Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Jan 17, 2015 - 08:27pm PT
|
^^^The mathematical description remains intact. Perhaps Tegmark's ideas are not so outlandish as they first seem: Mathematical Universe.
Meditators: How about it? Is moving meditation a poor stepchild? Since a practitioner becomes lost in the movement (moment) is this path inappropriate for attaining no-thingness? Should this even be called meditation? Must a true meditator sit still?
The silence is deafening . . . and revealing.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Jan 17, 2015 - 09:41pm PT
|
These are not easy questions to answer
these are koans, like one-hand clapping, designed to frustrate to the point of psychiatric collapse . . . or enlightenment.
|
|
Psilocyborg
climber
|
|
|
Jan 17, 2015 - 11:13pm PT
|
Is it possible to reach the experience of "awareness without content" and the "no-thingness" JL talks about by engaging in moving meditation?
Yes.
What's more, what would an object actually be if stripped off all the projections wrought through human perception, such a shape, color, and so on.
These are not easy questions to answer.
Easy to answer, but difficult to come to terms with if you must cling to your mathematical framework.
hese are koans, like one-hand clapping, designed to frustrate to the point of psychiatric collapse . . . or enlightenment.
Only on the surface. There is a specific point being made by speaking in circles.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 05:53am PT
|
I refer to what I believe to be the same thing as active meditation and it can definitely be approached through climbing-especially long continuous soloing, trail running, xc skiing and other activities. You're not always there, in those activities but it can be a conduit.
|
|
Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 06:29am PT
|
'The Field of Rabbits'
The boy ran through the field of rabbits and came to a train station.
He bought a ticket and boarded a train to the nearest town. He sat down next to an old woman who told him a story and he fell fast asleep. While he slept she cast a spell on him with mysterious consequences. When he awoke he disembarked at a town and walked to the village square. In the square was a park with park benches and many birds all around. He saw a little girl sitting on a bench and feeding the birds. He asked if he could sit with her and she offered him some bird seed to feed to the birds. When he looked in her soft brown eyes he fell instantly in love with her. They quietly fed the birds for hours and hours until her mother called for her. The girl took his hand and before she left she whispered a word to him. The boy came back to the same park bench at the same time every year but he never saw her there. He on his eighteenth birthday he came back to that place and discovered her sitting there. When he asked her to marry of course she said yes and soon they were married. They bought a small farm and she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. The baby grew into a strong young boy who would help with the chores. One day the boy's job was to help his father feed all the rabbits. There were thousands of rabbits and soon the boy became terribly bored. He sat down to rest and his father found him and scolded him soundly. He went back to work but in anger he decided to run far away.
The boy ran through the field of rabbits and came to a train station.
-Bushman
01/18/2014
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 08:46am PT
|
Objectivity versus subjectivity, experiential versus discursive, koans, and many another human puzzlement may be a price we pay for language. When someone tells about or writes a story about an experience they had, we get an incomplete idea of what it felt like to them. When JL asks questions like those above, I ask myself, "What would Jake say?" The answer is always, "Arf!"
Meditation may in part be a way to recapture a before-language headspace. A mental Eden.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 08:51am PT
|
Jgill: The silence is deafening . . . and revealing.
DMT: These questions seem utterly unimportant.
To your minds.
Jgill: What is meant by subjectivity?
Try answering your own question, please. You have everything you need to do so, as much as anyone anywhere, any place, at any time.
Largo: What is objective, . . . ?
For those steeped in science, this should be very easy to answer.
Subjectivity is what you are.
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 09:07am PT
|
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 10:26am PT
|
subjectivity and objectivity are a pair of words that form a dichotomy, and I don't think it is overly difficult to define them, they have to do with our individual view and with a consensus view.
Objectivity being defined essentially as that which we all agree upon, independent of our own individual view. Subjectivity is what we alone view. Our view being a combination of the two. One might object that even the entire planet's worth of people cannot form a truly "objective" basis, but I think that's essentially a quibble, as it is easy to generate a definition of objective that extends the idea (as science does).
Science is done in a way requiring the communication of method that allows anyone to attain the same result, independently. This combines the two ideas in the "scientific method" of publication and reproducibility, a functional definition of objective.
As a counter example, consider the role of "miracle" in religious testimony. Miracles are by their nature non-reproducible, and their main affect is the profound sense an individual feels regarding the event, a quintessential subjective reaction.
In no way can we talk about one without the other (Subjective/Objective). To the extent that this is a part of the general human "theory of mind," it represents the common experience of "internal" and "external" sources of thought, of individuals and of groups.
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 11:24am PT
|
Really fine article tn the New York Times Review of books this morning: "Among the Disrupted" by Leon Wieseltier.
My only complaint is that I didn't write it. Among other things asks the question what is the difference between knowledge and information? Perhaps a more revealing question than what is subjectivity/objectivity?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 01:18pm PT
|
Jgill: What is meant by subjectivity?
I didn't ask this question.
I did ask about moving meditation.
?
