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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 10, 2014 - 02:10pm PT
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IME, there are various modes of understanding. There is a discursive understanding that looks at components and associations and functioning or at any rate various computations. This is a kind of instrumentational take on something. It is objective because what the instruments tell us is apparently conjured by the instruments, not our sense data. Our sight is limited for, say, microscope work on proteins. A microscope, greatly enhances our ability to accurately deconstruct a given protein into relevant components, and go from there with our symbolic wranglings (numbers, words, etc.).
Another kind of knowing is direct experience, or direct encountering. Whereas the first mode provided the topo map, the second involves actually climbing the wall as our sentience absorbs the totality of it in real time. In the later, we come to "know" the wall in ways not possible from the discursive perspective, just as the discursive can tell us things about the physical nature of the wall not evident while actually climbing it.
The experiential mode is not an attempt to do the work of the strictly discursive, nor is the discursive an attempt to understand the experiential. They are two side of the same coin - human reality - but each is a perspective with angles impossible to see from the opposite side.
JL
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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May 10, 2014 - 02:40pm PT
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I'm probably mistaken about the details. I remember traveling to Guatemala. Their gods would draw stingray spines through their penises during their rituals. Also. it was found that much of the rainforest in Central America is second growth. "Logging" was widespread 500 or so years ago.
We have technology. I remember that the US population growth rate was near zero, if you discount migration. We have healthcare.. Obamacare, voodoo, or whatever you want to call it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 10, 2014 - 03:35pm PT
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Another kind of knowing is direct experience, or direct encountering.
which is like looking through your microscope...
or telescope,
or at the flickering display of a high energy particle experiment...
the direct experience of a speculation, a place on the map which was only inferred previously, and when we travel there, we encounter reality.
why is this "another way of knowing"? it seems very much like the same way.
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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May 10, 2014 - 07:03pm PT
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Does theflickering display of a high energy particle experiment , also sort out the results, so you can grab your fish bag and run for the hills. (....way over my head....)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 10, 2014 - 08:29pm PT
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. . . the first mode provided the topo map . . . we come to "know" the wall in ways not possible from the discursive perspective (JL)
Is your only involvement with the discursive sitting and staring at a map? So you didn't need or use rational thought as you climbed? Pure experiential adventure?
Wow!
I am impressed.
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 10, 2014 - 08:30pm PT
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...and I bet he never wrote about it...
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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May 10, 2014 - 10:53pm PT
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barkeeper's friend
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 11, 2014 - 04:33pm PT
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There is a discursive understanding that looks at components and associations and functioning or at any rate various computations. This is a kind of instrumentational take on something . . . Another kind of knowing is direct experience, or direct encountering. Whereas the first mode provided the topo map, the second involves actually climbing the wall as our sentience absorbs the totality of it in real time. They are two sides of the same coin (JL)
And that's the problem you have in convincing others on this thread, John. Because of your years of Zen and your knowledge of awareness with no objects you tend to focus on either end of the knowledge spectrum, either side of the coin - either empty awareness and nothingness or extreme nerdiness and attachment to measuring - whereas most of our existence is on a middle path embracing both experiential and calculating, with no clear lines of demarcation - no coin.
The middle path is the path of wisdom.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 11, 2014 - 04:44pm PT
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Thank you jgill!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 11, 2014 - 05:08pm PT
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At the start, John said he'd like to go into Kant with anybody willing. I've read this thread, and I do think Kant would have a lot to contribute. I consider myself knowledgeable, having studied Kant extensively under Jill Buroker, Tony Brueckner, and Hubert Schwyzer. I've also taught history of modern philosophy and dedicated Kant courses at the university level. So, I would definitely enjoy a Kantian discussion of mind/consciousness. I personally think (and this is shared by the likes of other Kant experts internationally) that Kant really ended the debate and that post-Kant debate continues because Kant is dense, difficult, and not widely understood.
John, I'd be interested on your take on Kant regarding mind/consciousness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 11, 2014 - 06:09pm PT
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Go for it, JL.
Sounds intriguing.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 11, 2014 - 07:28pm PT
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The New York Times has also run a series on mind and the brain which discusses the same issues.If nothing else, we are au courant.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 11, 2014 - 08:34pm PT
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One thing that jumps out to me, John, is how few people in our society know how to use "conflation" properly in a sentence. Well done.
:-)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 11, 2014 - 10:31pm PT
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Only philosophers have a legal right to use the word "conflation." US Supreme Court decision LX1275.98/conflate.
;>)
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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May 11, 2014 - 10:37pm PT
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employing the mind is akin
to grabbing gear.
on our ascent to never
we encounter uncertainty
and then fear upsets the journey
so we emotionally collapse
and fire out logic
at all of the unknown horizons
in a cowardly display
of surrender.
drop your mind at the curb.
it's best left for the bottom feeders.
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MH2
climber
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May 11, 2014 - 10:58pm PT
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One thing that jumps out to me, John, is how few people in our society know how to use "conflation" properly in a sentence. (madbolter1)
Dodge that figure of speech!
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 11, 2014 - 11:58pm PT
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Makes you want to jump right in!
;>)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 12, 2014 - 12:08am PT
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Conflation: art/math? Who knows?
Images of a virtual integral from a time-dependent vector field in the complex plane.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 12, 2014 - 01:33am PT
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Well, nobody's jumping on it immediately, so I'll prime the pump a bit....
