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okay, whatever
climber
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Apr 22, 2017 - 07:39pm PT
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This is opinion, not a lecture from someone who thinks they have it all wired. Just listen... to everyone and everything... and shove to the back of your mind what doesn't seem to make sense. And then go out and DO something... whether it's climbing, or plumbing, or framing a house, or digging a hole, or building a fence, doing a spreadsheet, negotiating a contract, trying to sell something, writing software, designing circuits, making love, or.... And then all the assorted views about what it means to be alive coalesce into an appreciation of what a strange and wonderful thing it is to just exist at all, in the moment. I don't think there is a deeper understanding of our lives and minds to be had than just LIVING. This is certainly why climbing has been important to me... you're just out there, DOING something that is not the same as walking down the street, absorbed IN THE PRESENT... "Be Here Now", to borrow from the popular book title, and it's also the essence of Krishnamurti's writings. But I acknowledge that we all have a hard time, given relationships, jobs, children, medical issues, aging, etc., just "living in the moment", consistently. Nonetheless, I think it's what we should be aiming for, day by day. I also think that is why most of us climb... because it takes us closer to "living in the moment", in a manner that involves physical activity, possibly some danger, environmental beauty, comradeship (and equal opportunity intended here!), etc. "Give me silence, water, hope/Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes." -- Pablo Neruda
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:13pm PT
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Jim:
You seem to be reporting your beliefs and experiences. I’m simply reporting dogma from what’s written in books about the purpose of a liberal education.
BTW, which was your complaint in your earlier post? Was it the job market, the younger generation, higher educational systems, or the values of the generation in power? (Or something else?)
Should we understand that it’s your opinion that the purpose of a higher education (university) is to get students better jobs and more material wealth?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:21pm PT
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JB said "the "I" that is you gets threatened by the those who want what you've got ?"
Definitely a good time to not be distracted by greed anger (fear) and ignorance!
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okay, whatever
climber
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:25pm PT
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MikeL: I'm not sure what earlier post you're referring to, though I'll look back at my posts on this thread, and try to answer your question. Give me a moment.... And no, I don't view the purpose of higher education as being a trade school, at whatever level of sophistication. I graduated from college in 1976 (I'm about to turn 63), and have a BA in Geology, but also took a lot of English courses, because I like literature. I went to graduate school at CU in geochemistry for a year in 1978, but never finished a master's, because I got so wrapped up in climbing, and a woman, and found a great job anyway, and then wandered into software engineering, etc. Update 11:44 PM EST: I looked at three days of history on my posts here at ST, and I didn't see anything that seemed to match what you're referring to in this context. Can you point me to it? I'll respond, even in all humility if I said something stupid!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:46pm PT
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okay, whatever:
My post was not meant for you. Sorry for the apparent confusion.
I’m sorry also to you, Jim Brennan. I am having difficulty following the track of your writing. I should imagine it’s me.
Be well.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:50pm PT
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Thanks, MikeL, for clearing this up from my perspective, anyway! Best to you... Jim Souder (that's my name!). And perhaps I should just change my ST account name to that, since I have nothing to hide, and don't remember why I used that alias here to begin with. I went to college at CC in Colorado Springs in the early 1970's, and graduate school at CU in Boulder in the late 1970's, and lived in Boulder for many years, before moving to Portland, OR, in 1992. I now live in Charlottesville, VA. I have climbed a couple of times here, on the Blue Ridge, but don't have any climbing partners now, though I do still have ropes and gear. I'll be 63 on May 31, so I'm not a youngster, though I manage to stay fit via physical work.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 22, 2017 - 08:59pm PT
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It exists moment to moment in your life non-stop
And you always make good sense, PSP. But JL seems to be talking about something else. Something "slippery" and "tricky" that eludes our collective grasp and is encountered on the road leading to a solution of the mythical "Hard Problem." In this pursuit he has attempted to use Hilbert Spaces, field theory, virtual particles, quantum mechanics, Planck, Bohr, and on and on. It would be instructive if you two could hash out this conundrum.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 22, 2017 - 09:17pm PT
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I may not understand Jim Brennan fully either, but as a fellow Vancouverite I also see around me the hardship placed on young adults by the real estate prices here.
How could we have let this happen when parents for the most part want to help their children, not make it impossible for them to live where they grew up?
This dilemma may not fall so far from the "What is 'Mind?'" theme.
