Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
|
Nice speculative tangent WBraun.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 05:00pm PT
|
Your weak words have no power .....
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 05:01pm PT
|
Still a nice speculative tangent WBraun.
|
|
rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 05:49pm PT
|
A robot can not even begin the simplest tasks without the superior consciousness of the creator first.
I think that as long as some people will not accept the possibility that there is no god and nothing more than physical beings, there can also be no discussion about what is mind.
If I assume and believe with all my heart that unicorns and vampires are real and you do not, we cannot have a discussion about those things in which you might present them as being myth.
As well, I think that as long as some people cannot accept the possibility that there is a god or sort of spiritual existence, there can be no discussion about mind.
If I assume and believe with all my heart that unicorns and vampires are myth and not real, we cannot have a discussion about those things in which you might present them as being real.
At least break this up into two discussion where some people debate how the mind, soul, god, etc., work together and others discuss the physical mechanisms of the brain that give us perception and consciousness. The two discussions being simultaneous is just too complicated for us simple minded soulless types.
Dave
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2011 - 07:48pm PT
|
You have excluded the possibility of a better and better scientific description of what is happening during subjective experience. Your God is 1st person subjective experience and that it must ONLY be approached on it´s own terms. And "on it's own terms" I read as "not through the use of scientific method"
You´re muddling the waters here, Marlow-san. I completely agree that science will get better and better at describing the physical and material processes that go on in the brain while we have our experience. What I am saying and have always maintained is that "what is going on" physically and 1st person subjective experiencing are, qualitatively, totally different animals. The reason I keep saying that quantifying is not right for experience is that experienced does not present itself as a quantitative thing, with constant properties that can be defined and measured. Man had to spend a lot of time trying to concoct the science suitable to deal with material (measuiring), and it worked because matter presents some material thing to BE measured. Science will certainly get better at measuring the objections brain functions, but it´s not going to get better at measuring experience because we´re not measuring it int he first place. We are, as you described, measuring the objective material functioning this IS HAPPENING DURING SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE. Subjective experience,m our principal human reality, is not some physical thing hiding behind some great mystery.
I tried this before but I´ll try it again, but slightly differently.
We can concoct the greatest topo of the Salathe Wall in the world. Every cam placement, every nubbing and hand jam, every turd on every ledge. We work up, say, a 300,000 page MAP of the Salathe. What´s more, we have girl -- FiFi - climb it and we hook gizmos up to her legs and gams and brisket and chest and arms and hands and so forth. We have charted out every conceivable physiological function that accompanies FiFi´s ascent of the Salathea every inch of the way and combined with our 300 grand pages of facts and figures on the physical route itself, and another 5 million pages on the 3rd person objective functioning that´s going on during the climb, we have a spectacular dat bank of soid scientific material on the Salathea Wall. The thing as an inert entity we have down cold. The material biological processes that transpire during the climb we have in long form and it explains basically everything about the physical processes of a human body climbing said wall.
Now what has our 5.3 millions pages left out about climbing the Salathea. Or are the 5.3 million pages the ENTIRE STORY.
Put differently, is Vin Scully´s spectacular and glib announcing of a Dodger game the actual game being played on the diamond. Is his descriptions all that all of us require. If that was true, no one would ever pay big dollars to see a game. And why do they pay. To have the experience of the game in the first person. The experience is the main thing. Ask any old athlete. It´s great to see a game and read about it. But there´s nothing like the experience of playing itself, because compared to experience, everything else, including the greatest descriptions in the world, are totally abstract and moreover are abstractions.
So in this sense all those papers about the Salathe are so many facts that don´t touch the actual experience of Marlow tying in and casting off for glory. I repeat, the fact that we can quantify the Salathe as a rock and list mega pages about objective human functioning while FiFi pulls down is all great and tells us loads. But the fact that we cannot quantify Marlow´s subjective experience of climbinig the Salathe in the same way we monitored FiFi´s gams, is no fault of science, IMO.
JL
|
|
MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:11pm PT
|
So sorry to MH2 & Krutley for not answering long ago. I'm still grading.
