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WBraun
climber
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:49pm PT
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Off to Red Rocks for four days. Will be nice to get away.
There's no escape ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:58pm PT
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^^^^^^
Ha ha. Good one.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 23, 2017 - 08:59pm PT
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Content without reference is emptiness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 23, 2017 - 09:08pm PT
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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?
Nice bit of Eastern philosophy, Mike. I have conceded raw awareness as an "empty stage" - my analogy, incidentally. What does your comment have to do with whether awareness (or context) is the outcome of a brain process? If it is not the result of neural activity in the brain, then what? Can awareness exist, as JL would say, sans brain? Is my pet rock, Jasper, aware?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 23, 2017 - 09:19pm PT
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I am pleased to share the honors ^^^
We'll split the proceeds.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Apr 24, 2017 - 04:58am PT
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Categories: The thought experiment known as hard problem is hard because it's spokespeople have put the mind/set background in categories that likely do not exist as they postulate. Wallow in your muddle?
Do not oversimplify the activity of computers as simply 1's and 0's. Computers are running algorithms and so are animal/human minds. It would be somewhat difficult to measure local binary flow and then determine what algorithms a computer was running. Our brain/ minds/ awareness measures a sorted local flow and the extrapolations of what is going on is talked & acted upon about endlessly. And women sort of quickly & unconsciously run their algorithm that decides for them whether they will leave the bar with you.
A neurological researcher that was interested in consciousness [circa 1990's [I cannot now find this book] ] found? [speculated?] that every thought going on in the brain is reverberated in the body. So when we think of running, signals are sent to our legs which in turn this stimulation sends signals back to brain which in turn stimulate various regions of the brain [and the recursion continues & continues & ...]. Hence the richness of thoughts from thinking of running and likewise the richness of the color Red -- once you have experienced red.
the hard problem vanishes
sleep that knits the ravelled sleave of care -- Chemicals in sleep stop this overwhelming reverbing that is going on in awakeness.
Strong AI will not be around until computers-minds get legs and a body for such reverbing and then spend a life growing up. And with some sleep?
John Long, the pundits you refer to [Searle & Dennett = no real support data -- science repeatable] set up their arguments in false categories based on how they think the mind works.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 24, 2017 - 07:49am PT
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Jgill: What does your comment have to do with whether awareness (or context) is the outcome of a brain process?
Sorry. I thought you had asked what the difference was between awareness and consciousness.
Everything that I’ve seen academically in cognitive science is a speculation, so that’s all I can report to you “legitimately.” As I’ve written here way above, it is commonplace now to think that cognition (they don’t call it mind) is not simply what goes on the brain. (But what do they know?)
I’m sorry to part ways with my friends here (to include you), but since we can’t appear to say whether mind is brain or not on either side conclusively, the conversation seems moot. The dialogue may also be irrelevant and leading us to issues that are unimportant.
I feel sure that you and others here would say that whether mind is brain is *the issue* to be worked out because only what can be empirically verified is (and should be) worth talking about. I suspect, on the other hand, that view is more of a knee-jerk response to a disaffection with anything remotely related to myth, religion, feelings, etc. That’s unfortunate to my way of thinking, for those conversations are also where I think our humanity lies. (Yes, and science, too.)
At the end of the day—and I mean on *the* last day—I wonder whether or not you or others will be wondering whether mind is brain or something that is essentially indescribable and intractable. We’ve gotten insightful comments from folks who have gotten a long view of life and this planet, and they did not talk about brains, science, or technology. They expressed mind.
http://www.spacequotations.com/earth.html
If anyone here on this thread has been most resonating with my view of what I think is my mind, it’s been PSP. The entire universe begins to shift in what seems to be an inconceivable way once this thing I call me stops taking “things” so seriously and concretely. What then emerges is a lightness, an absence of substantiality, a vast openness (space?), spontaneity, and (just now and then) a unity not unlike what the astronauts described.
Ha Ha. I guess that makes me a space cadet.
Be well . . . (and sorry for my senior moment).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 24, 2017 - 01:57pm PT
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the extrapolations of what is going on is talked & acted upon about endlessly
I can't speak for the women deciding whether or not to leave the bar with you, but this does sound familiar.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 24, 2017 - 02:00pm PT
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sorry for my senior moment
Are you over 65?
Are you sure?
