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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 15, 2017 - 03:18pm PT
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MH2: Sounds anthropomorphic.
I can imagine that it does. It (the incommensurability of different disciplines) does challenge the mind to make sense of things, and if that is of interest to folks, then they will (sooner or later) want to tie everything together.
If reality is just one thing (as it were), then all of these different disciplines are supposed to come together. Philosophy has tried to make that happen in various ways, but it has failed. The so-called 3 pillars of truth (what is true, what is beautiful, what is good) which formed the broad basis for philosophy was only united in Western thought through religion, which was obviously hegemonic to all things material and spiritual. Once man came to think that he was the measure of all things, then religion fell, and man’s existence and wonderings have been fragmented ever since (one can argue). Reason has become the final arbiter in all matters, but unfortunately reason cannot sustain itself: that is, it cannot justify itself in terms of values. Values come from cultures, from communities—and those are not found to be equanimous. They appear to be idiosyncratic.
Unless we can somehow rise to another level altogether beyond reason, we will remain a fragmented species. It may well lead to Hobbes’ “war against all.”
It’s funny-strange to me how the more advanced we seem to become, the more we war with one another ideologically, emotionally, philosophically.
I see all of this as some kind of bizarre dream, not quite real.
What kind of perception brings all people together? Physics?
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 15, 2017 - 03:20pm PT
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What kind of perception brings all people together?
WAR .....and GOD
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Jun 15, 2017 - 04:47pm PT
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MikeL . . . .
Werner has it right.
Dingus: Consciousness is an illusion we create
Dingus' statement creates a mobius strip, an mise en abyme, like a mirror placed in front of another mirror, a display of a display, a reflection of a reflection, an infinity loop.
Consciousness is that which “you” are. One illusion is that there is a you, as well as all the things that “you” populates onto awareness that facilitates consciousness. Take out the things that are created, and what’s left? (There IT is.)
MikeL,
please note the subtle distinction you missed: I did say,
"Consciousness is an illusion we create" as a reason for why Largo would have difficulty explaining it in scientific terms. And I went on to further say that some see the bigger picture [maybe of how things happen?[including in your mind]]. You have made an odd assumption about what the bigger picture is or totally neglected to consider what it might be to call me out in manner you have. I never said anything of the "you" experience
All of us at least have an elusive delusional illusional idea of what consciousness is but is the bigger picture still consciousness? You seem to think I have taken a definitive stance on this but I have not. Only for the ideas of naive consciousness.
I do think for [some] a false set of ideas exist in their minds as to what is happening within their mind yet they cling to those ideas like a bulldog suspended by rope e.g. Largo
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2017 - 07:40pm PT
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I do think for [some] a false set of ideas exist in their minds as to what is happening within their mind yet they cling to those ideas like a bulldog suspended by rope e.g. Largo
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This is, once again, the rookie error of conflating content (thoughts/ideas/beliefs, feelings, sensations, and memories) with being aware in the first instance.
What happens when you stop clinging to ideas?
What ever gave you the impression that awareness itself is an idea?
That's a case of being lost in your own mind. Fused or attached, as we say, to WHAT is going on in your awareness.
Uncle Dennett's Folly is not realizing that ANY content postulates awareness. You can argue content all day long - that it is unreal or real or imagined or fill in the blank. But as mentioned, no one is going to go to CERNE and say, "You are only imagining you are aware of those atoms smashing around in that chingadera there. Your awareness itself is an illusion."
This, of course, is logically incoherent. Believe otherwise? Think out the process on paper. You'll stall out in no time. Or default into statements like, "the brain attributes awareness to itself," surely one of the most sensational howlers to ever fart from the physicalist's camp.
All efforts to describe awareness as content are themsevles conflated with same, but the phenomenon are not selfsame - we can easily see why once we shut up and stop calculating and clinging to content.
Here's a little bit to chew on:
https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Jun 15, 2017 - 08:16pm PT
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Largo,
give me an example of awareness that does not have content. In some way provide evidence not the self same assertions you rummage with as to how things are regarding awareness without content.
I think in all your experience with awareness without content you doze off to a state where the low level effects of being alive are felt as almost nothing and in this numbed out state of mind you conclude the experience is of awareness without content.
Watch more carefully
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 15, 2017 - 09:04pm PT
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Dingus:
Don’t feel that I’m calling you out, per se. It’s just a conversation.
