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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 11, 2017 - 08:56am PT
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We might get an answer to that by going back to the notebooks of Galileo Gallilei when he looked at how long it took balls of different size and mass to roll down inclined planes. We could go back to Simon Stevin or Lucretius, too. We better avoid Aristotle because when someone invented the word 'gravity' it may have caused his observations to go wonky.
Time works in mysterious ways.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 11, 2017 - 12:24pm PT
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A bit of truth in the above.
"I'm being kind of facetious."
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 11, 2017 - 08:52pm PT
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MH2: When we talk about consciousness we are not talking about science.
Oh. But the way we are talking and presenting counterpoints sounds like we are attempting to talk about science and mind, somewhat scientifically, analytically, logically, rationally. (I guess I’m confused.)
It’s lucidly clear to me that whatever thing I’m talking about or experiencing is simply consciousness at work. I don’t mean that it’s a result of consciousness. I mean it IS consciousness.
It’s the one thing that one knows without a doubt: “I am.” The rest? Pfffttttttt.
. . . "we are but a product of accidents within the structure of evolutionary processes and no more than a temporary byproduct of that process . . . .
This, too, is what consciousness apparently looks like or how it can present itself. It can present itself as anything.
Do you think objects plummeted to the earth any differently when "gravity" didn't exist?
More theory. Theories, speculative explanations, models, abstractions, partialities, bracketing, etc.
How can any one thing exists on its own, by itself, analytically?
Gravity is just a label for something people don’t fully understand.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Nov 12, 2017 - 03:47am PT
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MikeL
Nov 11, 2017 - 08:52pm PT
MH2: When we talk about consciousness we are not talking about science.
Oh. But the way we are talking and presenting counterpoints sounds like we are attempting to talk about science and mind, somewhat scientifically, analytically, logically, rationally. (I guess I’m confused.)
It’s lucidly clear to me that whatever thing I’m talking about or experiencing is simply consciousness at work. I don’t mean that it’s a result of consciousness. I mean it IS consciousness.
It’s the one thing that one knows without a doubt: “I am.” The rest? Pfffttttttt.
MikeL above has posted an example of 1st person confusion? about what is consciousness for him. Though all good and well, it does not seem like science -- but his narrative of generalizing all experience. The last line of his rant has one item that concurs with IIT,
(remember, IIT maintains that the only thing one can be sure of is the existence of one's own consciousness).
Whether you like/understand the science based IIT theory or Phi theory or not it gives one a science way of looking at what goes on within this meat -- the theatre of wakeful life.
The ability to perform this jump from phenomenology to mechanism rests on IIT's assumption that if a conscious experience can be fully accounted for by an underlying physical system, then the properties of the physical system must be constrained by the properties of the experience.
The heavy math going on in the workings of the IIT[theory] is a constrained transformation process from experience ( what is out there or in there) for binding externalities to what IS uniquely goes on during consciousness.
Key here is the word process if we are seeking a science based theory of consciousness. Consciousness is a process or simply consciousness at work. Saying Consciousness Is begs the question and is mostly meaningless as science description.
Choose your views and the question becomes, do they constrain you in any way?
the answer here is yes and we see it all the time.
But with IIT there exists a transformational process to map MikeL 1st person experience [out of the past] to the theatre.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Nov 12, 2017 - 04:47am PT
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Per Largo and his no-thing
from IIT
as there is no point in assuming that something exists if nothing can make a difference to it, or if it cannot make a difference to anything.
Conscious awareness is a feeling that arises when we are calm. It's content is coming from the sub/un conscious which is always monitoring.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 12, 2017 - 08:06am PT
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IIT. Another interpretive theory. (They go on endlessly.)
In tantra, one learns and sees that a feeling can be broken into two different parts. There is energy, and there is an interpretation of the meaning of the energy. It’s also called an emotion. Emotions and moods are what people are experiencing almost all of the time. Mind training can help to distinguish the different parts, disregard one and exploit the other.
I’ll choose an example that some men can identify with intimately. Let’s say that you wake up from sleep and feel sexual arousal. You make a comment to the person that you’re sleeping with, and they say that they’re hung over. So, you lay there for a while and get to your ablutions, frustrated and a bit miffed. After your morning ritual at the sink, you might see your desire and sympathize with your sleeping partner, and your interpretation of frustration and antimony might subside due to empathy--but the energy of your desire might be put to another use. You might take a bike ride, get to some chores that lay in front of you, or avidly read the morning paper.
We seem to be in emotional or mood states constantly. Sometimes they are overwhelming, and other times they are as subtle as a piece by Erik Satie, Debussy, or Schubert. At times one senses an emotion running through one's veins like molten lava, and other times it has the touch of a feather. Learning to distinguish an interpretation from the energy that is associated with it or appears to drive it can bring much understanding about mind each and every day. (See Paul Ekman's and Joe Navarro's writings, or read some Tibetan explanations.)
