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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 06:27am PT
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And awareness? Again, if you've ever been unconscious and come out of it you shouldn't really need any convincing that becoming aware is an emergent process.
I'll show you how it's not once I work up the model.
Good luck with that, but at least that's a proposal with a promise of something more than nothing.
Nothing does not emerge.
Ok, sure, but relatively (if not literally) pointless.
Mind is an emergent function.
I'm glad we agree on this, but that's half an answer. The full answer would be mind is an emergent property / function of the brain.
Awareness didn't GO anywhere during surgery.
Agreed, awareness is a state of mind and it simply ceased to exist - as in poof, gone - which is how emergent properties are want to come and go. Again, relatively pointless.
Experience can't transpire without something on the stage, and the generator of that something (brain and emergent mind) comes and goes.
Agreed again, no [conscious] mind, no experience. Your point?
But this is tricky...
Seems less tricky and more common sense so far. Again, awareness is a coherent and persistent state of an emerged mind. Establishing it is process, as in 'becoming aware', through what is essentially the boot sequence of a newly emerged mind establishing itself by self-identifying and self-locating. The elongated version of that process is easily seen in newborns.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 12, 2017 - 07:08am PT
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Me: Almost no clear and complete understanding lasts the test of time.
Smoking Duck: If it is not clear and complete then it is material, temporary like the mind ........
We’re talking about the mind, Werner. If you have a clear and complete understanding of the mind, kindly show it to us. I’m all ears. In disagreement with healyje, I’ve seen that there is no “full answer.” Can’t find it. Doesn’t exist. With all due respect to all my esteemed community members here on this thread, we’re on a fool’s errand. The “fool’s errand” is sort of where we are all at.
As Buckaroo Banzai said: “no matter where you go... there you are.”
Nothing is what it seems to be, but everything is exactly what it is. (Drop the interpretations.)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:01am PT
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I didn't say there was a full answer to question of "what is 'mind'"; I said Largo's answer to the question of the mind being emergent was half an answer to the question of emergence as it left out 'property / function of the brain".
That's a long way from a "full answer" to the OP question or this thread would have died thousands of post ago.
For me the best places to look for answers to that question lie in the evolutionary adaptations driven by ever more sophisticated predator / prey relationships; in the highly hierarchical and distributed organization and nature of the brain and brain functions; and in the myriad interfaces between physical functions and subconscious processes and between subconscious processes and consciousness. But the question of how the mind emerges is on par with how life emerges - it's not going to be answered or solved in this thread by anyone's experience, speculation or religion.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:53am PT
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the best places to look for answers to the question lie in the evolutionary adaptations driven by increasingly sophisticated predator / prey relationships
You will never find any complete answers there ever because the living entity is not material ever.
You people are clueless to who you really are and what you really are.
Until then nothing but mental speculations and endless circle jerk .......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 08:57am PT
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As opposed to the confabulous spasms of a jerked duck splashed so lubriciously upon these sacred threads?
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 09:13am PT
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I could very well be wrong but I think what Werner is saying in his unique way is that we are not physical beings having a spirit experience but rather spirit beings having a physical experience.
What is spirit? or do you feel that that question does not belong on this thread?
Does spirit impinge on mind?
Who let the worms out of the can?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 09:38am PT
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I could very well be wrong but I think what Werner is saying in his unique way is that we are not physical beings having a spirit experience but rather spirit beings having a physical experience.
Yeah, I get that he's a panpsychist. At least he comes out and says as much. And everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if they can't recognize that's all it is.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 09:55am PT
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And everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if they can't recognize that's all it is.
he's a panpsychist.
That's all it is. A neat little box. Hey Werner, I hope you have heating in there.
tone.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 10:31am PT
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Largo can speak for himself (usually with lots of words) but basically it comes down to:
Something/Nothing
which is a juicy dichotomy the sum of which is asserted to represent everything... though it can be confused with the equally legitimate:
Everything/Nothing
which makes defining "Nothing" problematic... and is the root of Largo's difficult, albeit it earnest, defense of his "fundamental insight."
