Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
nafod
Boulder climber
State college
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 11:56am PT
|
Wisdom is pure intelligence from the source far higher than the defective traces of materialism. Wisdom comes from survivable ground falls
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 04:05pm PT
|
Ever the reductionist, my current take:
What is Mind? -- really, is two questions.
1. What creates mind?
2. What do (created) minds do?
I believe that not appreciating this distinction is the root of many misunderstandings on this thread. They really are different questions. Here are my short answers.
1. Mind is an evolutionary adaptation, like every other kind of attribute or behavior in the biological world. Therefore, the short answer is that Mother Nature created mind as she unfolded over time.
2. Minds in communication created the humanities, religion, money, empires, Zen, Mary Poppins, etc. Mind does not make sense as something that could exist without other minds. It is only something that could have evolved in a social species.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 04:11pm PT
|
Those are NOT answers but only pure guessing .....
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 04:35pm PT
|
eeyonkee,
Yes, Good Questions!
My friend, there is no “Mother Nature” if you’re a materialist or a typical scientist. Come up with another “cause.” Second, you’re referring to “brain” in the first answer you pose if you are a materialist or scientist. Look for mind empirically and you’ll have to admit that you don’t have any data that folks can agree upon. (That’s empiricism.) Stick with the brain. It’s something you know about.
Surely there have been minds alone. For that matter, it’s only your mind that you know. The rest you’re guessing at.
It’s the human sciences (sic) that mind has created if you look at those categories that you’re pointing to.
Is physics a human science?
Mind is akin to that pink Ever-Ready Bunny. It energetically and needlessly elaborates everything it comes in contact with.
My suggestion is to swap out mind for awareness. Let mind go.
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 04:39pm PT
|
MikeL, I couldn't disagree with you more. But then, we both know this. My view points are always evolving. Yours aren't, from what I can tell. Frankly, it's your and Largo's posts that generally make me want to quit this thread.
Sorry, hoping to get this in before Mike responds. So, Mike, perhaps you can give us your thoughts on the relationship between us sharing 98% of our genes with chimpanzees and our relative similarities and differences in "mind". Evolution has something to say about this. Do you? Is this just immaterial to you or what?
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 04:58pm PT
|
So, I have one more independent thought to throw out there on this thread. I don't know about you, but the fact that ANYONE would still think of Trump positively is telling us something about mind and intelligence. I have been stating in various ways now my belief that intelligence is a completely separate thing from mind. I contend that it is mind overriding intelligence that is responsible for this Trump phenomenon. Clearly, it's not that the Trump supporters are unintelligent. It's got to be something else. That something else has to be higher-level algorithms that are based on a relatively few, simple beliefs that are stored and/or processed in the "interpreter" part of the brain. This is entirely consistent with my contention that Michael Gazzaniga is correct in his assessment of mind. It is NOT a decision-maker. It is, instead, an after-the-fact story-teller. But the after-the-fact-story-teller has a profound influence on future thoughts.
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 05:08pm PT
|
Are you really from Santee?
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jul 30, 2018 - 05:18pm PT
|
there is no “Mother Nature”
Not true.
Everything has personality.
The impersonalists are in poor fund of knowledge .....
Material nature (Mother Nature) cannot create anything.
She needs the superior energy (spiritual energy) for that and is an absolute fact.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 30, 2018 - 08:25pm PT
|
That something else has to be higher-level algorithms that are based on a relatively few, simple beliefs that are stored and/or processed in the "interpreter" part of the brain.
--
That's based on a computer-data processing model. But the brain doesn't "store" memories remotely in the manner you infer.
https://www.wired.com/story/your-brain-is-memories/
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 07:10am PT
|
eeyonkee: My view points are always evolving.
Mmmmm, well, sure, ok. That’s nice and all, but if your thinking is always changing, what do you think you know? My “evolved” point of view is, indeed, pretty much the same: I’m not sure of just about everything. You?
. . . [what do you think about] sharing 98% of our genes with chimpanzees and our relative similarities and differences in "mind".
You really don’t mean “sharing.” You mean similarity. As for your question, I think about the similarity of genes between species the same way I think about noticing the similarity of atom configurations between what I appear to be made of physically and what everything else appears to be made of physically. Interesting, but it doesn’t really tell me much of anything about the experience of living.
With all due respect, imo, you don’t think clearly enough. You should have great unfathomable intelligence as a living entity, but you’re not really exercising it. You pick and chooses data and associations selectively, and when you generalize, you focus on sub-categories of your choosing. There are many theories about this or that, and they all have something to say. Each conscious reference point in the universe appears to offer a unique perspective on the whole. Rather than pick one theory over another theory, you could consider them all simultaneously.