I don’t get it. Of course I mis-read your writing, but I can’t quite decipher what you’re getting at. I don’t see how one can claim that consciousness is an illusion. One either has it or doesn’t, in any form. Whether I’m in a trance on the dance floor, in the middle of a schizophrenic episode, in a dream, imagining I’m a super spy agent for the CIA while reading the most recent Ludlum novel, or in the middle of a visualization practice preparing to climb that 5.12D, it’s all consciousness, right? Any and all content is indicative of consciousness, as it would be in a sensory deprivation tank where there is nothing (apparently) to perceive.
I take it that your writing is doubting the possibility of being aware of no content whatsoever—to include the very absence of absence of content (a negation of a negation). If that’s so, then I would suggest that it is possible—when the subject drops out of the subject-object dualism. I’m sure I won’t say this well enough, but when “I” am no longer the center of everything (as seems usually the case), then objects are no longer distinguishable from that which perceived. (I can imagine this might make very little sense from a conventional point of view, but I would imagine that you’ve experienced it from time to time.)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2017 - 09:07pm PT
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I tend to side with John on this one issue of empty awareness. I do believe he has had a meditative experience that can be interpreted as empty awareness, like an empty stage before a performance. Of course that is a little bit of a stretch for to have the experience and remember it he must be conscious of it at the time, and so is in a sense aware of empty awareness.
The mind looking into itself is a paradox generator.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2017 - 07:40am PT
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Yes.
Let us acknowledge that there can be different kinds of awareness, whatever we mean by awareness. Calling a kind of awareness "empty" may not mean much to some people. Perhaps it could also be called unfocussed or open awareness? It could happen that one's awareness is so evenly distributed that no one thing stands out from any other.
But I agree with John Gill. If one claims to have experienced empty awareness, one must have been aware of the emptiness.
At the same time, zen and logic are matter and anti-matter.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jun 16, 2017 - 07:41am PT
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Here's a little bit to chew on
So I read that, Largo. I have to say it surprised me that a distinguished professor of psychology would have such a poor understanding of computers and then express dogma about what they can be used to model. For example, he cites an article (an interesting one) by Michael McBeath that proposes a method to characterize how baseball players catch a fly ball. Epstein says it's his "favourite example of the dramatic difference between the IP perspective and what some now call the ‘anti-representational’ view of human functioning." He concludes that McBeath's work shows the way the brain works catching a baseball "is actually incredibly simple, and completely free of computations, representations and algorithms". I'm not sure if Epstein is just blowing smoke here, or really doesn't have a clue. At any rate (perhaps Epstein is unaware of this) McBeath has since used his method to build a robot that's pretty good at catching baseballs:
.
It seems to me, the main problem with the article is Epstein's knowledge of computer science seems to be based on an introductory IT course. Too bad, because I would tend to agree that, in many important ways, the brain doesn't seem to work like a digital computer.
In my opinion, Dreyfus, for example, was already saying more interesting stuff about this same subject, more than 60 years ago. The thing about Dreyfus's philosophical criticisms is they actually may have helped people in AI clarify their job.
In an interview in 2005, Dreyfus said:
“They said they could program computers to be intelligent like people. They came to my course and said, more or less: ‘We don’t need Plato and Kant and Descartes anymore. That was all just talk. We’re empirical. We’re going to actually do it.' I really wanted to know, could they do it? If they could, it was very important. If they couldn’t, then human beings were different than machines, and that was very important.”
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2017 - 05:43pm PT
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If they couldn’t, then human beings were different than machines, and that was very important.”
That depends on who "they" are.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 16, 2017 - 06:24pm PT
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They?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2017 - 06:41pm PT
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John, you're scurrilous.
But in a good way, of course.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 16, 2017 - 07:14pm PT
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Yanqui, the article was not meant to be a definitive take on computation, rather to show how metaphors using processing to "explain" mind are merely another in a long line of stop gap fads using whatever technology is at hand.
Point being, people are fixated on externals to try and describe what we all know is an internal phenomenon. If not, tell me what your wife is experiencing right now. Most answers automatically default to the mechanism believed to "create" consciousnes, which leaves you with the Hard Problem. Then the double talk and evasion tactics start in big time.
If you want to look at a much more comprehensive take from a computational POV, check out this one:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-minds-are-not-like-computers
And Dingus Mcgee, when you say, "Look closer," the implication is that you can get outside of awareness and look at it closely, and "out there" as an external object. In my opinion, this betrays a crooked view of awareness itself. You cannot get outside of it. The phrase some traditions use to hammer home this point is: "you cannot kiss your own lips."
What's more, you cannot find a physical mechanism that is separate from or is more fundamental that creates or sources or gives rise to awareness. Likewise, we'll never find sense data outside or external to awareness and consciousness. That is, you'll never find "red," "love," or "joy" themselves inside of dancing neurons. The notion is absurd, of course.
