Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 05:46pm PT
|
Hi Ed,
I think you didn't have time to read all the preceding pages where we discussed what true spirituality might be, that meditation alone and, its experiences weren't enough, that I felt true spirituality meant going back into the world and having both wisdom and compassion. I labeled compassion heart the first round and of course MikeL thought it was more subtle and abstract than that. He and several people cautioned against trying to do good without enough wisdom. He in particular, stressed that everything is ok as it is. Hence my comment that even the realized masters try to convey their wisdom out of compassion.
I then posed the question that I'd love to hear from you on. If we are entering a new secular era which we seem to be, on what do we base ethics? Most particularly how did individuals on this thread teach them to their children. If we maintain that we are just evolved animals with meat brains, on what do we base those ethics - be the best evolved human you can be? Meanwhile, DMT blew that discussion out of the water, impressing all with both wisdom and compassion.
At least that's how I've understood the conversation.
And finally, I did read Doug's book, several years ago and found it spot on, but only covering a small part of the continuum of internal experiences that I've had.
|
|
Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 05:48pm PT
|
after posting on the soul thread
the mind was referenced as related to the soul
so I thought it would be a good idea to follow up and post the Skeptic Dictionary definition of the "mind
under "M" for mind
mind
http://skepdic.com/mind.html
The mind is thought to be the seat of perception, self-consciousness, thinking, believing, remembering, hoping, desiring, willing, judging, analyzing, evaluating, reasoning, etc.
Dualists consider the mind to be an immaterial substance, capable of existence as a conscious, perceiving entity independent of any physical body. Dualism is popular with those who believe in life after death. The brain and body may decay and disintegrate, but the mind (or soul) does not depend on the body for its existence and so may continue to flourish in another world. The belief in the mind as a substance that exists independently of the brain seems to be a requisite for immortality (and reincarnation), but the idea is also popular with many New Agers who believe they are contacting spirits, angels, and other supernatural entities with their magical thinking. Some philosophers think mind must be an immaterial substance for there to be free will; these philosophers consider free will to be necessary for morality. If the only thing that exists are material particles, these philosophers say, then human actions are determined by material causes over which we have no control. If so, then we can't help what we do, there is no responsibility for our actions, and punishing people for their misdeeds (or rewarding them for their good actions) is misguided.
The mind-body problem emerges when mind is defined as non-physical and not occupying space, while body is defined as physical and occupying space. Physical things can cause effects in other physical things but not in non-physical things because they don't occupy space. And non-material substances can't affect physical substances. So the dualists say, but they also say that it is obvious that the two substances do interact because perceptions and thoughts can give rise to feelings and changes in the body, while changes in the body can give rise to thoughts. This way of thinking may have made sense at one time, but it is hard to understand why anyone after the dawn of modern physics and neuroscience would talk about substances, material or immaterial, when talking about mind or consciousness. Yet, they do. Some, who recognize the absurdity of Descartes' notion that the place of interaction between mind and body is in the pineal gland, opine that the quantum mechanics explains everything: how mind and body interact, how free will exists, and how immortality is possible (Schwartz 2002).
A better model today would be one that recognizes the interrelationship between neural networks, physiological processes such as hormone and neurochemical production, brain modules such as those that comprise the visual pathways, perception, subjective experience, memory, the sense of self, and consciousness. Whether one considers the self as a substance or an illusion, the sense of self is real and so are the thoughts, feelings, and moods of a person. One need not take a position on the reality of the self itself in order to describe how one might affect a neural network, for example, by concentrated effort at controlling one's thoughts or focusing one's attention. It may be true that only the person having thoughts can have direct access to those thoughts, but an outside observer might witness and record changes in neural pathways brought about by processes accessible only to the subject himself.
Metaphysical materialists consider the mind to be the brain itself. For the materialist, 'mind' is a catchall term for a number of processes or activities that can be reduced to cerebral, neurological, and physiological processes, some of which are conscious and some of which are not. On this view, consciousness is not identical to mind, but represents a part of what is referred to as the mind. The 'unconscious mind' refers to those cerebral, neurological, and physiological processes that affect feelings, thoughts, and moods without our being conscious of their influence.
One apparent problem with the materialist view is that it is obvious that the mind, consciousness, perception, and the sense of self includes subjective experience, which is not equivalent to the neuronal activity except in the same sort of way that, say, matter is equivalent to energy.
