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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 27, 2017 - 09:40pm PT
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Huck Finn affected no one and had no impact on history
Sycorax and Paul should chime in here. Interesting subject.
Did the fundamental theorem of calculus affect history?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 27, 2017 - 10:08pm PT
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Huck Finn affected no one and had no impact on history
There are those that would say Huck is the very source or even seminal spring of 20th century lit. As in, for instance," finnegans wake," a book that neither begins nor ends but may be exited only through the careful self-reflection of a meditation on the course and meaning of life itself.
Did the fundamental theorem of calculus affect history?
How could it not?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 28, 2017 - 03:27am PT
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That's ridic. Huck Finn affected no one and had no impact on history.
And yet when I read the book as a child I identified with Huck Finn. At that time I knew absolutely nothing about Samuel Clemens: what he looked like, when he lived or any other facts or details about his life. I didn't even know his name (because the author of my copy was "Mark Twain"). Of course I'm not suggesting that imaginary characters have the same kind of real physical existence that my daughter does and they certainly wouldn't exist without their creators, but can't they have an effect on us that may even go beyond the authors intent?
What kind of work did Nagel do trying to find out what it is like to be a bat
Always asking me questions I have no idea how to answer! Perhaps befitting to a thread that began with the question "What is Mind?". I've spent a lifetime occasionally rescuing, and then taking care of street dogs and cats (until they pass on, then the cycle starts again). To some extent, I suppose you could call this "doing the work", which is why I like to talk about these animlas in my examples of animal consciousness (the phrase "animal consciousness" can be replaced with "animal behavior" if the prior tweaks anyone out).
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 03:44am PT
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Largo,
The type A materialist will immediately default out and say fine, but it is the physical brain that "created" Huck in the first place. But it's not the case that a close study of the brain alone will tell us much about Huck Finn as he lives in our consciousness.
Engineers that design cars have little concern as to which pop culture figures are going to ride on the seats. They knows Huck Finn will never be fastened by the seat belts. Scientists uncovering brain fundamentals know your Huck Finn example is like asking computer designers,"Will software ran on this machine allow uses to violate copyright protection for Samuel Clements"? Your example has little to do with uncovering how the movement of data happens in the brain-frame.
But to your point, any final scientific model of the how the brain creates consciousness must also account for weird behavior in some fashion. And we already can account for the whining we get from you about specifically your subjective experience of your mind as if it posed a great problem for brain researchers. Let us know when you get your first interview [on some car seat?] where a brain researcher needs to know what you think to continue his research.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 28, 2017 - 03:59am PT
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Your example has little to do with uncovering how the movement of data happens in the brain-frame.
I think that was exactly Largo's point.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 05:01am PT
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Yanqui,
I think that was exactly Largo's point.
If I did not make my point clear to be more than to concur with Largo, a science based model for the brain is sort of a map of the system as to where data can move and not the tracing of how some specific bit of data is used in a specific brain.
A brain/mind simulator that could trace & predict of how some thoughts [real or imaginary] influence specific people would need one hell of a lot of initial conditions for starting input. Such a simulator would be a technology based on how the brain research had found the brain system works. There already are some indicators that predict how people act as a group -- see marketing research.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 05:37am PT
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Largo,
Another interesting thing is that metaphors don't apply to awareness because awareness itself (not WHAT we are aware of) has no qualities in the normal sense of the term. That is, awareness is not LIKE something else. That's why I get a kick out of people believing that awareness is a feeling.
...has no qualities ... If so, the word, awareness, would not exist. Maybe as a form of the null set, but the null set has qualities? And the member of the null set?
In our minds the awareness of some data [that which the self sees] is accompanied by the feeling of awareness. It is possible to have the feeling of awareness without getting a signal of awareness content.
Awareness [monitoring] is the process of receiving data and intervals of no data from a sensor to a control mechanism of actuators. In some forms of awareness the monitor can communicate to other monitors that it has a watch on the data. And in very special form of monitoring each signal is accommodated with a feeling module which makes people sentient and seems to them so different than zombie machines.
