What is "Mind?"

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MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 24, 2017 - 02:31pm PT

Jgill: However, I can easily imagine riding to Mars on the back of a unicorn, but that's probably not going to happen.

Ed: . . . "the job" of a thought experiment isn't to apply unfettered imagination in an attempt to make it reality...

Demons, unfettered imagination, attempting [intending] to make reality, and unicorns? (Gee, . . . thanks for your thoughtfulness.)

Imagination cuts both ways.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Mar 24, 2017 - 02:50pm PT

Have the 12 steppers here fallen off the wagon or what? Long-winded posts full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Isn't part of the program to get out of your ego's way?

oh, sorry, I'll refrain from posting in the future...

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2017 - 02:55pm PT

Consciousness is the immediate fact of experience, the capacity to have experience and the naturalistic process by which experience arises and falls away. Or in a word, consciousness IS experience

What is "experience"? This is an example of the game of musical chairs philosophers love. You can't define one thing? Well relate it to something else that can't be defined accurately. How about "awareness"? is awareness the same as consciousness? If it is, then can one have "empty experience"? On and on . . .
--

These are legitimate gripes, but while John tries to fob it all off on "philosophers" (most of who are math geeks BTW), efforts to describe any one thing are never accomplished though describing aspects of said thing that are exclusive to only that thing. With any force or external object you must recruit qualities to "accurately" define it.

Take energy:

NOUN:
1.
the capacity for vigorous activity; available power:

2.
an adequate or abundant amount of such power:

Note there is no effort to "accurately" define WHAT has vigorous activity and power because there is no such "thing" as energy that HAS power, there is only power.

Or consider the definition of light:

light1
[līt]
NOUN

1,
the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible:

Here, light (radiation) is described in terms of its effect it has on the vision of animals, including humans. This can hardly be said to be an "accurate description" of light itself. And chances are slim that a philosopher did the defining.

Likewise, there is no such thing that has experience, there is only experience. This is no slam on experience, rather it shows the limit that symbolic representation has in trying to define something in and of itself.

The contention that this is an exclusive folly of "philosophers" feels silly to me.

What's more, when you ask "what is experience," what criteria would have to be met to qualify, to you, as an "accurate" answer.

Kindly note that this question never gets answered. Ever.

My sense of it is that only a 3rd person answer, as one would use to define an external object or force, would satisfy you. Because experience is itself 1st person, how do you expect a 1st person phenomenon to somehow conform to 3rd person status so you can have your accurate answer. The fact that it cannot do so speaks more to the reality of experience itself - it is NOT, itself, an observable phenomenon, so nobody - philosopher or physicist or Indian chief, can give you a sense data answer.

Another thing to note is that the epistemiclly, experience, being a 1st person phenomenon, cannot be know nor yet "accurately" described as something it is not - a 3rd person external object or force.

Nevertheless we know what experience is "more better" than anything else in reality because it IS our reality. Experience is a given. It is self-affirming simply by having it.

The great uproar about experience is that, even though it is the only reality that any human can know, we simply cannot describe it as an external object for one good reason: it is not one.

And no, mind, consciousness and awareness are not the same "things."

But more interesting to me is how Ed ended up being, by default, a panpsychist.

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Mar 24, 2017 - 03:07pm PT

Experience = absence of unconsciousness.

;>)

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 24, 2017 - 05:20pm PT

Long-winded posts full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We have them.

edit:

case in point

efforts to describe any one thing are never accomplished though describing aspects of said thing that are exclusive to only that thing. With any force or external object you must recruit qualities to "accurately" define it.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 24, 2017 - 05:30pm PT

Then a fixed point would be u(x)=x and v(y)=y. For example, suppose the scale is S=50 and the center point of my screen should be (100,50). I find that the unique fixed point under this transformation is approximately (89.8,55.9).

I know, more hopeless blathering from a labcoat.

We do not engage in debate to persuade others of our point of view, but to learn what others think.

A wise woman I heard on CBC Radio.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 24, 2017 - 05:56pm PT

It might boil down to something as basic as people not actually believing that consciousness is a unique phenomenon in the known world, though it clearly is.

Please tell us what is unique to consciousness.

Try to be specific, and give us an example.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2017 - 05:56pm PT

We do not engage in debate to persuade others of our point of view, but to learn what others think.

That's why I am always offering views from many camps, even AI. But there is also the need to try and present the truth as you understand it at any given time, lest "debate" can postpone trying to arrive at even a temporary model or hypothesis.

I'll offer mind soon.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 24, 2017 - 06:23pm PT

I'll offer mind soon.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 24, 2017 - 06:28pm PT

Not long ago I met an immigrant from Bulgaria. We did a couple hikes together. He told me a curious story, which I recalled when I heard about an animated short nominated for an Academy Award.

