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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 28, 2018 - 10:59am PT
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Consciousness itself is not visually observable.
what is "consciousness" that you refer to as being "not visually observable?"
is it observable in some other manner?
you are the one going down the rabbit hole here.
Ask anyone about consciousness and they will understand your question and even respond, whether or not they have thought through any of the philosophical issues. Their responses will also be recognizable, and even share many (if not most) of the questioner's own experience.
To make it out as something mysterious is disingenuous ("not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does"), among humans, consciousness is a common trait, a universally shared phenomenon.
On that we can, and have, all agreed.
One can take the stance that we can only know that we alone have a consciousness. I have no argument to refute that, no one has.
and probably this is not resolvable by just philosophizing
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
does this chart mean anything to you?
why?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 28, 2018 - 11:59am PT
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Largo,
What song was Gordon Lightfoot listening to on the radio when he heard the news that he had died?
Who's most recent book is This I Know?
You need to walk a mile in your audience's shoes.
Words are the instrument of change.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 28, 2018 - 01:15pm PT
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MH said "Words are the instrument of change."
I would rephrase that to words are one instrument of change ; but, In my experience words are not as effective as in changing me as running out of water half way up Washington's column or rappelling off of leaning tower in a blizzard or sitting in silence for 7 days.
In Zen practice a key component is seeing you are attached to name and form i.e. thinking that by studying climbing you would fully understand climbing, thinking you know more about climbing than a climber who never read any climbing stories or history or technigue guides etc. .
It is back to the map is not the territory. Words are not the territory just an interpretation of the territory.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 28, 2018 - 03:17pm PT
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When proper sound vibration of transcendental words is vibrated then real lasting change happens.
Just babbling any material words has no real lasting effect and are only temporary fleeting effects that do not carry beyond material birth and death ......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 28, 2018 - 04:00pm PT
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As usual, PSP's comments provide clarity regarding Zen, without all the mystical metaphysics.
At this point I am reluctant to accept consciousness without content, although the empty stage analogue is attractive. But even there one is conscious of the stage, and so there is content. Thus, in dreamless sleep we are one with empty awareness. It all makes sense.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 28, 2018 - 06:31pm PT
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jogill -- "I am reluctant to accept consciousness without content, .." \
Yes, the impersonal stage of realization is always incomplete.
There must be content and there is in full realization, variegatedness, individuality, and personalities ......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 28, 2018 - 07:22pm PT
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Confirmation bias feels good. Thanks, Duck.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 28, 2018 - 07:40pm PT
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jogill: At this point I am reluctant to accept consciousness without content, although the empty stage analogue is attractive.
Ha-ha. You see this as an academic enterprise, don’t you? But that will show you almost nothing. There must be involvement, and I suppose for my friends like you, that won’t be coming. Engagement need not (perhaps should not) be serious, nor looking to find a secret key or bullet for what you think are problems in your life. Those problems can, perhaps, bring a person to wonder “what the hell is going on,” but if you’re like most folks (and I don’t know), then you’ll let that slide by because it looks too big, messy, or futile. And this too is evolution.
EDIT: When I said that it's evolution, I didn't mean any particular one. It seems that all roads lead to the same place.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 28, 2018 - 08:00pm PT
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It seems that all roads lead to the same place.
It seems .... but it's NOT true at all ....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 28, 2018 - 08:13pm PT
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PSP also PP said:
I would rephrase that to words are one instrument of change
I would have said the same, except that I was quoting. At the moment I don't remember the source, but will probably come up with the right words eventually.
A more significant qualifier is that words may not be the only or the most important instrument of change for you, personally, but they are probably the most likely instrument you would use to bring about change in others.
Words are important. Even if they are not the instrument of change, they are the common coin for expressing change. Works of art can do it too. Great literature may be a work of art.
And yes, PSP also PP is a steady, balanced, considerate voice on this thread. Good use of words.
edit:
Ah, yes. There are people on this planet who are highly motivated to create change. They are the people paid lots of money to promote products. One of them is Terry O'Reilly. He is a good person to listen to.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-day-gordon-lightfoot-died-then-came-back-to-life-1.4604390
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 28, 2018 - 09:18pm PT
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Yes and no, Werner.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 28, 2018 - 10:17pm PT
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Interesting video jstan. First they claim they kept the brain alive and then they tell us it had no consciousness. It seems to me that could be seen as evidence by people who view consciousness as existing apart from the brain ??
