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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 12, 2011 - 11:46pm PT
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Ed, that position collapses once you get to art criticism.
I don't think so at all, first off, all art is communicated by some combination of human sensory input. And as such, all art seeks to evoke a response based on those inputs...
...art criticism depends on a consensus opinion of a group of people who experience the art and communicate their experience.
If what you are saying is that we cannot agree on that criticism, well, it is certainly true that art criticism determines the price people are willing to pay for objects of art, and not just because of the prestige, but because of the attributes valued as a result of the critical evaluation.
The expenditure of resources to experience art, and I don't mean just buying it, but say, taking the time out to go to MOMA and see some exhibit, is certainly quantifiable, and what art people are willing to expend those resources for would certainly be something to study in a quantifiable manner.
From that, one could derive without difficulty, some interesting aspects of human mind, quantifiably.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 12:34am PT
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Ed: I think Lovegasoline has got it in his first paragraph. Endless arguments indicate something that cannot be bounded or properly described with a given approach to articulation. Every attempt to do so is merely another approximation in an infinite set of approximations.
Ed also wrote: ". . . .what art people are willing to expend [their] resources for [e.g., a work of art] would certainly be something to study in a quantifiable manner." That's economics, Ed--not art.
DMT: I don't deny that people attempt to measure experience; I claim that they are spectacularly unsuccessful at it. I also claim that our love of and proclivity towards the measurement of almost everything (look at how Ed wants to quantify art) are unmistakeable signs of a gross deficiency in our current state of consciousness. Earlier I argued above that the general belief of our time is that if a thing cannot be measured, it must not be worth thinking or talking about. Aren't you proving that point?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 01:31am PT
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MikeL and Lovegasoline - you seem to believe that the particular way something tickles your sensors and stimulates your perception has a greater meaning, value and worth. Seems dubious, is there a universal esthetic that all consciousness would understand and observe? probably not, and especially not if we can't even define, in any way, what consciousness is...
...the value of a thing does quantify it, like it or not.
Human esthetics are dependent on humans, in a quantifiable way, through the way we perceive the world via our senses. Tiger aesthetics are probably different... though because we are so closely related not so different, what esthetics does a snail have? what art does it aspire to?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Dec 13, 2011 - 02:28am PT
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dr f demonstrating a dramatic misunderstanding of the nature of spirituality...
(...and by-the-way; human brains have been evolving substantially smaller for many years...)
yes,it would be worthwhile following around a snail and carefully watching everything for some number of days
(sort of like the story of Edward Teller installing a new staff member in a barren office with just a goldfish in a bowl; telling him to study and report...each report leading to further study...until Teller was satisfied with the man's powers of observation.)
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 02:34am PT
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what art does it aspire to?
I think Andy Warhol answered that.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Dec 13, 2011 - 02:40am PT
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considering how long it took our society just to enfranchise the females of our own species; it is hardly strange how many humans look down upon all the so-called 'lesser creatures' with whom we share this planet
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 13, 2011 - 03:18am PT
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What is getting clearer and clearer to me is that Largo and I think also WBraun and MikeL have from the very start defined experience as unmeasurable (for them unmeasurability is a part of the definition of experience and they are thinking dogmatically about this predefinition). And from the postion "experience is by definition now and for all future in principle unmeasurable" a discussion about the unmeasurability of experience is started. They will not allow any crack in their predefinition, they will allow no possibility of an open end, and the discussion is from the very start wasted. Though there is learning taking place because of alternative perspectives. And to me the predefinition is some kind of inertia, their minds set one time for all time around this issue.
I am beginning to see Largo, MikeL and WBraun as true believers who are excluding other possibilities than those they themselves see or feel at present.
If you want to, you can also hold on to such a position when it comes to the body or nature. You could say that the measured body is not the body and the measured nature is not the nature and it wouldn't be wrong in every sense. Still the body and nature can to a large extent, even at the present time when we are living, be measured. And there is more to come as science develops. Though some apocalyptical believers like to be seen as prophets seeing the new "Untergang des Abendlandes" emerging in the West, in America.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2011 - 05:14am PT
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I asked a simple question - Now WHAT, exactly, are you going to measure per experience ITSELF.
Instead, people go off on objective functioning ONCE AGAIN. Itīs gotten rediculous.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 05:47am PT
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Largo, you can clearly expound all day as to what 'subjective experience' isn't. Fabulous. How about a post of what do you think subjective experience IS (even if that depends on what your definition of IS is)?
