Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
WBraun
climber
|
|
Modern science only knows, measures and studies the "hardware" of the gross physical manifestation.
"Life" itself is beyond the material instruments of modern science.
"Life" is the driver of the hardware.
Real science = life comes from life
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
At this point it occurred to me that meditation is a kind of luxury for people with a food surplus and leisure
I've often thought that as well. Of course it was originally supposed to be for the poor lumpen to escape their struggling and suffering, but then none of them came up with it; it took a pampered prince to reach enlightenment, and it's obviously a lot easier to become enamored with the "non-discursive" when you've got the time and leisure to do so.
|
|
Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
|
|
Uh oh, Buddha belly.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
At this point it occurred to me that meditation is a kind of luxury for people with a food surplus and leisure (Jan)
Makes you wonder about the ancient Greeks who instead of turning to meditation began western civilization by developing discursive thought to exceptional heights.
|
|
MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
|
|
Ed:
Sure. (Quite simply, I don't see any indication that Wilczek had been making careful systematic observations on any of those three subjects. Perhaps you do.)
FM:
I'll pass on the tofu burgers. Bring on the meat.
Cintune: Human beings, as far as we know, are the only species who are also able to turn their attention away from the external world and just think for extended periods of time, but the fact that the mind evolved to engage with the world may place limits on our ability to do this.
The taproot representatives of our species (great artists, great social scientists, great physical scientists, and great meditative beings of all sorts) have seem to have done exactly that.. What is considered more and more--even among the physical scientists--are those "things" that are not directly evident . . . "things" that are unavailable to the senses. People might give that "evolutionary trend" a consideration for just a minute. As Man and Woman have evolved into post modernity, they have created and concerned themselves with worlds that are beyond their direct senses. Man and women live, for the most part, in imaginary worlds that are not tangible as ancient men and women lived and died in. The "non-discursive" is just another example of just that.
Seen from afar, the bigger picture of this trend line would suggest that perhaps the so-called objective, physical world is not quite what it seems to be. That is to say, it is not preeminent. it is not paramount. It is not essential. It is not quite what common people make of it. There is far more to life, living, and being than what seems to be available to commonplace sensibilities.
So, what's important? What captures our most intense attentions? What do we live our lives for? What do we look back on when we are on our death beds . . . that which is objective and physical? I'll bet not.
Being is everything. There IS nothing else.
And what is Life to you? Atoms? Energy? Neurons? Geological strata? The language of some lost tribe in Africa? (Wake up! You're dreaming--and behind the curve.)
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
And what is Life to you? Atoms? Energy? Neurons? Geological strata? The language of some lost tribe in Africa? (Wake up! You're dreaming--and behind the curve.)
Should we take this as a cry for help?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
So, what's important? What captures our most intense attentions? What do we live our lives for? What do we look back on when we are on our death beds . . . that which is objective and physical? I'll bet not.
you are speaking for yourself here, right?
it certainly doesn't have anything to do with me...
I'm hoping that I'm "not looking back on" anything on my death bed... just as I was not looking forward to anything at my birth. These are two times that define my life... what happened in-between happened.
It wouldn't surprise me if I were working some interesting physics problem at that second time... that's what I do.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
And what is Life to you? Atoms? Energy? Neurons? Geological strata? The language of
some lost tribe in Africa? (Wake up! You're dreaming--and behind the curve.) M/L
Mike:
I'll admit to a failure. Lo these last few years I have not been able to discover where you live. You
go into a line of thought but then unexpectedly at the last moment, and for no apparent reason
veer off in some odd direction. You have attempted to explain this as a Socratic device. But while
these odd twists seem to urge people to feel free, i don't see any direction suggested for that
freedom to be pointed.
Wilczek on the other hand was very successful, I thought, in leading us on a grand adventure
crossing boundary after boundary in the disciplines but in each applying native intelligence
unconstrained by any reluctance to approach difficult problems. What he did was creative
throughout thereby making the whole a most exciting travelogue. Starting at Pythagoras, the
start of it all, laid his plan clearly at our feet at the very beginning.
What he accomplished was truly Socratic, at its heart.
And I have to say, Ed's many contributions to us have been rather along this same line.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
You had a death bed? Luxury.
|
|
The Real Mad Dog
Gym climber
Napa, CA
|
|
Consciousness. Does it exist? Do we exist? Does the universe exist? For starters, review relativity and quantum physics, and the implication is that time, space, and matter do not exist. Weird, but it turns out that back in 1991, renown astrophysicist Paul Davies actually wrote a book on this: The Matter Myth. So, the universe does not exist. But we know it does, and I suggest this is correct. Moreover, both views may be correct. Without the universe, there is nothing to perceive; with the universe, perception is impossible. Consciousness seems to require both states, something like quantum weirdness. For a good background on consciousness, read CONSCIOUSNESS: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, by Christof Koch of Cal Tech (MIT Press, 2012). For more enlightenment, read REINVENTING THE SACRED (very misleading title), by non-reductionist, very holistic Stuart A. Kauffman, the founding director of the Institute of Biocomplexity and Informatics (Basic Books, 2008). Caution! Despite published by Basic Books, there is nothing basic about. It is a very hard read; helps to be a polymath.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
...helps to be a polymath.
hahahaha
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
This wax holding my feathers together may not be up to it.
|
|
Mar'
Trad climber
Fanta Se
|
|
Dang.
