other in hideous ways for obtuse ideologies - are but a few of these.
Smart enough to see these absurdities, it is tempting to just end it all but the idea of an eternal life and bad consequences for those who seek to escape their responsibilities is but one way a belief in an eternal life a survival mechanism for both individuals and groups.
With groups who suffer great injustice and many tragic experiences, the idea that this life is a testing ground and all will be evened out in the future is a survival method for a whole tribe or nation.
Witness what happens when people begin to suspect that there is no long term survival and no justice. People turn to hero worship of politicians and sports figures and numb their senses with drugs. In the case of widespread chaos such as drastic climate change, mass migrations, worldwide famine and epidemics, I'm betting that those with strong belief systems will survive and the doubters will simply give up and not survive.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 10, 2017 - 03:26pm PT
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There is no way to bring these two modes together other than neuroscientific investigations into the underlying brain processes leading to these inner experiences.
I'll bet the Wizard would beg to differ. He said he is working on a model. Wait for it. But first he will tell you where you went wrong.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 10, 2017 - 03:26pm PT
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You stubborn old material scientists are your own worst enemies.
Ya only know how to do something one way only.
You're like someone who's never seen a computer and trying to learn how, then get frustrated and then start throwing the mouse.
Then stompin out the door in a huff ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2017 - 09:54am PT
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I'll bet the Wizard would beg to differ. He said he is working on a model. Wait for it. But first he will tell you where you went wrong.
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Telling people where they went wrong is not the point. Most of these issues have been dealt with in philosophical circles for ages, and most of the arguments have been the topic of not only countless conferences but doctoral papers et al. We are all "wrong" insofar as nobody has ever presented a model that really passes mustard across the board.
A key thing to realize is that the conversation takes place on many levels. Descriptions are not explanations, for starters. Suggesting that complexity explains how matter becomes conscious is a non-starter. You've simply offered a philosophical position called the "complexity argument."
Investigations per the complex processes of how the brain translates light waves of a certain frequency to an inner sense of the color red does not go into how or why we are aware of experiencing red.
Machine registration of the same light waves doesn't result in a machine's conscious experience of same. And while the mechanics of machine registration is public, human experience itself is private. No one can directly access another person's internal light show.
We can call the public and the private selfsame, but that doesn't explain anything but objective functioning, which is not the sticking point. We can insist that our internal light show is an illusion, but this doesn't account for the fact that we are aware in the first place, or illusions or external objects we can measure.
So the task, in some ways, is like trying to shovel smoke, and oftentimes people are not even talking about the same phenomenon.
JL
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 11, 2017 - 10:11am PT
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and oftentimes people are not even talking about the same phenomenon.
Yes, and oftentimes they just keep talking anyway. As much as I enjoy the back and forth on this thread, and the eloquence of the speakers, I wonder if they had the same 6th grade class in communication skills that I had. You know, the part where you see if anyone is even listening. Feedback in these internet situations becomes tedious to the point where it is forsaken for the need to heard and to herd. Every once in a while there is an actual exchange of ideas but it is not the norm here and maybe rightly so. Who has the time and inclination to try and clarify anything instead of just sorting out the innuendo and cleverness.
What interests me more than the ideas presented here is how we try to communicate such grand ideas.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 11, 2017 - 11:15am PT
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Most listening is "listening to find a counter-point/-argument", leading to serial-monologues or debates - a hermenutics of suspicion at play.
Listening and asking questions to understand is also a possibility, opening up another possibility - a trustful hermeneutics - a door to dialogue.
In a forum context, I think the act of trustfully asking questions to understand is seen as a weakness...
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 11, 2017 - 11:25am PT
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No one can directly access another person's internal light show.
How could you be sure of that?
it was confirmed that they share a thalamus which connects their brainstems. Through this shared brain tissue structure and the interconnected neurons, one brain receives signals from the other brain and vice versa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hogan
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 11, 2017 - 11:50am PT
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So the task, in some ways, is like trying to shovel smoke
I thought of "trying to grasp smoke" when I wrote my last post. The experiential is beyond even smoke, but there may be ways to emulate a scientific approach. The other problem - connecting with neuroscience - is another matter.
