What is "Mind?"

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Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
Jun 30, 2017 - 09:15am PT
Writing habits can work both ways. I used to write poetry but after years of learning to write precisely in graduate school and footnote everything, I can't do do poetry anymore. As a result, when I want to let my artistic mind flow, I do it with something my discursive mind has never been trained for like Japanese flower arranging.

Since I write for an international audience I deliberately try to write in straightforward international English so that people can sort through my ideas instead of wondering whether it's my ideas or the grammatical and technical construction of English that is making things difficult to understand. The result is that I routinely have my journal articles critiqued by editors for not containing enough professional jargon.

In the publish or perish world of academia the goal increasingly seems to be producing work that only a handful of people in the world can understand and less than that are interested in, a syndrome that has been criticized for effectively removing academics from meaningful public discourse. Mathemeticians would be less concerned about this, but it causes at least a few social scientists to question exactly who are we doing our studies for.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Jun 30, 2017 - 10:04am PT
I do it with something my discursive mind has never been trained for like Japanese flower arranging.

Interesting point. It seems the need to communicate with a listener in mind has us all rushing to the rules of engagement. Flower arranging is free of the dictates of rationalism so that its point, it's crux, can be anything the viewer devises it to be. This leaves the arranger free to say something or to say nothing.

In fictional prose, as just one example, some writers would be well-advised to heed the flower arranger's approach -- to give up the ghost and to trust the reader implicitly when the tough get going and the going gets tough. I would suspect this is sometimes why short stories are often more difficult to do well.

Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 30, 2017 - 03:23pm PT
You gots to go to Ward's music link. Such interesting stuff - like a harmonium on peyote. Go Ward.

And is the avatar pic from El Camino Real?
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jun 30, 2017 - 03:40pm PT
Jan:


it causes at least a few social scientists to question exactly who are we doing our studies for.


ibid:

only a handful of people in the world



See yanqui above.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jun 30, 2017 - 03:44pm PT
I listened to Ward earlier this morning.

Intricate and very listenable.


I suggest reading The American Language.
H. L. Mencken
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Jun 30, 2017 - 05:05pm PT

You gots to go to Ward's music link. Such interesting stuff - like a harmonium on peyote. Go Ward.
And is the avatar pic from El Camino Real?


I listened to Ward earlier this morning.

Intricate and very listenable.

Thanky. As I mentioned I could be getting this thing played by real musicians on real instruments ,in due course.
If and when that happens I'll get a recording for y'all.
Recently started work on orchestral piece. And of course always working on pop,rock, a leetle Jazz influenced stuff,etc..

Yes that's El Camino Real. Good eye there my friend. Excellent route ,hey?

Tonight got a dinner with a good friend Andre Trepanier ( my dinner with Andre). He was once best friends and "business associate" with Sal Pacino, father to Al of Godfather fame. (Sal died a few years ago). Andre has these Hollywood and mafia stories you would not believe. One of these days I'm taking a tape recorder along to capture some of them.


Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
Jun 30, 2017 - 08:37pm PT
I would agree with you Ward. After poetry, short stories would be the next hardest thing for most academics to write and for the same reasons.
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Jul 1, 2017 - 12:16pm PT
Hey so I like to simplify. This is my take on the main sides of what is mind. I've broken it out basically, into the rationalist/religious and empiricist/scientific categories.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 1, 2017 - 01:40pm PT
Interesting take on mind, especially what you list as "empirical/scientific" modes on inquiry.

Empirical, in its general usage, means "based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic."

All scientific inquiries, by definition, strive after observer-independent measurements of some observable object or phenomenon. Then, based on those measurements, you work up theories, experiments, and work toward predictions about what said object/phenomenon will DO. Any description containing the slightest quotient of the subjective/experiential is, again, by definition, NOT objective.

