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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:22am PT
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Just spend 10 seconds realizing that you have absolutely no idea what my experience has been to date. That might help you get clear of your prison of assumptions and intellectual blind spots. Like the silly 'space between your thoughts' literally being what it feels like, for example. Really? 30 seconds of thinking about how that would actually work doesn't clear that up for you? And what is this straw man fetish with 'objects'? A device upon which to defend a failing idea? They are irrelevant to this discussion.
"This might help you get clear on it: just spend thirty seconds with your attention wide open, NOT focused on any thing. No thoughts will rise up if you keep that focus wide enough. In the abscnece of thought, what do you find? That is what you are missing when your attention is fused to what your dendrites are parading before you. We don't expect you to know otherwise, lacking the expoeriences that would make some of this material clear to you and entirely void of woo and magic and all the other silly sh#t your heap on what you don't understand. But so long as you are curious and are not a slave to your own POV, you have a shot at a wider, and clearer perspective."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 10:36am PT
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Ha!
where is HFCS, off sulking somewhere?
LOL. Not off sulking, just out looking for a new hinge. ;)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 25, 2014 - 10:46am PT
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We're all being led around by the nose by an evil cabal of scientists, bent on keeping the truth hidden.
Their purpose is clear.
The universe-as-recycled-summer-blockbuster-plot
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 25, 2014 - 11:20am PT
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Raw awareness is the aspect of sentience which is aware (JL)
The heart of the theory, remember, is that awareness is a model of attention
I must be getting too old for this sort of thing. It looks like metaphysics to me, at best some kind of circular reasoning based on poorly understood concepts.
Mechanistically, it is the perception that I act on, that model which the brain computes of the outside world, which does animate action. My perception could be wrong, some combination of shadows that appear as the face of a tiger, for instance, might make me jump. Or a fallen branch that I notice as I step over a log, that appears to be a snake... (Ed)
An obvious observation, but one that puts a little meat on a rapidly diminishing bone.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 25, 2014 - 11:37am PT
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'In a religious or spiritual view, the “experienceness,” the consciousness itself, is a non-physical substance, something like plasma. It is ectoplasm. It is spirit.
Even if it is "Spirit", your spirit is seperate of my spirit. Doesn't that constitute some sortof physicality?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 11:40am PT
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maybe you didn't read the article jgill... but the there might be little compelling in the explanation. I happen to like it a lot, but I can see, and the authors admit, that their hypothesis lacks some grand "ah ha!" moment...
basically the hypothesis is simply that consciousness is associated with the evolutionarily advantageous social behavior, that we have "built in" circuits for "social attention" and that our "theory-of-mind" uses these same circuits to predict behavior.
The hardwired nature necessarily simplifies the totality of sensory input. That is what we call "perception".
Obviously, we use the attention queues of others in our interactions. The "rays" which we perceive as vision happen to correspond to the 1º to 2º field of view of our fovea, the region on our retinas that have the highest resolution capability... knowing where that field of view is pointed is a good approximation to the visual attention of someone else...
...the hypothesis would posit that our individual process for "pointing out attention" is also used to interpret other people's attention. It would be a marvelous generalization, and it would explain a whole host of behaviors, imitative learning, for instance... with the important consequence of decreasing brain size... a brain that is already energy hungry, engineering wise, the brain energy use has to be compensated by the energy it helps to find...
...what are you looking at? is there a banana in that bush?
The report goes on to point out that the center of "consciousness" in the brain corresponds to the location of social attention, and that injuries of a particular location result in our loss of consciousness of one side of our world (the left side).
To test this, they experiment with a set of "social scenes" in combination, and show that scenes that are not "normal" require a lot more brain processing than scenes that are expected. As they predicted.
Perception, our model of the world around us, includes awareness, and social awareness, all perceptual models we base our actions on. But the models have limitations, so our actions are based on incomplete or unfamiliar sets of information.
Not only that, but we use the same sort of generalization to build our own model of how we interact with the world, using the same "circuits."
The commonality of experience is simply the commonality of the physical structure of the brain.
Our sense that the universe is conscious comes from that same behavior, we extend our "theory of mind" to everything... we can't help it, it's how we're wired...