P.S. Wait, damn, I forgot, there are no words for that; you can only go there, you can't report back...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 06:37am PT
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PTC: How would all this:
healyje:
a) an awareness of an external environment
b) enough 'self awareness' for an organism to place itself in that external context
c) enough perception to detect and identify prey
d) 'anticipation' or the ability to predict movement / speed
e) judgment around self and prey capabilities
give rise to an internal awareness the "I" that we are talking about here, the "I" in the grander scheme of things, the "I wonder about myself, who am I? Is this all a dream?" Having information about yourself (anticipation caused by predator anxiety which may be understood as an intense feeling of anxiety)and having information about your environment equates to reflective self awareness? How do you make the jump from basic knowledge of the environment and inner sensations to reflective self awareness? Do the above a-e apply to animals? If so, how are we different than animals? There clearly is a difference, conventional wisdom says so.
PTC, you are [understandably] very anthropocentric.
In the above presentation of the A-E list, I'm still down at the single-cell-to-insect level of organism; no need to climb the tree to anywhere near mammals or humans. My conjecture on motile predation was around the idea those listed abilities (i.e. the development of an instinctive, anticipatory response) would eventually lead to consciousness.
And I personally can't separate our "mind" discussion from the mystery of how behavior got/gets encoded into genomes. True, that question doesn't have nearly the philosophical 'meat' on which to chew. But it bears, if somewhat indirectly, on the question of "what is mind" in that it's about meat exhibiting behavior.
For instance (and climbing up the tree a bit), here is a remarkable case of two forms of meat imbued with highly complex behaviors entwined as predator and prey. One has an amazingly well-developed anticipatory response such that, when striking, it 'leads' its prey, anticipating where it will be in the future.
[ Here's the video (kind of have to watch the whole thing), but the article is where its interesting... ]
One of these two complex behaviors is definitely instinctive and I'm betting, for the purpose of this conjecture and in reality, that both are. Granted that, both behaviors would have evolved over time and been passed down from generation-to-generation via DNA as opposed to being taught (especially given the response speeds involved).
My basic take on 'consciousness' (and "mind") is that genomically encoded [anticipatory] responses eventually became inadequate to the task of keeping up with the continuously escalating and increasingly complex demands of predation. That at some point, 'rote' necessarily gave way to 'reason' and a new escalation began which would eventually lead to 'consciousness' and 'mind'. My further speculation would be that 'mind' initially 'emerged' as a necessary prioritization / 'final arbiter' function over immediate predation options.
And, given both predator and prey developed increasingly sophisticated rote genomic responses in lockstep, it would surely be interesting to know which first made the leap from rote to reason - predator or prey?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 10:14am PT
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MikeL writes: "Earlier I argued above that the general belief of our time is that if a thing cannot be measured, it must not be worth thinking or talking about."
certainly I have never argued that the inability to measure devalues the subject under discussion.
It is a rather over generalization and a poor argument. It's not that I want to measure art, it is that art is measurable, in many different ways. But the idea that art has some intrinsic value beyond its human domain is unsupported by any argument made here, except for the appeal to a similarly generalized concept that the inspiration comes from some more profound source, a source unidentified, and by those who propose such arguments, unidentifiable.
I find that to be a quaint anachronism and the result of lazy thinking.
Perhaps proponents of art's deeper meaning could propose better supporting arguments for their belief.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 13, 2011 - 10:37am PT
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Largo,
Back to basics:
1. Show us your 1st person subjective experience.
2. Give your best shot to showing us your raw awareness.
You will have to exemplify to start making sense.
And when you have done that: Tell me what is driving you when you let all your objective words flow into this, your sea of emptiness.
At present you are just acting as if you are the king of objectifying the subjective. Now take it one step further and show us that you really are the king of objectifying the subjective.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2011 - 11:05am PT
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I'm waylaid in Curacao for the day but will be home tomorrow and can dig back into this a little.
Marlow, you're back into that closed circle of demanding that I quantify or "show" you what subjective experience is when I have repeatedly said you cannot quantify it and, as Ed has pointed out, there is NO material proof that 1st person subjective experience, in and of itself, even exists. What's more, subjective experience is only accessible in the first person, so obviously any attempty to give you a 3rd person objective break down is impossible.
But yo might and should wonder: what does a 1st person objective POV look like? And don't think of this is absolute terms, rather as a sliding scale, a moving target, and that doesn't mean it is all bosh and inexact, that it's that the spectrum is infinite, so you never get all the way "there," but you're rallied by the promist that "more will be revealed." But exploration of experience itself is not number crunching.
JL
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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Therefore I stipulate that consciousness arises from perception. Raw sensory data is at all times impinging upon the five senses. From this field of sensation we exclude some stimuli and include others, this is the selective process of perception. Those stimuli we include and are aware of are integrated into our minds to form the base material for ideas and associations (things and categories,etc.). This is consciousness.