Behaviorists, on the other hand, consider 'mind' to be a catchall term for a set of behaviors and have no mind-body problem. The behaviorists have been criticized, however, for not recognizing the differences in evolution of the human brain from that of other animals. John B. Watson's declaration that "the behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute" has been taken as an open-door policy to dehumanizing therapeutic practices (Schwartz: 2ff.), as well as an admission of ignorance of the significance of vital differences between the brains of, say, dogs, orcas, and humans.
the brain, body, mind, consciousness feedback loop
In a typical adult human brain, there might be one hundred billion neurons and each of them might have thousands of connections with other neurons. (Plus, there are about a billion neurons in the spinal cord.) We have no idea how they collectively create thoughts or feelings or moods. In any case, we are never aware of these neural networks or connections while we are going about are daily affairs (unless we are neuroscientists studying or operating on brains as part of our daily business). We have no idea how the sense of self arises from these hidden neural networks, but it is obvious that the sense of self does arise and is not identical to the brain activity that results in simple perception, self-awareness, imagination, memory, or planning tomorrow's menu. This fact has led some to refer to the mind as an epiphenomenon or emergent substance: the mind is not identical to the brain but its existence depends on the brain and when the brain dies so does the mind. Some who adhere to epiphenomenalism deny that the mind can cause effects in the body, but this view does not seem plausible.
Just as the qualia one perceives are distinct from both what stimulates the brain to perceive those qualia and from the brain itself, so too are the mind and consciousness distinct from what stimulates the brain and from the brain itself. The qualia don't exist at all when there is no creature with a brain perceiving something. Consciousness itself doesn't exist if there is no brain in a body that can perceive. Where there's no consciousness, there's clearly no self-consciousness. The human mind, on this model, is the entire feedback loop of the brain, body, qualia, consciousness, and self-consciousness. One might even consider many unconscious brain and physiological processes as part of the mind since they affect thoughts, feelings, and moods. The mind is not an additional object to the processes that occur when brains in bodies perceive, think, and reflect on or guide perception and thought. This model is sometimes called materialism because it does not recognize the mind as an immaterial substance, i.e., an incorporeal body (a notion that Thomas Hobbes noted long ago is a self-contradiction). But, as noted above, modern physics does not recognize anything like the traditional philosophical concept of material substance. We can't study substances in the classical sense in our labs and our interest is in what we can know. We can know a great deal about various forms of electro-magnetic reality, about magnetic and electrical forces, about energy and power, about light and sub-atomic particles, and the like. We can know a lot about the brain, neural networks, hormone and neurochemical production, feelings, moods, and the like. We can study the effects of various cognitive conditioning programs on neural networks and the effects of various electrical or chemical brain stimulations on thoughts, feelings, and actions. And we can do this without labeling the mind as material or immaterial. As noted above, the mind and self and consciousness are not additional things in the world that exist above and beyond the brain and the body and their interaction with the world.
There is probably no more fascinating topic in philosophy or neurology than mind or consciousness. Yet, despite the fact that the human mind has made it possible to gain all the understanding of the world and ourselves that we now possess, it has done precious little to help us understand itself. For example, memory is something we all have to some degree or another. Yet, we do not fully understand the nature of memory, and several models of memory are equally plausible. Some models, however, seem more intelligible than others. When trying to understand something like Alzheimer's disease, for example, the view of the mind as identical to or emergent from the brain has advantages over the mind as an immaterial substance existing independently of the brain. For the immaterialist, the mind has no parts and there is no plausible way to determine how various mental activities like memory, sense perception, and self-awareness are related to one another. It is not even clear what 'subconscious' could mean in a mind that knows no parts. We may not know exactly how neural networks give rise to particular memories, but we do know how brain diseases like Alzheimer's disease disrupt neural connections essential to memories. Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles explain why various mental and physical functions cease. There is no plausible explanation for loss of memory or other sensory functions possible with the mind as spirit hypothesis. The usual explanation is that the mind somehow works in parallel with the brain, but there seems to be little in favor of this notion except that it is consistent with the concept of the mind as an immaterial, independent substance. To be plausible, there must be more to an idea than that it is consistent with another idea that is not based on much evidence itself.