Interpretations are, well, . . . interesting puzzle-like constructions. Energies can appear to be good, bad, or neutral, but those assessments are purely interpretative. Contemplative mind training helps one to: see interpretations for what they are (constructions), quit putting so much importance and concreteness into them, and simply surf the energies. Tantra training, for example, is a way of taking the energies (often seemingly negative) and using them to see awareness. (There are other techniques.)
Just look at your experience at this very moment. See the interpretation; feel the energy?
Even this explanation above is heavy-handed.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 12, 2017 - 08:14am PT
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the one thing that one knows without a doubt: “I am.”
Tsk. The discursive mind can convince you of anything.
A lot of thought has gone into this both before and after Descartes.
a more relevant contention is whether the "I" to which Descartes refers is justified. In Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams provides a history and full evaluation of this issue. Apparently, the first scholar who raised the problem was Pierre Gassendi. He "points out that recognition that one has a set of thoughts does not imply that one is a particular thinker or another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum
Raymond Smullyan says it succinctly:
I think, therefore I am?
Could be!
Or is it really someone else who thinks he’s me?
cutting out the dubious reference to an "I":
The one thing that is certain is that something exists.
Then you can get on to arguing about whether existence is a property that some things have and others don’t.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 12, 2017 - 09:35am PT
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The one thing that is certain is that something exists.
Everything exists, the inferior gross and subtle material energies exist temporarily.
The superior spiritual energies exist eternally.
The gross materialist is completely clueless how the superior energies exist and how they interact with the inferior material energies.
The gross materialist barely even have half the total understanding of life itself.
They are in the dark ultimately.
That is why they make these st00pid mental speculative claims (guessing) after death there is nothing .....
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Nov 12, 2017 - 11:05am PT
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http://www.oxherding.com/my_weblog/2013/08/correct-situation-relationship-and-function.html
What we act on in our consciousness makes our life. My observations are much of our acting is based on habit based on our lives conditions. the meditation tool can be effective by allowing a person to step back and see the habit and make a different choice or see you just followed the habit rather than making different choice. Moment to moment what you do is your life. What kind of life do we make?
The other day I made the mistake of driving on a dirt road (up hill) after the rains. Got stranded fairly quickly and remembered driving on silty clay uphill when it is wet doesn't work. A neighbor arrived with his F350 and proceeded to unleash and a very angry tirade laced with F this and F that. He was fairly well dressed in his urban cowboy costume. He likely assumed we were had no business there (but we did) and unleashed his anger on us. My colleague did not over react and reflect the anger back.(I was not there for the tirade, probably a good thing) .
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 12, 2017 - 11:47am PT
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Why read works of philosophy and literature in their entirety
What have you read by Jaako Hintikka?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 12, 2017 - 11:51am PT
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Werner is once again in good company.
"A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word - 'Everything.'"
Willard Quine
On What There Is
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Nov 12, 2017 - 12:00pm PT
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The gross materialist barely even have half the total understanding of life itself.
I would put that estimation at below 2% for the total understanding, but at least it is being scratched at.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 12, 2017 - 12:35pm PT
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Why read works of philosophy and literature in their entirety when one can wiki out of context?
By making Wikipedia your enemy you may win the battle but lose the war. The scope of this internet tool is breathtaking. In mathematics alone there are over 30,000 pages, compared with online Encyclopedia Britannica which has a total of about 32,000 pages. Wiki provides introductions and in many instances concise overviews of millions of topics.
But a work of literature it is not. And to read descriptions of literature is indeed a poor alternative. Philosophy is another matter, in my opinion. To read clear but brief synopsis of works of philosophy may be far more enlightening than trying to make one's way through dense and virtually incomprehensible original sources. Just my opinion (and that of my late philosophy professor in a senior level course at the U of GA sixty years ago).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 12, 2017 - 01:48pm PT
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Whether you like/understand the science based IIT theory or Phi theory or not it gives one a science way of looking at what goes on within this meat -- the theatre of wakeful life.
The totally daffy belief that awareness is itself a "feeling" is in no way "science."
While ITT has much to say about consciousness, IMO, the aspect of awareness, when posited AS content (thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories) is something any beginning meditation adept could instantly dismiss with confidence by way of direct inference. The goofy thing is that this particular illusion (awareness IS emotional content/limbic system artifact = feeling) is that it's such basic level stuff, barely scratching the surface of any meaningful investigation.
Searle's take on ITT:
[Koch] is not saying that information causes consciousness; he is saying that certain information just is consciousness, and because information is everywhere, consciousness is everywhere. I think that if you analyze this carefully, you will see that the view is incoherent. Consciousness is independent of an observer. I am conscious no matter what anybody thinks. But information is typically relative to observers. These sentences, for example, make sense only relative to our capacity to interpret them. So you can’t explain consciousness by saying it consists of information, because information exists only relative to consciousness.
In fact, Searle’s point applies to other information-centric theories of consciousness, including one sketched out by Chalmers more than 20 years ago (which helps explain his affinity for IIT). Information-based theories of consciousness are circular; that is, they seek to explain consciousness with a concept—information—that presupposes consciousness.