How do we become "aware" of the stimuli-seems like in this model, consciousness was already there somehow. What is "mind"? What is "we"? Are these just plain intuitions, a given?
Theoretically, you could create artificial models (AI) to perform and engage in the same processes as the above mentioned perception model spells out. Sort of similar to the philosophical arguments "the turing test".
But then the objection is...do these artificial models have that substance. By substance, we could mean that feel, the awareness, the self reflection, or simply understanding as Searle's Chinese Room argument points out as an objection to AI.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Dec 13, 2011 - 01:24pm PT
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What is mind?
?
Something I don't mind.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 01:43pm PT
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Ed, I am not aware of any means of description, explanation, or criticism of art that is quantified. It's just not the sort of thing that's been done. (Has the field developed categories of aesthetics for mathematics?) I'm not sure there are universal aesthetics as you are suggesting; I believe many of them are culturally informed, although scholars like Joseph Campbell and Erich Neuman would say that there are remarkable patterns that appear to transcend cultural boundaries and time.
No one is saying that art is a superior means of understanding, Ed. Art is nothing special, but then neither is mathematics, science, religion, and so forth. They are all different. There is a place for different things and views, Ed. Hence, DMT, my argument about the "deficiency" of mental / rational consciousness refers to applying a tool made for one thing to a place where it doesn't seem to add or belong: like quantification of art.
An emerging state of consciousness today seems to be one that allows everything to be or have a place, equally. Pluralism, multiculturalism, different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, these are all good and all have a place. Validity is perspectival, and so is verification. Truth is not a single, binary determination. Truth comes in all kinds of flavors, depending upon time, space, culture, etc. The same goes for Beauty. The same goes for The Good (unfortunately). It's a complicated world that we're finding our way into.
There is a kind of exception to all of this: The All, the Tao, immediate experience. Some call it God, emptiness, pristine awareness, the Great Seal, The Great Compassion, etc. Those terms refer to IT. IT is right here in front of us.
Our many attempts to deal with or grok IT has developed through various phases of consciousness since we first started to pry awareness from our species' collective unconsciousness. At first our consciousness was simply a seed, a potentiality: deep sleep without dreams. There was no consciousness because there was no developed sense of self that could reflect on awareness. Everything was one, but without discriminations or distinctions. Then Man's awareness began to discriminate inside versus outside, and one from another primitively; everything was still completely related to everything else but without causality. Everything existed and happened magically; everything was correlated with everything else. Parts were equal to other parts or to wholes. Symbolic meaning began to emerge (language, keeping a thing in awareness when not in view, etc.). Man's identity was no more than that of an appendage, a member of a small group (tribe or clan). Nature and man were part and parcel of each other. Man senses greater differentiation, and his groups get larger and more specialized--and an ego begins to emerge, but not so strong that it can stand on its own autonomously. The ego and sense of individuality still succumbs to unconscious drives (emotions, instincts, images, symbols). This is the age of myths, temporal time, and polarities. Everything is positied into polarities. Everything has an opposite to create unifications (night/day, right/wrong, heavy/light, birth/death, etc.). Man is given places and roles to be through myth (archetypal stories) that repeat themselves cyclically.
Finally, we come to the age of Reason. Man's ego finally gains full autonomy and independence from the collective unconscious (over instincts, emotions) by using reason (but the collective unconscious still has powers). Reason most famously emerges full-blown with ancient Greek civilization, but it does not become fully embedded in all developed civilizations until after the Middle Ages. The mental / reason stage of consciousness stabilizes the ego, largely sets it free, and hence the ego spreads its wings and begins to conquer all things with reason. Reason develops further with scientific thinking and become rationality, whereby all things get defined, measured, tested, and predicted. With reason and rationality, the ego now stands not in harmony with reality but against reality. The ego becomes the center of consciousness and its univese, and with that, it stands in opposition to everything else. The ego kills off God(s), and replaces God(s) with itself. Man (and his rationality) becomes the measure of all things. Rationality is a tool of domination over everything. It means to conquer and assimilate everything and bring everything under mental, rational control.
How does it do that? It uses analysis.
Analysis is dividing and conquering. Every academic tradition (and the scientific method of inquiry) is a specialized content approach to delineations of reality. Each has its own lens by which to study reality.
But reality is not and never was a thing. It's the all, infinite, beyond time, space, and concept. Every time some academic or scientist (or wannabe scientist) undertakes an investigation (like here), they cut off a part of reality, dissect it, categorize and classify its parts, label them, measure them, and then claim that they have discovered . . . viola! reality--when in fact what they've done is to define into existence things and objects.