Mind and experience are clearly subjective realities. They are not external objects or stuff detectable as sense data - we can easily see why. If you are working off the intuitive assumption that the brain creates, or sources mind, then what you are measuring is not mind itself, rather the mechanism you believe is creating or sourcing ("neurological substrate," etc.) - in some manner - our experiential reality. So in any real or simplified way, measuring brain is not empirically investigating mind, rather you are investigating brain with the assumption that brain mechanistically sources mind - a common intuition to us all.

As mentioned, this is where our assumptions start getting sticky.

If we say mind and brain are the same, that is, identical, then mind has to be an inherent quality OF brain. If we say brain sources mind by way of a mechanism or mechanistic process, we commonly look to the theory of emergence, where what emerges is NOT identical WITH brain.

Problem here is that emergence is not an explanation, rather a theory, which goes no distance in shaking down how mind is the mechanical output of brain.

That leaves us with the Hard Problem. Ain't no escaping it.

One of the challenges is that we have little to go on, mechanically speaking, since in every other instance of a mechanism sourcing an output, or some object or phenomenon, the output is an object or measurable phenomenon - that is, an objective thing - that we can get hold of, 3rd person, as sense data. In the case of an object sourcing a subjective phenomenon, there is nothing else in known reality that exhibits this ever happening. Saying there that subjectivity is not itself real is clearly not an explanation.

As I've said before, using a subjective-independent mode of inquiry to supposedly "find" or examine subjectivity is itself an absurd proposition. It leaves people to explore the mechanism (the brain). No harm in that, but it unavoidably carries with it the need to demonstrate how the subjective is the output of the objective - a tricky task when experience itself is no "verifiable by observation." It's no small wonder that conflation often follows.

A more coherent question might be: What is the relationship between mind and brain, and what might that relationship look like in terms other than mechanical causation? Problem is, most people are not disposed to thinking in anything but mechanistic-causal terms, all else being "magic."

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jul 1, 2017 - 01:45pm PT
Largo,

You are the caterpillar asked how it moves its legs. When you try to think about it you get all tangled up.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jul 1, 2017 - 04:37pm PT
As I've said before, using a subjective-independent mode of inquiry to supposedly "find" or examine subjectivity is itself an absurd proposition. It leaves people to explore the mechanism (the brain)


Which leaves us with some kind of introspection - the mind exploring itself - or trance states requiring belief in what appears. Thus these states are a kind of godless religion.

Are there other ways to investigate mind without science?
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 1, 2017 - 06:52pm PT
Which leaves us with some kind of introspection - the mind exploring itself - or trance states requiring belief in what appears.
--


Trying to lock onto WHAT appears is not the job - that is the common misconception. This tact is what I call an attempt to do science without instruments. Or else it leaves people to try and reify the content of experience (thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories) as this or that. John thinks that it leaves an observer to consider the content to be a kind of "godless religion," a unique take since there is no worship, doctrine, higher power, or any of the other stuff on which "religion" usually turns. But it does underscore the difficulty of getting mired in identifying with the stuff of consiousness.

Another kind of knee-jerl reaction is MH2's, where he believes that an observer is, or should be, trying to get hold of how his body moves in time and space.

In both of these curious takes on the question, we see no effort to look at the points raised - that we can hardly expect an observer-independent mode of inquiry to disclose observing (or the fact that we are cognizant and aware), and that experience does not present an output that we can wrangle as sense data.

I sense that efforts to equate any of this to "god" is yet another effort to track down a causal source, to consider mind as an output of some other agency, be it a mechanism, or in John's case, some nebulous god or .... MH2 is also thinking of the question in terms of output - how do you raise your arm. Again, that output is something we can wrangle as sense data, which is yet another dodge of the basic question.

So I'll rephrase the question - is it possible for you to imagine investigating mind, not in terms of a source, a god, a religion, a mechanism, or in terms of carrying out a physical task (like raising your hand)? And is it possible to introspect sans a "trance" state? In other words, why would you consider it axiomatic that all introspection is, perforce, conducted from a trance state, and is this belief based on introspection, or SPECULATING on introspection from a 3rd person perspective?