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 03:54pm PT
|
I'm not too familiar with meditation but I always thought long hikes were meditative in the sense that the rhythm of breathing served as a kind of mantra, climbs as well. I always noticed in climbing there was sometimes a perfect balance between concentration and fear, where the whole world seemed to disappear except for the necessity of the next move and the mind had a kind of perfect clarity when all peripheral thoughts disappeared... always thought that was a kind of meditative thing: the mantra of controlled fear, I suppose.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 06:20pm PT
|
Paul that was a great article.
Sounded like somethin you could've wrote.
It is a interesting question as to why liberals would fear their philosophy?
In the Navy they would tell us "Smoke'em if you got'em, otherwise keep working!"
Seems Liberal if something is available to society, it is someone's right to use it. When science stumbled across GMO's, farmers agreed to garnish their crops under the guise of "someone is hungry somewhere". And the fact that GMO's raised their income some 600%. The fact that GMO's alter the genetic makeup in Rats only opens the door for scientist to experiment more on genetic alterations. Meanwhile peoples in third world civilizations over a couple generations are having their guts turned inside-out by these "scientific foods". Which in turn will be the cause for science to be called in to find a miracle cure to save society. Where they've been waiting in the wings with their labrat experiments and just chomping at the bit for an excuse to experiment on humans.
Who is it that "we' have to "think-harder" over the liberal science snow-balling experimental "progress" as to what is produced for human consumption?
Fundamentally We are One with Nature. Science is a super-sonic subway causing Separation.
|
|
PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 07:27pm PT
|
JG said
"If and when the meditators rejoin the thread, here is a question for them: Is it possible to reach the experience of "awareness without content" and the "no-thingness" JL talks about by engaging in moving meditation?
And how does moving meditation differ from a gymnast, for example, performing a routine - apart from the period of time involved in each? Can distance running be considered moving meditation? "
Being an ex gymnast and a climber and a meditator i will try to answer this slightly awkward question.
First of all there is nothing to reach for ; the moment is the moment that is it. So your thinking; that meditators are trying to get something is off base. Beginning meditators are often trying to get something , after a while they typically let that go or quit because "it didn't work". The Heart Sutra says " no attainment with nothing to attain"
That being said, yes! climbers , athletes , scientific researchers and everyone get a glimpse of the moment through vigorous concentration (paying attention) during their activity. We (the royal we) leave our whinyass selves behind and enter the moment and in climbing it is especially easy because the consequences are great. After the climb we think we are feeling great because we accomplished something; IMO we feel good because we left our sh#t behind while we paid attention to what we were doing.
All the accomplishment thinking stuff is "I" co-oping the experience. If you go back to my Jan 7th 11:59 post by HSIN Hsin Ming it expounds on this.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 07:34pm PT
|
I'm not too familiar with meditation but I always thought long hikes were meditative . . .
Thank you for your comment, Paul.
For years I practiced bouldering (even gymnastics to some extent) and long solo climbs as moving meditations, but clearly these were not the same as "seeking" open awareness. So maybe they were not really "meditations", only energetic interludes of abstention from rational thought.
When I read of walking a zen path focusing on each increment of motion I try to recall what it was like years ago, doing routines on the rings, climbing the gym rope for speed, bouldering a wired problem. There was not rational thought, just following an ingrained pattern of motion. Still, this may not be the same as a zen walk, unless moving zen is simply about leaving behind normal thought patterns, concerns and "I".
Edited after PSP's answers above. It seems that JL "seeks" no-thingness by not seeking it. But I'm still unclear if the experience he talks about - the "awareness without object" - is attainable by moving meditations. Not simply entering into the "moment" as PSP mentions.
|
|
dave729
Trad climber
Western America
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 08:25pm PT
|
And if its Religion 'plus' Science?
What will change now we know god did not password protect the universe.
Scientists claim hacking gods firewall is simple with new quantum computers.
Why Heaven is under denial of service attack and do you care?
Quantum hackers co-op gods administrator powers. Its true!
World commerce markets irrelevant now anyone can have anything instantly.
Download link: get god powers now for free https://www.getgodpowernow.com
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 08:33pm PT
|
My error Jgill. Apologies.
What is subjective is what an individual views?
What is objective is what many agree upon? Which many? How many? Independently reproduced, and published? I defy anyone or anything of independence. Show me one thing that is independent. Every being / actor is a product of culture, training, past experiences, social group, and on and on. As for what gets published as proof, please. There are fierce controversies everywhere, and they change on an almost regular basis. Even in science. Even in consensus. Nothing lasts. Everything is impermanent. What is not?
I say that whatever one thinks is objective, must be per force subjective and constructed. All that is objective is subjectively perceived. What is not?
This is quibbling? This is not revealing?
(No theory of mind is needed.)
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 09:28pm PT
|
whatever, MikeL...
there is nothing objective
there is nothing permanent
everything is provisional
yada yada yada...
paul has provided a perfect foil and you pontificate using "...all the miracles of electronic dissemination..." I suppose if STForum goes to a Twitter feed, we'd be hearing your twittering there, too...
there is nothing objective
there is nothing permanent
everything is provisional
yada yada yada...
I find the debate about the humanities to be rather old and worn. After all, we've had the "humanities" since the beginning of formal education, long before there was "science."