...and you don't even have to conjure up "emergence" to do it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 12:34pm PT
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So you think ohm's law is valid for an incandescent light bulb, huh?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 01:25pm PT
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the resistance is a function of temperature, so it doesn't obey Ohm's law, it is non-linear...
how does that happen?
you could probably look at Purcell and figure it out.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 01:33pm PT
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So you researched it, huh? Just proving I can quibble as competently as the next guy is all, lol!
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jul 25, 2014 - 02:33pm PT
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JG said "I must be getting too old for this sort of thing. It looks like metaphysics to me, at best some kind of circular reasoning based on poorly understood concepts."
It is metaphysics or philosophy if you don't actually do it. But JL is talking about doing it. It is like the difference of talking to someone about a climb you both have done vs talking to someone about a climb you have done but they haven't or don't even climb.
One thing that hasn't been discussed very much is in some meditation practices (zen and I think others) it is emphasized to put your attention to your hara(just below the belly button) or various chakra points. Basically you are moving your attention from your thinking to the body.
After some practice, in my experience, you will physically feel a sensation (commonly called chi)at the point of concentration that can vary from a slight tension to an expansive almost out of body sensation that grows from the area.
By moving the attention from the thinking to the body comes an feeling/ability to be much less distracted by the thinking and to drop into a subtle awareness.
In this meditation state you can trigger bliss by just smiling; emotions and feeling are very raw and intense but if you stay with the attention on the hara and just witness the emotions and feelings you can watch them rise to cresendos and drop off and leave. As they leave you enter into a more subtle state and observe the next cresendo of feelings move through. And things become more subtle and very quiet.
It is quite an amazing climb ; I would give it 5 stars and highly recommend you climb it; the cruxes can get very runout but if you pay attention it is all there.
But to get on the climb you typically have to hold your opinions very very lightly, and it helps to have a good sense of humor.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:04pm PT
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Thank you, Ed. That clarified things for me. And, yes, I didn't read the article - I started it but lost interest after a short time. You are one helluva expositor!
I appreciate your comments as well, PSP.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:17pm PT
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'flat earth theories' are actually extremely interesting
even though they don't enlighten the nature of the universe
such myopic theories do shed interesting light upon the local psychological and social and political domains
some people literally have to fall off the edge of the earth before approaching an improved understanding of reality
(in my business, falling off the edge of the earth is called an 'orbit')
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MH2
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:29pm PT
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In this meditation state you can trigger bliss by just smiling; emotions and feeling are very raw and intense but if you stay with the attention on the hara and just witness the emotions and feelings you can watch them rise to cresendos and drop off and leave. As they leave you enter into a more subtle state and observe the next cresendo of feelings move through. And things become more subtle and very quiet. (PSP also PP)
Doesn't everyone do that?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:30pm PT
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Doesn't that work both ways? A certain amount of current will heat a substance based on its conductivity? This is how a toaster functions.
I am curious where on the evolutionary ladder awareness arises. Many animals are aware, but we wouldn't characterize them as intelligent as humans are. That is one thing that JL hasn't mentioned, that I know of. It is an obvious point of study, though. Comparative anatomy and comparative study of other species should actually help us in our ability to define consciousness, sentience, and free will.
Awareness seems to me to be the point that free will originates. Be it in a dolphin, a dog, or a snake. They are all self aware to some degree, and we have this huge wild world of animals to study and learn more about ourselves. Why we are not discussing the entire animal kingdom for examples of sentience and awareness baffles me.
If you offer two choices to a mouse, a red button for food and a blue button which delivers an electric shock, can it be said that the mouse is self aware because it can learn the difference? Humans will obey the same experiment. Is this free will?
This all seems to be very prejudiced when we carve out humans from this argument. Behavioral biologists have done a lot of basic work in this area, and many animals can be taught. My dog has a vocabulary of English words which she understands. She seems to be self aware to me. She seems to have free will as well.
The only argument there seems to be is what we call instinct.
Instinct is those behaviors which animals do without being taught. We ourselves have a healthy dose of instinct.
For instance, when I hit the age of 14, I became a horny little bastard. If I managed, a few years later, to convince a woman in the Mountain Room Bar to accompany me to my secret love nest back around swan slab, was I simply reacting to a pre-programmed biological desire, or was there sentience involved? I would argue a little of both. I was captive to this basic biological desire, but the implementation was downright devious, and full of thought. At what point does this universal biological desire, independent of human awareness, include free will?
I would argue that free will was very much a part of who I would go home with when the opportunity presented itself. I'm not comfortable with that narrow focus type of action. Lord knows that the seduction was a fairly involved matter. Even the act was a sort of dance with the other person (women in my case).