It is quite obvious that brain can handle gaps in data transmission. Some may think experiencing this gap is a mystical experience. I am fine with that and a brain/mind simulator would predict that behavior for a given person. Step right up, Largo.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 28, 2017 - 06:16am PT
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Dingus McGee still thinks he is his computer, his car, his TV, every machine ever made by man are all persons.
He even thinks he's the owner of his material body.
He even thinks he IS the body that he is in right now .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 28, 2017 - 07:34am PT
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Conception and language what they are, if our "self-model" architecture (Metzinger, others) generates our "sense of self" then this qualifies as not "just" "sense of self" imo but self itself. There you go. Imo. Self.
Good morning, Self.
Tags: 1. the mental life 2. Introspection 101
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 28, 2017 - 07:55am PT
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That's ridic. Huck Finn affected no one and had no impact on history.
I really do wonder exactly who I am talking to on this thread, and how - at least to me - established historical facts can get trounced on with such impunity. It's one thing to believe a falacy, and another thing to say them, and still another to insist others believe as much. And in my opinion, nothing could be more erroneous than that Dingus' statement above. No knock on Dingus intended here, but it's worth looking at the simple and facile facts of the matter.
Huck Finn was published in 1884, Tom Sawyer in 1886. President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but the impact was not widely felt for some time. For example, slaves in Texas had no knowledge of their freedom until two and a half years later.
So Twain's two seminal works came at a time when the attitude (towards blacks) of the white majority was largely based on the slave model. How could it not be? Both books were if not the first, certainly the most famous examples of humanizing blacks in literature. Old norms unravel slowly, but the impact and effect on Twain's handling of blacks in both volumes had an incalculable effect on revising the majorities attitudes about blacks as human beings equal and in all the ways that matter, identical to their oppressors.
Huck Finn was never more than idea that only existed in a reader's consciousness, an idea we call Huck Finn. He was never "real" in terms of being an observable, external, physical person, but his effect on people and impact on history was huge.
Harking back to Nagel's point, if our only metric for "reality" is material objects and measurable phenomenon, we miss many of the very dynamics that shape our lives, dynamics that are not to be found by neuroscientists measuring electrochemical artifact in the meat brain. Try as they might, they will never find Huckelberry Finn in the dancing neurons.
The physicalist's knee-jerk, fall back position is that the dancing neurons are the fundamental causal drivers of Huck Finn. So in that sense, what's really being posited here is a causal argument.
And Dingus McGee said: ...has no qualities ... If so, the word, awareness, would not exist.
You must have missed my post to John about the "existence" of awareness. My sense of it is that for you, the metric for "existence" and "reality" is an observable or detectable external physical thing or phenomenon, all else being woo, including Huck Finn.
But per the "qualities" of awareness itself, what are the qualities you might attribute to awareness - NOT what you are aware of, but awareness itself? And through what mode of inquiry are you drawing your conclusions?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 28, 2017 - 08:37am PT
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MH2: How about pictures?
Yes. They are, it’s told, worth a thousand words. They are perhaps best thought of as *expressions* rather than descriptions / definitions. If we see, we see expressions I would say. If we hear, we hear expressions. If we feel, we feel expressions. If we think, we are expressing. IMO, from my observation.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 28, 2017 - 08:38am PT
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An expression based on your impression?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 28, 2017 - 08:41am PT
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Harking back to Nagel's point, if our only metric for "reality" is material objects and measurable phenomenon, we miss many of the very dynamics that shape our lives, dynamics that are not to be found by neuroscientists measuring electrochemical artifact in the meat brain. Try as they might, they will never find Huckelberry Finn in the dancing neurons.
Whose only metric for reality is material objects and measurable phenomena? Could you explain what you mean by that? Do you believe there are people who read Shakespeare and don't accept it as real because they can't figure out the physics that produced those particular lines of text?