For cripes sake, the dons of Oxford still dress like they did in medieval times and they are probably one of the last surviving guilds, not that there is anything wrong with that...
but all these crocodile tears over science preempting "the humanities" honestly seems rather trite. If there is a competition of ideas, then some ideas are going to outcompete others... and the leather bound "humanities" may not be up to it right now...
the "ascendancy" of the sciences in this competition is relatively new, probably well within our lifetimes, and it isn't just about "information" but about "ideas."
The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions of life must be explained in terms of the material dimensions, and that nonscientific understandings must be translated into scientific understandings if they are to qualify as knowledge, is increasingly popular inside and outside the university, where the humanities are disparaged as soft and impractical and insufficiently new. The contrary insistence that the glories of art and thought are not evolutionary adaptations, or that the mind is not the brain, or that love is not just biology’s bait for sex, now amounts to a kind of heresy.
oh my... when someone questions "the glories of art and thought" you might think the defenders could come up with some better defense than "you can't explain everything yet, neener, neener, neener" or "there is some invisible something that we can't know that is responsible for all the nobility of mankind" or "hey, you, it's subjective, get off of my cloud!"
What we get on this thread in defense is, "oh, you believe that? obviously you aren't a very serious."
But mostly, we get a lot of old ideas that are not explained very well (and I suspect not understood very well by the explainers).
Oh, paul's article asserts:
So, too, does the view that the strongest defense of the humanities lies not in the appeal to their utility ... but rather in the appeal to their defiantly nonutilitarian character, so that individuals can know more than how things work, and develop their powers of discernment and judgment, their competence in matters of truth and goodness and beauty, to equip themselves adequately for the choices and the crucibles of private and public life.
I like ideas, utilitarian or non-utilitarian, but WTF is is about being "defiantly nonutilitarian"? and why would one expect to be recognized for it... seems to me you pick that path and you travel it because you want to, not because you want to be recognized for your choice. Most likely, you're going to be told you're stupid for doing it. If that bothers you don't take it out on those things that are utilitarian.
I was shocked to find that Engineering departments at great universities are teaching classes in Ethics. It got me wondering, how did I learn ethics. Quite shockingly I learned it in the humanities classes I took as an undergraduate as well as experiencing it in real life...
why doesn't that happen any more?
Well perhaps it's like the Physics classes in math methods... taught in the Physics departments... why not in the Math departments? well, no one teaches 19th century mathematics in modern math departments, or at least not in the context needed for the Physics curriculum. When I last taught I thought it would be good to change the curriculum to include more computational methods in the "math methods" classes and ran into the buzz saw of opposition, "we don't have enough of the 19th century math methods, we couldn't possibly waste time teaching computer stuff, and anyway, you could learn that on your own in a summer..."
Maybe "the humanities" are being "defiantly nonutilitarian," but the consequences of that are that they aren't in the arena where the ideas are being competed...
In the final paragraph there is an odd, unsubstantiated statement:
"The persistence of humanism through the centuries, in the face of formidable intellectual and social obstacles, has been owed to the truth of its representations of our complexly beating hearts, and to the guidance that it has offered, in its variegated and conflicting versions, for a soulful and sensitive existence."
I wonder, what have been the "formidable intellectual and social obstacles" to "the humanities"? The church? normal people who really don't know what all the brouhaha is about? it couldn't be science, that's mostly something that's happened in the last two centuries...
and it is news to me that "humanists" have a monopoly on "a soulful and sensitive existence." What is the basis of that?
Oh, maybe I'm playing too hard for "the humanities" and they need a more sensitive engagement, though they become "defiant" at some point...
If "Our solemn responsibility is for the substance" please tell us what you think is substantial, especially were you think someone like me does not... "the humanities" have no monopoly on that, either, not anymore.
Put your ideas out there, make a case for "the substantial" "... complacent humanist is a humanist who has not read his books closely, since they teach disquiet and difficulty...." (and I'm sure the reviewer didn't mean to be exclusive in the language used, implying that humanists are men).
If the ideas from science out compete the ideas from "the humanities" now, then "the humanities" have to up their game... all the blah blah blah of "tradition" and "history" will end up in history books, not in the contemporary conversation. If you don't want to compete, that's fine too, but don't whine too much over the consequences of that choice...
|
|
Psilocyborg
climber
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 09:32pm PT
|
Lol, right.
DMT
"hey I am DMT and I climb"
"bullshit"
"I do, come see for yourself"
"I can't....I got to wash my hair"
|
|
rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
|
|
|
Jan 18, 2015 - 09:57pm PT
|
I think that our ability to make moral decisions is a result of evolution. Sorry, but I'm confused about how that has moved beyond or is no longer controlled by evolution. Dinosaurs had brains too I guess.
Along with our morality most of our brains have developed an overwhelming self confirmation bias need to believe that we're more than we are, that our beliefs are more than they are. I think that it helps us get out of bed to enjoy the view (that we all agree is beautiful). It's clever of us and our transcendent brains - kudos to the creator! I'm pretty fond of the right foot I created too.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!