Models of mind or consciousness continue to occupy the brains of some of our best philosophers and scientists. Yet, despite the fact that the key to understanding the human mind is likely to be found in the study of the functioning and evolution of the human brain, some philosophers and psychologists continue to be guided by the belief that the mind can be adequately understood independently of the brain. It seems obvious to most scientists that the human brain is a product of millions of years of evolution and is intimately related to the brains of all species from which our species is descended. Somewhere near the beginning of the chain of beings with brains were creatures who did not possess self-consciousness, much less anything like the complex brain modules (some thirty in all) that make up the visual system of the modern human. The notion that consciousness could have emerged from basic biological processes over millions of years conflicts with the notion, favored by many, of an independent consciousness created by another consciousness--albeit one of infinite power--with the capacity to exist in a body and outside of a body when the body dies. To the materialist, there is no need to posit a consciousness or mind as the creator of the minds that we humans call our own. The human mind may not be able to fathom how the universe came to be or how it exists without any beginning, but positing a mind that brought the universe into being or which has existed forever just pushes the incomprehensibility up to another level. We may not be able to understand how self-consciousness emerges from neural networks, but positing an immaterial self piloting the material body through life and leaving that body at death just pushes our non-understanding up a notch. It explains nothing and seems attractive mainly because it is consistent with the notion of life after death. Instead of asking what is the evidence for this immaterial mental substance, we might better ask "what makes the idea of immortality attractive?" There are some obvious pros, of course. You could be with the ones you love forever. You could see your parents and dead relatives and friends again. Is there a down side to immortality? I'd say the downside is nearly infinite even without considering concepts like eternal hellfire, but each of us should figure out this kind of thing for ourselves. Then, there is the notion that, as Steven Pinker put it, "the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth."
mind-body medicine & mind-body science
Whereas dualist philosophers have long struggled with what is known as the mind-body problem, New Age gurus are calling for mind-body harmony in medicine, therapy and science. In short, philosophers have realized that there is a problem in explaining how two fundamentally different kinds of reality can affect one another, while New Age pundits think the problem has been caused by treating the two--mind and body--as if they do not interact. Science-based medicine is well aware of the mind/brain/body feedback loop and has no need to posit substances that do or don't interact.
While many advocates of so-called mind-body medicine are dualists, it is not necessary to posit an immaterial substance to accommodate such things as the physical effects of meditation, yoga, tai chi, or hypnosis--activities often cited as examples of mind-body medicine. The relationship of the mind to the body is not well understood, but some models fit better with the data than others. Philosophers and psychologists have long divided the mind into conscious and subconscious processes. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever divided the brain into conscious and subconscious processes. All brain processes occur outside of awareness of those processes. Logically, it seems impossible for the brain and mind and self to be one. From that fact, however, it does not follow that the mind and self can exist independently of a brain. What percolates into consciousness from brain processes, whether the result of intentional perception or unintentional triggering of neuronal networks, is perceived to occur effortlessly. What manifests itself as a feeling or mood may appear to us as due to this or that experience or event, but the underlying brain, hormonal, and other physiological processes that give rise to the feeling or the mood are hidden from conscious awareness. The sense of self that each of us has emerges as we develop. What might be called the standard model of the brain today sees the self as emerging from some sort of brain processes not yet understood or identified. How these processes will be identified is thought to be similar to the way that many other specific brain functions have been identified: (1) we will study people who have lost the sense of self and try to identify areas of the brain that are damaged or malfunctioning; (2) we will study the effects of stimulating specific parts of the brain; (3) we will study the brain in action with fMRI technology, including trying to detect what parts of the brain change when a person's consciousness changes focus. For example, one aspect of the concept of self is that we identify it as existing within the confines of our body, usually as located in the head behind the eyes. Stimulation of the right temporo-parietal region has induced the sense of the self floating above the body. Studies have also found that imagining the self floating above the body activates the same area of the brain (Burton 2008: 128).
Neurological studies on the sense of self-identity have not located a single brain module that gives rise to the sense of self.
A small group of brain scientists is now investigating misidentification syndromes, as the delusions are called, for clues to one of the most confounding problems in brain science: identity. How and where does the brain maintain the “self”? What researchers are finding is that there is no single “identity spot” in the brain. Instead, the brain uses several different neural regions, working closely together, to sustain and update the identities of self and others. Learning what makes identity, researchers say, will help doctors understand how some people preserve their identities in the face of creeping dementia, and how others, battling [brain] injuries ... are sometimes able to reconstitute one....
Researchers who have taken images of the brain as it processes information related to personal identity have noticed that several areas are particularly active. Called cortical midline structures, they run like an apple core from the frontal lobes near the forehead through the center of the brain.