The OP is "What is Mind?
I thought Largo used to to be quite the meditator. I wonder what that was all about… whenever I heard about that it was in the context of utter panic. Was that such a leisurely pursuit?
Ooops, well, If you consider climbing bums as expressions of a leisure class…
More to the point: mind isn't created. Mind isn't philosophy. It isn't even thinking, much less the organ. The brain keeps the body functioning, but it isn't the seat of awareness. Mind isn't the identity relative to the psychology and sensual perception of the organism that is going to die.
A few posts have suggested that mind is awareness.
Awareness is selfless in that it has no identity. Mind isn't attributable~ having never begun.
When mind sees itself nonexistence doesn't even exist.
How wonderful.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
When mind sees itself nonexistence doesn't even exist
I kinda like it! A whole lotta thinkin goin on here.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
The brain keeps the body functioning, but it isn't the seat of awareness. (Mar')
Then the brain would at least need to be aware of the body, which would at least give it a seat at the table of awareness.
Mind is a word. The mind is like a small animal that runs in the shadows through the tall grass beyond the campfire and loses itself in the dark.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
Mind is a word. The mind is like a small animal that runs in the shadows through the tall grass beyond the campfire and loses itself in the dark
The ideas they's a'pourin' out now! We got substance comin' from nothin' !!
|
|
Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
|
|
Some of us who have experienced mostly the physical, believing that the potential for extending our consciousness beyond the mortal would require a future technology in which our memories are transplanted into an android brain, have faced the inevitable fact that in leu of such advances in medical science our consciousness would end.
Based on the realization of our physical limitations, some of our minds would strive to be freed of the trappings of our fear based longings to live eternally, and aspire to enjoy a consciousness of the 'now', assuming there is no 'more'.
Not ruling out the possibility that all of life might be of a 'collective consciousness', that the perceived spirit might be a 'continuous quantum energy force' of which we have not yet learned to detect with scientific instruments, then a planetary consciousness would be billions of years old.
Barring this, the difficult part there is to say goodbye to the spiritual realm of the eternal, and embrace the natural world, with all its beauty, harshness, and mystery.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
If only life were easy it would be such fu uu uuuu un.
The Kinks
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 5, 2014 - 09:31am PT
|
Healyj said: "the point remains, 'no thing' is no more and no less than a place you can't 'be' in much of any significant way. And by 'significant' I mean it can take months or years of meditation to just get a toehold on that wily wabbit, thus the comparison to trying to [directly] 'experience' your Vagus nerve."
Almost without excepting, the perspective offered above, inevitable as it is, will radically shift once you start in on the work. What jumps out first and foremost are the parts of us that are simply mental constructs for survival, or whatever. One of those is the "you" referenced above supposedly can't be in . . . " That "you' is only provisional, but be glad you have it to navigate this world. There is nothing "wrong" with this you. But on other levels beyond survival, our "you" is entirely chimerical.
This perspective also throws objective functioning (vagus nerve, sympathetic nervous system, memory, etc.) in with sentience as just another bi process and in doing so you we tend to get a muddled view. All the functional aspects of our brain provide no reason and no explanation and for certain no definition for us to be sentient. That was the point of mentioning my discussions with those friends of mind who wee simply entertaining the IDEA of having to process a machine to be sentient. Objective functioning we can see in the biology and we have some sense of a process or function we can mock up. But nobody can observe sentience at the level of biology, at least not at a level remotely lucid enough to start writing code about how to make it so in a machine.
The more we bore into sentience, the more we find ourself in that space-between-thoughts Ed mentioned, and there is simply no-thing there. Put differently, the basic nature of our sentient "minds" is emptiness, or no-thingness. But not in any absolute way, rather I flash back again to what Ed as saying about so-called empty space. Even in the most empty sector of the universe if we pruned out a square of space seemingly empty there would still exist in said space the potential for energy to simply arise, here, there or any damn place. Our tendency is to think the energy must exist somewhere else and spontaneously arrives and arrives in that "empty" space. But maybe this space is like our minds, or our minds are like that space, and the nature of that space is that it births stuff and things.
A fun thought experiment is to observe your mind and try and see when and from where a thought or feeling or sensation or memory arises. We can in fact never see a thought etc. arise of vanish. It is as though all of these things were always there and we simply noticed them.
Go figure . . .
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
Yes ....
Everything is always there but not in our vision always.
When you are ready then whatever one needs will appear.
You can't force it nor are you in full control.
There is a higher power that ultimately controls all.
The gross materialists will always be subordinate to that higher power no matter how much they deny ......
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!