As far as I can see, Largo hasn't decided on which of these he is pushing... none the less, there is some major work for him to do, as we have discussed in the abyss of the past-posts on this topic spanning many threads.
In particular, I believe that Largo has posited that there is a causal relationship which schematically goes like this:
Nothing → Something
that is, Largo claims that there is a procedure for connecting with "Nothing," he does it through meditation (I presume)...
interestingly, we can ask if there is also a relationship:
Nothing ← Something
and what the nature of that connection is... now there need not be any symmetry that causally links the two lobes of the dichotomy...
But it is important that this dichotomy has the union:
Everything = Nothing ∪ Something
and in particular, Nothing ∩ Something = {}
Defining the connection of the two becomes a problem, at least one can talk about the nature of Everything, and the relationships of sets within it...
If the alternative dichotomy is chosen, that is, Nothing and Everything, then the discussion gets a bit trickier... and perhaps takes the discussion in a direction that Largo didn't intend in the original OP...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 10:33am PT
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Well, last I checked the definition of panpsychism, it was a belief in universal consciousness. Is there some aspect of "spirit beings" that doesn't fit that 'box'?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 10:37am PT
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a physicalist's concept of panpsychism is that it posits consciousness as a fundamental property of matter... that all matter "has" consciousness.
the major criticism of this idea is simply that, at least as initially defined, "consciousness" is attributed to humans alone... making the generalization to a physical property a dicey maneuver to explain a "difficult problem", i.e. what is "consciousness."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2017 - 10:41am PT
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Agreed, awareness is a state of mind and it simply ceased to exist - as in poof, gone - which is how emergent properties are want to come and go. Again, relatively pointless.
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Nope. Problem is you are IMO half right about much of what you say, but as you have it posited above, awareness is a property of mind, a function that is tied to content and data processing.
Where you lose you way is in sticking to a philosophical belief that the brain sources or creates the whole conscious process, or else you have to introduce some magical stuff like ether or whatever. This is the same idea that my physicist friend likes to ridicule with his quantum field cracks, that the type A physicalist will always attribute the existence of any thing or phenomenon to particles, or stuff, or in this case, attributing conscious entirely to the physical brain. Which, in his words, is like saying the quantum field is "created" by the tiny shite that glitches in and out of existence WITHIN the field. Are the two inseparable? Of course. But it is this endless interplay between something and nothing that gives rise to whole Magilla. You're trying to make awareness a mind state, when in fact all the mind stuff and states occur within the field or on the stage (to use figurative language) or the borderless screen of awareness.
But if you have never done any direct work on awareness itself, all of this will appear as data processing. Problem is that just gives you a Touring machine, which has no inner sense that is either a machine nor yet that it is processing any content.
When you don not approach the mind problem with an integrated POV of both 1st and 3rd person perspectives, you will arrive by default at an "observer independent" belief about consciousness. And from that perspective you get exactly what Healyje arrived at. No way around it.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 12, 2017 - 10:52am PT
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But the question of how the mind emerges is on par with how life emerges - it's not going to be answered or solved in this thread by anyone's experience, speculation or religion.
So? We shouldn’t think about it, talk about, explore ideas?
Evolution in and of itself is no complete answer to the issue simply because the structure of a universe mediated by the laws of physics had within it from the moment of its inception the potential for both life and mind. That structure and its order are predicate to all things including evolution itself. In that sense mind, like life, is written into existence as part of the structure of what is. What the mind can do is know through experience. Knowing, awareness, experience, consider what occurs when we look at the latest images of some distant planet, the inherent satisfaction of knowing: what is that or what is the certainty of our own awareness?