These frontal and midline areas communicate with regions of the brain that process memory and emotion, in the medial temporal lobe, buried deep beneath each ear. And studies strongly suggest that in delusions of identity, these emotion centers are either not well connected to frontal midline areas or not providing good information.*
In addition to the fundamental sense of self that we use terms such as "I" and "me" to refer to, there are the memories each of us has that we think of as "ours" and without which we would become a different person. Anyone who has lived with a person with dementia who you've known for many years knows what it is like to watch a person become a different person. It is, of course, impossible to know what it feels like to have a brain that cannot access much of one's life's experiences and memories. Such a brain can't be aware of what has been lost, although false memories can be created with stories and photographs. These new memories can be reinforced through repetition, giving the demented person a sense of remembering some elements of her past life. I have watched a person develop dementia over a period of several years who never lost a sense of self, but whose self-identity changed drastically as she lost more and more memories.
One misconception of the self that has been corrected by science is the notion of the self as a "ghost in the machine," a kind of pilot who steers and directs the body through life. As Steven Pinker puts it in The Blank Slate: "The conscious mind—the self or soul—is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief."
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along. (Pinker 2007)
A complicating factor in neurological studies trying to locate areas of the brain from which the sense of self or consciousness itself emerges is the brain's plasticity: the ability of the brain to alter itself so that functions previously governed by a part of the brain that has become damaged are taken up by different parts of the brain.1
Scientists often describe self-awareness as having three components: (1) awareness of one's body and a sense of the ability to act; (2) autobiographical memories and a sense of one's own personality and physical traits; and (3) an ability to reflect on one's own actions and mental states and their consequences. Some studies have identified several specific areas of the brain as being involved in these processes, yet there are cases of people brain-damaged in these identified areas who have a sense of self-awareness.
Self-awareness is a complex concept, and neuroscientists are debating from where it arises in the brain. Some have argued that certain regions in the brain play critical roles in generating self-awareness. The regions neuroscientists have advocated include the insular cortex, thought to play a fundamental role in all aspects of self-awareness; the anterior cingulate cortex, implicated in body and emotional awareness, as well as the ability to recognize one's own face and process one's conscious experience; and the medial prefrontal cortex, linked with processing information about oneself. Patient R's illness destroyed nearly all of these regions of his brain.
....[yet] Patient R's self-awareness is largely intact in spite of his brain injury.*
In short, the research so far on consciousness, mind, self-awareness, and the like is complicated and incomplete. On the other hand, a model of the mind as an immaterial substance adds nothing to understanding anything about the mind and its relationship to the brain. Why posit the mind as an immaterial parallel processor to the brain whose existence is somehow completely disconnected from that of the brain? Again, the main reason seems to be that the idea fits well with the desire for immortality or at least some sort of continued existence after death. Some also think that free will can only exist if the mind is an immaterial substance distinct from the body and morality is not possible without free will. To which the materialist or science-based philosopher might say, "so what?"
Finally, since it makes sense to talk of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, mind and consciousness are not identical. The word 'mind' is a catch-all term for both conscious perception and unconscious brain processes that affect thoughts, feelings, and moods. 'Consciousness' is also a catch-all term for subjective experience of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and moods. Neither 'mind' nor 'consciousness' refer to objects. They are neither material nor immaterial, much the same way that force or energy is neither material nor immaterial.
__
1. Re neuroplasticity: Dr. Steven Novella wrote the following in comments on a book review by Dr. Harriet Hall.
No magic need be invoked to explain neuroplasticity. Along with recent discoveries that show there is more plasticity than we had previously recognized, is research showing what at least part of the basis for that plasticity is. We have also recently learned that there are neuro-stem cells in the brain – cells waiting to become new neurons, to make new pathways and connections.
We also already have a great deal of information about the cellular mechanisms underlying plasticity. We know that neurons grow and make synapses in response to neurotrophic hormones secreted by other neurons.
When cells are injured they release chemicals into the local environment, and those chemical act as signals to other cells to repair the injury.
Of course, this is a complex system and we have a long way to go before we understand it fully. But so far we are finding good old-fashioned biological causes (cells, chemical signals, hormones) producing all of the brain effects that we see.* (see comment 15)
See also astral projection, change blindness, dualism, free will, inattentional blindness, materialism, memory , soul, Charles Tart, the unconscious mind, and p-zombies.
book reviews
Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks (2012)
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)
SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable by Bruce Hood (HarperCollins 2010)
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons (Crown 2010)
The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine
by Anne Harrington (W. W. Norton 2008).
Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine
by R. Barker Bausell (Oxford 2007).
Madness on the Couch - Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis
by Edward Dolnick (Simon & Schuster 1998).
Searching for Memory - the brain, the mind, and the past
by Daniel L. Schacter (Basic Books 1996).
The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together by Charles T. Tart, Ph.D. (New Harbinger 2009)
The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
by Gary Schwartz (Atria 2003)
Ghost Hunters - William James and the Hunt for Scientific Proof of Life After Death
by Deborah Blum (Penguin Press 2006).
The Rediscovery of the Human Soul
by L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology Press ? 1996).
further reading
books and articles
Blackmore, Susan. Consciousness: An Introduction (Oxford University Press 2003).
Burton, Robert A., M.D. 2013. A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves. St. Martin's Press.
Burton, Robert A., M.D. 2008. On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You're Not. St. Martin's Griffin.
Churchland, Patricia Smith. 2013. Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain. W. W. Norton.
Churchland, Patricia Smith. 1986. Neurophilosophy - Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. MIT Press.
Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Avon Books, 1995).
Davies, P.C.W. 2004. Does quantum mechanics play a non-trivial role in life? Biosystems. "The case for quantum biology remains one of 'not proven.' There are many suggestive experiments and lines of argument indicating that some biological func- tions operate close to, or within, the quantum regime, but as yet no clear-cut example has been presented of non-trivial quantum effects at work in a key biologi- cal process."
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford Books, 1978).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Elbow room: the varieties of free will worth wanting (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1984).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Consciousness explained illustrated by Paul Weiner (Boston : Little, Brown and Co., 1991).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life (New York : Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Kinds of minds: toward an understanding of consciousness (New York, N.Y. : Basic Books, 1996).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2005).
Doidge, Norman. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Penguin Books.
Fine, Cordelia. 2008.A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. W. W. Norton & Company.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Daniel C. Dennett The mind's I: fantasies and reflections on self and soul (New York : Basic Books, 1981).
Hofstadter, Douglas. Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
Hood, Bruce. 2009. SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable. HarperCollins.
Hotz, Robert Lee. "Deciphering the Miracles of the Mind," Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1996.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2012. A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning. Oxford University Press.
Kandel, Eric R. & James H. Schwartz, eds. Principles of Neural Science 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 2000).
Linden, David J. 2009.The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God. Belknap Press.
Mlodinow, Leonard. 2012. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Random House.
Norretranders,Tor. The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (Viking Press, 1999).
Pinker, Steven. 2007. "The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness." Time.
Pinker, Steven. 2008. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. Penguin Books.
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking.
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes and Noble: 1949).
Sacks, Oliver W. An anthropologist on Mars : seven paradoxical tales (New York : Knopf, 1995).
Sacks, Oliver W. The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (New York : Summit Books, 1985).
Sacks, Oliver W. A leg to stand on (New York : Summit Books, 1984).
Sacks, Oliver W. Seeing voices : a journey into the world of the deaf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
Sala, Sergio Della. (1999). Editor. Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain. Wiley & Sons.
Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory - the brain, the mind, and the past (New York: Basic Books, 1996), especially chapter 6, "The Hidden World of Implicit memory". Review.
Schwartz,Jeffrey M., M.D. and Sharon Begley.2002. The Mind and The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Harper Perennial.
Watters, Ethan and Richard Ofshe. Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried (Simon and Schuster, 1999).
websites
The Whole Brain Atlas
Mind and Body: René Descartes to William James by Robert Wozniak of Bryn Mawr College
Tracking Down Consciousness by Stephen Novella, Neurologica Blog A new study by neuroscientists at Cambridge claims to have found a possible signature of conscious processing.
Last updated 21-Oct-2015
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 05:52pm PT
|
Neurological studies on the sense of self-identity have not located a single brain module that gives rise to the sense of self.
Duh, that's because the self is NOT material ever and the foolish scientist is using material instruments to find the self.
The gross materialists have a very poor understanding of science.
What can be done when the gross materialist is brainwashed by the rigid dichotomy of only gross materialism ......
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 06:19pm PT
|
Craig [cutting and pasting from a dictionary]: Dualism is popular with those who believe in life after death.
Dualism is popular with everybody. It’s a very simple idea: there are two. (Duh.)