Our brains got to be pretty good doing what it took to live in the African savannah thousands of years ago. I picture those ancestors as living the way Jim Souder advises: in the present moment.
Things have changed and the pace may have outstripped our mind's ability to adapt in sensible ways to new circumstances. We co-operate well in small groups but are not so good at co-operating as groups of millions in finding answers to our common problems.
However, our minds should be capable of coming up with solutions to our collective difficulties, and our minds should be motivated as well. If history is any guide (and I have been reading up on Hellenic and pre-Hellenic Greek history) when things get too bad for The Many, The Many tear down the social order and both The Many and The Few suffer.
Our ancestor parents on the plains of Africa would run risks and make sacrifices for their children, not deprive them of necessities.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:45am PT
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Well articulated thoughts, MH2.
Jan: . . . though I don't experience reality as being nearly as chaotic as he [Mike] seems to.
This comment of yours has played on my mind, lately, Jan. Pointing to the recent movie on Jane Jacobs on the science vs. religion thread reminded me that we might look at what looks like chaos more closely. (Chaos carries a negative connotation to it, just as some paint conservative orientations as indications of “being afraid of change.”)
In her 1961 book on great cities in the U.S., Jacobs argued that what looks like chaos to most everyone was actually a sign of vitality, diversity, and attractiveness. Jacobs fought against well-intentioned, intellectual urban planners, traffic commissioners, major elected officials, and others at the top of municipal hierarchies who claimed that regular folk are well-meaning but untrained—that regular folks were only concerned with their “parochial interests,” unable to see “the big picture.” But, Jacobs argued, a city’s structure consists of mixture of uses, and one gets closest to a city’s structural secrets when one deals with the conditions that generate diversity. Great cities provide a sensible whole with great intensity and a sense of endlessness. But, architectually trained observers view those two things as confusion and disorder, for they see what looks to them as superfluous and offensive street scenes; they see those things with impatience and contempt. But, Jacobs argued, those scenes are often the very basis for a city’s diversity, freedom, and life. Jacobs argued that a great many variables are, nonlinear, interrelated, and complex.
Jacobs argued that no one or no group of planners can create a city. She said that theorists of conventional modern city planning have consistently mistaken cities as problems, of a lack of simplicity, disorganized complexity, and intellectuals have analyzed and treated them as such. They have seen great complexity in dark and foreboding ways--as irrational, especially when viewed from an Olympian vantage point.
I was became interested in Jacobs’ work when I was living downtown Seattle a few years ago (super high growth). I thought that Jacobs’ insights could encourage another way of looking at complexity in organization (“bad”), especially to those responsible for their designs and management. Since then I’ve discovered more instances where what looked to be chaotic seem instead to be expressions of almost intractable complexity—with highly contextualized structures (viz, “unique”).
Whether from a view of the left or right, liberal or conservative, materialist or spiritual, scientific or religious, new-age or classical, highly educated or common-sensical, the wont to see “problems,” “fix them,” force premature closure through simplicity, definitions, and obvious sureties seem now to me the means by which cause more problems than they solve. Ala, “unintended consequences” because the world is not as some folks imagine it should be. As PSP continues to remind us: being distracted from the present moment by fear and ignorance.
I just didn’t know if you were aware of the some of the issues in urban planning or Jacobs’ wonderful work. (BTW, I had typed a 12-page bullet point summary of Jacobs’ book. I can send that to you if possibly interested.)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:49am PT
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The University of Maryland is now offering a degree for $20,000 if you go to a junior college first and take the rest online. I think that is the future for most who are not born wealthy.
As for real estate in Vancouver, it was inevitable that too many Canadians wanted to live there given the mild climate. There was also a lot of greed involved when permanent residence was given out to those who had a certain amount of money to invest. I've seen the McMansions with kids and servants living alone while the parents were back in the old country making more money.
Most countries in the world restrict foreigners buying property there. Unfortunately North Americans have not been that astute and large portions of our countries have become playgrounds for the world's rich at the expense of our own citizens.
Imagine how much better off the planet would be if we had invested in education and family planning as much as we have invested in the machinery of war. Tool smart and goal stupid seems to the the mental malaise of our species.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:54am PT
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Mike, it seems we just posted at the same time. I would be interested in your summary of Jacobs. As for chaos that works, the primary example of that for me are the cities in India. Often I have to come back to my hotel room and just stare at the ceiling for a while to cope with sensory overload. At the same time, it is the most stimulating place I know. And therein lies a human dilemma. We seek to order chaos, and then we get bored with order.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2017 - 09:51am PT
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John, you have to stop considering what I say in terms of things that can either be part of the things you can see and touch and measure, or else it is some strange thing that exists separate from the "real things." Reality is seamless and unified, so far as I can tell. No phenomenon is separate or stand alone.
