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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 25, 2015 - 08:34pm PT
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Jgill:
I didn’t say that maths or language was wrong. I said they present problems. You can understand that to mean they are not neat, tidy, with loose ends. The notion that those conventional wisdoms constitute a “pathology” or a “contamination” is your interpretation, not mine. I don’t think you are reading my writing well. I see nothing wrong with incompleteness or open-endedness. I take those as unavoidable givens, conventionally. I embrace them. I don’t think ANYTHING can be tidied up. In my view, everything is freeform.
I don’t stick with anyone, much less Derrida, John. Even he is incomplete, and particularly open-ended.
Your use of the words contamination and pathology signals a value assessment in my view. Am I wrong?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jan 25, 2015 - 08:48pm PT
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Your use of the words contamination and pathology signals a value assessment in my view. Am I wrong?
No, you are not wrong, Mike. And, yes, pathological describes
incompleteness from my limited and conventional perspective. Other mathematicians would disagree. Some delight in dabbling in this stuff, finding it the breath of mathematical life.
But, getting back to whether JL's discourses on meditation are evidence of religious conviction . . .
;>)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 25, 2015 - 08:50pm PT
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Thanks, John. Understood. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.
HFCS: None of your items above address "biological information processing" in the relevant context of the tvash post. :(
I did address information, processing, information processing, and all three with regards to what I understand to be the most valuable human activities in current society. I take it that you want me to talk about neuroscience and the chemistry of neurobiological activities in the human specie?
We just can’t talk, can we? I have the backgrounds that I thought were relevant, and I parsed some points of views without going into labels or terminology so that they’d be understood by most people on the thread. It seems to me that you’re asking me to specifically talk only in your field. That means we can’t talk if I am not an expert in your field.
This is perhaps one of the bigger problems of having too much education in a narrow field of study. It takes a liaison role to integrate different points of view, technology, disciplines, and values held dear by the different fields. The costs of integration outweigh the benefits.
Sunk in the depths of a field of study may lead to more problems than it solves. I’d argue that what’s needed is the facility to explain all those things you know to others who are not well-versed in your field of study. Real expertise is being explain the big picture of what you know to your mom so that she gets it.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:58am PT
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back to whether JL's discourses on meditation are evidence of religious conviction . . .
Another possibility is that he is planning a crime and laying down evidence for a defense based on insanity. As I have said 1,000 times before...
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 26, 2015 - 10:36am PT
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Some here have burned a whole lotra MIPS to try to convince themselves that whats going on in their noggins is information processing plus...plus...ooblick?
"my brain does not work like dbase query"
Um...ok. the way information is processed might vary from that a bit. Then there's the ooblick to consider. Without processing any information, of course.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 11:36am PT
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Yer a bunch a closet preachers.
Preaching all day what's in yer academic books.
If it ain't in yer books and papers it don't exist.
Academic bubble boys with no real actual life proof .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 11:53am PT
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Jgill: Evidence . . . religious . . . conviction
Without interpretations, none of these are available.
The argument seems to be over genre or type rather than basis. When one says “I believe,” they just as well say: “I like this; it suits my sensibilities.”
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 26, 2015 - 12:59pm PT
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i don't see how " love your enemies" can be senseable to anyone.
Isn't believing; knowledge. And knowledge; believing?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 26, 2015 - 01:20pm PT
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BB said "i don't see how " love your enemies" can be senseable to anyone."
That is because your POV is narrow; from a egoless/altruistic perspective it is the view.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jan 26, 2015 - 03:18pm PT
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Without interpretations, none of these are available
Did you mean "appropriate", Mike? All these words are available to anyone wishing to use them.
;>\
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 05:01pm PT
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Words, yes. Meaning, no.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 26, 2015 - 05:33pm PT
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It isn't "experiential adventures" that remind one of religion; it is the way you talk about them as a path to be followed in order to grok that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
What you mean to say is that you still hold out the hope that grocking onto "emptiness is form and form is emptiness" is some thing that you can get hold of discursively. That an open focus approach is not required. But this is plainly not the case, lest we all would have done it that way. "Path" is your term. I have tried talking about this is strictly technical terms - do SOMETHING, ANYTHING but discursive reasoning and see what happens. Conflating this with religion is simply what you do when a direction is pointed out that does not square with the discursive.