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jul 1, 2017 - 08:22pm PT
is it possible for you to imagine investigating mind, not in terms of a source, a god, a religion, a mechanism, or in terms of carrying out a physical task (like raising your hand)?


I don't need to imagine it. I experience it.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jul 1, 2017 - 08:41pm PT
Trying to lock onto WHAT appears is not the job - that is the common misconception


And yet you repeatedly refer to your experience of "empty awareness" or "no-thingness", implying you were conscious during this experience even though it was not an objective revelation. You more than imply you believe what you were experiencing, and that is where you share a pew with religion. Don't attempt to dilute this argument by referencing gods or demons.

I could have believed I had the ability to walk through walls over forty years ago, but that speculation vanished when I made the attempt when not in an altered state. You always assert that what you experienced in your altered states you believe to be true. You have even borrowed from quantum physics in an effort to somehow justify your beliefs by invoking analogies with science. And then on another thread saying it's ridiculous to do that.

Get a grip, man.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 2, 2017 - 12:11pm PT
You more than imply you believe what you were experiencing, and that is where you share a pew with religion. Don't attempt to dilute this argument by referencing gods or demons.
---


Except you are totally missing the point of what is not an argument, but rather an observation that anyone can have for themselves.

The religious references are all your own - that much is clear. Why, because you repeatedly go back - like a mouse to a hole - to the belief that the "what" you experience during ANY form of introspection is the point of it all, and that "what" is sharing a pew with religion. This is your own baggage, John.

Again, since I have never said anything of the sort - the idea seems ludicrous to me - I can only guess that this belief is based on your own experiences, since it certainly is not based on mine. So it might be interesting to know how you came to consider the "what" of your own introspection to be religious in nature. This has not been my experience, but I don't rule it out in your case.

And it's crazy talk to say that introspection is the ONLY way to study mind. I see mind as three-pronged. Mechanical brain function and output, awareness as a priori, and consciousness as the convergence or confluence of where brain meets awareness. If you want to study awareness itself - sans content or John's "what," introspection is probably your only direct means of doing so. That still leaves brain function, and consciousness, which are huge fields to be sure. It is also necessary to pursue each of these independently, as everyone does.

While consciousness is a unified phenomenon, there is much profit gained - at least in a discursive investigation like this - in isolating out (for example) say, awareness, as a special study of inquiry. Few doing so would consider that they are directly looking at objective brain function in the bargain, doing what I call "science without instruments." However many using an observer-independent mode of inquiry per mechanical functioning believe they are also directly observing sentience itself. Chalmers Hard Problem simply asks: What makes you think so, and how?

The only possible answer at this point is say that either objective brain function IS conscious, or it sources consciousness by way of a mechanism.

This has led nowhere in terms of answering how we are aware of anything. We are, in fact, totally clueless per a mechanistic explanation for sentience.

All takes on the question are themselves based on the notion that awareness is in some way evoked by way of data processing, that the stuff we are aware of - when presented this way or that, when reflected back to us by way of mirror neurons or as composite information or (fill in the blank), that this self-generates awareness in the process, that in some way awareness is spawned by the content of awareness, or the mechanical processing behind it. Or most fantastically, that the brain "attributes" awareness to itself for reasons never explained.

To say we are fixated on the stuff of awareness is an understatement. Notice this allows us to try and posit said stuff as objective phenomenon we can be right or wrong about. Curiously, the only thing we cannot be wrong about is that we are aware in the first instance.

Integrated Information Theory says it like this:

"Intrinsic existence: Consciousness exists: each experience is actual—indeed, that my experience here and now exists (it is real) is the only fact I can be sure of immediately and absolutely. Moreover, my experience exists from its own intrinsic perspective, independent of external observers (it is intrinsically real or actual)."

To repeat, my immediate consciousness "is the only fact I can be sure of immediately and absolutely." No sane person doubts that they are experiencing their life.