Not that your hunch is not intuitive. We can use a mirror to get a look at our physical selves, and size ourselves up as sense data. Not so with awareness, which itself is a transparent mirror of sorts.
And MH2, awareness does not come in varied flavors. What you are talking about is what consciousness does WITH awareness in terms of focus and paying attention to this or that or to nothing at all. You might find Les Fehmi (from the UCLA Brain Lab) Open Focus (google the term) interesting in this regards.
More later. I'm bushed.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2017 - 07:37pm PT
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What you are talking about is
Wow! Someone knows what I am talking about.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2017 - 11:08pm PT
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^^^^
LOL!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2017 - 11:46pm PT
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Jgill: The mind looking into itself is a paradox generator.
I meant to comment, but I had to get ready to travel.
I can’t remember the Lama's name, but he described the event of falling into unelaborated awareness in a familiar way to me. At the moment of a dawning of the event, there is a kind of toggling back and forth between being conscious of self and sensations and “perceiving alone” (no subject, no objects). The toggling seems to be the mind not settling with either the conventional or the ultimate view, a sort of a state of confusion or a kind of optical illusion. In-out, in-out, in-out, in-out, until one finally relaxes or gives up the need to observe. Then it’s just perceiving without a perceiver or things being perceived: the nondual. This is what actually occurs all the time, but with more than a few veils overlaid for most people (delusion).
“A paradox generator” seems to be a pretty apt pointer if you can see what the paradox seems to be. A Dzogchen master named Garab Dorje said there was only three steps to liberation. He left his instruction, “Hitting the essence in three words.” (i) Get the view just once: see unelaborated pristine awareness—the nondual state. Here one is introduced to one’s true nature oftentimes by one’s teacher. (ii) Remain without doubt that the view is one’s natural state. In other words, return to the view as often as one can. It is a decision: decide that the view is one’s true nature. (iii) Continue in confidence until unelaborated awareness pervades being at all times. Meditation then is remaining in the state without searching, without distraction. I have to use the word “state,” because there is no other than perhaps “experience” (only here experience without content). It’s also poetically called “radiant presence.” It appears to be simply the play of light that is always present. It’s what one’s consciousness is; it is what appears to manifest in unending time. It’s all there is.
Gotta get to bed.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 17, 2017 - 12:08am PT
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awareness does not come in varied flavors. What you are talking about is what consciousness does WITH awareness in terms of focus and paying attention to this or that or to nothing at all. humm, i woulda thought awareness came before conscience? but prolly not on the evolutionary chart tho, eh?
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jun 17, 2017 - 03:55am PT
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.
past--------------------------[thought/moment/consciousness/MIND]--------------------future
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jun 17, 2017 - 07:25am PT
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They?
I always suspected that AI researchers at MIT in 1958 were just space aliens in disguise! The full interview if anyone is interested:
http://full-tilt.blogspot.com.ar/2005/10/hubert-dreyfus-interview.html
Largo: that newer post is long and complex and I don't have time now. The Chinese Room is an intriguing thought experiment and has certainly stimulated a lot of debate. I would agree that Searle's thought on this matter is interesting, even if it's not conclusive.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2017 - 08:18am PT
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Nice write up, Mike.
I view that toggling as the discursive mind attempting to label, interpret, and make sense out of the flow of experience.
Strangely, when one holds their attention at a level below words, when you drop out of generating semantic meaning to what you are experiencing, duality starts to dissolve.
But what does that signify?
It's probably a shift of identity from the perceiving I, with all our feelings and thoughts and memories and evaluations, to the field of awareness in which all of this arises, which itself is empty (no separate, stand alone existence). That's when all the stuff of the world is seen as impermanent.
The tricky part to try and explain is that our discursive minds will label these experiences as evaluations, when in fact they are more akin to simple encounters minus identifiable information or data per discrete things (which births duality).
That is, before our brains generate meaning and evaluations, who are we? What are we?
From a discursive mind point of reference, when that mind is not grinding on discrete things and meanings, the mind itself is going soft, dozing, dropping into a trance, when in fact with some practice and instruction, the mind starts to clear and perception gets increasingly robust - pretty much the opposite of a trance of doze state.
But this takes time to work up to because the mind is so habituated to grinding, and doesn't know how to rest, or "do nothing." Many traditions use breath following or mantras to give the mind something to chew on, like giving a dog a bone, while awareness can slowly become unfused with content.
Then the rest of the stuff starts to make sense.
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