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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 13, 2017 - 08:54pm PT
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. . . even though they live their entire lives in a subjective bubble, they nevertheless believe the lives they actually lead are fundamentally unreal, while the external objects of their experience are, strangely, real
Not so at all. Our experiences are certainly real, but an attempt to isolate and explore them in discussions in principle, rather than descriptive fact, leads away from their reality to a puzzling and non-productive plane of discourse. We certainly talk about our experiences and language conveys impressions to others, but to speak of experience as an abstract concept of some peculiar and elusive persuasion doesn't seem warranted. Remember, the map is not the territory.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 13, 2017 - 09:55pm PT
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Yankee Doodle rode a pony to town because a perfect square y2 and a perfect cube x3 that are not equal must lie a substantial distance apart, but since Doodle was himself a perfect cube, what distance from town would the Yankees have to go to square dance with a pony?
and the answer?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 13, 2017 - 10:58pm PT
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John Gill: I love ya.
. . . an attempt to isolate and explore them in discussions in principle, rather than descriptive fact, leads away from their reality to a puzzling and non-productive plane of discourse.
I gotta say something here. Descriptive fact is, well, . . . not so sound as you might make it out to be. What can I say? You have to be more forgiving here.
(again): We certainly talk about our experiences and language conveys impressions to others, but to speak of experience as an abstract concept of some peculiar and elusive persuasion doesn't seem warranted.
Let’s forget that impressions are all that we have empirically.
Experience is NOT an abstract concept, John! Even to suggest that betrays a particular view. Experience, if anything, is completely indescribable and impossible to deny as experience. It’s a wonderful thing.
To abstract any part of it destroys it. That’s paradox number 22. There is a long list of them.
“Elusive persuasion.” What a wonderful description. What do you make of what your eyes give you?
Be well, no matter what.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 13, 2017 - 11:07pm PT
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Looking at things artistically is a form of noticing “what this is,” and when you get right down to it, "noticing" is the yoga.
Artistry or being artistic in your life seems to engage more subtle forces.
Doing art is like looking into fractals. There appears to be repeating major themes—but in such detail! There’s nothing to it, and the nothingness of it all shows through. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. This is such a fuc*king madhouse.
Nice day, huh?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2017 - 09:51am PT
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Our experiences are certainly real, but an attempt to isolate and explore them in discussions in principle, rather than descriptive fact, leads away from their reality to a puzzling and non-productive plane of discourse. We certainly talk about our experiences and language conveys impressions to others, but to speak of experience as an abstract concept of some peculiar and elusive persuasion doesn't seem warranted.
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First, I'm rather amazed that you consider your direct experience "abstract." the feeling of old injuries, the sensation of drinking coffee in the morning, the memories of this or that, the fears and thoughts and hijinks of the day... These have always felt to me the most tangible and immediate and most real phenomenon OF life, of being alive and being conscious.
When someone says that dancing neurons unseen and unfelt and unconsciously going on are somehow more "real" because we can measure them, it seems to me that a blatant abstraction (measurements) has falsely usurped the immediacy of our direct experience.
What's more, when you say that exploring experience straight up "leads away from their (material?) reality," how do you mean?
And in what sense would exploration of the experiential realm be "warrented?" If we could pull some measurements? If not that, what would satisfy you in terms of "warrenting" an exploration of the very life you actually live, which is experiential.
Another thing which often gets lost here is that at least in my mind, it is absolutely crucial to explore the experiential to know what is there TO describe, and without this first look, so to speak, we have no reference point to even draw so-called neuro correlates. In fact, when the experiential itself is left unexplored, and people look only at the brain to "explain" consciousness, two things happen. One, they assume they know what it is (consciousness) that they are seeking to explore, and two, they assume that a causal explanation is all there IS to know, all there is WORTH knowing, and anything beyond measurable functions (functionalism) can only be so much "poetry."
It is worth acknowledging that all of these assumptions are based on beliefs, NOT on true investigation.