And I have repeatedly said that while we cannot use figurative or metaphorical language to speak about consciousness - as it is entirely unlike any thing else in reality - we can nevertheless cast about for example drawn from other fields that might possibly have some symbolic bearing to what we are talking about.
My use of any physics talk was entirely derived from being around physicists who never shut up, and from recognizing that some of the issues commonly discussed in QM resonate with some of the terrain everyone encounters when they take the time to shut up and stop calculating and taking a close look at what the hell is going on in perception of their own lives - including thoughts like: This is my brain doing this.
The idea that I was using physics to "buttress" what I was driving at seems absurd to me, not because physics is vastly divided on what the hell they are actually measuring, but rather because physics is mostly about objective functioning, and while consciousness has that going on as well, this is neither the issue or even the terrain of the Hard Problem, though many in the material trance insist that it is. Mention of Hilbert spaces was never an effort to transpose what was found by physicists into some woo hypothesis, or to seek "proof" of same. Merely to list an example of using a model to work with a slippery phenomenon. Contemplation is not an effort to try and do physics without instruments, anymore than physics is an effort to see what your perception is all about through measuring. Both notions are absurd, IMO.
The way I look at the Hard Problem is that in one sense it is a trick question, but moreover, careful reasoning of what is implied will invariably lead one to MH2's position - that the brain doesn't "produce" awareness (which leaves you with something above and beyond the brain to try and explain away), rather it IS conscious. Yes, there is a process involved, but also a phenomenon that was NOT the result of a process: awareness. The challenge is that there is no observable thing to prove the point. That's what Kant and many others went crazy trying to explain with his a priori. The Zen tradition simply say it is ungraspable, meaning it is not some external object you and hold up to the light and say, "There. That's IT!"
The hitch to all of this is that most people have no direct experience of recognizing they can be aware of ANY thought, feeling, sensation or memory, and in a way that clarifies to the observer that the two are not selfsame. There is no separate observer "watching," no Catesian observer, there is simply awareness itself of what the brain is serving up to the conflagration of objective brain function and awareness = consciousness.
We can say, well that's simply the brain being aware of its own content. But as mentioned, the wonky thing, as queer and strange as anything in quantum mechanics, is that when brain generated content is allowed to fall away from your sphere of focus, awareness itself and the experience of awareness intensifies many fold SANS content. But none of this can be appreciated by trying to wrangle it from a 3rd person perspective, which is always fused to content. The observing will always go missing, except for the person doing the measuring or reading the instruments. No escaping that.
You might be able to get hold of this by asking yourself what is the difference between your experience and that of your computer. The first thing to realize is that awareness in not data, nor yet an input, which IS data. Then explore the difference between machine registration, like a space probe taking a reading, and you having an experience of reading these words. Then go from there.
PS: An example of a universal truth was busted out a few posts back when the man said, "...but never finished a master's, because I got so wrapped up in climbing, and a woman."
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 23, 2017 - 09:58am PT
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Tool smart and goal stupid seems to the the mental malaise of our species.
Didn't Albert Einstein also say that?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 23, 2017 - 12:52pm PT
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Largo just posted on the science and religion thread about being a teacher, so what I say here could be put there just as well.
For any of you who have ever been a teacher, you’ve probably found that sometimes you just can’t get through to a student. It seems they just haven’t gotten it, and you start to think that they’re never going to get it. You try other means or other narratives or other ways of trying to explain / express what you think you know, but then they come back confused and almost invariably somewhat irate.
Sometimes when you look more closely into the matter, you realize they’ve not really done the homework, they have an attitude about you, they don’t really know how to listen, they won’t suspend their beliefs, you aren’t putting it in quite their terms (your ideas won’t fit into them), they won’t admit that they don’t know (they won’t abandon their assumptions), they lack self-confidence, they’re addicted to an entertainment form of learning, they don’t know how to play with ideas (everything must be critical or important), they exhibit a very high level of cynicism about your topic of study, they assume the NIH position (“not invented here”), they confuse learning with acquiring information, their emotional state is not helping them, they don’t trust you, and on and on.
