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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 19, 2017 - 08:47pm PT
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Can you guys honestly tell yourselves that you are tryng to understand anything?
Yes. If awareness is not a product of the brain, what are its origins. Where does it reside? Try to add something of substance to your arguments and not the continual harangue about first person vs third person.
Answer this simple question: Does awareness arise from the brain? Or does it arise elsewhere?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 19, 2017 - 08:48pm PT
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You might look into Proust's famed madeleine passage
Good reminder
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 19, 2017 - 11:54pm PT
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Again, with regard to awareness, all you have to do is look at extant species from bacteria to humans to see the development of awareness. Each is 'aware' within the constraints of its biological capabilities. It's not a stretch of any kind to posit awareness was a precursor to and prerequisite for consciousness.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 20, 2017 - 08:15am PT
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And following that line of thought, the spinal cord came before a larger brain in mammals and this fits nicely with the Indian idea, that we have a kind of consciousness in our spinal cords as well as our brains. For most people however, it remains unconscious, and can only be discovered through long effort at quieting the discursive mind. The nerves in the spinal cord are connected to major organs and endocrine systems which in turn can be manipulated to change awareness in body and brain through the alteration of chemicals, otherwise known these days as biofeedback. The true masters of these effects however, remain in India.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 20, 2017 - 08:26am PT
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Yes, Jan.
Our brains over the years master the art of ignoring sensations considered unimportant to our immediate needs. It is a revelation to tune in to any of countless sensations ordinarily overlooked or ignored and pay close attention to them.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 20, 2017 - 08:44am PT
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I'm somewhat in agreement with Jan and healyje on the unconscious / subconscious (from my personal research and readings over the last 3-5 years--especially in trance and improvisation). Unfortunately, published empirical research seems lacking.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 20, 2017 - 09:01am PT
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First, comes consciousness, then comes awareness.
Without consciousness period none of you would even be here to be aware, to begin with.
Thus consciousness is far more important to understand.
The root and source of life itself ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 20, 2017 - 11:09am PT
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Put simply, a subject cannot be mistaken about their OWN awareness.
Why not?
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Excellent. "Why not" logically implies a reason for feeling mistaken. So I'll hold you to it.
Now tell us the reason you feel it is possible for you to mistaken about your own awareness. Or the reason for you to THINK you might be mistaken about being aware. That is, what about awareness itself, not WHAT you are aware or, has given you reason to doubt that you, or others, are mistaken about being aware.
Second, what criteria would have to be met to abolish all doubt that you, MH2, are aware of reading these words?
And John, you're demanding that I answer your question on physically mechanistic terms, which are terms I don't believe in per every aspect of consciousness. Yes, I believe that WHAT we experience is mechanically sourced by an evoloved mechanism called the brain, in a dynamic process we call consciousness. But I don't believe awareness is an output, a product, or a function produced by brain anymore than I believe gravity is "caused" by or arises from falling rocks.
Strange as it might sound, this is the most logical conclusion once you really dig into the alternatives, and realize they all involve magical thinking or magical causes. Screwy thing is that fundamental forces are never called "magic" nor whatever it is that holds the laws of physics in place. A poor metaphor, for sure, since figurative language doesn't work on awareness as it is not "like" any thing else in reality.
To try and nutshell the whole history of mind conversation, especially from the point of view of Chalmer's Hard problem, the challenges are basically two fold. Before Chalmer's even presented the Hard Problem, consciousness was considered such a nebulous subject that science largely stayed clear of it. Once that changed, the Hard Problem asked how a mechanism could "explain" how it might cause or source consciousness. What's more, Chalmers admitted in a way that this was a trick question by insisting that experience ITSELF was irreducible to mechanistic function.
Why - and this is the subtle part - because everyone knows that is a qualitative difference between the experience of smelling a rose, and, say, the physical process of photosynthesis. That means that even the best mechanistic "explanation" per where consciousness came from, you'd only have a list of causal relations leaving experience itself out of the equation. That is, the explanata leaves out the very subject we sought to understand.
Now here's where it gets tricky, because with virtually every other thing, object, or force in reality, so long as we understand causes, we can draw up theories and make predictions, proving that we "know" all there is to know about a given thing, object, force, or phenomenon.
Mind seems to defy this.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 20, 2017 - 01:00pm PT
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Our brains over the years master the art of ignoring sensations considered unimportant to our immediate needs. It is a revelation to tune in to any of countless sensations ordinarily overlooked or ignored and pay close attention to them.
Unfortunately, published empirical research seems lacking.