Per introspection, in the same way we are "immediately and absolutely" certain that we ARE aware, we can get a feel for the fundamental nature of awareness itself, but this DOES NOT involve discursive evaluations of WHAT we are aware of - the stuff John, for reasons yet explained, puts in a pew with religion.

It is imaginable that one might try and equate the fundamental nature of awareness to the omniscient nature ascribed to the gods of religion, except for one crucial aspect. And that is that awareness itself is totally devoid of all aspect, feature, color, tone, feeling, data, independent nature, ascribable property. It is entirely empty, devoid of all the aforementioned designators, religious or otherwise. One can easily see why John would scramble to paint awareness with religious ornament since discursively speaking, we cannot objectify what is not there. The mind yells, something MUST be there, something we can be right or wrong about. But all qualities and labels simply do not stick to awareness.

In the discursive investigation of mind, we might say that sentience is only one component in unified consciousness, but without it, the conversation drives itself into all manner of dead ends and conundrums.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Jul 2, 2017 - 12:58pm PT
Mechanical brain function and output, awareness as a priori, and consciousness as the convergence or confluence of where brain meets awareness.

Well, as I said, at least we've gotten this far in the way of what you explicitly believe. I in no way share that belief, but that's cool.

It is imaginable that one might try and equate the fundamental nature of awareness to the omniscient nature ascribed to the gods of religion, except for one crucial aspect. And that is that awareness itself is totally devoid of all aspect, feature, color, tone, feeling, data, independent nature, ascribable property. It is entirely empty, devoid of all the aforementioned designators, religious or otherwise.

Awareness is a near infinite set of hierarchical processes which input, modulate, filter, translate, combine, recognize, acknowledge, and contextualize the world for your mind. Funny thing is that all most all of that happens in physical and subconscious processes; the awareness of your mind is like a very small tip of a very large iceberg where most all of the work is happening under the hood before your mind ever becomes consciously 'aware' of anything. Might need to start talking about conscious and subconscious minds.

But all qualities and labels simply do not stick to awareness.

That's because there's no-thing there to label - it's a state / experience about which, in its pure form, not only there is no-thing to label, there is nothing to be had or learned from it either. Vacating all the various premises in your head and emptying your mind is great as a subjective experience, but let's get real and just say that an experience is what it is and begets no-thing other than having had that experience.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jul 2, 2017 - 04:02pm PT
However many using an observer-independent mode of inquiry per mechanical functioning believe they are also directly observing sentience itself

And there it is: they "believe."

Nothing wrong with that. And when you speak of "form is emptiness and emptiness is form" it's clear you believe. And that's fine, but it doesn't leave much wiggle room for discourse.

The only possible answer at this point is say that either objective brain function IS conscious, or it sources consciousness by way of a mechanism. This has led nowhere in terms of answering how we are aware of anything

And so the failure of past efforts is evidence they should no longer be pursued? You give up so easily.

While consciousness is a unified phenomenon, there is much profit gained - at least in a discursive investigation like this - in isolating out (for example) say, awareness, as a special study of inquiry

Which has led nowhere beyond a meditative state of "empty stage." Why continue?
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 2, 2017 - 04:40pm PT
The tricky thing about your proclamations Healje is, IMO, that you are half right about half of the time. Conflated and stacked as they are, there is enough truth in them to bother trying to unpack them so they are, or seem to be, logically coherent.

First this whopper:

"Awareness is a near infinite set of hierarchical processes which input, modulate, filter, translate, combine, recognize, acknowledge, and contextualize the world for your mind. Funny thing is that all most all of that happens in physical and subconscious processes; the awareness of your mind is like a very small tip of a very large iceberg where most all of the work is happening under the hood before your mind ever becomes consciously 'aware' of anything. Might need to start talking about conscious and subconscious minds."

So we see Healje is an adherent of the processing school of mind, the implication being that awareness itself can be understood entirely in terms of WHAT is processed, and is a kind of adjunct process accordingly. A sort of, "We are what we eat" metaphor for awareness.