So far as ignoring the experiential goes, this has caused more nonsense and pure rubbish than anything else, especially in terms of trying to describe awareness, the very phenomenon that sets consciousness on fire. Through only looking at objective functioning, awareness itself get falsely construed as a function, as information, as a state, as all manner of silly and remote things that any beginning introspector could write off as entirely false if they could only stop calculation for a moment and simply pay attention.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Mar 14, 2017 - 10:50am PT
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I don't see how anyone could disagree with the above, as mind experience is an immediate reality. It may need mediation through reason, but how can it be ignored as an important and immediate aspect of understanding? There is a disturbing sense afoot that information and knowledge are one in the same... a problem I'd blame on electronic media to some extent, as in "why do I need college when I have google?" This related to the notion that quantification is the certain reflection of reality, an idea that's certainly failed in education.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 14, 2017 - 01:43pm PT
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When someone says that dancing neurons unseen and unfelt and unconsciously going on are somehow more "real"
Not more, or less, real.
Do you have any direct experience of neurons? Do you think that a neurophysiologist might have such?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 14, 2017 - 03:00pm PT
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Experience is NOT an abstract concept, John! . . . . To abstract any part of it destroys it
I never said it was. Experience is very real. But after a particular experience has begun and ended - like a nice climb - recalling it as memory or video clip or photo introduces an abstraction of the real deal. And perhaps you are saying experience cannot be parsed? The passage of time does that for us, however. True, our recollections or thoughts or speculations are another form of experience - but not the experience which we contemplate. That effort places it in another realm.
I have conceded there is something called "empty awareness" that JL and others have encountered in an altered mental state. I even contributed the analogue of watching an empty stage, waiting for content to fill it. John used this analogy afterwards. But now it seems we are contemplating "empty experience" , a truly nebulous idea. How can you isolate experience from its content? Does experience = awareness?
It was fun playing with elementary topology for a brief time, trying to tie together brain states with qualia. But the latter was too ill-defined and esoteric to interpret as collections of open sets in some topological space. It was beyond even abstract mathematics - which leaves it in the domain of what I will now call the bailiwick of Abstract Philosophers.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 14, 2017 - 03:44pm PT
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Thx, DMT. it was a brief moment of lucidity.
When someone says that dancing neurons unseen and unfelt and unconsciously going on are somehow more "real"
Well, Largo, I’m not sure that a scientist would actually say that, but I think that one might say that there is more substantiality and certainty to his or her scientific beliefs than that of subjectivity. To many people, “subjectivity” seems so unreliable because it’s not reproducible experimentally.
We might review the logic behind “reproducibility.” In doing so, we would talk about the significance of “statistical significance,” about those things that are inherently stochastic, about the number of tests for reproducibility on previously accepted research, and on how what gets tested are theories (not reality).
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 14, 2017 - 04:32pm PT
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Jgill:
The so-called bailiwicks of abstraction are also science and art, John.
When you say “altered mental states,” I think you are saying that *some* experiences / subjectivity is not truthful in an objective sense.
Objectivity refers to the existence / presence of objects, and that implies numerous perceptual processes.
What constitutes “altered?” You seem to imply that there is one state of consciousness that is truthful and others that are not.
What is “true?” What constitutes truth? Is it experience or is it concepts? Neopositivists said it was both. I think you’re in their camp, John, trying to avoid talk of empirically unobservable phenomena. (Oops, we fell back into philosophy. Sorry.)
Round and round we go.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 14, 2017 - 04:46pm PT
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Is there experience without content? And if there is, is it necessary to go into a Zen trance to comprehend this? Is experience the same as awareness? Is there a "science" that deals with these issues? Is it practiced at the Noetic Institute? Is Dennett's Folly on the other end of the spectrum from Largo's Dictums?
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 14, 2017 - 06:42pm PT
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it necessary to go into a Zen trance to comprehend this?
NO ... unless you want to spend 60 to 70 thousand years sitting in meditation to achieve such a perfection.
They could do it the satya yug when the human life span was up to 100,000 years.
It's not the prescribed method for this age of Kali yuga, the age of hypocrisy and quarrel, the iron age, where human only lives up to 100 years.
This proves that we've devolved.
Oh wait ... that never happened because the modern lab coat didn't see it in his beaker ........
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2017 - 06:53pm PT
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Royal Robbins died. Whatever mind I have is very sad. Like a part of myself died, the part that always dreamed about high places and things greater than myself.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2017 - 07:21pm PT
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Royal Robbins died. Whatever mind I have is very sad. Like a part of myself died, the part that always dreamed about high places and things greater than myself.
But what the hell. I might as well try and answer John's question just to get my mind off RR.