The importance of meditating in a group also sounds like church
Does studying in a classroom sound like church? Does going to the beach with a group of people sound like church? Does a book club sound like church? Why does an activity like meditation, done in a group, sound like church when there is no doctrine, no message, no diety, no worship? You surly can see that your church association is a projection of what you have heard about meditation as practiced in India, and so forth. I invite you to go to a Zen center and tell me how much "church" you find there.
and your long record of promoting the meditative path and castigating those you feel are not heeding the message can legitimately be likened to preaching.
If you look at mot of my messages I am clear to always say that the discursive is not the Devil and is indispensible to living in the world. What I "castigate" is the speculation before investigation. People make the most fantastic sweeping statements about open focus self observation before ever trying to do it, even going so far (as Ward once did) to claim that open focus work does not, in fact, exist.
My contention all along is that blind scientism is the Devil here. Like insisting that all consciousness is reducible to lower order things, but when you reduce down far enough, to where the sacred stuff has "no physical extent," and is no thing at all, the conversation suddenly gets squirly as people scramble to reassert that sacred stuff as the end-all.
As has been said across time by many wise folks, emptiness, when met head on, can scare the sh#t out of you - they used to call the experience seeing the face of God, which mythology said will kill you. Working at some level in all of our phyches is that desperate holding onto the imagined stuff out there, the real things that give rise to reality, that birth reality, like a reliable father figure. Except that father is a ghost.
So in a sense meditation is dancing or surfing with ghosts. That how we roll, it's just that most of us don't see this, fixated as we are on things, much as that kid on the corner is glued to his cell phone, keeping the discursive engaged lest the trap door opens and he goes into free fall.
JL
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 26, 2015 - 05:58pm PT
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One of the leading theories about consciousness, proposed by Michael Graziano of Princeton, is that it is nothing more than our mind allowing itself to be fooled by the appearance of awareness (what I've been calling agency) of other people, other non-people agents like your pets, and yourself.
Wikipedia attributes this to him.
"... awareness is a computed feature constructed by an expert system in the brain. The feature of awareness can be attributed to other people in the context of social perception. It can also be attributed to oneself, in effect creating one's own awareness.
So, the very thing that Largo holds so sacred is suggested to be nothing more than the mind fooling itself. Can't help but see the irony in this.
By the way, watch this short video of Graziano which talks more about our perceptions of awareness. Note his allusion to attributing awareness (what I've been calling agency) to his dog (my cat). I swear I had never seen this video or read anything by Graziano along these lines. It makes me think that my own reasoning involving my relationship with my cat is proving fertile ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Fp67k03jg
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 26, 2015 - 05:59pm PT
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Well, "sacred stuff" is at least something in the way of a bone; the rest falls way short of any form of "reporting back"...
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jan 26, 2015 - 06:33pm PT
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blind scientism is the Devil here
Ah, we agree.
You are right that 'preacher' is the wrong word for you. You are more of a missionary. One who underestimates the meditative history of your intended converts.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 26, 2015 - 06:55pm PT
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Holy crap! I finally found a potentially good response to the "there is randomness in the universe out there, but how does this help the free will question."... that resonates with me. Ed had more than one post with a reference to the general idea, but this looks pretty thought-provoking and compelling to me. I am totally ready to abandon my new stance that free will is an illusion if this can convince me (using arguments I was not familiar with). I'm slow. I have to mull over these things for days...think about them while I walk or ride the bus. I'll report back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMp30Q8OGOE
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:06pm PT
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This all stupid.
Do some actual real free will and you will then know the actual answer.
Instead all this guessing and theorizing you do.
You modern western rigid mental speculators sitting on your couches trying to guess your way into sh!t you don't even have a clue with ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:25pm PT
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Jesus, Werner, you're like a bad fortune cookie. Hey, I don't even know what that means. It just seems appropriate.
It must be nice to be you. You apparently know things without recourse to "academic books" and such. Seems to me that you should have a little more empathy for us who are not you. How could we be?
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:36pm PT
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I said the exact same thing Largo said but only condensed.
In other words one has to the work
There's no other way there's is no other way.
There is no other way.
There is none but to "Do the actual WORK"
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