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 29, 2018 - 02:33am PT
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At this point I am reluctant to accept consciousness without content, although the empty stage analogue is attractive.
But even there one is conscious of the stage, and so there is content. Thus, in dreamless sleep we are one with empty
awareness. It all makes sense.
This again harks to the role of the subconscious in the question of "what is mind?" And it doesn't surprise me it doesn't
get much consideration here given it we don't think of it as playing much of a role in what we are aware and conscious of.
But personally, I suspect our conscious mind is very much like the tip of an iceberg and the vast majority of the work
that goes into us being aware and having subjective experiences is accomplished by the subconscious mind. And that
subconscious mind isn't content, but rather filtering, processing, aggregating, correlating, and contextualizing sensory
inputs so that you have something to subjectively experience.
If that's all the case, then what does 'no-thing' in mediation, 'empty awareness', or any form of awareness mean in terms
of subjective experience? I'd personally say it casts some doubt on all of the above and that's because anything you are
aware of or subjectively experience is a result of an extraordinary amount of preprocessing by your subconscious
and there's no way around that so regardless of the appearances you are directly experiencing no-thing or empty
awareness you aren't.
That's because, similar to the idea reality may be created by our consciousness, everything you experience, even
in meditation, is ultimately a product of your subconscious mind and it's processing - no subconsciousness, no
consciousness - you can't have the latter without the former and there is no conscious end-run around
the subconscious mind.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 29, 2018 - 07:50am PT
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True meditation quiets the agitated waves of the subconscious to a clear smooth conscious state so that one can then see "as it really is" and not how one thinks it is ......
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Apr 29, 2018 - 08:23am PT
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^^^^
Well said !
We ARE consciousness, but sometimes we can't see through the clouds of random thoughts floating by!
Just do, go about your day staying fully in each moment!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 29, 2018 - 09:41am PT
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Healyje,
You have a theory.
Consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness, awareness, mind all seem to be inadequately stipulated--at least for scientific purposes. What we seem to be left with is unending speculation. What we seem to have instead are metaphors, one of which you made reference to: the computer (memory, information processing). It's a conceptualization of how "things" happen in mind, but without saying what mind or consciousness is. I guess if electricity is what electricity does, then mind is what mind does.
Is mind what mind does (behavioralism)? Objectively, we cannot say. (We can say what brain does, I suppose--but are we assured that is a 1:1 equivalence?)
It seems to me that the best data anyone can come to is what is observed subjectively. Places to start are typical: thoughts, feelings, emotions, instincts, intuitions, etc. For the most part, that is not what's normally suggested here in this thread by people with your view. Do you not see *any* usefulness in simply observing subjectively what's going on for you, in you? What do you see? Can you make careful, detailed, subjective observations of your own subjectivity?
Rather than breaking out the MRI or EEG or blood analyses or such, one might first take some insight from the thousands of years of understanding from hundreds of spiritual masters on the subject of awareness / consciousness / mind. Although they are not all saying the same things, they appear very much to be pointing in the same directions. Should that mean nothing to anyone who has interests in consciousness or awareness?
What made people masters was not that they achieved total liberation (a freeing from illusions) but that they appeared to have mastered themselves. I don't know that science has very much to tell us about that topic at all.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 29, 2018 - 10:56am PT
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Consciousness itself is not visually observable.
what is "consciousness" that you refer to as being "not visually observable?"
is it observable in some other manner?
As we have seen presented here many times, consciousness, in it's common usage, refers to the phenomenological aspect of reality in regards to being a human being, stated variously as subjectivity, the sense of having personal experience, of being aware of existing in time and space and having the content of consciousness (thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories etc.) pass though awareness, and our ability to acknowledge same as actually happening, t mention a few.
If you can demonstrate how any of these phenomenological aspects are physically observable "in some other manner," or at all, have at it, Ed. Your best description will at best describe a zombie or a machine, with consciousness itself handily left out.
Scientific representation/notation can take us to the threshold of consciousness, but no further.
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