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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Wescrist wrote: "Mind IS a product of matter."
I would tend to agree with this if by "mind" you meant cognition, thought, thinking, and so forth. Awareness itself, the still, detached reference point that can experience thoughts, is not the "product" of any "thing." You're using a reductionistic/mechanistic causal reasoning here, basically saying that the brain "creates" overservation, that the act of observing is a function or result of the brain.
One of the problems here is that awareness itself has no content, that is, awareness and thinking/sensation/feeling/remembering/hearing/tasting/ etc... are not the same things. Moreover, as any meditator can tell you, awareness does not exist simply through its connection to content.
Beware: paradox coming.
Now clear your head for a moment, Wescrist, because here's the clencher. You struck out with your quote because your causation is screwy, tied as it is to a purely mechanistic (long ago junked) view of matter and things. Awareness is not a "thing" that is a product of matter. Awarenss IS matter, and matter IS awareness. There's no separation or duality in the material world.
JL
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Flanders!
Trad climber
June Lake, CA
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I've been gone for a few days, freezing my butt in the new snow, burrr. Fun to come back and see
where this has gone.
"Flanders has done something quite interesting here. He has attempted to use a statistical (scientific) calculation to show there is a god." Jstan.
I didn't actually attempt to show there is a God, nor did our brilliant astrophyicists come up with
with that conclusion. All they pointed out is the Darwin's theory of evolution is not remotely
plausible. Being real scientists, they do the measurements, do the calculations, record their
observations and see where it all leads; maybe to something they did not expect or even
something they didn't like. THAT IS SCIENCE !
I do find it rather interesting that so many diss God, or even the plausibilty of God. The entire
message can be summed up in Micah 6:8 . The prophet asks the ?, "what is it that the Lord
requires of thee" Then he answers his own ? " But to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk
humbly with your God.
It seems so plain and simple: do what is right, be forgiving, acknowledge God. Why do we humans complicate so many things? Yes, it's not always easy, Yes there are many hippocrites,
Yes, we ALL fall short of goal, but that is the reeeeeessst of the story.
Doug
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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JL, you have given me something to put in my heart/mind and mix about. Grazi.
Doug, wondered about yo today, and the snow and if you now need to do the 7 hour vs. the 2 hr.
Yeah, Micah 6:8......I am back in a great centered place. Thanks for your incredible friendship. Peace always, lynnie
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Are we talking about awareness or mind? Neither ARE matter.
Awareness is the perception of an entities interaction with its environment. Matter requires an interaction to be "aware" of anything. A billiard ball isolated in space is "aware" of only distance gravitational forces and electromagnetic radiation.
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Not even close. Yo didn't read what I said - that awareness is not contingent on "content," or the mind's interaction with people, places or things, nor yet with thoughts. Ergo, matter does in fact NOT require an interaction to be "aware,' since it IS aware to begin with.
To grasp these concepts, it might do you to look into "no-mind," in the Zen sense, and see what they say about it. Also, when people talk about the "space" between thoughts, what do you think they mean, in terms of your own experience, NOT in terms of your thoughts on the matter.
Lastly, it's not "biofeedback," which is galavanic skin testing and so forth, but "neurofeedback," which uses an EEG machine and cuting edge software to induce brain states (great for treating ADD) and more recently, to arrest all "states." This has been a private study of mind since 1975.
JL
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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I wonder about people like me. I like to, on occasion grapple with the huge depths of these concepts. But generally I live my life simply and simply thinking and processing much. I really Live my life to the best of it and all it encompasses. But I live pretty much basically from my gut. I am not a scientist. Many thoughts in this thread have been offered from the realm of science. I believe one can live and know and achieve true peace, love and joy along with wisdom and knowledge and a friendship with god even if one is science deficient.
Dare I ask what yo think about these thoughts Wes ???
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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with all due respect,
awareness devoid of matter has never been observed
its existence may be speculated
in fact, all that we are aware of is tied to a material state, this is not a deep statement, rather a statement of fact, we are material, we are aware
it continues to be a good idea to pursue the material and reductionist card to the end and see just how far it takes us. I'd bet it takes us all the way... but it is just a bet.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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We were made in the image of God, like Him.
Roaches, scatter when the lights go on, they are aware of their environment.
Man, is the one that can act or pretend and play a role, or be out side himself, be an observer, self aware.
We are the one's that can have fellowship with are Maker, all else is just playing games.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Ed H. "we are material, we are aware." I think that is what I was trying to express in my above statement, but who knows.
As in school, one can get so caught up in the philo, the causement statement one loses the reality of life and movement of it today. Jess waking up and taking it one day at a time, one step at a time with peace and patience and perseverence...well that's precious life living and breathing.
Life......a thing to be loved, respected, perhaps sometimes dissected but above all to be hugged to your chest and appreciated.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin' place
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When it comes to Qualia I'm with Tye and the other reductionists.
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MH2
climber
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I agree with Ed. I heard a reputable neuroscientist, perhaps Eric Kandel, offer a good story about what may underlie awareness/consciousness. I think it had to do with central neurons that only light up when several widely separated brain regions are activated. Those would be neurons that could tie together sensations that are not necessarily related.
The brain has to do a lot of guesswork early in its life to make sense of what is going on around it. Adults have no idea what a huge amount of their "thinking" was acquired heuristically, very young, and outside of any education.
Your conscious awareness is only a light froth riding on an ocean of mental processing devoted to such things as temperature regulation, muscle coordination, and the pH of your blood.