You could also stop now and then and consider the assumptions that you’re holding implicitly. What, for example, are the assumptions that the scientific approach makes and relies upon? (There are quite a few, you know.) If you were to hold in abeyance those assumptions, then where would you be and what could you say you know?
Werner,
I’m trying to talk to these physical materialists here. If I try to introduce a notion of Shakti to them, for example, I’ll lose any basis for a credible conversation with them. I think I need to try to stay within a physicalist frame of reference initially. (For those who aren’t up on this notion of Shakti, an absolute unmoving awareness {e.g., Shiva} first expresses itself (moves) as unbounded creative energy, and that energy emanates into infinite manifestations. Shakti is a kind of “mother” of forms.)
The kind of “Mother Nature” terminology often used loosely in general conversations such as these is obviously anthropomorphic and not scientific. However, its usage points to a belief in physical causation, and just what that cause would or could be is the essence of the recognition I’m trying to draw out. Is there an organized causation? If there is structure to reality that we can see and reference, then what is it?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 08:10am PT
|
Rather than pick one theory over another theory, you could consider them all simultaneously.
Rather than post one idea over another idea, you could post them all simultaneously.
Or could you?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 08:18am PT
|
I think eeyonkee has a good perspective. There is a difference between trying to say what the brain is versus trying to say what it is doing.
Here the computer analogy is of some help. Take away the power, or put your computer to sleep. Then it is like your brain: the structure is there but it isn't doing anything (besides existing). When your computer is running, many things are happening in it that don't happen when it is off. Information is being passed between parts of it and operations are being performed on the information. That is like what we call mind. Knowing the structure of your computer and knowing how it operates are different ways of knowing something about it.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 31, 2018 - 09:02am PT
|
What is Mind? -- really, is two questions.
1. What creates mind?
2. What do (created) minds do?
When Nagel said, "Consciousness is not a question about causality," what do you think he meant? Do you believe behavioralism and physicalism are concepts lost on Nagel?
|
|
nafod
Boulder climber
State college
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 09:14am PT
|
I wonder for animals where instinct dominates, if they have a "memory" of snakes, for example, that in any way mirrors the memories we build from scratch.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 31, 2018 - 09:57am PT
|
they don't actually explain anything at all. They merely describe, and we can work with that.
What would an explanation accomplish that a description cannot?
You may be guilty of sophistry.
This is a key concept to get clear on. But try and figure it out for yourself. Start with the psychological level with how one "cause" can "create" various effects, then go to the physical and see how different causes or forces can "create" the same effect.
You will find that in the determined sense of the word, there is no explanation for any of this, not when reduction is used as the method of inquiry.
Another crucial difference to realize is how, at least on the surface level of things, determined causation is seen in consciously engineered external objects like computers, in a way totally absent in Nature.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 11:45am PT
|
This is a key concept to get clear on.
I admire the civility of your reply. Perhaps we can make a step forward.
Can you tell me what happens when light strikes a mirror?
Either a description or an explanation would be ok.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 31, 2018 - 11:57am PT
|
MH2, you're slipping back into your default position of answering a question with another question. Re: my words: "But try and figure it out for yourself."
This isn't an order, but an invitation to see the holes in any so-called determined chain of causation. Like I said, start with the psychological to see the diversity of "effects" from one "cause," then move on to the physical to see the diversity of "causes" that can render the same "effect." Use the scientific method of reducing, down to smaller and smaller "causes" and it should become obvious.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 01:54pm PT
|
when light strikes a mirror
Before you can even describe or explain one must fully know what "light itself" is.
The gross materialists have no full complete realized understanding of light itself.
Thus their mirror questions are useless ultimately .......
The gross materialists never ever get to the actual root of all knowledge!
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jul 31, 2018 - 02:07pm PT
|
Werner:
You might consider listening to Richard Feynman's "Robb Memorial lectures"
on Quantum Electrodynamics given in New Zealand in 1979. There you will see
discussion of the path integral method for solving the equations governing
photon light paths where there is reflection. Those results agree with experiments
to something like ten decimal places. Feynman asserts this method has been
found equally successful for 96% of all phenomena involving light.
Those lectures are a pedological tour de force, IMO.
Pedology is a term referring to instruction of children. Since we all are
arguably children when it comes to the quantum, I think I use the term
correctly. Interestingly the quantum was first invoked by Planck when
he explained the source for "The ultraviolet catastrophe" late in the 19th century.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!