Well I'd like to see those sensations catalogued and then try to figure out what they were evolved for in the past.
Some of us are very sensitive to weather changes for example. Before good weather predictions, I could forcast a typhoon was forming up off Okinawa four days before it was announced, simply by the way I felt (and that was before I had arthritis). Nowadays with satellites we don't need it, but it was handy in the past, especially if you were a sailor, and it might be again. I would be interested in how many Polynesians have that ability also, as it is easy to see how advantageous it would be for them sailing across vast expanses of the Pacific.
I believe empirical research has been done, but it is overlain with religion so it's mostly disregarded by the scientific world. Then again, there is another theory that many of the chemicals released during meditation were originally evolved to make death less terrifying if you were the prey and getting eaten, a theory seemingly in agreement with the beneficial aspects of psychedelics for terminal cancer patients in the modern age. These experiences in turn fostered religious explanations and beliefs.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 20, 2017 - 01:49pm PT
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But I don't believe awareness is an output, a product, or a function produced by brain anymore than I believe gravity is "caused" by or arises from falling rocks
OK. Thanks. That clarifies your position. I'm curious if anyone else, here, is of that opinion? It's certainly imaginative.
;>)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 20, 2017 - 02:17pm PT
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I know artists hate art critics but I have taken the liberty to rearrange some of jgill's artwork.
See what you think.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Apr 20, 2017 - 02:34pm PT
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 20, 2017 - 04:32pm PT
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But I don't believe awareness is an output, a product, or a function produced by brain anymore than I believe gravity is "caused" by or arises from falling rocks
OK. Thanks. That clarifies your position. I'm curious if anyone else, here, is of that opinion? It's certainly imaginative.
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Actually, John, I don't really consider it imaginative. When I was studying Whitehead and other Process philosophers in grad school I wondered why most all of them had consciousness as a given or starting principal, or why Kant and many others had what were essentially first principals (a priori conditions) or first assumptions on which they did their work.
My reasons for citing awareness as a first principal or given component of reality is that the alternative - that experience is reducible to objective functioning - renders what to me is a logically incoherent argument. And even if it were true, your are left with the brain itself being conscious (not CREATING consciousness, but rather BEING conscious), which can only be explained by way of an inherent quality, not an output. Any output, including emergence, still has to answer Chalmers' Hard Problem per how experience itself is reducible to firing neurons, and the even greater task of explaining how that belief even makes sense, or is comprehensible in any way shape or form. In fact the explanations are so far fetched or vacant ("consciousness is what the brain is doing") they have in many cases driven people - perhaps even Uncle Dennett, to write off consciousness as illusory, knowing as they do that bridging matter to conscious awareness was an entirely different matter than going from water to steam, say, or from mixing water and liquid nitrogen.
However I have learned to believe that even more important than the conviction is the reasoning about how you arrived at your particular position.
My view differs from Whitehead, Chalmers and others who posit panpsychism (consciousness, mind or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of all things) to understand consciousness. The reason is that I've done too much brain study to doubt that neural functioning means the brain can absolutely function like a sentactic engine, but when you blend objective functioning with awareness you get consciousness. So in my view, its awareness that's the primordial feature, not consciousness itself.
All other ways I have seen or studied has either conflated information processing with awareness (which even basic meditation would show a person otherwise), or relies on a magical step during which your Uncle becomes your Aunt, so to speak. Trying to explain the magic away with complexity arguments, and fifty other strategies, mostly based on computer modeling, are anything but convincing when closely studied. You invariably end up with the brain making a decision which implies awareness in the first instance.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 20, 2017 - 06:45pm PT
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So your view (hypothesis) is that there is NO spiritual soul and that conscious awareness arises out of the brain which makes the mind?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 20, 2017 - 07:11pm PT
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Now tell us the reason you feel it is possible for you to mistaken about your own awareness.
If, for example, I thought that my awareness was not a consequence of the way my brain is built, I believe that I could be mistaken.
A person who thinks that awareness does not have a biological basis could be mistaken.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 20, 2017 - 07:16pm PT
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The bell that rings inside your mind,
Is challenging the doors of time,
It's a Kind of Magic
Queen
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 20, 2017 - 09:05pm PT
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Actually, John, I don't really consider it imaginative
I am on board with awareness preceding consciousness, and I go a step further citing awareness existing in the absence of consciousness, as I explained in my previous post. But most people perceive consciousness and awareness existing only in tandem.
However, I don't think for a moment that awareness is a kind of fundamental feature of reality, other than its promulgation in the developing brain is a commonality. Once you philosophically remove it from its physical origins you are in essence left with no recourse other than shifting into another mental state and bearing witness - a strategy of "proof" doomed from the very start.