I read the book The Probability that God Exists. It was written by a guy who makes his living estimating the odds on nuclear power plant disasters. He was motivated by the idea that even though science and faith are largely separate, there is nothing wrong with trying to use reason to ask questions about faith.
The result of his calculation was a 1 in 3 chance that God exists.
However, he specified that he was talking about a personal caring God who listens to and answers prayers, not a distant Cause who set the Universe in motion and let it run.
The main strike against God is that he would have no reason (that the author found plausible) to allow tidal waves or other natural disasters.
Funny thing was, he said God would allow people to do all kinds of nasty things to each other in order that they could have free will.
On CBC Radio today there was a biologist pointing out that the recurrent laryngeal nerve is evidence against an Intelligent Designer. In a giraffe this nerve goes about 15 feet out of its way before arriving at the voice-box, which it passes within centimeters of before descending to the stomach, hooking around the esophagus, and climbing back up the neck to the throat. It does that not because God had too many beers that afternoon but because we land creatures all came from fish.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin' place
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There are no veils to perception; Qualia and Self-awareness and Mushin no shin are difficult to explain, but there is more evidence that they require interacting material than any other gobeldygook.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Ed writes
"with all due respect,
awareness devoid of matter has never been observed
its existence may be speculated
in fact, all that we are aware of is tied to a material state, this is not a deep statement, rather a statement of fact, we are material, we are aware"
Awareness devoid of matter can not be observed but it can be the observer without an object of observation. Studies have shown that meditators of 25+ years can be aware during the deep sleep state (I do this personally) while for others it just a void.
Yet you might say we need a physical brain matter to house awareness. Then the soup gets thick and it's hard to prove somebody's out of body experience (even if they see something far away that they couldn't have otherwise known, people's eyes gloss over and they refuse to accept)
Mind this. All the dang matter on this whole planet could squeeze into the size of a softball in a black hole so matter isn't nearly what it seems to be, neither is consciousness. We think we know more than we really do
PEace
Karl
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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I think I may be alone in how I feel, but no matter how I feel is real....as in real life, real living, honest love and joy and peace mixed with the grit determination of not letting the world and it's spider webs wrap itself around me or my life.
So, I am no scientist with facts on how to live. But I do Live and generally do it well. With alot of Grace and Peace.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Largo, I'm no philosopher...my eyes start to glaze over when I hear terms like ontologoical and ergo. That being said, this sort of pure philosophical discourse is just not up to actually answering a question such as is mind or consciousness entirely the result of physical processes. With all due respect, there are bad assumptions throughout your logic train. The very notion that consciousness is transcendent with respect to the physical world is an opinion of yours and certainly not something that is self evident. Eyes evolved several times on this planet. Prior to their first emergence, what was sight? Seems to me, according to your logic, sight would be considered transcendent because it did not exist in the world prior to its appearance through evolution. Evolution works this way. It doesn't strive toward anything, yet novel things appear, as if designed.
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WBraun
climber
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The working senses are superior to dull matter.
The mind is higher than the senses.
Intelligence is still higher than the mind.
The soul, is even higher than the intelligence.
And .... why worry about Gobee, he does no harm to anyone here. If you get twisted by his posts then you have no self control and are not equipoised.
He who does not identify with the body is freed from the conception of false ego and is equiposed both in happiness and distress.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Weschrist-
I agree the answers are in Thomas. Unfortunately most people are not capable of understanding it - still.
One of the big benefits of living overseas is that creationism vs. evolution is not an issue outside the U.S.
Cintune and Weschrist-
Thank you both for the references to Ramachandran. I have ordered his book, The Emerging Mind.
One problem I do have with psychologists / psychiatrists / neurobiologists explaining the brain is that their focus is always on those with disturbed minds. It's a pity that we haven't yet spent the same amount of attention on what constitutes a healthy mind let alone a superior mind. There's a huge difference between an epileptic having religious experiences who thinks he's God and a person who experiences God and then takes up a compasionate way of life which helps many others.
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Flanders!
Trad climber
June Lake, CA
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"the point to remember is that the fossil problem for Darwinism is getting worse all the time. Darwinist paleontologists are indignant when creationists point this out, but what they write
themselves is extraordinarily revealing. After attending a geological conference on mass
extinctions, Harvard paleontologist Stephen J Gould told his readers that he had long been
puzzled by the lack of evidence of progressive development over time in the invertebrates
with which he was most familiar. He said, "We can tell tales of improvement for some groups,
but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of
multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence."
But Darwinist evolution should be a story of improvement in fitness, and so Gould regarded
"the failure to find a clear vector of progress in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil
record"
from Phillip E. Johnson's Darwin on Trail
Doug
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Doug-
I am mainly familiar with homonid fossils and it is definitely possible to measure progress in fitness as each species that supercedes the other timewise (Ardipithecus, Austrolopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthal, and Homosapiens) show improvements in bipedal mobility and endurance, an increase in brain size, and an ever more sophisticated tool tradition.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Ed-
I agree that it continues to be a good idea to pursue the material and reductionist card to the end and see just how far it takes us, (assuming we ever get to an end) . It will certainly be interesting to see what the new hadron collider turns up !
jstan-
I have read some about brain scans, mostly from a Buddhist perspective. However, as far as I know, the biochemistry of the brain and spiritual experiences has not been equivalently explored beyond figuring out how psychedelics work. There are many more experiences beyond that which no one has yet looked at, the main problem being, as we see here, that it is so difficult to find scientists and religious people who can share any kind of a common vocabulary.
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