John asked if there is really awareness without any content?
I have no idea what a "zen trance" is. Zen meditation is done eyes open to try and help break the trance of having our attention always fused to thoughts, feelings, memories, planning, fear, worries, sensations, etc. Zen is an exercise to try and wake up from a trance, so far as I know. The trance of attachment to the stuff of awareness.
There is no pure awareness in any absolute sense of it being separate from content. But one way to look at it is the old Gestalt paradigm of figure and ground. The figure is what our attention is normally fused to. The ground is the back ground. Visually, to use figurative language, the figure is in focus and the background is blurry. That is, there is always some background stuff going on in awareness, if only the slight hum of the blood in your ears of the feel our your ass on the cushion or the sound of your breathing. But all that becomes ground, out of focus, while attention itself - usually only marginally felt and known - become figure.
Attention is like a vacuume that mind anxiously tries to fill, so remaining in awareness, as figure, so to speak, usually takes a lot of practice. When it does happen, attention morphs into presence, a sense of simply being there, of existing, as the stuff of life arises and falls away, all of it impermanent save for attention itself.
Once this is grasped, experientially, the study of mind becomes a totally different animal. That's not doing the subject justice, but it's as good as I can do just now.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 14, 2017 - 07:28pm PT
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it's as good as I can do just now
At ease, soldier.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2017 - 07:36pm PT
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Thanks, MH2. I'm just heartbroken, man. I never knew this would hit me so hard.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 14, 2017 - 08:09pm PT
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RR: the Master of us all. He'll be missed.
John asked if there is really awareness without any content? (JL)
John, I didn't ask this. I have accepted there is empty awareness and I said as much on the previous page. Remember, I suggested the analogy of the empty stage, awaiting content? That's a settled issue for me, if not for others.
What I did ask was: Is there "empty experience", experience devoid of content? Does experience = awareness? If it does, then I suppose there is empty experience. However, I don't think there is such a thing as experience without content, but, for me, awareness is another matter. You've convinced me.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 15, 2017 - 09:50am PT
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MH2: At ease, soldier.
Perfection.
Jgill:
I think we’ll be hard-pressed to make keen distinctions among the terms of consciousness, awareness, trance, attention, noticing, dreams, experience, etc. Different schools of spiritual practice have their own ideas about these things. Within their particular universes, the terms probably fit together, but making one-to-one comparisons among the terms across different disciplines will expose contradictions and give rise to confusion, just as it does among different scientific disciplines. (Perhaps this is why math is so loved in science; it’s a kind of universal language or set of notations.) Examining the many schools of Buddhism, for example, will present a labyrinth—one that in my view isn’t worth solving unless you are academic.
I’ve seen that every spiritual practice (and theory) finally comes to an abyss. Logic, reason, comparisons, definitions, etc. won’t get one across—that is, if it’s important to get across. Many argue that only grace will transport one across the abyss; others argue that one must let go of everything to deal with the abyss: you know, jump! Some say there is no where to go; it’s already a done deal; you’re off the hook; there’s nothing to do; there’s nothing needing to get done; there’s nothing that *can* be done. All of this can be infuriating, confusing, and disheartening to someone who feels they should care about such things. Those that care are, IMO, naive or novices.
What IS experience if there is no personalized self (aka, the grasping ego) to establish a subject that is experiencing? What is happening if there is not two? Even to imply that there is non duality sets up a polarity of non duality and not non duality. If there is pure presence, then what is absence? Again, another polarity. If there is presence, then there would have to be absence, and then an absence of absence as well. See what I mean? The abyss. Conceptuality has a very hard time here.
I’ll bet you have empty experiences of awareness all the time, but they escape your notice because you would need to be looking for something to see them. They look like nothing.
MH2 offered the best guidance there is.
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Mar 15, 2017 - 11:24am PT
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Nietzsche: . . And still not Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
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chipperdarl
climber
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Mar 15, 2017 - 12:17pm PT
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it is entertaining to
see a literary giant such as
largo limp.
why, other than for your own entertainment purposes would
you attempt to harness the space that occurs between expressions?
the mind is a pause.
and it cannot be qualified.
or quantified.
it is void.
on either side of it's vaccum
occurs substantive expression.
do you, John, write the punctuation before you scribe a sentence?
no! you f*#king write down jolly and the echo follies!
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