On the other hand, it seems premature to limit the scope of neuroscience in the way that you describe. They found Halle Berry in a dancing neuron, so why not Huckleberry Finn?
http://www.caltech.edu/news/single-cell-recognition-halle-berry-brain-cell-1013
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 28, 2017 - 08:57am PT
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Thomas Nagel is a likeable guy. I admire someone who would ask what it is like to be a bat. And he did no work trying to find out and did not attempt to answer the question. He ‘considered’ what it was like to be a bat.
Nagel regards the problems he has chosen to discuss as more compelling than his own contributions to them, and he is always willing to say that he does not know the answer to a difficulty. His discussions are informed by a sense that what he is saying may be overthrown or overtaken by other views.
Bernard Williams reviewing Nagel’s book, The View from Nowhere
In which Thomas Nagel asks how scrambled eggs taste to a cockroach.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 09:22am PT
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Largo,
You must have missed my post to John about the "existence" of awareness. My sense of it is that for you, the metric for "existence" and "reality" is an observable or detectable external physical thing or phenomenon, all else being woo, including Huck Finn.
Huck Finn is data in the mind and hence observable by all those minds entertaining Huck Finn.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 09:43am PT
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Largo,
But per the "qualities" of awareness itself, what are the qualities you might attribute to awareness - NOT what you are aware of, but awareness itself? And through what mode of inquiry are you drawing your conclusions?
Please read:
Dingus McGee
Awareness [monitoring] is the process of receiving data and intervals of no data from a sensor to a control mechanism of actuators. In some forms of awareness the monitor can communicate to other monitors that it has a watch on the data. And in very special form of monitoring each signal is accommodated with a feeling module which makes people sentient and seems to them so different than zombie machines.
If you are a little slow on getting this idea, note the word process which makes no mention of content. Plenty of qualities are suggested in my above quote. Go figure.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 28, 2017 - 09:56am PT
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Dingus: . . . note the word process which makes no mention of content.
The distinction may well fall flat. "Process" is a conceptualization—and hence content.
We all seem to be in some sort of madhouse of mirrors.
Marlow: An expression based on your impression?
What would you say this is, exactly?
What would you say if I said it was me?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 28, 2017 - 10:18am PT
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MikeL,
The distinction may well fall flat. "Process" is a conceptualization—and hence content.
We are not talking about the contents of awareness. Yes, my conceptualization of awareness as process does have content just like any quality assigned to awareness has content. And if Largo says awareness has no qualities that is a statement of content about a conceptualization also. You missed that detail.
Would you be better off nit picking on your quilt blanket?
Do you like this wording better?
... note the word process which makes no mention of [the] content[s] [of awareness]
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 28, 2017 - 12:20pm PT
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We are not talking about the contents of awareness. Yes, my conceptualization of awareness as process does have content just like any quality assigned to awareness has content. And if Largo says awareness has no qualities that is a statement of content about a conceptualization also. You missed that detail.
Dingus McGee, from my view, you have backed yourself into a corner and the above is logically incoherent, nor does it get at what Mike and I are saying.
What YOU are saying, so far as I can tell, reflects the Gordian knot of conceptualizations we often see with beginning meditation students who's attention is enmeshed with content and who look for systems, emergent functions, conceptualizations, and so forth, as a way to get hold of awareness. To nail down WHAT is IS. It's for good reason that people who have spent their lives investigating this unique phenomenon typically say it is "ungraspable" in the way you are attempting to frame "it."
That is why I asked you what mode of inquiry per awareness ITSELF were you using to draw your conclusions.
My sense of it is you are not looking at awareness at all, but deriving an conceptual conclusion about awareness from looking at what you believe are emergent systems involving content and subsets, as experience by Damasio's provisional "self," one of which you believe is awareness.
Your statement above (... if Largo says awareness has no qualities that is a statement of content about a conceptualization) I believe misses the key distinction between a conceptualization and a direct experience.
For example, I can look at a topo map of Lost Arrow Spire and conceptualize what it will be like. But that is different than actually climbing the Arrow and having a direct experience of doing so.