Look at whatever is in front of you (the computer screen, maybe?). Whatever you are looking at, it doesn't exist independently but only in conjunction with other things that allow the thing you're looking at to exist. That claim goes on infinitely for each and every thing. Moreover, everything is constantly changing. There are no objects in reality. There is only reality, and it is one, and it is beyond concecpt, beyond measurement, beyond definition, beyond categories, beyond time, beyond space, beyond beginning and end. IT is all that there is. No thing that can be done can change it, and nothing can be added or subtracted from it. IT is forever perfect, unrepeating, and (sorry) undescribable because words and concepts and semantics are analytical limitations on it.
That's ultimately, that is. Conventionally, there are atoms, people, and an infinite list of objects that are creatively constructed by minds.
When I said that the mental rational state of consciousness is currently in a deficient state, I am saying that we've gotten as much good out of the mental state of consciousness as we can. It's time to move on into the next state of consciousness--one that can access all states of consciousness simultaneiously and entertain all views at the same time. See the timeless, the past, the future, and the present simultaneously. Not hold on to any single perspective but to be aperspectival. Not to eschew rationality, but to be arational; not be hold on to single perspectives, but to be aperspectival; not to view everything from our own egos, (and not to get rid of ego) but to put our egos on the side.
To quit boundedness for openness
To quit rigidities and defensiveness for fluency and availability
To quit intolerance / toleration for playfulness
To quit control for letting be
To quit hesitancy for immediacy
To quit categorization for name transcendence
To quit dogmatism for multivalency
To quit doubt for reverance
To quit exploitation for service
To quit anxiety for enjoyment
To quit alienation for participation
To quit internalized responsibility for responsiveness
To quit emotional independence or dependence for feeling freedom
To quit observer for participant
To quit abstractions for bodily presence
To quit knowledge for wisdom
To quit guilt for superego freedom
To quit falling in or out of love for being love
All these things get us closer to The Tao, to the All, to allow us to get to experience without all of the filters, obscurations, afflictions, desires, and aversions that we live through almost every moment of the day.
Mind seems to be at the center of all of this; but it's really more about awareness. Not expansions of consciousness but intensities of consciousness. Being more conscious of what's right in front of us.
And yes, Ed. Science can surely help to get us there.
We--our present evolutionary state of consciousness--cannot be at its zenith, the pinnacle of awareness. We can look to the growing tip of humanity who have gone beyond this point to give us insights to what comes next. If interested, people can start begin to look for themselves--i.e., right in front of them.
Dr. F: Disabuse yourself of the idea that you only believe what has been or can be proven to you. The number of things that you have proven to yourself is insignificant. Mostly your beliefs come from the acceptance of the claims of others you have not met or know. The list is almost infinite of the existence of things you surely have not proven to yourself: atoms, Jupiter, my existence, a past war, AIDs, death, neurons, etc. As for the infintesimally few things that you have actually "proven" to yourself, just how did you do that? Did you design a study? Did you create constructs? Did you come up with metrics you would measure? Did you undertake systematic observations? Did you run statistical analysis (ANOVAs, cluster regressions, etc.) at a .05 level of confidence? Did you calculate R-square?
Oh, . . . you didn't do that? Maybe we should all reconsider what "you know?"
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 01:53pm PT
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They'll never figure it with their mechanistic hang ups.
Modern mechanistic science is like the forbears who thought the world is flat.
The mechanistic test tube consciousness points to a flat earth consciousness.
This is where Modern materialistic science is still rooted in.
It's nothing but cave man consciousness in it's end result.
They know very little in the end, very very little.
They can't even do a simple little experiment any child can do that proves themselves wrong .....
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Jobee
Social climber
El Portal Ca.
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Dec 13, 2011 - 02:28pm PT
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-I am out of mine!
"Don't Know."
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
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MikeL, that's quite the optimistic, but anthropocentrically-arrogant [religious] tract. Can't say there is much in there I'd agree with, but particularly this:
We--our present evolutionary state of consciousness--cannot be at its zenith, the pinnacle of awareness. We can look to the growing tip of humanity who have gone beyond this point to give us insights to what comes next.
And more particularly:
...the growing tip of humanity who have gone beyond...
I'm guessing the dinosaurs and Neanderthal probably felt the same way about their circumstances right before it all started to go south.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 13, 2011 - 03:19pm PT
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This thread is looking more and more like a religious thread.
I would be curious to know how many words each of the major enthusiasts for this thread would use were they to be asked to summarize their thoughts on this subject.
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