---------------------------------------------
(Well, this may be redundant immediately after Largo's post . . . .)
Last night I took off for a dinner with the wife at friends' home. While we got ready, we had the TV on. The Etrade commercial came on with the Etrade Baby, and we both chuckled. I wondered aloud why we were taken with the commercial. My wife presented an analytical interepretation of the commercial and why it resonated comically.
No matter what she would have said, she would have been right, and she would have been wrong.
One: it was my wife's imaginative interpretation about a phenomenon that there could be endless interpretations about. The phenonmenon in question was somehow infinite if it could absorb endless interpretations.
Two: no matter how brilliant my wife's interpretation was, it would never equal the experience of the commerical. Somehow, the commercial's story could not be fully and accurately communicated / explained / reproduced / understood with mental, rational, analytical language.
(I'll call stories myths.) Are myths less accurate or less significant than what words or concepts provide? No. Myths are just different kinds of understanding by a different kind of consciousness.
Go to any movie theatre, sit in the audience, and when the movie is finished, describe with words all that the movie was. It can't be done. What can be said about any movie / story / book / play / piece of art / experience of any sort is more than can be said with words or concepts.
Why is that? Because experience is infinite and non-repeating. Every experience is indescribable. Vision, sound, tactile sensing, smell, taste, and even consciousness itself is indescribable because they are experiences. No one can communicate or describe the taste of sugar to a person who has never experienced sweetness.
Mental-rational thinking, myths, instincts, dreams, and sleep are all different kinds of consciousness that provide their own kind of understanding--but they all only are parts or parcels of WHAT IS HAPPENING in front of each of us all the time. Experience is whole, infinite, one, and perfect. Science, myth, etc. describe IT, but always incompletely, imperfectly, and as some sort of pattern. But there is no pattern. There are only patterns because we impose them.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:12pm PT
|
And then Mr Scientist shows up.
Now listen here Fifi, just see this Largo made up of only meat and brain, DNA, blood puss and stool.
That's all there is babe as I've reduced Largo with my great scientific instruments Mr scientist says to poor little Fifi.
Fifi responds with ......
You don't really want to hear her response ...
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:22pm PT
|
Largo
You say: "What I am saying and have always maintained is that "what is going on" physically and 1st person subjective experiencing are, qualitatively, totally different animals."
Answer:
And I will cut the word qualitatively because you can by using this word in this context define in the total difference in the word qualitatively beforehand and then act as if you are reasoning. And I will answer: They are not at all totally different animals in the way that they are closely connected. They can only be seen as unconnected and totally different in a most abstract way. The effects of drugs for one thing show the close connection.
You say:
"The reason I keep saying that quantifying is not right for experience is that experienced does not present itself as a quantitative thing, with constant properties that can be defined and measured."
"Science will certainly get better at measuring the objective brain functions, but it´s not going to get better at measuring experience because we´re not measuring it int he first place."
Answer:
Experience is probably not directly measurable. Experience is not measurable today, is extremely difficult to measure, but not in principle unmeasurable. It is a phenomenon connected to the bio organism that we are. The end is open.
You say:
"Subjective experience, our principal human reality, is not some physical thing hiding behind some great mystery."
Answer:
In my view it is you who are making experience much more of a mystery than it is. And my breath going, my heart pumping, my eyes seeing and so on can in no meaningful way be excluded from my principal human reality, though: Is a part of your intention to separate the mind from the body?
And still you are spreading more words into your sea of emptiness.
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:27pm PT
|
That tangent wasn't as good as the last one WBraun. Now you're just being a naughty little boy. That's alright too.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:29pm PT
|
Fifi then said to Mr Scientist
You can't see the complete Largo with your puny test tube ......
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 08:36pm PT
|
WBraun
If Mr Scientist was a good scientist he would not claim to see the complete Largo. But he could get fairly close to what it was to be Largo or WBraun by the use of some tests if the two agreed and even answered honestly if asked.