It is mysterious enough that there is, in fact, something but the mysteries of experience and awareness cannot simply be delegated to evolutionary processes because those processes can’t explain the ordered universe central to their creation and of which they were an inevitable part.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 10:55am PT
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Where you lose you way is in sticking to a philosophical belief that the brain sources or creates the whole conscious process, or else you have to introduce some magical stuff like ether or whatever. This is the same idea that my physicist friend likes to ridicule with his quantum field cracks, that the type A physicalist will always attribute the existence of any thing or phenomenon to particles, or stuff, or in this case, attributing conscious entirely to the physical brain. Which, in his words, is like saying the quantum field is "created" by the tiny shite that glitches in and out of existence WITHIN the field. Are the two inseparable? Of course. But it is this endless interplay between something and nothing that gives rise to whole Magilla.
there are types of physicalists now? who knew... I always considered our ideas of particles and fields (Schwinger objected to the Feynman-centric view and created "Source theory," it didn't become popular, the basic reason being the prejudice that "Schwinger presented his ideas in a way that no one had a chance of understanding, and Feynman in a way that everyone thought they understood," and anyway, their apparently divergent views were always shown to be equivalent) as a calculation tool that allowed us to predict the outcome of experiments/observations.
The current field-theories are insufficient to understand a lot of phenomena, and for phenomena that are addressed, many of those field-theories require rather complex computation with problematic approximations to obtain a defendable answer.
For field-theory, really, the only philosophical issue is: does it calculate something that agrees with our observations/measurements? The conceit that there are deeper philosophical issues ("the interplay of something and nothing") doesn't enter into the discussion.
To the extent that "it matters" what the fields are, or the sources of those fields (the "particles") has to do with gaining insight to those difficult to explain phenomena...
It is possible that quantum-mechanics requires that we give up on the insistence that we have "realistic" theories.
That is a liberation, and one that philosophers might adopt when discussing "the mind."
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:04am PT
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Where you lose you way is in sticking to a philosophical belief that the brain sources or creates the whole conscious process, or else you have to introduce some magical stuff like ether or whatever.
Actually, I've merely stated the mind is an emergent property / function of the brain. I didn't specify type or emergence or how that emergence happens. Again, if you don't think mind is an emergent property / function of the brain then it is you - not I - that's sprinkling the fairy dust.
But if you have never done any direct work on awareness itself
I have.
You're trying to make awareness a mind state, when in fact all the mind stuff and states occur within the field or on the stage (to use figurative language) or the borderless screen of awareness.
Then they did the surgery on you when you were conscious I'm guessing, because if not then you somehow missed you were not aware and there was no 'operating' awareness while you were under. And that when you woke up - you then became aware. Awareness is a mind state. The mind is not a property of some "borderless screen of awareness" - that right there is either completely inverted nonsense or I'm using the word 'mind' for your 'awareness' and 'awareness' for your 'mind'. Take your pick.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:15am PT
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It is mysterious enough that there is, in fact, something but the mysteries of experience and awareness cannot simply be delegated to evolutionary processes because those processes can’t explain the ordered universe central to their creation and of which they were an inevitable part.
Seriously? Consciousness evolved and it is plain to see that both in extant species and the evolutionary taxonomy of life. Again, how it emerged is, like life itself, a mystery, but that it evolved and evolved in an observable manner is not arguable.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:22am PT
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If you were a point on a circle and you move along the limit of that circle you experience a sense of infinite movement along a line. The fact that you are merely going in circles may be unapparent. When you look at the earth from above the North pole you see that it spins counter-clockwise. From above the South pole it goes clockwise. To us mere mortals, the sun comes up and we experience it's warmth. It goes down and we have to chop more wood.
"How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?"
Fireside Theater
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:30am PT
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You can sit here in the waiting room, or you can wait here in the sitting room.
Fireside Theatre
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:33am PT
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we're all Bozos on this bus
You know who.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 12, 2017 - 11:45am PT
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Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein and the Dalia Llama walk in to a bar. Already sitting there is Jesus himself, Karl Marx, Some guy named Chalmers and some dude named Harris. The bartender is the guy that invented the Roller Coaster and is serving one up to Rodney Dangerfield. "Let's take a ride on my new invention.It goes up and down, around in circles, there's some water , and I even threw in some flaming sh#t-balls. The cool part is we end up where we started. Everyone rolled their eyes and sighed and got up and took the ride again. After it was over they all got real drunk. And Rodney drank the bong water again.
All fun aside, I think what this thread could use is a facilitator. I'll bet MikeL has some experience or ideas about that from his work. Someone that is not actually participating but is familiar with the material and can help keep things on track. I'm not suggesting anyone in particular here, just throwing the idea out there.
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