My only contribution, apart from naive and amateurish philosophical blather, is through personal experience in mathematics with weak emergence - which may be the only form of emergence that actually exists. Stong emergence is highly speculative but may somehow connect with the experiential.
Keep up the good fight, Wizard.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 11, 2017 - 11:53am PT
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Pretty simple starting proposition - no brain, no consciousness.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 11, 2017 - 12:16pm PT
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Most listening is "listening to find a counter-point/-argument", leading to serial-monologues or debates - a hermenutics of suspicion at play.
Listening and asking questions to understand is also a possibility, opening up another possibility - a trustful hermeneutics - a door to dialogue.
In a forum context, I think the act of trustfully asking question to understand is seen as a weakness...
Marlow, well said. Are you a native speaker of English? If not, you have learned it well.
I think just about everyone that participates in this thread has some really good thoughts and perspectives on the topic of mind and it's related fields.I yearn for a synthesis as I think that that is the only way this round and round can be left for what it is. Maybe.
I envisage a big table in a large room with a fire in the hearth and there is food and wine and mirth. We can all look one another in the eye and see the subtle nuances of non-verbal communication and not waste time with the tedium of verbosity. We could untie this Gordian Knot that we have created and then go to sleep and forget it all and get up and do it again. Eventually there might be a level of satisfaction that I find so lacking in this virtual medium. Just a dream.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 11, 2017 - 12:33pm PT
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Wayno.
I'm no native speaker of English. My written English is a rather annoying school-English, annoying to both Englishmen and Americans. Though it's no on-my-mind-matter, I can easily live with the... eh...condition... :o)
Maybe it is sometimes an advantage to be a stranger in a strange land...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 11, 2017 - 01:03pm PT
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Maybe it is sometimes an advantage to be a stranger in a strange land...
He concludes that the non-dual is simply just listening.
It is quite simple to take these two viewpoints and in my own way synthesize them to arrive at perfectly refreshing idea that neither of the original speakers intended but nonetheless I find meaningful. To attempt to express that new idea is the crux as I am straying from the original intent. I think most people do this subconsciously and never take the opportunity to observe themselves and what the intent or impact of the action is. Most people don't really care to delve into an abyss of their own creation. It is difficult to be honest with yourself when you are the observer and the observed.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 11, 2017 - 01:07pm PT
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Most people don't really care to delve into an abyss of their own creation. It is difficult to be honest with yourself when you are the observer and the observed.
And still, what you can control (let go or not let go) is yourself, and not the others...
The fear of losing face can easily make us lose ourselves. What should be most familiar to us, then becomes uknown...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 11, 2017 - 01:16pm PT
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Which begs the question: "How do we really know ourselves?"
Through meditation?
From books?
From the experience of seeing yourself in another's actions or words?
From attempting to walk a mile in another's shoes?
What is my mind? What is another's mind? Can we compare?
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 11, 2017 - 01:32pm PT
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Some cues to my 10 cents:
If I want to achieve something and misses out... try again, if I miss again... reflection... if someone else was involved ... getting feedback... then try something else... failing better...
If fear and face-saving turns up in my mind, let it be, let it flow...
If I judge myself, let me judge, then let go...
If somebody has a negative reaction to what I have said or done, think it through, do I understand?
If not, ask them for feedback and inquire. Often it is one of three causes: 1. I did something "stupid", 2. They had expectations that I did not meet, 3. Something was misunderstood.
Think hypothetically, low or high probability of truth, not in absolutes. Be kind to everybody, trust no one absolutely...
Knowing that what is on my mind in any given moment usually feels much more urgent and important than it deserves to be treated...
Knowing who I want to be, not only who I am...
Get the sleep I need...
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