It's only WBraun who claims to be connected to a main server of life.
del cross
As you have seen I make no claim to be able to measure experience directly and I have not got the ability to look into the future, but the future is open. I have every reason to believe that man is a bio organism. Nothing about the bio organism is from what we know today in principle unapproachable by science.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2011 - 09:20pm PT
|
Marlow wrote: "Experience is not measurable today, is extremely difficult to measure, but not in principle unmeasurable."
Excellent, Marlow.
Now WHAT, exactly, are you going to measure per experience ITSELF.
JL
|
|
part-time communist
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 09:21pm PT
|
So how, in principle, would you measure it?
I think the problem is, is that consciousness is being. It is faulty to pursue it in terms of measurement or classification. In principle, if you are categorizing something as an "object of study", then it becomes something outside of you, (ex. concrete entity) and you can never study/measure something like consciousness while you are outside of it, and you cannot simultaneously be outside of something and at the same time, be in being.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 09:34pm PT
|
Too much Sigmund void going on here .....
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 10:55pm PT
|
Now WHAT, exactly, are you going to measure per experience ITSELF.
I am going to record the action potentials generated by every neuron in a human brain, humanely and benignly, during some arbitrary experience. Then I will ask the subject to give an account of the experience. Then I will use stimulation, again controlling every neuron of the brain and reproducing exactly the activity previously recorded. Then I will ask the subject to compare the two experiences. If they are not the same then I am missing something and will need to wonder what that could be.
|
|
MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 11:02pm PT
|
DMT
25 year HVAC tech, references available upon request.
That is experience; measured and qualified.
--------------------------------
No it isn't. You're equivocating on the word "experience." You're just playing with more words.
To make your notion work as I think you wish, you actually need to provide the experience of the man / woman n question right here in this very space that you are reading from.
But you can't do that because instead your clever efforts contributed to an experience of ours here.
|
|
MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 11:07pm PT
|
MH2: I will ask the subject to give an account of the experience
And that will only be an account . . . .
Can I truly give an account of any thing real? If you think I can, then what do you think its worth is?
It's just an account. It's not the thing. It's an abstraction, a summary, a loose set of characteristics or attributes, a theory, a construct.
Just what are you expecting with an account?
|
|
part-time communist
climber
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
|
I am going to record the action potentials generated by every neuron in a human brain, humanely and benignly, during some arbitrary experience. Then I will ask the subject to give an account of the experience. Then I will use stimulation, again controlling every neuron of the brain and reproducing exactly the activity previously recorded. Then I will ask the subject to compare the two experiences. If they are not the same then I am missing something and will need to wonder what that could be.
your study: neuron 1 interconnected with neuron 3,4,6,7 fire and cause sequence 78, 45669, 23, causing a chain reaction of neuron 34 to fire, but due to psychological conditioning, and the interference of anxiety disorder A, creates neurons to detour through 1-5 circuit, creating neuron 9 and 0 to fire, etc. etc.
Subject: Felt experience, visions, a stream, quality a feeling like sand slipping through your fingers.
lesson learned: neuron analysis is far too complex and even if you map it out into a 170,900,236 page report, it will not = the felt experience. Your study and subject does not even match linguistically, how are we going to say it matches neurologically?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Dec 12, 2011 - 11:31pm PT
|
MikeL wrote: Two: no matter how brilliant my wife's interpretation was, it would never equal the experience of the commerical. Somehow, the commercial's story could not be fully and accurately communicated / explained / reproduced / understood with mental, rational, analytical language.
which I find to be rather strange... eTrade didn't hire an advertisement agency to produce witty, clever adverts telling interesting stories that are "experienced" in non quantifiable ways by individual interpretations of myth, etc...
...they bought those services to sell business, and the advertisement agency knows how to pitch an ad, in a quantitative way to accomplish that task. You can claim it isn't so, but you would be rather obstinate to do so.
It is precisely this sort of practical application of manipulating human behavior which is a counter example to the claim that human thought is somehow unquantifiable. It is quantified, and it is bought and sold... we are inundated by it, constantly exposed to it, metricized in our response and then exposed to even more targeted and effective stimulation.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!