As a dictionary, this one fails. I mean we’re talking 3500 words here for a definition of a single word. It can’t be a dictionary. It must be an encyclopedia.
Werner, +1.
P.S., Jan—I don’t see that compassion is abstract. I’m with Loori: compassion is so common, automatic, maybe even mundane as to go unnoticed by the very people who engage in it. It’s like walking.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 07:19pm PT
|
Hey Jan,
I played around with that slider at the NYT's piece too. But since I didn't know the algorithm behind it, the details of it and how the audio was generated/manipulated, I was a little suspect about its results, usefulness.
At the end of the day, I ended up much more impressed with how one's own perception, in this case mine, could switch back n forth - Yanny or Laurel - given the very same input/source each time. Much like optically with the Necker's Cube or the Rubin's Vase or the old lady/young lady phenomena.
Pretty neat, too, I think, that social media uncovered this one. From the depths of obscurity/rarity/complexity you might say.
...
This just in...
Janny v. Laurel: what’s interesting is that nobody hears a mush in between. The brain strongly filters our sensory input and imposes an interpretation before sending info up to our conscious perception. -Sean Carroll
This is my description, too.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 17, 2018 - 07:44pm PT
|
I did read the pages, I'm not sure what "true spirituality" is because it seemed unnecessary to call it "spirituality," unless you want to completely divorce the word from its etymological roots.
If you want to base a "new ethics" separate from some religious/doctrinal basis it is relatively straight forward to incorporate what we know from science to help.
First and foremost, the utterly random fact of our individual existence seems to have a meaning in this world that no one is more special than an other. This is not an "inalienable" endowment from "our creator" but the simple fact of biology.
While individual abilities may vary, the importance of this variation and the contribution to the genetic totality of our species and its very future depends on this variance.
The planet which we occupy has life which depends on all of the existing species, and the conditions of our existence similarly depend on all that other life. There was a 4.095 billion year period of life on the planet without our species, there could well be a similar length of time in the future. We are not special in that regard.
The possibility of making a viable living environment elsewhere in the universe is doubtful based on what we know about the energy requirements of creating such an environment. This means that there is only one planet, our home, and we'd be short sighted not to take care of it.
None of these things are based on spirituality, but these, and many more, could form a basis for a "moral" system projected onto a set of ethics which arise naturally from the consequences of not having them.
I do agree that if you are looking for a grander meaning, you wont find it here, but I don't see why you need to look further than what we have here. Living in celebration of our utterly improbably existence would seem to be enough.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - May 17, 2018 - 09:34pm PT
|
a model of the mind as an immaterial substance...
Like a massless particle? Some "substance" we cannot see or measure?
Tis a puzzlement.
Also, the “Laurel” or “Yanny” audio file is a blast to tinker with as you consciously change your perception, going from wide to narrow focus, or shifting attention somewhere else but your head - all while toggling the pitch bar.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 06:55am PT
|
Jan,
It seems to me that you have to square your sense, most anyone's sense, of ethics with upaya if you want to honor certain Buddhist views.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 08:43am PT
|
None of these things are based on spirituality, but these, and many more, could form a basis for a "moral" system projected onto a set of ethics which arise naturally from the consequences of not having them.
Yes, that's the new paradigm I'm looking for. As an anthropologist I have experienced that all moral systems arise naturally from the consequences of not having them. Our term for it is cultural ecology.
In the recent past, since the invention of agriculture about 8,000 years ago, the moral systems of most of humanity have been set in motion by charismatic visionaries who were able to translate powerful interior experiences of the subconscious or unconscious or spiritual mind into practical morality. However, as the populace becomes more educated, the more each seems to have to work it out for themselves within some kind of a broad framework.
One big question is how broad that framework should be. Obviously Ed and Werner have found what they believe to be complete frameworks. It seems to me Mike has combined two frameworks - postmodernism and a certain form of Buddhism. For myself, ever the agnostic, I'm still pondering.
Science works for the left brain conscious mind for sure, but what for the unconscious mind? Jogill emphasizes the intensity of its experiences but ultimately subsumes them under a scientific explanation. Perhaps in the year 2100 that will be the common view. If not, what would be the alternative?
Can the logical conscious mind and the emotional unconscious mind be reconciled or will humans forever ping pong back and forth between them? Will humans develop new disciplines and methods for the unconscious mind whose explanations supercede the scientific conscious mind? There are a number of indications that we are going in that direction. Will this lead us back into a new dark age or a new age of enlightenment? Is this the age of skillful means or total confusion?