I have been married for over twenty years and have not strayed from my wife during that time. I would call that free will. I certainly have been around attractive women many times, but I have never acted on it. I have reserved that for my wife.
I could delete that previous paragraph if I wanted to. That is free will. I find this argument about free will a little silly. Certainly we, like other animals, are born with certain innate behaviors, and reproduction is a fundamental one, seen in all animal species. All species have some certain reproductive urge, and while we might say that it is instinct without awareness in a flatworm, it is difficult to say that it is solely instinct in higher animals. Sure, the instinct drives the behavior, but how the act is achieved can be horribly complicated.
To sit here and argue something like awareness without considering other animal species seems to be an arbitrary distinction in this argument, because we are animals ourselves.
This anthropomorphic chauvinism is running full blast when we concentrate solely on a human example for awareness and sentience in a spiritual or metaphysical sense. To me, this seems a little presumptious.
My dog dreams for instance. I know this because sometimes when she is sleeping, she yelps a little and peddles her feet.
The definition of instinct is an interesting question. We have reflexes, such as the dilation of the pupil in low light. Instinct is different from a reflex, though. Instincts can be complicated affairs.
I read something interesting a few years ago. Apparently Humpback whales sing long and complicated "songs." Sound travels through water with great efficiency, and it has been observed that whales separated by thousands of miles learn to sing the same song, and the songs change over time. That is an important point. This whale behavior changes. It is not, by definition, completely instinct.
It has been argued with some success that language is an instinct in humans. An infant learns language, apparently without free will.
Is free will simply the ability to ignore an instinct? Humans seem to have a fear of heights. Climber try to ignore that instinct.
Are we really more intelligent than whales? Is our intelligence the result of opposable thumbs and symbolic language (writing)? Is that the only difference between humans and whales? Whales obviously have a complicated means of communication. Perhaps as complicated as human oral communication. Who knows what their cognition is like.
I don't know if we are more intelligent than whales. Obviously we can build microwave ovens and space craft, but is that due to our ability to write things down and share them with other humans? Written language is a tremendous advantage.
If whales had ST, would they endlessly bitch and troll each other like we do?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:40pm PT
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"Doesn't everyone do that?"
That would be a no. Typically pushing the emotion/feeling away or clinging to it afraid it will change; which it will.
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MH2
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:52pm PT
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Nevertheless, PSP also PP, lots of people do behave in the way you describe, quite naturally and without method.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 25, 2014 - 05:27pm PT
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We need to be careful about the difference between instinct and free will.
I am pretty inclusive regarding free will. I define it as the point where we ignore instinct. We have to be aware to accomplish this.
We do it all of the time, yet much lower forms of animals appear to completely be controlled by instinct, which is something an organism is born with and not taught.
For that matter, anything that can be taught is also free will.
The notion that the universe is entirely deterministic just doesn't pass my smell test.
You could still suggest that our curiosity is a form of instinct, but it is open ended and not deterministic by its very nature.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jul 25, 2014 - 05:46pm PT
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Nevertheless, PSP also PP, lots of people do behave in the way you describe, quite naturally and without method. (MH2)
I am definately describing a method.
I think what you are saying is since everybody has emotions and feelings don't we all have to work with them. Yes there is no choice. Where we differ is I think most people typically choose try to avoid the feelings/emotions that make them uncomfortable and seek the ones that make them comfortable.
The method that I am descibing is to attempt to cut that habit by being extremely curious about what is a "good" feeling and what is a "bad" feeling. What makes good and bad? what is it really? Just experiencing it without reacting or watching the reacting.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:56pm PT
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Just experiencing it without reacting or watching the reacting (PSP)
Well, I know I've had that experience (as I'm sure others have): Getting emotional, then watching myself being emotional, then backing off the emotions and exercising restraint and logical analysis. So it can happen without Zen psychotherapy, but Zen offers a path supposedly for those so inclined, a path apparently devoid of logical assessment or willful restraint - or any sort of moral judgment.
Way too passive for me. But you state your argument well.
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MH2
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:39pm PT
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Where we differ is I think most people typically choose try to avoid the feelings/emotions that make them uncomfortable and seek the ones that make them comfortable. (PSP also PP)
Where we are the same is in trying to say things about the great diversity of human experience in a few simple sentences.
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