Now what in my experience makes awareness so tricky a study is that even a direct experience of all other things and phenomenon - from the Lost Arrow to the sensate impulses in our body - involve us being aware OF something we can conceptualize, and those conceptualization are always built on properties and values ranging from feelings and sensations and thoughts to size and weight and electrical charge and velocity and so forth. What's more, all of these conceptualizations are drawn from the experience of being derived from a given perspective in space and time that we normally call our "self." That is, "I" have the experience of awareness. This provides us a perspective, real or imagined, that in some way we are not only different from whatever we experience and conceptualize, but that there is an inherent duality between the two.
However what happens when you get to where you can directly BE in awareness, there is no content to grab onto and no self that manages to get outside of awareness to look back on it and start objectifying in way we do with virtually all other things and phenomenon. Here, you are encountering awareness BEFORE conceptualizations arise, before your attention and focus direct or get shanghaied by content. Once we start TALKING about it we are absolutely moving into conceptualizations, but the point is, the direct experience of awareness itself is NOT a conceptualization and what is most obvious about said awareness is that it is entirely "empty." No inherent content.
"No thing there" (no content) in no wise implies that there really IS some thing there, and in my view is nothing more that our discursive minds attemption to reify what is NOT there (properties, content) into some thing we can lable and objectify as THIS or THAT. Language is geared to describe and report about things and phenomenon, so we refer to the empty nature of awareness itself as "ungraspable" not to signify a concept or article of content, rather to point, rather awkwardly, toward what is wildly counterintuitive.
All attempts to to garb ungraspable awareness in a suite of clothes, so to speak, necessarily involve recruiting what we can grasp onto (data, "information," processing of stuff) and positing awareness BETWEEN that stuff. A good example is so-called "gap awareness." Try letting go of the stuff on both side of the gap, then you might start getting a sense for the ungraspable nature of awareness.
Of course this is a gross, dashed off simplification of a very slippery slope, and I'll try and give some other examples of this later. Very tricky to try and make clear that in my view, awareness is not an experience, or some thing or phenomenon of experience, but rather, the experiential process occurs within awareness.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 28, 2017 - 01:17pm PT
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he only exists in playful imagination
Indeed. I am inclined to say the same for the objects and relations we define and study in mathematics. To outsiders, it may seem mathematicians spend an inordinate amount of time proving things exist, but essentially what that means now-a-days is we can construct or specify a desired object or relation in a logical fashion from the axioms, using the language of sets. It doesn't mean they have physical existence. However, it would be rather clumsy to always have to say that such and such a mathematical thing exists as a logically consistent idea that can be constructed from the axioms using the language of set theory, so we just say it exists. On the other hand, the ontology of physical laws seems to be a more delicate matter to me (if we believe there are true physical laws).
What is remarkable to me is how playful imagination can have such a profound effect on our understanding of the world and, in turn, on our behavior. Why should quaternions (or must I say "the idea of" quaternions?) play a fundamental role in computer animation and robotics, when they were "only" made up by Hamilton's imagination in the early 1840s? In some sense I "know" the answer to that: for one thing quaternionic representations don't have some singularities that appear in the use of Euler angles for modeling rigid motion in 3-D space (the so-called "gimbal lock" problem). But what's remarkable to me is that something made up in Hamilton's imagination should have anything at all to say about robotics or computer animation, when the possibility of these fields couldn't have been imagined.
What I would like say is that Huck Finn effected my perspective of the world, but if you think I'm better off saying Samuel Clemens effected my perspective of the world by creating the fictional character (or pretend person) Huck Finn, OK. It does seem a bit wordy, though. What is remarkable to me is that an author can have a profound effect on other people's perspectives (and therefore on the physical world) simply by creating a pretend person.
Substitute unicorns for Huck Finn, same thing.
Let's try:
And yet when I read the book as a child I identified with unicorns. At that time I knew absolutely nothing about the author: what he looked like, when he lived or any other facts or details about his life. I didn't even know his name. Of course I'm not suggesting that unicorns have the same kind of real physical existence that my daughter does and they certainly wouldn't exist without their creators, but can't they have an effect on us that may even go beyond the authors intent?
You're right!
Edit to add: after a few edits, I think I've got the text cleared up!
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