Blind Vaysha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Vaysha

Theodore Ushev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Ushev

[Click to View YouTube Video]

Cowboy Bebop

http://bebopattic.weebly.com/the-realfake-eye-debate.html

edit:

I should include what my recent Bulgarian friend was telling me about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Gospodinov

WBraun

climber

Mar 24, 2017 - 08:27pm PT

I know, more hopeless blathering from a labcoat.

You're a good labcoat!

Always remember that!

Don't let anyone tell you different.

Respect!!!! (It's the character of the man that's the most important above all)

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 24, 2017 - 10:19pm PT

Largo: The great uproar about experience is that, even though it is the only reality that any human can know, we simply cannot describe it as an external object for one good reason: it is not one.

Sorry, John, but I saw this go by and howled. Every thing is One. That’s the crux of it. You get by that, . . . and you’re done. There is nothing else to realize. But that one ONE, well, . . . that’s really liberation from what I can make out.

We do not engage in debate to persuade others of our point of view, but to learn what others think.

I don’t think so. I think we debate to see what each of us subjectively thinks. As Karl Weick has said, “I don’t know what I mean until I see what I say.”

This points to what we are. We are an unfolding, ever never-ending. If you don’t know what you think until you speak and see what you say, then that is unfolding. It is consciousness discovering itself.

How can you pin that down? What is THAT (which discovers itself)? Say what its existence, its essence, is. Is this not what you and I are?

Duck: It's the character of the man that's the most important above all

I used to believe that as if I was the architect of my life. I see that I am not the architect of my life, and I am not the worse for it. "Character" is more stilts on this personality I call my ego. I would rather think of my character as that which I cannot consciously affect—that which I cannot help but be. I AM. That’s it. No more. There is nothing else.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 25, 2017 - 07:51am PT

consciousness discovering itself

brain learning about itself

WBraun

climber

Mar 25, 2017 - 08:05am PT

brain learning about itself

No

It is the self, learning about itself.

The brain is NOT the self ever .......

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2017 - 09:31am PT

consciousness discovering itself

brain learning about itself

Let's look at the implications of this, the bottom line belief of a Type A materialist.

We first must ask: Is the brain that is believed to be learning about itself conscious? Put differently, is said brain aware of learning about itself?

Second, is this "learning" any different than the processing that goes on in a computer (now, or in some future computer), and if so, how?

And Mike, I agree that this whole shebang is one unified unfolding. But for the sake of this discussion, it is helpful to isolate out the two sides of the coin which paradoxically comprise the one: form and emptiness. There is no duality IME because one is exactly the other. I think we're slowly moving in that direction because staunch materialism I am realizing can only lead to two possible conclusions: A) That consciousness is not "real," or "not what we think it is." And B) What consciousness really is, is simply what the brain is doing. We only believe there is something separate, or something more, than the unified sum of brain matter doing what it is doing.

The inescapable conclusion of this is that the brain doesn't "cause" some separate function we are mistakenly calling "consciousness." Rather, the brain itself IS conscious. That's panpsychism, or a specific stripe.

More on this later but it will be interesting to see MH2's take on the questions above.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 25, 2017 - 10:20am PT

Hey, John,

I knew what you meant by your writing. The topic of being is so difficult, that in trying to work into it, one must say what one does not really mean.

I find that with my wife at times, and it can frustrate her and me often. She has a very concrete approach to understanding / knowledge / perception, and she wants to know “what I really mean.” I’m often stuck between not being able to say anything about anything to her, and trying to communicate what appears to be impossible to communicate. I keep trying to tell her that what's coming out of me is simply an expression (of many possible ones); she says that's not very helpful.

It’s sort of like me watching national or local news on TV. On the one hand, the news appears to be very dramatic and important. On the other hand, the news appears to be a part of a grand theatre of the absurd. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to laugh hysterically or to cry or to look at it with blank countenance. Looked at from one view, the news on the television seems to be presented by real people in real time about real things going on in the real world. On the other hand, what I seem to be witnessing is a play of light in front of me. Pixels. Are the narratives real, fake, artistic expressions (not really news), entertainment, or some manifestation that I’m projecting meaning and value and existence to? The question cannot be answered, leastwise concretely with a single assessment.

You’ll have to pardon me sometimes. I don’t mean to make fun of anyone. I hope you know that. “Things” are funny to me, though.

Be well.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2017 - 10:31am PT

Mike, what we are attempting here I look on as an intellectual exercise, and a fun one that is an extension of what I studied in grad school (above and beyond the lit stuff). It is at one level totally artificial because as we both know, impermanence is the rule so trying to say what "really is" is itself an illusion. I remember the old Roshi at the LA Zen Center, when pushed to try and nail down this or that would finally just throw up his hands and say: "It's ungraspable"

So we are just grabbing at pixels, or whatever, but ain't it fun?