And so you are forced to cast about for analogies amongst physical processes like QM that seem to dwell half in physical reality and half somewhere else. The difference of course is that physicists can predict outcomes accurately regardless of a current inability to part the veil of mystery surrounding the subject. You need the tools of neuroscience to make comparable strides - but you reject these, it seems, in favor of weaving philosophical tapestries as if the sheer number of words should suffice.
But you're an interesting fellow whose speculations provide entertainment.
;>)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 20, 2017 - 10:10pm PT
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WHAT ?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 20, 2017 - 10:36pm PT
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Atta girl, Jan.
Jim Brennan: Magic is the occupation of people who do card tricks and saw you in half while you are placed in a big box.
You could do with a little more reading, Jim.
Magic is a term also used to describe primitive awareness based purely on association (without an understanding of cause and effect).
You can also look up “participation mystique” for another instantiation of the notion of magic. When folks cannot clearly distinguish (and separate themselves from) objects, then that is an example of magic. When primitive men would create small dramas with artifacts before a hunt, what occurred to the artifacts is what would occur in the hunt (it was believed).
There are many ways in which planning tools in business mimic magical thinking: “if the model behaves this way, then so will our experiences.” Projection is a form of magic. Doing anything for luck is also a form of magic. Anyone who practices visualization techniques before a competition is using magic. Charisma is magic.
As I’ve said earlier, we think we are so technical and logical and rational, but if anyone looks closely, they’ll see plenty of evidence that today’s human beings are also greatly instinctual, mythical, and magical . . . actually not so very logical, rational, or technical. The literature in psychology and decision theory provide much to give anyone pause.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 21, 2017 - 04:52am PT
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My reasons for citing awareness as a first principal or given component of reality is that the alternative - that experience is reducible to objective functioning - renders what to me is a logically incoherent argument.
Maybe you're over-thinking it and with a philosophical bent I suppose that's not surprising. And coming at it top-down like you are I can certainly see why it's hard to even get off the mark because you immediately get caught up in exactly the logical conundrum you speak of.
That's why I keep encouraging folks to look at the [progressive] neural sophistication of extant species. If you were to do a hierarchal sort and play those behaviors bottom-up like a time-lapse movie it would hopefully be obvious from the progression of primitive sensory-reaction loops on up through human subconscious and conscious behavior that 'awareness' is unavoidably rooted in and sourced by physical biological functioning.
Hell, look at advanced behaviors like multi-generational butterfly and long-distance bird migrations - behaviors which are physically encoded in those species' genomes. Successfully pulling off such migrations requires attending high levels of 'awareness' sourced from a set of biological capabilities which are highly targeted and finely tuned to the demands of those migrations and also embedded in their genomes.
Similarly, look at the behavior of social insects - all behaviors wired into their genomes. Or look at specialized sensory capabilities like Chameleon, Jumping Spider and Mantis Shrimp eyes which all lend them quite unique forms of 'awareness' and, subsequently, behaviors which depend on them.
Are we/you really prepared to say those awarenesses aren't or can't be sourced by "objective functioning" (genome -> organism) or that those behaviors are sourced elsewhere than their genomes? Or are we/you prepared to say those forms of animal awareness are somehow fundamentally different than many of our own?
For me - starting bottom-up - it's just damn hard to escape that reality and fact that both behavior and awareness can be physically programmed into a genome and successfully passed from generation-to-generation. Add to that the intense and ever-escalating evolutionary pressure of predator/prey relationships driving the sophistication of awareness and subconscious processing and I'm personally very hard pressed to see how the emergence of consciousness could be anything but inevitable.
I also think you either inadvertently or deliberately wrap up a vast universe of biological sophistication in the rubric of "objective functioning" and then summarily dismiss it out of hand. I personally believe that is a grave mistake regardless of one's views on consciousness and mind. Abstraction is great and I make a living at it, but when it comes to things like consciousness and mind I prefer a more nuanced approach which embraces and encompasses both ideas and physical reality.
That all said, can I point to an exact hard demarc or species where awareness makes the leap to consciousness? No. But abstract, hard problems aside, I know it when I see it looking back at me. For me the "logically incoherent arguments" are more the abstract ones which dismiss physicalism out of hand because that (as John points out) leaves you groping pretty damn hard to fill the void with equally abstract things like panpsychism, first principle, component of reality, etc, etc.
But, it is good after 15k posts to finally hear some clear words around what it is you actually do believe.
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