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 10:48am PT
|
First and foremost, the utterly random fact of our individual existence seems to have a meaning in this world that no one is more special than an other. This is not an "inalienable" endowment from "our creator" but the simple fact of biology.
Here you immediately run into a problem. The stronger are special as it is the stronger who are likely to survive and procreate. Why shouldn't the stronger control or use the weaker? How is that not the paradigm of evolution? You have to find a better base for notions of equality if you're going to base an ethos or moral system on it.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 10:57am PT
|
We're all cast more or less from the same mold, but Paul has a point.
|
|
i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 12:19pm PT
|
Jan,
Today my wife came in and told me that when she was at our daughter's condo seeing our granddaughter, she overheard someone at the door wanting $30.00?
Come to find out it was one of the gardener landscapers who work on the property had found some keys that our daughter's mate had lost a week and a half ago! However this was not the first time this worker came to their condo wanting money but she didn't have any cash at that time.
The question is how did the worker know who to bring them, did he see them drop and why did he wait so long to return them? He said it would cost us more to replace them than $30.00!
My wife went out and started to argue him and said that just to give them back and he said why should I, then she said what's people do and it's the right thing and he could feel good about it, than the worker laughed! Eventually he gave my wife the keys without getting the $30.00.
Come to find out the front gate remote that was attached to the keys was missing, so my wife called the HOA to inform them of what happened!
When I've found keys left in our multi unit mailbox I just returned them and hoped someone would do the same for us!
By the way our granddaughter just had heart surgery and our daughter has no money to spare to give this guy $30.00, but they felt they had to change their locks to feel safer!
...old paradim! : (
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 01:43pm PT
|
Jan,
I’m not sure that you nor healyje have a very good grasp of postmodernism. Here are some conceptually related ideas that are aligned with postmodern views: grounded theory; symbolic interactionism; ethnomethodology; phenomenology; conversation analysis; inductive ethnology; hermeneutics of many, many flavors; critical theory; poststructuralism; deconstruction; discourse analysis; feminism; and genealogy—to name a few. All of these focus on the authority of interpretations. A related spiritual idea found in Buddhism (as well as other ancient traditions) is that it is best to avoid hard and fast interpretations; it is better to simply cultivate and immerse oneself in awareness (Sanskrit, “samavesa”) before interpretations become reified.
I’m also not sure you and I have the same understanding of upaya, either.
The wont for certainty leads science and most religions to errors. It also undermines most rule-based systems of ethics.
If there were an age of upaya, only bodhisattvas and buddhas could say what would be ethical or not.
|
|
cintune
climber
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 01:52pm PT
|
"... a good grasp of postmodernism."
Funniest line I've read all day. Thanks.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 02:57pm PT
|
Here are some conceptually related ideas that are aligned with postmodern views: grounded theory; symbolic interactionism; ethnomethodology; phenomenology; conversation analysis; inductive ethnology; hermeneutics of many, many flavors; critical theory; poststructuralism; deconstruction; discourse analysis; feminism; and genealogy—to name a few.
Feathers tossed in the air.
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 03:11pm PT
|
Funniest line I've read all day, thanks.
Feathers tossed in the air.
The old and worthless "you're wrong" argument. Feathers that didn't get off the ground. How about a real argument against post-modern theory? They're out there you know.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2018 - 03:20pm PT
|
"... a good , grasp of postmodernism."
On this thread, as it often goes in life, when people don't have a studied grasp of something - myself included - we seek to dismiss the notion rather than stating the simple truth: I don't really understand where these people are coming from, how their ideas evolved, and why, what their reasoning is based on, what they are seeking to correct or reframe, or why any of it's important.
What you would likely find should you analyze those lambasting postmodernism is an addiction to a narrow style of attention, backed with a personality type that favors physical literalism with definitive "answers" rendered in classical, black and white terms. Few understand that it's these attentional and psychological traits that generally birth their beliefs, ideas and convictions, not intellectual rigor.
I want this (classical) to be true, ergo that must be false or suspect. Then, where is the (classical) data to support your argument?
That's called a closed loop.
I'm just waking up to the fact of how pervasive this is in my own life. I too would like to "know." For a fact.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
May 18, 2018 - 03:21pm PT
|
The old and worthless "you're wrong" argument.
Wrong interpretation.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!