Here, awareness is not simple sentience of content, rather awareness itself is posited as a processing agent given to "input, modulate, filter, translate, combine, recognize, acknowledge, and contextualize the world for your mind."

Not sure what he means by "mind" here but it may be that if he swapped out awareness to mind as used above, he would be onto something.

The paragraph above by Healje, as we can plainly see, is to ascribe to awareness the function of consciousness, which in my understanding does all the things Healje ascribes to awareness.

The logical coherence goes out of the claim once we start asking how the "hierarchical processes" falsely ascribed to awareness manages to parse awareness into discrete units or functions by which awareness is different at this lever of the hierarchy, as opposed to that layer.

What, exactly, is the qualitative difference in awareness itself - NOT in what we are aware of - at the various stories or levels of awareness? The only possible answer is to default into WHAT arises in awareness, ergo Healje is pitching for a conflated, logically incoherent picture of awareness.

Rather than saying that all of these hierarchical processes, or more aptly, meta processes, occur WITHIN awareness, we have Healje trying to subdivide an indivisible phenomenon relative to what content arises within the phenomenon. I liken this bass-akwards rendering to astronomers trying to work out celestial movement with earth as the center of the universe. You can plot it out accordingly, but only with the wonkiest array of loops and so forth.

Then this:

I said: "But all qualities and labels simply do not stick to awareness."

Healje says: "That's because there's no-thing there to label -"

So far, so good. But then this whopper:

"It's a state / experience about which, in its pure form, not only there is no-thing to label, there is nothing to be had or learned from it either."

This is a clumsy misrepresentation of the word "state," as used in normal usage. Again, Healje is trying to designate awareness with what is IN it.

How so?

A "state" is know only by virtue of phenomenon (content) we can label: A depressive state, an agitated state, a receptive state, a fractious state, a calm state, and so forth. Awareness, as I described it, is the total absence of all such designators and labels.

So here we have Healje agreeing that awareness itself is empty "because there's no-thing there to label -," then immediately defaulting out of the position by labeling awareness as a "state."

Then this: "Vacating all the various premises in your head and emptying your mind is great as a subjective experience, but let's get real and just say that an experience is what it is and begets no-thing other than having had that experience."

If this is "getting real," we are turned around indeed.

The fatal error here is to consider awareness itself as a kind of closet that derives it existence from and is only knowable by way of the garments that hang therein. And that through craft or some wu wu techinique, we can somehow "vacate" the closet of what rightfully and naturally belongs there.

It never apparently occurred to Haelje that the closet, so to speak, IS empty. But the most grievous error here is to miss that this emptiness is essential to understand per awareness, lest you start filling it with the conscious processes of "inputing, modulating, filtering, translating, combining, recognizing, acknowledging, and contextualizing," which all belong not to awareness, but to the conscious processes of which we are aware.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 2, 2017 - 06:44pm PT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7HlrI1COSs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRWp9rhfS_0

This links take you to what some consider the greatest spectator sporting event on earth - the Isle of Man Grand Prix motorcycle event, called a "200 MPH Street Race." The remarkable part is that the top riders have some rare brain capacity to intake and process something happening so fast. Haven't seen Grand Prix motorbike racing in person, but from what I've heard it has to be seen to understand the crazy speed these riders carry into turns (170) and the agility to manage their system at 200 per. Some don't make it, neither, and one wonders if the 250 that have been killed there are not engaged in man's most dangerous orgainized game.

That's "mind" for you there...
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jul 2, 2017 - 07:52pm PT
We are, in fact, totally clueless per a mechanistic explanation for sentience.


Can you describe what you mean by sentience in such a way that we may get an idea of what sort of clues would be needed to explain it?

Or are you, like Chalmers, quite sure that no physical or biological investigation can ever account for what we call consciousness?


“[We must] take consciousness seriously. … [To] redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioural functions are performed is unacceptable.”

Chalmers


What would be acceptable?





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