For those of you who have been a teacher and have not experienced the frustration of not connecting with students fruitfully, I bow down to your prowess. You are not only a better teacher than I, but you are obviously much smarter than I am.
“If I can’t get it, then you must be wrong or stupid.”
There are people who sit almost endlessly in retreat after retreat at one mediation center after another and claim they can’t see their mind. There are others who sit the very first time and experience kenshō. Go figure. There are so very many things that can’t be explained or known to the satisfaction of someone. What can be said?
Just because a teacher can’t bring something to light for to a particular person, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Be well.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Apr 23, 2017 - 01:21pm PT
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Yes, that is true. But it is also important to see that in the end also Jim Jones had problems getting through to some of his "disciples"...
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allapah
climber
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Apr 23, 2017 - 01:22pm PT
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Mind is a property of matter. Potential for mental process exists in all matter, including the stone we climb upon. Organization of matter into what we call Mind is driven in part by quantum dynamics at the sub-nucleic level. Potentiality for Mind exists at every point in space/time. When the right criteria for non entropic organization is met (difference, coded transforms, hierarchy, replication, recursiveness) then Mind begins to emerge, on a spectrum in which Largo, with a neural network, has much greater potential for Mind than does the stone upon which he climbs.
Oh, this isn't the Friday night posting while drunk thread? Sorry, I surfaced into the wrong thread again.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2017 - 01:22pm PT
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Here's an interesting take from Dean W on Hard AI, and endlessly fascinating subject.
All digital computers are binary systems. This means that they store and process information exclusively in terms of two states, which are represented by different symbols—in this case 1s and 0s. It is an interesting fact of nature that binary digits can be used to represent most things; like numbers, letters, colors, shapes, images, and even audio with near perfect accuracy.
This two-symbol system is the foundational principle that all of digital computing is based upon. Everything a computer does involves manipulating two symbols in some way. As such, they can be thought of as a practical type of Turing machine—an abstract, hypothetical machine that computes by manipulating symbols.
A Turing machine’s operations are said to be “syntactical”, meaning they only recognize symbols and not the meaning of those symbols—i.e., their semantics. Even the word “recognize” is misleading because it implies a subjective experience, so perhaps it is better to simply say that computers are able to physically register symbols, as inputs, whereas the brain is capable of semantic understanding.
It does not matter how fast the computer is, how much memory it has, or how complex and high-level the programming language. The Jeopardy and Chess playing champs Watson and Deep Blue fundamentally work the same as your microwave. Put simply, a strict symbol-processing machine can never be a symbol-understanding machine. Philosopher John Searle has cleverly depicted this fact by analogy in his famous and highly controversial “Chinese Room Argument”, which has been convincing minds that “syntax is not sufficient for semantics” since it was published in 1980. And although some esoteric rebuttals have been put forth (the most common being the “Systems Reply”), none even remotely bridge the gap between syntax and semantics. But even if one is not fully convinced based on the Chinese Room Argument alone, it does not change the simple fact that Turing machines are symbol manipulating machines and not thinking machines.
Simulation Does Not Equal Duplication
The Weak A.I. hypothesis says that computers can only simulate the brain, and according to some like John Searle—who coined the terms Strong and Weak A.I.—a simulation of a conscious system is very different from the real thing. In other words, the hardware of the “machine” matters, and mere digital representations of biological mechanisms have no power to cause anything to happen in the real world.
Consider another biological phenomenon, like photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert light into energy. This process requires specific biochemical reactions only viable given a material that has specific molecular and atomic properties. A perfect computer simulation—an emulation—of photosynthesis will never be able to convert light into energy no matter how accurate, and no matter what type of hardware you provide the computer with. What's more, whatever method you used to demarcate light and energy would only be a symbolic simulation of these phenomenon, they would not be light and energy themselves.
To understand the issue even deeper, consider doing a computer simulation of a rainbow, sticking with the standard method of sticking to an observer independent piece of data that objectifies the given phenomenon, in this case a rainbow.
What might the simulation consist of? It would have no actual color, since this is a subjective quality requiring an observer. Every other aspect of the rainbow would be represented by symbols that would designate the physical aspect of an arc of radiation in certain frequencies, existing and changing over time, that is if you were simulating the actual PROCESS of a rainbow appearing and vanishing in the sky. Close as you can get to simulating the rainbow through representing it symbolically, no one would dare claim that the symbols in the simulation would actually function and exist in the same way as the rainbow itself. How would that statement make sense?