Kant was responding to the standard empiricist account of mind, best articulated by Hume, that says that consciousness "emerges" from a "stream of empirical impressions." So, the idea, simply stated, is that what we recognize as consciousness is nothing over and above an empirical impression, followed by another empirical impression, and so on. Put all the impressions together into a unified "stream," and you have consciousness. Self-consciousness, then, is nothing over and above the unified stream of "inner impressions," which are themselves empirical.
This sort of account of consciousness fits neatly within the neuro-science perspective, because the stream of empirical impressions themselves can be accounted for in terms of electro-chemical "firings" in the central nervous system. So, the Humean model (in one form or another) came to be standard fare among the likes of the Churchlands as the explanation of consciousness: electro-chemical "firings" produce empirical impressions, which, when streamed together in a unified chain of "events" produce "awareness," including awareness of "self."
Kant's response to Hume, in my forum-ready, pathetically-simplistic nutshell, is that this "stream" is rendered a UNIFIED "stream" instead of completely unrelated impressions BY being combined ("synthesized" is his term) into a single consciousness. This is to say that to recognize empirical impressions as a "unified stream of consciousness," namely "experiences for me," there must be something "in the background" that is doing the synthesizing. The Humean account presumes synthesis but provides no account of it; the Humean account just helps itself to that which makes an impression INTO an impression in the first place, much more so when combining impressions into a SINGLE, unified, "for me" stream.
So, whatever this "synthesizer" is, it is not itself the "stream of consciousness," because the stream itself logically presumes the existence of the synthesizer. There can be no "unified stream" of impressions without synthesis, and the synthesizer cannot be part of the stream, because the very unity of the stream presumes something doing the unifying. To even recognize an impression, and the stream into which it fits, as MINE, there must be something that does the unifying. By the time I am conscious of an impression, the unity already exists, and the synthesis has already been performed.
Kant went further to demonstrate that each individual impression itself cannot be ANYTHING to the "perceiver" without itself being synthesized into this stream of consciousness. In other words, Kant recognized that the impressions themselves presuppose the stream, not the other way around, as Hume had thought. So, the unity of consciousness is logically prior to individual impressions, and there CAN be no individual impressions that are not part of the unity of consciousness. Such would be "nothing to us."
Ultimately, Kant demonstrated (I and many others think conclusively) that everything we take to be "empirical impressions" can be nothing to us (we cannot be conscious of having experienced ANYTHING at all) without the synthesizer at work. So, then, what is this synthesizer?
Kant said: of that thing we can say nothing. It is not a possible "object of experience," so it is not a possible "object of knowledge."
This is not a "punt," because Kant carefully demonstrates that to know anything about it would be to know something empirical about it. But to know anything empirical is to presume the activity of the synthesizer. So, every time we might think we are knowing IT, we are, yet again, seeing only the RESULTS of it. The synthesizer can never be captured as an object of consciousness; thus, in principle, nothing can ever be known about it. We can demonstrate its existence and see and catalog the results of its activities; but about it itself, we can know nothing.
Now, obviously, many people, particularly empiricists about consciousness, do not find this result acceptable because:
1) It takes consciousness forever out of the purview of empirical study.
2) It takes consciousness forever out of the purview of metaphysical study.
3) It demonstrates the necessary existence of something that is truly occult and unapproachable by us, locked as we are in the "box" of the PRODUCTS of synthesis.
Kant's results, if correct (as I and many others believe they are), mean that even the "experiences" of the "ineffable" are necessary empirical, because we can know nothing that is not an "object of consciousness." Even Zen recognizes that the "ineffable" is an awareness or experience of the unity of consciousness. But, as an "experience," it is empirical (in the strict philosophical sense of that term). As such, it is a product of synthesis. Thus, is is "knowable" only as a product of synthesis, which means that even that "awareness of the unity of consciousness" is not itself an awareness of the synthesizer. It is impossible in principle, according to Kant, to ever experience (in any sense) the unity of consciousness, because ALL awareness, including what WOULD be awareness of IT, already presupposes ITS activities; hence, it is never itself captured as an object of consciousness.
Now, both empiricists and scientist are very motivated to reject Kant's results, because, obviously, if correct, Kant has ended discussion of WHAT consciousness "really is!" Nobody wants to believe that there is "something" that "really exists" but that defies our exploration and ultimate understanding.
Hence, you get Hegel, attempting to "build" on Kant's results, but to end up able to say "something" about the various "things in themselves" about which Kant said we could know nothing.
Almost universally, Hegel is recognized to "argue past" Kant and be seriously retrograde (and confused) as a philosopher. Those that have studied both Kant and Hegel extensively quickly realize the extent to which Hegel misunderstood Kant.
Hegel is to be forgiven, however, because Kant is a notoriously terrible writer, not nearly as consistent with his technical terminology as he should have been, and seriously spare with examples. In fact, Kant famously stated in the Critique of Pure Reason (paraphrased): "Examples are for the weak of mind." LOL
John, early on in this thread you said that Kant had changed his position. Would you elucidate on that? Kant definitely revealed different facets of his position between the first and second editions of the Critique and the Prolegomena, but I don't see a CHANGE of positions. I see him arguing different ways for the same positions.
The first edition of the Critique was a response to Descartes, while the second edition was more directly a response to Hume. The Prolegomena was supposed to be the "Cliff's Notes" to the Critique, although it actually contains some of his clearest and best abstract argumentation.
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