Said John Horgan in Scientific America: The concept of information makes no sense in the absence of something to be informed—that is, a conscious observer capable of choice, or free will (sorry, I can't help it, free will is an obsession). If all the humans in the world vanished tomorrow, all the information would vanish, too. Lacking minds to surprise and change, books and televisions and computers would be as dumb as stumps and stones. This fact may seem crushingly obvious, but it seems to be overlooked by many information enthusiasts.
Like many others, ITT conflates consciousness (and especially conscious content) with awareness - something the mind adventures makes clear is absolutely false. The internal adventures make known all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that. That is, nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. Why, because the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Or put differently, awareness and content are not selfsame. Anyone claiming otherwise is not deriving their claim from any science or insight, rather to defend a philosophical position.
While this may feel rhetorical as a concept, once you settle and observe your own inner process, you will no longer be able to coherently conflate WHAT you perceive (content) with perceiving. Perception itself, or the fact that you are aware, is self-evident and is not debatable. You can debate forever the verity of WHAT you perceive, but even Dennett wouldn't say, "You only imagine you are aware." This is logically incoherent, though some do not see why.
For those seeking an overview on ITT theory - which IMO has about half of the equation correct - is found here, in Searl's review in the NY Times books section.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7d26/807dad7ec7f443ac28e45778f9a2748a6ce8.pdf
My sense of it is if ITT went a step further and uncoupled awareness with what we are aware of, the basic thesis would be far more intelligible. As it stands, you are left with phenomenological howlers such as "consciousness itself is a feeling." We are aware of feelings,just as we aware of barking dogs, clouds, and quadratic equations - that is, the stuff or content we are aware OF. Feelings are not, themselves, aware.
Simply put: We cannot explain consciousness through "information" because information presupposes consciousness. Content is not "information" till an aware subject decodes it. Till then, it's all symbols that have no inherent meaning or significance.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Nov 12, 2017 - 04:52pm PT
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Largo, you don't get it.
From IIT
Similarly, an experience of pure darkness and silence is the particular way it is—it has the specific quality it has (no bedroom, no bed, no book, no blue, nor any other object, color, sound, thought, and so on)
or the IIT folks could have written
Similarly, an experience of pure meditation and silence is the particular way it is—it has the specific quality it has (no bedroom, no bed, no book, no blue, nor any other object, color, sound, thought, and so on)
To IIT consciousness is the making of any experience into a conscious moment. The perceiver is not separate from the making of an experience into a conscious phenomena. Each instance of making an experience into consciousness creates a perceiver.
As for the tenant that conscious awareness is a feeling [more at Damasio and quite different than IIT] we get when from the source of being aware that arises in the subconscious and we are calm. Our conscious awareness comes about by the subconscious telling our "perceiver" module that it knows of such and such.
Sitting and watching gets you your narrative of what is going on? and some of what you posted is your spouting of what you were told so as to "understand" the process -- all is welcome from the Zen narrative.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 12, 2017 - 07:26pm PT
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I have an old Penguin Classics version of the Discourse on Method and the Meditations. They are beautifully translated. The tiny paperback version of the Discourse is 64 pages long. The Meditations checks in at 75 pages. Not so many words, by today's standards
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 12, 2017 - 07:56pm PT
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While ITT has much to say about consciousness . . .
Searle's take on ITT . . .
Like many others, ITT conflates consciousness . . .
etc.
What does a huge manufacturing company have to do with consciousness?
Wake up (or get more rest).
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2017 - 10:45pm PT
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Gravity is just a label for something people don’t fully understand.
I think we understand quite well. Perhaps you do not.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 12, 2017 - 10:50pm PT
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http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019289
Perceived Object Stability Depends on Multisensory Estimates of Gravity
Michael Barnett-Cowan, Roland W. Fleming, Manish Singh, Heinrich H. Bülthoff
Background
How does the brain estimate object stability? Objects fall over when the gravity-projected centre-of-mass lies outside the point or area of support. To estimate an object's stability visually, the brain must integrate information across the shape and compare its orientation to gravity. When observers lie on their sides, gravity is perceived as tilted toward body orientation, consistent with a representation of gravity derived from multisensory information. We exploited this to test whether vestibular and kinesthetic information affect this visual task or whether the brain estimates object stability solely from visual information.
Methodology/Principal Findings
In three body orientations, participants viewed images of objects close to a table edge. We measured the critical angle at which each object appeared equally likely to fall over or right itself. Perceived gravity was measured using the subjective visual vertical. The results show that the perceived critical angle was significantly biased in the same direction as the subjective visual vertical (i.e., towards the multisensory estimate of gravity).
Conclusions/Significance
Our results rule out a general explanation that the brain depends solely on visual heuristics and assumptions about object stability. Instead, they suggest that multisensory estimates of gravity govern the perceived stability of objects, resulting in objects appearing more stable than they are when the head is tilted in the same direction in which they fall.
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