Now say we want to simulate the sentience of a rainbow, in which case we would have to simulate the rainbow, and also the sentience of same.
Since computer simulation requires representing a physical process by way of a code, much as the computer simulated photosynthesis, the imagined sentient code would ascribe symbols that digitally represent the physical process of sentience. In other words, the symbols would symbolically describe the process, but they would not be the physical brain itself. The simulation, in essence, would be a digital mock up of the physical system equated with sentience, and that symbolic mock up would exist as a multi-layered hierarchy of digital code.
But ... when we run the photosynthesis program, for example, nobody would claim that the program was PERFORMING photosynthesis, and yet when we run the theoretical code for being sentient of a rainbow simulation, some believe that the simulation will be PERFORMING sentience by way of a code that simulates the physical process.
Why? The fatal error derives from another computer science concept called emulation. An emulator "is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the host) to behave like another computer system (called the guest). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system. Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate (or imitate) another program or device."
While we do not consider either photosynthesis or a rainbow to be another electronic representational program or device, Hard AI folks have gotten it in their heads that sentience is an electronic program or device representing (by way of a biological code) some underlying thing or function. Or else they have conflated the code WITH the function. That means in the case of photosynthesis and the rainbow, we only need translate the code of these "devices or programs" into analogous digital formats, emulate the process, and the result will be sugar and color itself. Or sentience.
Maybe not ...
--
Not sure what the point is here. Perhaps he was railing against those insisting that consciousness is itself a physical process, while at the same time trying to wiggle out of the panpsychism that necessarily follows from that belief. You can't have it both ways.
The point I can understand per the above is that few would consider a fire, say, to be a program, so we all know that a digital simulation of a fire isn't going to burn anyone's had because the symbols representing "fire" are not themselves kinetic energy.
If you hold that consciousness itself IS physical, then it is qualitatively no different then a fire or photosynthesis. None of these are programs so a digital simulation would not be sentience itself, anymore that the simulated fire would be hot.
If you believe that "mind' is only a program running on the brain, you not only have to answer the hard problem, you also have to symbolically represent (digitizes) what you cannot see, so you are left to simulate the physical brain, and you're back to hoping, figuratively speaking, that the simulation of photosynthesis would generate energy.
There's also a possible implication if infinite regress, but I have to ponder it.
Off to Red Rocks for four days. Will be nice to get away.
Peace!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 23, 2017 - 03:30pm PT
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Yes, there is a [brain] process involved, but also a phenomenon that was NOT the result of a process: awareness
This is where you part ways with some of us. You seem so certain awareness is not a product of the brain. And yet you fail to convince the science types on this thread - those of us used to logical argument. Where does your certainty come from? The only point of origin seems to me to be your meditative experiences.
And the mind plays tricks. I found I could not walk through walls.
The challenge is that there is no observable thing to prove the point
Perhaps the challenge is that you are attempting to extract elements from an empty set.
Perhaps he was railing against those insisting that consciousness is itself a physical process, while at the same time trying to wiggle out of the panpsychism that necessarily follows from that belief
So if consciousness is the result of brain processes it must follow that my pet rock has a primordial form of consciousness? Your logical implications sometimes are way off the deep end.
Have fun at RR.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:24pm PT
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Jgill:
Regarding “awareness”: . . .
What is the context for (your) experience? (Do you understand what I’m asking you?)
Some Buddhists refer to it as alaya, the base. What is the basis of experience? Reference to *an experience* is content. What is the context for experience?
If you believe that there is experience, then what is the ground for that?
Or would you contend that there is no ground or base for experience that can be perceived? If so, then what would content be without reference?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:44pm PT
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If you believe that "mind' is only a program running on the brain, you not only have to answer the hard problem, you also have to symbolically represent (digitizes)
A good example of misunderstanding, here, and above with all the 0s and 1s. The brain is an analog not a digital computer.
Put simply, a strict symbol-processing machine can never be a symbol-understanding machine.
How about a non-strict symbol-processing machine?
If you hold that consciousness itself IS physical, then it is qualitatively no different then a fire or photosynthesis.
You must have a different notion of "qualitatively different" than I do. I find fire and photosynthesis to be qualitatively different.
Very very weak argument.
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