Does it matter?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 24, 2017 - 02:01pm PT
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The thread struggles with communication ;it reflects the real world. How do we communicate clearly about things when we can't hear the other person or perceive their experience? The thread has shown me that linguistics is a really important field and mediators have a great purpose!
When I first saw the thread title "What is Mind? I thought "oh this is a zen thread" but others probably thought it is an AI thread or a philosophy thread, woo thread etc. etc.. it turns out it is all of those and others.
From the zen point of view the thread struggles with the map is not the territory because zen is not philosophy or a belief system ( since it is a thread this is probably inevitable and part of the conversation) .
There is an interesting thing that happens in meditation sometimes; where you become so undistracted that you don't have to try to meditate, there is no difference between meditation and not meditating. You can move away from what ever your mediation is focusing on and there is no change in the perspective /view. Things are just as they are in an unconditional view; mostly, after meditation, the conditional view reappears and I get pulled around by my likes and dislikes. Supposedly with a lot of practice and attentiveness this unconditional view will dominate the experience most of the time.
Some times I notice that the zen masters don't appear to be too excited about sitting; maybe because for them there is no real difference between formal meditation and eating lunch. i think when they sit they are just sitting for the students.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 24, 2017 - 07:27pm PT
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The dialogue may also be irrelevant and leading us to issues that are unimportant
It's when the conversation wanders off a bit that things get interesting, IMHO. How can anybody in their right mind expect a breakthrough in What is Mind to occur on this thread? But when each of us contributes a little something from our training and backgrounds - that's what makes the thread percolate. It's interesting also to watch JL's "models" shift and change.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 24, 2017 - 08:47pm PT
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zen is not philosophy or a belief system
According to zen. But zen has nothing to say, so whose opinion is that that zen is not a philosophy or a belief? Zen doesn't care and doesn't have an opinion, so if a human considers it a philosophy or a belief, where's the problem?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 24, 2017 - 09:28pm PT
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MH2 says "According to zen. But zen has nothing to say, so whose opinion is that that zen is not a philosophy or a belief? Zen doesn't care and doesn't have an opinion, so if a human considers it a philosophy or a belief, where's the problem?"
There a lot of western armchair zen fans. They read the books but they don't take the step to get a teacher and sit retreats. For the book readers it is a philosophy something always within the discursive.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 24, 2017 - 09:44pm PT
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They (Zen) try to become desireless.
That is a desire itself.
It's impossible to become desireless, as that is the eternal symptom of every living entity ........
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 25, 2017 - 07:05am PT
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You wrote many interesting things in your penultimate post, PSP (like that alliteration?). To wit:
--A lack of distraction is meditation.
--The unconditional is also the conditional.
--Eating lunch is zazen.
--Teachers do things for students as models. (That may be the most influential thing about being a teacher. It subordinates content and "doing" for being.)
--Not getting too excited about anything is a sign of fruition of the practice.
--The map is not the territory (again!). As the Duck says, one cannot really try not to try.
Cheers.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 25, 2017 - 08:23am PT
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John, my model has changed a ton as I go through the issues and try and weed out what seems to me to be experientially and logically untenable. Strangely, it is through contrasting models and eliminating poor options that the way is starting to open up - not knowing, per se, but reducing options to what seems to be the most probable.
And Dingus, have you gone into the reasoning about syntactic engines It takes a while to wrestle it down but there is no "understanding" with the shuffling of symbols by a Turing Machine, nor yet any awareness of BEING a machine or the processing going on. It is all input, processing, output. What you get from any 3rd person appraisal. There is no "meaning" to the processing, no consciousness, no intelligence. A machine is dumb as a stump. But fantastically adept at mechanical tasks.
One way to approach this is to ask: When AI says they will produce a sentient robot in X amount of years, what will be the difference between the sentient machine and the ones they have now? And what is the difference, right now, between your own internal process, and the process of Vulcan (at Livermore), supposedly the most powerful computer in the world.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 25, 2017 - 09:16am PT
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It is all input, processing, output.
The same can be said of you.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 25, 2017 - 09:19am PT
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You are a good communicator, PSP also PP.
I was just noting that when a person says what zen isn't, it implies that they have a notion of what zen is. Can you say what zen is? I am not asking in the odd sense that MikeL asked, "Can you say what the taste of sugar is?"
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 25, 2017 - 09:26am PT
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ask Siri
Ask Siri .... lol
Siri doesn't know sh!t beyond what limited little programming is put into that unconscious robot and you know that too ......
A machine is dumb as a stump.
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